He approached a gap between two tall trees. On the far side he saw Rival, standing upright, genitals pinkly visible, rubbing his scent markers on the bark. Rival barked a contemptuous challenge.
Without hesitating, Noth took a final huge swing. The branch flexed and hurled him on a smooth parabola high into the air. For a few heartbeats he flew, tail held high, hands and feet held out before him ready to grasp.
His head was filled with the stink of estrus. He had had an erection since he had woken this morning. Even now, as he sailed from tree to tree, his penis stuck out before him, pink and solid. He had yet to succeed in battling his way through the crowding males to get to a receptive female, and he felt as if his belly would burst if he didn’t succeed soon. But even as he was consumed with inchoate lust, still he relished the power of his lithe body as he hurled it through the forest domain for which it was exquisitely adapted.
Noth had never felt so alive.
Noth landed in Rival’s tree, just where he had aimed. He grasped the branches with faultless positioning of his hands and feet. But immediately Rival was on him.
Facing each other they stood upright, their spindly erections poking out. Noth, tail held erect, stalked toward Rival, vigorously rubbing his groin against the tree bark, chattering and barking. Rival responded in kind. It was a ritualized encounter, each of them responding to the other’s movements in a kind of dance: tail waft followed by groin rub, wrist spread provoking a spitting glare.
Soon the air was filled with their angry stink. They came close enough for Noth to feel the tips of the other’s bristling fur, and Rival’s spittle sprayed his face.
Rival was about the same age as Noth, about the same size. He had joined the troop a little earlier than Noth and his sister. To him, Noth had invaded a troop that he had come to regard as 'his.' Noth and Rival were too similar, like brothers, too close to be anything but enemies.
Rival was marginally bigger and heavier than Noth, and if anything he had done better in the early-season feeding. But Noth’s difficult year had forged an inner toughness, and he stood his ground.
Psychology won out. Rival subsided suddenly, his display collapsing. He turned his back on Noth and, briefly, symbolically, displayed his pink backside in a curt gesture of submission.
Noth hooted, relishing his moment. Briskly he rubbed his wrists over Rival’s back, marking his victory with his scent, and released a stream of urine. Then he let Rival slink away along the branch toward a cluster of berries.
Rival would come to no harm. He would skulk alone in his tree for a time, perhaps feeding, withdrawing for a while from the fray. But his chances of mating were for a few hours reduced. Noth’s urine would make him briefly sterile; it would even reduce his ability to make the special trilling calls used by the males to attract females.
For Noth it was a valid strategy. Today it was impossible for any male, however heroically he tried, to cover all the females. But he could reduce the number of competing males with such sensory intimidation.
With Rival defeated, Noth’s penis throbbed anew; soon he would at last attain the satisfaction he craved. With fast, vigorous swings he hurled himself through the branches, across the forest toward the place the females clustered.
But he was not aware of the grim battle taking place there.
Still immersed in his females, the Emperor finished yet another mating. His penis raw and dangling, he stalked among the females, cuffing and snapping at any male he could reach.
And suddenly he found himself facing Solo.
The aging Emperor hauled himself upright, bared his teeth, and let his glands pump out still more of his potent musk. Hair bristling, muzzle working, he was a magnificent sight, enough to intimidate any other male.
Any but Solo.
Solo had spent a comfortable winter in a burrow with a female band not far from here. As soon as the light had returned he had joined in the early feeding, rapidly building his body to the peak of strength and power he had enjoyed last year.
And he had begun his roaming. Already today he had planted offspring in half a dozen females throughout the forest. Now he had come to take more — once he had eliminated the opposition.
Solo lunged at the Emperor, ramming his scarred muzzle into his belly.
The Emperor was knocked flat on his back on the branch, winded, and might have fallen from the tree if his quick-working primate hands had not scrabbled at the bark. He was as much shocked by the sudden physical assault as hurt. Save for cuffs and slaps by food-monopolizing females, and occasional inadvertent blows from other males, nobody had ever deliberately hurt him in his life.
But it was not over.
With a bound, almost graceful for a creature his size, Solo jumped on the Emperor. He sat on the older male’s chest, compressing the Emperor’s fragile ribs. The Emperor screamed. He chuffed and panted, and he beat at Solo’s back. If he had used all his strength he might yet have driven the other off. But to injure another went against his instincts, and his punches were weak, his blows ineffective.
He had missed his chance.
Solo bent forward and pushed his muzzle into the Emperor’s crotch. He teased aside fur that was stiff with semen and the vaginal fluids of several females. With a brisk, practiced lunge, he bit into the Emperor’s scrotal sac, severing one testicle.
The Emperor howled, thrashing. Blood gushed, mingling with the mating fluids on his fur.
Solo climbed easily away. With a single firm motion of his foot, he pushed the Emperor off the branch. The older male’s body went crashing through the foliage beneath, plummeting toward the ground. Then Solo spat out the bloody testicle, letting it fall into the green below.
Solo advanced on Right, Noth’s sister, one of the youngest of the females. He fingered his rapidly swelling penis, preparing to take her.
But now here was Noth, young, eager, horny, plummeting out of the air to land at Solo’s feet. Solo turned like a tank turret to face this new challenger.
Noth hadn’t known Solo was here. But he remembered him.
Noth was a creature of the here and now. He had no real conception of yesterday or tomorrow, and his memory was not arranged in an orderly narrative; it was more like a corridor of vivid images, rendered in sight and scent. But the powerful stink of Solo brought images flooding back, shards and glimpses of that dreadful day in another part of the forest, his mother’s despairing howl as she fell into the pit of teeth.
Conflicting impulses surged through him. He should display, stink-fight — or else he should show his submission to this powerful creature, just as Rival had submitted to him.
But
And here was Right, Noth’s only kin, cowering in the foliage at Solo’s feet. Here were the females with whom he had lived for half a year, and whose swelling pudenda had filled him with anticipatory lust for days, weeks — and here was this monster, Solo, who had destroyed everything he had grown up with.
He stood upright and howled.
Solo, startled, hesitated.
Noth’s wrists and crotch itched with musk. He performed a frantic, one-second display, an accelerated demonstration of his power and youth. Then, blindly, not understanding what he was doing, he lowered his head and barged at Solo’s midriff. With a gasping hoot, Solo was knocked backward, finishing on his back in a clump of foliage.
If he had followed up, Noth could have capitalized on his surprise attack. But he had never fought a physical fight in his life. And Solo, with the instincts of an experienced fighter, twisted and slammed his knee against Noth’s temple. Noth went down face first and instinctively scrabbled for a hold. An immense mass crashed into his back, crushing him against the bark. And now Noth felt Solo’s incisors sink into the soft flesh of his neck. He screamed at the sharp pain. He twisted and thrashed. He could not shake off Solo — but the vigor of his movements tipped them both off the narrow branch.
Hooting, with Solo’s teeth ripping at his flesh, Noth found himself plummeting through layers of foliage and twigs.
They crashed to the ground, their fall scarcely cushioned by the rotting leaf cover. But Solo was shaken free, his clenched jaw giving one last rip at Noth’s shoulder. Solo made his own display of aggression. He roared, an ugly, unstructured noise. He stood upright and hammered his small fists into the detritus at his feet; bits of leaf flew everywhere, surrounding him in a loose, sunlit cloud.
It was a battle of two small creatures. But much larger animals, watching timidly, backed away from Solo’s ferocity.
It was a one-sided contest. Solo advanced on Noth, stalking out of the settling leaf fragments. Noth watched, not even displaying, as if hypnotized. He looked down in horror at his shoulder, where a flap of skin hung loose and blood soaked into his fur.
But now a burly mass came flying at Solo. It was the Emperor. Even as the blood continued to gush from his ragged scrotum, the big notharctus slammed feetfirst into Solo’s back, knocking him flat, facedown in the debris.
This time Noth did not hesitate. He threw himself at Solo and began to pummel his back and shoulders with feet, hands, and muzzle. The Emperor joined in — and so did more of the males, until Solo was immersed beneath a blanket of hooting, jostling, inexperienced assailants. Any one of them Solo would have defeated — but not all of them together. Under the rain of inexpertly aimed blows, it was impossible even for him to rise.
At last he burrowed like a taeniodont through the forest floor detritus, out from under the clamoring pack. By the time the ragged army had noticed he was gone, that their punches and kicks were either landing in the dirt or on each other, Solo was limping away.
Aching, battered, Noth clambered back into the tree. When he got there he found the females grooming each other calmly, picking bits of dried semen out of their crotch hair, as if the combat beneath had never taken place. The Emperor was sitting quietly with the female Biggest. His flow of blood had stilled — but his copulatory campaign was suspended forever.
And here was Rival, vigorously covering Right. Noth saw his sister’s face buried in her own chest hair, low squeaks of pleasure emanating from her throat. Noth felt an oddly warm glow. He was not driven by jealousy of other males over his sister — even of this male whom he had bested, and who had apparently recovered very quickly. A deeper biochemical part of him recognized that with his sister pregnant, the line would go on: the shining unbroken molecular thread that stretched from Purga, through this moment lit by the low polar sun, on into unimaginable futures.
He heard a remote lowing. It was the call of a moeritherium, the matriarch of a migrant herd, walking slowly up from the south. With the return of the herds, summer had truly come again. And from all over the forest came a high keening: It was the song of the notharctus, a song of loneliness and wonder.
In just a few years Noth’s life would be over. Soon his kind would be gone too, their descendants transmuted into new forms; and soon, as Earth cooled from this midsummer peak, even the polar forest would shrivel and die. But for now — bloodied, panting, his fur covered with leaf mold — this was Noth’s moment, his day in the light.
The huge female Big approached him. He trilled gently. With a glance into his eyes, she turned her back and presented to him. Noth entered her quickly, and his world dissolved into unthinking pleasure.
