“I mean that most of our engineered life forms are very susceptible to radiation, Patty. You see, with natural life forms, you got DNA in a double helix. Now, when a chunk of radiation hits it, it usually breaks only one strand, which usually grows back like it was but sometimes a little bit different which makes for mutation and, occasionally, improvement.”
Guibedo felt awkward being so close to Patricia, and he gulped his beer nervously. He would have moved away except that Liebchen was pressed tightly against his other side.
“But with an engineered life form, you don’t want it different. Mein Gott! What if some big shot would start breeding my pretty Liebchen to be soldiers in an army! Or worse yet, to sit behind some damn typewriter! No! What we use is single-strand DNA, a little bit like what they call RNA, so if some radiation hits it, the loop breaks and the cell maybe dies, but cannot be modified. This way my pretty Liebchen’s children will be absolutely identical to her, because she reproduces asexually.”
“Asexually! Do you mean that there aren’t any male fauns?” As Patricia talked, her pointed breast touched Guibedo’s arm. She wasn’t really conscious of it, but Guibedo was. Very.
Liebchen refilled the glasses.
Guibedo gulped nervously at his beer. This little girl could be my granddaughter. Might have been if them damn Nazi big shots hadn’t killed my Hilde. “That’s right. No need for boys. In nature, the boys is to mix up the genes so sometimes the kid gets the good parts of both his parents. And because, in higher animals, the kid and the mother can’t take care of themselves, the boys is to protect them.” Guibedo put his arm around Patricia. Sipping daintily at her glass, Patricia snuggled into the warmth of his pudgy side.
Liebchen filled their glasses again.
“But with engineered life forms, you designed it right the first time. And you got real humans around to protect the kids and pregnant girls, so you get a symbiotic relationship. And the other reason is that single-strand DNA can duplicate eighty times faster than double-strand, so they grow like blue lightning!”
“But, Dr. Guibedo, how can you have reproduction without sex?” Patricia said, trying to ask intelligent questions. This interview will make my career in broadcasting.
Hooh! This little one’s got sex on the brain, Guibedo thought.
“Nothing to it. The problem is making them not reproduce. You see, you got to make sure that you got as many houses or fauns as you need. But you also got to make sure that you don’t get too many. We can’t have tree houses crowding each other for sunlight, or Liebchens running around like unloved alley cats.”
Liebchen shuddered at the word “unloved,” but topped off the glasses.
“There is got to be harmony, or the world me and Heiny are building would be just as cruel as the one nature made. With the trees, it’s easy. Each tree grows seeds in a cupboard, which stay there until you pick them. If you want a house, you find one just like what you want and ask the owner for a seed. Then you got to plant it and water it every day for three months. So it can’t just happen by accident. And the grown tree is got to have people living in it, for the fertilizer. So you got balance. Mutual need. Symbiosis.”
Liebchen was keeping the glasses filled. Guibedo was drinking far more than usual. Patricia was drinking on the theory that she needed the antifreeze.
“With intelligent animals, they can make their own decisions. We make them so they got to be real happy before they can have kids. And you have to ask them please, real often, before they get pregnant.”
“Show Liebchen can get knocked up whenever she wants to?” The champagne was starting to tell on Patty.
“Liebchen is knocked up now! Fauns is way different from humans. Like their body temperature is eight degrees cooler than ours, which is why fauns don’t wear clothes around here, but humans do.” Well, Guibedo thought, looking through Patricia’s transparent blouse to her bikini bottoms, most humans do.
“And which is also why we keep the temperature in here at sixty-five degrees.”
Now that the subject had been brought up, Patricia was too comfortable to want to do anything about it.
“Like they can only eat a special fluid what the tree makes, which contains everything they need and nothing else. Liebchen’s small intestine just keeps getting smaller until it ends. The only holes she’s got are in her pretty head. She has breasts because they’re pretty and because fauns is to take care of human children.”
Guibedo gently put his fingertips on Patricia’s right nipple. She didn’t seem to mind. Actually, she didn’t even notice.
“Ach, I talk and talk and so late it gets. Come on, Patty. Is time for bed.”
Leaning drunkenly together, their arms about each other for support, Guibedo led Patricia through a branch to his bedroom.
“Ach, it will be so nice,” Guibedo said gently. “You sleep with me tonight.”
Patricia was shocked sober in an instant. It had simply never occurred to her to think of kindly, wise old Guibedo as a sexual being.
“Uh… I…” For a second she stood tongue-tied, then Patricia ran down to the living room.
Guibedo was equally confused. He stood motionless for a while, then turned to his bedroom, flopped on the bed, and cried himself asleep.
A knowledgeable and sober observer would have understood the problem. Guibedo and Patricia had vastly different cultural backgrounds and, as a result, used totally different body languages. To Guibedo, when a nearly nude woman aggressively snuggles into your arms, she is obviously eager for sex. By Patricia’s standards, she was properly dressed and was merely being friendly to a nice old man.
Meanwhile, Liebchen was snuggled up on her favorite couch—the broad comfortable back of an LDU. Something about Dirk’s inherent deadliness always excited her, and he reciprocated by doing for her whatever small favors he could. Just now his skin was a good imitation of a Campbell Tartan because Liebchen liked Scottish Tartans. Crouched down, doing his usual guard duty he looked like a big oval pillow. Patricia had just spent hours in the same room with him without being aware of his existence.
Liebchen was startled awake as Patricia blundered, crying, toward the door. The ways of humans would ever be a mystery to Liebchen, but her programming put courtesy and hospitality first. “My lady! Are you in pain?”
Patricia stopped. “Uh… No. I… I’m okay. But I’ve got to go now.”
“But my lady! It is so late. Where would you go? How could you find your way in the dark?”
There was a certain logic in what the faun said.
“There is a guest room behind the kitchen, my lady. It has a lock on the door, and a private exit. Oh, please, my lady. Accept our hospitality.”
After a bit of confused argument, Patricia agreed. She fell asleep on the guest bed, trying to sort out what had happened.
The next morning, Patricia and Liebchen sat alone at the breakfast table.
“My lady, I do not understand what happened last night.”
“I’m not sure I understand it myself, Liebchen.”
“Does it have to do with your bisexual reproduction custom?”
“Reproduction? Well, not exactly, except in a roundabout way,” said Patricia. How do you explain romantic love to an asexual being?
“And my Lord Guibedo found you to be a suitable mate, but you rejected him?”
“I didn’t exactly reject him, I just didn’t want—Liebchen, I can’t explain it to you.”
“My lady, you have mated before, haven’t you?” Liebchen persisted.