The males offered day-long rides. He could even smoke during them. They’d dangle him as far away as possible from the end of a mid-body tentacle. They couldn’t guarantee, of course, that they could keep a grip on him. As an additional incentive, they’d elect him leader of the herd. Ferdinand wouldn’t like that but he could just blow it out as far as the others were concerned.
Simon could keep the ship’s ports closed and so block out the entreaties of the females, who stood around the ship and whistled fumes at him. But he had to look through the viewscreens from time to time to cool his cabin fever. When he did so, he saw the huge black dot-and-dash clouds the males were laying out in the air above him. This was the first time he had seen obscene skywriting.
“Whichever way you decide, your life won’t be safe,” Chworktap said. “Why don’t we just leave?”
“I gave my word.”
“And what would happen if you didn’t keep it?”
“Nothing of cosmic importance. But to me it would mean that I am less than a man. I’d have no dignity, no personal integrity. People wouldn’t trust me because I couldn’t trust myself. Everybody, including myself, would be contemptuous of me.”
“You’d rather die?”
“I think so,” he said.
“But it doesn’t make sense.”
“Society would fall apart if people didn’t keep their words.”
“How many people on Earth kept theirs?”
Simon thought for a moment and then said, “Not many.”
“And Earth society fell apart?”
“Well, no,” he said. “But it didn’t operate very efficiently, either.”
“So what are you going to tell the Giffardians?” she said.
“Come with me, you’ll find out.”
Accompanied by her, the dog, and the owl, he walked through the forest to the meadow. At its edge he shot off a Very rocket, at sight of which the females wobbled toward him and the males sailed toward him. The young continued playing. When all the males had wrapped their tentacles around large rocks to anchor themselves, Simon proposed his new system.
“I hope this will make everybody happy,” he said. “It’s a compromise of sorts, but nothing workable is ever achieved in this world without compromise.”
“Don’t try to soften us males up,” Ferdinand whistled at him. “We know what’s right.”
“Don’t try to take away our hard-earned rights,” Amelia whistled.
“Please!” Simon said, holding up his hand. “I have a plan whereby all you females can get your air-time. And it’ll be absolutely safe. No more crashes. The only thing is, it means that you’ll have to change your system of marriage.”
He waited until the storm of whistles had ceased and the wind had blown the stenches clear.
“You’re monogamous,” he said. “One male married to one female for life. A good system it is, though, if you will pardon the observation of an objective alien, more honored in the breach than in the observance. But if you females want to enjoy flight, you’ll have to change the system.”
There was another storm which deafened him and made him choke and gasp. When it subsided, he said, “Why don’t you set up a polyandrous system?”
“What’s that?” they whistled, among other things.
“Well, you forbid any male to lock into the mouth-vulva of any female unless he’s married to her. But what if one female was married to two males?”
The females were silent. Their eight eyes rolled around and around, which was a Giffardian’s way of showing deep thought. The males were scandalized, and the ripping noises and sulphides drove Simon and Chworktap into the bushes for a moment.
When he came out, Simon said, “It’s a matter of logic. The only way a female can be safely carried is by two males. They can share the burden and easily levitate a female. There won’t be any more crashes.”
“And how can we possibly do that?” Ferdinand said.
“Why, two males can lock into one female, one in the oral opening of the apex-lock and one in the anal. Two males can easily carry one female. On one day, half of the females can fly; the next day the other half take their turns. It’s all so easy; I don’t know why you didn’t figure that out…”
Fortunately, the females were too wide to get through the forest and the males had to fly overhead against a strong wind. Simon and Chworktap fled hand in hand with Anubis howling after them and the owl flying overhead. Even so, the males were only a few feet behind them when Simon and the party broke out of the woods. They reached the spaceship three steps ahead of Ferdinand’s tentacles and threw themselves through the port. Simon closed it and gave orders to the computer to take off for stars unknown.
Chworktap, panting, said, “I hope this teaches you a lesson.”
“How was I to know they’d get so mad?” Simon said.
Years later, he was to run across a being from Shekshekel who had landed on Giffard about fifty years after the Earthman’s visit.
“They told me about you,” the Shekshekel said. “They still refer to you as Simon the Sodomite.”
11
LALORLONG
The Hwang Ho, after a few days, headed for the planet Lalorlong. Chworktap had told Simon that she had heard that this was inhabited by a very philosophical race.
“They don’t have much else to do but think.”
“Then we’ll go there,” Simon said. “It seems to me that if anybody has the answers, they would.”
Lalorlong hove to. It was a planet about Earth-size which had long ago lost all its surface water except at the poles. Erosion had filled the oceans and cut down the land until the planet was a smooth globe. The difference in temperature between the polar and the warm regions and that created by the tilting of the axis caused general winds. These followed an easily predictable course.
The only object that rose above the surface was the gigantic heart-shaped tower of the Clerun-Gowph. This had fallen over, its base of stone eaten away by the winds. Simon had the ship fly over it so he could take a look at it. There wasn’t any sign of life, but he hadn’t expected any. The tower must have been erected a billion years ago and fallen many millions ago. What a sound its topple must have made!
Who was there to hear it? Only the sentient species of Lalorlong. They were the only animal life left. The only vegetable life was a type of tumbleweed on which the Lalorlongians depended for food and water. The plant apparently had very deep roots that sucked up water from the rocks and broke down the chemicals in them to form its own food. When it grew to a certain height, the upper part would fall off and whirl over and over, borne around the world unless it was intercepted by a hungry Lalorlongian.
The natives resembled automobile wheels with balloon tires. The tires were composed of thin but tough inflated skins with diamond-shaped treads. The wheel part consisted of a rim of bone and twelve bone spokes which grew from the hub. The hub was a ball covered with a hard shell like an ant’s exoskeleton. This contained the brain and the nervous, digestive, and sexual systems. In the center of the right and left side was a round hole. A cartilaginous stalk ran out from each hole horizontally for a few inches and then abruptly curved straight upward. The stalks reached approximately two feet above the tire and each ended in two eyes on separately rotatable auxiliary stalks. Halfway down each was a bulbous organ which could flash a light like a firefly’s. They used these at night for illumination and sometimes in the day to signal turns.