Abasio was still worrying the problem. “I understand Justinian having the right genetics, but my family was never anywhere near Norland . . .”
Xulai said, “Huold had seven sons. Both he and they traveled all over the map, Abasio. Women liked him and he liked women. If you could trace it back, you’d find that your mother or father or both had Huold as an ancestor. And the line may have inbred several times, as well. As soon as we have a few sea eggs to distribute, we want to take them to Norland. But, Precious Wind, we can’t ignore the threat of that monster . . .”
Precious Wind made a face. “I know. Clan Do-Lok has been talking about it. They’ll want to meet with the emissary as soon as he gets here. He’s the only one who’s actually seen the thing. It killed Bear plus several of our best fighters, and quite frankly that terrifies us because it means it’s going to be very hard to trap the thing or kill it. It hates Tingawans, and we’d rather set a Tingawan trap in Norland than here, for obvious reasons. It might decide to destroy the whole country if it were here, and maybe it actually has the means to do so. We don’t know what it’s capable of. However, I don’t think our people will like the idea of you or any sea-fertile woman going into danger. They want to figure something else out.”
They left it at that. The following day, Xulai joined Precious Wind in providing the sea eggs to a dozen young Tingawan men and women, all very serious, several of them seeming to be in a state of exaltation. Xulai wondered at this until she realized that, of course, these were to be the parents of the whole race. It would be a very great honor to have been chosen. They were eager to question her about how she had felt.
“I felt strange,” she said. “I think you may, too. Try very hard just to relax and let it happen, because otherwise you’ll upset everyone and they’ll wonder if they’ve chosen the right people.”
As it turned out, she had given this advice to the wrong people. The scientists who had run the program descended upon the poor young people with a battery of tests and hours of questioning. The young people, already struggling to adapt, felt irritated and unresponsive, and this in turn made the questioners doubtful, itchy, and more demanding. Precious Wind wanted to compare this with Xulai’s experience, and she began going back and forth with suggestions and questions.
Xulai, suddenly aware of what was happening, went furiously off to find Lok-i-xan.
“Grandfather, your people are very smart and very interested, and they chose the twelve people by doing all that preselection stuff, testing for compatibility and so on, but now instead of trusting their process, they’re fiddling with it, and they’re driving the young people crazy. If anyone had treated me like that, I’d have jumped off a cliff! You’ve got to make people leave them alone!”
“Tingawans are not perfect,” he said, half-amused. “Most humans behave in the way you have described, particularly people who have spent a large part of their lives on a single project. They have a great deal invested in those young people and, unfortunately, they regard them as experimental subjects.”
“Well they’d better disregard them as such,” said Xulai emphatically. “That was the one thing I really had trouble with. I could face danger. I could stand confusion. I even managed to deal with betrayal, even though it still makes me cry every time I think about Bear and what he did, but it was the idea that people were herding me like a goat or sheep that I really objected to.”
This meeting ended with her kissing her grandfather and promising to hold her temper.
“And I promise to keep the experimenters away from the subjects,” he said.
“They’re not subjects!” she snarled, forgetting her promise. “You see, even you’re doing it.”
Precious Wind and her colleagues were instructed to leave the sea-fertile people alone. Left alone, each one of the twelve managed to cope, either alone or with one another’s help. Over the next few days there was a good deal of group talk and group strolling and group eating and drinking tea, often with Xulai and Abasio. Within ten days six couples had coalesced from within the group, and Precious Wind had started to relax and spend more time with her wolves.
“We’ll have to take a ship to get back to Norland, won’t we?” Abasio commented to Xulai as they lay on their comfortable bed, looking out into the garden. “Blue was asking. He’s just recovered from being seasick last time.”
Xulai murmured, “We can’t really talk about going until you’ve made the sea change.”
His mind balked. He felt it happen. He’d seen Blue balk like that, stop dead when there was nothing much in front of him, and the comparison bothered him momentarily. “Why is it dependent upon that?” he asked. “You didn’t do it until you had to. Perhaps I won’t be able to do it until I have to, assuming it works at all. I’m the first male they’ve tried it on, remember.”
“That’s why,” she said rather sadly. “You’re the first one, and we have to know it works before I’ll go back. Why should I go, otherwise? Danger. Possible death. For what? I had a dream last night. I dreamed we got there and you couldn’t change. If you can’t change, it means giving eggs to the men may not work. You and my father have never changed even though you can supposedly father children who can change. Grandfather says the change part comes only from a sea egg. We need at least
