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“I suppose so,” Kassquit said reluctantly. “What you say makes good logical sense.” What she felt when she touched herself, though, was about as far removed from good logical sense as anything could be. The Race, as far as she knew, was logical all the time. She wished she could be. Except when she was touching herself, she wished she could be. Then… She didn’t know what she wished then, except that it could go on forever.
Ttomalss said, “I must tell you, Kassquit, this is not easy for me. Matters pertaining to Tosevite reproduction behavior are most alien to the Race, and lie at the heart of the differences between us and the Big Uglies.”
He is embarrassed, too, Kassquit realized. Had he not felt it to be his duty to bring this up with her, he would without a doubt have been happier saying nothing. She admired him for doing his duty despite embarrassment.
She said, “What are my possibilities, superior sir? The only ones I can see are continuing my present behavior and not continuing it… and not continuing it, at least occasionally, would be difficult for me.” Without some sort of release when the pressure of not quite belonging to the Race grew too great, what would she do? She had no idea. She did not want to have to find out.
“I understand,” Ttomalss said. “That is, I understand as well as our differences in biology permit me to understand. Tosevite females have the potential to be sexually available to males at all seasons of the year. From this, it follows that there would be interest in and desire for activities pertaining to mating throughout the year as well. Your behavior seems to affirm this.”
“I suppose you may be correct, superior sir,” Kassquit said, “although I have never thought of what I do as a mating behavior, only as something that gives me pleasure.”
“Mating behavior is designed to give pleasure, to ensure that organisms continue to pursue it,” Ttomalss said. Kassquit made an affirmative hand gesture; she had encountered that concept before. Ttomalss went on, “There are, or could be, other possibilities available to you besides those you mention, though they might require considerable discussion before they could be implemented.”
“What other possibilities?” Kassquit demanded. “If any other researchers have raised Big Uglies from hatchlinghood, I am not aware of it.”
“No, nothing of the sort,” Ttomalss said. “It might have been better-I daresay it would have been better-for researchers other than myself to have undertaken such a project, but none chose to. Other than myself, none had the patience for it.”
“I understand, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “You have spoken many times of the difficulties involved in rearing Tosevite hatchlings. This being so, what other alternatives are there for me?”
Ttomalss let out a hissing sigh. “If the urge to mate grows uncontrollable, I suppose it could be arranged to bring a male up from the surface of Tosev 3 to attend to the matter. I do not urge this course, mind you; I merely mention it as a possibility.”
“A-wild Tosevite?” Kassquit used the negative hand gesture. “I think not, superior sir. I want as little acquaintance with the Big Uglies as I may have; my destiny, for better or worse, is with the Race.”
“I agree, Kassquit,” Ttomalss said gravely. “But, however much your spirit may belong to the Race, it is housed in a Tosevite body with Tosevite hormonal urges. The strength of these we are still in the process of ascertaining, but everything we have learned proves they are not to be despised.”
Kassquit bent into the posture of respect again. “You are generous, superior sir, to show me so much consideration. But, first, I do not wish to meet any wild Tosevite males.” She used an emphatic cough. “And, second, you understand that I am as ignorant of proper Tosevite mating behavior as the Race was before coming to this world. I suppose there is such a thing as proper Tosevite mating behavior; however beastly they may act, Big Uglies are not beasts.”
“This is all truth.” Ttomalss sounded surprised, and soon showed why: “It is also truth that did not occur to me. If you wish to learn more of Tosevite mating behavior, you may consult our archives on the subject.” He gave her the code by which she could retrieve them from the data system.
“I thank you, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “I did not realize these archives existed. One cannot search for what one does not know is there.”
“Again, truth,” Ttomalss said. “Examine some of them, if you care to. It may help influence your decision. And now, having said what I came to say, I shall depart.” He did, with every sign of relief.
Kassquit went back to the computer. She intended to call up the document on which she had been working, the one in which she was requesting increased autonomy from Ttomalss. But here he had come to give her more autonomy of a different sort.
Curiosity overcame her. She supposed she had known it would. She used the access code Ttomalss had given her. The computer screen showed two wild, unshaven Tosevites coupling. Kassquit watched with fascination and horror mixed. The posture struck her as absurd, and what the male was doing as unlikely to cause pleasure. It looked, in fact, as if it ought to be acutely painful.
Evidently it was not, though. The female gave signs of the same pleasure Kassquit knew when stroking herself. The male’s deeper groans seemed to be of the same kind, even if different in degree. After the recording finished, the computer menu asked if she wanted to view another. She gave an affirmative response.
Again, fascination and disgust warred. Some of the practices in which the Big Uglies indulged looked most unsanitary. Finally, Kassquit turned off the computer. She was very, very glad she had not asked Ttomalss to supply her with a wild Tosevite male.
Monique Dutourd stopped her bicycle in front of a public telephone kiosk on her way home from the university. Before she slid off the bicycle, though, she shook her head and started pedaling again, this time up a side street. A phone on her regular route was too likely to be tapped. After a few blocks, she came to another kiosk, this one in front of a little market.
“Better,” she said, and let down the kickstand. Before she approached the telephone, she looked all around, making certain the coast was clear. She even stuck her head into the market, to make sure Sturmbannfuhrer Dieter Kuhn was not lurking there after outthinking her. The fellow inside washing squashes-rather a handsome young man, with a diabolical little chin beard-waved and blew her a kiss. She ignored him, as she ignored half a dozen casual invitations every day.
Rummaging in her purse, she found a twenty-five pfennig coin and put it in the telephone’s coin slot. She was glad to hear a dial tone; she would not have wanted to place the call through an operator. She still wondered if she ought to be placing it at all. But surely the brother from whom she’d been so long separated got other calls. What was one more?
Everything, Monique thought. Everything, or maybe nothing.
She dialed the number. Finding it had taken a long time, and meant dealing with people of a sort she’d had nothing to do with since the tense days just after the fighting stopped. She hadn’t trusted them then; she still did not. For all she knew, they’d
taken her money and given her a number that would connect her with the city pound. And if they had, maybe that was just as well.
The telephone rang… and rang, and rang. Monique was about to hang up, get her quarter-mark back, and give up the whole thing as a bad job when someone answered: “Allo? Who’s there?”
Monique had not expected a woman with a sexy voice on the other end of the line. Flustered, she blurted, “Let me talk to Pierre.”
“And who the devil are you?” From sexy, the voice went to hard and suspicious in the blink of an eye.
“I’m his sister,” Monique said desperately.
“You’re a lying bitch, is what you are,” the other woman snapped. “He hasn’t got a sister. So he’s two-timing me again, is he? He’ll be sorry.”
“I am not. He has. And he isn’t,” Monique said. “Tell him I remember that the name of the dog we had when he went off to war was Alexandre.”
She waited to discover whether the woman would hang up on her. Silence stretched. At last, the woman said, “He has spoken of this dog to me. I do not think-I could be wrong, but I do not think-he would have spoken of it to any of his whores. You wait. I will see if he will speak to you.”
Wait Monique did. The operator frightened her out of a week’s growth by demanding another twenty-five pfennigs. She paid. The operator got off the line again.
Another man came onto it. “Tell me your name,” he said, his voice strange and familiar at the same time.
“Pierre? I am your sister Monique, Monique Dutourd,” she answered.
As she hadn’t expected a woman to answer the phone, so the sigh now also took her by surprise. “Well, I might have known you would catch up with me sooner or later,” he said. “Life at the university finally got boring, eh?”
