The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) (29 page)

It was an enormous proposition and wholly unexpected.  It was also unrealistic to Diem that Five Houses, who struggled to feed and clothe their own, would have any hope of overcoming their oppressors.

"We don't have the numbers they have," Diem said.

"How do we know?" Generation said.  "We only see the overseers, the Plutians who handle the shipments, but what if their numbers aren't what we think they are?"

"They have Gall dragons," Diem said. 

"They had them...possibly...during the Scorching," Generation said.  "I've never met a soul who actually saw one with their own eyes.  The Plutians say they exist, but they could easily be urban myth."

"Urban myth?" Diem asked.

"A lie," Generation said. 

"But we do have a distinct advantage.  We are here and they are there," Shown said.  "It may be as simple as closing the wormhole they use for the trans shipments at the west end of our lot.  Without a wormhole, their journey here would take years at least."

Diem's mouth dropped open.  He had never been given the actual location of the trans, none of the Rhas had.  He hadn't even been told how the trans worked.  The whole business of shipments and transportation between the planets had been shrouded in secrecy since the Scorching.

But it made the most sense that the overseers would load the shipment trans in a remote area of the Hold House lot.  Hold House was the last stop on the dragon's journey through the harvesting chain and Pizant, the Hold House's overseer, was the only Plutian even remotely comfortable with handling the trained dragons. 

"It is a wormhole?"  Diem asked, slightly suspicious.  "They told you this?"

"Not intentionally.  Mark and Bra...Break, thought they located the wormhole."  Generation's tone swelled with pride.  "The Plutians drug us to sleep during the times of shipments, but we dug tunnels underground, to avoid the gases they put in our air.  It's taken years, but we've finally succeeded in reaching the peninsula we suspected they were using."

"But you still don't know if it is the actual site?" Diem said, his excitement waning.  Generation winked at him.

"We just retrieved the confirmation of it from Pizant," he said. 

"Retrieved..."

"Pizant believed he was immune to the human body he dwells in, but he's not." Shown chuckled.  "He's finally become so complacent that he was willing to drink with us.  It's amazing what a few jugs of distilled
gorne can do to a Plutian."

"He ga
ve you the same exact location and confirmed it was a wormhole?"  Diem asked.  His mind was a blur of thoughts—wormholes and dragons, drunk Plutians, and the fantastic possibility of regaining the Earth.  It overwhelmed him and sharpened him at the same time.

"Yes, but the location is the least of our worries," Generation said.  "He said there are two wormholes.  We have only located the one."

"One is a good start," Shown pointed out.

"Mark tracked the last five trans and has a general knowledge of how it works."

"Only general?" Diem said.  "Even after seeing it?"

"That area is obscured with a permanent, low-lying fog," Generation explained.  "Mark saw the trans sitting on the west peninsula.  Pizant loads the dragons onto the trans, but then the overseer leaves.  Pizant may not even know how the trans operates."

"How does the trans take the shipment into the wormhole?"

"Mark doesn't know that exactly.  The sleeping gases overwhelmed him before he could find out."

"So, we know, but we don't know, its location," Diem said.  The news was both dismal and hopeful, and it was hard to tell to which emotion he should commit himself.  Knowing the general location of the wormhole was promising, but not knowing exactly where it was, or what was capable of coming through it, was chilling.

"But we don't know where the second hole is," Diem said.

"Or if there is one," Generation pointed out.  "Pizant was drooling by the time he brought up the second one.  He could've just been blabbering." 

"We haven't ruled out the second; we just haven't been able to locate it," Shown said. 

"Maybe it's not on your lot," Diem said.  "Strategically speaking, it would be smarter to hide the other elsewhere."

"True.  It could be anywhere," Generation said.  The three men sat quietly, each raking over his own thoughts as the laughter of the children in the back yard drifted among them.  Diem's mind spun.  He could scour his own lot, but unless he was so lucky as to observe a Plutian actually traveling through the hole, there would be little chance of finding it.  It would be carefully obscured and locating it would require the amazing feat of being at the exact right place at the exact right moment.

"If we do this, if we start a war," Diem said.  "There are other possibilities we should consider.  The Plutians could choose to destroy the Earth rather than fight for it."

"True," Generation said.  "Another Scorching.  Raze it all and begin again."

"They could," Shown added, "but that would mean putting a hold on their lucrative trade or finding another work force to run it.  Pizant said there were no other options for labor, aside from humans.  He made it sound like submissive life forms are hard to come by and would be next to impossible to transplant here.  It would be a huge undertaking for the Plutians to start over, if they even could, and I can't imagine they'd want to do that."

"Which means they will fight," Diem said. 

"Or decide it is too much hassle and kill us all."  Generation rubbed a knuckle over his lip.  A child squealed with delight from the other side of the house.

"The real question we need to answer is this," Shown said,  "are we all ready to commit to doing whatever it takes to gain control of our planet again?"

"Bring it," Nature said from the door. 

***

Phuck smelled oddly, but he was elated as he made his way back to his cabin once again.  He felt certain that he was on the verge of obtaining several delightful successes:  pleasing his superior, maintaining his flourishing side trade, and acquiring a mating with Karma.  Things couldn't be going better.

Until he saw the woman parked in front of his cabin door. 

At first, he only identified the form as woman and mistook her for Wind.  He considered diving into the neares
t
shor
b
brush before he was spotted, but he realized too late that it wasn't Wind at all.  It was worse, and he had completely missed his chance to dive.

Tiddy lounged on his doorframe, arms crossed, mouth tight.  Her countenance was a bad sign.  Her pink, seeing-spheres glinted at him.   

"Blessings, 21141231185," Phuck grumbled as he came to his own door.  He was still annoyed with her for reporting the shortages to 38596.  His thoughts lingered upon sinking a shot of venom in a place that wouldn't kill her, but would make her think twice.  A small spray, perhaps, fired into one of her hearing holes, or a droplet to lop off the tip of her scent indicator... 

"Ughm," Tiddy grumbled, as if she were the one wronged.  "Where have you been?  I have been waiting to share mating with you for some time."

"I was with my Rha," Phuck answered sharply, "informing him of the new human trade and the impossible quotas that came about because you reported shortages."

"As I must."

"Oh?  Why must you?  What you must want is to bring my existence to an end."

Tiddy stepped closer to him, the jagged fringe of her eyelashes blocking half her sight holes.  "You misinterpret me.  Think again.  I must want to share joys with you."

Share?  She meant his independence.  And what could she possibly contribute that would make him want to share any of his enterprise with her?

She answered his thoughts by dropping her pants.  There in his doorway, Tiddy stepped out of the fibers that had fallen to her ankles, kicking them aside.  Phuck's eyes sunk down to the fuzzy mating spot at her base.  Furry as a hampig, she lifted one leg to openly entice him.

But the sight of it instantly reminded his urine straw of the marathon mating he'd had with Wind.  His straw seemed to crack as it hoisted and then, in pain, shriveled.  It drooped, a vertical blindfold that could not hide his pain berries from the cavernous, gaping maw hailing from behind Tiddy's scraggly thatch. 

Phuck gulped as Tiddy began to stroke herself.  Her pink eyes flashed and Phuck could feel the static shift in the air as she pulled in her wild excitement, gathering it into a ball of energy somewhere in her core. 

He knew from the sound, chuffing from her throat like smoke rings, that if she hit him with the kind of energy he believed she was accumulating, it would likely rip him in half.  And if it didn't, all the worse it would be for him, since she would expect the same vivacious energy returned.

"21141231..." Phuck began, his tone already pleading.  He did not get to finish her name.  Her breathing accelerated like a freight trans gaining speed in order to break through the atmospheric ring.  Phuck threw up his hands.  "No, no...listen, 211...extinguish it!  Extinguish!  EXTINGUISH!"

It was too late.  Tiddy's eyes closed, her head dropped back, and the glistening, pulsing ball of her sexual frustration blasted from her chest, aimed straight at Phuck.  He had a split second to decide.  He could either submit, and risk the inordinate pain of shaving off whatever was left of the raw outer skin of his urine straw inside of her, or he could inflict upon her the ultimate insult of his rejection. 

The steaming ball of her need crawled through the space between them as Phuck dropped to his knees.  He tucked his jaw knob to his upper torso in the hope that, after the energy sailed over the top of his cranial helmet, Tiddy would open her sight holes and see him kneeling submissively at the tips of her walking extensions.  He hoped his position of absolute surrender might sway her.  The only chance he had of not becoming her consummate enemy was to show her that he meant no insult in his rejection of her mating energy.    

Tiddy moaned and Phuck brought up his head, hoping that she was looking down on him with forgiveness.  But she was not looking down.  In horror, Phuck witnessed an unprecedented second release fire out of her, right behind the first.  The second, only slightly smaller ball of energy impregnated the first.  The sexual concoction bobbed once before it fire-balled straight into his face, swallowed up by the central, black hole in his head. 

He sucked in a breath as Tiddy's head snapped up, searching for him on her own sight horizon.  Her sight holes finally dragged her head down, to find him kneeling before her.  Consumed with dread, Phuck waited for the ball of her energy to sink to the bottom of him.  He pictured Tiddy's throbbing, sexual projectile softly tapping down onto the floor of his pelvis, immediately followed by a staggering detonation of hormones.  His urine straw cringed in anticipation.

Tiddy peered down at him expectantly, moving closer, bearing her tangled patch to his lips.  Phuck only peered back up at her, mouth clamped shut.  Moments passed.  No sexual explosion rocked through him.

"Rejection?  That is what you give me?" Tiddy sparked.  Phuck got to his feet gingerly.

"I did not intend...you did enter me...it came through the hole in my face..."

Tiddy wouldn't hear it.  She reared back with a warning hiss and Phuck scrambled out of the way.  It was a grave insult he paid her.  Worse than not accepting the mating energy, he had accepted it, but blocked response.  Except that he hadn't blocked it, so much as it hadn't detonated yet. 

He expected her to spew him with venom, spraying him until he melted off his bones.  Then she'd probably spray him again, until the bones cored and melted too.  She might even spray the seething, disintegrated puddle of whatever was left of him.  Then once more, just to be sure.

But instead, Tiddy howled like a human with its skin bag stuck in a trap.  She rocketed away from his doorway, swooping down to retrieve her pants. 

"I did not mean..." he began again, but she howled louder than he could speak.  She shot away, into the spindlings.  Her miserable howl went on for a hundred beats of his heart, as if she were out there running in circles around his cabin. 

When it finally faded, Phuck couldn't move. 

He stood paralyzed, realizing that her hormonal bomb was still inside him, lodged somewhere far below his skin, volatile and ready to annihilate him at any moment.  If the thing went off now, without a female nearby to quell it, the sexual blast would most likely kill him.  It was a hideous caveat to the miraculous wonder of Plutian mating.  He could literally go mad without an outlet for his urges, trapped by the overpowering desire to mate and left to work over his urine straw until the thing either cracked off or he went blind from utter dehydration.  He was already on the threshold as it was.

"By 1295," Phuck spat a cursing oath on the Plutian
deity.  He slid one foot painstakingly over the threshold of his cabin.  He brushed the second along after it.  Step by cautious step, he eased himself across the room to a chair, lowering himself with absolute trepidation.  Although his sitting lumps were in contact with the chair seat, he could not rest or recline, as it might jostle Tiddy's sex missile and bring him to total ruin.