Analog SFF, April 2010 (10 page)

"More of your Odwans?'

"No, just war leaders."

Freya waited a moment to see if Benton had more to say before she spoke again. “You are better than you believe, I think. Your men seem happy."

"Most of them, yes. Most of them believe we're still going to get home someday, and in the meantime this is as nice a posting as any cavalryman can hope for. Most of the men in the company didn't have a wife or a steady girlfriend back home,” Benton explained. “A few do, though, and that's a hard thing, to know you may never see them again."

Freya paused, then spoke carefully. “Do you have such a woman, Captain Benton?"

He didn't answer for a moment, decided to only reply in the negative as he usually did when someone asked that, then found himself saying much more. “No. My wife died several years ago, during the war with the South. It's . . . not easy to think of even now, because when I left for the war she was so worried that I wouldn't return, that I'd never be able to come back to her. But while I was campaigning she fell ill and died, so when I came home she couldn't be there. I . . . can't think of it without hoping she didn't know her last hours were her last, because it would have hurt her so to know she wouldn't be there waiting for me when I came back.” Benton couldn't recall the last time he'd spoken of that to anyone.

Freya regarded him gravely. “May the Light ease the burden of your grief and the stars shine in memory of the one you have lost.” The words sounded ritualistic, but she said them with real feeling.

"Thank you. What about you, Odwan Freya?"

She made a sad sound. “I had a man who died nearly half my life ago, in battle. He stays young in my memory. Now I am bound to my duty as Odwan. There has been little room for anyone else. You understand?"

"Yes, I do. I'm sorry for your loss. I'm grateful there is room in your life for my friendship.” It felt both comfortable and strange to be speaking so with a woman, one who truly did share so many things with him, who also knew how the burdens of command could force out personal wants and needs. The only thing standing between them like a wall was a truth that Benton hadn't yet shared with her. “I need to tell you where we actually came from, Freya."

She shook her head. “Whatever led you from there is nothing I need know."

"Yes, I think you do.” He explained his world, the storm, the changed world they'd found afterward, and Lieutenant Garret's theory. “We have no idea how to get back, but if we ever found a way, we'd have to use it. I have a duty to fulfill."

To his surprise, Freya didn't express any disbelief, instead nodding knowingly. “The lightning. Its ancient name is the fire-writer, that which the Light uses to cast messages in the sky, messages whose meaning we often cannot read. The lightning brought you here from the world you knew, but the reason may never be clear.” She sighed. “Your cavalry has saved Astera not once but twice and guaranteed our safety for years to come. You have already done so much. Yet, you may also help us and other cities build peace in this part of the land again, the type of peace no one has seen since the days of the fallen empire. But our debt and our duty is clear. If Astera, if I, can ever help you reach your home again, we will. But the lightning never repeats the same message twice."

"We say much the same thing,” Benton replied, turning away from the darkness where his duty had lain, turning to face Freya.

She smiled and touched his face gently with one hand. “No matter what the lightning does, you will always have a home here."

Postscript

Though historical memory of the Benton Massacre has been eclipsed by the Fetterman Disaster in 1866 and Custer's Last Stand at the Little Big Horn in 1876, it attracted considerable attention for a brief period and remains an enduring military mystery. On October 4, 1870, a company from the 5th Cavalry Regiment under the command of Captain Ulysses Benton left Fort Harker on a routine training patrol of the area south and west of the fort in preparation for campaigning later in the season. The company of cavalry did not return as scheduled, and every attempt to locate Captain Benton or any of his men failed. Nearby tribes all denied knowing what had happened to the cavalry unit, but an official investigation concluded that the only plausible explanation for their disappearance had to be a massacre of the entire company and the concealment of their bodies and equipment. No trace of Captain Benton's command has ever been found.

Copyright © 2010 John G. Hemry

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"Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind."

—The Princess Bride

"When you kiss me, without uttering a single word, you speak to my soul."

—Source unknown

"We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine."

—Eduardo Galeano

Search the Internet, and it's easy to find hundreds of quotes like this.
Every writer or poet with even a hint of a romantic streak seems, at one time or another, drawn to rhapsodize on the power of the kiss. And not just the first kiss. Consider this quote from John Keats (1795-1821): “You are always new, the last of your kisses was ever the sweetest."

But what exactly is involved in these lip-locks?

Love, obviously. Hopefully, some happily ever-aftering.[1] But that's not all. According to osculologists[2]—scientists who make their careers studying kissing—there's also an enormous amount of neurotransmitters, evolutionary biology, and instant assessments of potential life-mates. “It can be highly positive or highly negative,” says Helen Fisher, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. “Often the first kiss kills a relationship,"

Many customs vary widely from culture to culture, but kissing isn't one of them. As far back as the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Darwin noticed this and mailed questionnaires to missionaries, asking if people in the isolated tribes they dealt with kissed each other. The overwhelming answer was yes. In the 1950s, the study was repeated, with similar results. “Even where people found it disgusting, they did all kinds of other things,” said Fisher, in a pre-Valentine's Day press conference at the 2009 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Blow on the face. Tap on the face. Nip on the face."

Unless this is a truly massive coincidence, it means that kissing must do something biological: self-reinforcing, so that once people discover it, it drives out the types of cultural alternatives science fiction writers might otherwise invent (such as, say, pairs thumb-twiddling).

One prospect is that it shifts the body's hormone balance. To test this, Wendy Hill, a professor of neuroscience at Lafayette College, in Easton, Pennsylvania, recruited fifteen couples (all college students) and asked them to spend fifteen minutes alone together. One group held hands and talked. The other kissed. (Ah, the sacrifices we make in the name of science . . .)

Before and after, the researchers collected samples of blood and saliva, analyzing them for two critical hormones: cortisol and oxytocin.

Cortisol is a stress hormone. Oxytocin is related to feelings of trust, closeness, and pair bonding. Some scientists think it might be stimulated, early in life, by nursing and (in some cultures) premastication, in which mothers chew food before giving it to their infants. Since both of these are oral behaviors, it's possible that later in life, the same warm-fuzzy hormone is stimulated by other oral actions . . . such as kissing.

Also significant is the fact that humans aren't the only animals to exhibit such behaviors. Bonobos kiss and elephants put their trunks in each other's mouths. Foxes lick faces. “Some form of facial contact is common not only in mammals but also in avian and reptilian species,” says Fisher. Darwin wondered if kissing might be a natural instinct. “This might be in our hard-wiring,” says Carey Wilson, a student researcher at Lafayette College who helped with Hill's studies.

Precisely what our “hard-wiring” is leading us to search for, via kissing, is a subject of some debate. One prospect is that men are trying to taste sex hormones, such as estrogen, in women's saliva, subconsciously attempting to determine which women are most likely to be fertile. Another is that they're trying to make their dates more randy by passing on testosterone from their own saliva. Supporting this argument, Wilson notes, is the fact that while women tend to view kissing as a form of mate assessment and of maintaining a strong relationship, men often see it more as a prelude to sex.

Men also seem geared to maximize the exchange of saliva. “Men are more likely to like wet kisses with an open mouth with more tongue action,” Fisher says.

Kissing in the Med Center

Hill's team found that even at baseline, the women had higher levels of oxytocin than the men: sad confirmation that most men might truly have only one thing on their minds.[3]

After kissing, cortisol declined in both men and women (compared to the hand-holding control group), indicating that stress had been reduced. But contrary to expectations, oxytocin increased only in the men. In women, it actually decreased slightly.

Perhaps something is wrong with the theory—though it's hard to understand how kissing might undermine the pair-bonding of already established couples.[4] Alternatively, perhaps the study group was too small to produce anything more than statistical noise in this part of the study.

Hill's team thinks the problem may have been that the experiment was carried out in the student health center. “It was done there for the convenience in drawing blood,” says EvanLebovitz
,
another of the student researchers. But that may not have been an ideal choice. “The setting wasn't very romantic,” Hill admits. “There were flowers and music, but it was a place where students go when ill."

She speculates that the setting may have been more disruptive to the women than the men. “We are in the process of running the study again in a more romantic setting."

Human Pheromones

Insects produce pheromones: airborne sex chemicals that signal interest or draw prospective mates. Could people do something similar via kissing and related behaviors?

Quite possibly, say some researchers. Sarah Woodley, a neuroendrocrinologist from Duquesne University, notes that the simple act of blowing kisses might, to some degree, signify such intents. And many children, she notes, learn early to “throw” hugs. “Are we ‘throwing’ pheromones around?” she asks.

There is considerable debate over whether humans truly produce pheromones, but it's possible to sidestep that argument by speaking in terms of “chemosignals."

Such chemicals might well be transmitted via kissing. One older study reputedly asked people if they'd have sex with someone they'd never before kissed.[5] Not surprisingly, quite a few men (about half) said sure. Women, however, were highly unlikely to do so.

In another much-better-publicized study conducted three decades ago, scientists sprayed androstenone, a male sex hormone, on chairs in dentists’ waiting rooms. Women sat slightly more often in the sprayed chairs.[6] “But the data are problematic,” Woodley said. “There is a great deal of variability in the ability of people to detect it [androstenone]. A lot can't at all, and some find it sickening in smell, almost like urine. Others say it's like vanilla. So it's a complicated story."

Also of interest are “MHC” genes.

MHC stands for “major histocompatibility complex,” comprised of about a hundred genes. All are involved in immune function, but for some unknown reason they affect body odor.

What this means is that by smelling someone (or kissing them), you may be able to determine the strength of their immune system: valuable information in trying to determine if they'll be around long enough to raise your kids. Or you might be determining how genetically similar (or dissimilar) they are to you. Kissing someone with too close an MHC complex might produce subconscious cues akin to kissing your brother (or sister), good protection against inbreeding.

To test this, several research teams have asked people to sleep in the same T-shirts for several nights in succession. Then, other people were asked to rate the odors on the shirts, assessing, among other things, their pleasantness (or lack thereof) and sexiness.

Six such studies were recently reviewed by a team that included Craig Roberts of the University of Liverpool, Woodley said. Most found that people preferred odors from people whose MHCs differed from their own.

Chemo-sensing (in this case by smell) appears to be real. But it's hard to pin down because there are plenty of cultural practices (up to and including arranged marriages) that can override it.

My Adventure or Your Comfort Zone?

All of this is only the beginning. Fisher believes kissing may stimulate brain-affecting hormones and neurotransmitters linked to reproduction. She groups them into three basic brain “systems.” One is the sex drive. We've already talked about testosterone and estrogen in saliva and how kisses, particularly of the sloppy, wet variety, can exchange them. “Men do see kissing early in a relationship as a step toward copulation,” Fisher reiterates.

But in the long run, neurotransmitters might be more important. Fisher and her colleagues recruited forty-nine volunteers who were madly in love and put them in a brain scanner to see what parts of their brains lit up when they thought about the objects of their affections.[7] Seventeen had fallen in love recently, seventeen had been in love for years, and the rest had recently been dumped.

She found considerable activity in brain centers known to express two major neurotransmitter groups. One was dopamine, a natural stimulant linked to many types of pleasurable activities, including intense romantic love. This was particularly evident in the people who had recently fallen in love, who showed considerable activity in the brain's reward centers—what Fisher called “the brain systems for wanting, for craving, for focused attention.” So much for that single-minded perfection of new love: you're high on neurotransmitters. In addition to the dopamine, Fisher says, there's probably norepinephrine, which produces sweaty palms and a pounding heart.