Eric Flint - Mother of Demons

(Time out for complaint: Is there ever any sunshine on this misbegotten planet? Day after day, the same solid light-gray sky. Makes Seattle look like Miami.)

Back to the ranch. The peculiar "riding" position of the males inside the females is so common that I'm even beginning to think it explains the (relatively) much longer arms of the males. Although that might be one of those "Just So Stories" kind of explanations. I can see where the males would enjoy it well enough-beats working-but I can't really see where there's any adaptive advantage to-Julius Cohen. Julius Cohen. Reproductive organs, dummy. That's why the male arms are so long. So they can reach way down deep inside the female's mantle, where the good stuff is. Talk about convergence! That's how male octopi transmit their sperm to the female-one of the arms is specially designed to carry sperm packets from the male sex organ to the female's. (If I remember right, that arm's called a hectocotylus.) More logical system than we have, when you think about it. Why waste valuable biotic energy growing a separate penis when you can do double duty with an arm?

OK. But why are all the arms long? If the owoc parallel the octopi, only one of the arms is adapted as a sexual organ. The others are just arms. So why are they all the same length?

Bingo. That's just the way the genetic switches work with the owoc. The regulatory DNA (or whatever equivalent exists on Ishtar-and would I love to know!-but I'm willing to bet that it's the same trusty old adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine, or at least three out of four of them) has all eight arms linked. You want just one of them long? Sorry, ma'am. Only comes in the economy eight-pack.

Anyway. To get back to the point, I always knew there were males and females. What I didn't know is that there are also mothers.

I just thought Kupu, the female who hardly ever moves out of that one little oruc grove, was the owoc equivalent of the fat lady in the circus.

Turns out the reason she's four times as big as all the other females is because she isn't really a female at all, she's a "mother." This distinction seems bizarre to humans, because for us "female-ness" and "mother-ness" are almost identical. But among the owoc, they're practically a different sex.

No, that's not the best way to put it. Makes it seems like there's three sexes. And there aren't. There's only two-female and male. But the females come in variants. Female and mother.

Why not female (meaning mother) and "neuter." Because it slides around the question. What's a "neuter," after all? It's either a neutered something-male or female-or it's some kind of bizarre sex-that-isn't-a-sex.

Fie on it. Let's stick to the ABCs of biology. In all sexed species, the female is the fundamental sex. Gotta have females. Males-the thought grieves my chauvinist heart, but facts, as the man says, are stubborn things-are unnecessary. Oh, sure, lots of species use males to reproduce. (Including mine, praise the Lord.) But they can be done away with, if necessary. Parthenogenesis, for instance. So the basic body plan of any sexed species is female. Males are just a specialized adaptation.

Since the infertile females are far and away the most common type of owoc-and the dominant ones, insofar as that aggressive term can be used with these beings-it seems to me most logical to refer to them as the females, and to call the ones which are specialized to actually reproduce "mothers."

I'll stick with that for now. (Note: ask Joseph to talk to the owoc about it. Be interesting to see what they have to say.)

He did, and Joseph reported that the owoc term for female was, just as Julius suspected, used to refer to the infertile ones. Kupu was called a term which translated quite closely as "mother." Joseph also reported that, according to the owoc, males came in two variants as well-the fertile ones, which were by far the most common type; and a rare type of male, which was not fertile. According to the owoc, there was no representative of that quasi-sex currently living in the valley. There had been one, some (indefinite-the owoc were always vague regarding questions of time) period ago, but he had died.

Julius tentatively labeled the sterile males "eumales." And then drove himself crazy trying to figure out an adaptive reason for the evolution of infertile males. ("The most useless creatures imaginable!" he exploded once, in Indira's presence; to his everlasting regret, for she expanded on the theme, at length.)

So there you are-just like a colony of bees. A queen-the mother-who does all the actual breeding. A small number of males, to service her. And a host of infertile females, to do everything else.

Like all analogies, of course, you can't take it too far. For one thing, the owoc are intelligent (not very, but intelligent nonetheless) whereas the social insects are as dumb as-hey, what do you expect?-bugs. For another, owoc society has none of the "slavish" characteristics of insect hives.

But I'd be willing to bet that if the owoc were smarter their complicated sexual relations would produce all kinds of fascinating cultural variants. Including, probably, some variants that are savagely oppressive.

He proved to be right. On both counts.

Doctor Koresz was the first adult to die, six years after their arrival on Ishtar.

It did not come as a surprise, for he had known for months he was dying.

"I do not know why, really," he had told them, lying on his pallet in the hut which the doctor shared with Janet and Hector. "I have only been able to scratch the surface, when it comes to understanding life and death on Ishtar. I shouldn't be dying, of course. I am only forty-two years old, and if I had not been in perfect health the Society would never have approved me for the Magellan. But-as Julius never tires of reminding us-facts are stubborn things. And the fact is that I am dying."

All of the adults were gathered around, except Adams, who had drawn more and more apart from the colony as time went on. He was the only one of the adults who still lived in the landing boat. All the others had long since moved into the huts which Janet had designed from native vegetation. The children were housed in four large barracks (no, "long houses," Indira had named them, after the Iroquois).

Except for Adams, the adults lived in two separate huts: Indira and Julius in one, the doctor and Janet and Hector in the other. The menage a trois into which Hector, Koresz and Janet had happily settled, within a few months after the crash, was a logical enough arrangement under the circumstances. And sexual mores on Earth in the 22nd century were characterized by considerable latitude and tolerance.

Julius immediately named their hut "Sodom and Gomorrah." And he demonstratively refused to come near it, fearing, or so he claimed, the wrath of God.

"You don't even believe in God!" Indira had once protested.

Julius chewed his lip. "No, I don't. But you never know. And if He does exist, He has two outstanding characteristics. Judging, at least, from the Old Testament."

"Which are?"

"He's the most hot-tempered, narrow-minded, mean-spirited, intolerant, anal-compulsive, bigoted redneck who ever lived. And, what's more to the point, he's a lousy shot."

"It's true!" he insisted, in the face of Indira's laughter. "Read the Book yourself. Somebody pisses Him off, does He nail 'em right between the eyes like Buffalo Bill? Hell, no! He drowns everything. Or He blasts whole cities, or drops seven lean years on entire nations. Indiscriminate, that's what He is. The Sawed-off Shotgun In The Sky. So I ain't getting anywhere near that den of iniquity."

And he hadn't, until he realized that Koresz was really dying.

"But why? " demanded Janet. She wiped away tears. "If it's a disease, maybe you can find a cure. You've done miracles, Vladimir! Not just with us, with the owoc too."