Chapter 1
THERE WAS THAT SOUND AGAIN—thin, high, querulous, yet audible even above the rhythmic stamp and shuffle of the dance that beat out through the open windows of the Club. It sounded as though something were in pain. Something was.
Brasidus belched gently. He had taken too much wine, and he knew it. That was why he had come outside—to clear his head and, he hoped, to dispel the slight but definitely mounting waves of nausea. The night air was cool, but not too cool, on his naked body, and that helped a little. Even so, he did not wish to return inside just yet.
He said to Achron, “We may as well watch.”
“No,” replied his companion. “No. I don’t want to. It’s . . . dirty, somehow . . .” Then with a triumphant intonation he delivered the word for which he had been groping. “Obscene.”
“It’s not. It’s . . . natural.” The liquor had loosened Brasidus’ tongue; otherwise he would never have dared to speak so freely, not even to one who was, after all, only a helot. “It’s we who’re being obscene by being unnatural. Can’t you see that?”
“No, I can’t!” snapped Achron pettishly. “And I don’t want to. And I thank Zeus, and his priesthood, that we don’t have to go through what that brute is going through.”
“It’s only a scavenger.”
“But it’s a sentient being.”
“And so what? I’m going to watch, anyhow.”
Brasidus walked briskly to where the sound was coming from, followed reluctantly by Achron. Yes, there was the scavenger, struggling in the center of the pool of yellow light cast by a streetlamp. The scavenger—or scavengers . . . had either of the young men heard of Siamese twins, that would have been the analogy to occur to them—a pair of Siamese twins fighting to break apart. But the parallel would not have been exact, as one of the two linked beings was little more than half the size of the other.
Even in normal circumstances the scavengers were not pretty animals, although they looked functional enough. They were quadrupedal, with cylindrical bodies. At one end they were all voracious mouth, and from the other end protruded the organs of excretion and insemination. They were unlovely but useful, and had been encouraged to roam the streets of the cities from time immemorial.
Out on the hills and prairies and in the forests, their larger cousins were unlovely and dangerous, but they had acquired the taste for living garbage.
“So . . . messy,” complained Achron.
“Not so messy as the streets would be if the beasts didn’t reproduce themselves.”
“There wouldn’t be the same need for reproduction if you rough hoplites didn’t use them as javelin targets. But you know what I’m getting at, Brasidus. It’s just that I . . . it’s just that some of us don’t like to be reminded of our humble origins. How would you like to go through the budding process, and then have to tear your son away from yourself?”
“I wouldn’t. But we don’t have to, so why worry about it?”
“I’m not worrying.” Achron, slightly built, pale, blond, looked severely up into the rugged face of his dark, muscular friend. “But I really don’t see why we have to watch these disgusting spectacles.”
“You don’t have to.”
The larger of the scavengers, the parent, had succeeded in bringing one of its short hind legs up under its belly. Suddenly it kicked, and as it did so it screamed, and the smaller animal shrieked in unison. They were broken apart now, staggering over the cobbles in what was almost a parody of a human dance. They were apart, and on each of the rough, mottled flanks was a ragged circle of glistening, raw flesh, a wound that betrayed by its stench what was the usual diet of the lowly garbage eaters. The stink lingered even after the beasts, rapidly recovering from their ordeal, had scurried off, completing the fission process, in opposite directions.
That was the normal way of birth on Sparta.