For an instant, she was shaken from anger to exasperation by this non sequitor. “What I’ve told you. They raise manna. They—”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, what are they like? How are they made?”
“Made?”
“Are they made in His image?”
She snorted. “Well, obviously, no.”
“How not?”
She rolled her eyes. But she did not speak of superficial things like one ear and three arms. “Surely, even you know that. Humans are made in His image.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning ‘male and female He made them.’ Angels aren’t. They’re—different. They’re neither man nor woman.”
“You mean neuter. Sexless.”
“Oh, for His sake! Can you really be this thick? That’s the point. Angels are perfect in His gaze. They’re complete. They’re—” and suddenly Laurel’s eyes went wide. She looked at Asach with growing horror—“entire.” She backed away, then sat abruptly as her exit was cut off by the sleeping couch. “What are you?”
But Asach deflected the question, instead answering directly to Sargon.
“I think, Laurel, that it might be useful if you explained to Archangel Sargon something about your lines. Beginning with your parents. Your mother and your father. I think that might help The Excellency to understand why you claim to be allies. And I advise, Your Excellency, that among humans, she is very far indeed from being counted as anathema.”
But Sargon was finished, and with an exasperated wave, departed. “Enough. Explain this rubbish to Enheduanna.” Then, in a rumble that rolled down the corridor, “Summon the Doctors. I would know my enemy.”
I am not, thought Asach, going to enjoy this physical exam.
Enheduanna waited, interested but passive.
“Laurel, unless you want to disrobe for what passes as the medical establishment here, I’d start talking. Now.”
They talked for hours. Enheduanna, by now aware of the humans oddly insatiable need for daily sustenance, ordered more green goo and water. As Laurel worked her way through generations of begats, Enheduanna asked the same questions over and over. “And…he was? And…she was?” At first the pronouns were hopelessly confused, but as forenames repeated and the pattern became clear, Enheduanna’s pronouns became unerringly accurate.
“So, your—people—always have two parents?”
Laurel gave the are-you-too-stupid-to-breathe- look, but simply nodded. “Yes.”
“And without two parents, all get are—impossible?”
She nodded again.
“And one parent is always—male, while the other is always—female?”
“Yes, of course,” she nodded. “That’s true for everybody. Humans are all made male and female.”
Enheduanna swiveled to face Asach, who remained impassive. “I would like this to be recorded by the Doctors.”
Laurel writhed with discomfort. “I don’t want—”
“Of course,” said Asach. “Me first.” Staring intently into Enheduanna’s eyes. “Then Laurel. You’ll find her to be a perfectly normal female.”
Enheduanna gestured and made purring sounds. Laurel shrank back, but the Doctors—long fingered, hare-lipped, lips pulled back slightly to expose olfactory pores on the roofs of their mouths—first walked directly to the corner, to examine the contents of the chamber pots. They sniffed deeply; rotated them; peered into their depths; exchanged them. Involuntarily, Laurel made an I-can’t-believe-how-disgusting-they-are curl of her nose and one eye.
Satisfied with the pots, the Doctors next approached Asach, and sniffed carefully, head to toe. They paused and sniffed as Asach inhaled and exhaled. One steadied Asach’s back lightly with the gripping hand, placed its twelve spidery fingers carefully over Asach’s abdomen and torso, and made a continuous, barely audible humming noise. The other bent at the waist and circled Asach, its ear held close. The humming stopped abruptly; the Doctors chattered a moment in a high-pitched burring; the first one rearranged its fingers, and then began again. They repeated this exercise a dozen times, until the finger placement had covered one hundred forty-four points. None of it was particularly uncomfortable. Asach was too tense to be ticklish, but twitched involuntarily as the probing fingers crept down the abdomen, eventually landing to ring the lower edge of the pelvic girdle.
Then they traded places. This time, the examination appeared to be muscular, skeletal, and circulatory. While one hummed, the other felt for, and found, multiple pulse-points: throat, armpits, elbows, wrists, ankles, knees, inner thighs, groin. On the way, it probed major muscle attachments, manipulated all of Asach’s joints, carefully examined the structures of the hand, and curled and uncurled Asach’s spine with as much evident interest as the Miners had shown.
Other than removal of boots for a foot examination, to everyone’s relief at no point did they require Asach to disrobe. Then they turned to Laurel. She blushed. The Doctors noted this immediately, with some excitement. Enheduanna translated, indicating Laurel’s face. “Is this normal? This change in skin color?”
Asach smiled. “Yes. It is an involuntary response. It is triggered by many things: fear, anxiety, anger, excitement.”
The Doctors sniffed especially carefully at Laurel’s breath; immediately felt for pulse points; chattered between themselves, then continued the systematic examination as they had done for Asach. When they got to the lower abdomen, they stopped, puzzled. They traded places, and repeated the exercise. They purred at Enheduanna, who translated.
“The Doctors have questions.”
“Yes?”
“You both have—”
Asach interrupted before Enheduanna could finish the sentence. “I am assuming that your Doctors can see—can form mental pictures, based on the sounds they make—inside our bodies?”
Enheduanna chattered something to a Doctor, who replied. “Yes, after a fashion.”
“And smell very precisely? Smell the—chemical compounds—that make up our bodies, and that we excrete?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell them that Laurel is a complete and typical human female, with usual levels of female sex-determining and reproductive hormones.” I hope that’s true Asach thought, gesturing in the direction of Laurel’s chamber-pot. “Including a normal womb,” Asach placed both hands over the lower abdomen, roughly wherein the uterus would lie, “where female eggs are fertilized by male sperm, and the zygote grows until it passes out of the female body via the birth canal.”
Enheduanna conveyed this information, and received more emphatic purring in reply.
“Yes, that is their question. It seems that—”
Asach interrupted again. “A typical, complete male does not have these organs. The male usually has only two testes that produce sperm, which are ejected from the organ that houses the urine tract. A typical male has very low levels of the same hormones, but very high levels of male hormones.”
Enheduanna conveyed this to the Doctors, who answered only briefly this time.
“And other configurations are—”
“Are normal, but not usual. They are more common in some populations than others. Some are reproductively viable, some are not. Whether they are considered to be acceptable varies by culture. In many, they are seen as what you would call anathema.”