"We all do crazy things when we're frightened," he reasoned.
"Yes, but now you're stuck here because of me."
"We're both stuck here," he admitted. "I won't pretend that this is where I want to be; that would be silly. Neither of us wants to be here. But so long as you're hurt, I'll stick by you wherever you are. And I don't blame you for anything that happened because the simple truth is none of it was your fault."
She said nothing for a long time as her shoulders shook quietly. When she had stopped crying, she sniffed loudly and looked into his eyes.
"This is where I want to be," she said.
"What do you mean?" He drew back slightly, but she held him.
"I mean I love you very much."
"I don't think you really love me."
She shook her head. "I know what you mean, and it's not true. I love you always, when you're quiet and when you rage. There are so many parts to you. I think perhaps I am the only one who has ever known them all. And I love them all."
"A few doctors claimed to know them all," Chris said unhappily. When Valiha did not respond, he went to the question he had been afraid to ask for a long time. "Do I make love to you when I'm crazy?"
"We make love in glorious tumult. You are my virile stallion, and I your erotomanic androgyne. We have anterior romps and frontal communion, and then we diddle around in the middle. Your penis-"
"Stop, stop! I didn't ask for the dirty details."
"I said nothing rhyparographic," Valiha said virtuously.
"I don't ... what did you do, eat a dictionary?" he asked.
"I must know all English words for the experiment," she said.
"What ... never mind, tell me about that later. I knew I made love to you once. I just wanted to know if I still do."
"Only twenty or thirty revs ago."
"And it doesn't bother you that I do it only when I'm crazy?"
She considered it. "I really have had a hard time understanding what you mean by crazy. Sometimes you lose some inhibitions-another word I have trouble with. This gets you into trouble with human women who don't wish to copulate with you and with any human who thwarts your desires. I have no trouble because if you ever become obstreperous, I simply pick you up by your hair and hold you at arm's length. When you calm down, I reason with you. You respond to this very well."
Chris laughed, and it sounded hollow even to him.
"You amaze me," he said. "I've been studied by the best doctors on Earth. They couldn't do a thing with me but give me some pills that are damn near useless. They'll be fascinated to hear your cure. Pick him up by the hair, hold him at arm's length, and reason with him. Ah, sweet reason."
"It works," she said defensively. "I suppose it would be efficacious only in a society where everyone was larger than you."
"My behavior at those times doesn't put you off?" he asked. "Titanides never assault one another, do they? I would expect you to see me... well, repulsive when I'm acting like that. It's so un-Titanide."
"I find most human behavior un-Titanide," Valiha said. "Yours when you are 'crazy' becomes perhaps a trifle more aggressive than is normal, but all your passions are magnified, love as well as aggression."
"I'm not in love with you, Valiha,"
"Yes, you are. Even this part of you, the sane part, loves me with a Titanide's love: unchanging, but too large to give all of it to one person. You have told me so when you were crazy. You told me your sane self would not admit his love."
"He lied to you."
"You would not lie to me."
"But I'm here to be cured of all that!" he said, in mounting frustration.
"I know," she moaned, once more on the verge of tears. "I'm so afraid Gaea will cure you and you'll never know your love for me!"
Chris thought this conversation was as crazy as any he had ever heard. Maybe he was crazy: permanently. It was within the realm of possibility. But he did not want to see her cry, he did like her, and suddenly it did not make sense to resist her any longer. He kissed her. She responded instantly, alarming him with her strength and passion, then paused and put her mouth close to his ear. "Don't worry," she said. "I'll be gentle." He smiled.
It was not easy, but eventually he made the sling she needed to rest comfortably while her legs healed. Finding three poles long and strong enough among the stunted shrubs that passed for trees in the cavern took quite a while, but when he had them, he soon fashioned a tall tripod. There was just enough rope to make the sling and pad it with material from clothes they didn't need in the warm cave. When it was finished, Valiha carefully pulled herself up with her hands, and Chris positioned her legs through the loops. She settled down in it and heaved a sigh of contentment. Thereafter she spent most of her time with her front hooves dangling a few centimeters from the ground.
But not all her time. In the sling, it was impossible for them to make frontal love, and that activity quickly became an important part of their lives. Chris was soon wondering how he had survived so long without it, then realized that, of course, he hadn't, he had been making love with Valiha all along. Now he felt he would most probably have succumbed to despair and simply wasted away, starving in the midst of plenty. Even Gaea's milk tasted a little better, and he wondered if it was his mood and not Her Majesty's that made the difference.
Valiha was not like a human woman. It would have been pointless even to try to say if she was better or not as good; she was different. Her frontal vagina fitted him within lubricious tolerances too close to be the result of cosmic happenstance. He could almost hear Gaea chuckling. What a joke she had played on humanity, to arrange it so the first intelligent nonhumans the race encountered could play the same games humans played, and with the same equipment. Valiha was a vast, fleshy playground, from the tip of her broad nose across acres of mottled yellow skin to the softness just above the hooves of her hind legs. She was completely human-on a large scale-in the caress of her hands, the mass of her breasts, the taste of her skin and her mouth and her clitoris. And she was at the same time wildly alien in her bulging knees, in the smooth, hard muscles of her back, hips, and thighs, and in the imposing slither of her penis as it emerged moist from its sheath. When he kissed her in the hollow behind her expressive donkey ears, she smelled human.
He was at first reluctant to admit the presence of most of her body. He tried to pretend she existed from the head to the fore-crotch and ignored the sexual superabundance she contained. Valiha led him gently to experience the surprising possibilities of her other two thirds. Part of his hesitation was a lingering misconception he had fought when he found it in others and had not realized he shared: part of her body was equine, meaning she was part horse, and one does not become intimate with animals. He had to discard all that. He found it surprisingly easy. In many ways there was less equine about her than there was simian in him. Another hurdle had been stated early by Valiha herself: she was an androgyne-though gynandroid was the closer of two words never meant to cover Titanides. Chris had never been homosexual. Valiha made him see that it meant nothing when making love with her. She was all things, and it made no difference that her anterior organs were so huge. He had always known that coitus was only a small part of making love.
Titanide crutches were long, stout poles with padded crescents to fit the armpits, little different from the sort used by humans for thousands of years. Chris had no trouble making a pair.
At first Valiha walked only fifty meters before resting, then a similar distance back to the tent. Soon she felt she was able to handle more. Chris struck the tent and packed everything on his back. It was a large burden, especially the poles of her tripod sling. He would never have attempted it but for the low gravity. Even with that advantage it was hard.