Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  “How unpleasant!” Ay’r opined. “I’d heard tales of MC guards harassing males, but –”

  “They’re young and boisterous.” P’al dismissed the incident. “They’d do no harm.”

  “Maybe not to us, but did you see how quickly that Maudlin Se’er fled? I’ll bet he’s gotten more than pretty speeches. Imagine!” Ay’r went on, unable to stop himself now that he was no longer among strangers, “He must be over a thousand years old!”

  “It’s said many Se’ers learn to limit their ingestion to a gram of food per month Sol Rad. Some can stop their breathing and heartbeat for hours at a time. Is it any wonder they live on and on?”

  “I wonder why the MC allows this one here at the very steps of their government!”

  “Universal religious and ideological tolerance was declared during the Intervening Systems Period and confirmed by the Treaty of Formalhaut. The New Matriarchy has never rescinded it. And, how better to show tolerance than to have this ranter preach doom at your very doorway?”

  The flat ramp conveyed them gently into a unusually spacious building, past a lobby of great size but simple taste, toward a series of openwork gravi-lifts rising above the fountains and indoor gardens along barely visible slots toward, and gently curving upward through, the nearly transparent ceiling.

  Ay’r was looking around and admiring the place when he spotted a tall woman on a converging flat-conveyer. She nodded a greeting to P’al, who had changed back into his MC uniform and skirt. Then she leered openly at Ay’r, who felt an instant of confusion.

  He was used to aggressive and frank women. What Hume male wasn’t? But the winking, whistling, and sometimes outrightly verbally abusive women outside hadn’t possessed this one’s stature and bearing, not to mention the single enlarged breast typical of a Cult Officer. Her provocative polished-black Plastro-Beryllium bodyplate rose up from around her heavily muscled bare legs and exposed her single breast. The armor was sculpted almost to peaks at her shoulders, then swept into a high collar around her head, ending in a vertical comb for her twisted hairdo, silver-white streaked with jet.

  “You’d better greet the Lady,” P’al instructed. “She’s a Cultist.”

  “It must be what you selected for me to wear. I must look like a complete Provincial in it,” Ay’r complained. It was a simple form-fitting lounge suit in pale brushed platinum, unpadded except to flatten his crotch, with flowing sleeves and legs, and a short cape of the same material thrown over one shoulder, cinched by – now – only two buttons. A pea-sized MC red ruby adhered to his forehead, a tint of homage to his host, and P’al had helped arrange Ay’r’s hair simply yet with a modest reference to a Tempian Arthropod, defeated by Wicca Eighth’s ancestress at the Battle of Betelgeuse.

  “I think you look piffo. And so does she. Greet her,” P’al urged in a whisper.

  Ay’r turned to their neighbor, a half foot taller than himself and nodded a greeting.

  The woman stuck her tongue out, licked around her mouth, and boomed laughter at Ay’r’s discomfort.

  “As a rule, I milk a dozen gynos like you before midmeal,” she said in a sultry alto, crossing over to their flat-belt. “But I could use a snack right now.”

  She’d already slipped a hugely muscled, duel-scarred arm around Ay’r’s waist when P’al said indifferently, “Doubtless, Lady, when you’re done, you’ll escort us to Her Matriarchy.”

  The Cult Officer had lifted Ay’r off the ground and was now rubbing him against her exposed breast and laughing.

  “And no doubt,” P’al went on, “Her Matriarchy will be intrigued by the nature of our delay.”

  “Ah, scratch it! Just havin’ fun!” She unhanded Ay’r and waved a Plastro-mailed fist at P’al. “And if you’re weaving me, you’re both vulva fodder!”

  “Come with us and see!” P’al said boldly.

  They’d arrived at the lifts and it was clear that they were at the central one with the floating-holo MC logo.

  “Maybe I’ll take a sip of you later on,” she said to Ay’r in a slightly aggrieved voice. “If there’s anything left!” And boomed more laughter as she strode to her own lift.

  Too late, Ay’r turned on his shield and tried not to tremble as the lift brought them to their rooms, a large, spacious fourteenth-floor suite with splendid views. Two male attendants dressed in the standard matte-rose color of the MC Personal Service were bustling around, eager to bathe and massage Ay’r and P’al. But P’al told them they’d have to settle for unpacking, until later.

  “Perhaps we should send them to that amazon’s suite?” Ay’r suggested.

  Another gravi-lift ride brought them to Wicca Eighth’s twentieth-floor suite. It commanded the top floor of the building and consisted of open and closed spaces beneath a vast half-circle of crystalline roof. The view here was even more splendid than from their own rooms, providing a two-thirds sector of much of the low-built smallish world, including a vast lake and just at the horizon the spindly high crystalline girders supporting the Arth.’s aerial park. The interior of the rooms was richly furnished but otherwise not in any way suggestive that this was the ruling center of the galaxy. No MC Security. No MC logos anywhere. No dais. Not even a desk.

  P’al claimed to have met Wicca Eighth, but not in this suite, and the two wandered through groupings of flower banks and streams, dining and sitting areas, most of them populated by unofficial looking women in conversation or meditation who paid no attention to their search for Her Matriarchy.

  A young tall, straight woman finally joined the two males as they approached the curved-in lip of the balcony wall affording the most attractive view. Ay’r noticed that she wore a short white tunic and matching calf-high boots, with a simple tiara of Dubhe Silica threaded through her curly dark hair. Her eyes were a lighter shade of the standard brown-black he had seen only once before, when he had been a university student: he supposed that this stranger, as that young woman had been, was of the old Matriarchal nobility.

  “Ser P’al,” she gestured, “Ser Sanqq’!” She barely laid eyes on Ay’r and, without waiting for a response, spun around and led them past more groups of women to the far side of the suite.

  “Sers!” Her Matriarchy turned from conversation with a striking-looking male to give a slight nod to the two Humes. A stout, handsome woman in an unornamented floor-length free-flowing gown, Wicca Eighth was perhaps 500 years old but might be as old as 650. With her large, almost golden-brown eyes accentuated by Prokaryote eyeliner and her highly stylized thick sea-green hair, the Matriarch seemed so extraordinarily ordinary that at first Ay’r was certain they had been mistaken.

  “You’ve met Alli-Lui Clark already,” she said in her rich contralto voice, gesturing them to approach closer. “This is Tam Apollon,” gesturing to the striking tall male who seemed to glide forward and grasp first P’al then Ay’r in the forearm grip used among MC soldiers and nobility.

  Only when Tam Apollon glided back again did Ay’r realize that his body appeared bottom heavy. Without staring, Ay’r quickly noted Tam Apollon’s long and apparently narrow torso; his long, pale-skinned face; and thickly curled, light-brown hair.

  “Thank you for visiting in person,” Wicca Eighth swept her large golden gaze over Ay’r, benevolently distracting him away from Tam Apollon. “And at such short notice. I hope you weren’t inconvenienced.”

  “Indeed not, Ma’am. I was merely in transit from an avocation project to my university.”

  “I’m pleased. I believe, however, that Ser P’al was inconvenienced,” she said.

  “Nothing that couldn’t be put aside.”

  “You have had a pleasant taste of Melisande, I trust,” Wicca Eighth declared as much as asked.

  “Aside from some ribbing,” Ay’r said.

  “Ribbing?” Alli Clark didn’t understand the Metro.-Terran word.

  “Ser Sanqq’ refers to our being aided by some of your Elite Guards outside the building,” P’al said diplomatically.

&nbs
p; Wicca Eighth raised her eyes as though She had heard of such “aid” before.

  “They were merely having sport with us, as we both soon enough realized,” P’al said.

  “As I suppose was the amazon,” Ay’r admitted. “I’m afraid I’m still a bit unused to Matriarchal customs.”

  “Amazon?” Wicca Eighth asked P’al.

  “We had an encounter with a warrior who found Ser Sanqq’ irresistible. A Lady of the Cult, I believe, from her armor and ...” He trailed on, clearly not liking the turn in the conversation.

  “A Flower Cult Woman? Here in the building?” Alli Clark asked, and when they nodded, she smiled. “It must be my Grand-Aunt Thol.”

  “She wasn’t half as surprising as the Maudlin Se’er,” Ay’r added.

  “Well,” Wicca Eighth sighed, “you have had an eventful arrival in Melisande.”

  “Aunt Thol is Black Chrysanthemum,” Alli Clark said quickly, not hiding how much she must idolize the older woman. “She’s the head of the Matriarchy’s most elite forces.”

  Wicca Eighth laughed softly. “A highly valued woman. And, as you’ve no doubt noticed, Sers, if there is any lack here in Melisande, it’s of attractive, unattached males.”

  “Old habits die slowly,” Alli Clark said in a hard voice.

  “Sometimes old habits need reviving,” Wicca Eighth gently counseled, “lest we become prejudiced.”

  “Ma’am!” the younger woman listened to the advice without any evident sign of acceptance.

  “When I was younger,” Wicca Eighth confided in the two males, whom she’d gestured to either side of her, “I, too, saw no place in life for males. Mere evolutionary holdovers, I thought. And so much trouble! Is that about it, Alli?”

  She looked to her younger companion, who added stiffly, “Not to mention their arrogance or the constant ego gratification they require.”

  “Yet,” Wicca Eighth continued, “When one reaches Our age, one discovers that women also have their limitations. Don’t be so amazed, Alli! They do. Even in merely social situations. And, in fact, those very same male qualities that can be so very annoying to younger women tend to become ... stimulating later on!” She touched Tam Apollon’s forearm, as though in proof of this statement. “You think Ourself jaded, perhaps?” She asked the younger woman.

  “Ma’am?” Alli Clark was clearly not about to dare question her ruler’s whimsy.

  “A young male like you, for example, Ser Sanqq’” – the Matriarch took his hand – “You’re unspoused. You have no family unit. You don’t belong to a gyne-group. Yet you’re content, aren’t you?”

  Ay’r had no idea what She was asking of him. “Relatively content, Ma’am. I have my work –” he quickly amended the hated word to “my avocation”!

  “And your own individual goal and aims?” Wicca Eighth asked.

  “I suppose they are individual. Although eventually they will expand the knowledge of the Three Species.”

  “Eventually. But right now they’re expanding your knowledge alone. As Ser P’al’s work – yes, I also use the dreaded word at times – expands his knowledge. What does Alli think of all this?”

  “Selfishness! Typical male ego gratification!”

  Wicca Eighth glanced at Tam Apollon, as though this was something they had discussed often. “You see, I can know what’s going on at any minute and issue directives for a thousand worlds, yet I would never dream of hoping to get a young male and female to agree on a single item.”

  “That’s wisdom, indeed, Ma’am,” Tam Apollon offered.

  “Hard-won and impossible to overthrow,” She agreed.

  “Do you mind strolling?” Wicca Eighth said. “I find my ordinary shyness almost disappears when I’m on the move. You come too, Alli. This concerns you.”

  Evidently Tam Apollon wasn’t joining them. He spun toward Wicca Eighth and bent to kiss the spot in the air inches before her navel. Ay’r was surprised to see how long his hair grew in back, right along his spine and into his tunic.

  “We’ll dream later, Ma’am?”

  “Of course, yes,” Wicca Eighth assured him.

  As the group turned to walk, Ay’r watched the dismissed male turn and glide away. Despite his floor-length trousers, even looser than those Ay’r himself wore, the enormous buttocks and the odd movement gave him away: a Centaur.

  “Staring at other species is considered poor taste,” Alli Clark said into Ay’r’s ear.

  “Apologies, if it were a true species. But I’ve never seen a mutant before.”

  “Never seen a Centaur you mean!” She failed to understand his sarcasm. “Truly, you are an ignorant and Provincial male!”

  “Although I should have supposed I would,” Ay’r said, “since everyone knows that all MC women have their own Centaur pets.” Ay’r hoped he was hitting a sore spot with her.

  “Centaurs are said to be excellent friends and counselors,” she responded blithely.

  “Come on. I’m out of Ed. and Dev. a long time!”

  “Well, there’s some reason they’re so valued in the Matriarchy.”

  “The way I’ve heard it, it’s due to the Centaur’s well-known oversized genitals, their acknowledged sexual endurance, and their general obedience toward Humes. Not to mention no genetic chance of a Matriarch getting pregnant by one!”

  “For someone over a hundred years old, you talk like a smutty little neo.,” she sniped and almost ran to join up with Wicca Eighth and P’al who had gone ahead.

  Ay’r had been purposely irritating Alli Clark, but he had been surprised to meet Tam Apollon. Centaurs were the so-called “fourth species,” discovered only upon stellar exploration of the distant Dexter Carina Arm of the galaxy ca. 3290 Sol Rad. Centaurs were thought to be a purposefully mutated combination of a Hippocene-type mammal indigenous to a planet in that sector and early Humes, dating back several hundred millennia before Metro.-Terran times. The perpetrators of the mutation were unknown, believed to be a nonmammalian species either not indigenous to the galaxy or by now long extinct. Also unknown was the reason for the mutation and its exact method. Centaur legends and myths were found to be curiously similar – in fact, diametrically opposed – to those of early Humekind, suggesting that they and Humes may have been abducted from atmosphere-borne vehicles for mating, and then eventually returned. Given the prehensibility of four of their six limbs, Centaurs had independently developed their own copper, iron, and iridium-based technology. When they were discovered by the explorer Ern’a Bailey Hyde, they had just begun interplanetary travel and colonization of their stellar system of six habitable worlds. Because of how few Centaurs there were compared to the other three species, they had been considered a protected species by the Matriarchy; their homeworlds an MC preserve.

  The others had stopped at a curved section of wall, a projection from which they could now make out Regulus itself, a small brightly etched coin in Melisande’s soft surrounding atmosphere. Ay’r caught up with them.

  “Thank you for being so gracious with Me,” Wicca Eighth said to them – especially, Ay’r thought, to him. “Now that we’ve spent some time together, I feel more easy in discussing why I’ve asked you here. What do you know of a planet named Pelagia?” Wicca Eighth asked Ay’r.

  “Nothing, Ma’am.”

  “Try to remember your species ethnology history tutorials. With reference to the Seeding Program of the middle 2nd Millennium.”

  “Of course I know something of the Seeding Program,” Ay’r admitted. “In fact, I’m just returning from a Seeded World in the Far 3-Kilo Parsec Arm.”

  The three of them looked at Ay’r, meaning for him to continue. It was like an oral examination.

  “The Seeding Program began at the end of the Metro.-Terran era,” he began. Naturally, he had boned up on the program before traveling to the N’Kiddim. “Humes had managed to utilize the SLp.G drive to explore many hundreds of stellar systems. But the drive was reasonable only for travel in space/time to a distance of a thousand
or so light-years. This represents only one percent of our galaxy, but does include all of the systems of the Orion Spur, a well as portions of the Sagittarian and Persean arms of the Galactic Spiral.”

  “In other words, the Center Worlds, which still remain Our most heavily populated area. Go on,” Wicca Eighth said.

  “Despite over three hundred years of intense engineering, no significant advance was made on the SLp.G drive and it was generally believed that none could be made, and that travel beyond the speed of light was impossible. All inhabitable planets discovered in the Central Sector were colonized to fulfill the demographic explosion of the late 2nd Millennium. But a group of scientists known as the Aldebaran Five decided upon a program that would allow colonization possibilities until the SLp.G drive could be surpassed. Focusing upon stellar systems within the galaxy’s outer arms, which were far out of the reach of SLp.G travel, they located worlds their instrumentation told them were capable of sustaining Hume life without any further needed terraforming. They devised in vitro carriers to travel via SLp.G to those distant planets. Under the guidance of Maxwell 4500 Cybers, those worlds would then be seeded with Hume embryos.”

  “How many worlds did the Aldebaran Five seed in this manner?”

  “Four thousand units were sent out,” Ay’r reported. “Two thousand three hundred were destroyed en route or upon landing. Fourteen hundred seventy-five are still in flight – or would be, except that now that we have Fast jump and seeding is no longer needed, Your Matriarchy’s fleet has probably intercepted and returned all of them.”

  “Indeed. Leaving how many successfully seeded planets?”

  “Unknown, Ma’am. Supposedly two hundred twenty-five units landed and began the seeding process. We know of only two hundred and four, all of them currently within a journey by Fast ranging from a week to a month Sol Rad.”

  “One of which you recently spent time upon, studying the modifications and culture which arose from that Seeding Program. What happened to the other twenty-one Seeded Worlds?”

  “As far as we know, no communication link between the Cybers sent with the units has ever been established, either because of radio interference or other stellar disturbances. It was common for the Aldebaran Five to seed worlds that were physically protected from normal communications or future SLp.G flight lanes by some stellar anomaly – a nearby black hole or highly ionized dust cloud – so that should a faster drive be developed, although no longer impossibly distant, these worlds would still be among the last to be explored and colonized by normal methods.”