“That is not a thing that can be dictated by others,” Stave said. “It has to be by choice.”
“It’s nice when by choice,” she said. “But it must be, regardless.”
Truth.
Darius liked the smell of this no better than the others did. Why was there this imperative for mass breeding?
“I must learn more of this,” Stave said. “I am learning your dialect. Let us go somewhere private and talk, and come to a more perfect understanding.”
“Will you breed with me?” she asked eagerly.
He glanced again at Nona. “You’re a man,” Nona said, resigned. “Do what men do. We need the information.” It seemed that their normal dialect was indecipherable to the rabble; Seqiro’s help enabled them to understand Keli. Thus they could continue to talk among themselves, without giving away the fact of Seqiro’s mind-talk.
“I may breed with you if I come to understand the necessity,” Stave said.
“Yes! Here!” She drew him into a side passage, and thence into a private chamber.
Darius glanced at Nona. They had been left behind physically, but not mentally, for Stave remained within range. What were they to do while Stave worked on getting them what they needed to know?
Then Stave reappeared, holding Keli’s hand. This was not affection so much as making sure she was not switched for another Keli without his knowledge. “My companions,” he said. “They must be fed, and have a place to rest, while we talk.”
Immediately, the three other rabble folk, who had changed out several times during this dialogue, responded. They led Darius, Nona, and Seqiro to a table where objects of assorted shapes were piled. This was food?
Potia picked up a branching stick and proffered it to Darius. He gazed blankly at it. Then she put it to her mouth and bit at the fringe. It broke off, and she chewed on the fragment.
Darius took it from her and tried a bite himself. The stuff was brittle, but melted as soon as it touched his mouth. It had a sweet aroma and taste. This was indeed food.
There were also vessels of liquid: bubblelike shapes with projecting blisters, which in turn had projections. When a person bit off a small projection, he could then sip the liquid nectar within.
So they ate, and while they did so, they tuned in on Stave’s dialogue with Keli. She was feeding him a similar repast, but in a suggestive manner: she caressed him somewhere each time she gave him something. He was becoming interested, for she was a fine-looking woman. But the point of it was what they were saying to each other.
“I do not understand about breeding with a thousand women,” Stave said. “On the surface, a man breeds with one woman, and if he considers doing it with another, the first is upset.” As Nona would be, if he let this creature seduce him: his thought came through clearly. Darius understood the situation well enough. He glanced across at Nona, and she met his gaze briefly. Her thought came through: she and Stave were close, but not possessively close; it was Stave’s right to do as he chose. Had she wanted to reserve him for herself, she should have done it before, and she had not.
“We rabble want most of all to return to the surface world,” Keli replied. “But we can not, for we have no magic, not even illusion. But if we breed with those from the surface, our children may have magic, and be able to return. So we long instead for that, and do our utmost to breed with those who are fresh from there. It is our rule: any person from that realm must breed with a thousand of our folk before being free to do what he prefers. His only choice is with whom to breed. We will not let you go until you have done this.”
Stave was beginning to appreciate the enormity of this requirement. “But Nona—the woman of our party—she could never succeed in doing this!”
Darius felt Nona stiffen beside him. This was becoming uncomfortably personal.
“Yes, she could,” Keli answered. “She could breed with twenty men in a day, and finish in fifty days.”
Nona did not seem reassured by that estimate.
“But she would not have a thousand babies!”
“But she would have one, and have given a thousand men the chance to sire that one.”
So that was it: a fair chance for every one of the rabble. It was beginning to make sense.
“But a man could not do that,” Stave continued. “He—maybe several in a day, but not twenty, and not for long.”
“We know. So it will be one a day, for a thousand days. Starting with me, for you.”
“But you might not conceive!”
“But I will have my chance. Some will conceive. There will be some babies who can go to the surface. That is all we ask. A thousand attempts with a thousand folk. It is not so much, because we take good care of you.”
“Suppose I decide not to?” he demanded.
“I will try my best to persuade you,” she said. “Like this.” She drew off her tunic, to reveal a body that struck Darius as it did Stave. Stave’s mind was relaying a mental picture: perfection. It would be no chore to address that body.
But Stave, like Darius, knew caution. He knew that the other rabble folk had been changing every few minutes, though they looked the same. He wanted to know why, but hesitated to ask.
I have found it, Seqiro thought. These folk are form-changers. Each can assume any form, human or animal, though they can not change their body mass, so it is not true magic. Form does not matter much to them; it is a convenience of the moment. They are giving as many of their number as possible a chance to breed: each has a set time to make an impression, and then must give place to another. Keli is the name of that form, not the person; but the person in that form when Stave took an interest is allowed to continue, and to breed with him if she can.
Darius whistled soundlessly. Form-changing and the desire to breed with the newcomers: that accounted for everything. It also showed an extremely fine-tuned program. Surely these folk did know how to prevent their visitors from departing, and how to force them to breed if they did not do so voluntarily. This was a trap of an unanticipated nature.
Nona, receiving his thoughts, looked pale. How were they going to handle this?
“Could they even assume our forms?” Darius asked.
They could.
“Then we had better develop sufficient mental touch to know exactly with whom we are dealing,” Darius said.
I know the difference between your minds and theirs, the horse assured him. I will keep you informed. They are not aware of my ability, so are taking no precautions against it. My difficulty in reading their minds is purely because they are constantly changing folk, and new minds are hard to address.
They continued eating, while Stave continued to fend off Keli’s advances without actually rejecting her.
Then Nona stood. “Is there a private chamber for personal matters?” she inquired.
“Ah, you are ready to breed with me?” Long asked, pleased.
Oops. “Not yet,” she said. “I meant for—I have eaten and drunk, and—”
“I will show you,” he said quickly. Meanwhile Seqiro confirmed that such conventions were similar here to those of the surface realm.
Nona departed. But then things got interesting. They are trying it, Seqiro thought. The woman who returns to Darius will not be Nona, and the man Nona returns to will not be Darius. I can not be sure, because Keli is not thinking of this, but I suspect that they believe that Darius and Nona are interested in each other.
“A nice ploy,” Darius muttered.