Maybe I was overreacting because of the way all this was being donefrom outside, by automatic stimulus, imposed again. That antiauthority response again. Or, maybe it was just fear of not knowing what to do, or what was to be done. I would have to depend on her for that.
We were on the river course down to the point, less than a day from our goal. Mara had puzzled over why nothing had happened yet, the buildup being slower than the normal pattern. On this world everything happened according to the normal pattern.
But now, today, this moment, the waiting was over.
I didn’t have to worry about how to do anything;
everything was all done for me. She was suddenly a blazing green, overpowering, as was her maddening scent. I couldn’t think of anything else, see anything else. I sent out a pulse to her and she stopped. Suddenly I was locked on; the normal pulsing became a steady, overpowering scream directly at her, full force. She stood there, frozen by it, as if hypnotized.
I moved close to her, swaying the sonic beam back and forth rhythmically, and she swayed to my tune and direction, expression blank, as if in some sort of trance. I forced the beam upward, up again, stroking her with sound, and she rose, leaning back on her massive tail, leaning, leaning further back than I had ever seen any Choz go, almost completely doubled back, so that her circular vaginal cavity was exposed.
Then I moved to within a meter of her and stood on my tail as well. I could feel my own breathing, heavy, rhythmic, and a tiny corner of my mind noted that her breathing was in perfect time to my own. Everything
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was a complete blur, a rush of urge and emotion, both of us in some sort of orgasmic fog.
Suddenly she sent out a steady pulse to me, stronger, stronger, until her far-different frequency and my own were in almost perfect tune. I edged close to her, following the beam linking the two pairs of horns, and then we were locked, linked together in that eerie tableau for who knew how long.
When, finally, that part was over, the whole process was not. Slowly we moved in perfect unison, bringing our bodies back up, then forward. Her two homs touched my curled ones, fitted through the loops in mine.
The sensation felt like an overpowering electric shock. We linked in some way, became as one, moved as one, saw as one, felt as one. I was both bodies and she was both bodies, yet there was no thought, no consciousness beyond the overpowering feelings.
Slowly she withdrew, and we turned and stood side by side as one organism. We moved to a clearing near the river and, together, we spun a house. It was beautiful, intricate, and came from someplace other than our minds, since I had no way of knowing how to do this on my own.
When we finished we lined the floor with leaves and grass, and went inside. She lay on the floor, on her back, a position that was extremely unnatural to a Choz under other circumstances, and I placed myself over her, penetrated again, and settled down atop her. We maintained this position, unmoving, unthinking, for what must have been daysI later learned that it had been ten days!without thought, without any sensation but the overpowering one. Finally, I felt a touch, and drew back, back, so that I stood not over her but in front of her. Suddenly, in front of me, the first egg emerged, a flashing, almost blinding white and quite large. Then came a second, and then a third.
I waited, but no more came. She sat up, and the
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fold or flap on her marsupial pouch seemed creased, part open.
I reached out with a forehoof, placed it over the first egg, the three-part cleft opening just exactly wide enough to go around the top half of the egg, and I lifted it slowly and carefully placed it in her pouch, then the second.
Then the ritual was reversed, and I leaned back, opening my pouch. Whereupon she leaned forward, grasped the third egg, and placed it in my pouch. We both were lying on our backs, cradled on our own bushy tails.
Exhausted, for the first time in ten days we both slept.
60
Eight
Mara was just coming in when I awoke. Her color was neutral green once again, and all the sensations of the past ten days were a dim and blurry memory.
I felt weak as I got to my feet, and a little dizzy. She saw me and stopped.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, concerned. – “Terrible,” I responded. “My God! Do we go through that every two years?”
“No,” she said slowly. “/ go through it once every two years. Youwell, as often as every two months until the next in-between time.”
It made me ill to think about that. Males would be studs in this system; we’d have to average one every three and a half months or so.
“Why do I have an egg in my pouch?” I asked. I could barely feel it there, but I was nonetheless conscious of it.
She laughed. “The eggs are neuter. The sex of the child is determined by its hatch-place. In a few days they will hatch, and attach to the inner wall of the skin. That way they will be fed, and with the nourishment will come the instructions on sexual development. No one knows howwe have no way of knowing here.”
“I” I began, then almost collapsed.
She came over to me, radiating concern. “Here! Come outside and eat. You have had nothing for a long time and are very weak. After you’ll feel a little sick as I do now, but that is normal. Then, only then, will we talk about the strangeness.”
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I managed to stumble outside. The food-color was overwhelming and I started in. It wasn’t the ravenous hunger of the changing; in fact, I ate a little, then stopped, then managed a little more. The sensation was more like one of starvation, where everything looks wonderful but you feel sick when you face the food about which you dream. It took me about three hours, and I still didn’t feel right, but I was convinced that I could manage no more. I went back to the hut, still feeling weak, as she had warned, and sour as well.
Even so, I took time to study the house. We had built it together in the Breed, yet I still couldn’t have done anything so elaborate on my own. Everything was so much of a blur I had only vague memories of its construction, but I admired the work.
She heard me approach, and came out of the house.
“That’s amazing!” I exclaimed to her. “The house, I mean. Did Idid we build that? Did we really build that?”
She nodded. “If there is no house of your mate’s own webbing, one will be built. This is only the third time for me, but it’s as good as any of them.”
I agreed. Still feeling lousy, I lay down on the grass near the house and stretched out as best I could. No position felt comfortable, but it was better than nothing.
“You’ll get used to it,” Mara said, coming over and lying down near me.
And this, too, was strange, I thought. The whole thingwhy it disturbed me so. It was wholly animalistic, instinctive. There was nothing of one’s will involved, nor of one’s true emotions, either. There was no romance, no love, not even the sense of fulfilling a need to combat loneliness that would make somebody use a prostitute. No, the whole process was totally without any inkling of humanity, and that’s what bothered me the most.
I had to get the hell off this planet, or die. Not be-ing suicidal, I would still prefer death to my current
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situationand I marveled at how the older ones, the Firsts at least, could feel other than this way as well. But these were ordinary people, for the most part, I realized. Like those of my own world. All their needs serviced, on the social dole. Even those who protested wanted only a world more Utopian, more perfect. They didn’t have my needs, my fierce belief that only in struggle was man something more than the animals.
Modern humanity might as well be these docile animals, I knew. This is what the reformers wanted, lacking only population control. A world without worries over food, over war, over jealousy and hatred. A world without care or caring of any kind, including the caring
of one person for another.
A world where thinking was also unnecessary, ob-solete.
“What are you thinking about?” Mara asked, concerned. “Your aura shows great disturbance.”
“Just thinking,” I replied. “And that’s something you shouldn’t do on this world. There’s no room for it.”
“And is that true on your world?” she asked.
I sighed. “Not anymore. Not really. Those of us who do think are either fitted into the corporate mold or put in jobs like mine, where they’re segregated from society
even as they serve it.”
“I think I understand,” Mara replied. “I often think about what my father taught me. The colonists were pioneers, too, you know. They wanted to poke into places nobody else had been, and to solve the problem of setting up a new society on a new world. Theythe Firsts, I meanalways felt cheated that they hadn’t the chance to do that.”
I nodded. My stomach felt a little better, but I was still light-headed.
“I can’t understand why the virus lets us keep thinking. They’ve already demonstrated they can stop that, by cutting through a part of our brain. Why leave us as fully self-aware individuals at all?”
She shrugged. “Who knows what such creatures
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think, or how they think? How could we ever even contact them, or they us? What do we have in com-mon? And what can we do about this life, anyway?”
Those were indeed the questions that begged answering. Of the first, I could only guess. They knew we were intelligent, knew even how to cut that intelligence off. They knew quite a lot about us. I suspected that they lived their own lives through us, saw what we saw, felt what we felt. I suspected that was the rea-son for the weird vision; this was the method by which they, as well as we, could see. Optic nerves to neural impulses to the brain would not be enough. They could neither interpret the signals nor get into the brain to have them interpreted.
But soundyou felt sound. It was vibration, air movement. This could go to several sources.
“It was a strange Breed,” Mara said suddenly.
“Huh?” I managed, breaking off my reverie.
“Only three eggs. That has never happened before. It’s always six.”
“Our masters are smart,” I told her. “They can count. They see that we’re breeding ourselves into a situation where there won’t be enough food for all. I suspect this is but the first stage of a complex change that they will eventually stop the Breed entirely, or stretch it out, or introduce death by aging. It’s either that or some must starve.”
But was that the only possibility? I mused. Was it, indeed? They reproduced through us; we’d been the means of greatly expanding then: race. Could they give that up now?
. They’d have to, I told myself. There was no other way. They must have had to do it before, with the animals here.
Suddenly I felt a shock run through me. The animals! They were a normal population! If these creatures could breed any living matter into anything else and set the rules for the organism, why hadn’t they done it to the others? This world was too normal, too
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ordinary except for the Choz. That revelation had been what had been bothering me all along.
The virus could not possibly have existed on this world much longer than humanity. Nor, in fact, could it have evolved herethe kinds of pressures that would cause such an intelligence to evolve just couldn’t be found here.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered.
That virus could not exist!
This world, the Choz, this system, could not exist!
Not without violating everything we know about evolution.
“Mara!” I almost yelled at her. “I think I’ve just discovered something!”
“What are you talking about?” she responded, not sure of my sanity. Truthfully, neither was I.
“The only waythe only-way that virus could possibly exist on this planet is if it came here with us!” I blurted. “It’s as alien to this place as we are. And if I could get to those tapes in the Peace Victory I think I can prove it.”
I became extremely excited though I couldn’t put my finger on the why of it. Somehow, I felt, I was nearing the solution, and only a few more pieces of the puzzle would be needed to get everything straight.
Mara seemed less interested; although bored by this world and amused by my emotional outbursts, she was unable to see the import of them.
I was convinced that another conversation with George would put the last pieces into place, and I was, therefore, anxious to be off. Since Mara had helped in the building of the first unit of George’s great house, she could be as comfortable there when the young came as in the little place we’d built.
Oddly, she was reluctant to leave, and it was some time before I realized why. First, she was still extremely nervous at seeing her father after all these years, and even more unsure as to how she would be
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