THRAX Read online

  I didn’t want to fade away; I wanted to walk away. And that meant I had to decide on something else to do with my life once I stopped playing. That was when I thought I’d like to have a child, to be a mother. And I wanted a child with the best man I could find. If I’m honest, I guess in some ways I can be a bit of vain, proud person. I’ve always wanted the best of everything and always looked for it. And usually gotten it.

  Thrax, I’m sorry if that makes me sound like I think you’re some kind of trophy, or something else I’ve won. I don’t want you to think of it that way…”

  Thrax nodded no. “That does not offend me either. As a Knight, I take greater offense at settling for mediocrity than at reaching for excellence. We are not trained to settle, either. We are taught that excellence exists; it is in us, and it is our duty to bring it out. We are trained to be the best and to seek the best. The Knighthood is not for the unambitious.”

  With a little exhale, Agena said, “I’m glad you understand.”

  He continued, “That part I understand. The part that makes me curious is this choice, this exact choice, to become a mother with a man of my type. It is a big galaxy, filled with choices and possibilities. You could have done anything, become anything. If you no longer wanted to play sphereball you could have become a trainer of those new, young players coming in behind you and taught them to be as great as you.

  You could have entered a different sport. Or you could have become an explorer, discovering or studying new worlds, perhaps as a member of the Colonial Expeditions. There are so many other things. Why this?”

  Agena hoped she did not sound as anxious as she now felt. She was suddenly not liking the tenor of this conversation very much. “All those things are wonderful, Thrax. I agree. But having a child… I guess, once I had what I wanted most in life and I knew it wasn’t going to be forever, I started to think about what else I’d want. And that was when…

  Maybe you’d call it something waking up inside of me, something that had been asleep all this time, or something that was there all along that I didn’t know about. I just realized one day that someday I’d like to have some other part of me, not something that I won, but something that I’d made, or created; another life that I could care for and teach and play with and help, that might go out and do something good in the world the way I’ve tried to do.

  Or maybe even do something better than I’ve ever done. The love you put into a child goes out beyond you, to everyone and everything the child touches. It’s something I want, Thrax. And I guess I wanted to make that little life with a man who was already something more than I am.”

  Thrax now wore the most serious expression she had yet seen on him. “You see me and my kind as something more than human?”

  “I guess I do,” she said.

  As honest as ever, he replied, “We’re not, you know. We’re as human as you. We have the same fears and hurts and hates as you. It’s only that we’re something else alongside our humanity. It does not make us any more or any less human. The fact that we’ve taken the measures we have to keep our world in growth should tell you that.”

  Agena blinked again, her brows arching. “The Lottery, you mean? Are you saying you don’t like the Courtship Lottery? That you don’t approve of it?”

  The beginnings of a frown showed on Thrax’s handsome face. “If I am honest, it has always troubled me. I have spent my life from adolescence until now, avoiding it. I’ve deferred it all these years, held it at bay. My status as a Knight and being stationed on other planets has helped me to defer it. Only now, I can’t hold it at bay any longer. It is my sworn duty to serve my world in whatever way I am called to serve. And now I am called to this.”

  She was now genuinely alarmed and fighting to stay calm. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, now of all times. “Then…you don’t actually want a child? You don’t really want to be a father?”

  Carefully, thoughtfully, Thrax replied, “Having a child is something that everyone imagines, I think. Even if we never intend to have a family, I think that we all entertain the idea. It’s a natural thing, to try to imagine how it would be to have a child and do what you described: protecting it, teaching it, playing with it, helping it, sending it out into the world and hoping that it will do good things. Loving it. It is the most natural thing in the world. And yet…it is not something I have ever really needed. The Knighthood has always been more than enough for me. I’ve never needed fatherhood.”

  Agena felt a sudden chill in spite of the perfectly maintained temperature. She settled back in her seat, hoping she did not look as pale as she suddenly felt. She wanted to open another bottle of wine and drink and drink and never stop. Feebly, she said, “Oh. I didn’t realize…”

  “There was no way you could know,” said Thrax. “This Lottery of ours selects people at random, complete strangers with no knowledge of one another, and tosses them together expecting them to produce children to stop our planet’s stagnating. It is a pragmatic thing to do. It is even a pleasurable thing to do. All around us now are people pleasuring one another in the interest of keeping our world vital. But when I ask myself if this is the way it ought to be…I find I don’t care for the answer.”

  For one of the few times in her adult life, Agena felt like crying, but she’d be damned if she would give in to the impulse now. Instead, she said, “Then, to you…this is nothing but a duty.”

  Thrax’s pain mirrored her own. “I’m sorry, Agena, sorry if this hurts you. But you needed to know. I couldn’t be so dishonest as to not let you know.”

  “I appreciate your honesty,” she said, suddenly feeling as hollow inside as she had felt excited and aroused just a few minutes ago. How could everything have changed so quickly?

  “Perhaps there is a way I could make you understand me in this,” Thrax said. “You remember the history of Earth, correct?”

  “Yes, I know history. What has history got to do with…?”

  “Please, just hear me out. You know that hundreds of years ago, in one of the old nations, there was a time when some people in power saw women as things to dominate and control and even use and abuse as they saw fit. And they believed that a woman’s body was not really her domain and that she should have no say in what she did with it, that a woman’s body was rightly the domain of a man or even the state.

  And they tried to make laws to compel a woman to reproduce, even if it was against her will. They said it was about the children, but it was actually about the women, about the way women saw themselves and the power that men wanted over them. Imagine yourself in a place where you were told that your body was not your own possession and that it was not for you to say what you did with it. How would you feel?”

  Apprehensively, she asked, “So, you’re saying you feel now the way some women felt on Earth when people tried to take their rights over their own bodies away from them?”

  “I’m saying that I am a Knight and I’m proud of it. I’m saying that I’ve committed my life to protecting and serving my world and my people. This is the only life I’ve ever wanted, and it is a life that I love. But in commanding me to surrender my body for breeding, my world is telling me that I am not its protector but its property.

  I gave myself freely into the life that I lead. Now my world says I must give myself into a different purpose, and not one that I have chosen. If I refuse this duty, I may no longer be a Knight. I’ll be stripped of badge and armor, and the life that I love will be behind me. And I do not know who or what I’ll be then.”

  Agena protested, “But you wouldn’t have to give up your whole life for it. You wouldn’t even have to marry me. Thrax, I could keep the child and have full custody. Or we could share custody. If you didn’t want to commit to living with us and raising the child together, you could be as much a part of the child’s life as you wanted. You could still stay a Knight and still do what you love. I’d never ask you to give that up.”

  Thrax shook his head decisively. “That is
easy enough to say, but think of the child. Think of the absence of a father in a child’s life. No matter how well a mother alone may raise a child, no matter how happy the child may be with only the mother, the absence of the father will always be felt. There will always be that one empty space in the child’s heart that only the father can fill.

  And that space, left empty too much, may be a very painful emptiness. I think of the pain and the wanting, and I think of a child wondering where the father is and why the father does not want to be with him or her. And I think of what that can do to a child, however loving the mother may be.

  And when I imagine that life for a child of mine, I cannot bear it. The only answer would be my renouncing the Knighthood and the two of us being married. And I say this very sincerely, Agena: in the heart of my heart, I have always believed that the one and the only reason to marry is for love. Not duty, not obligation, not even the well-being of a child—but for love.”

  Agena felt something crumbling inside her, whether it was her heart or her hopes or only the fulfillment of her desire for the man across the table from her. She said, “And you and I aren’t lovers. We’re only a couple that the Courting computers chose for each other.”

  “Yes.”

  “There is one other answer,” she ventured.

  “What?”

  “As the aspirant, I have the right to select myself out, to back out. I can void the selection and request another Lottery. There’ll be questions asked and there’ll be some noses out of joint, but I can handle that. Would that leave you free to go back to the Knighthood and not have to give up your life?”

  He shook his head again. “This is something that very rarely happens, Agena. It happens so seldom that it’s hardly ever discussed. In the event that you voided the selection, we would both be paired with others. You would be free to mate with another Lacertan, even a Knight or one of the Corps if you still wanted one. And the Lottery would simply present me with another human female, and my orders would be to breed with her as I would with you.”

  She could only imagine that she now looked as pained as she felt. “Then what are we going to do, Thrax? I don’t want to go into this with you if it’s not what you want.”

  “I don’t know what we can do,” he replied sadly. “But I do want you to know one thing. Had you and I met under any other circumstances, had we found each other in any other way…we would even now be on our way to bed. And I would give you nights and days such as you would not soon forget.”

  For a moment, she said nothing. She only returned to imagining being in bed with Thrax, knowing that the reality of it would surpass his words. And inside, she continued to crumble. In a sad, low voice, she finally spoke: “I think we both have some things to think about before we go any further.”

  “I believe so.”

  “This isn’t the way I wanted this evening to end,” she admitted.

  “I know, Agena,” he said. “And I know that if we were to go to bed now, we would please one another, perhaps better than anyone has ever pleased us before. I find you exceptionally beautiful, especially now. And only my discipline stops me coming round this table and taking you before we even have a chance to reach a bed.”

  She faced him with only an ache left in her heart where her hopes had been. “You’d be wonderful, Thrax. I know you would. And I’d be wonderful for you. I knew that as soon as you came across that bridge and joined me on the platform. I thought, ‘Here is not just the father of my child. Here’s the best lover I’ll ever have.’

  I still believe that. But for something that special, it has to be mutual—mutual in every way. If we’re only together in one way, it won’t be everything it ought to be. So we’re both going to have to think hard about what it is we want.”

  Agena rose from the table, and Thrax gallantly rose with her. She told him, “We need some time to ourselves, to think it over. I’m sorry you’re in this position, Thrax. I wish I could release you from it completely. But I really hoped I could be something besides just your duty. I’ll be on my side of the suite. Good night, Thrax.”

  “Good night, Agena,” he replied. He wanted to tell her to sleep well, but he knew that she would sleep no better than he would tonight.

  Thrax watched her step off the balcony and into the suite, and the sinking of his heart matched the sinking of the orange Lacertan sun on the horizon far beyond the grounds of the Chateau. And if the truth be told, his heart was not the only part of Thrax that was sinking. Some other part of him, down lower on his body, felt the same way.

  The deep blue and pink sky of twilight yielded to the violet-blue of dusk and finally to star-dappled indigo. Thrax sat back down at the table and looked out over the grounds, now shining with the golden lights of the night.

  A soft, warm wind stirred the trees and blew over the balcony, and Thrax thought he could just barely hear the moans of some couple’s thrashing ardor somewhere nearby. He multiplied that soft but urgent sound by however many other couples must surely be conjoining at the Chateau at this moment. And in spite of everything, he wished that he and Agena were joining them.

  *

  Agena sat up in bed, feeling as dejected and morose as it was possible for her to be.

  It had all been going so well. Thrax had been a bit formal at first, yes. And he had been mannered and courtly and decorous. She had accepted that, even found it charming. He was a Knight of Lacerta, after all, and they generally had a way of comporting themselves. Mighty warriors that they were, the Lacertan Knights also tended to be the very soul of civility and dignity. She had learned that from those of Thrax’s peers that she had known.

  But she had also learned that there was another side to them. Thrax had told her that there came a point when a Knight was not so decorous and courtly. They were as dominating in sex as they were aggressive in battle. When the armor skin came off and a Knight was ready to deploy the weapon of his maleness, his bedmate became the absolute captive of his desire. And Agena was ready and willing to surrender unconditionally…

  …until he had told her how he really felt. And it had killed her arousal as surely as if he had run her through with his multiblade.

  That left her where she was now, in bed, sitting up by herself, still in the gown that she had worn for the express purpose of offering herself up for pillage and plunder, where she had expected by now to be naked under his awesome nakedness with her legs in the air, submitting to Thrax’s every thrusting demand.

  How had it all taken so sharp and shocking a turn? How had it come to this? Agena cursed herself on some level for being so naive as to expect the course of sex with this weredragon to run as smoothly as it had with the others. And yet, this of all times, it should have been even more certain.

  This was not just the meeting of two would-be lovers. This was not even a date. This was arranged, ordained, and sanctioned sex. It was the entire reason they had been introduced. It was not really naive at all to think she should even now be the recipient of Thrax’s pumping, pounding ardor. And truthfully, she could not even blame him for the things he had said, the way he felt. He had a point.

  …in commanding me to surrender my body for breeding, my world is telling me that I am not its protector but its property. That was what he had said. And damned if he wasn’t right. Agena realized what he was really saying. The custom of his people was essentially putting Thrax to pasture, using him for stud service. Treating him as breeding stock. Why shouldn’t he object to such a thing? Why shouldn’t he see it as a trespass on his very dignity?

  At the moment, the only thing that surprised Agena was that more members of the Knights and the Corps, and more of the Lacertan population in general, did not object to this whole system of Lottery and Courtship. Or, if they did object, that they were not a great deal more vocal about it than they were. There was an element of the violation of people’s rights about this whole thing, and in her eagerness to become a mother, Agena had completely overlooked it.

  Lac
erta was a free society, after all. It was not a dictatorship; it was not under absolute rule without the consent of the governed. The people of this planet seemed to have willingly entered into this system and been willingly complying with it for generations. Was it only the fear of their society and economy collapsing, their world and their very lives falling into ruin, that had brought such compliance? Was the sheer will to survive really so strong that people would hand over their reproductive freedom for it?

  Agena thought long and hard about the question. Mating, reproduction, and child rearing: these were among the strongest and most powerful drives in all of life. They were basic, not only to humans but to every other species that humanity had ever encountered in its travels.