Chapter 8: A Babe in the Rough
After a lifetime of feeling as insignificant as a dried leaf blowing through town, Wisteria suddenly became visible. Phylomon himself took her off her feet and physically set her on the back of the wagon while Ayuvah patted her back and Tull stood grinning from ear to ear, too happy to be of use to anyone.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I mean, I feel great.”
“Babies are rare enough out here in the Rough,” Phylomon said, “There’s no use taking chances with them before they are born. Besides, it’s hard for a human woman to carry a Pwi child full-term.”
“He’s right,” Scandal said. “From now on, no more pushing wagons or hauling wood for you—you’re our lord, and we’re your slaves. You tell us to jump, and every man here will bust a testicle at your whim.”
So by sundown they left Sanctum, and Short Tail kept his mammoth moving well after dark. Phylomon was pleased with the progress. Though the woolly mammoths weren’t as large as the woodland mastodons, they were better suited for cold-weather travel, and they were spirited. “Cantankerous,” Scandal called them, and they were that too. Short Tail’s mammoth would often jerk the wagon, for he hated butterflies, and he was constantly lunging after cabbage moths, sucking them into his trunk and spitting them out with enough gusto to break their tiny bodies.
Still, it was nice to ride in the wagon, and Tull sat with Wisteria all day long, just holding her. Scandal razzed them. “All the panting and rutting you two have been up to has paid off! I’ll be surprised if you don’t drop triplets! Why, you’ll have a veritable litter of woolly-backed little Neanderthals running around your feet in no time.”
Ayuvah just sat out in the sun in the back of the wagon and smiled at them, then looked back at the mountains toward Smilodon Bay, as if mourning the distance between himself and his own wife. Only Tirilee did not seem intoxicated by the joy everyone felt at news of the impending birth. She sulked along beside the wagon, trailing it just a bit.
Scandal spent part of the afternoon hunting with Phylomon, and after battle practice, for dinner Scandal celebrated news of the pregnancy by making a clay oven and baking three grouse and glazing them with a paste of his special plum sauce. For dessert he baked his famous walnut and sweet potato pie. Wisteria could imagine no heaven where time could be passed more enjoyably than feasting upon such delicacies. After the food had settled while Wisteria lay on the grass enjoying the scent of the fire. Tull pulled her to him and kissed her.
“Let’s go to the thicket by the pond and make love,” he said.
She felt surprised. He had not tried to make love to her for days—not since Short Tail had slugged him. Indeed, his ribs were bandaged and he often held them and breathed shallowly while he and Ayuvah practiced. “Not now,” she said. “Let’s just enjoy the fire.”
Tull raised himself to one elbow and slid his hand into her hair at the base of her skull, then he clenched his fingers and pulled her toward him. He smiled down at her from above and kissed her roughly, then nipped her lower lip. She just stared at him in surprise. He was warm and sweaty, and his Neanderthal teeth were large and clean.
“Come, let’s go to the pond. In another two weeks, we will be in Craal. Like the dragons above us, I want to soar to the heights and burst into flame once before I die.” Tull let go of her hair, stroked her face, and his hand continued running down her, over the curve of her breasts and thighs.
Wisteria felt intoxicated at his touch, as if every inch of her body raged with desire for him. Even the webbing between her toes seemed to tremble, and she wondered how long it had been since she had felt so alive. She gasped, and Tull picked her up and carried her to the pond.
“Wait,” Wisteria said, “the others will see us. They’ll know what we’re doing.”
“Then let them ache with jealousy,” Tull said. “I must have you.”
He carried her to a spot beside the pond where the grass was still green. Some young mallards flew up from the rushes at the far side. Tull stripped her and made love to her like a wild man, raking her back with his nails. She laughed aloud, and as dusk became full night with a million burning stars, he took her higher than she’d ever been before. It seemed to her that she was like the dragon, soaring free, burning from his heat. And after several hours, when they lay together naked and exhausted, she asked, “So, did you reach the heights? Did you burst into flames at my touch?”
Tull was silent for a moment. “Almost, my love, almost,” he said. And Wisteria’s heart fell with disappointment. Then Tull smiled, “Let’s try again.”
Wisteria laughed and climbed atop him and kissed him long and passionately. The world felt magical and she realized that for the first time in her life she was perfectly happy. With all her father’s plans for a marriage to some businessman in the south, she was surprised at how perfectly happy she felt at this moment, out in the Rough, naked, straddling a half-breed. They bathed in the pond in the moonlight then afterward dressed and returned to camp to lie in their furs and watch the dragons. There were many flying high tonight.
“The dragons are searching for the winged Dryad and her lover,” Phylomon said. Wisteria was not sure if he was speaking to them or if she were catching the tail end of some other conversation. “The dragons are talking to each other, telling one another of yesterday’s hunt. You watch, the skies will be full for months.”
After awhile, Tirilee asked Phylomon in her melodic voice, “Will Falhalloran ever rise again?”
Phylomon answered, “No one knows. The red drones are energy vessels, and their fuel has limits, but no one knows much about their creators, the Eridani. The Eridani believed that humans were too young a race to inhabit the stars, so they sent the red drones to keep us planet-bound. When they first tried to restrict us to the number of worlds we would inhabit, they demanded that we not leave for five thousand years. A thousand years have passed since the war. When the Eridani ships grow old enough, their liquid brains will die. I do not think that that will happen for four thousand years. If Falhalloran still exists at that time, the city might be repaired.”
“None of us will be here to see it,” Scandal said wistfully.
“Who knows?” Phylomon said. “Miracles happen daily. Why, look at Tull and Wisteria: When humans came to Anee, we had had a lot of genetic upgrading. We’d extended our memories, lengthened our lives. Made ourselves stronger. Every human was a Dicton. In those days, humans and Pwi were so different in their genetic makeup, that a mating between Wisteria and Tull would have been thought impossible. A miracle.”
Tull asked. “Then how does it happen?”
“The Creators made the first Dryads—beings that were neither human nor Pwi. Some Dryads, like the women of the redwoods, breed with members of other species. But some Dryads attracted the Neanderthals with their singing, and when they mated, the males were born Neanderthals while the females were Dryads. Obviously, the genes that produce a Dryad are a sex-linked family that is expressed only in females.”
“Dryads never give birth to males,” Tirilee said.
“Supposedly not,” Phylomon agreed, “But in the pine forests on the west coast, solitary trappers often find male children dumped on their doorsteps. To some Dryads, males are born. And, as you know, Dryads can mate with humans as well as Pwi.
“So, it happened that a Dryad gave birth to a male child who carried enough human genes and Neanderthal genes so that his offspring could mate with both groups, and our blood lines became mixed.
“There are no purebred humans anymore. Those who are close are Dictons. Even among the Slave Lords who have struggled to maintain their racial purity, such children are uncommon. My younger brother once told me that he believed the Creators made Dryads partly for that purpose—to rid Anee of humans who carry the memories of words that define us as part of a Starfaring culture.
“In a way, I think it would be a good thing. We as a people have never had to learn how to think, how to create. When someone wants a ship, they have a Dicton design it based upon his inherited memory, and in a way that is a shame. The designs are always adequate, but we never improve on anything done on old Earth. Our thoughts, our culture—all have become stifled, static. In a way, I wish that my brother had been right, that the Creators could rid the world of the Starfarers.
“But I do believe my brother was only engaged in a wild fantasy. It is true that the Dryads destroyed our racial purity, but it is also true that few Pwi are purebred Neanderthals. The old woman we met on the trail a couple of weeks back is among the last. The psychic powers of some purebred Neanderthals is a marvelous curiosity.”
“Then it is not good for humans and Neanderthals to mate,” Tull said, “if the Neanderthals lose their power, and the humans have lost their inherited memories.”
“I’m not sure,” Phylomon said. “I think it may be good. My people had become all intellect—cold, calculating, unfeeling. When the Eridani banished us to Anee, it was easy for them to conquer this world. Perhaps too easy. They had no intellectual challenges, and they did not respond to physical challenges. It was easier for them to enslave the Pwi and live their sordid lives on Bashevgo than it would have been for them to work honestly.
“And as for the Pwi, their complex emotions, the shroud of kwea through which they perceived the world, robbed them of clear sight. They lost the ability to dissociate themselves from their pasts, and so they were never free from childhood fears.
“I think that both races need something that can be found in the other. And I see a new race emerging, a race of men like Tull, who can think with both their hearts and their minds.
“When our ancestors came here, their bodies were changed so they could travel on vehicles faster than light. And we have lost those days of glory. Yet, two thousand years ago, our ancestors communicated on simple radio waves, and those waves are making their way to us now. Within a hundred and fifty years, radio signals will begin to reach us from Earth, and I believe your great grandchildren will build a receptor to capture those signals and learn how humans first entered the Nano Age. Your descendants could rise up and carry all of Anee back into that age again.”
“Why should we?” Tull asked. “If the Starfarers created us as mere curiosities, would they welcome us?”
Phylomon hesitated. “They would welcome you. Tull, not all of the Starfarers saw the Neanderthals as mere entertainment. When the Eridani sent their red drones, only a few humans were cruel and thoughtless enough to take slaves. Most of us Starfarers deplored the idea, but we did not think of destroying our own brethren. The thought of going to war with one another appalled us. It did not appall the slavers. For the first two hundred years, they lived and bred on Bashevgo, and we ignored them and they ignored us. Some among us went so far as to raid their strongholds and release their Neanderthals. We thought it only a game at the time, but eventually it turned to war, and they struck the first blow. We’ve never really recovered from that blow. But I tell you in all seriousness: If you regain the stars, you will find humans who look upon you as brothers.”
Up in the sky above the camp, a dragon’s wings seemed to sparkle in the moonlight. It careened in a controlled drop, then its wings went limp and it plummeted. The breeze carried the scent of Tirilee, and Wisteria thought the girl smelled unusually pleasant, earthy, like a rose garden or a wheat field. Wisteria inhaled the scent deeply.
She watched the dragon as it dropped beyond the treetops over a nearby hill. Its death cry sounded, a long ululating scream that pierced the night, yet the sound came from high and far away—for the dragon had uttered the scream when first shot.
Beside her, Tull breathed deeply, inhaling Tirilee’s aroma, and he sounded as if he choked back a sob. Wisteria heard him breathe the words, “God, let me stop burning.”
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