“I don’t care if I taste good,” he says.
“But everybody wants to taste good.”
“Humans don’t.”
“Then how do humans show their affection for each other?”
“They tell them, I guess.”
“That doesn’t sound very intimate.”
Jujy looks at the ground and frowns, as if she feels sorry for Franklin because he’s a human.
Over the next hill, they pass a small cottage. It is just big enough for one person. On the other side of the hill, they see a candy woman working in a garden, planting tootsie rolls like carrots.
“That’s Minty,” Jujy says. “She’s one of the grossest women in the cave. Nobody would ever mate with her.”
Franklin looks carefully at the woman. She is actually very attractive. She has tan skin, long yellow hair. Even though she’s a candy person, she is one of the most beautiful women he has ever seen. She is far more beautiful than Jujy.
“Why do you think she is gross?” Franklin asks. “She isn’t very ugly.”
“Her flavor is peppermint and peanut butter.” Then she sticks out her tongue as if just thinking about the flavor makes her gag.
“So?” Franklin says. “She still looks attractive. She has a good body and a cute enough face.”
“Who cares about what she looks like?”
“Most people are attracted to good looks,” he says. “I’m surprised she hasn’t been able to find a mate.”
“But nobody cares about what she looks like,” she says. “Flavor is the only thing that matters.”
“Are you saying a fat wrinkled woman that tastes of strawberry shortcake would be more attractive to mates than her?”
“Of course,” she says. “Aren’t humans the same way?”
“No,” Franklin says. “Physical attraction is everything.”
Jujy pulls them in a different direction before the peppermint woman notices them.
“You humans are really weird,” she says.
“I’m weird?” Franklin laughs. “You have gumdrop nipples and you think I’m weird?”
Jujy laughs with Franklin, but she doesn’t really seem to understand what he’s laughing about.
By the end of the walk, Jujy agrees to take Franklin outside more often. She found walking and talking with him to be strangely pleasant.
“It is very unusual,” Jujy says. “Most dominants and submissives do not go on walks or have conversations with each other.”
“Because submissives are supposed to keep silent and do what they are told?”
“Well, yeah, but it is also because submissives and dominants rarely have anything to talk about.”
While they are out on their walk, Franklin is able to memorize everything he’s seen and store it within his super brain. With picture perfect clarity, he has every detail of the area they have been exploring stored in his memory cells. He knows that if he continues to go on walks with Jujy in different areas of the underground, he will eventually be able to map out the entire territory. Not only will he be able to learn the way out of this cave, but he will also be able to return to the human world with a completely accurate map of this place. He will be able to show the authorities exactly where every candy person lives, exactly where they can be attacked.
He realizes now that he doesn’t need to escape right away. He is in the perfect position to work as a spy, gathering intelligence so that he can one day prove the existence of the candy people and make it possible for the military to wipe them off the face of the planet.
After three straight sessions of mating, Jujy takes Franklin to a high peak overlooking the village.
“We can see the center of the village from up here,” she says. “But nobody will be able to see us.”
The village center is where most of the candy people live. The streets are paved with toffee bricks, the buildings are tall candy cane palaces, the gardens are well-manicured works of artwork filled with rainbow-colored flowers and chocolate statues of long dead candy sports heroes. Franklin records everything he sees into his computerized brain.
“What is that?” Franklin asks, pointing at the fanciest of buildings in the center of the square.
“That is the courthouse,” Jujy says. “It is where our leaders live and make laws. I hate keeping track of all the new laws.”
There is a smaller, bright banana yellow building next door to it.
“What about that one?” Franklin asks.
“That is the schoolhouse and library. I hate learning and reading books. Most of them are from the old human world.”
Beyond the square, there are large buildings in the distance. Their color: coffee-ice-cream-gray. Purple smoke billows out of large chimneys and forms clouds on the ceiling of the cavern.
“What about those buildings?” Franklin asks.
“They are the candy mills. All the young people work there until they are old enough to go on hunts themselves. I hated working in the candy mill.”
Closer to them, there is a field where several large candy men are playing some kind of sport. Many older candy men and younger candy women are watching from the sidelines. They are wearing pink and yellow uniforms
“What is that?” Franklin asks.
“They are playing jawbreaker ball,” she says. “I hate that game. It is an obsession among the males. That is what they do for fun.”
“What do the women do for fun?” Franklin asks.
“Women who have been taken as mates don’t do anything for fun unless it pleases their dominant. Women who do not have mates go to jawbreaker ball games in order to attract males. They spray their scents in their direction, hoping to draw males interested in taking them as their mates.”
“They want to be taken as mates?” Franklin asks.
“Most women are born to be submissives,” Jujy says. “But not me. I was born to be a dominant.”
“Why do most women want to be submissives? Do they enjoy being chained to bedposts?”
“Submissives don’t have to enjoy anything. It is their place to obey their dominant. I would like there to be more women who are dominants, but in this cave the women are encouraged to be weak at a very young age and the men are encouraged to be strong. If they weren’t influenced in this
way there would be more strong women in this cave.”
“Human children are influenced in a similar way,” Franklin says. “Our culture influences our young to fill certain gender roles, but it is much different than your culture. Men and women are considered equals in human society.”
“You mean there are an equal number of dominant women to dominant men in the human world?” Jujy asks, her eyes wide with interest.
“No, in human couplings the man and the woman are equals.”
“You mean two dominants will couple? Or two submissives? What is the point of that?”
“No,” Franklin says. “There are no dominants or submissives. Everyone is equal.”
“But if there is no dominant who provides the food?” she asks. “If there is no submissive who looks after the babies?”
“They usually share all of the work equally,” he says.
“But that’s stupid,” she says. “Dominants specialize in hunting. Submissives specialize in raising children. If both the dominants and submissives shared their coupling tasks neither would be very skilled at hunting or raising children. It is better to specialize. Then there will be one really good hunter and one really good child-raiser. I don’t see the point in having two hunters and two child-raisers.”
“The point is that the submissive would have more freedom,” Franklin says. “The submissive would lead a more happy, fulfilling life. The submissives would be able to choose their own mates. The submissive would be able
