They had clearly grown to understand what a gift the universe had given their ancestors when their ships had found this planet, even though the planet had worked such a profound change in them. With passing generations, they had taken what they’d needed from Lacerta and otherwise trodden lightly on it, and their reward was a planet as beautiful in its natural places as in its populated areas. And beyond one rise of rolling green hills lay Agena and Thrax’s destination. Their craft sped up along the face of the hill and dropped down into the valley on the other side, and there lay Lake Shimmershine, its surface living up in every way to its name, sparkling in the late afternoon sunlight.
The lake glittered in a round impression in the land, a basin broad and vast and deep. Agena remembered things she had read about Lacerta’s geology and topography during the trip from Earth and recalled that the lake was actually a huge meteor impact crater that had been filled by rains, by runoff of water from the mountains that thrust up along three quarters of its arc, and by one large mountain stream that fed into it.
She looked to one side and found the churning white rivulet of Serpent’s Tongue Stream, just as it had appeared in the geographic data and holograms. She appreciated the familiar sight. Though she was a newcomer on this planet, it made her feel almost if she had come home along with Thrax.
As they slipped through the air and moved in closer to the lake, Agena could see what a busy place it was. Shimmershine had a steady year-round traffic of Lacertans visiting it to take their health-preserving swim. Docks and marinas were clustered along the rim of the shoreline, with eateries and shops and lodges near them. She could make out more than a dozen hoverboats moving quickly along the surface of the water.
No craft or vehicle ever actually entered the water or touched its surface; that was forbidden. The planet’s laws also prohibited any person from entering the waters except for the dragon metamorphs themselves; swimming in the lake was strictly off-limits to pure humans or beings of any other species.
Looking more carefully, Agena saw a couple of hoverboats marked with the official dragon’s head symbols of the Knights and saw Knights themselves at the controls of them. The lake was patrolled at every hour, the laws rigorously enforced. Gazing up, Agena noted the figures of other Knights in dragon form making circles like hawks in the sky overhead, doubling the security. This swim would be one that Agena could not share with her suitor. It would be for him alone.
Many of Thrax’s people must already be down there in the water, she guessed. In various places on the surface of the lake, the water would break, and a horned serpentine neck would rise up and linger to taste the air. The neck and head would cruise the surface for some meters, suggesting the powerful form under the water propelling itself along, until the serpent descended once more and disappeared into the depths. This sight repeated itself in different places, speaking of the activity of many reptilian bodies swimming and surfacing and diving again.
There was no way of knowing how many beings were down there, cleansing and restoring their dragonhood. It made Agena think of stories she had heard of Earth in pre-interstellar days, when people had sworn they had seen such things in lakes on the home planet. There was never enough proof of their accounts until the subterranean caves connecting those lakes to the ocean were found, giving evidence of the animals passing from the sea to inland waters.
If only those people could see what she was seeing now, Agena thought with a smile. The believers of the “monsters” inhabiting those lakes hundreds of years ago would be overcome with shock and awe at what was taken for a plain fact today.
Thrax glided their craft out over the surface of Shimmershine and brought it humming to a stationary position at a point that Agena judged was just a little less than halfway across the lake. Then he turned to her and said, “I’ll have to be under for about half a standard hour, perhaps forty-five minutes, to get the full benefit of exposure. Will you be all right by yourself while I’m down there?”
“Yes, certainly,” said Agena. “You need this, and I’ll have great scenery to watch while you’re off. Don’t worry about me; I wanted to come, remember?”
“Very well, then,” Thrax said, getting up from his seat. “The sooner I’ve had my swim, the sooner we can move on to…other things.”
Agena smiled up at him, and Thrax gave a subtle smile in return. He moved his hands to the strap and loincloth just below his waist, and Agena felt her pulse quicken a bit, knowing that he was about to take off what little he was wearing and was not shy about it I any way.
. She remembered, too, from studying up a bit on the culture that the Lacertans had made for themselves, that the dragon people had very little in the way of body shame. Of course, with bodies like theirs, they had no reason for it. Humans, over the last couple of centuries, had mostly gotten over their fear and loathing of their own bodies.
Lacertans, though they dressed for convenience and social convention, really had none at all. So Thrax had no inhibition at all about pulling away his thong and loincloth in front of a woman he had only just met late this morning and showing her fully what lay under them.
But no sooner had Thrax begun the gesture than a voice called down from overhead: “Hail, Sir Knight!”
Thrax and Agena both looked up and found a Knight swooping in toward them. This one’s dragon body was as strong and powerful as Thrax’s, but much more lean, with curves in places where Thrax in his dragon form had none and horns only about half the size of his. All of this, and the Knight’s higher-pitched voice, told Agena that they were being greeted by a female Knight, a Dame of Lacerta—one of Thrax’s sisters-in-arms.
“Hail, Meline!” called Thrax, waving at the newcomer. “Still on lake patrol, then?”
“And enjoying it,” said Meline, flying one circle around the hoverboat. “Permission to come aboard?”
“Granted!” said Thrax, smiling the broadest smile that Agena had yet seen from him. She was not at all sure how to take this.
Behind the seats was a small open deck, and Meline came in for a landing there, morphing to the form of a lovely, red-haired woman in Knight’s clothing, as athletically built as Agena herself. “I heard about the Lottery,” she said. “I heard they called you in, and I was wondering how you were doing.” She cast her bright green eyes at Agena: “Is this…?”
Thrax gestured at Agena and said, “This is my aspirant, Agena Morrow. She plays Sphereball and has been awarded the…what did you say it was?”
“The Pleiades Cup,” said Agena. “Two times.” For some reason, she was feeling very competitive at the moment and needed to let this other female know exactly with whom she was dealing.
Thrax said, “Agena, this is Dame Meline Gable. We trained together at the Spires.”
Meline and Agena shook hands, Agena decided that it was best to keep things on a friendly basis to find out more about this dragon lady. On some level, though, a purely rational impulse that was completely at odds with her other feelings told Agena there was no need to feel threatened. She was his fellow Knight and that was all…wasn’t it?
“How do you do, Meline?” said Agena.
“Very well, Agena,” the lady Knight said. “And welcome to Lacerta.”
“Thank you,” said Agena.
“Is this your first visit to our planet?” Meline asked.
“It is. I’ve never been here before. You…well, you don’t have a Sphereball league, and I’ve always taken my holidays in other places.”
“There’s no other place quite like this,” said Meline. “Though I suppose you know that already.” Looking at Thrax out of the corners of her eyes, she added, “And I can’t believe my old friend here is actually in Courtship. After some of the times we’ve had, he’s actually in line for mating. It only goes to show it really does happen to the best of us…”
Thrax, mildly incensed and more than a little embarrassed, cut her off. “Meline, if you don’t mind…”
Agena faced Thrax with a cocked
eyebrow, wondering aloud, “Just exactly what kind of ‘times’ have the two of you had together?”
Simmering, Thrax replied, “Not the kind of times you may be thinking.”
Meline chuckled a bit at her comrade’s discomfiture and the human female’s pointed curiosity. “Oh, Agena, I’m sorry. You didn’t think…you don’t actually think…” And she dissolved into mild laughter. Thrax fidgeted and looked away from both of them, eyeing the water and wanting very much to be in it.
“I don’t know exactly what to think right now,” Agena admitted.
Thrax tore his eyes from the water and said with the same sharpness at Agena’s curiosity, “Well, you’ve no need to think anything like that!”
Meline carefully put a hand on Agena’s shoulder. Stifling her laughter, she said, “He’s right, Agena. He’s right; there was never anything like that. Thrax is more of a brother to me than anything else. We’ve seen battles together, that’s all. Well, battles and games and liquor halls. Truly, he’s the best dragon I know. Even when he’s drunk.”
Thrax frowned, “I do not get drunk.”
Both females looked at him—Agena skeptically, Meline knowing better.
With a frustrated sigh, Thrax added, “…any more. I’m not a fledgeling, you know.”
“I should say not,” said Meline with a final chuckle. “And I know you’re due for your gene washing, Thrax, so I’ll let you get on with it.” To Agena, she said, “I’m very pleased to have met you. I have to fly another circle of the lake now, but I offer you my sincere congratulations on your Courtship. Honestly, the Lottery could not have selected a finer suitor for you. You’re very, very fortunate, Agena, and I’m pleased for both of you.”
Sensing no cynicism or bite under Meline’s words, Agena allowed herself to relax a bit. “Thank you, Meline,” she said. “I appreciate that.”
The female Knight stepped back and said to her comrade, “Good courtship, Thrax. Happiness to both of you.” And she returned to dragon form and lifted off with strong beats of her wings, swaying up and into the air again.
Once Meline was gone, Thrax said to Agena, “Truly, she and I have never been anything more than the greatest of friends. We trust each other with our lives, but we have never known each other in any other way.”
Agena let go of her tension and said, “I know, Thrax. And there’s really nothing for me to say about it, even if you weren’t just friends. That’s one kind of relationship. Ours is something completely different. And besides…everyone has a past.”
“And everyone has a future,” Thrax said. “And mine comes after I’ve known these waters once more. So, getting back to where we were…” He took a couple of steps back on the deck toward the port side of the hoverboat, and once again, he moved his hands to his loincloth.
Agena watched, her heart fluttering as if it had wings of its own, as he pulled the meager garment down and away and let it drop to the deck. And there it was, the thing she had glimpsed dangling behind and between his buttocks, suspended from a thick and bristling patch of dark hair. Seen full-on, it was even more stunning. In its flaccid state, it truly was a proud and powerful thing. Agena had no doubt that when erect, it would become the most formidable weapon of sexual conquest on this or any other world. She swallowed reflexively, self-consciously stifling a gulp.
“Relax while I’m gone,” Thrax told her. “Enjoy the lake. I’ll see you again soon.”
Thrax turned around, again showing her his glorious glutes, perfectly tapered torso, and magnificently muscled back. She would enjoy the lake well enough—after enjoying the scenery right in front of her. That view, however, was short-lived, as Agena watched the wings erupt from his upper back, the tail unfurl and drop from above his buttocks, the flesh turn from human to reptile, and the body parts morph and change, until what faced her was the back of a naked dragon man.
He first stretched his wings wide, then contracted them and folded them tight against his back and sides. He stepped up to the rim of the deck, the massive tail twitching behind him, then stretched out his arms before him and gave a leap up off the hoverboat. His dragon form arced gracefully through the air and down, slicing the surface of the water with a splash as perfect as if he were one of the Olympic divers of Earth, and he was gone.
Agena stepped to the edge of the craft and looked down at the ripples Thrax had made in the water. He was in the embrace of Lake Shimmershine now, and she must wait her turn.
Alone in the hoverboat now, Agena looked out over the water and up over the mountains to the sky. She certainly would not be bored while waiting for Thrax to return. She had a stunning panorama to keep her mind occupied. She also had the sight of his fully naked and exposed human form to do the same. How wonderful would it be when she had him back in the suite and she could get her hands on the beast that had emerged from under that loincloth?
Her hands, and her lips, and her tongue. And it would be even more wonderful, she knew, when he put it to work inside her. She returned to the passenger’s seat to dwell on the prospect of fulfilling her purpose in coming to Lacerta, and admire her surroundings a bit as well…
…and she failed to accomplish either thing. She was vexed to find that there was something else on her mind.
How could she have reacted that way to his friend Meline? It was so off-base, so out of line. How could she actually have been…? No, she refused to put the word to it. There was no way she could possibly have been that. It was completely out of the bounds of reason that she should be… Again, she dismissed the word, frowning and cursing at it. Both the word and the feeling were unwarranted. Weren’t they? There was no justification for her to be…
The word could not be ignored. Jealous. And it made no sense at all. Of all things, jealous. She had actually felt a twinge, a pang, a stab of jealousy. Why?
After all, Agena thought, the situation hardly called for it. What she was doing was called a Courtship, but they were not courting in any sense of the word to which humans had been accustomed for hundreds of years. What she and Thrax had was actually an arrangement. It had been brokered and facilitated by the government of the planet for the express purpose of maintaining their population and driving their economy. It would certainly lead to incredible pleasure once she got Thrax between the sheets, but it was an entirely pragmatic thing. Or so it was, in principle.
The trouble was that once it came to the intimacies that would fulfill the purpose, it would no longer be so pragmatic. Those intimacies had feelings attached, feelings that Agena could only guess would be very strong and run very deep. It could not be any other way. There would be pair-bonding. There would be an inevitable sense of attachment, if not actual romance. She was setting out to have him give her a baby, after all. The feelings accompanying that goal could not help but be proprietary. She was already starting to feel that way, she realized. Even though it was a brokered, pragmatic arrangement, the feelings that it brought up were something else again.
Which brought up the question of whether Thrax felt the same way.
Agena sat back in the passenger’s seat, now at best only half aware of some of the greatest scenery in known space, and puffed a hot breath into the perfectly climate-controlled air over the lake. If only her own feelings could be managed as easily right now.
Under the water, Thrax held his dragon arms at his sides and kept his dragon legs straight, letting his hips and his undulating dragon tail do the work of thrusting and propelling him through the water. Everything around him was serene, a deep blue-green tranquility. Another dragon male shot quickly past him, leaving a wake of bubbles as he torpedoed into the distance where still others swerved and dove, some making for the bottom and others climbing to the surface.
Beneath him, on the bottom, there were some who had taken not to swimming but just to relaxing on the beds of water plants in the sandy basin of the lake. They looked almost like sculptures, sitting there so still, as tranquil as the water. Thrax pushed on, letting them enjoy Shimmers
hine as they liked while he got on in his own way.
This was Thrax’s favorite lake in which to take rejuvenation. It was really no better than any of the others; some of them, in fact, were even more scenic. But this was the one in which he had taken his first rejuvenation as a very young boy, and the one to which he returned most often. These waters were another home and had served him well. And being down there gave him more time to think.
Really, there was not that much to think about. He had his duty and was bound to honor it. This had to happen. Thrax had pledged his skills, his muscle and breath and blood, his very life to the needs of the world to which he belonged and the community of worlds of which it was a part. He was a Knight, and he had his orders.
And that was part of the problem: These were his orders. It was not his desire; it was what was required of him. He would mate and copulate with a human woman. He would contribute to the next generation of Lacertans. He would provide for the health of his world as he did for its defense. He was a Knight, and this was his duty.
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