Twilight at the Well of Souls

Awbri

The land of Awbri was a strange jungle rainforest, thick with huge trees growing out of a dense swamp, rising thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of meters into the air. The atmosphere was heavy and humid; little droplets seemed forever suspended in the air and there was nothing, really, but water, water, water… Water from waterfalls spilling down the trees and over broad leaves in a series of cascades, going down, ever down, into the forest floor below. And yet there was little sunlight; the great trees blocked it somewhere, up there, in the omnipresent gray clouds themselves, perhaps even above those clouds. The people of Awbri, if they knew, did not seem to care.

And below, far, far below, was the Floor, the base of the forest and the destination of those cascades. Down there, it was said, was a horrible swamp with quicksand and quagmire the rule and in which lived terrible, voracious mud and swamp creatures, creatures both animal and parasitic plant—and even carnivorous plant—that fought one another in a continual battle and devoured all that came near. None could climb, however, and even the parasites seemed stopped as they grew upward, halted by secretions from the great trees. The insects were mostly symbiotic, or, if parasitic, were so on animals and not the trees. Of insects there seemed an infinite number, some of which could penetrate and draw life-giving blood even from the bodies of the Awbrians, but that, too, was fair: in addition to the fruits of the trees and the vegetables from the vines that clung to great limbs, the Awbrians ate enormous quantities of those insects.

The Awbrians themselves lived only in the trees, from about the hundred-meter level to the clouds at about the fifteen-hundred-meter level. They had comic-looking short duck bills that were somewhat flexible, mounted on thin, flat heads whose long supporting necks joined lithe, almost infinitely supple ro-dentlike bodies. Their four limbs all terminated in identical monkeylike hands, each with opposable thumb; there was no difference between hand and foot, which, with the Awbrian’s infinitely flexible backbone and limbs, were used as either as the situation warranted. Except for their bare gray palms and long, flat, almost rigid, kitelike tails, their bodies were covered in thick fur whose oils repelled water. All limbs were connected by fur-covered membranes, and their bones were hollow, allowing them considerable bird-like buoyancy in the air, something they needed because, with arms and legs outstretched and using the tail as a rudder, these creatures could fly between the treetops and glide for long distances, agilely darting around limbs, leaves, and other obstructions. Unlike birds, they were ultimately victims of gravity, more gliders than powered flyers. Yet by sensing the air currents and speeds and distances, they could, like a glider, remain aloft a long, long time.

Such was the physical world into which Yua, former high priestess of Olympus, had been reborn through the Well of Souls. The cultural world had been, for her, the greater shock.

As with her own people, there were many more females born here than males, perhaps ten or more to one. But here the men ruled supreme, whereas in her old world they had functioned merely as pampered courtesans. She had sought out the leadership of this land when she first awakened here and had been directed, finally, to the local council, which had its headquarters in a great tree that seemed set apart from the rest. So far, she had been treated with discourtesy, even downright rudeness, and had little liking for her new people, a feeling that grew even more ominous when she discovered she was to be assigned to a family of low rank. She was pragmatic; she accepted their rule for now because she could do nothing else about it, and because the alternative was to be drugged or lobotomized into acceptance and submission.

Awbri had no central government. It was made up of clans, each of which was an extended family all living and working together. Each tree could support between a dozen and twenty or so Awbrians; clans spread to adjoining trees and their relative power and social ranking was based on the number of people in the clan and, by extension, the number of trees it inhabited and controlled. Within each clan, which ranged from as few as a hundred to more than five thousand, male rank was a combination of age, birth, and tests of strength and endurance. Female rank depended more on age and relationship to the chief male of the clan than on anything else, although the highest-ranking female was always well below the lowest-ranking male.

A young Awbrian female came for her in the morning. She was Dhutu of Tokar, she told the newcomer, and she was here to help Yua get to her new home and to help her in adjusting.

Dhutu was friendly, at least, and helped her with the fine points of flying, although the more Yua did it the easier it became. She seemed instinctively to know distances and to “feel” and “see” the sluggish air. Still, lacking complete confidence in her ability as yet, she grabbed trees and took things in short stages. Dhutu was amused but patient, and it was during such stops that Yua learned more of the culture of Awbri.

The men, it seemed, spent most of their time in combat-type sports and rivalries, although they also regulated commerce and trade, swapping whatever their clans produced for whatever they needed. They decided what would be grown on the limbs and in the mulch-lined hollows of branches; they decided just about everything, in fact. Only males received any sort of education. She found Dhutu’s ignorance almost appalling. The female considered reading and writing things of magic; books and letters were mysterious symbols that “talked” only to males. She had no idea what lay over the next grove beyond her own local neighborhood, let alone the fact that she was on a planet—-or even what a planet was. She knew there were other races, of course; hexes were too small to conceal that fact. But she knew nothing about them, for they were all monsters and could be understood only by clan chiefs. And anyhow, she had no curiosity.

The women, it turned out, provided the labor. They not only bore and raised the young, they farmed the limbs, harvested the vines and fruits, created the special mulches for better yields, and were also the craftsmen and manufacturers. Working in wood was elaborate work here, since it was incredible and ornate, yet it had to be done without killing the tree. They built and maintained highly detailed homes inside the trees and created the intricate woodwork, the distinctive furniture, objets d’art, and household equipment, such as vases. They also made strange musical instruments for elaborate compositions—written by men, of course—and the tools and weapons for their own work and for the men’s sport.

They reached a tree—her tree, Dhutu told her— and landed on a lower limb. “This is a new tree,” she was told, “that is, it was acquired in a trade with the Mogid clan, who needed additional fruit production. We had extra fruit trees off near their border, they had some spare life trees near by, and we needed new space. It has caused us great excitement, for such a thing has not happened before in any of our memories. We are only now starting to develop the tree properly, work in which you will share.” She said it with such enthusiasm that Yua supposed that she was expected to feel thrilled or something at that.

They entered a large cavity and descended a ladder to a lower floor that was more developed. The trees were huge; she guessed that the tree must be thirty or more meters in diameter, with its own life system in its outer area. The trees seemed naturally hollow, so there was little damage done by living inside them, but what was done inside was something impressive indeed.

The new level was in the process of being transformed. Females busily worked hand-sanding areas, using planes and small tools to refashion and reshape the interior into something that looked more manufactured than grown, yet with such thought that it used the contours of the tree and the tree’s various natural wooden supports to good benefit. Shaping, sanding, polishing, and finishing were all being done in different areas. Artisans also worked carving elaborate designs into the wood. It was obvious that the thick flooring was also mostly natural, but it had been finished so slickly that it was now completely level, shined, and polished like finished wood on furniture.

Dhutu stopped and called out, “My sisters! Meet our new sister, Yua, who will join us!” The others halted their work, turned, nodded to her in friendly fashion, then went back to work. “Come on, let’s get you settled in,” the Awbrian continued, and went to a neatly concealed trap door, opened it, and climbed down. Yua followed. There seemed nothing else to do.

Lower levels were finished and appeared all the more impressive. What was most fascinating, she thought, was the way in which some sort of luminous sheen had been carefully applied all around, allowing the light from very tiny glass-covered lamps to illuminate those huge rooms. The living tree was moist enough that the small oil lamps provided almost no threat of fire, but a huge blaze, like the kind that would be required to illuminate the room in normal circumstances, would have been far too dangerous even if there had been some outlet for the smoke.

On one level they did not stop at all, and it was blocked by high curtains from floor to ceiling from view. “The men’s quarters,” Dhutu explained, and they continued. The next level was living quarters for a number of older Awbrian females, the supervisors of this world. “All are past their Time,” Dhutu whispered enigmatically. “Respect must be shown them at all times.”

Yua was taken to one ancient Awbrian, who was reclining on a soft, huge pillow, somewhat catlike in manner. Yua needed no guide to know that this one was old indeed; her bill was blotched with odd marks of age, and her fur seemed mottled not only with white but with mange. Her hands were wrinkled and withered, and she was so thin she looked almost skeletal; her skin, already loose because of the membranes, seemed to hang baggy and limp all about her, from face to tail.

“Revered grandmother,” Dhutu said, bowing slightly, “this is the one we have been told to expect.”

The ancient female peered myopically at the Entry. Finally she said in a cracked, withered voice, “You are one who was once some other creature?”

Deciding that it was better at this stage not to anger the leadership, particularly the lower-echelon leadership, Yua nodded but said nothing.

The elder seemed satisfied. “You won’t like it here,” she said abruptly.

Yua decided that called for a comment. “It is not what I am used to,” she admitted. “I admire the trees and the work, but not some of the ways I have been told you have here.”

The elder nodded. “What work did you do—before?” she asked.

“I was a speaker, a traveler, a… a religious leader,” Yua replied, groping for the right words in this new tongue.

“I suppose you could hold a book so it would talk to you?”

Yua nodded. “I could—but in my old tongues, of course.”

The elder Awbrian sighed. “You won’t like it here at all,” she repeated with emphasis, then fell silent for a time so long that Yua felt awkward and feared the old one had fallen asleep. But Dhutu still stood there respectfully, and so she thought she might as well do likewise.

Finally the old female opened her eyes again and looked right at Yua. “Better you had been a carpenter, or farmer, or artisan,” she croaked. “You have no skills of use here, so you are fit only for the most boring, repetitive, unskilled work. It will drive you mad. You will try to show your cleverness, and if there is one thing men will not allow, it is that in women. You will be a threat, and threats must be dealt with. Eventually they will send you to a Healer and then you will think no more.”

Yua considered this. “You don’t sound very dumb or ignorant yourself,” she noted.

The old one’s bill curved in the Awbrian version of a smile. “But I am a survivor,” she said proudly. “Growing up in this society I found ways to be clever and to learn but never to betray that fact. It is something born of a lifetime’s experience, and you have not the lifetime to learn it. It is called subtlety, I believe. And to what end? To spend my last days on a cushion inhaling drugged vapors and dreaming of what a waste it all has been?”

If Dhutu was shocked by all this, she showed no sign. In fact, she barely moved at all.

“I should think,” Yua almost whispered, “that there is more here to this society than meets the eye of a newcomer—or a man.”

Again that smile. “Yes, that is so. Within the clans are the guilds, and within the guilds are things that— help. A hidden school, you might say. I tell you this only because it will be more obvious to you than to the men, and you will get along better if you make no obvious betrayals, to ask no wrong questions. You understand the men’s rule here is absolute. You are property, not a person at all. They may do anything with you they wish, and you have no rights or say in the matter. As a result, all that we do is at great risk, yet it is necessary. We have the same brains and talents as they, yet we cannot show it. We must work far in the background, so that our own ideas are thought of as men’s ideas, not ours. It is the way we progress, and it is the only way possible.”

“But why?” Yua wanted to know. “Why is it so? This system looks ripe for revolution.” She struggled with the last concept, which had no equivalent in the Awbrian language. The word came out something like “changing the way things work,” but it made the point.

The elder sighed. “My child, you do not yet know or understand. When your first Time is done you will understand that this way is the only way. Now go. I release you from work until your first Time and clan induction. After that, things will be clearer to you. After that you may want to kill yourself.” Her eyes narrowed. “And remember, if there is any chance that you might, even accidentally, betray what you now know, you will have an even easier, and more sudden, out.”

With that threat the interview was over. The old woman settled back, took up a small box filled with some fine white powder and form-fitted to her bill, inhaled deeply, and seemed to sink into some kind of pleasant oblivion. Dhutu gestured and they went out, down to the next level.

The women stayed in spartan quarters on several levels, divided according to guild—carpentry, farming, artisan, etc.—with the bottom-most level left for those without guild or classification. It looked much like the others, a barren hall with straw pillows for sleeping, an ingenious plumbing system where outer waterfalls were tapped and brought through the thick trunk and then back out again, and toilet facilities, open to all, flushed in the same manner by the force of a trickle of running water in a trough. But unlike the trough for washing, bathing, and the like, the toilet outlet went to an area below the lowest level, where a natural system filtered it out. The fecal matter of the Awbrians helped nourish the tree, so it was a clever system, but it made the level just above one nasty stinking place —and that, of course, was the level for unskilled and non-guild workers, her level.

“You’ll get used to the stench,” Dhutu assured her. “After a while here you don’t even notice it any more. We all started in a level like this. Most of your sisters will be very young and not yet apprenticed to guilds —or very, very stupid. You understand.”

Yua nodded less than enthusiastically. “Dhutu, there’s something I’m still puzzled about. This thing about my ‘Time.’ At first I misunderstood you, thinking you were talking about time in general. But you’re not. The ancient one above referred to it. What does it mean?”

Dhutu hesitated a moment. “Best you experience it. It is hard to describe. It is just your Time, that’s all. You’ll see. Then you will not need it explained.”

That wasn’t satisfactory, but despite all her pressing, that was all she was going to get.

The next few days passed slowly, but she was allowed some freedom to see the kind of work that went on in making a life tree ready and was given some introduction to the type of life they lived here. The different kinds of trees for different purposes interested her. Only some of the trees were life trees, huge with hollow interiors able to support colonies of Awbrians; some grew specific fruits; others offered nothing on their own but had flat branches with depressions in them in which the mulch, mixed from chewed bark, straw, insects, and lots of other stuff and molded together by saliva from glands only the females possessed, was deposited and then the mess seeded expertly, fertilized, and tended lovingly until a crop of some kind of vegetable or even straw was raised.

She grew more puzzled, too, at Obie’s grand design. Something, she felt certain, had gone wrong. She was to organize and lead an army, or as much of one as possible, rallying others along the way to her cause, finally linking up in some place called Glathriel with forces raised by Marquoz and Mavra Chang, wherever and whatever they were now. But even if she knew where that was, and where she was, the Awbrian system made it all but impossible for her to do what was required. And she couldn’t really see what sort of skills the Awbrians possessed, anyway. Perhaps she had become the wrong thing, she feared. Or, possibly, Obie did need the Awbrians for some reason, some balance of forces—there was the omnivorous character and the flying, for example—perhaps he forgot in his encoding of her to specify sex. Perhaps she should have been an Awbri male. It would make more sense.

Time was running out, too. In a very short while the flood of people into the Well World would begin —if it hadn’t already. The Well World’s population was due to double, even in Awbri. In some cases the system would break down completely. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, when Olympian Entries outnumber the Awbrian population the revolution would come automatically and she would then be in a position to rally and lead them. Perhaps. She could only hope and wait, impatiently.

Several times she thought of escape, but that seemed a dead end. She alone would not rally anything; each hex was like a separate alien planet anyway, and she had no idea where on the world she was.

But it was maddening all the same, made even more so by this totally degrading existence.

A week after she arrived she started having odd feelings, strange dreams she couldn’t quite relate to any reality, and hot and cold flushes. She was afraid she had become ill, but the others assured her what she was experiencing was normal, natural. She was approaching her Time.

And, one morning, she awoke to it in full. She felt an enormous ache, an absolute need to be satisfied, like a drug addict too long without her drug. It was a craving beyond reason, beyond belief. Her entire body ached with longing and she could not think at all, couldn’t get control of herself. Her entire being wanted, needed, desired only one thing, and nothing else would matter until she got it. The elders knew, too, and made the arrangements, and soon she was up on the upper-level quarters, in the quarters of the males, and they in turn gave her what she wanted, needed, craved. She had no idea how many of them there were, nor how long it took, nor, afterward, could she even remember anything of the experience except the tremendous, ultimate pleasures it brought and the fact that she would have done anything, anything at all, for them.

Later she learned it had lasted for two days and nights—about average, they told her. And it recurred about every six weeks except during pregnancy—the hormones pregnancy triggered made an individual docile and somewhat dreamy, increasing more so as term neared.

She felt even more degraded, not merely from the experience but because of her own uncontrollable passions. She had had sex before, as an Olympian, but it had been nothing like this. Nothing. This was in and of itself a drug, a feeling so pleasurably intense and so total that the memory remained as a pleasing ache and her mind kept anticipating her next Time even as her intellect feared and abhorred it.

And this, she realized, was the trap. This is what they meant, why there had been no revolution nor was there a likelihood of one, and why the men were so secure in their position. The women could rebel, all right—and the men would simply wait for the Time to bring the rebels crawling, begging, so much in heat they’d probably kill their best friend if that friend tried to stop them. Here was a cruel biological control on this society, and an absolute one. The female reproductive system, it seemed, was very chintzy with its eggs, and even with this system pregnancy was usual only once in every two or three years. Conditions, both for male and female, had to be absolutely perfect to produce young.

About the only positive thing was that all the women now called her “sister” and she received far better treatment from everyone in the clan, even from the very few males she ran across. She was one of them now.

All this made her reflect once more on the ancient matriarch’s comments and warnings. Something had definitely gone wrong with Obie’s plans and now she was trapped, totally trapped. Even escape was now out of the question, since the Time was open-ended and continued until release was found, and there was only one way to get that.

That night, totally down, facing assignment the next day combing through the dung accumulation and gathering enough for certain kinds of fertilizer, she slept, finally, fitfully, and she dreamed. She was aware that she was dreaming, yet it seemed so real. She was an Olympian again and she was bathed in a strange, shimmering purple glow. There was a presence there with her, she sensed. All around, all-encompassing.

“Obie?” her dream self called out.

“I’m here, Yua,” came the familiar tenor of the great computer.

“But you’re dead!” she protested. “I’m dreaming all this!”

“Well, yes, I must be dead or at least badly damaged,” the computer admitted. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this little chat. Obviously my fears were realized—the union with Brazil badly damaged or destroyed me and, therefore, the job must be done the hard way. Too bad. If he just hadn’t been so obstinate I could have beamed him down to the Well World at an Avenue and we wouldn’t have had these problems.” He paused. “Well, who am I kidding? With the rip in space-time I was too screwed up to do the job anyway. It doesn’t matter. It only matters that, if we’re talking like this, you must be in Awbri and past your first Time.”

She started in surprise. “You know about that? But —what am I saying? This is a dream. Wish-fulfillment, nothing more. I’m not really talking to you.”

“You’re right on most counts but wrong on that last one,” the computer responded. “Yes, this is a dream. You’re asleep somewhere in the bottom of a tree in Awbri right now. And, yes, I’m not really here or near by. Even if I could get there, I doubt that I would have the power to overcome that nullified space and that tremendous short circuit of Markovian energy. But we are having this conversation—already had it, in fact. When you went through me for the last time, all of this was planted by me deep in your subconscious to pop up at the proper moment. Only after you’d gone into heat for the first time could it come out. You had to know what you were up against.”

“I don’t really believe this,” she told herself and the ghostly computer. “I’m just fantasizing what I desperately want to happen.”

“Well, fantasize this, then,” Obie came back. “Right now you’re seeing a map of your area of the Well World, and you see where you are in relation to Glathriel. Also in your mind at this point is a briefing on the lifeforms and such of the hexes in between.

And, here, I’ll give you a complete political-topographic map of Awbri as well. You’ll need it before long.”

And it was true. There it all was, in glowing detail, so much a part of her mind now that she doubted she could ever forget it. She began to feel a glimmer of hope that, perhaps, her dream might be real.

“But what good does all this do me, Obie?” she asked, still defeated. “If you had made me a male, I might have done something, but this!”

Obie chuckled. “Sorry. I thought you of all people would be a bit stronger than that. Think about it. The women have the numerical superiority, for one thing, and just as many brains as the men. Maybe more. And, of course, they have the biggest stake in a change. The men would fight you, probably kill you outright. They have a nice, neat, packaged little world that exists for their own pleasure and enjoyment. They are opposed to all change—more conservative types you cannot possibly imagine. Almost all creativity and progress in Awbri come really from the women, nurtured secretly and then sort of put into the minds of a young male here and there. A composition whistled while you work, an idea for a simple spring-loaded mechanism instilled in a young male while still at his mother’s knee that, later, he miraculously ‘invents’ and really thinks he did. You name it. Without the women the place would have stagnated into unthinking animalism, nothing more. But when push comes to shove and the Awbrians have to choose sides between joining the forces of Brazil or stopping him at all costs, the men of Awbri will be right there with the stop-at-all-costs faction. They have to be. He could upset their little applecart, their nice little world.”

She was beginning to understand. “But not the women.”

“Exactly! They have the most stake in change. Never was a place more ripe for, or deserving of, revolution. Tell me, do you think the women would revolt if they could?”

She thought a moment, remembering particularly the ancient female’s comments on lost opportunities.

“Not all of them, of course—but the leadership, certainly. The ones with an ounce or more of brains.”

“The ones who count,” Obie noted. “The rest will follow like sheep whoever wins and cheer that side. Now, what’s stopping them? What’s kept a revolution from happening?”

“The Time,” she responded quickly. “When you go into desperate heat every six weeks, there’s not much you can do.”

“Uh huh,” the computer agreed. “And so what do we have to introduce to produce a revolution the way we want it—on schedule, on time, just waiting for the load of new Entries?”

“You’d have to kill off all the males,” she responded, then stopped. “No. That wouldn’t work. That would only put us all in unending heat.”

“What you need,” Obie continued, “is something that will keep the Time from coming. You need the one thing a race that reproduces so slowly it still has females in heat would never consider, not even the most intellectual of them. You need a birth-control device—or, rather, a birth-control chemical, something that would fool your body into thinking it wasn’t the Time.”

The thought excited her. “Yes! Of course!” Then she hesitated, considering the idea. “But there are two problems there. One is the psychological addiction to the experience. Obie, it’s unbelievable! The direct pleasure center of the brain is stimulated. I don’t know if anyone who has had the experience could bring herself to deny it again.”

“Not even you?” the computer shot back.

She considered it. “Of course I could, but I could see becoming so addicted I couldn’t stop. Most of the women in Awbri have been through this so many times it would be impossible. And, of course, there’d be the other problem—that with a race reproducing this slowly, there would be some hesitancy in giving women this out, even by the female leaders. They wouldn’t want to wipe out their race.”

“True on both counts,” the computer admitted. “Now, I chose Awbri for a number of reasons. One is geography—you can get where you’re needed quickly. Another is mobility combined with agility. Don’t underestimate the potential of your race as fighters, and their ability to fly is combined with a toughness and flexibility not found in birdlike species. Unlike the bird, you are not fragile. A lot of protection is built in. And the final reason is that the choice of Awbri converts a certain enemy into an ally. In order to do this I had to analyze the Awbrian biochemistry and the biome of the hex and see if what I wanted was possible. If it were not, you wouldn’t be there.”

“There is a way out, then!” She was excited now, the dream becoming more real than her true situation —lying, asleep, on a straw pallet above a dung-heap on the Well World.

“Yes. Indeed. If there weren’t, this conversation would have been wasted and, frankly, you would be somewhere and something else.” Obie had a nervous pause right now. “Um, that’s assuming you are in Awbri and I didn’t foul up. Oh, my. If that’s the case, tell me what you are and I’ll switch to a different set of messages that might not be of as much help but should do something, anyway.”

“I’m in Awbri,” she assured him. “Otherwise, how could we have had the earlier conversations?”

“My dear, you fail to understand that this conversation, for me, never even happened at all. It’s a stimulus-response thing, with your own mind filling in the gaps from my multitudinous leads. Well, anyway, let me continue. First of all,” Obie said, “there is a potion created out of seven different plants that will cause what would medically be a hormonal breakdown, but won’t actually impair you and will free you of the Time. The potion is easy to make and should be terrible to drink but such sacrifices for a revolution are necessary.” With that, into her mind came a complete set of ingredients, where to get them and how to mix them properly. Some heat was required, she noted, and she didn’t like where two of them came from.

“Those are Floor fungi!” she objected. “Obie, do you know how dangerous that Floor is?”

“No,” the computer responded. “Do you? But, so what? A little risk is required. Now, to continue, I should warn you of several side effects. One is that the stuff is physically addictive. But I wouldn’t worry too much about that—a little goes a long way, as you can see from the recipe. Take a dose every day for a full six-week cycle, then, when Time should come and doesn’t, you’ll know it’s effective. The effect on the women who take it should be electric. After that, a dose every five to seven days will keep it that way. Fortunately, you needn’t keep a calender; your body will crave the stuff when necessary—and an increased dosage is not required after the initial period. You’ll need a supply to travel with, but I’m including the complete chemical formulae for each ingredient. Nothing’s so odd or rare in biochemical terms that a high-tech hex couldn’t whip up a batch, maybe even in pill form, in a matter of weeks. Make that requirement known as soon as you link up, even just for communications purposes, with the others. And, finally, I should warn you that the drug will cause a physical attraction between women. I shouldn’t think this would bother you, considering Olympus, and I doubt if it will be a major problem with the Awbrians. It’ll stimulate, in a much milder way, those pleasure centers and make breaking the psychological habit easier.”

“But will the ancients go for it?” she asked, still not convinced. “I mean, we’re spelling the end of their race.”

“Not at all,” Obie responded. “First of all, they will be in control of who ultimately gets the drug, and there’s that extra power they’ll love. Second, the Well regulates population. Centuries ago they had a war— one in which I had a part—and a large number of races were decimated. All that happened was that the survivors bred like flies until the numbers were back to normal again. The same will happen here. Those who do not get the formula will get pregnant a lot faster, and there will be a lot more multiple births.

The Awbrian female is designed to give forth a litter of six. That’s why there are six nipples. On a planetary scale and in a horribly hostile environment, they would need it so even a few survive. Here they would crowd out your small hex, so births are rare and hard. The grandmothers all know this. They remember what it was like in times of famine, flood, whatever.”

She considered this. “But what of the men? They aren’t going to stand idly by while all this goes on. Surely they’ll try to stamp it out.”

“Hm… you overestimate them,” the computer responded. “They have done so little over the years they couldn’t take a bath without help from women. Who prepares all their food? Women. Add this to the food of key people—the ugly-looking brew should be disguisable somehow, I’d think.”

She had another thought. “Obie, what will the potion do to the men? Anything?”

“It’s double duty,” he informed her. “Only some of the ingredients are needed to produce the effect on the females. The others…? Well, let’s put it this way. Suppose the tables were turned. Suppose for a number of weeks they couldn’t do with you and then for a few days they couldn’t do without you? I’d think that one or two cycles of that and you’d have the men eating out of your hand.”

“Some of the matriarchs will think that’s enough,” she pointed out. “They might use it only on the men.”

“I can’t do everything,” he retorted. “You have to do some, you know. Part of it is political, of course. Besides, you don’t need the current population. You only need the Entries that will be coming in. There should be a suitable compromise. No reason Awbri should fight our war—although if they want to help they’re welcome. That part is up to you.”

That sounded reasonable. There was only one other question, but it loomed big in her mind. “Obie, tell me, what happens if we run out of the stuff despite all precautions? On the trail, I mean. What would withdrawal be like?”

“Unpleasant,” he said gravely. “It would be increasingly physically painful, bordering on the excruciating. You see, the substance replaces hormones produced naturally by the body. The body, in reaction, stops producing them. Withdrawal would cause some breakdown, since it occurs faster than the body can recover and replace not only the hormones but the cellular enzymes replaced as a by-product of the drug. Eventually, after a few days, it would break and the body would overreact once more. The Time would then come with full force, but, this time, for a long, long time. Depending on the body, constitution, and the like, it might take weeks. In a few cases it might never go away. So there is a risk.”

She shivered, and a part of her mind wondered how you could shiver in a dream like that. But that was a terrifying thought—all the more so to one who had gone through it—to be in that kind of heat forever!

“That’s all,” Obie told her cheerfully. “If I can be of any help to you in the future, I might pop up like this. I’ve placed a number of contingency positions and possible solutions in your brain just in case, so we may meet again. But let’s hope we do not, for, if we do, it will mean something has gone terribly wrong.”

Yua awoke with a start and looked around. The others were still there, snoring away. It was not yet morning. How long, she wondered, had the whole dream lasted? Not very long, most likely—if, in fact, it had taken any time at all. She sank back down on her straw mat and tried to relax. She would have a busy day tomorrow, she’d need her sleep. In the early part, she would work in a compost heap; later on, she would see an old woman about overthrowing the underpinnings of her society…