Procreation Pt. 01: Uruk

The rulers alone were privileged to use the box-mothers and sire children. The lesser men were made to forage and hunt for supplies up above, on the cruel surface, which doomed them to short lives, for cancer and disease took them quickly there, as it does still.

Was it better in those days to be born a girl, and spend your brief life entombed, until your eggs were gone, than to be born male, and be doomed to die in search of food? For both man and woman life was harsh and short.

The men who returned with supplies often brought with them disease. The guardians of the city would not let them enter and cast them away or slaughtered and burned them at the gates. But one such man, Alan, overpowered the guards and entered.

This Alan was strong and fearsome, and in time he ruled, and became King. He poured his seed into the box-mothers, and begat many children. The other men, whom he had subjugated, grew enraged that he took all those women for himself, and tried to rebel, but he and his police killed many with their bare hands and quelled the insurrection.

The vanquished rebels began to pray for salvation, and soon a creed developed among them that a goddess, Inana, would soon come, who would deliver them from his tyranny and return them to their home, which was in the sky and which they called Eanna.

On a time, a Daughter was born to the King. Straightaway the men worshipped Her. All smiled in Her presence, for from Her skin arose the Perfume of Slavery, which is called Attar Sharia, which makes a man peaceful and obey Her.

She was declared to be Inana, their Conquering Goddess, who would restore them to Eanna, where dwelled false gods who had abandoned them. For it was ordained that Inana would subdue those false gods and rule from on high.

She grew to Womanhood, rising above all men in stature, wisdom and strength, and Her beauty subdued them and they grovelled in Her presence and bestowed on Her their gifts.

Alan The King, he too worshipped Inana, but in his eyes there was also desire. He wished to become Her husband and esquire, and begged Her to lie with him, even as he fell prostrate before Her, his own daughter.

She desired him also, and let him inside Her and She felt great joy to feel him there.

But when he lay with her he perished, for Her Prana, her life-force was poison to him. But his seed sustained Her.

And the men knew then that Her power was terrible.

She declared herself then Goddess Queen of Uruk, and set free the captive women, and they loved her, and she named Her people the Kadin. And She took men to lay with her, that she desired, and each died. But she aged not, for she had taken their Prana and it gave Her life even as they lost theirs.

She began the ritual of sacrifice; every thirty days She would choose men to lie with Her and pay the ultimate tribute, forfeiting their lives to ensure Her immortality.

Women she also took to lie with her, but they did not die; she did not take their Prana from them. She could give pleasure to women as much as to men, for Her lower region was such that its upper bulb, where She felt most her desire, protruded, though not so much as man's part.

And she loved many women, and they became her favourites, and rose to power under her.

She bore many children; and her children too, in time, themselves bore children. But the sons were all small and weak, for they could not abide so well inside their wombs, while the daughters grew strong and tall as She.

Her daughters, their Prana did not kill the men who lay with them, and so a few men, of the best stock, sired children from more than one woman, although it was not customary.

Inana, her sons too she lay with; but they would all perish, as do all men.

And her daughters she lay with also, and they grew strong.

And So in time, all in the City were her offspring.

For two hundred years She has reigned thus, and aged not. And all the while, Her power and her wisdom, and her family waxes.

Bilulu looked across at Jonah, but he slept.

Auntie Moon

When Jonah awoke, he was back in his bed. Bilulu had gone; the door was still open. He was in a weird state of mind; everything felt unreal. He wondered he had accidentally slipped into some parallel universe, or if he was dreaming, still in hyposleep, and would wake up to find himself back in the Dildo, and there had been no atomic war. He continually had a strong sensation of déjà vu: "I'm remembering the present, as it happens." That was the paradoxical phrase he used to describe it to himself.

He took a long drink of water, and went to the bathroom to pee.

"Inana's fucked your head good," he told his reflection in the mirror. His reflection replied smugly, "I knew you were about to say that."

I have to escape.

You can't escape. She owns you now. You have to... you have to... what? Go on, say it!

"I have to serve Her," he said aloud.

"Yes. You have no choice. Come to Me." The voice was Inana's. She had reappeared, in holographic form, in the living room.

Jonah started, and glanced at his reflection on his way out of the bathroom. See? I told you, it said.

Inana stood, her back to him. Automatically he knelt. Her Paisley patterned veins seemed to writhe and flow over her skin. "You will go now to your shuttle, and bring your goddess, Diana to me. She waits for you."

"I cannot force her to come."

"No. But she will come, when she has seen you. I have spoken with her, through my daughters. I explained to her that you are safe, as long as she remains where she is, and does not try to return to Artemis. I told her that you were sick and that I cured you. She is no longer imprisoned by her soldier in the shuttle, and has walked outside, but she wears her protective skin and dares not breathe our air. I do not allow her to venture far from the craft."

At his doorway, two guards appeared. He recognised them, from their skin patterns, and their scent. He was becoming one of these people: His sense of smell had become more acute and refined, and he could read their emotions not just in their faces, but in their body language, and most of all in the dancing patterns of their veins.

"Here are my daughters, who will take you to Diana." Inana's image faded abruptly.

Jonah spoke to them. "Please wait, I need to put my catsuit pants on." The guards looked at him, uncomprehending. "For my feet, the rocks hurt them."

One of the guards said to him, "for your little feet." The other stifled a laugh.

Flanked by his tall, alabaster living statues, he entered a small elevator, which was more functional and plain than the one he had taken down to Inana's throne room. It went up. And up.

When they emerged, he was outside. The air was fresh and cold. They were high, up near the top of a mountain. He could see the whole sierra laid out around him. Nearby, set into a rocky saddle below the final peak, was a massive radio dish, about a hundred feet across. It was perfectly camouflaged to be invisible from the air.

There was the remains of a pathway leading down from the exit of the elevator. They took it, walking in file, with Jonah in the middle. They walked quickly, he almost had to jog to keep up.

The sun burned hot. He thought he might get sunburnt - and the radiation level was still high. Then he noticed that the guard in front of him was getting a suntan. Right before his eyes. Within a few minutes both of the guards had chocolate-black complexions, as dark as Bugspit's. A useful trick.

The path led down, down, through pine forests. He smelled that alien, yet familiar smell that had assailed his nose when he'd first taken off his mask. Then he saw the shuttle below him. They had approached it from a different direction than Bugspit had led him away from it.

Finally they reached it. The shuttle's hatch was open and the ladder extended. Four or five little brown men, Bugspit's family, were seated in the dell around it. In the midst of them, crouched over a piece of monitoring equipment, was Diana, in her catsuit. She saw him, and stood, arms open.

"Unug," said one of the guards, addressing her sister, and gesturing up into the hills. They stalked off. At that word, Jonah caught Bugspit's scent in the air.

"Jonah. Jonah. Isn't it wonderful!" Diana hugged him.

That wasn't the word he'd have used to describe his experiences since leaving the shuttle.

She stood back from him and appraised his health.

"You were infected with the MTP virus. It's a mutant form of the plague, that wiped out humanity after the war. It's extraordinary, Jonah, it's not harmful to these people, it's symbiotic; it benefits them. It's more than a symbiont; it's deeply integrated into their genes; it's part of them. But it's still toxic to us. Particularly men, because it's carried on the Y chromosome. But somehow, they managed to cure you of its lethal symptoms; so you'll live, I think. We may well be able to survive here if we discover how they did it. I think you probably caught it from the rat scratch. Or maybe you came into sexual contact with one of them. Did you?"

Jonah opened his mouth to reply, but Diana didn't wait to hear him. She continued, her eyes shining, "it's incredible: They're an eusocial mutation, like the naked mole-rats. And Inana is their queen. But I need to know more about their reproduction. They're definitely haplodiploid, like honeybees. Divergent sexes, like the arachnids, large females, smaller males."

She seemed like a funny, prattling eccentric witch to him; from a species less akin to him than the little, lazy gnomes that sat about them, ignoring them. Had Inana changed Jonah that much, that his own kind now seemed alien to him?

"I've got Alia here, she's viewing my cam. Jonah, wave to Alia."

Jonah didn't wave to Alia. "Inana told me to bring you to her. If you want to come."

"Of course! Of course." She looked at him intensely. She hissed into her mic, addressing her words to Captain Hussain. "Inana's got some hold over him; either by threats or by controlling his mind."

She spoke to Jonah now: "She's gained control over you, Jonah, hasn't she? With her pheromones. Chemosignalling. No, a complex chemical language. I wonder, does she use it to suppress ovulation in the other females? Popmouth ovulated, but they were unfertilised eggs, so her offspring are all male. Sorry, Jonah, I'm wittering away to myself again. You don't know who Popmouth is."

"I do. But I call her Bugspit. And she's coming to see me, right now."

On cue, Bugspit appeared, on a ledge high above them, looking down at them.

"You smelled her. Amazing." Diana looked up, but Bugspit disappeared among the trees like a startled deer.

The guards appeared, breathless, looking up at the ledge. They weren't going to let her near him. They beckoned Diana and Jonah to them. It was time to go.

The climb back up was steep and slow. Diana had to stop and rest frequently to catch her breath, while the guards waited impatiently. It became a little easier for her, when they entered the shade of the pine forest.

Diana stopped again. "Sorry, guys, I'm not a young lady."

She sat, her back to a tree, and turned up the coolant level in her suit. Jonah wandered over to a pine tree, to pee. Silently, Bugspit dropped to the ground beside him.

She wrapped her long arms around him and held him, his head against her warm chest. He didn't resist, but his arms hung by his side. She kissed the top of his head. The guards jumped up and quickly pulled her away from him. She made no fuss, no noise. One of the guards stood between the two of them, arms and legs spread out. Bugspit looked at Jonah, then bolted away. She knew that her mother, Inana had taken Jonah from her, and that he would never belong to her again.

Finally, after many hours, they reached the elevator, and descended into the cool depths of the mountain. To Diana's amazement, the guards' skin tone lightened to their original creamy white during the descent.

The elevator stopped, at a different level to the one Jonah had entered at. They were led into an antechamber, a circular room with an ornate tiled floor, and a fountain at its centre. There were benches set around the fountain, which were also covered with patterned tiles. The guards remained with them. Jonah sat down on a bench, while Diana examined everything around her, fascinated.

Presently, Jonah sensed Inana's approach: His hairs stood on end, and he caught her animal/flower scent in his nostrils. Through one of the arches that led into the antechamber, she came. Diana watched her, spellbound. And Jonah, familiar though he was with the sight of her, was equally spellbound.

Inana turned to Diana, and said to her, "you see, Auntie, the Engineer is unharmed and well, as I told you. But he belongs to Me. If I wished it, he would slay you at my command. Shall I show you?"

"No, Inana, I believe you. He's clearly under your spell."

Jonah was relieved, he didn't want to be subjected to any test. He knew Inana's power, but Diana had not witnessed it, and might have doubted her.

"Jonah my Engineer, your mother would not speak to Me until she was assured of your good health. She loves you. She fears that I mean harm to her family. Sit."

"Auntie, your transmission does not reach your soldier, Alia. She cannot hear us."

Diana stirred. "No. The shielding, this place was a nuclear bunker..."

"And its shield protects us still, and saved us all these years. But now this place is a prison to my people. I would die if I ventured out into the unclean air."

"But your daughter. Popmouth - Unug. She lives on the surface. And her sons too."

"She cannot get a daughter, and she will die soon. The air is a slow poison to the Kadin. It would kill me, too. Only in Uruk can I remain immortal."

"Immortal, Inana? Maybe long-lived, but surely, nothing, not even you are immortal."

"Perhaps you are right. But I have lived long here, for many hundreds of years. My daughters too, live long years. Only the men die in Uruk."

"Why, then, does Unug choose to dwell on the surface?"

Inana's pupils contracted, then grew. Diana was startled by the sight, but Jonah knew that Inana was reliving a sad memory.

"I will tell you of Unug: I cast out to the surface all those who are unfit, to die. In days past many monsters were born, and I feared them and banished them, for they were sickly, and would make my family unclean. And any child born who was not clearly akin to Me, I did likewise. My daughter Unug is the last who I have cast out. She has now lived many years on the surface, with her man sons, and her pigs which she rides and keeps as pets. She it was who rescued Jonah and brought him to Me. She is a good woman, and holds no grudge towards Me, her mother, even though I had cast her out, simply because she did not learn to speak."

Inana turned to Jonah, thoughtfully.

"But Unug I cast out for another purpose, too: To lure you to Me. Sooner or later, I knew, you would find trace of her, or her children, and would send someone to learn more.

"I have seen the devices you have sent down, to learn of the state of the world, and have heard some of your radio signals, but I remained silent and watchful, unsure if you meant harm to us; for I feared you, my Auntie, as a goddess terrible and powerful. Also I believed that you possessed an army legion in number, not a mere handful, as I know now. "

"We will never harm the Kadin, you don't need to fear us. And I'm most certainly not a goddess, not terrible or powerful either," Diana said.

"But Auntie, I know the awful deed you have done. And I see that you have kept this from your Engineer. Tell it now, from your own lips."

Diana glanced fearfully at the puzzled Jonah, and looked away. She shook her head sadly.

"Very well, then I will speak: You foresaw, long ago, that the milk of the world would be soon dry, and her greedy baby was Man.

"Man saw Gaia not as his loving mother, but as his milk, his fuel, as his prey, and as his foe, to be vanquished and subdued, in his service.

"Now, it appeared to the wisest of men, that it would be impossible to curtail man's thirst for Gaia's milk; and if her teat was shrivelled and dry, then other mothers should be sought, other worlds, in the sky. For you had discovered that in the sky there are many worlds like ours. You told them that you would build them a ship to take them to one of those worlds.

But secretly, you had made a pact with Gaia, to protect her against her rapacious son. Tell Jonah."

Diana began, "The Artemis was equipped with defences. We could jam and intercept signals from ground-based control centres and monitor satellites..."

She choked, but Jonah already understood.

"You did it. You started the war. To save mother earth, you murdered its child," he said, without emotion.

Inana spoke, as though issuing a decree: "Man is only one of Gaia's children, Jonah. And not the last of them. She did this deed, and I was born. A midwife she is to me."

Diana sat, rocking, her hands clasped between her knees, deaf and blind to the world.

Inana bent low, and kissed the crown of Diana's head.

Jonah looked coldly at Diana. "You're evil."

Diana looked at him, as though only just becoming aware of him.

"Evil. Whatever you choose to mean by that. I was the cause of the war, Jonah, but I wasn't actually its instigator. It began as an argument between two men: One was the president of the United States, and the other was General Blackman, the head of the Global Space Agency. The subject of their argument was Artemis, and in particular, me.

They were both my lovers. I'd seduced them both, Jonah, until they were as much my slaves as you are to Inana. How do you think I managed to get the go-ahead for Artemis? It was the most expensive project in history. I played them off against each other, getting them to outdo each other in ever-increasing attempts to win me over. And all the time I had my own plan, to begin a new society, a gynocracy, which would restore people to happiness.

But then the president's jealousy got the better of him: He tried replace me with a crony, in the pay of Humanex, the global entertainment corporation. They sent a replacement for me up in a shuttle, along with a team of five hundred eco-architects and engineers. They would have ruined everything, Jonah. It was General Blackman himself who ordered me to lockdown the Artemis against any attempt to gain entry. And it was Monica, following her logic, that decided that the best way to defend the Artemis was to shoot the shuttle down. Things escalated quickly after that. Inana is right to attribute the war to me. So call me evil, if that's what you want to think of me."

"I - I don't know what to think. Inana doesn't let me think."

"No, My Engineer, I do not allow to think of your Auntie as evil. You are to return to your quarters. Soon you will fulfil your destiny. Go."

Jonah immediately stood as though the order had been directed to his limbs; he left the chamber, escorted by the two guards.

"My Auntie, can you breathe long in your mask?"

"I can remain here for a while. A few days. After that I will need to return to the shuttle."

"Good. For I wish to discuss much with you. Firstly, tell me of Jonah. He is a skilled and trusted engineer."

"Yes, he will get you onto the Artemis safely."

Inana laughed her deep laugh. "You guess shrewdly. I shall ascend, with a few of my most noble daughters, save for Bilulu, My daughter's daughter. She will remain, and reign as queen of Uruk, and here she will dwell. Her own power will grow once she is no longer under the influence of my Attar sharia; she will herself become a queen as mighty as Inana."