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“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.”
“Have they?” Atvar shrugged. Such things happened all the time during mating season. Still, Kirel’s point was well taken. Atvar said, “A good notion. I shall summon Moishe Russie. Not only is he a Big Ugly, but also a physician, or what passes for such among his kind. He will undoubtedly be able to tell us much that we do not yet know or suspect about what lies ahead for us.”
He wasted no time, but telephoned Russie at his practice in Jerusalem. Being the most powerful individual on the planet had its advantages: Russie did not refuse to speak to him. Atvar couched his orders in polite terms; he had seen over the years how touchy and stubborn Russie could be. But they were orders, and of that the fleetlord left no doubt.
Next morning, Russie presented himself at Shepheard’s Hotel. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” he said when Pshing escorted him into Atvar’s presence. “How may I assist you?” He spoke the language of the Race well if pedantically.
Atvar remembered there had been a time when Russie was unwilling to assist the Race in anything. He had, to some degree, mellowed. If he could help the Race without hurting his own kind, he would. The situation was not ideal from the fleetlord’s point of view, but it was acceptable. On Tosev 3, that ranked as something of a triumph.
“I shall explain,” Atvar said, and he did.
Russie listened intently. Atvar had studied Tosevite expressions-far more varied and less subtle than those of the Race-but saw nothing on the Big Ugly’s face save polite interest. When the fleetl
ord finished, Russie said, “I have already heard something of this. There was an incident in Jerusalem the other day that shocked both Jews and Muslims, but no one knew its likely cause till now.”
An incident that shocked the Muslims was the last thing the fleetlord wanted; that Tosevite faction was already far too restive. He said, “How are we to prevent further such incidents?”
“As you surely know, it is our strong custom to mate privately,” Russie said. “A ban on public mating by the Race would help keep order in areas of the planet you rule.”
“Our custom is the opposite,” Atvar said. “We are in the habit of mating wherever we chance to be when the urge strikes us. Still, for the sake of good order among the Tosevites, a ban such as you suggest might be worthwhile.” It would be a palliative, as would tighter controls on ginger-smuggling, but Tosev 3 had taught him palliatives were not always to be despised.
“If your females, or some of them, are to be in season all the time, you will also need rules about with whom they can mate, and perhaps about what happens when a male mates with a female against her will,” Russie said.
“If a female is in season, mating is not against her will,” Atvar answered.
Russie shrugged. “You know better than I.”
“Not necessarily,” Atvar said. “This is unfamiliar territory for the Race, as unfamiliar as Tosev 3 was before our probe landed here-and as unfamiliar as Tosev 3 was after the probe landed here, too.”
“Why exactly, then, have you summoned me?” the Tosevite asked.
Atvar turned both eye turrets toward him. “For your suggestions,” the fleetlord replied. “You have already given some. I hope you will give more. The Race will have to cope, as we have had to cope with so much on your world.”
“If you had thought of it as our world from the beginning, you would not have these problems now.” Moishe Russie’s face twisted into a peculiar grimace. “And I, very likely, would be dead. I will do what I can for you, Exalted Fleetlord.”
