Acts of Conscience (32 page)

Three white wolfen, at the corners of three alternate apices, made quick, metallic barks, short, precise, one, two three. Six adjacent sets of dollies snapped to attention, making their half-sides seem taller.

Now, three red wolfen, duller, more wooden sounds, with a choked-off quality, skipping around the hexagon, awakening movement from the remaining dollies. Air filled with some electric anticipation now. Filled with... That certain something, reaching down into my heart, to the thing which pretends it is my heart, and makes me feel...

Abruptly, an alien dogpound cacophony began, the metal sound of the white wolfen, wooden sound of the red, giving the whole something of a sawmill quality, and the dollies began dancing out, stamping time to the... music. Dancing out, whirling round, dancing back to a new place in line.

Getting all mixed up.

I looked down at the Kapellmeister, wondering what, if anything, to say.

One of its eyestalks seemed to float my way, though there was really no way to tell what it was looking at. Even in daylight, no pupil, no iris. It said, “Individual decision making, done through solitary initiative, is possible.”

Granted. All you have to do is... decide.

It said, “Difficult. But it can be done.”

So. Why tell me? Should I interpret this as... some kind of invitation? I thought about the software in the translator pod.

The spacesuit AI whispered, The pod imago is willing to be pinged, but little else.

OK. Security still in place. Across the way, dark shapes leaping in the night, leaping close to one another, touching, dancing away. I sat forward suddenly, listening to the rapid tempo of the wolfen’s barking, watching the dollies’ movements. What the hell are they doing?

Touching each other... down there.

Pausing now, in the middle of that central whirl, rubbing their... cloacas together, then dancing away. I started counting dancers, trying to remember the patterns they were weaving.

The library AI whispered, If the pattern continues long enough, each dollie will have mated with every other dollie.

Hmh. I took a long pull on my beer, undiverted alcohol in my blood interfering slightly with my brain chemistry, finished it, burped softly, and said, “Why are they doing this?” Slightly greasy feel to my skin now, perhaps a sheen of sweat on my face.

The Kapellmeister said, “A small trade mission, apparently.”

A most unpleasant feeling at the bottom of my belly, a distant awareness... I said, “Trade?”

It said, “Apparently, from what we’ve been able to find out, what the wolfen, whose culture is sans technology and hence sans material goods, trade is the germ plasm of the various dollie breeds.”

I said, “Interesting. What do they...” Abruptly, I remembered the little ceremony in which one of the dollies had been eaten. So much for
why
they practice dollie husbandry. “How long have they been... doing this?”

The Kapellmeister said, “The wolfen oral tradition, of course, is without a viable timescale. They have no legends of a time, apparently, when they were without the dollies. A time when they themselves were not precisely as they are now.”

I felt a slight start as one of the white wolfen suddenly bounded into the middle of the dollies’ dance, watched it whirl through them, go back to its place, felt myself relax slightly. What the hell was I expecting? Tearing claws? Rending fangs.

A white wolfen danced out and back.

The spacesuit whispered, In a few more passes, the mating pattern will be complete.

Meaning, I guess, that every dollie will have fucked every other dollie. What does that imply? Boys with boys and girls with girls, as well as the more usual and utilitarian sort of... Two wolfen danced out, one red, one white, whirled around one another in the midst of the mass of spinning, humping dollies, danced on back, having traded places.

Then two more danced out. Then four. Then six.

The spacesuit said. Assuming linear growth, all the wolfen will be dancing simultaneously just as the last pair of dollies completes its mating act.

One of the dollies, one I was sure had already mated, suddenly cartwheeled through the middle of the dance, making a handspring completely over a pair of dancing wolfen, coming to rest on the far side of the now thoroughly trampled patch of grass.

Now another one, then two, then four, then eight, looking like so many small, female gymnasts.

The spacesuit whispered. This exponential growth rate will also converge on the dance completion. This is exceedingly well planned.

The Kapellmeister said, “Impressive, even for sentient animals. Practice does indeed make for perfection.”

I suddenly realized that, even as they danced and whirled, the wolfen had continued to bark out their raucous music. I looked closely, trying to decide if the wolfen were fucking each other as well.

The library AI whispered, In most eusocial species, only certain members of the group mate and breed. Among terrestrial wolves, for example, its usually only the alpha male and female who mate. The others remain celibate. Among bees, the queen has her harem of drones, while the workers are developed from immature females, lacking the capacity for copulation.

Well. How nasty. Then I thought about my own situation and was amused. Maybe humans are on their way to a eusocial order as well? Or is it only me? I opened my mouth to ask the Kapellmeister a rather obvious question...

The spacesuit whispered,
Now
.

The dollies froze in place.

And then the wolfen fell upon them.

I jumped to my feet, suppress an urge to rub disbelief from my eyes, and shouted, “Why the hell are the wolfen fucking the dollies?!” Surely. Surely that’s what’s going on. Dollies pressed flat to the ground, wolfen arched over them, hindquarters moving, in, out, in, out, wolfen eyes gleaming in the firelight, tongues lolling from their toothy mouths, mouths with fixed grins that looked...

The library AI whispered,
No data
.

One of the wolfen whimpered softly, then collapsed on its dollie, like a man whose orgasm was spent. Then another. Another. Another. And, all the while, the leftover dollies, for there were far more of them than the wolfen, formed a circle, a double circle, inner one dancing this way, outer one that.

And I remembered that these wolfen were, supposedly, all female, the males hidden away... elsewhere. I wondered if these were sterile females then, like so many worker bees.

The Kapellmeister said, “Dollie egglets are... deficient. Genetic material without a nutrient supply. At first, we wondered if the dollies weren’t more or less like marsupials or even monotremes, that the egg would attach to a cloacal nipple, in order to continue its development beyond the blastula stage. This, apparently, is not so.”

More wolfen collapsing now, moaning softly, as though exhausted. I wondered if the dollies would be smothering underneath them.

The Kapellmeister said, “The Arousians’ research indicates the dollie eggs are simply the stripped remains of a standard egg, not so different, in fact, than the eggs of many Salieran species.”

Including Kapellmeisters? The library whispered, It seems likely.

It went on, “Apparently, the wolfen provide additional material, a nutrient sac derived from their own unfertilized egg structure, which surrounds the dollie egglet, protecting it as well.”

The wolfen were done now, groaning like Romans in the endstage of a feast.

Library: An unusual coevolution scheme.

I thought about wasps and spiders, decided it was more unusual than that. Thought about the little fish that live up bigger fish’s assholes. Not even close.

The library brought up mitochondria, the commensal bacteria living in human cells, reproducing with the cells, having lost the ability to exist outside cells, without which the cell could not survive. It pointed out that this symbiotic relationship was the basis of all higher life on Earth.

OK. That’s a little more unusual, I...

One of the wolfen, a white, stood, stretched gently, walked to one of the dollies in the inner ring of now motionless dancers. Leaned forward and delicately bit off its head.

“
Shit
.”

The dead dollie collapsed, spouting dark blood, The wolfen bent and began to eat, making little liquid gobbling sounds. Another wolfen, this time a red, got up, stretched, stepped forward, did the same. Then another. Another. Another.

The ring of dollies remained motionless, waiting.

The spacesuit noted, There are many more dollies than wolfen.

The Kapellmeister said, “We assume the dollies being eaten are expendable males, their job complete. We assume the female dollies lying in the middle of the circle are now pregnant. The outer ring of dollies...” standing by, watching, wide-eyed, “...are never eaten.”

I turned away, very short of breath and stood looking up at the stars, acutely conscious of a heavy miasma filling the air, stealing the breath from my lungs. God damn it. Why the fuck do I still have this pathetic erection?

I don’t know.

I found I couldn’t stand to hear the soft gobbling noises, sound of the wolfen contentedly eating their... what? Sex partners? Rape victims? Commensal... shit. I turned and walked away into the darkness, walked away from the camp quickly, breathing hard, feeling an urge to run, suppressing it, walking at first along the banks of the Somber, southward upstream in the direction of Vapaa, whose lights made a sullen orange glow against underside of what few low-hanging clouds there were. Paused, looking up at the sky. Stars. No moons. Should they be up now?

Four hours, whispered the spacesuit, exhibiting its link to
Random Walk
’s navigation software. Right. On the other side of the planet now.

Seems colder out here than it did back at camp. Warmth radiating from the pop-up habitat, from the Arousians’ fire, from so many breathing bodies, their breath a... miasma. That’s the word I like. When I get away from the
miasma
, my nuts will calm down, this damned ridiculous hard-on will go away and...

Then what?

I walked away from the river then, head down, hands in pockets, walking up the shallow slope of a low hill, feet whispering in the soft, calf-deep grass. Pleasant smell in the air now, as of... grape and jasmine. The quality of smell that comes from a cotton candy machine. Maybe that’s the smell of Cetian bugs.

I stood at the crest of the hill, first looking away into the darkness beyond, then turning and looking back down the better lit slope toward the river. Delicate light reflected there, a glitter of starlight on the water, I suppose.

Why the hell does it bother me?

They’re just animals.

No one in any position to tell me why, of course.

If I asked, the library would consult its psychological databases and, perhaps, find some predigested answer. Maybe it would tell me that some animals reminded humans of little children, of babies, demanding our blind, unthinking, elemental protection. Maybe...

I didn’t ask, because then I’d have to ask why the hell my prick wanted me to fuck them. Oh, sure, it could excuse the matter with a babble of talk about pheromonal coincidences and... Unable to forget the fat man at the dollhouse, dollie straddling his lap. Is that me?

I walked away, down the northern slope of the hill, thinking I might as well get it over with, get on back to camp, stop thinking about this bullshit and go to bed. Tomorrow, I told myself, is another day. Unasked, the library popped up a reference for that, some being with remarkably empty eyes.

Stopped.

Some soft little noise, in the shadows up ahead. Prickle of fear up the back of my neck, thinking about dangerous animals. Are there things like snakes on Green Heaven? The library told me there weren’t. But... prickle of fear. And, something else.

I walked forward, slowly, deliberately, acutely conscious of the placement of my feet, one almost in front of the other, like I was some kind of God-damned Indian scout or... There. Pale, pale shapes, like the photographic negatives of shadows in the darkness. Christ. More dollies, nestled together, as though sleeping, under the overhanging branches and leaves of some broad, low bush.

Not asleep though.

Whispering among themselves.

I stood still, watching, listening, my eyes slowly adapting better to the darkness.

Whose dollies are these?

Are there unknown wolfen nearby?

Another little pang of fear.

The library whispered, Photomosaic enhancement suggests these are a subset of Limbcracker’s dollies, the ones you saw conducting a mature egg distribution.

I remembered.

One of the dollies lifted its head, staring at me with big, empty eyes. Empty because all I could see was the oval shape of the eyes themselves. I haven’t really...
looked
into a dollies eyes, have I? No.

It got up, whispering to its fellows, walked slowly forward, came to stand in front of me, hardly coming up to the bottom of my ribs. Not afraid of me then. I... grew suddenly, excessively conscious of my dick. This is a God-damned cruel joke nature’s played on... who? Me? Or the dollies?

I crouched, dropping to one knee in the grass, peering into the dollie’s face, trying to see. Felt its warm breath on me. It’d be easier to accept if I could at least
smell
the pheromones that are... The dollie stepped closer, reached out and touched my face delicately. I sat down, dropping to tailor’s seat in the grass, shivering.

Get up. Get up and go away. God damn it,
run
!

Who?

No voice in my head other than my own, advice from some subtly independent judgment engine or another, something afraid, perhaps, for the sanctity of... The dollie suddenly darted forward, jumping into my lap, feeling exactly like... No. Not
exactly
like anything. Not a child. Not a woman. Not a dog or a cat or...

It nuzzled against my face, purring softly.

Why?

Why isn’t it afraid of me?

I ran my hand down the soft, impossibly silky fur of its back. Nice, nice doggy. That’s it. The dollie rubbed its little face against the side of my neck, purring louder. Nice, nice kitty, I... jerked slightly, feeling a rough, wet, absolutely inhuman tongue touch the side of my face.