But she was also essentially a thirty-year-old lesbian virgin who had never expected to mate at all, let alone with the makalang. I had to take my time with her, at least in a physical sense. As for the rest of it, well, she wasn’t inexperienced by any means, having been with plenty of other females. Her oral skills were considerably more developed than my younger wives.
When it felt like she’d had enough, I got up and got dressed. She lay there on her stomach, sleepy-eyed and sated, resting her head on her arms, striped tail slowly twitching in contentment.
“I always envisioned mating with a male as something crude and degrading,” she said. “But you make love like an experienced female. Your wives are lucky.”
“Hey.” I squatted down by her head and kissed her. “You’re one of them now.”
She laughed softly, rolling over halfway.
“A wife. To think, the most fortunate day of my life was when you kicked me in the head.”
I laughed. “Ain’t that a kick in the head?”
◆◆◆
Then I went to Lorelat. She had her own room, considerably nicer than the guard quarters. I realized I was going to have do some upgrading and redecorating now that I’d raised the guards in status. They’d more than earned it over the past couple of sampars. Fortunately, aJia’jara had left me plenty of money to do it.
She was waiting for me in her bed. I slipped in beside her, taking her in my arms. She looked up at me, smiling, and put her hand on my face.
“Busy night?” she asked.
“The rest of it belongs to you.”
“I know I’m not one of your inner five . . . or six, now . . . and that’s okay. I’m perfectly happy where I am with you.”
“Good.”
Her eyes began to water.
“What you did for me today . . . I’ve never seen you like that. You were so strong. I mean, you usually are, but this was on a completely different level.” She took a ragged breath. “You were really ready to kill all those soldiers for me.”
“I didn’t want to do it. It would have been a disaster for this situation. But if it had come down to a choice between you and them, yeah, I would have.” I kissed her. “And I’ll tell you what did it for me. Merindra told me what you were screaming to her as they dragged you off.”
“‘Tell him I didn’t leave.’”
“Right. And just the thought of what you were feeling at that moment, terrified that I would think you simply left me, just ripped my heart in two.”
“Mine too.”
“But you’re back, bunny-girl.”
She kissed me.
“Yes, I am, Bunny-daddy.”
Then she sat up, gently rolling me on my back and climbing over me.
“So . . .” she said, kissing her way down my chest, big breasts sliding over my groin, long ears brushing against my nipples, “I need to thank you properly. It may take the rest of the night, like you said.”
Then her head went down, and my last thought for quite a while was, Do rabbits not have a gag reflex?
Chapter 17
Two nights later, Phareewee sent a message to us that Narilora was recovered and ready to go home. So the next morning, Mereceeree and I went to the crystal circle, and I used the tunnel to take us back to the mountains.
I found her fishing by the river with her crossbow.
“Hey, pussy-cat.”
She turned around.
“Wait. Don’t disturb the fish.”
I paused. A few moments later, she shot into the river. Something splashed, and she darted in after it, emerging with a long silvery jalank.
“I’ve been stalking that thing since dawn. There aren’t a lot of jalank up here.”
Then she tossed the fish and her bow on the ground and came to me. I just held her for several minutes as she purred against my chest.
“Sounds like I missed a whole lot of shit,” she said finally.
“You could say that. But it’s all good now. How do you feel?”
“It’s weird. I feel fine. But different. It’s hard to explain.”
“You don’t need to.”
“No, I want you to understand. I think it’s why I was being so emotional. Not that I didn’t care about a child, it’s that I was trying to sort out how to feel with all these pieces of other people inside me, all of them in conflict because they wanted to be in control.”
I felt inside her, and I could see all was right now. She could conceive.
I kissed her.
“I think all the panikang are asleep now. How about we go get to work on that kid? You can make all the noise you want.”
She smiled, then looked at a patch of grass beside us.
“Do we even need to go back to the village? That’s an hour we could spend doing other stuff. And trust me, the panikang hear everything. Way out here, I could be really loud.”
She pulled me down to the ground. We pulled each other’s clothes off. In a few minutes, her yowls were echoing through the trees.
I had solved Narilora’s problems. But it wouldn’t help Taitala’s.
◆◆◆
Because you see, I’d been doing some math.
Let’s just try a quick thought experiment. If I never found a way home and lived to be 95, I had maybe 60 years left on Taitala. And, assume I was able to get a different Taitalan female pregnant every single day for the rest of my life, even though I hadn’t managed that so far, and even though I would surely hit a point of diminishing returns eventually, whether from age or some other factor. Even then, we were still only talking about twenty thousand kids.
That was something, for sure, even if the idea of having offspring in the five figures staggered me a bit. But it still wouldn’t be enough to save Taitala. When I was gone, I’d only have given them a bit more time. With no more makalangs after me, the same decline would just set in again.
What I had to do was change things. While I certainly needed to produce as many children as possible, I also had to figure out a way fix the entire ecosystem so that it would be self-sustaining – not dependent on occasional injections of alien DNA.
But how? I just didn’t see how one person, even the makalang, could alter things so fundamentally. I wasn’t even sure what exactly would need to be done.
Remembering what Phareewee suggested, I went back into Silas’s journals. I’d reached Vol. 3, which was entitled 1783(?)-1802(?) – My Years with the Pany-kang. With everything that had gone on since the bombings started up, I hadn’t had time for reading. I was determined to get through them, because I had a feeling he had left them behind for a reason.
Silas stayed with the panikang for about ten talons. The clans came after him, but between the rugged terrain and fighting amongst each other, they were never able to get to him. A low-level war dragged on for about two talons before exhausting all participants. Fighting during this war was surely the source of the old battleground we’d found on the way up the mountain.
Meanwhile, Silas contented himself with raising his family, which consisted of about twenty wives of the other clans and their children. He mated with the panikang but took none as wives. As his wives gave birth, and their children grew, many of them went back to their clans. They were periodically replaced by especially determined females who were able to climb the mountain and find him. Unable to bring him under their control, the clans in the lowlands had to content themselves with that arrangement.
His entries came less and less frequently, as he seemed to lose interest in recording the mundane minutiae of his life when little changed day-to-day. Children were born, wives came and left, and so on.
I kept waiting for Silas to talk about the panikang and their crystal science, but he rarely mentioned it except in passing. While impressed with what they could do, he had little interest in it himself and never made any real effort to learn. I’d just assumed back when I first started reading his journals that Silas had the same sorts of abilities I did, even though he mentioned doing
similar things only occasionally.
But as I read through his experiences with the panikang, it gradually occurred me that Silas likely did not have anything like the abilities I did. Then one passage in particular jumped out at me.
The pany-kang leader came me today, once again wishing to discuss their invitation to teach me how to use their crystals. I was in an especially ebullient and conciliatory mood due to the attentions of my wives, and I so decided to finally indulge her. The leader and two other elderly pany-kang led me to their settlement, and we assembled inside a large round building. They showed me a sizable collection of crystals both large and small, and the leader thereupon asked me if I would like to choose one.
I told her they all seemed the same, and suggested she choose one for me. They insisted that I must choose myself, so I selected one at random to satisfy them. Yet they were not satisfied, as it seemed they expected me to put more thought into my selection. This baffled me, for I could see little of importance to distinguish the crystals from each other. They were a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors, but they seemed to expect me to choose based on some other feature, telling me to take the one that “spoke to me.”
When I told the leader I could hear no such speech from the crystals, she grew frustrated with me and insisted that I must listen to their energies as I listened to those of my wives. I again tried to indulge her, but in the end, we were all left unsatisfied and the leader said that I could return to my home.
That was about as clear a statement as I was likely to get. He had no interest in the crystals simply because he had no facility with using them the way I did. I finished Silas’s third journal about as frustrated with him as the panikang leader must have been.
So the title of the fourth volume got my attention: 1803(?)-1808(?) – A new Home and Calling. And there was a reason for it: After more than ten talons on Taitala, something happened to change Silas’s perspective: One of his wives gave birth to a male, the first after several dozen female children.
But rather than the strapping son he had hoped for, he was shocked to be presented with what was – to his eye – a sickly, blue-skinned creature. Silas by this point was well aware of the appearance and characteristics of Taitalan males, but for some reason he had expected to father a human son. Discovering that was not the case, and knowing by then how rare this event was, he set out to ensure his son’s survival and success. Twenty leisurely years in the mountains came to an end.
But wary of his past experiences with the clans in Phan-garad, he decided instead to travel to the city of Yama-Kana. This was long before the crystal maglev was built, so his family had to descend from the mountain and travel there on foot. Many of his wives decided not to make the trip, and he arrived in Yama-Kana with an entourage of less than a dozen. Once there, he negotiated an arrangement with the city for mating services in exchange for a home and financial support. Basically, he was doing exactly what his son, who he named James after his own father, would do eventually in Phan-garad: Whore himself out.
I was struck less by his experiences in the city than the descriptions of James as the child grew. Though Silas seemed continually concerned with his health, James sounded quite a bit more vigorous than the Taitalan males I’d encountered. Other than being blue, he grew like a human child in stature. Silas made no mention of anything unusual about his body, which suggested to me that James was not as modestly endowed as other Taitalan males.
But I’d met James’s son, aJia’jara. He was taller and more vigorous than iXa’aliq – the only other male I’d seen in person – but still quite short at about five feet. iXa’aliq at around three was more typical in stature, even a bit on the tall side. And aJia’jara had been much closer to iXa’aliq in endowment than to a human male.
I sat back and thought about that for a few minutes. There was a direct line of descent from Silas to James to aJia’jara. Yet two generations were enough leave aJia’jara only somewhat larger than other Taitalan males. And there was a kumala-talon gap between Silas and the previous makalang. Whatever stature and vigor that makalang had passed on to his offspring, it hadn’t lasted.
That was surely significant. Something about Taitala was sucking the vigor out of his male descendants. But what was it?
Without the benefit of my hindsight, Silas couldn’t see what I did. So his entries were maddeningly thin on the information I was looking for. But after about five years in Yama-Kana, one of Silas’s entries glossed over something that seemed very significant to me. James was about three talons old, and Silas was still stressing out about his health.
Today, something very odd occurred, though I have concluded it must be of little import. Nevertheless, I will record it here on the off chance it should prove to be of some worth. After lunch, when I was relaxing with several of my wives, one of the servants came in and told me that one of the talelonge had come to speak with me about James. I asked who it was, and the servant said that she had not given her name. I requested that it be obtained, and the servant returned to say that my visitor would give her name only to me.
Somewhat annoyed, I dressed and emerged into the sitting room. There I found a talelonge in a long violet cloak waiting for me. To my great surprise, given that I did not know her in the slightest, she requested that she be allowed to examine James. When I told her that I valued his safety and welfare above all else, and would certainly not allow an unknown person into his presence, she became quite agitated and repeated her request, being quite insistent about it. I repeated my refusal.
When it became clear that I would not allow her further entry into my home, she loudly declared that I was bringing doom upon my line and upon this land and stormed out in a great lather. What this meant, I cannot say, but I have concluded that her intentions could not have been benign and have instructed the servants to refuse her entry, should she ever return.
I sat there in a daze, staring at what Silas had written.
She loudly declared that I was bringing doom upon my line and upon this land.
Who was this talalong, and why did she think Silas was bringing doom upon his line? Did she somehow know what would happen with his descendants? And, more importantly, did she have a solution?
After talking briefly with Kisarat, I called Professor Sloraq to discuss what I’d read. She was fascinated to learn that Silas had lived in Yama-Kana – she hadn’t been aware of that. But she knew about James, who changed his name to ami’Jiama upon moving to Phan-Garad. When I asked what she knew about other male offspring of the makalang, she recounted several examples from the literature, all of which sounded more or less like the fairy tales they mostly were.
Then I pitched her my theory about how these male offspring didn’t seem to retain the makalang’s size and vigor, and in fact seemed to lose it quickly over succeeding generations.
“Yes,” she said. “That is a thing some have noted, and it’s the main argument that Peerita has used to attack my work. That is, if the makalang truly existed, there would be more of a physical legacy in his descendants. Until you appeared, she argued that aJia’jara was simply at the high end of the normal size distribution for Taitalan males. Now I hear she is busy working on some new theory to explain you away.”
“She doesn’t believe I’m the makalang?” I asked incredulously.
“Well, she believes you are something. She refuses to accept that your appearance is proof of any of my work, or really anything about the makalang at all.” She laughed. “I have to say it’s nice being back in the mainstream and seeing your critics mocked for once instead of you.”
“I can imagine.”
“Yes,” she said. “But! Since I have you here, I have a few quicks questions for you, if I may.”
“Sure.”
“As you know, some of my work has involved theories about your world, based on what we know about the makalangs that have come here. Everything you have told me so far has been enormously valuable in that respect. But I have begun to wonder ab
out something else. I find it quite odd that this phenomenon seems to be entirely one-sided, that is, the makalang comes here, but nothing goes the other direction. At least, that is what our literature has to say. Now that I have you, I think there must be a great deal more to this story.”
“You’re asking if anything from Taitala has ever come to Earth.”
“Yes.”
I took a deep breath and thought about what to say.
“All I can tell you is more legends and myths, just from our end.”
“I expected as much. But do go on.”
“There are beings in a lot of Earth legends that bear a pretty strong resemblance to dwenda. It’s hard to say about the other clans, but I think you could probably find examples of sorai and linyang if you really wanted to. What that means, I can’t tell you.”
“What sort of legends?” she asked. “Let’s start with the dwenda.”
“I don’t suppose the names would mean anything to you. But they’re usually described as being creatures of magic, having special abilities and so on. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good.”
“How prevalent would you say these creatures are?”
“Pretty common, to be honest.”
“But it’s all legend?” she asked. “No actual records or science?”
“No.”
“What about the linyang and sorai?”
“As I told you, there are animals on Earth that bear a lot of resemblance to linyang and sorai. There are some cultures that have legends about human that are hybrids with these animals, or can turn into them, and as the legends go, they sound a lot like sorai and linyang, now that I’ve been here for a while.”
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