Second Contact (39 page)

“I suppose I assumed you understood what the situation was here,” Bunim said. “We of the conquest fleet take matters Tosevite so much for granted by now, we are liable to forget that you colonists are less familiar with them.”

“It would be better if you did not.” Nesseref got up. “And now, superior sir, if you will excuse me . . .” She turned and departed without looking back at Bunim, so she never found out whether he excused her or not.

Outside, the wind snapped at her as if it had teeth, blowing snow into her face and into the front of the building where Bunim had his office. She drew her own mufflings more tightly around her. Her eye turrets turned toward the guards around the building. She pitied them. They had to endure this brutal weather for far longer stretches than she.

They’d also had to endure Bunim for a far longer stretch than she had. She pitied them for that, too. Now she turned an eye turret back toward his office. He infuriated her. He knew things, didn’t bother to tell them to her, and then blamed her when her work had problems.

“Unconscionable,” she muttered. But his superiors would back him. She was very sure of that. They’d served with him since the conquest fleet arrived. She was only a newcomer, and a newcomer of lower rank at that. “Unfair.” That was a low mumble, too. It was also the way the world—any world—worked.

She hated it, hated Bunim, hated everything about Tosev 3 except, strangely, a Tosevite or two. Rummaging in her belt pouch, she pulled out one of the vials of ginger males had given her. Maybe that would make her feel better.
Nice if something could,
she thought.

The breeze threatened to blow the ginger out of the palm of her hand. It was so cold that she wondered if her tongue would freeze to her skin when she shot it out. The taste of the herb was like nothing she’d ever known, sharp and sweet at the same time. And its effect was everything the males of the conquest fleet had said it would be, everything and then some. The truth of that amazed her as much as the sensation itself; she knew perfectly well how much males were in the habit of exaggerating.

Bliss filled her. The sensation reminded her of how she felt during mating season. She hadn’t thought much about that since her last season ended. Like the rest of the Race, she kept the mating season and what went on then in a separate compartment of her mind from the rest of her life. Ginger seemed to make the walls around that compartment crumble.

She shivered in the breeze, a shiver that had very little to do with the wretched Tosevite weather. To be interested in mating when she was not in season frightened her; some severe hormonal disorders had symptoms like that. But, at the same time, she enjoyed—she couldn’t help enjoying—the delicious feeling of longing that stole over her.

She took another taste, bending her head low over the ginger still in the palm of her hand. Bending her head low was also the beginning of the mating posture. She did her best not to think about that. With the herb coursing through her, not thinking was easy.

Nesseref swung her eye turrets back toward the building in which Bunim had his headquarters, to make sure the sentries hadn’t noticed her tasting ginger. Despite the number of males from the conquest fleet who used the stuff, it remained against regulations. The penalties imposed for using it struck her as absurdly harsh. She did not want to get caught.

Whether she wanted to or not, though, she was about to get caught, for both sentries were approaching her. She started to move away, hoping for the chance to sidle round a corner and disappear. But they were advancing on her with quick and determined strides.

Then she saw that their erectile scales had risen, and that they were moving with a more nearly upright gait than the Race usually used. “By the Emperor,” she whispered, “I was not just thinking about mating after all.” The breeze blew her words away—the same breeze that had blown her pheromones to the two males standing outside Bunim’s building.

One of them gestured, motioning for her to stick her head down farther and her hindquarters in the air. It was a gesture only used, only seen, during the mating season. She obeyed it without thinking. That seemed easier than ever.

Sometimes, in the wildness of the season, males fought over females. Sometimes they simply took turns. That was what happened here. The male who had not gestured tugged at Nesseref’s wrappings, then at his own, so they could join. “Miserable, clumsy things,” he grumbled.

He thrust his reproductive organ into hers. The pleasure that gave, when added to the pleasure of the ginger, was almost more than Nesseref could bear. When the male finished, the other one took his place. She enjoyed his attentions as much as those of his predecessor.

Dimly, she noticed a crowd of Tosevites gathering around her and the two males she had aroused. The Big Uglies stared and pointed and said things in their incomprehensible language. Some of them made strange barking, yapping sounds. Nesseref had heard that was how they laughed. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything except the ginger and what the males were doing.

They’d switched again. A moment later, the one who’d gone first finished his new coupling. The other one took his place once more.

By the time he finished, the ginger was beginning the ebb from Nesseref’s system. She raised her head and lowered her rump, turning her eye turrets back toward the males. “Enough,” she said. Suddenly, what she’d just been doing disgusted her. She felt as low as she’d been filled with delight a moment before.

“No such thing as enough,” one of the guards said, and gave an emphatic cough. But he’d mated with her twice, so both the words and the cough sounded halfhearted.

“Funny a female should come into season in winter,” the male remarked. “Probably has something to do with the long Tosevite years.”

Sunk in depression as she was—something about which ginger-tasters had not warned her—Nesseref did not answer.
But I wasn’t coming into season,
she thought.
I wasn’t. I would know if I were. I always know a few days before I do. Every female knows beforehand.

She hadn’t been close to coming into season till she tasted ginger. As soon as she’d tasted it, thoughts of mating started going through her head. That was very strange. She wondered if it would happen every time she tasted. Maybe she would find out, because she wanted to taste again. From these depths, the heights to which she’d ascended on the herb seemed all the more desirable.

Desirable . . . “Do you males go into season when you taste ginger?” she asked the guards, figuring one or both of them was likely to use the herb.

“No,” one answered. “That’s foolish. How can a male go into season without a female in heat to send him there?” The other sentry gestured to show he agreed.

I don’t know,
Nesseref thought.
How can a female go into season when it’s not her time?
She didn’t know that, either, not for certain, but she’d just done it. Now she noticed the gaping, laughing Tosevites.
By the Emperor, how am I any different from them?
One more question for which she had no answer.

“I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. “I trust your stay in Australia proved enjoyable and restorative?”

“Oh, indeed, Shiplord, indeed,” Atvar said. “And I trust there are new crises and disasters awaiting me here.” His mouth opened in a wry laugh. “There always are.”

“No crises or disasters,” Kirel said, and Atvar felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. The shiplord of the bannership went on, “There is one thing, however, which has come up in the last few days that does appear worthy of your attention.”

“There always is,” Atvar said with a sigh. “Very well, Shiplord: enlighten me. You were on the point of doing so anyhow, I have no doubt.”

“As a matter of fact, I was,” Kirel agreed. “It appears that, here and there across Tosev 3, a certain number of females from the colonization fleet have come into season. Matings have taken place, and one male near Basra was badly bitten in a fight over a female.”

“That
is
curious,” the fleetlord said. “A certain number of females, you tell me? They should all enter their season at about the same time, not piecemeal. Did Reffet use some peculiar selection criteria for them? Are some from the worlds of the Rabotevs and Hallessi rather than Home?”

“I do not believe that to be the case,” Kirel replied. “Nevertheless, there does appear to be a common factor in these incidents.”

His tone warned that good news did not lie ahead. Atvar fixed him with a baleful stare. “I suppose you are going to tell me what this common factor is, too. Before you do, tell me whether I really want to know.”

“I do not know whether you do or not, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said, “but I will tell you that you need to know.”

“Very well,” Atvar said, with the air of a male who expected the enemy to do his worst.

Kirel proceeded to do just that: “It appears that all the females who suddenly came into season had tasted ginger shortly before they did so. This is not certain, due to natural reluctance to admit to ginger-tasting, but it appears likely to be true.”

“I think I will go back to Australia now,” Atvar said. “No, on second thought, I believe I will go into cold sleep and have my miserable, frozen carcass shipped back to Home. When I am revived there, everything that has happened to me here will seem to be only a dream remembered from hibernation. Yes, I like the sound of that very much.”

“Exalted Fleetlord, you led us into battle against the Big Uglies,” Kirel said loyally. “You gained as satisfactory a peace as you could after conditions turned out to be different from those we anticipated. Do you now despair over an herb we have been fighting since not long after our landing on Tosev 3?”

“I am tempted to,” Atvar replied. “Are you not? Fight as we would, we could not keep a great many males from becoming regular ginger users. Do you think we shall have any better luck with the females from the colonization fleet?”

“Who can say, with any certainty?” Kirel replied. “We may yet find a way to overcome the craving the herb causes.”

“I hope you are right,” Atvar said. “But I wish I truly believed it.” He studied Kirel. The shiplord of the
127th Emperor Hetto
truly did not seem too upset at the news he had given Atvar. Perhaps he did not understand its implications. Atvar did. Tosev 3 had given him practice in recognizing catastrophes while they were still hatching. He proceeded to spell this one out: “You say it is truth that females who taste ginger go into their season?”

“Some females, yes: this is truth,” Kirel said. “I do not know if it is truth for all females.”

“Spirits of Emperors past grant that it not be,” Atvar said, and cast his eyes down to the floor of his office in Shepheard’s Hotel. “Females going into season will mean males going into season, sure as night follows day.”

“That is also truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel admitted. “I have no doubt it will prove a nuisance, but—”

“A nuisance,” Atvar exclaimed. “A nuisance? Is that all you see?” Kirel was sound, conservative, reliable. He had as much imagination now as he’d had in his eggshell, when he’d had nothing to imagine. Atvar said, “Females will not taste ginger at only one season of the year, any more than males do.”

“No doubt you are right once more, Exalted Fleetlord.” No, Kirel really did not grasp the size of the disaster looming ahead.

Atvar made it unmistakably clear: “Shiplord, if we have females accessible to mating at any season of the year and males accessible to mating at any season of the year,
how are we any different from Big Uglies?
”

“That is a . . . fascinating question, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said slowly. “I must confess, I have no good answer for it at the moment.”

“I was hoping you might, because I have none, either,” Atvar said. “The accursed Tosevites have evolved to cope with their bizarre biology. If our biology on this world becomes bizarre, how are we to cope? Evolution has not prepared us to be in season the year around. Can you imagine anything more wearing? How are we to get done that which will assuredly need doing if our minds are constantly filled with thoughts of mating?”

Kirel’s eye turrets were rigid and still with horror as he stared at the fleetlord. “No analysis up to this time has suggested such a chain of events,” he said. “That does not necessarily mean they are improbable, however. Indeed, they strike me as all too probable.” He folded himself into the posture of respect. “How did you come to postulate them?”

“When dealing with matters on this planet, my standard method is to take the worst thing I can imagine, multiply it by ten, and then begin to suspect I have something a quarter of the way to the true level of misfortune,” Atvar said.

Kirel laughed. Atvar wished he had been joking. Kirel asked, “What is now to be done?”

“I do not know,” Atvar answered. His laugh, unlike Kirel’s, was bitter. “We have been studying the Tosevites’ sexuality since we arrived here. Who would have imagined our research might have practical applications to our own situation?”

“We must do everything we can to keep ginger out of the hands and off the tongues of females,” Kirel said. “That will not eliminate the problem, but it will help reduce it.”

“Draft the appropriate orders for my approval,” Atvar said. “As you say, that will not remove the problem, but it will make it smaller. And, like an army that has taken a heavy blow, we need to buy time and regroup.”

“Truth. It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord.” Kirel hesitated, then went on, “If I may offer a suggestion?”

“Please do,” Atvar said. “The more suggestions we have now, the better.”

“Very well, then.” Kirel looked away from Atvar with both eye turrets for a moment. He was embarrassed at what he was about to say, then. Nevertheless, he said it: “In matters pertaining to year-round sexuality, we are the ignorant ones, the Big Uglies the experts. You could do worse than consult with them in regard to this problem. We shall not be able to keep it secret. In fact, if some of the reports reaching Cairo are true, it is no longer secret. Some very public matings have occurred.”