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Tosev 3, you already seem to have discovered the idea of marriage-and the idea of prostitution.” The two key words were in English; the language of the Race had no short, exact term for either.
Atvar had heard both English words often enough before going into cold sleep to know what they meant. He despised the words and the concepts behind them. The Race had brought civilization to the Rabotevs and the Hallessi-and to the Tosevites. What could be more humiliating than borrowing ways to live from barbarians? Nothing he could think of.
But right now he could hardly think at all-and he did not much want to, either. “If you will excuse me…” he said, and rose from his chair and hurried out of the conference chamber.
Somewhere not far away, a female was ready to mate. That was all he needed to know. He turned his head now this way, now that, seeking the source of that wonderful, alluring odor. It was stronger that way… He hurried down a corridor. His hands spread, stretching out his fingerclaws as far as they would go. Males often brawled during mating season. Some of the brawls were fatal. Penalties for such affrays were always light, and often suspended. Everyone understood that such things happened under the influence of pheromones. It was too bad, but what could you do?
There! There she was! And there was another male-a miserable creature, by his body paint a hotel nutritionist, second class-headed for her. Atvar hissed furiously. Of their own accord, the scales that made up his crest lifted themselves from the top of his head. That was partly display for the female’s sake, partly a threat gesture aimed at the hotel nutritionist.
“Go away!” the nutritionist said, hissing angrily.
Instead of answering with words, Atvar leaped at him, ready to claw and bite and do whatever he had to do to make his rival retreat. The hotel nutritionist was much younger, but not very spirited. He snapped halfheartedly as Atvar came forward, but then turned and fled without making a real fight of it.
Atvar let out a triumphant snort. He turned back to the female. “Now,” he said urgently.
And now it was. She bent before him. Her tailstump twisted to one side, out of the way. He poised himself above and behind her. Their cloacas joined. Pleasure shot through him.
Still driven by the pheromones in the air, Atvar would have coupled again. But the female skittered away. “Enough!” she said. “You have done what you needed to do.”
“I have not yet done everything I want to do,” Atvar said. The female ignored him. He hadn’t expected anything different. He might have hoped, but he hadn’t expected. And his own mating drive was less urgent than it had been in his younger days. He trotted off. If that hotel nutritionist, second class, made a sufficiently aggressive display to this female, he might yet get a chance to mate with her. But my sperm are still in the lead, Atvar thought smugly.
He went out into the street. It was chaos there, as he’d thought it would be. Males and females coupled on the sidewalk and even in the middle of traffic. Sometimes, males overwhelmed by pheromones would leap out of their vehicles and join females. Or females in cars and trucks would see a mating display and be so stimulated that they would stop their machines, get out, and assume the mating position in the middle of the road.
Accidents always skyrocketed at this time of year, along with the brawls. It was no wonder that the Race didn’t care to think about the mating season when it finally ended. Males and females simply were not themselves, and they knew it. Who would want to remember a time like this, let alone celebrate the mating urge the way the Big Uglies did? Incomprehensible.
Atvar coupled with another female out in front of the hotel. Then, sated for the moment, he watched the show all around him. It was interesting for the time being, but he knew he was pheromone-addled. When the pheromones wore off, so would the appeal of the spectacle.
Overhead, a pair of squazeffi flew by. They were conjoined. A lot of creatures mated at this time of year. That way, the eggs the females laid would hatch in the springtime, when the chance for hatchlings’ survival was highest. Like other flying creatures on Home, they had long necks, beaky mouths full of teeth, and bare, membranous wings with claws on the forward margin. Their hides were a safe, sensible green-brown, not much different from the color of his own skin.
Tosev 3 had nothing like squazeffi. Similar animals had once existed there, but were millions of years extinct. Instead, the dominant fliers there were gaudy creatures with feathers. Atvar had never got used to birds, not in all the time he’d spent on the Big Uglies’ homeworld. They looked more like something a gifted but strange video-game designer might imagine than anything real or natural.
He wondered what the Tosevites thought of squazeffi and other proper flying things. If he still remembered to ask after mating season-by no means certain, not with the pheromones addling him-he would have to ask them. In the meantime…
In the meantime, he ambled back into the hotel. A Big Ugly-the dark brown one named Coffey-walked past him. Like Rabotevs and Hallessi, the Tosevite was oblivious to the pheromones filling the air around him. He said, “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” as if Atvar weren’t thinking more of females than of anything else.
The fleetlord managed to reply, “And I greet you.” Frank Coffey smelled like a Tosevite-a strange odor to a male of the Race, but not one to which to pay much attention during mating season.
Then Atvar spotted Trir. The guide saw him at the same time. His crest flared erect. He straightened into a display a male used only at this time of year. Trir might not have intended to mate with him. But the visual cues from his display had the same effect on her as females’ pheromones had on him. She bent into the mating posture. He hurried around behind her and completed the act. After his hiss of pleasure, she hurried away.
Frank Coffey had paused to watch the brief coupling. “May I ask you a question, Exalted Fleetlord?” he said.
“Ask.” Still feeling some of the delight he’d known during the mating act, Atvar was inclined to be magnanimous.
“How does the Race get anything done during mating season?” the wild Big Ugly inquired.
“That is a good question,” Atvar answered. “Females too old to lay eggs help keep things going, and there are a few males who, poor fellows, do not respond to pheromones. Rabotevs and Hallessi are useful in this role, too, now that we can bring them back here. They have mating seasons of their own, of course, but we do not need to take those into account here as much as we do on their home planets.”
“I suppose not,” Coffey said, and then, thoughtfully, “I wonder how many intelligent species have mating seasons and how many mate all through the year.”
“Until we got to know about you Tosevites, we thought all such species were like the Race,” Atvar said. “The first two we came to know certainly were, so we thought it was a rule. Now, though, the tally stands at three species with seasons and one without. I would have to say this sample is too small to be statistically significant.”
“I would say you are bound to be right.” The Tosevite looked up toward the ceiling-no, up beyond the ceiling, as his next words proved: “I wonder how many intelligent species the galaxy holds.”
“Who can guess?” Atvar said. “We have probed several stars like Home with no planets at all, and one other with a world that supports life but is even colder and less pleasant for us than Tosev 3: not worth colonizing, in our judgment. One of these days, we will find another inhabited world and conquer it.”
“Suppose someone else finds the Empire?” Coffey asked.
Atvar shrugged. “That has not happened in all the history of the Race, and by now our radio signals have spread across most of the galaxy. No one from beyond has come looking for us yet.” He swung his eye turrets toward the wild Big Ugly. “I think we would do better to worry about the species with which we are already acquainted.” Coffey did not presume to disagree with him.
7
Most of the time, the Race mocked Tosevite sexuality. For a small stretch of each year, though, males and females here far outd
id the wildest of wild Big Uglies in sheer carnality. Kassquit had seen two mating seasons before this one. They astonished and appalled her. The creatures she’d thought she knew turned into altogether different beings for a little while.
She had seen mating behavior in the starship orbiting Tosev 3 after the colonization fleet brought females to her homeworld. Some of those females had come into season on their own. Others, ginger-tasters, had had chemical help. That was disruptive enough, as their pheromones sent males all over the ship into heat. But this… this was a world gone mad.
And it was a madness of which she had no part. The Race scorned Tosevite sexuality, yes. Kassquit knew that only too well. She’d been on the receiving end of such comments more times than she could count back in the starship orbiting Tosev 3. She hadn’t heard so many since waking up on Home. It wasn’t that males and females here were more polite. If anything, the reverse was true. But a lot of them were simply ignorant of how Big Uglies worked.
For the time being, Kassquit could have done the mocking. Males and females coupled on the streets. They coupled in the middle of the streets. Males brawling over females clawed and bit one another till they bled. Yes, Kassquit could have done the mocking-had she found anyone to listen to her.
The Race paid no attention. Right now, males and females were too busy joining to worry about anything else. Later, once the females’ pheromones wore off, everyone would try to pretend the mating season had never happened. Kassquit had already seen that. And, once the females’ pheromones had worn off, males and females would go back to disparaging the Tosevites for their lascivious and disgusting habits. She’d seen that, too.
Now, though, she could talk with the American Big Uglies. They hadn’t come down to the surface of Home when she watched the two previous mating seasons. The server in the hotel refectory was a female. She skittered about as if she’d tasted too much ginger, but Kassquit did not think that was the problem. Unless she was wrong, the female had to hurry to get her work done before some male interrupted her.
