Offspring

I found the place where I had left off. Captain Harkon had just landed on the planet he had called Hope. They were on a grassy plain, the river about two hundred feet to the east, a forest some five miles to the west. No sign of wildlife or natives.

Captain Harkon armed fifty of his men and instructed them to establish a defensive perimeter with orders to fire only if they were attacked. Scientists were sent to check the immediate environment. The results were encouraging. The river water was potable with little purification needed, there were no known pathogens in water or soil, the only disappointment the high lithium contamination of the soil apart from a strip around one hundred feet wide along the riverbank where the lithium had presumably leached out of the soil. With a bit of fertiliser it would be possible to grow Earth type plants there for food. There were fish in the river which proved to be edible and were found to be quite palatable.

All was peaceful and quiet. Over the next three weeks they established a settlement, planted crops and set up workshops and kitchens using the equipment and supplies meant for the erstwhile colony. People were at work as usual when one of the guards raised the alarm. Natives were heading up the river towards them in boats. There seemed to be only a few of them, they were still too far away to make out much detail.

Captain Harkon ordered his guards to take up defensive positions, to keep their weapons out of sight and not to make any hostile moves unless attacked. As the boats drew nearer it became clear that this was no native war party. The creatures on the boats wore no armour and seemed to be unarmed. The boats were fairly substantial, carried a small sail and were propelled by twelve oars, six on each side. There were six boats of this type. They were accompanied by two larger vessels carrying cargo with twice the number of rowers. The rowers were winged creatures with bald heads much like humans in appearance in contrast to the passengers who were furred and looked from the distance like squirrels walking upright on two legs, but without any tails. A quick count revealed there were about two hundred natives who made up the party.

The group stopped some two hundred yards downstream from the human settlement. They drew their boats up on the riverbank and commenced setting up camp. Colourful tents were erected, fires were lit and soon the smells of cooking food drifted across. There were still no signs of weapons.

Captain Harkon figured the natives were not here to make trouble, they were here to make contact. He decided to wait for developments. As night fell he posted extra guards with instructions to keep a close watch on the camp, but to stay put. The natives made no hostile moves during the night. The morning brought no surprises either. Just normal, peaceful camp activities.

***

Captain Harkon, trusting his earlier assessment of the situation, donned his best uniform and took the initiative. He walked slowly over to the native camp on his own. Squirrels and faeries he thought as he got a better look at the natives. The faeries seemed to do all the manual work while the squirrels sat around in groups talking and watching what was going on.

As he came closer one of the squirrels got up and walked towards him. They both stopped and looked at each other when they were about five steps apart. The squirrel lifted his arms and invited the captain into the camp with hand gestures. Captain Harkon sensed no hostility, only curiosity. Contact had been made and everything looked promising for the colonists.

Over the next few weeks better communication was established. Groups from each camp visited each other, friendships developed, in other words things went well. The squirrels were very much in charge, with the faeries doing the simpler jobs. They didn't appear to be servants or slaves to the squirrels. To Captain Harkon it seemed more like some sort of symbiotic relationship. Whatever the system, it worked well. There were no fights or arguments and strangely, apart from work, very little interaction between the two races.

Captain Harkon wrote in his log:

"I have been on a number of worlds and I have seen many extra terrestrial races. What I am seeing here is something I have not come across before.

"The faeries, the squirrels call them 'Trinn', have many human characteristics. They are bipedal, have well formed hands with six fingers and an opposing thumb. Their heads are bald. On their backs they have two wings the size of large dinner plates, too small for flight. faeries are very protective of their wings claiming they are very sensitive and delicate. They possess a limited intelligence, are capable of speech and are conscientious workers when trained to do a specific job. The curious thing about the faeries is that all are female. They produce offspring by laying eggs which are produced asexually. In spite of their slender, almost fragile appearance they are physically very strong and do not seem to tire easily.

"The squirrels are totally different and one wonders how two such divergent sentient races could have evolved on the same planet. Calling themselves 'Darnaq', they come in three types, easily distinguished by their colouring. Type one have black fur with a white stripe down their backs and are called 'Orr'. Type two are called 'Mac' and are of a reddish colour. Type three are grey, called 'Orrmac' and have a pouch similar to Earth's marsupials. I am told they represent different sexes and that a union of all three is required to produce offspring. They mate for life. During their first mating their consciousness fuses and from then on resides in the Orrmac. The three sexes fulfil different functions. The Orr are the practical types, mostly concerned with handling physical things, the Macs are the intellectual part of the trio with the Orrmacs looking after offspring and doing all the domestic work. After mating when one of the trio dies for whatever reason its partners perish within hours."

So much for the good captain's comments.

The squirrels were fascinated by Earth's technology. The volume I was studying went at length into the spread of human technology throughout squirrel society. I was skipping much as the subject did not hold a lot of interest for me. I almost missed the bit that talked about the emergence of human - faerie hybrids. The subject was only briefly mentioned, but it did provide three links to sections in Captain Harkon's log.

"Today I caught one of my guards fucking one of the faeries," wrote Harkon. "I didn't interfere or make my presence known since there seemed to be no coercion involved. I simply watched for a while.

"The guard had the faerie bent over a bale of some sort and was fucking her from behind. The female was flapping her wings in step with his strokes, otherwise she displayed no discernible reaction. When he had finished and pulled out of her she dropped her skirt and continued with her work as if nothing had happened. None of them had noticed me.

"Some hours later I called the guard into my office and told him what I'd seen. He was very embarrassed and presumably expected some punishment. I told him that since the act seemed to have been consensual I had no problem with it, but I was curious what had brought it about.

"He told me that the faerie had watched him urinating and had been curious about the appendage he had used for that purpose. She asked if she could touch it and he let her. When she was examining his penis and scrotum he got hard and eventually ejaculated. The faerie was so fascinated with it that the next day she walked up to him, took his penis out and brought him to climax once more. One thing led to another and he examined her in turn, discovering her orifice and deciding it was much like a human arse, a bit smelly and a bit too dry. He was no stranger to buttfucking. When she came to him the next time he lubricated his dick and fucked her. The guard explained that because her wings were so delicate he could not lay her on her back and that bending her over a bale and fucking her from behind seemed to be the only way to do it without injuring her wings. 'It's not too bad a fuck,' he had said, 'if you don't mind washing a bit of birdshit off your dick afterwards.' I thanked him for his frankness and let him go."

Harkon then went onto something else in his log so I went to the next reference.

"This planet is full of surprises," he wrote. "Just now the guard who had been fucking the faerie came to me and asked my advice. Apparently the girl had shown him an egg the size of an ostrich egg and told him he had made it in her. When he asked how she knew, she said the Goddess had told her and that the egg had a black shell instead of the normal yellow one. He asked me what he should do. When I asked him if she had made any demands of him he said no. She had told him she had to take the egg to the hatchery in the city and that she would not be around for some time. A short time later another faerie had come to him and asked him to make an egg in her too. She had been most insistent and had not left until he had fucked her. He was very confused. I told him to enjoy his good luck and go for it. He thanked me and left.

"I felt like a bit of a heel. I had only told him to keep going because I was curious what kind of a hybrid humans and faeries were capable of producing."

There was no more on the subject in the log entry so I went to the third reference I had been given. This entry was dated about two years later.

"Today I saw my first human - faerie hybrids. By now there are about eighty of them. The oldest is about two, the youngest hatched yesterday. Little is visible of their human characteristics when they first hatch. These develop later. When they emerge from the egg they look very much like birds, covered in bright yellow down everywhere except the face and the legs. They make no noises of any kind until they are a year old when they seem to acquire speech almost overnight. By that time arms, hands and human facial features are very much in evidence. By the time they are two they look like a grown up faerie except they are only three feet tall. In the hybrids human facial features are much more pronounced, their hands are like human hands having five fingers and fingernails instead of small claws. They are said to be more alert, learn easier and are more curious than their non hybrid cousins. They are evidently popular amongst their own. More and more human males are approached to make an egg inside a faerie. Curiously enough even the hybrids are all female."

Again Captain Harkon went onto something else and I went back to my history book. It went on about technical developments and I found myself skipping again. It was the grumbling of my stomach who brought me back into reality. I had been so absorbed in my reading the day had gone past unnoticed. Time to go for a bite to eat and a drink.

***

Feng had already left. I told Talla to call it a day and went upstairs to the bar. Feng was there nursing a beer.

"You were so absorbed in what you were doing, you didn't even hear me when I called," he said. "I thought it best to leave you at it."

Over a couple of beers and the meal afterwards I filled Feng in on what I had learned. I told him that, like Captain Harkon I found it strange that two such dramatically different sentient species could evolve on the same planet.

"I think I can explain how that happened," said Feng. "I've been doing some reading on flora, fauna and agriculture on this planet. As you know this world is different to most places we know because of the high lithium content of the soil. Consequently the plants have a very high lithium content in leaves, seeds and fruit which makes them toxic to us and incidentally also to the creatures Captain Harkon had named squirrels. Tubers, roots and also some nuts are virtually lithium free.

"A bit similar to the potato on Earth where the tubers are edible and nutritious and the leaves and seeds are toxic.

"As a result two different types of fauna evolved, those who were lithium tolerant or dependant and those who were not. Since they didn't compete for food and couldn't eat each other the development of both types ran parallel without conflict. Aquatic life evolved along the same lines, where the lithium dependant creatures live in the ocean and lithium intolerant species in the rivers."

That made a lot of sense to me. I said so.

Feng excused himself and went to have his lesson. I had no idea where he took off to on his jaunts and what he did there. I never asked. A man's sex life is his business and if he doesn't want to talk about it one must accept it.

I went to visit Mara. There were a lot of things I wanted to ask her, but all she wanted to do was fuck. Admittedly there wasn't time for much else on those short lunch breaks of hers. Just the same, I found it irritating. I understood her need, but, for crying out loud, I fancy there is a bit more to me than my cock. But then, you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I took my fuck and returned, somewhat frustrated, but at least I got my rocks off.