That last bit is especially important. Sows are in estrus for a bedevilingly short time, sometime for only a single day of the year. But thanks to his vomeronasal organ, a panda boar knows when that all-important day will be. A boar will enjoy most of mating season not by mating, but by mellowing out to estrogen-drenched sow-pee, growing accustomed to the pleasures of its one-of-a-kind bouquet, recognizing it as friendly and desirable, and having their testicles triple in size through a process called “spermatogenesis.”
This is a key aspect to how pandas mate in the wild, a lesson humans were slow to learn when they tried to mate captive bears. Without this long, leisurely process of familiarization, a boar is more likely to maul a sow than mate with her: which, unfortunately, has led to the maiming or death of more than a few eligible she-bears in captivity, sometimes in front of a horrified zoo-going crowd.
For the most part, pandas are solitary creatures. There is no term of venery for a group of pandas. We could default to the generic terms for groups of bears: a “sleuth” or a “sloth.” We could take one of the adhoc suggestions from the Internet: a “cuddle,” an “ascension,” a “contrast,” or my favorite, a “monium” of pandas. But the fact is there isn’t much need to speak of pandas in groups, since they spend almost all of their time alone.
There are two exceptions. One is when a mother is tending to a newborn cub. Even then, however, you wouldn’t speak of a group of pandas, since the mother usually gives birth to a pair of cubs but tends to only one, leaving the other to die. Mother and cub will go their separate ways once the cub can fend for itself.
The other exception, however, is that fateful day when a sow is ready to mate. Then it can truly be said that pandas gather. Boars will contend with each other—usually through demonstrations of strength rather than battles to the death—for the right to conceive.
This is a panda behavior that has become increasingly rare in the wild, since panda numbers have dwindled so dangerously low. But its resurrection may hold the key to a true resurgence of the population.
For you see, while the victor gets the sow, the losers get the consolation prize of watching the winner’s happy ending play out before them. It is in this fashion that younger, less-experienced boars are taught the ins and outs (ahem) of mating.
Biologists have tried to use videos of pandas having sex to mimic this effect for captive pandas. But humans found panda porn much more interesting than pandas ever did. There’s no substitute for the live show. A panda can’t trust anything it can’t smell.
But if the scents are right and the sounds are right, would-be suitors will find themselves a nice vantage point and spy on the mating couple. Yet another distinction between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom collapses: we are not the only animals who voyeur.
Perhaps the best term for a group of pandas is an “exhibition.”
I inhale the world in a way no human ever could. Scarves of scent, of all aromatic “colors,” ride the wind, wending their way from all over the bamboo forest into my nose. When I open my mouth, even more smells rush in. I respire, and in comes all Creation.
But this is my first minute as a panda; I don’t know how to differentiate between particular odors. I can tell flora from fauna, I can smell the sweet rot of dead plants, the thiol-thick stench of animals decomposing. But I lack the lexicon of fragrances to link each hyper-distinct scent with the real-world object that generates it.
All I know is I smell a lot of death. I’m stunned at how pervasive it is, how relentless. Pandas are often portrayed as peaceful and contemplative, but with all the decay that must unstoppably flood their noses every waking second of their lives, it would be impossible for a panda to be a Buddhist. It inhales suffering every second of its life. Were I a panda full-time, I’d spend my days raging against heaven for its indefatigable cruelty.
The strongest non-rot odor is the musk of other pandas. That I find, to my surprise, I quite enjoy. Now I know why, back at APM headquarters, they go to the trouble of dousing the suits with that noxious, bestial cologne. That musk is my lighthouse, my Rosetta Stone. That’s how I will know Ken Cooper.
Or rather, that’s how I will know Avalon, the robot-bear he’s jockeying. There are at least four boars in the area, but only one musk smells like his. All I have to do is wait. Cooper will find me.
But so will the other bears. And that frightens me. I don’t trust other bears. I don’t trust anything. All this death. What I want to do is head into the forest of bamboo and sit quietly and hide, and maybe eat.
Oh God, yes, please, I need food. I’m starving.
Basically, I’m paranoid and famished. If you want to know what it’s like to be a panda on the cheap, get high by yourself, and fill your fridge with nothing but bamboo shoots to snack on. Oh, and kill some mice and leave them to rot in their traps.
Eat or fuck? Eat or fuck?
Fuck.
I might be killed. Go fuck. I’m so hungry. Go fuck. No, no, not out in the open. Anything can see me. I want to go deep into the bamboo and hide and eat quietly.
No, Gabby. Go fuck.
I go fuck.
My head is raised and calling out. I am making noise. This is insanity. I want to shut my mouth, stop announcing my presence, but I can’t. (I literally can’t. Mission control—i.e. Xiadon and Deeprashad—partially operates the bear, making it call out and urinate as I walk. I can feel liquid trickling down my legs, but I can’t stop it.)
Bears. They’re coming. They’re converging on me. I know them by their odors.
I stop, sit. I’m still peeing uncontrollably; my bear-ass is getting wet.
This isn’t much of a clearing, but it’ll do. And if I need to run away, the bamboo forest is right here, ready to envelop me, hide me.
I can hear one of the boars now. I don’t see him. He’s sliding through the bamboo, slow and deliberate. I can hear the shape of his body as he pushes stalks aside and comes for me.
He’s grunting, low and repetitive. Each grunt sends a thrill racing over my skin. I can barely remember I am me.
There’s another boar. He’s farther away, but his smell is more intense. Something deep within me groans. My need flowers.
A third approaches, but I don’t care. The second bear, his smell. I’m intoxicated. I want him.
That’s not Avalon, human me, barely audible, thinks. Where is Cooper?
On-cue, Deeprashad’s voice enters my head. “Sorry about this, Gabby, but we’re going to have to pull the plug. We located the second terrorist. Ken’s en-route to help capture him. So we won’t be able to continue. We’re going to move the robot to a safe space and shut you down.”
I know she said this to me, because I heard the recorded transcript earlier. But here, now, inside Funicello, I have no idea. All I know is that’s a big, glorious, scary-ass bear coming for me. I can hear his massive ursine body parting the forest.
The first suitor moves to intercept the big bear. I hear them meet. There are growls and yelps, and what sounds like a brief chase. Then the first suitor runs off, yelping and crying.
Apparently Deeprashad’s been trying to talk to me all this time. “Can you hear me, Gabby? Gabrielle Reál, are you there?”
Something in my voice gives both of them pause.
“She’s there,” says Xiadon. “But she’s a bear.”
“I need to override Funicello and extract Gabby ASAP. Just waiting for your order, Mei.”
I’m not following this conversation very well, but I know they’re about to separate me from the bear that is juggernauting through the bamboo forest to find me. I don’t think this in words, but in whatever way a languageless mammalian brain constructs thoughts, I think to myself, over and over, I want to stay. Please don’t take me.
“Gui Gui is moving in quickly,” Xiadon says. “He subdued Wei Wei. He might be ready, Anita.”
“Oh Jesus. Not now.”
I’m punchy and dizzy and scared and happy and I don’t have a clue what I’m sa
ying or hearing. All I know is that big bear is trudging toward me again. And every step makes my flesh horripilate.
“All Gabby has to do,” says Xiadon, “is stick her ass in the air and present. If Gui Gui does nothing, no harm, no foul. But if he’s interested—”
“You can’t be serious,” says Deeprashad.
I face the direction of the incoming boar. He’s still just a jumble of rustling sounds and a pheromone bouquet, but both are getting stronger. I call out to him, this time because I want to. Inside the helmet I call out; I sound congested and tongue-tied thanks to the tongue-sleeve and the tubes up my nose. But at the same time I call, I hear the robot bleat like a panda sow at the height of estrus. I might burst before he gets here.
But here he is, his moon-sized head peaking through the bamboo. My god he’s massive. His mouth is open; he is flehmening me like a heavy-breather. I have never been so scared, so ready. He is so beautiful.
“We’ve got to stop this, Mei,” says Deeprashad.
“Too late,” says Xiadon, not the least bit unhappy. “Gabby, can you hear me? Gabby, you’re going to have to go through with this. Don’t worry. We’ll help control you from here. Just relax, no sudden moves.”
It takes all of my intellectual power, but I am able to produce two words: “Okay. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay.”
Gui Gui comes into the clearing, approaching neither slow nor fast. I rise. We touch noses; his lip rises, and he takes my odor in his mouth, eats it. He licks my face a few times. I lick his, my human tongue sliding back and forth in the helmet’s sleeve.
“Jesus,” says Deeprashad. “You sure you haven’t done this before, Gabby?”
The boar moves behind me, smells me from behind. He jams in his nose, machine-gun sniffs my most sensitive parts. He nuzzles and licks. I turn to sniff him. We make a yin-yang of ourselves, inhaling each other’s backsides. This is his musk at full strength. I’m drunk, terrified, ready.
Somewhere off in the distance I hear Xiadon saying over and over, “Now, Gabby! Present! Face on the ground, butt in the air!”
The front of me drops to the ground; I raise my rear up. I briefly wonder if the other bears can see us. But to be honest, I don’t really care. This is for me.
Gui Gui mounts me. He mostly supports his own weight. I adjust to make us fit together better, then press my backside into him. And he presses forward.
The suit doesn’t stimulate my human genitals, or any part of my brain in charge of sexual satisfaction. I don’t orgasm, not even close. What I receive instead is communion. The event horizon that constitutes my sense of self grows outward. I breathe in the ground beneath me through my nose, and it becomes me; I inhale the stalks of bamboo that surround us, and I am they; I am the boar who mates with me, and I am all the death in the forest. But I am the life, too. Two other boars are in trees nearby—yes, I’ve smelled them out—watching, learning. I snort them into me, snort up more and more of the forest, the world, until it’s no longer useful or desirable to think of myself as a me.
The last thing APM wanted was to put an amateur like me in a real mating situation. But as accidents go, this was a very happy one for APM. My mate, Gui Gui, was seen by APM as the next in line as a possible panda suitor, as APM’s other boars were still a little young and uneducated in matters of love. Gui Gui had been observing Avalon mounting sows for two seasons. It seems he learned all he needed, since he successfully deposited a healthy payload of sperm into Funicello.
Gui Gui will now join that elite group of boars whose sexual exploits are recorded in The International Studbook of the Giant Panda, a registry of every boar whose sperm has been used in procreation attempts. His sample will be divided into test tubes of 100,000 cells and sent to breeding facilities all over the world.
Moreover, three of APM’s five sows will enter estrus within the next few weeks. This could be the beginning of a wonderful career for him as a professional stud.
My helmet is unfastened screw by screw. I’m still panting, dazed. Suddenly my panda-head is halved, removed, and all that’s left of my mind is my own mind. In front of my face is Cooper, smiling like a dumbass.
“You did great,” he says. “You were perfect.”
“Always am,” I say sleepily. I’m not ready to lose my dream of being a panda yet. I’m resisting returning to the world. “And you missed it.”
“I was busy,” he says. And then, with mock modesty: “I got her.”
“Who?” I ask, blinking.
“The second terrorist. I caught her. And I didn’t even break anything on this one.”
“Good for you,” I say. But I don’t give two shits. Talking to Cooper is shrinking me. Sentence by sentence, noun by noun, he’s turning me back into Gabrielle Reál. But I don’t want to be Reál. Not yet. I want my body to be as large as my imagination for a while longer.
And now Deeprashad is kneeling next to me. “You were glorious!” she says. But then she takes a paw in her hand. “But we need to talk seriously about your security. Unfortunately, you will now be on 22:19’s list. Since in their eyes you’ve … had relations with a real bear, that makes you a sinner. And therefore a target. But APM will—”
“Anita?” says Xiadon. Cooper and Deeprashad part a little so I can see her behind them. “We can discuss that later, maybe?”
Anita wrangles the words back into her mouth. Then, tight-lipped, she says, “Sure thing, Mei,” pats my paw, backs off.
“You too, Ken.”
“What’d I do?” asks Cooper. He was trying to be funny, but it comes off a little strained. I notice his finger is ringless now. Does he take it off to jockey bears? Probably. God, I hope so.
When he delays, Xiadon gives him the take-a-hike thumb. Reluctantly, he winks at me and leaves my side. That just leaves me and the good doctor looking at each other.
“It’s beautiful, right?” Xiadon asks. “It’s hard to come back, I know. But it’s okay. Take all the time you need.”
And I’m giggling. Out of nowhere. And then crying, too: my patented giggle-cry, confusing and disturbing to watch, I’ve been told since I was a kid. But I can’t help it. I wasn’t just alive when I was a panda; I was in life, indistinguishable from life. Now I feel manacled by thought, self-awareness, words. Especially words. Language is the knothole in the fence: you’re grateful to be able to see through to the other side, sure, but wouldn’t it be better just to jump the fence?
Xiadon raises a hand as if she is going to wave hello, but instead she wiggles her panda thumb at me.
That little gesture snaps my crying jag. Now I’m just laughing. I lift the suit’s right paw and wiggle my own sesamoid bone at her. At least I’m still that much a panda.
The Macrobe Conservation Project
1.
My asiMom was okay. She was like a pillow, a walking talking pillow. But she gave good hugs and smelled right. They did a good job with her: sometimes when she hugged me and I closed my eyes it felt like it’s supposed to feel and I forgot that she’s not my real mom.
I saw her in the shower a few times. She didn’t care. She took showers every day exactly at 5:45 PM, even if I messed up every clock in the house, because her inside clock was always right. She didn’t even need to shower because she was just a robot, but she did anyway. My dad said that that made her more realistic. But if they cared about that, why didn’t they give her nipples? Or any hair, except on her head? She didn’t even have a butt crack. Sometimes, just when I was forgetting that she wasn’t my real mom, I’d remember that she didn’t have a butt crack and I’d get a little freaked out.
My dad’s one of the head honchos on the station. He’s the lead scientist on the Macrobe Conservation Project. He said that he was the one who wrote all the grants and traveled all the way back to Earth to shake hands with all the jerks in Washington, and so now he was the one in charge, and if Malloy or Grisget or any of those other pieces of skrak thought they were going to hone in on his dream, they had another thing coming. He went
to work at 6:00 and got home at 6:00, but they always called him back at night with some big macrobe problem. Sometimes on the speaker I’d hear Dr. Malloy or Dr. Grisget or one of those other pieces of skrat saying, “Don’t worry, Lance, this is no big deal. We just wanted you to know. You just have a good time with your kid tonight. We’ll handle this.” That drove my dad nuts. He waited until they hung up, and then he cussed like crazy at them while he tied his tie back on, and told my asiMom to clean up dinner and make up a plate for him to eat later. Mostly he didn’t come back though. Just stayed in the lab all night.
He said that we could cuss all we wanted while we were on the space station, just me and him, but only in Macrolog. Macrolog is the pretend language Dad and I made up for the macrobes. It’s what the macrobes are thinking whenever scientists are probing them or taking tissue samples or whatever. The whole language is just swear words: skrat and fragbag and kikface and dunkaballs and a bunch of others. Almost all of them have the letter k in them. I think my dad thinks the letter k is dirty.
Skrat is my favorite. Dad’s too. It sounds the dirtiest. Sometimes I told my asiMom to go skrat herself, to see if she’d do anything. But she just kinda looked at me like she didn’t get it, and smiled, and then went back to whatever she was doing. Didn’t matter, you can’t skrat without a buttcrack anyway.
2.
I had an asiBro too who was supposed to be like my brother, but he wasn’t like my brother very much. For one thing, they made him a younger brother, and Lance Jr. is my big brother. But they only make younger asiBros. My dad told me that they tried making older asiBros for a while, but that all these little kids were following them around and burning themselves or getting their fingers cut off or getting themselves killed in the dishwasher, because the asiBros didn’t know what they were doing and couldn’t protect all those dumb little kids from all the dumb stuff they do. I asked Dad why they make asiMoms then, since they’re supposed to be substitute moms, but my dad got really serious, the way he always does before he tells a really stupid joke, and said, “Randy, you of all people should know that kids never listen to their parents.” Ha ha ha.
The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria Page 7