Sashi has often told me - usually in the middle of an argument - that I should, "loosen my corset", "get out there, instead of sitting at my machine typing all day", and "to stop thinking of sex as messy, unhygienic and invariably disappointing".
I keep telling her that I can't help my upbringing - my parents never did it, I'm certain of that - and we NEVER spoke about it, apart from the occasional reference to an infertile domestic animal or something, and next door's Jukamut (it's a little like a dog, I guess.... sort of). The horrid thing lunged at me every time I walked past their home, would wrap it's front legs around one of mine, and make strange gyrating movements with it's pelvis. I have no idea what it was up to, but my leg always felt sticky afterwards.
Anyway, despite my reservations, I decided to follow up on a rumor that someone had been indulging in some ad hoc, gene therapy in exchange for the exclusive rights to some pretty lucrative mining concessions. It wasn't difficult to track down the location - the perpetrator was blabbing about his 'premium coup' in every booze parlor and girl joint in Amen Ebsi, a city in the northern hemisphere of Craxa. It's a lawless world, where traders go from time to time to unwind, or to get rid of cargoes they dare not transport to civilized places for fear of having them impounded and themselves imprisoned. Naturally, prices are pretty low on Craxa, it's a buyer's market, but even five percent on 'cost' is a profit!
The man's name was Funn. Marku Funn. A citizen of Capsilom, he'd been prosecuted more than a dozen times for customs duty evasion. He'd also been fined eight times, on as many worlds, for the illegal transportation of technology to recognized "war zones", where his goods had usually shifted the balance of power in favor of the losing side, and made him a tidy profit to boot. Finally, being what some, near-sighted females might describe as good looking, in a lean and hungry kind of way, he'd had four paternity orders served on him, and was the unwitting subject of a murder 'contract', taken out on him by the incandescent, and very rich, father of one of his innocent (not so innocent now, of course) victims.
Taking a deep breath, and wrapping a long cloak around myself, so as to conceal what I think, and several, nicely spoken and well mannered escorts have told me, is a drop dead figure - tightly sheathed in green on this occasion - I pushed open the swing door of Luka's Review Bar and Griddle and walked purposefully up to the bar, where I enquired, in the imperious tone I usually utilize when in the presence of the lower classes, "Is Marku Funn in here?"
The barman, an unsavory looking individual, with large hands that looked like they'd have no trouble strangling a Lindarian, horn-faced lizard answered, without looking up from the glass he was wiping with a dirty towel, "Over there. By the door to the can."
"Can," I repeated. "That's what you people call the little boys room, isn't it?"
He nodded, placed the glass upside down on the bar, with several others and turned away with a knowing smile to serve a customer.
I made my way across the room, wriggling past chairs - running the gauntlet of the bottom pinching and waist grabbing champions of the known universe, who had obviously gathered in Luka's Review Bar and Griddle for their annual prize giving.
I stood in front of Funn's table and asked if I might talk with him. He nodded, slid a chair towards me with his foot, and once I was comfortable, pushed his empty glass in my direction with the words, "Same again. And have one yourself."
It's not my nature to get any man - or woman for that matter - a drink, but since I wanted information from Funn, I knew I had to swallow my pride for the moment and humor him. I was about to run the gauntlet, again, to get him a refill, when he pulled out a weapon of some kind, aimed it at the ceiling, pulled the trigger - blasting a six centimeter hole in the plaster - and yelled, "Hey, Luka, let's have some service over here. The lady's thirsty."
The drinks appeared, Funn drank half in one gulp, and I sipped mine slowly, all the while thinking, 'In the right light, he's quite good looking. Rough, less than clean, but good looking'. He hadn't shaved for some time, and scratched the stubble on his chin occasionally, as he told me about the deal he'd cut with the inhabitants of Tok-Nar.
My researches, before I set out looking for Funn, had revealed the fact that the most highly evolved life-form on Tok-Nar was amphibious. I suppose you'd compare them with alligators on your world; but they were more than mere reptiles, they were sentient. Some spent their days on the sandy river banks, sleeping in the sun, and their nights gazing at the stars, while half immersed in the still warm water. Others ruminated on problems of logic, physics, even mathematics. Their spoken language was rich in metaphor, poetic, even - though to us it would sound like grunts, interspersed with guttural clicks and whistles.
Funn had learned of the mineral wealth on Tok-Nar from another trader, who'd been forced to land on the planet when his ship developed drive problems. The Tok-Nar, even though they'd never seen an interstellar propulsion system, were able to work out what the problem was simply by snoozing on the sand and applying their powerful logic to the task.
From this trader, Funn discovered that the one thing the Tok-Nar lacked was knowledge of what lay beyond the pink/mauve atmosphere of their world. Funn arrived, several months later, laden down with film discs, sound tapes and the means to play them. The first amphibians he encountered lay spellbound for days, watching Earth news reports, TV soaps, advertisements for hemorrhoid cream, Burger King, Coca Cola, and the highlights of a Broncos / 49er's Super Bowl game (whatever that might be) - all of which had been recorded several years ago by the communications officer on a Torellian freighter laying off Alpha Centauri Prime. He happily exchanged these treasures for a small star-fire crystal Funn had 'acquired' from the trader the Tok-Nar had helped.
The Tok-Nar's appetite for knowledge was insatiable, so eventually Funn's supplies of tapes and discs ran out. He was soon down to his last item: a digitally re-mastered copy of a ancient video called, 'Debbie does Dallas'. The reaction of the Tok-Nar to this visual feast was nothing short of unrestrained delight. They clapped their front flippers together, grunted and clicked loudly and pointed repeatedly at the genitalia of the male and female actors, who were busy demonstrating that human sex isn't just about who's on top.
Funn suddenly had an idea, and through a combination of gestures, as well as alternately pointing at the man's erect manhood and a particularly large, and priceless crystal he'd picked up from the ground, sold the Tok-Nar on the idea of handing over all the 'rocks' on their world in exchange for the chance to possess one of these male organs, and the female counterpart, of course. Now, dear reader, you might well wonder what would be the attraction for the Tok-Nar, after all, they did have sex - or they'd have died out millennia ago - but it was simply a cold-bloodied and brief exchange of DNA in the form of a small pod. Basically, the male had a small mound in the middle of his belly and the female had a corresponding concave area in hers. Come mating time, they'd put their bellies together, a small pod would emerge from the male's organ and be deposited in the female's. The skin of her belly would grow over the pod and she'd be impregnated. After watching the fun Debbie was having, however, Funn just knew they'd give anything to do it doggy style. The deal was cut!
Funn returned a year later, accompanied by Cedrik Lance, a struck-off geneticist from Monakesh, who'd been disbarred from ever plying his trade again after giving growth hormone to a five inch, sand lizard, with terminal results for the world it lived on, Hite, and every one of its inhabitants. Seems the lizard reacted well to the hormone and started to grow at an exponential rate, until it was fifty feet long. Then it started eating people and got to a thousand feet long. Pretty soon there weren't any more people and it started on everything else. Eventually, it grew to such a size that it depleted the entire oxygen supply on its own world and died of asphyxiation. Its carcass now forms the largest mountain chain on Hite.
Lance went to work with a will - he was on a percentage of the haul of crystals - and pretty soon, the first male Tok-Nar was born with a human penis. Shortly after, the first female was born with human female genitalia. Funn removed his first load of gems and crystals, leaving Lance to continue the work.
When Funn got back to Tok-Nar, hundreds of them had human genitalia. They were doing 'Debbie does Dallas' all over the place. Not one was musing on logic, none had watched the stars for months, and several of the males had taken to lying alongside one another, comparing the length of their newly acquired status symbols. Fights broke out, occasionally - which had never happened before - and the females formed a circle around the protagonists, ready to 'do the Dallas', as they called it, with the winner.
Then, one day, the first signs of trouble showed up. A Tok-Nar male was born with a penis that didn't look like a penis - more like a tree. It had branches. And on the end of each branch was a pod. Funn and Lance took the only responsible course of action open to them. They loaded their ship down with as many crystals and rocks as they could and high-tailed it out of there. Neither has been back since. That was a little over ten years ago.
By the time Funn had finished his story, he was laughing, loudly, I'd had at least six of those drinks, and wanted desperately to have his babies. Somehow, his suggestion that we 'head upstairs' was entirely appropriate and we left the smoke filled room arm in arm.
I awoke the following morning with an army of trolls digging their way out of my brain with hammers and picks. As consciousness returned, I remember thinking, 'Why can't they just leave the way they got in?' I sat up and looked around. Funn had gone, my corset was lying on the floor, next to my dress, shoes and bag, and there was an unpaid bar bill on the bedside table. "Men!" I screamed, wincing as another hammer hit the inside of my forehead. I fell out of bed and crawled on my hands and knees to the bathroom.
Three days later, I reached Tok-Nar, and made my way to the sandy riverbank Funn had described. There were no amphibians to be seen, just a dust covered video play-back machine and a dismantled video tape cassette. I picked it up and read the torn label. "...... do.. Dallas", it read. A thought struck me. It was a warning my mother had given me, once. "Be careful what you wish for," she'd said, wagging her finger, "it just might come true."
