Root and Branch

by Tripp Greyson

  That went over like a lead pancake. I got a series of very loud raspberries from each of the boys. Me, the father of their country!

  ❖

  When I arrived at my office an hour later, Tripp, my scribe, quietly handed me the personal ledger where I maintain the information about my children. When I opened it and perused the latest entries, I saw that there were now 383, the last 180 or so in his neat, crabbed handwriting (Normally I maintained my own ledger).

  Not only did I have 10 Imp and 147 new Dixie sons, a dozen or so of my Pooka lovers had given birth, there were three new Faunlets, and one of my four Harpy eggs had hatched. There was one other entry that caught my eye, just before the copious entries for the Imps and Newdies started. "What the heck is a Kushtaka?" I asked, pointing at the column for Race.

  "The otter girl," he replied, pushing his glasses up onto his nose. He'd been very pleased when the glassmakers had been able to create and grind the lenses, and had carved the frames himself from gopherwood. He had a deft hand with a knife. "Apparently the Kushtaka were myth figures among the Tlingit culture of the Pacific Northwest before the Ruin."

  "Oh, I remember her," I said fondly.

  "We all do. You couldn't stop talking about her for days," he replied sourly. Then he continued, solemnly, "I also have some interesting news. And... some terrible news."

  My heart fell. "What? What's happened?"

  "Look again at one of your new Pooka children, Entry 374 — the youngest son of Cressida." I looked, and though the Race field read "Moggie," the entry had a notation in the right-hand margin: "Baseline Terran appearance."

  I looked at Tripp. "This can't be right. I remember Cressida very well. She's full-on Moggie."

  Tripp replied, "I know it seems like it can't be, but little Ambition doesn't have a single Moggie trait, sir. He looks as Terran as you or I, right down to his little fingernails and lack of teeth. Either some of the new races are starting to revert back to baseline, or he'll grow into his felinity."

  I looked at him thoughtfully. "Or, it could be something else. Could he be a boymaker?"

  My scribe blinked a couple of times, then replied, "I hadn't thought of that, sir. But we have plenty of non-Terran boymakers. The Dixies and the Elves don't have any trouble impregnating the ladies. Why should he be baseline because he's a boymaker?"

  "Good question," I said thoughtfully as I started to close the book.

  "Wait," Tripp said, pushing his glasses up his nose again. "I... I have to give you the terrible news now. We had an elderly Terran die a day after you left."

  I sighed. "Was it Connie Haim?"

  "Afraid so. Poor old soul. She was nearly a hundred."

  "Yes. Glad I visited her before I left. She was a real jokester — but most of her jokes can't be repeated in polite company. Well, is that it?"

  "No," he said sadly. "Look at your Entry 67, sir. I am so sorry."

  "Ebon? What happened?"

  An icy hand gripped my heart as I flipped back and scanned down to Entry 67, the second child, of four, of a Wolfin who had named herself "Two-Toes" due to her dewclaws, and the fact that the Step Through had robbed her of her true name. In the left-hand margin of my baby boy's entry was the notation Deceased 1 May AR 25.

  A second of my children had died. I choked out a cry and slammed the ledger shut. May 1 had been just three days ago. "What happened to my precious Ebon?" I demanded, weeping unashamedly. Last I'd seen him, just before I left for Hamiltown, the little black-furred wolf-boy was a toddler, just learning to run, laughing his head off. He wasn't even a year old, but Pookas mature quickly. He loved butterflies and flowers, and his reflexes were so fast he'd caught a hummingbird, only to release it unharmed.

  "Mauled by a chupacabra," Tripp said flatly. "He was quite the little runner, you know. Managed to escape from the crèche one morning, slipped out a postern gate to play in the flowers... one of the local Taura saw what happened as she was clearing the area, but she was wasn't able to get there in time to save him."

  "Where is he now?" I whispered.

  "I look the liberty of burying him next to his brother, sir," said my scribe soberly. "We were waiting for your return to hold an official service. Just this morning, I found that the Goddess had gifted him with a headstone." He sniffed a bit and blinked hard. "It reads 'Ebon W. Fell, Runner in Beauty,' sir. W for Wolfin, as P was for Pixie with Icarus. Now it is tradition, sir."

  I nodded. "Good. But I have to visit his mother," I told Tripp, wiping my eyes. "Are Night, Pitch, and Inky all right? How did they all take it?"

  "Their mother was crushed, of course, but is staying strong for her boys. I'm sorry to say young Ebon wasn't the first child she's lost since Step Through. But I don't think the boys are old enough to understand yet. When I saw Pitch yesterday, he asked me when Ebon was coming home."

  "You didn't — "

  "No sir. I just said I didn't know."

  "Well done. Thank you." I looked at him bleakly. "What should I take to her, Tripp?"

  He smiled. "Your love for your children should suffice, sir."

  "Yes," I told him quietly, them looked at him, my face stone. "And for her, for all the mothers and children, we will also render the chupacabra species extinct in this Commonwealth. Am I understood?"

  Tripp gulped. "You are, sir. I'll spread the word immediately."

  "Do that," I told him. "Set a bounty. Fifty icas each."

  He paled, probably afraid I'd bankrupt the government. But it was my government. I issued the icas. Wisely, he said only, "It will be done, sir."

  We called it Ebon's Law. Inside of a year, there were no chupacabras left in the entire Commonwealth of Icarus. The last one in all of Tejas was killed three years ago. I have yet to feel one iota of remorse for exterminating that loathsome species, though my leatherworkers miss their tough hides.

  Chapter 4

  Entry 384. Hydra Fell. Birthdate: May 7, AR 25. Mother: Undine Fell. Race: Kappa.

  Entry 385. Rudolph Fell. Birthdate: May 7, AR 25. Mother: Jenna Fell. Race: Incubus.

  Entry 386. Valentino Fell. Birthdate: May 8, AR 25. Mother: S'linkitha Fell. Race: Incubus.

  Entry 387. Davin Trent Fell. Birthdate: May 9, AR 25. Mother: Ava Fell. Race: Harpy.

  Entry 388. Trent Davin Fell. Birthdate: May 9, AR 25. Mother: Ava Fell. Race: Harpy (baseline appearance).

  I was mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted.

  Even as I began to grieve for little Ebon, four of my wives gifted me with five more sons: two Incubi, two Harpies, and a kappa. They were all adorable little darlings, of course, but Rudy and Val, the children of sex-bombs Jenna and her mother, drew most of the attention from the gaggle of women who descended on the Castle after their birth.

  I had my answer about Incubi: they were attracting women already. S'linkitha assured me they would mature at a baseline rate, assuming they matured like their Succubus sisters, so I was going to have to keep a tight rein on them, or they'd be fathers by the time they were sixteen.

  I was briefly worried about what they would "eat," given what served as the special "meals" for their mothers, but the girls primly assured me that until they were adults, they would be sustained by the Mother's Kiss in addition to ordinary food. I didn't want to think too much about what that entailed.

  Apparently, for the female of the species (and the occasional male, I'm not judging), both boys had eyes with the same kind of hypnotic effect that Toméz's Alfa babies had on males. Which was why they were hidden away and protected by the Elves or Mamas at all times.

  Both boys were powder-white at birth, but instead of purple tiger stripes, the pale lines that marked their pudgy little chests were tawny — the color of my hair. Their eyes were Fell green, their stubby wings pure black, their wispy hair cottony, and they were handsome little devils.

  Hydra was Fell green with blue highlights, a real handful from the get-go, and he was born with all his hair and teeth. Sharp ones, suitable for catching fish. He was
also born swimming: Undine birthed him in a small pond on the edge of Pecan Grove. I learned quickly that, as with his oldest Harpy brother Isaiah, one did not tease a child with lightning reflexes and sharp teeth.

  Isaiah, whose major occupation at the time was toddling around and munching on micicles (don't ask) thought it was hilarious when Hy took a chunk out of my thumb. I thought the way he glared at me was hilarious after I thumped him on the backside of his diaper. He ran off yelling, "Mamaaaa!"

  But by then his mother was busy with twin baby raptors who were as hungry, if not hungrier, than Ike had been when he hatched. Davin snatched the micicle out of Ike's hand and swallowed it whole. The look on the Ike's fuzzy face was priceless, especially when the baby spat out the stick and it bonked him on the forehead.

  Like his older brother, Davin was pure Harpy, but covered with golden down. He screamed like an eagle when he was hungry, and had no problem gulping down his prey bones and all. Trent, his twin, couldn't have been more different. Like his Moggie brother Ambition, he looked completely baseline Terran. That said, he acted Harpy, screaming and snapping his beakless mouth at the raw meat the Hero Dixies brought his brother, but he was as toothless and funny-looking as any Terran newborn. He took his sustenance from his mother's breasts, and his hair was as dark-gray and downy as his mother's, though not feathery at all.

  I had no idea what was going on with him and Ambition, who was as cotton-topped as I had been at his age.

  Just as I was beginning to get used to the bedlam, Freddie gifted me with my first hairy-footed Olbytla child, half-sized but otherwise perfect. She named him Peregrin, after some book she'd read back on her Earth, which I thought would have been a better name for one of my Harpy boys. When I told her that, she just smiled and said I ought to be happy she hadn't named him Meriadoc.

  "Why?" I asked. "That's an interesting name. We could have called him Doc for short."

  She just rolled her eyes. "You have no imagination, husband. You'll probably want to call Peregrin Perry."

  "Well, why not?"

  "Because he's going to be a Pippin!" she said in a voice that brooked no disagreement.

  I failed to see how that was supposed to make sense, but Pippin he was. I knew better than to argue with my wives. Meriadoc, a.k.a. Merry, came along a few years later. I didn't dare call him Doc.

  That left only two of my wives pregnant: Coulter and Montana. Coulter's Saul, the world's first male Centaur, would be born in another 52 days, as I had (somehow) already foreseen. The world's first boy Giant, name yet to be determined, would precede him by a few weeks.

  I also began to experience the first hint of trouble in Paradise. A few months after Rudy's birth, Jenna proposed something to me that left me confused and angry right after we'd just finished working on her next child. She admitted that she'd gotten rather attached to Toméz's son Brandyn while I was away, as he had been her go-to Elf for her special "meals."

  The kicker was that since the pointed-ear trait seemed to breed true — by then, there were plenty of Newdies and Cobber kids to prove that — she thought it would be "kinda neat" to have a pointy-eared baby.

  She whispered this to me in a sultry voice as she kissed my own ear, and I sat up in bed abruptly, glaring at her. I took in her tousled hair and slightly luminous orange eyes with my usual sharp gasp when her beauty struck me, but today, at this moment, any pheromones she might have been emitting had no effect on me. She was mine, and I'd be damned if I would share her womb!

  My refusal was possibly audible in Hamiltown, and thus began the first row she and I had ever had, destined not to be the last. "You want to cuckold me?" I yelled. "How dare you! How would you even think I would allow something so shameful?"

  "It's not really like that — "

  "Yes! It is exactly like that! Having another man's baby instead of your husband's is the very definition of cuckolding!"

  "But I just think the combination would be beautiful — "

  "Babies are not fashion accessories!" I bellowed. "You are MY wife, not some harlot to be passed around!"

  "I know how important babies are!" she shouted back. "And I am my own woman!"

  "You gave up breeding with other men when you became my wife! You knew that!"

  "I can breed with whoever I want!"

  "NO! No you canNOT!" I thundered. "That is what marriage means!"

  She tried a different tack. "Not every boy in this town can be your child! We need variation to produce viable breeding stock for the new races!"

  "Toméz and the boys are doing just fine!" I shouted. "We're in no danger of interbreeding due to the Repository chromosomes anyway!"

  "Maybe I just want a little variety, Toby! And sex more than once a week!"

  Ouch. "I have responsibilities to my other wives, you know!"

  Then she dropped her bomb on me: "Yes, but you're hyperspermic! You could do us all every day and not suffer from it! Instead, you get to dip your wick into a hundred women a month! How is that fair to us?"

  The argument ended as I left the room, ducking the heavy things she threw at me. The heaviest was the last point she made.

  To my enduring sadness, that was not the end of the matter.

  ❖

  I had brought with me to Icarus Township three of the four Lords Protector I'd somehow had a hand in creating, back during the liberation and clean-up of Hamiltown. Towana Miller, Edgar Dubois, and Caleb Kensie had come with me to consult on the war we were about the wage on the cannibal's nest that called itself the Scholastic Empire of Wayko. When we were done with Wayko, we'd have to do something about the Tejarkanye. If they wanted a fight, I was happy to give them one.

  I was meeting in the conference building with the Lords Protector when someone started pounding insistently on the door. Scowling, I flung it open, but saw no one. "Down here, Gramps!" a squeaky voice shouted.

  I should have known better than to forget the small races by now! I squatted and looked at Gration's Cobber son Malus, who was easy to distinguish due to the shock of gray in his brick-red hair. To my astonishment, instead of wearing it in a loose cloud around his head, as usual, he had it tied back in a neat ponytail, and wore a tiny brown cap and uniform.

  Grinning widely, black eyes glittering, Malus shouted, "Coney Express dispatch for you, All-Father Tobias!"

  "Coney Express...?" I asked, and I'll be damned if the boy wasn't holding reins leading back to a jackalope squatting behind him, about as ugly and skinny a horned hare as I'd ever seen.

  "Yessir! All the way from Queen Isengrûn down south!" he crowed.

  I'd never heard of her, but all Tauras were welcome. "You boys have been busy."

  "Yep yep! We had this idea to run hares to facilitate communications between all the new territories and communities in the Commonwealth! Pretty soon we'll have airmail, once we can get the hawks trained! They haven't realized yet that we're meaner than they are!"

  He handed me a sealed letter and said primly, "That'll be half an ica, your Grandfatherness."

  I tossed him a full ica coin, which was the size of his head, and he caught it with some effort and put it into a little saddlebag on the side of the hare. "Thanks for the tip, Gramps!"

  "I have to know," I said, as I stood and scratched my head. "How are you catching hawks?"

  "Oh, that was Old-Father Trent's idea!" the tiny green boy said excitedly. "He read about it in this old kid's book back before the Ruin! He had Ezra sew this wounded squirrel outfit, see? We take turns wearing it an' pretending we're a poor, helpless, hurt tree-rat, and when the stupid birds come to get their free meal, we throw nets over 'em an' beat 'em over the head until they give up!"

  "Smart," I said, impressed.

  "Yeah, I got me a red-tail hawk yesterday! You have to be real careful with 'em — nasty beaks." He held up his left hand, which was bandaged. "I was lucky! I only lost half my pinky! He et it right up!"

  "Oh dear," I said, feeling faint.

  "No worries, Gramps! I smacke
d the hell outta him a buncha times!" He turned and jumped onto the back of his coney, which he rode bareback. "Let Papa know when you're ready to send the return message. Now if you'll excuse me, neither rain nor hail nor loss of appendages can stay this courier from his appointed rounds!"

  And just like that, he bounded off, headed off Goddess only knew where.

  Still worried a little about Malus, even if he wasn't, I examined the message I held in my hand. It consisted of a neatly folded piece of Commonwealth-manufactured paper (one of our most popular imports), sealed with red wax bearing the sigil of the wooden signet ring I had given to Queen Isengrid when her herd had joined the Commonwealth.

  That immediately made me suspicious, so I tore the letter open and read it aloud to the Protectors: