March To The Stars

'What is it?' Dobrescu asked, setting down and laying out his med-scanner. The scanner could pick up a lot even from a distance, and it showed Denat's heart and metabolic rate off the scale. The Mardukan was actually at an elevated temperature compared to ambient, which was very unusual. 'Poertena said you'd been grouchy lately, and he told me about what just happened. I need to know what's going on.'

'It's ... a Mardukan thing,' Denat said. A shudder ran through his massive body.

'I kind of need to know a little more than that,' the medic persisted. 'I have to tell Captain Pahner something. That's a human thing.'

'It's nothing!' Denat shouted, banging all four fists on the massive, ironwood desk so furiously that the eight-hundred-kilo piece of furniture leapt into the air.

'Denat, according to my instruments, you're coming apart at the seams,' Dobrescu said mildly. 'Why not tell me what's wrong?'

'Because nothing's wrong,' the Mardukan ground out. 'This is perfectly normal.'

'Then what is it?' the warrant officer asked reasonably.

Denat looked at him, rubbing his hands together in distress. Then he sighed, and told him.

* * *

Pedi removed the rags from around the injury and dropped them into the solution the healer had given her, then reached for fresh dressings. She and the two other released slaves had been caring for Cord ever since the injury. The wound itself was mostly healed, but he still wouldn't awaken, and he was getting even more restless and warmer. Lately, though, she'd at least been able to get him to take a little food, and he'd been muttering under his breath. She'd picked up a few words of his home language before he was wounded, but not enough to recognize much of what he was saying, although the word 'banan' was close to 'benan,' so perhaps he was talking to her.

She opened a jar of lotion and began smoothing it on the dry patches in his skin. She'd picked up some of his background, more from talking to the humans and Denat than from him, and she realized what a valued person he must have been in his home country. To come to such knowledge as he had developed was hard for the sort of backcountry village from which he'd sprung, and men—warriors especially—who gathered that much training and understanding were extremely valuable to any tribe. She suspected that the human prince, surrounded as he was by a plethora of warriors and scholars, didn't know what a wrench it must have been for both Cord and his people to lose him.

And she had to admit that it would be a wrench for the human to lose him. And for her. The old shaman was one of the finest men she'd ever met; strong, yet gentle and wise. Knowledgeable, but physically brave, and often humble to a fault. It was hard to find such qualities anywhere, and she had to admit that they were even harder to find amongst the Shin than most places.

Because the medic didn't know if the increased body heat might cause mental damage—surely a horrible thought!—they had been wrapping the shaman's head in cool cloths. She started to replace the current cloths, then stopped with a gasp.

She laid her hands on the swellings at the base of the shaman's horns and felt a shudder pass through her body. She had to fight conflicting emotions, but finally she drew a deep breath, pulled back the light sheet that covered him, and took a peek before she quickly dropped it back again.

She sat back, thinking hard, and many things fell abruptly into place. She remembered what Light O'Casey had said about the language similarity, and she thought about the ramifications of the situation. She thought about them very carefully, and then, last of all, she thought of the sight of Cord coming over the railing of the pirate ship.

'Oh, Pedi, this is such a bad idea,' she whispered as she pulled the sheet all the way back.

* * *

'What we have here is a failure to communicate,' Dobrescu said with a chuckle.

He'd asked Captain Pahner, the sergeant major, and the prince to meet him in the stores office. They had —and they'd also reacted predictably to the sight of Denat's trembling body and bulging forehead.

'What the hell does that mean?' Roger demanded. 'Denat, are you okay?'

'Aside from wanting to kill you, I'm fine,' the Mardukan grated. 'And that has nothing to do with your being a prince. You just spoke to me, is all.'

'Is it a good idea to do this here?' Pahner asked.

'He should be fine,' Dobrescu said soothingly. 'And we'll leave in just a second. But the actual problem is fairly simple: he's in heat.'

'In what?' Kosutic asked. 'That's a ... Oh, yeah.'

'That's right. Mardukan 'males' are functionally and technically females, by our standards,' Dobrescu said. 'And vice versa. Denat's sex produces the eggs, the other sex produces the sperm. When the time comes, and the two, ahem, 'get together,' Denat's sex use their ... notable organs to implant their eggs in the other sex.

'He's currently ovulating. Which means, evolutionarily speaking, that he should be battling other 'males' for a chance to mate. Thus the horn prominences and other signs. Unfortunately ...'

'I have no mate here,' Denat growled. 'And I won't simply wander around, howling into the wilderness while I look for anything to couple with.'

'In a way, he ought to,' Dobrescu said. 'Mate, that is. From a population standpoint, it's a bad idea to take one of these guys out of the equation.'

'The problem of conservation you were talking about a while back,' Kosutic said.

'Yes, because the sex that produces the eggs only does so twice per year. If they don't implant the other sex, they lose the chance for a long period, statistically speaking,' Dobrescu said. 'The reason the Kranolta took such a beating after they overwhelmed Voitan was that their egg-producers were scattered all over hell and gone.'

'Can the—I have to think of them as females,' Pahner said. 'Can the females accept the eggs at any time?'

'Yes. They maintain a sort of 'sperm sac,' equivalent to the vans in humans,' Dobrescu said with a slight smile for the captain's obvious discomfort. 'The eggs are implanted by ... well, we've all seen the ovipositors. Once implanted, they're joined by the sperm in the region, and become fetuses. I've been looking forward to watching the development, but we've always missed that stage. There were some in development in Marshad, but I didn't get much of a look at them.'

'I didn't see them at all,' Kosutic said. 'Pregnant Mardukan females?'

'Yeah,' the medic said. 'The fetus sacs form what look like blisters on their backs.'

'So ...' Pahner began, then paused. 'I just discovered that I don't want to know the details. Or, at least, while I'll be interested in reading your report, I don't want to discuss it at the moment. Is this important to the mission?'

'Just from a medical perspective,' Dobrescu said. 'The only military consideration I see is that I wouldn't expect them to be much use from a military point of view during their heat.'

'Are all of them going to start acting like this?' Kosutic asked. 'Denat is a fairly controlled fellow, but if the Vashin and Diasprans get hit, we're going to have some big-time fights. I don't want to even try to imagine what Erkum Pol would be like, for example.'

'I don't know what their season is,' Dobrescu admitted. 'The Vashin and Diasprans, I mean. It could happen, and when it does, it will probably happen all at once. Denat's from a different area, and it seems to be seasonally affiliated. Which is probably all to the good at the moment. He's the only Mardukan from that area with us.'

'Wrong, Doc,' Roger said. 'Cord and Denat come from the same village.'

'Ouch!' Dobrescu grimaced and shook his head. 'Good point, Your Highness. I need to check him out and find out if he's got the same condition. If he does, it might explain some of the strange stuff that's been going on with him since he was hurt.'

'Please do,' Roger said, and stood up. 'Denat, sorry, man. Wish there was something we could do.'

'It's all right,' the Mardukan said. 'Now that I know what's going on, I can focus on controlling it.' He gave a gesture of rueful humor. 'I wish that I were in Marshad, though.'