To be in Xeqor in the greening of the springtime…

His mother’s rooftop garden would be in bloom. Amber could sit there, doing domestic things as she grew his son (he had only the vaguest notion of what these things might be). Some days, he would visit and prove he was not the mannerless brunt that life in the wildlands so often made him seem by reading with her or teaching her to play Towers or Crown-Me. And some days, he would visit and prove he was exactly that bruntish by having sex with her right there on the rooftop, spilling Crown-Me pieces simply everywhere.

It stabbed him, in some hot, unexpected way. Stabbed and twisted, not with lust, but with a kind of ferocious joy that lingered on in echoes after the vision itself faded away. Meoraq turned around and strode, not back along his wandering trail, but through stale snow and over iced rock directly to his cave. Amber tried to chat at him when he arrived, but the only thing Meoraq wanted to know was whether she’d eaten. As soon as he’d determined that she had, he took his wife to bed and it was there, after far too short a sleep, that Meoraq was awakened by Amber’s hand firmly gripping his shoulder.

“Start without me,” he mumbled.

“I think we need to talk.”

Nothing good ever came of a conversation that began that way.

“I am agreed that we shall begin our preparations to leave,” he told her, still not bothering to open his eyes. “But I am not doing anything more tonight.”

“No, we need to talk about…um…babies.”

“Oh.” With effort, Meoraq woke himself all the way and rolled onto his back so he could at least attempt to look at her. “As near as any man can make a promise in Gann’s land, I promise you we’ll be home before you carry heavy. Eh?” He patted her thigh. “Now go to sleep.”

“I really want to talk about this,” she said quietly.

He caught the sigh before it could get him into trouble and rolled his hand at her invitingly. “I’m listening.”

But she just lay there and frowned at him for several long moments. Meoraq waited her out in comfortable silence, moving his eyes sleepily over the mess of her hair and trying to imagine it in drapes over the cushions on the bed where he and his father and all the sons of Uyane were born.

“Do you…” she began at last, waking him from an open-eyed doze. “Do you really think…we’re going to have a baby?”

“Is that a serious question?” he asked, smiling.

“Do I look like I’m kidding around?”

“You look—” He pulled her close enough for a nibble at her scarred shoulder. “—like a woman who has been burning hot with her man.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I believe I just answered your question.”

“We had sex. That doesn’t mean we’re having a baby.”

Half-asleep and not thinking clearly, Meoraq was startled into laughter. He quickly cupped the end of his snout, but the damage was done.

“It. Doesn’t,” she said, with that icy enunciation that meant she was very annoyed with him. “I can’t have your baby, Meoraq.”

“Of course you can. Don’t worry, Soft-Skin. I suppose it’s the sort of thing women get nervous about the first time, but you’ll do fine.” He patted her thigh again.

“You’re not listening. I can’t be pregnant. You,” she said with curious emphasis, “can’t make me pregnant.”

“God would seem to disagree.”

She clapped her hands over her face and mumbled, “You’re giving me a brain tumor,” through them.

Watching her take deep, calming breaths, Meoraq decided it was just possible that, no matter how freely she said the word, she might not know what sex really meant. “Come, wife,” he said, reaching out to catch her wrist until she allowed him to unmask her. “I don’t pretend to understand what’s upsetting you, but I’m willing to thrash it out if you are. Tell me plainly what you are thinking.”

“You and I can’t make a baby.”

“All right.” He took a moment to collect his thoughts and conquer his discomfort, and then said, speaking slowly, “Sex…is the mechanical means by which a baby is created.”

Her mouth opened, just a little, but no sound came out.

Encouraged, he went on. “When Sheul wishes a man and woman to produce a child, He sets the spark of that life within the man’s, ah, fluid, which is called ‘semen’.”

Amber clapped her hand over her eyes, then splayed it so as to stare at him through her fingers.

“This spark burns in his belly, causing him to desire sex. With Sheul’s blessing, the man will release that spark with his, er, semen, and if the woman is also blessed, she will conceive by him. How do you mark me?”

She continued to stare, although she did drop her hand. “I know,” she said at long, long last, “where babies come from. But you can’t really think that’s the only reason people have sex! We’re just doing it because it’s fun!”

“Each man’s clay desires its own gratification,” Meoraq admitted. “To eat beyond its fill, to take strong drink, to pollute the mind with poisons, and yes, to take the lustful pleasure that comes from Gann. That may take the form of sex, but it is no more than animal mating and it will corrupt beyond forgiveness if indulged. What we have, Soft-Skin, we have with God’s blessing and with His holy fires comes the promise of new life.”

She only looked at him, her thoughts in motion and her face unsmiling. “I can’t have your babies, Meoraq,” she said at last. “I can never have your babies.”

“Why do you keep saying this?”

“We’re two completely different species.”

He waited, but that seemed to be all. “Are we not both children of Sheul?”

“That’s like saying that since God made both tachuqis and saoqs, they should be able to have children too!”

“They could,” he said, “if Sheul wished it.”

She put a hand over her eyes hard enough to make a slapping sound.

“You’re a good man,” she said finally, without uncovering her eyes. “Strong. Brave. Noble, in a weird, hyperviolent kind of way. And I know you can be a smart man if you really, really tried.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought there might be an insult hidden in all that praise.

She lowered her hand and looked at him. “I can talk myself blue in the face and never convince you, so just think about it. Think hard. Don’t just throw it all up there in the name of God, look at the evidence. Think. Don’t pray. Think.”

“If it will put your mind at ease, I’ll meditate upon your words.”

“Meditate.” She covered her eyes with another slapping sound. “I don’t know why I bother. You see God in everything.”

“Sheul is in everything.” Meoraq sighed and rubbed at his brow-ridges. “You are so good at seeing evidence. How can you not see that?”

She dropped her hand to her thigh. That also made a slapping sound. “Because it’s ridiculous. People happen, Meoraq. People make babies. People make the rules. And then people make up gods so they have someone else to blame when things don’t go right.”

“No,” he said simply. “All things fall according to His ultimate plan.”

“Oh for…Listen to yourself! Listen to what you’re saying to me!”

“I hear it.”

“Do you? Do you really? So, according to you, God wanted you and me together. With the infinite power at his disposal, he made a planet clear across the fucking galaxy and then he allowed it to get completely trashed so that we would have a reason to leave it, and then, oh yeah, he killed my mother just when the technology to leave the planet came along, all so he could put me on that ship and then lob a meteor at it, so it would break just enough to go careening out of control through space but still stay together long enough to land, killing all the apparently superfluous people—Do you know who those people were?” she demanded suddenly. “Do you know who your killer God chose to wipe off on the surface of your fucking planet like a booger on a bathroom wall? They were the families, Meoraq! They were the children! They were the pregnant women who supposedly conceived with his very fucking temporary blessing. There were also thousands of them, but hey, at least I got to walk away and meet you and then lose all the distracting other people God had no use for, including my sister, and all this, Meoraq, all this so that you and I could make a baby?”