Leo Frankowski

want
and ask the owner for a seed. Then you got to plant it and water it every day for three months. So it can’t just happen by accident. And the grown tree
is got to have people living in it, for the fertilizer. So you got balance. Mutual need. Symbiosis.”
    Liebchen was keeping
the glasses filled. Guibedo was drinking far more than usual. Patricia was
drinking on the theory that she needed the antifreeze.
    “With
intelligent animals, they can make their own decisions. We make them so they got to
be real happy before they can have kids. And you have to ask them please, real often,
before they get pregnant.”
    “Show Liebchen
can get knocked up whenever she wants to?” The champagne was starting to
tell on Patty.
    “Liebchen is
knocked up now! Fauns is way different from humans. Like their body temperature is
eight degrees
cooler than ours, which is why fauns don’t wear clothes around here, but humans
do.” Well, Guibedo thought, looking through Patricia’s transparent
blouse to her bikini bottoms, most humans do.
    “And which is
also why we keep the temperature in here at sixty-five degrees.”
    Now that the subject
had been brought up, Patricia was too comfortable to want to do anything about it.
    “Like they can
only eat a special fluid what the tree makes, which contains everything they need
and nothing else. Liebchen’s small intestine just keeps getting smaller until it ends. The
only holes she’s got are in her pretty head. She has breasts because they’re pretty
and because
fauns is to take care of human children.”
    Guibedo gently put
his fingertips on Patricia’s right nipple. She didn’t seem to mind. Actually, she didn’t even notice.
    “Ach, I talk and
talk and so late it gets. Come on, Patty. Is time for bed.”
    Leaning drunkenly
together, their arms about each other for support, Guibedo led Patricia
through a branch to his bedroom.
    “Ach, it will
be so nice,” Guibedo said gently. “You sleep with me tonight.”
    Patricia was shocked
sober in an instant. It had simply never occurred to her to think of
kindly, wise old Guibedo as a sexual being.
    “Uh… I…” For a second she
stood tongue-tied, then Patricia ran down to the living room.
    Guibedo was equally
confused. He stood motionless for a while, then turned to his bedroom, flopped
on the bed,
and cried himself asleep.
    A knowledgeable and
sober observer would have understood the problem. Guibedo and Patricia had vastly different cultural
backgrounds and, as a result, used totally different body languages. To Guibedo, when a nearly nude
woman aggressively snuggles into your arms,
she is obviously eager for sex. By Patricia’s standards, she was properly dressed and was merely
being friendly to a nice old man.
    Meanwhile, Liebchen
was snuggled up on her favorite couch—the broad comfortable back of an LDU.
Something
about Dirk’s inherent deadliness always excited her, and he reciprocated by doing for
her whatever small favors he could. Just now his skin was a good imitation of a Campbell Tartan
because Liebchen liked Scottish Tartans. Crouched down, doing his usual
guard duty he looked like a
big oval pillow. Patricia had just spent hours
in the same room with him without being aware of his existence.
    Liebchen was startled
awake as Patricia blundered, crying, toward the door. The ways of humans would ever be
a mystery to Liebchen, but her programming put courtesy and hospitality
first. “My lady! Are you in pain?”
    Patricia stopped.
“Uh… No. I… I’m okay. But I’ve got to go now.”
    “But my lady! It
is so late. Where would you go? How could you find your way in the dark?”
    There was a certain
logic in what the faun said.
    “There is a
guest room behind the kitchen, my lady. It has a lock on the door, and a
private exit. Oh, please, my lady. Accept our hospitality.”
    After a bit of
confused argument, Patricia agreed. She fell asleep on the guest bed, trying to sort
out what had happened.
    The next morning,
Patricia and Liebchen sat alone at the breakfast table.
    “My lady, I do
not understand what happened last night.”
    “I’m not sure I
understand it myself, Liebchen.”
    “Does it have
to do with your bisexual reproduction custom?”
    “Reproduction?
Well, not exactly, except in a roundabout way,” said Patricia. How do
you explain romantic love to an asexual being?
    “And my Lord
Guibedo found you to be a suitable mate, but you rejected him?”
    “I didn’t
exactly reject him, I just