The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [36]
Wajee said, “Mating frequency rises too. Too many mouths. Must invent herding.”
“Herd, then tend crop to feed herd. Then cities and factories. Then barrier bag over placer tube,” Sfillirrath said, “so don’t make a clutch of infants every curse time! Now we mate without mating, but need cities to support factories to make barrier bags, laws and lawmakers to enforce use. Control air and water flow, cycle waste, spacecraft to moons for raw resources, first contact with Chirpsithra, beg ride to see the universe and here are we. All for a perversion of nature.”
Jehaneh asked the Folk, “How do you keep your numbers in bounds?”
“Breed more dangerous prey,” one answered.
The female Gray Mourner asked, “How do humans pervert sex practice?”
I asked the woman, “Shall I take this?” She gestured, Go.
I suppose I shaded the truth a bit toward what she might want to hear. “What Jehaneh said isn’t all true. Most of us don’t mate with anything but adults of the other gender. Most men know that most women want one mate. Most women know that any man can be seduced. We make bargains and promises and contracts. We compromise. To go against human nature is the most human thing a human being can do.”
The Folk laughed. Jehaneh was watching me. I said, “We’re a young species. In an older species the sexual reflexes would be hardwited.” I wasn’t sure that would translate, but none of the devices paused. Any space traveler uses computers. “But with us, sex involves the mind. We’re versatile.”
“We have barrier bags too,” Jehaneh said. A moment’s eye contact—Condoms, of course, and had I caught the reference? I flashed a smirk.
Still, I wouldn’t be needing a barrier bag tonight The rasp at the back of my throat told me that I’d be snuffling and coughing and gender free. I was lucky it had held off this long.
A Folk asked, “How are you versatile? Male with male? With sexual immature? Outside species?”
Sfillirrath asked, “Triads?”
“You’ve been reading the tabloids,” I guessed.
Jehaneh said primly, “All of that has been known to happen. We discourage it.”
“There are legends,” I said. “Old stories that weren’t written down until centuries after they were made. Mermaids were half woman, half sea life—”
“And mermen,” she said.
“Jehaneh, those are modem,” I said. “When sailors were all men, mermaids were all women with fish tails and wonderful voices.”
Jehaneh asked, “Are you an anthropologist, Rick?”
“Sure.”
“What discipline? What’s your education?”
I’d been lecturing on her turf. My head throbbed. It does that sometimes when I’m challenged, but this was the day’s low-level headache lurching into high gear. I must have caught what Gail and Herman had.
I reeled off some of my credits. “If you think about it, I need every life science to run this place, and e-mail addresses for everyone in the Science Fiction Writers of America. If you’re an anthropologist, you might consider working here for a year or so. We rotate fairly frequently, and both my steadies are out at the moment—”
“No, I’m a bacteriologist.”
Bacteriologist? How was I going to get closer to a bacteriologist? I was trying to plan for the long range ... and the aliens weren’t following this at all.
I said, “We humans, we do seem wired up to mate with strangers, outside the tribe. At least in fiction, yeah, Jehaneh, we’d mate with anything. Fairies were powerful aliens, nearly human, not very well described. Humans with goat horns or animal heads, goat legs, fish tails, wings. Some were that tall,” hands eight inches apart, “others the size of mountains. Spirits in trees and pools of water, angels and devils and gods from various myths and religions, they all mated with human beings in some stories. I’m telling you what’s buried in our instincts. We don’t always act on our instincts.” I realized I was rambling.
“Rick, do you have any visual aids about?”
I gaped. Jehaneh’s smile seemed innocent, but the question was impish.
“I don’t think so.” A raunchy thought crossed my mind. “Do a demonstration?”
“I don’t think you’ll be up for that,” Jehaneh said.
“No, not tonight