Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 50

That night, Orick and Tallea slept on the floor of the ship’s hold. Maggie and Gallen used one stateroom with the baby, Orick, while Athena and Hera slept in another. Thomas had passed out on the couch in the ship’s lounge, and so the bears were forced to make do.

Thus it was that Orick woke in the hold, disturbed by a strange scent-a mixture of blood and urine and something more. It seemed out of place here, among the strange odors of the Nightswift’s hold, but he recognized it at once, and something in him stirred.

Tallea was in heat.

Orick lay on his belly and put his paws over his nose. Trapped. He was trapped here on the ship, at least a week out from Cuzzim. Trapped in a closed space with a she-bear in heat.

It shouldn’t have happened. Orick didn’t know Tallea’s chronological age. The Lords of Tremonthin had grown her in a vat, forcing her to reach something near maturity before downloading her memories into the bear’s body. But still, Tallea was small. Orick imagined she would be no more than a year old, though it was hard to tell with bears. A small two-year-old was not much larger than a one-year-old, and a two-year-old could go into heat.

Still, Tallea seemed too young.

But Orick couldn’t gainsay what his nose told him. Perhaps the Lords of Tremonthin had some esoteric reason for making Tallea small and fertile. Perhaps they’d given her maturity while sacrificing size. Whatever the reasons, Tallea was in heat.

In other rooms of the ship, Orick could hear the sound of Thomas snoring, of Gallen tossing on his bed.

Yet Orick lay alone, sniffing the scent of Tallea.

Oh, God, why do you do this to me? Orick wondered. Is this a test? I promised You-never again, never again.…

Orick’s prayer escaped his throat as a whimper, and for a long time he just lay still, trying to control his erratic breathing, trying to still his racing heart.

Tallea lay close enough so he could hear her own deep breaths, watch the rise and fall of her chest. Her rear legs were toward him, her nose pointed somewhat toward his tail. She absently pawed with her hind leg, then moaned in her sleep. Discontent.

Even in her slumber she knew what she needed.

Orick’s own glands responded to her craving. I could just crawl over there on top of her, Orick mused. I could straddle her and deliver the goods right now, while everyone is sleeping.

The thought aroused him further, and Orick raised his own muzzle in the air, half-involuntarily, and sniffed again. The smell of her was growing stronger. Here in this closed atmosphere, such scents tended to become overwhelming-the scents of fur, of Tallea’s sleek fur, and of her need.

The smell made Orick dizzy. His heart pounded so hard, the blood thundered in his ears. It seemed that his brain was afire, burning, and his tongue felt thick and dry in his throat. He whimpered.

Eight more days of this, he considered. Eight days of estrus in these tight quarters. Does God want to drive me mad? Is that it?

Yes, that was it. God would punish Orick for his impure heart, his unclean thoughts, his-Orick had a sudden vision of himself, climbing on Tallea’s back.

The very notion sent shivers of anticipation up his hairy spine.

Sister Tallea. She’s Sister Tallea now, Orick reminded himself. She’s been baptized. She’s my sister in the gospel. That’s it.

Now that she’d accepted the gospel, Satan was tempting Orick. It was the perfect trap! The old dark angel could lure the two of them away and secure both their souls in one fell blow!

Ah, the pity of it! Orick considered. She loves me. She yearns for me like no she-bear should. It was unnatural for the Lords of Tremonthin to do that, to give life to a shebear who loved as deeply and firmly as any human woman could. Now the devil would use that love against them.

Orick imagined Tallea as she had been a few weeks before, rising up out of the waters of baptism, the light of God shining in her eyes-those beautiful brown eyes, that sleek dark fur, those shining claws, those inviting legs, those eyes so full of love.

Calm down, Orick told himself. You have to calm down. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.

But of course that Scripture didn’t apply here. If Orick were to pluck out his eye just because he envisioned himself succumbing to temptation, he’d be eyeless in thirty seconds. But it wasn’t his eyes he needed to pluck out. It was that other thing. It had hardened in an uncomfortable position.

Like a dog, Orick thought. You’re no better than a dog. Orick lay there, perfectly miserable, praying.

At length, Tallea rolled over, looked up at him, sniffed the air. “Something’s wrong!” she whispered. “I smell blood!”

Orick didn’t dare speak. In a moment she recognized the source of it.

“I’m sorry, Sister Tallea,” Orick whispered. “I–I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, Orick, your vow!”

“Yes,” Orick whispered. “God has chosen to punish me, or test me. Or maybe it’s Satan, I don’t know.”

“It’s not just you being tested. It’s both of us. We should pray.”

“Good idea “ Orick said. He picked up his Bible in his teeth and Tallea commanded the ship to turn up the lights in the hold. Orick had the ship close the door to the hold, so that the sound of their voices would not disturb anyone else. The air was so thick with Tallea’s odor, closing the door only made it worse.

Tallea let the Bible flip open at random, and began to read:

“And from the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and he brought her unto the man.

“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: She shall be called Woman, for she was taken out of Man.

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife: and they two shall be one flesh “

Orrick perked up, surprised at the Scripture she had picked to read. “Wait a minute!” He said, “Try another one.”

Tallea closed the Bible and flipped it open again, near the end this time. She read:

“But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife.

“And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.

“What therefore. God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Tallea looked up at Orick, her snout wrinkled in surprise. “Oh, Orick, do you think God is trying to tell us something?”

Orick frowned. “Wait a minute. Let me see that thing!”

Orick closed the Bible, closed his eyes, then flipped it open at random and opened his eyes. In the dim light, one passage seemed illuminated above the rest-a holy glow, shining down on the paper. He read:

“Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.”

The hairs raised on Orick’s back. To open the Scriptures three times and find such passages, it seemed more than pure coincidence could claim. Surely this was a message. He squinted up at the ship’s lights, saw that they were not brighter. He looked back down on the page. Surely that verse stood out more than all others. He gazed at it for a moment, saw the difference-the paper behind those words was whiter than the rest, somehow highlighting that verse. It was a miracle!

“But what of my vows?” Orick asked.

Tallea looked about warily. Gallen and the others were all still asleep. She whispered, “Perhaps this is God’s way of telling you that it’s all right for us, that this is more important to Him.”

Orick didn’t like the idea of taking spiritual direction from someone like Tallea. She hadn’t been baptized for more than a few months. Her fur was hardly even dry, and here she was expounding the will of God to him.

“One more. Let me try one more!” Orick said. He flipped open the Bible and read silently:

“Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is shame unto him?”

Orick frowned. This had something to do with prayer-Paul spouting nonsense about the virtues of baldness, something Orick sincerely doubted he would ever experience firsthand. But then he saw it, the brightness three verses higher on the page, and he read aloud:

“Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord.”

Orick’s heart pounded, and he could not think straight. Surely the Lord willed that Orick take Tallea to wife, and Orick could think of no commandment he would rather keep at the moment, yet somehow it saddened him.

He felt, in a way, that God rejected him. Orick set the Bible down.

“Tallea, will you take me to be your lawful husband?” he asked. It was a simple vow, the kind poor folks who could not afford donations to the church would make back home. Yet all his life, this vow had been treated as sacred by everyone he knew.

“Yes,” Tallea said, not knowing the more proper response. “Will you take me?”

“How can I not?” Orick whispered. “God commands it.”

“Then I don’t want you,” Tallea said, turning away. “You can just go off and do whatever. I won’t have you as my husband!”

“What?” Orick asked, shocked at the anger in her voice.

“If you’re marrying me only because He says so, then I won’t have you. When you’re hungry and I haven’t got dinner fixed, I don’t want you getting mad at Him. And if someday you do get mad at Him, I don’t want you taking it out on me. If you want me, then take me because you want me.”

Orick did not speak for a moment, simply gazed into Tallea’s eyes. In that moment he forgot she was in heat. He forgot to feel that he was inspired to make this decision. For one brief time that seemed both infinitesimal and eternal, there was only Tallea crouched on the floor of the hold before him, the woman who had given her life for him fighting the giant Derrits in the tunnels of Indallian; Tallea who had given away her dreams so that she could join him when the Lords of Tremonthin gave her back her life in the body of a bear. She’d given her life for Orick, given all her dreams for him. Certainly Tallea deserved only the best, and Orick wished he could give her all she deserved.

“Every breath I breathe from this day forward,” Orick said, “I will draw for you. Every dream I dream, I will dream for you. Now I know why God so seldom gets involved in matchmaking: because there’s only one she-bear like you.”

“Good,” Tallea said. “That’s the way it should be. Now will you say it in public?”

Orick agreed, and together they woke the others on the ship, and as captain of the ship, it was Maggie who married them, and all of it was recorded by the ship’s Al.

So Orick and Tallea took their vows that night flying amid the stars, in the quiet of the ship’s lounge, and Orick would always remember how Tallea’s eyes outshone the stars.

No woodland chapel could have been more beautiful, more reverent, or sacred.