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.It waslove, I like to think that drove us together that day in the hut.We rutted quickly like beasts, and it wasan artless but ecstatic copulation.Unlike most women, Katharine was quick and easy to arouse.However, once her blood was hot she liked to spread her pleasure out for hours, savoring eachmoment one by one.This had often annoyed me because I was always eager for the finish, for thatblinding moment when our ecstasy crescendoed and we died the little death together.I was eager forecstasy, and we had only a few moments, so we thrust furiously, in rhythm, pushing and panting andsweating.Her heels were hard against the backs of my legs as she urged on and on.I must havekicked aside the old furs covering the floor because I felt my naked toes gripping and digging into thesnow.I was dying to be done, and I moved faster, moaning like a beast."No, wait," she said, and Iopened my eyes, and she opened hers, staring through me into herself, into her luminous, crystallineinterior where she could view her own pleasure as a voyeur peers at a rutting couple through a crackin an icy wall.But I was dying and I couldn't think of waiting; I couldn't think of anything at all.Igasped to feel myself hot and alive inside her, burning drops of life leaving me in spasms.We gaspedtogether too loud and too long, but I did not care.Afterwards she lay still for a long time, clutching the back of my neck, opening and closing herfingers.She seemed both sad and amused; her face was open with resignation and anxiety, but with,happiness, too."Oh, Mallory," she said, "poor Mallory." I wondered if what we had done hadhappened against her will, but then I remembered she was a scryer who denied her individual will."It's all so intense for you, isn't it?" she said.When she held her hands over her eyes and shook withboth laughter and tears, I realized that I would never understand her.She separated from me and stood up to dress.She turned to me, whispering her scryer's whisper:"How I loved the memory of the last you; how I always shall." Then she fled from the hut, leaving meto renew the oilstones' flames, which had burned too brightly and were pale yellow and dim.Chapter 13HungerIf we become too many, we will kill all the mammoth and have to hunt silk belly and shagshay for food.And whenthey are gone, we will have to cut holes in the ice of the sea so to spear the seals when they come up to breathe.When the seals are gone, we will be forced to murder Kikilia, the whale, who is wiser than we and as strong asGod.When all the animals are gone, we will dig tangleroot and eat the larvae of furflies and break our teethgnawing the lichen from the rocks.At last we will be so many, we will murder the forests to plant snow apple sothat men will come to lust for land, and some men will come to have more land than others.And when there is noland left, the stronger men will get their sustenance from the labor of weaker men, who will have to sell theirwomen and children so that they might have mash to eat.The strongest men will make war on each other so thatthey might have still more land.Thus we will become hunters of men and be doomed to hell in living and hell onthe other side.And then, as it did on Earth before the time of the Swarming, fire will rain from the sky and theDevaki will be no more.from the Life of Lokni the Unlucky, as told by Yuri the WiseA few days later I confessed everything to Bardo.Because he was as terrified of his own mortality asanyone I have ever known, he pretended to boredom and a false calm when I told him of myexperience in Shanidar's chamber, my great "vastation," as he called it.But he was more than curiousto hear the details of my tryst with Katharine.Upon learning that we had been lovers since the nightwe received our pilot's rings, he was full of advice. "Your jealousy unmans you, Little Fellow.Let her swive as many men as she needs to - why elsedid we come here? A man should love women, of course, but he should not love a woman too well.Itpoisons him to do so." We were standing in the woods outside the cave, drilling yellow holes in thesnow as we performed our "piss-after-drinking-the-morning-tea." The wind was up, blowing in gustsfrom the south.This made our urination awkward and perilous, because as I have said, the Devakimust always face south when they relieve themselves.Bardo shook himself dry and said, "By God,it's cruel the way this wind blows down the trousers." And then, "Poisons! I should tell you thispoison of Mehtar's is peculiar, indeed.Here, look at this," he said showing me his membrum, whichwas limp and wrinkled, though still very large."Who ever heard of such a poison? During the day ithangs like the hammer of a bell, and there is nothing I or these hairy women can do to make it rise.But at night - ah, at night it splits the air, so what else is there to do but find a woman to drain it dry?You should be glad the Devaki share their sex so freely, my friend.Do you want some advice? I willgive you some advice: Let Katharine collect her samples, and then we'll go home."Katharine, I should mention, was not the only one who managed to collect bits and pieces of Devakiflesh.As head of our family, Soli was called to help hold Jinje when Yuri decided that his frozen,rotten toes must come off.I was not present at the amputation so I never learned how Soli pocketedone of the toes and smuggled it to Katharine for storage in her krydda sphere.And of course I was notallowed near Marya at the rear of the cave when she gave birth to her baby boy.The men, being men,were forbidden to witness this deepest of feminine mysteries [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]