Procreation Pt. 01: Uruk

He climbed further until he came out beyond the trees and the ground was rocky and bare once more, dotted with a few flowers and gorse bushes. From here he could see, far below, the shuttle; from his vantage point it appeared as a dark green dome nestling in a patch of paler green grass. He stared at it dispassionately. He was unmoved by the sight of it, as though it were a curious rock formation, but no more.

Again he became aware of the odd smell he'd first experienced when he'd taken off his mask. But now it was mixed with something more familiar. He almost remembered it... something from his childhood? Perhaps. Wild flowers, rosemary, and... pig shit!

He looked across the face of the mountain. There he saw a herd of animals grazing and ambling in his direction. At this distance, it was hard to tell what they were, but they were definitely not goats or sheep. When he recognized them, he laughed out loud. He'd loved those little Andalusian black pigs as kid. Especially their hams. And the pigs had survived while the pig-eaters had perished.

But then he saw that these pigs were bigger than they should be. And then his stomach convulsed; they were very big indeed, almost the size of rhinos. Big enough to ride...

...In fact, unless he was hallucinating, someone was riding one of them. A woman.

Automatically he shouted "Hola!"

She wasn't Spanish. She looked East African, very tall, maybe Maasai. Her elegant poise even made the pig look graceful as she rode it down a steep incline towards him.

Hog-Riding Mama

Suddenly aware of him, the pigs paused their grazing and looked up at him. They ambled towards him, with the rider at the rear. She made her way through the herd towards him, until she was at the van. When she was thirty feet from him she halted, and he gasped.

No, she wasn't Spanish, or African either. She was barely human; her limbs were too elongated for her body, her brow too high, her ribcage too big and her fingers, one of which clutched a rein, were too long. He hadn't really prepared himself for the shock of seeing humans down here, let alone a mutant. He stared, transfixed.

The matt black hair on her scalp was so close-cropped that it appeared painted on. It had been etched with a fine razor creating ornate swirling dark brown patterns where her scalp showed. Taken separately her features were odd in the extreme, but to Jonah, who was in general attracted to the exotic, her overall appearance was rather beautiful. She was as naked as he was. He was grateful that the fashion for clothes had not returned since he'd last been down here.

She spoke to him as she advanced; if that was speech - it was more a collection of pops and hisses, and sounded more like she was frantically trying to spit out a swarm of bugs that had flown into her mouth. It was no language he'd ever heard, and he knew a few.

From her tone he guessed she was telling him that he was trespassing on her land.

She spat out more bugs, this time stretching out her long arm in the direction of the shuttle far below. Of course: She'd seen it come down out of the sky. He'd been so stunned by her appearance that he'd forgotten how strange he himself, this funny-looking space traveller with his sky-chariot must have seemed to her! And yet she didn't seem perturbed or surprised at all. Maybe it was just that he couldn't read her facial signals... and ergo, he reasoned, she couldn't read his facial signals either.

Responding to her verbally or facially was useless. He opted for mime: He acted out his descent from the heavens with his hands, finishing with an open-armed "ta-da!" gesture indicating the shuttle, grinning happily.

She looked down at the shuttle, then at him. She grinned too, showing a row of healthy-looking, but very yellow teeth. Mimicry?

She stepped to the ground from her snuffling mount, which meant her head was now higher up than before; she was at least two meters tall, a lithe and slender giraffe towering over Jonah's muscular panther's frame. She advanced on him, still grinning.

She stood at arm's length from him. She stunk like a goat. But there was also a slight floral scent to her, like she'd applied some perfume a couple of days ago. Suddenly she pushed two fingertips against his bloody chest. He stepped back and winced. She licked her long fingers, tasting his blood, looking at him appraisingly him for a moment. She grabbed his wrist and tugged at him, accompanied by more of her incomprehensible bug-spitting. She wanted him to go with her. He was tempted to comply, out of more than just curiosity: he felt weirdly attracted to her. But then he checked himself:

"Wait, Diana. She's got to see you." He'd almost forgotten Diana. He pulled away and started towards the shuttle, calling out pointlessly, "Come with me."

She stood, and then followed him, on foot, a few feet behind him. Good, he thought, she's coming. Diana will see her, and Captain Hussain will be forced to let her out.

But the woman suddenly bounded past him overtook him. She planted herself facing him, legs and arms spread out in an unmistakable 'no entry' stance. She started spitting and clicking at him quickly and more insistently.

He chose a name for her then: "Bugspit".

"Come on, Bugspit. I'm not trying to run away. Come and meet Diana, you'll like her; and I know she'll love you. She'll want to examine you all over and analyse your DNA."

But Bugspit spat angry bugs at him, immobile. He felt inclined to laugh.

"Sorry about this, Bugspit," he said. He grabbed her thin wrist. "Now it's time for you to come with me." She responded in kind, taking hold of his other wrist. "Hey, now I'm getting annoyed. Don't make me punch you out..."

She broke free of his grip. Then she leapt at him like a frog, wrapping her long legs around his hips. He toppled over onto the ground, with her on top of him. In a moment she was straddling him, pinioning his arms by his head. She was heavier than her frame suggested, and her wiry arms and hands were far stronger than he expected; he wriggled and twisted and tried to free his arms, to no avail.

It was absurd: Jonah Da Costa, famous for his fighting prowess, had been wrestled to the ground by a skinny, gangly-limbed woman! He just couldn't believe it. Maybe all that time in hypo aboard the Dildo had made him unfit and lethargic, he thought. He breathed hard, and his nostrils filled with her weird body odour. He gradually ceased struggling and lay still, his breath and heartbeat becoming slower.

"You know, your smell is actually kinda nice," he said... and then he understood:

"It's you! or rather your B.O. It's making me go all tame and dopey. Diana's guess was right, fuck how come she's so smart? But no, I can't have been infected so quickly..."

She cocked her head and smiled at him, getting the gist of his words: She had won. She began gyrating her hips. He started to laugh. "This is crazy. Bugspit. Enough, already."

She decided he was subdued sufficiently for her to release her pincer-like grip on his wrists. She sat up straight with her hands resting on her thighs and watched him patiently, like a dentist waiting for an injection to take effect. His dick grew with each slow pulse of his heart, until it pressed tight against the inside of his pants. She maintained her nonsensical sputtering chatter, and it seemed to him now that he could understand its meaning: "I own you now."

She shuffled down until she straddled his calves. She scratched and rasped with her claw-like fingernails at the bulge in his pants. She found the fastener for his fly, and released it. His dick bounced free. She reached down into his fly, and her fingers probed quickly, like the long, busy legs of a spider. They found their target and grabbed it: with her thumb and forefinger she made a tight, blood-constricting noose round the base of his scrotum.

She slowly clenched her fist, crushing his balls between her palm and fingers, watching his face intently, gauging his pain threshold . He grimaced, flapping his arms feebly, but his strength had drained from his limbs. She began to clench and unclench her fist, pumping his balls in a steady rhythm. Each time she squeezed the pain was at the limit of his endurance, yet it gave him overwhelming spasms of pleasure.

Her tempo increased, and then, when she saw that he was about to cum, she yanked his balls down sharply, as though plucking a fig, angling his bursting dick towards her. He simultaneously cried out in pain and climaxed powerfully; his jizz spurted, three, four times onto her belly; his eyes fluttered gently closed as he was drowned in ecstasy. And then, in his ears, her strange percussive gibberish mingled with the birdsong, the chirping of the crickets and buzzing of the bees creating a crazy cacophony of urgently whispered messages full of secret meaning, a Babel of unknown languages, utterly incomprehensible to an alien like him...

...Bugspit stood, wiped his cum off her with her fingers, and patted his limp dripping dick playfully with her foot. He opened one eye and squinted up at her. Then he opened both eyes, wide.

"I'd swear you're hiding a dick up there..." he said to her. He wasn't sure, but it looked as though high in the arch of her labia lurked a shiny, pink dick head. But whatever part of her strange anatomy it was, it rapidly shrunk like a deflating balloon and receded to safety behind her curtains.

She mounted her pig, which had been grazing peacefully all this time, and raised an arm like an Old West pioneer: "Let's go."

"It's going to be dangerous and weird..." he murmured, repeating Diana's warning, as he brushed dirt off his pants and prepared to follow. What could he do but obey her? Already the question was rhetorical to him: His capacity for decision-making had all but left him. With a last, wistful look back down at the shuttle far below, he plodded on behind her. He needed water. Maybe there was some at her place.

They crossed a wide, green prairie. She rode some yards ahead of him. Her herd snuffled and snorted about him. They seemed happy to follow her. He wondered if she had the same taming effect on them as she had on Jonah himself, or if they were simply domesticated through generations of breeding.

Jonah tried to process everything he'd witnessed since he'd landed. To think that Captain Hussain had asked him cynically earlier if he'd learn anything they didn't know already! He really wanted to talk to Diana, to get her ideas; she'd obviously thought a lot about how earth had changed, and her guesses had been shrewd. Was Bugspit human? He looked ahead at her, her tall, straight back swaying as she rode, her spidery legs splayed out on either side of her porcine mount's fat belly. What was she, this mesmerising swineherd? And what was Jonah himself becoming, meekly following her towards some unknown fate?

The countryside passed Jonah by, but he paid little attention to it. He thought about viruses and DNA, about parasites and symbiosis, gamma-rays and mutation. He recalled Darwin's finches, which evolved ("radiated") to occupy all the biological niches on the Galapagos in a few generations. Then he thought of rats. There were now dog-rats, cat-rats and sheep-rats. One day one of their descendants would walk upright like him, pondering evolution, a man-rat.

Bugspit was spitting bugs at him. He was already able understand her - or more accurately, to obey her commands, without needing to understand them. She wanted him to mount one of the pigs. He didn't protest. She had a good reason for him to do so, no doubt.

Clumsily, he mounted a large, docile sow. He teetered unsteadily. He wondered if she would let him hold on to her big, soft furry ears. Probably not. He started to feel nauseous. It felt like radiation poisoning.

They crossed a stream, almost hidden under a green swathe of reeds in the middle of a wide meadow. He heard shrill noises at his feet. The ground was alive and rippling with a huge swarm of mice. Or maybe they were mice-rats. Diana would have recognised them, from cam recordings sent back years ago to the Dildo from an AV probe. The pesky mice had overrun the equipment, chewing through the electrics with their diamond-hard teeth. The pigs didn't seem to mind them, carelessly trampling those in their path.

At the far end of the meadow, nestling at the foot of a high cliff at the base of a pine-covered mountain, was a large, decrepit stone barn. Most of the roof had crumbled and collapsed, and been replaced by a patchwork of rusty iron panels, corrugated plastic, and what looked like rush matting. Beside the barn was the largest fig-tree he'd ever seen. The scent of it was sickly-sweet and overwhelming, and reminded him in some way of Bugspit's own odour. He heard, then saw giant lazy black hornets, as big as sparrows, buzzing around the heavy yellow figs. He realised that the 'starlings' he'd seen as he and Diana were landing were probably hornets like these.

When they reached the barn, Bugspit dismounted, and he followed suit. It had a single wide entrance which had no door; it was big enough for a tractor to pass through. She stood at the threshold facing inwards; she clapped her hands quickly. Jonah heard scuffling and grunting noises from within the barn, and waited for what he expected to be more pigs to come trotting out. Instead, a dozen sleepy-looking gnome-like men and boys of assorted sizes wandered out. They were all so similar-looking to each other that if it weren't for the difference in size and apparent age, Jonah wouldn't have taken them for identical siblings. The four oldest, who Jonah judged, as best he could, were adults, were no more than five feet tall, but broad shouldered. The children too were stocky and sturdy. They were all hairless, long-fingered and dark-skinned like Bugspit herself. Their dicks were short and stubby, but their balls were huge, the size of apples. Their faces were wide, with big, heavy-lidded and lash-less eyes that made them rather stupid-looking. They were either all mute, or perhaps simply chose not to speak. They showed no interest in Jonah at all.

Bugspit patted and stroked their bald heads and hugged them. They surrounded her in a sort of lethargic but merry welcoming party, the way a family of lazy farm dogs would greet their owner.

She led him inside; her family (he assumed) of children and menfolk followed them. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. It smelled, literally like a pigsty.

Inside, the barn was cool and shady. The floor was straw matting, skilfully woven. Piles of hay were strewn about, rising in a hill towards the rear of the barn. In the centre was a single, long table. The near right-hand corner was a kitchen of sorts; there were shelves, with plates, mugs and spouted jars. Bugspit, almost invisible in the shade of the room, chattered to one of the men, who poured a drink of something from one of the jars into two large mugs which another had placed on the table. Jonah took one of the mugs, and looked within. It was milk. She stood at the table and mimed drinking.

"Thank you," he said to her, and put the mug to his lips. But she hastily pushed his wrist down.

"For fuck's sake, what is it now? do we need to say Grace first?" It turned out that they did.

Bugspit led him outside the barn to the fig-tree. Standing propped against its trunk was a tall wooden statue, carved in the shape of a woman. It was long-limbed like her, but was painted white, its scalp adorned with pink swirling lines, like the shaved pattern on Bugspit's scalp. Its eyes were huge black dots, and they held his gaze. The sculptor had carved her a larger-than life gaping vagina, an upside-down heart in shape, framed within a pair of smooth, red bulbous labia. And its clitoris was enormous and shiny crimson, the size and shape of the figs hanging in the boughs of the tree above. She was obviously a fertility goddess.

Bugspit knelt before the statue, and held up her mug as an offering. Then, she dipped her finger in the mug, and placed her milky fingertips inside the statue's vagina. Jonah prepared to copy her actions, but it appeared that his ritual was to be slightly different. She dipped her fingers into his own mug, and shook a drop of milk onto his penis. Then she indicated that he should now fuck the statue. He tried not to smile as she solemnly pushed a tree-stump over to him with her foot, for him to stand on so he could reach the statue's gaping hole.

He wasn't sure whether an erection was obligatory for the occasion, or on the contrary, would be seen as blasphemous. But to his surprise, either due to Bugspit's own sexual power, or that of the statue itself, the choice was made for him, and his dick stiffened. He climbed the stump and pushed the tip of his hard-on into the hole in the statue. That perfunctory act seemed to suffice as far as the ritual was concerned. She indicated that they could now drink.

He took a big draught, and felt instantly less nauseous. So maybe it had merely been hunger after all. It was the first time he'd tasted what he guessed was sows' milk. It was delicious, sweet, refreshing, and very creamy. He held up the mug to her in a 'cheers' gesture, smiled and made pig-noises.

She looked at him, then mimed expressing her own breastmilk into the mug. He looked shocked. "No. It's not your milk..."

Then she started laughing. She'd made a joke. Her laugh made his hard-on, which hadn't fully abated since his ritual sex with the statue, grow more rampant.

Then, still laughing, she stepped around behind him and reached for his hard-on. With her other hand she held her mug nearby his waist. Now it was his turn to be milked.

Her fingers were four tightly coiled snakes around his shaft. She pressed herself close to him, sucking and licking the crown of his head. Her warm wet tongue flicked deep into his ear.

She grew more serious, and watched the progress of her hand-job intently over his shoulder, making sure she could catch his moment of orgasm. Her movements were slow and steady, and her grip unrelenting.

She yelped with pleasure when she caught his spurting jism in the mug. Still standing behind him, she lifted the mug to his lips and poured him a little of the milk/cum cocktail. Then she took a little sip herself, sharing the 'mug of love'.

It had grown dark, and the air had become cold. Jonah clasped his arms to keep warm. Bugspit noticed, and led him back to the barn. She fetched a large blanket and wrapped it around herself like a cloak, but to his disappointment didn't offer him one. She led him to the pitch-black rear of the barn, climbing the soft hay. She shoved him gently face-down into the hay. He was startled when the hay moved; someone or something was lying there beneath him. Then he became aware that all of the men were there too, already asleep.

He lay down and tried to make himself comfortable and warm in his prickly bed. In spite of his doubts that he would ever be able to sleep, he must have done so, because when he opened his eyes after what he thought was a brief nap, daylight was streaming into the barn from the doorway.

Bugspit was already up, with one of the men. He saw her tall silhouette in the doorway.

The man approached her and looked up at her. She took his hand and led him back towards Jonah, into the barn.

At this, the hay around Jonah came alive, and men emerged from their beds and scrambled out. Jonah instinctively jumped up to join them. They surrounded Bugspit. Her goaty scent was strong; the men's dicks stiffened. They began masturbating; one of the men suddenly came, spurting big jets of creamy cum onto her belly, ass and legs. When he did, she spat bugs at him and slapped his face. He slunk away into a corner. The others quickly fell into line, literally; the formed a queue like in a soup kitchen. Jonah took his place at the end. He was excited; he was horny; he was overcome with lust.