Jens was frowning. “But that’s not the only reason we let her live. It was also . . . I don’t know. She was so incredibly brave.”
Indira sighed. She understood, even if Jens didn’t. The culture of the human colony was rapidly being shaped by its necessities.
A warrior culture. One of whose inevitable features is deep respect for courage, even the courage of the enemy.
It was an aspect of warrior cultures which many people admired, even in the 22nd century—including professional historians. Romantically seductive, unless you understood the corollary.
When the Mongols took Kiev they spared the life of the commander of the garrison, out of admiration for his courage. They did the same, later, at Aleppo.
Then they slaughtered everyone else.
Her musings were interrupted by the male in the wounded gukuy’s mantle.
“Please. Do any of you—demons—speak my language?” The male was speaking Anshaku.
“Yes,” replied Indira immediately. “I do.”
Ochre and red rippled across the male’s mantle, in the delicate, complex traceries of which only males were capable.
“Are you—are you the Mother of Demons?”
Indira sighed. It seemed she was doomed to that title.
“You may call me so, if you wish.”
The male—a truemale, she now recognized—made the gesture of obedience. Then spoke again.
“Will Nukurren live?”
“She will live, according to our healer. Her recovery will be difficult, however. And—” A quick question to Maria. “—her eye cannot be saved.”
“So long as she lives,” said the truemale softly. To Indira’s astonishment, the little male began stroking his companion’s head. His mantle was flushed with that shade of green which, for gukuy, was the sign of romantic attachment.
Now this is something I’ve never seen. A romantic attachment between a female and a truemale?
She pondered the situation. Julius had long been puzzled by the active sex life enjoyed by the gukuy, the vast majority of whom were sterile females. Sex, he had explained to her, takes up a lot of biological energy, and he couldn’t figure out why a species would evolve such an orientation when there was no possibility of reproduction between sterile females. Among the owoc, a cousin species, there was little sexual activity except between mothers and males. He had eventually developed an explanation which satisfied him. Though it was based on an elaborate (to Indira’s mind, arcane) web of neurological reasoning and kin selection game theory, his hypothesis amounted to: “They’re smart, sex is fun, and how are you gonna keep `em down on the farm when they’ve been to gay Paree?”
Still, the sex life of gukuy followed definite rules. Sterile females coupled with other sterile females. Truemales with mothers. (Eumales with no one.) Indira had never observed a romantic relationship between a truemale and a sterile female. Even among the relatively tolerant barbarian tribes, such an attachment would be considered unnatural and perverted. And among the far less tolerant civilized cultures—such as the Ansha from which the truemale obviously came—such a coupling would be anathema, for which the priests would demand the death penalty.
There’s a fascinating story here. I must learn it from him.
“What is your name?” she asked. To her surprise, the answer came from behind her. In the voice of Ushulubang.
“He is called Dhowifa.”
She had not heard the sage coming. Ushulubang, she had already learned, was not given to ceremonious parades. At the moment, she was only accompanied by one of her pashoc—a young gukuy named Shurren, who, like Ushulubang, came from the Anshac capital of Shakutulubac.
Indira looked back at the truemale. Dhowifa had withdrawn further into the mantle cavity. Stripes of ochre and orange rippled along his mantle.
“Hello, great-nephew,” said Ushulubang softly.
A moment later, the truemale replied: “Hello, great-aunt Ushulubang.”
How many more surprises are there going to be today? wondered Indira. The two gukuy were not actually “nephew” and “aunt,” of course—not, at least, in the precise sense of the English words. But those were the nearest equivalents for the Anshac terms. Closely related members of the same clan, separated by sex and two generations.
Indira saw that the mantle of Ushulubang’s companion was dappled blue and yellow.
“What is the pervert Dhowifa doing here?” demanded Shurren. The tone of her voice was extremely hostile.