Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
“Onsy, I’m ashamed of you,” cried D’Jevier.
“I will talk to Bofusdiaga,” said the Corojum, plodding away with his head down and his fur lying flat, the picture of dejection.
“We can’t do this,” cried Madame. “It’s unconscionable.”
The world shook. From the chasm opposite they heard the great mooing, a plaint of such enormity that they covered their ears and grimaced with pain. Stones plunged past them. The procession of monsters stopped their descent and held on. Whenever the sounds of the stones stopped, the muttered cadence of the monsters was heard:
hup, hup, hup, hup
. Finally, after long, terrorized moments, the tremors subsided.
“Perhaps you find it more conscionable to die,” Questioner said to Madame. “I think you will find yourself in the minority.”
Another tremor struck, then a milder one, then one milder yet.
“The moons are separating on the backside of this world,” said Questioner. “We will now have a time of peace before the end. Which may, or may not, be long enough!”
The monsters had resumed their progress downward. The observers stood in silence, watching, waiting until the Corojum came into sight once more, trudging toward them along the edge of the Fauxi-dizalonz.
“Bofusdiaga says yes, he can do it,” said Corojum. “He will take all material from those coming down road; he will filter out bad stuff; he will hold rest of it in readiness. Then you have Mouche and Simon and Calvy go in, and Bofusdiaga will make a big one body to do the will of the little one’s minds.”
“Me?” cried Calvy, in outrage. “Me!”
“Bofusdiaga needs more brain stuff than one person,” said the Corojum.
“So it’s fortunate you’re here, Family Man,” said D’Jevier. “You and Simon and Mouche, and that other one, what’s his name? Ornery.”
“Not Ornery,” said Questioner. “She’s a girl.”
“A what?” cried Onsofruct. “A girl? What is she doing in sailor’s garb? She’s not allowed to do that!”
“Allowed or not, she’s been doing it.”
“By all the Hagions,” muttered Onsofruct. “We’re losing our grip upon this world.”
“Let’s get beyond this crisis,” pled D’Jevier. “Then we can decide what needs doing about our grip upon this world.”
“Mouche comes,” said the Corojum. “With Ellin and Ornery.”
Mouche did indeed come with Ellin and Ornery, all of them Eiger borne. He was softly lowered before the others.
“He told you?” Mouche panted.
Madame nodded sadly. “Yes, Mouche. We understand that we must make a partner for the Quaggima.”
“The Fauxi-dizalonz is going to make it,” said Questioner.
“Out of Timmys?” asked Mouche in a distant, detached voice. “As before?”
“Evidently there’s insufficient time,” said Questioner, giving him a sharp look. Where had she seen that expression before? “The Fauxi-dizalonz doesn’t work that way. It can make one large thing in the same time it can make a few small things. We have the pattern, however, and if you’ll look up the hill, you’ll see our raw material.”
Mouche’s eyes focused on the descending monsters, and his jaw sagged. “What are they?” he demanded.
Madame explained. Ellin caught her first glimpse of old Pete and turned aside, flushing.
The two Hags approached, trailed by a disconsolate Calvy and Simon.
“Mouche,” murmured D’Jevier, wiping tears, “we appreciate your sacrifice.”
“It was nothing,” said Mouche, slightly puzzled. “I figured it out at the same time as F1 …” He caught himself. “… Bao. He figured it out as much as me.”
“Still, many would have concealed the truth because of the implications.”
“I am glad to be of service, Ma’am,” he said, still puzzled, made more so by Calvy and Simon’s faces as they turned away and departed, without speaking, arms around one another’s shoulders as though for mutual support.
The women turned away as well, D’Jevier saying to her sister, “You see, Onsy. He is one of a kind. A marvel.”
“I don’t know what’s so marvelous,” said Mouche.
Madame replied, “Neither Calvy nor Simon have your sense of duty, Mouche. They are not really willing to go into the Fauxi-dizalonz to be made into a Consort for the Quaggima.”
“A
Consort
for the Quaggima!” shouted Mouche, his voice reaching all the retreating persons. “Are you crazy?”
Calvy and Simon turned as one, staring, mouths slightly open.
D’Jevier turned, white-faced. “I thought you understood.”
Questioner held up her hand imperiously. “We know the Quaggi anatomy is quite different, Mouche. But if the Fauxi-dizalonz can make and remake, to order, so to speak, we can simply use you trained people—you, Mouche and Simon and Calvy—to create a male for the Quaggima.”
Mouche smiled, his face serene once more. “You didn’t explain it to them, Bao.”
“Explaining what?” yelped Bao. “I myself am not understanding….”
Mouche said in that same, distant voice, “Actually, considering the size, the anatomy isn’t that different. All the pertinent parts have their mankindly parallels. And I’m sure the Fauxi-dizalonz could probably come up with a Consort of some size. And I’m sure that would be quite appropriate … if the Quaggima were female.”
“But I saw her … him … it….” said Questioner. “Out on that moon. And I saw him….”
“You saw one Quaggi violate another Quaggi,” said Mouche. “You assumed it was the male assaulting the female. In fact, it was a female who did the assaulting. She laid an egg in him. We ran an analysis from the data, and the egg was actually imbedded under the skin next to the male organs. That’s how they do it. The females are bigger and stronger. They lay eggs in the males, and the males are the brooders. We got the sex wrong.”
D’Jevier cried, “That’s silly. Even Bofusdiaga says …”
“Bofusdiaga has no experience of heterosexual creatures,” said Ellin, crisply. “After mankind came, Bofusdiaga made the assumption it was female, because in mankind and their livestock it is the females who have the eggs.”
Ornery said, “It’s the female that sits out there on the far moon and sings her siren song, and it’s that song that excites the male and makes him follow it. Later, when the egg is ready to hatch, the young ones call in almost that same voice.”
Madame said, “I know that some creatures respond sexually to scent and some to appearance, but you’re saying this one responds to sound?”
“It’s true,” said Mouche. “When the creatures in the egg call, the sound stirs the same excitement as the mating call did, and the Quaggima gets so excited, he thrashes around and breaks the shell of the first bomblet or whatever it is, and that sets the hatching sequence off. It ends with some kind of explosion….”
“Nuclear,” murmured Questioner. “A shaped, nuclear charge.”
Mouche went on, “What Bofusdiaga and all have been doing with their dance is relieving his sexual arousal. That’s all.”
“But why didn’t someone realize …” Madame murmured.
“What did this world know about sexual arousal?” snarled Questioner, suddenly very much aware of much she had overlooked. “Nothing! And, seemingly, neither do I. After all my instructions to you about not jumping to conclusions—”
“Forgive me for interrupting,” said Mouche in the same serene but distant tone he had used since coming from the chasm. “We have every reason to believe this can be managed, but first the four of us need a little rest and something to eat and drink and some quiet conversation.” He took Ellin by the hand and tugged her away, up the steep slope toward several tall stones that held between them a patch of moonlit quiet and private space. Bao and Ornery followed them.
“I must be forgiven, also,” said Corojum, “But I am lost in all your talk. What is sexual arousal? What do you mean, Quaggima is not mother. She is child hatcher!”
Questioner replied, “On our home planet, Corojum, back when we had animals, sometimes the male was the child caregiver or hatcher. A bird called the rhea, for example. The seahorse and the stickleback, which are kinds of sea creatures. It just happens that the Quaggi is a race in which the males are the caregivers.”
“Males are choosing to be this?”
“They are not choosing,” Madame said in an annoyed voice. “They can’t help doing it, any more than a pregnant woman can help doing it. If the egg is attached, then the Quaggi can’t get rid of it. It has to bear it, even against its own will.”
“Could we separate it?” asked Onsofruct. “Could the tunnelers separate it?”
“Do we have the right to interfere with another race’s mode of reproduction?” Questioner asked.
“But the hatching will kill him,” said Calvy. “It’s already crippled him and kept him bound here for an eternity.”
“Evidently, that’s the way things are done among the Quaggi,” said Questioner.
“Does that make it right?” cried Simon. “Just because that’s the way they evolved? It’s a reasoning, feeling being! It was impregnated against its will!”
D’Jevier laughed, almost hysterically. “Oh, read your history, Simon. Read your history. Some philosophers would no doubt argue that the hatchling, being innocent, has more right to life than the father! Historically, in similar cases, women were expected to sacrifice themselves!”
Onsofruct cried, “Then why should not this male creature die for its child as women have often done? It has already had a long life.”
“Aside from the ethics of the situation, he shouldn’t die for his child because we’ll all die with him,” said Madame with asperity. “Revered Hag, this is not philosophy, this is reality. Will you please keep in mind what’s going on!”
“I need maintenance,” snarled Questioner, more or less to herself. “This is ridiculous. How could I have made such a stupid error. Well, let us start again! Instead of Mouche, Calvy, and Simon, we will use you, Madame. And the two Hags.”
Madame and D’Jevier were shocked into silence. Not so Onsofruct, who cried, “Well, if you think we females are going to make a partner for it, forget it! I for one, am not going to do it. Let us have another Miscalculation. Let the world blow itself to Kingdom Come. I don’t care.”
F
ollowing Onsofruct’s outburst, the people on the ledge regrouped themselves in a mood of general discontent and befuddlement, the Hags and Madame taking refuge behind several large rocks at the western end of the ledge, the two men finding refuge at the eastern end. They could look upward and see movement among the standing stones, where the young people had gone to talk, or downward, where the tunneler levees were so solidly implanted they might as well have been made of stone.
At the female end of the ledge, Onsofruct said for the tenth time, “I won’t do it.”
“You expected Mouche to do it,” snapped D’Jevier.
“He is younger than we,” said Onsofruct. “He is more adaptable. If he won’t do, let the off-planet girl do it. That dancer. Let Questioner do it. She’s female.”
“If I were less bionic and more fleshy,” said Questioner, from a midpoint on the ledge, “I would leap at the chance for such an experience. Oh, yes, I would go with you.”
“You mistake me,” grated Onsofruct. “I refuse to go at all.”
“You are female. We need females. Why would you shirk your duty to your people?”
“I have never shirked my duty to my people.”
“Your duty at times must have been unpleasant,” said Questioner in a tone of barely repressed annoyance. “Keeping things as they are.”
Silence stretched. None of the three asked what she meant.
She continued, “When Mouche told us of our mistake, I castigated myself for stupidity. Then I wondered what else about your world I might have missed, and of course, once I started looking for it, I saw the mold, the pattern, which should have shouted to me from the beginning.”
“And what pattern is that?” asked D’Jevier.
Questioner came nearer, leaning against one of the stones. “I never have enough time, I seldom have skilled help, but I always have a surfeit of data. I know all that there is to know about life here and there, including on Old Earth. There, historically, various hierarchies were preoccupied with Cura Mulierum, the care of women. Of course, in order to care for women, it is first necessary to make both men and women believe that women cannot care for themselves.”
“True,” said Madame. “So I have read.”
Questioner went on: “The care of women has always presented a problem for government or religion, for there were always leftover women who could not be conveniently disposed of.”
“Widows, I suppose,” said D’Jevier tonelessly. “Or women no one wants to marry. Or women who don’t want to marry.”
“Oh, all of those, yes,” said Questioner. “Plus women who do marry and can’t bear it, or prostitutes, or girls who have babies with no way to support them, or single mothers with large families, and wrinkled old crones hobbling about, muttering imprecations and getting in the way.”
“Handling surplus population is a perpetual challenge,” said Onsofruct. “Has it not been written that the poor are always with us?”
Questioner shook her head. “Handling surplus men isn’t that difficult. Just start a lively war or find some new frontier—there’s always dangerous work that needs doing. If that fails, one can create lethal rites of passage to kill off batches at a time. One needn’t pretend, not with men. The gang chief or general simply talks them into a fury and sends them into battle, and then gives them a medal after they’re maimed or dead. Or, the employer gets them to use up their lives in a factory and then tosses them aside with a memento and an inadequate pension. Team spirit does the rest.”
“The same would apply to women,” said Madame.
“Women are not such good team players, so society has to enforce its control by pretending it’s for women’s own good. Then, too, women do produce babies, which multiplies the problem.”
Onsofruct said in a remote voice, “Purdah always worked well. It allowed troublesome women and girls to be disposed of without anyone knowing. If no one had ever seen your wife or daughters, who would wonder if they disappeared? And then there were nunneries, and witch hunts. I understand religion on Old Earth managed to remove a great many elderly women by claiming they were witches.”