She appeared in my cabin as I was getting ready to go to bed. At first I thought it was Mara, the same figure, the same eyes and facial features, except she was a lot younger. Not a day over thirty, I thought. I must have stood there looking like an idiot, staring at her. What threw me was that Talla had insisted that Feng and I were the only humans who travelled. But, there she was, evidently human and evidently travelling.
"You can call me Tikana," she said.
By that time I had composed myself a bit and remembered my manners. I offered her a seat and a drink. She settled for a beer.
"Who are you, Tikana, and what brings me the honour of your visit?"
"My people refer to me as the Goddess. I thought it was time we had a talk."
"But you are human!"
"Remember when you travelled as a bull, a dragon and a little monkey? I am as human as that."
I felt like an idiot. Of course she could take on any form she liked. I had done it myself, as she correctly pointed out. I apologised for being confused.
"I have never been visited by a Goddess before," I stammered, still a bit flustered.
"Perhaps not, but you've fucked a few. Remember Hera, Demeter, Aphrodite ... shall I carry on? You weren't confused then."
"No, I wasn't. At that time I still thought of them as exciting and very realistic hallucinations. I wasn't until Lata that I discovered the true nature of travel. I doubt I would have dared to screw Hera if I'd known then that she was the real thing."
By that time Tikana had finished her beer. I gave her another one.
"Tell me, Tikana, what makes me and Feng important and why now?" I asked as I filled her glass.
"Brace yourself for a long story. I have to go way back into the history of my people if what I'm about to tell you will make any sense. I have suspended time around your cabin. We could spend weeks in here and it would only be a split second in your universe once you left this space. You already know about this."
"Yes, I do."
"Talla already explained some of this to you. My people experience things, learn things, have feelings and thoughts like every other living thing.
"I don't know if other creatures do something similar, but my people, throughout their lives, make a copy of everything they perceive and deposit it on a different plane. It happens on a subconscious level. Call it a racial record, if you like. This record of consciousness became very large over time and by processes I don't understand acquired sentience. I am that sentience. I don't know if the males of my race did something similar, mine is exclusively a female perspective, there are no male memories in the things that make up my racial consciousness. All I know about males of my race was put there by females, including me, once I became aware.
"The males of my race were thoroughly detestable creatures. They lived in bands in the forests. They only cared about two things, food and inseminating females. They built nothing, they grew nothing. The females lived in small communities, villages, if you like, where they raised their offspring and grew a few crops. Periodically the males would raid these settlements, inseminate what they could and eat some of the females and even their own offspring.
"This went on for a very long time. I was still in my infancy, if you wish, still accepting things for what they were without looking for alternatives. The change came when a group of women decided they had enough and wanted nothing further to do with males. They moved their village to easily defensible ground and built fortifications. The males had never met violent opposition before. When next they tried to raid the settlement they were bombarded with rocks by females on top of barricades. Many were killed or maimed. After three unsuccessful raids the males decided to move on to places where the pickings were easier and left them alone.
"Our females can tell if a freshly laid egg will produce a male, a female or is infertile. The women in their isolated position noticed they were still laying eggs and that some of the eggs were fertile and could raise female offspring. They had discovered they were capable of sexless reproduction, parthenogenesis, as it is called by humans. Suddenly the males had become obsolete, or so they thought. The knowledge of this became widespread and females everywhere started to destroy eggs which contained male embryos. I was still young and inexperienced and encouraged this practice. Within a century there was no male alive on the planet. Everyone, including me, considered it to be a good thing.
"For a while things went well. With the constant irritation and damage caused by the males removed the settlements thrived. Production was at an all time high. Trade with the Darnaqs also increased. For a long time my people had known that the inedible parts of the plants we harvested were prized by the Darnaqs and that they threw away much that was edible by us. A trade developed over time benefiting both sides. At some stage it was suggested that perhaps a joint venture was better. The Darnaqs would plough and plant the fields and my people would tend the plants and harvest the crop. The roots and so forth would go to the Darnaqs, the to us edible parts would go to us. It was so successful that this method became standard all over the planet. Over time cooperation extended over many areas, both races did better than ever before. Everyone was happy.
"Then cracks started to appear. I was the first to notice that something was wrong.
"Each successive generation was a carbon copy of the one before it. New born were exact replicas of their mothers. The entire race had become stagnant. That's when I realised that the males may have had something of value to contribute after all. The Darnaqs noticed it too. My people became more or less a servant race, only good for lowly labour. There was no malice involved, it was just the way it worked out.
"Then the humans arrived. I was overjoyed when the first hybrids appeared. After centuries of stagnation my race was evolving again. The new cross breeds had many desirable characteristics. They were more alert, more intelligent and more curious than their mothers. Their bodies too had evolved to a more refined form with many human features The most notable change the human type hand, which afforded better dexterity and enabled my people to perform delicate tasks that had been difficult or impossible before.
"Then problems arose. At around age four the young ones started to get sick. They became listless, dull and showed poor coordination. We didn't know what to do. Since only the cross breeds were affected we thought it might be some kind of human disease and asked Captain Harkon for help. He wasted no time. He sent a team of scientists to find out what the problem was. They must have been good people. In less than a week they had determined that the children's diet was causing the problem. The doctors called it lithium poisoning.
"They immediately took the children off our traditional food and fed them a type of bread they had made up of native tubers, grain the humans grew for themselves and river fish. Within days the children showed improvement. We were told that our food was too rich in lithium for their metabolism. They designed a diet that gave the children the lithium they needed without overdosing them. For the next twelve months they monitored the lithium levels in the kids and adjusted their diets as needed. There were no new cases and all the children that had been affected had recovered.
"The next problem that cropped up was the food supply. There are only a few areas on the planet where human type food can be grown, mostly narrow strips along riverbanks where the lithium had leached out of the soil. Now that grain had become an important part of my people's diet shortages developed. There was no satisfactory substitute for grain. The native tubers and roots did not supply the energy needed to maintain my people's health. Only the native seeds and grain could do that and there was now a limit on how much of the native seeds we could consume. This problem did not get solved until we discovered Pumpernickel and started to import it in quantity.
"One more problem showed up when the new hybrids reached maturity. They were not capable of asexual reproduction. In other words they needed human sperm to produce offspring. Most human males find having sex with my people repulsive. Sure enough, there are always some who don't care what kind of an orifice they stick their dicks into as long as they get their rocks off. There weren't enough of them to fill the requirements though, besides, a much larger gene pool was needed if the new hybrid race was to have a chance at all.
"By that time Captain Harkon had passed away. The people who were running human society were not as enlightened and liberal as the old man had been. They solved the problem by introducing harsh rules that regulated people's sex lives. Masturbation was banned, human to human sex was restricted to producing offspring and men were forced to inseminate a certain number of my people every year. Any breach of the rules was punished severely. This regimen still exists today.
"Then the Torgons arrived. By that time the virus they had released had wiped out the Darnaqs. My people had no defence against them. They were put to work under harsh conditions and treated cruelly. They were even killed for food. The humans had scattered and gone underground. They were hunted mercilessly. But the humans fought back. Many Torgons were killed, mostly by explosions set off by humans who seemed to appear out of nowhere, struck and disappeared as if by magic. This went on for about a year.
"The killing stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The Torgons arranged some kind of truce with the humans and negotiated a deal. I guess by that time the Torgons had found out they were doomed. The humans must have demanded a better deal for my people as part of the arrangements, because many of the cruelties inflicted on my people stopped. They also received more and better food.
"For the next ten years they loaded up all the large ships and aircraft they could find with ballast, took them out to sea and sank them, creating an artificial reef in the middle of the ocean. On this reef a huge concrete platform was erected. They made contact with the Federation via the humans and the spaceport was built by the Federation.
"Then the Torgons started dying. It wasn't pretty. In spite of what they had done you couldn't help feeling sorry for them. Thirty years after the invasion all were dead except for the ones on the ships. My people had been decimated. The humans started trading lithium ore for things they needed.
