When the time arrives, I'll remove the as-yet'unsealed apexes, place the eggs in the capsules, which are already in position, and seal the apexes over them.
I can anticipate your next question, Daniel Hall. so there's no need for you to ask it. Incubation time never varies, and can be computed to the second, and the main reason I and my sister in the neighboring dhen were- chosen for the job was that our procreation times were compatible with the Terran and Uvelian time periods that had to be used. At the end of the incubation period an adult rather than a child emerges from the nest. Physically, she's only partially grown, but mentally, she's completely mature, having inherited the parent's knowledge and abilities, plus a sizable quantity of the parent's judgment. As a result, she's perfectly capable of carrying out whatever commands the parent may have implanted in her embryo-mind at the beginning of incubation. In the case of my Gizeh offspring, the commands which I implanted were three in number: Take over the Terran capital of Kafr el Haran, establish immediate contact with the Terran Space Navy and order all of its units to return to base at once; then retain control of the Terran government until otherwise advised. The commands which my sister implanted in her offspring were basically the same, and her three offspring carried out the Uvel end of the operation at roughly the same time mine were carrying out the Terran end of it. Consequently, both governments are now under the dominion of Pornos, and moreover they will remain under the dominion of Pomos until such time as the million-year peace treaty is signed. Since my sister just notified me that her scout has already agreed to cooperate, the fate of the long-range aspect ^,vf our plan is now in your hands, Daniel Halt.
Hall sighed. Oh, I'll go along with you, I suppose-I'd be pretty much of a heel iff didn't. But before we get down to brass tacks, how about relieving my mind on a certain little matter? Granted, I'm half in love with Ahura, and maybe she's half in love with me as you say, but there has to be more to it than that for marriage to work. Now that the crisis is past, how about taking a peek a little ways into the future and finding out whether Ahura and I are going to hit it off the way a married couple should?
I'll try, Daniel Hall, said the Sphinx. She looked straight ahead, and Hall could tell from the serious expression on her face that she was concentrating with all her might. A few minutes passed. Then the Sphinx turned to him and winked.
Unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary one-horned creature. Almost all horned animals have two horns, one on each side of the head. An exception is the rhinoceros, which has a single horn on the nose, and there is some thought that the legend of the unicorn in the Middle East and in Europe originated with vague tales of rhinoceroses in India.
Much more likely is thai it originated with Assyrian representations of wild bulls in profile. In profile, naturally, the two horns overlapped and only one was visible.
Somehow this gave rise to the thought of one-horned bulls.
In the Bible, mention is made of a creature named re-em in Hebrew. The reference was to the wild bull (called an aurochs in Europe) which is the primitive ancestor of domestic cattle, and which is now extinct. It was described as immensely powerful.
In the Greek translation of the Bible, re-em was translated as monokeros ("one-horn"), the reference being to the Assyrian representations in profile. This became unicomis (also "one-horn") in Latin, and the legend was fixed.
Somehow, the unicorn tale became preltied up. Instead of a one-horned bull remarkable for its strength, it became a one-horned horse, or horselike antelope, remarkable for its beauty and swiftness. It began to symbolize purity and virginity; it could be caught only by a virgin woman.
Its horn is now pictured as a tight spiral, extending forward and slowly tapering. This is actually the "horn" (really, the tooth) of the narwhal, a species of whale. The narwhal tooth was brought back by sailors and sold as a unicorn horn for large sums, since such a horn was considered a powerful aphrodisiac.
The following story deals with the unicorn at its prettiest.
The Silken Swift
by Theodore Sturgeon
There's a village by the Bogs. and in the village is a Great House. In the Great House lived a squire who had land and treasures and, for a daughter, Rita.
In the village lived Del, whose voice was a thunder in the inn when he drank there; whose corded, cabled body was golden-skinned, and whose hair flung challenges back to the sun.
Deep in the Bogs, which were brackish, there was a pool of purest water, shaded by willows and wide-wondering aspen, cupped by banks of a moss most marvelously blue. Here grew mandrake, and there were strange pipings in midsummer.
No one ever heard them but a quiet girl whose beauty was so very contained that none of it showed. Her name was Barbara There was a green evening, breathless with growth, when Del took his usua! way down the lane beside the manor and saw a white shadow adrift inside the tall iron pickets. He stopped, and the shadow approached, and became Rita. "Slip around to the gate," she said, "and I'll open it for you.*'
She wore a gown like a cloud and a silver circlet round her head. Night was caught in her hair, moonlight in her face, and in her great eyes, secrets swam.
Del said, "I have no business with the squire."
"He's gone," she said. "I've sent the servants away.
Come to the gate."
"I need no gate." He leaped and caught the top bar of the fence, and in a continuous fluid motion went high and across and down beside her. She looked at his arms, one, the other; then up at his hair- She pressed her small hands tight together and made a little laugh, and then she was gone through the tailored trees, lightly, swiftly, not looking back. He followed, one step for three of hers, keeping pace with a new pounding in the sides of his neck. They crossed a flower bed and a wide marble terrace. There was an open door, and when he passed through it he stopped, for she was nowhere in sight.
Then the door clicked shut behind him and he whirled. She was there, her back to the panel, laughing up at him in the dimness. He thought she would come to him then, but instead she twisted by, close, her eyes on his. She smelt of violets and sandalwood. He followed her into the great hal!. quite dark but full of the subdued lights of polished wood, cloisonne, tooled leather and gold-threaded tapestry. She flung open another door, and they were in a small room with a carpet made of rosy silences, and a candle-lit table. Two places were set, each with five different crystal glasses and old silver as prodigally used as the iron pickets outside. Six teakwood steps rose to a great oval window. "The moon," she said, "will rise for us there."
She motioned him to a chair and crossed to a sideboard, where there was a rack of decanters-ruby wine and white; one with a strange brown bead; pink, and amber. She took down the first and poured. Then she lifted the silver domes from the salvers on the table, and a magic of fragrance filled the air. There were smoking sweets and savories, rare seafood and slivers of fowl, and morsels of strange meat wrapped in flower petals, spitted with foreign fruits and tiny soft seashells. All about were spices, each like a separate voice in the distant murmur of a crowd: saffron and sesame, cumin and marjoram and mace.
And all the while Del watched her in wonder, seeing how me candles left me moonlight in her face, and how completely she trusted her hands, which did such deftness without supervision-so composed she was, for all the silent secret laughter that tugged at her lips, for all the bright dark mysteries that swirled and swam within her.
They ate, and the oval window yellowed and darkened while the candlelight grew bright. She poured another wine and another, and with the courses of the meal they were as May to the crocus and as frost to the apple.