The Press at Honaseka

By Lee Willard

In an ancient land that thought of itself as the ‘Known World’ until recently, there lies a group of cities only a day’s hike from one another that are the cultural melting pot of this ‘known world.’ Thru most of it's history few paid any attention to the outside world. Then, two centuries ago this area was discovered by an outside group, a civilization of Elves with many advances in technology. They brought advanced crops that banished hunger until the population grew. They brought advanced medicines that allowed those with the means to overcome diseases that had taken many in former ages and allowed them to enhance their beauty and strength. They brought machines that could record music, machines that could paint pictures incredibly lifelike and detailed, machines that could communicate over vast distances nearly instantaneously.
But two of the boons they brought have been especially disruptive to the cultures of the 'Known World'. One was extended youth. At first the medicines that extended youth were very expensive so that only the wealthiest could afford them. At first they were secret so very few knew of them. As time went on, the price came down and more of the population knew of them and could take advantage of them, with the result that cheating old age and death is no longer secret.
The second great change was a plague that made people sterile. At first the sterility plague was distant. It is spread only by exchange of bodily fluids, most thought it was spread only by sexual union. As we will witness, the plague has now reached the area where the people we will observe lived. For seven generations the poor have known that the wealthy live on. They resented it, and there was often trouble, but their preachers tell them that living on is a sin that keeps the ageless from their reward in the afterlife. Until now they've always lived on thru their children but today the plague is ending all that. The generation that will have no one to care for them in their old age is already born, and all the resentments, both social and religious, are coming to a head.
When we of Earth get to this point in biological science, let us hope that we come thru it as cleanly and easily as we see in this story. There is no doubt that the treatments will be only for the privileged and secret for quite some time. We will probably never know when they become available to the elites of Earth but already many parts of this have been kept from us. A cure for grey hair exists today, but Clairol has bought the American rights and does not allow it to be imported to this country. Telomere treatments have been researched, but news of them has already been suppressed.
In this story we see how the transition from ephemeral to eternal was made in one of the most backward areas of Kassidor, and one of only two where there was a long delay in bringing the benefits to nearly all of society. We follow the lives of six people thru the forty years when that transition occurred, 11ad. To 51ad. Two of them have made the transition long ago, three are affluent enough that they knew they would live on even when they were young and one of them longed to stay young but was too poor to ever suspect he would make it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Willard
• Release date: Apr 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005364656

Lee Willard

I am a retired embedded systems engineer and sci-fi hobbyist from Hartford. Most of my stories concern Kassidor, 'The planet the hippies came from' which I have used to examine subjects like: What would it take to make the hippy lifestyle real? How would extended lifespans affect society? What could happen if we outlive our memories? How can murder be committed when violence is impossible?I have recently discovered that someone new to science fiction should start their exploration of Kassidor with the Second Expedition trilogy. To the mainstream fiction reader the alien names of people, places and things can be confusing. This series has a little more explanation of the differences between Kassidor and Earth. In all of the Kassidor stories you will notice the people do not act like ordinary humans but like flower children from the 60's. It is not until Zhlindu that the actual modifications made to human nature to make them act that way are spelled out. To aide that understanding I've made The Second Expedition free.I am not a fan of violence and dystopia. I believe that sci-fi does not just predict the future, but helps create the future because we sci-fi writers show our readers what the future will be and the readers go out and create it. I believe that the current fad of constant dystopia and mega-violence in sci-fi today is helping to create that world, and I mention that often in reviews and comments on the books I read. I also believe that the characters in those stories who are completely free of any affection are at least as unnatural as the modified humans of Kassidor.In my reviews, * = couldn't finish it. ** = Don't bother with it. *** = good story worth reading. **** = great and memorable story. ***** = Worth a Hugo.

Book preview

O – 41,51,33 (11ad.)

Since the Forty Cities each keep their own year from their city’s founding, we are recording the dates in Elvish years. The Elvish calender was used by about a third of the population of the planet at this time. The Elvish standard calendar is used by almost all of them in the modern age.

41,51,33 wasn’t a standout year in most of the Forty Cities. It was a little dry, especially along the upper Lunstran cities and their surroundings, but not disastrously dry. The following joke went around, ‘A Nycoba goes up to a group of Enurate guys and asks, ‘How many Megnor men does it take to get an Enurate woman pregnant?’’ It would usually start a fight.

The King of Bef Lazahn married his seventh wife during the year in an elaborate ceremony which was marred by an anti-eternal-youth demonstration. The King’s own guard deserted him when the mob of aging men attacked and both bride and groom were driven back into the palace by shouting and placard-waving crowds. The hakkens were released in the grounds and two of them were killed by archers in the crowd before the hakkens were brought back in.

Plans were made public for a second floor drawbridge across the Honaseka towpath from the dockwalk to the west bank of the towpath. The bridge was over only a sand pit now, but the towpath would continue in that direction. The next section was scheduled to be flooded this fortieth year. That section would take the towpath on its closest approach to the old Bolanda dock-wall, and under the planned bridge.

Seventeen people were killed and hundreds injured in Zenereth when an inbound ship broke loose on the last descent of the Ereth carry and went thru the base house and into an acre of newcomer’s camps. Six tumufs were also destroyed and the carry was out of service for the remaining half of the year.

Warships from the GuildsBank of Demsalle blockaded the port of Caldone for six weeks late in the year on non payment of claims. Four cargoes were confiscated from the shippers that the bank held accountable. When the GuildsBank Headquarters was vandalized, Merchant’s Bank and Farmer’s Bank also sent warships in pursuit of claims they also held due. A Caldonian dockmaster’s headquarters was burned and a Caldonian tug was sunk on Nightday of Kenduul.

1. In the Temple

The ruddy globe of Kortrax was nibbling the tops of trees on the low hills to the west, swimming in the thick air along the river Lunstran. The slow luff of filmy-wings as they glided over the shadowed water could be heard over the sound of the throngs of squatters in their shacks and stalls. The aromas of cooking duskmeals wafted from those camps lucky enough to have a duskmeal this week. Like the city of Honaseka that Dharmon left behind this wakeup, a few saplings and some tent cloth was the standard home, a scrap of rag was the standard attire in this neighborhood.

He should never have started this trip on an Afternoonday, but now that he was twelve hours into it, he wasn’t turning back. He would have to get thru the dark somewhere on the road. He would have to find some food and sleep. He should be able to sleep anywhere, just about every bit of worth he had left had been converted to the camping supplies he was traveling with. He could trudge on til an early Duskmeal, then climb the hill and find a pocket in the brush to camp. If he bought food he would use his last Honaseka pennies. He had no more iron, much less copper on him.

He should have started on this trip ten years ago. That was when Kordel turned him out of the only comfortable place he’d ever known in the Forty Cities, certainly the only comfortable place in Honaseka. He spent two years hoping to get back into that obsession, he just waited around the other four, wasting the last of his money, taking day jobs because he didn’t have her connections to get more stonework. Over the last ten years he had slid back to join the ranks of the city’s poor. So now he had to hike out of Honaseka, his tools and everything else he owned on his back, dodging dusty pack animals and swarming children. Every little while he had to move over for a team and its cargo or one of the great, lumbering tumufs, nine feet tall and seven wide, pulling barge or ship along the canal.

He was well down the river here. He had paced the towpath downstream, south southeast, all day long, making at least twenty one miles. The great muddy camps of Honaseka were well behind, he’d passed the crumbling ruins of the walls only an hour and a half after his early start on this sweltering Afternoonday. This far south the plain beside the river was narrow, only one real street wide on each side of the canal. It was planked up businesses out on stilts on the river side, stalls and huts with more huts behind and climbing up the hill on the other. The hillside went on up steeper and steeper til it was mostly ledge at the top. Kluboeb gargoyles decorated the eaves of some of the crudest huts farthest up the hill.

The river and even the canal was starting to swing to the left. He knew if he followed too far it would swing around and back and land him in MqNeer, where he’d find little more work than Honaseka, but for totally different reasons. Most of Honaseka was sapling and tent with only a few foundation stones, more brute sweat than skills such as his. MqNeer had lots of old stone, the whole nineteen mile long island between the Var and the Lunstran was at least four floors deep in stone, but all the new structure in MqNeer was done with the grown structure and cast crystal the Elves introduced. What fine stonework was done was mainly decorative and securely in the hands of a few strong guilds of which he was not a member. Guildsmen could all afford youth now, the last new membership granted in a MqNeer Stonemason’s Guild was three generations ago.

He would have to leave the towpath here and make his way overland, but first he needed to find a meal that he could afford or dig into his supply of trail rations. Once he climbed the hill he would find no commercial establishments for some distance and any that he did find might have little welcome for a Nycoba. The Hununts were Enurate land since the fall of Blubor, many of them of fundamentalist Kluboeb orders.

He found a guy selling some grilled fish for his dinner with a few dried fruits on the side. The fish were fresh enough, those not yet grilled still swam in a net in the canal. He was pleasantly surprised that the price left him with one last, lonely Honaseka penny. He would probably keep it as a souvenir of the life he was leaving, the paper of Honaseka banks was not accepted in Nunstalle.

He removed his pack and sat on the bank of the canal to eat his duskmeal. It wasn’t his biggest meal of the week and he had to eat it alone except for one urchin who stopped to try and sell him some fishing gear that was probably stolen. He wondered what he would do for food on Nightday? If he could climb the hill he might nibble at a farmer’s field, but he didn’t think he would be able to make the climb in the dark. The face of the Hununts was higher and steeper down here. He could hike thru Nightday along the towpath. The lanterns and bells of the tumuf tows would guide him but he would arrive in MqNeer, no closer to Nunstalle.

Only one ship went by while he ate and that was on the far bank, going upstream and pulled by a four keda hitch. It was a fine little twin hull river boat all the way from the lowlands, a thousand miles and two thousand locks down-river. It’s railings were shaped and varnished and its passengers slept in cabins with glass in their windows. There were four square-rigged masts but they were bare of all but the base rigging as they were pulled along the canal. The people aboard were mostly lowlanders. A couple pretty, dainty, black-haired girls waved to him. He had never had sex with a Pixie, but would have had it with either of these in spite of their almost eerie whiteness and narrow shoulders. They each wore a thin, colorful sheath. It was clear that their nipples and pubic hair were black also thru that fine weave. Their breasts seemed bigger, with narrower shoulders to support them and their waists slimmer and hips rounder. Their thighs beneath their sheaths were very round and white. Their feet were dainty, but they did have little bitty pot bellies that showed their navels more than an Enurate women of the same weight. Of course an Enurate woman as slim as they would be Kordel and Kordel is almost as exceptionally beautiful as an Enurate woman could get, more beautiful than the average Nycoba woman.

After his duskmeal was done he noticed a Tahmote temple just off the path behind the fisherman’s shack. Behind that, it looked like there might be an easier climb up the hill, maybe even some steps. The temple was actually behind a block of stalls and huts that had been built up in front of it like the one this fisherman built. These huts were almost on its steps. The temple was now dull with age and half hidden by the moss and vines that climbed it. As a mason he could see that it was built of good stonework, work he would be proud of, had he done it some fifteen or twenty generations ago when these stones were raised. He took the path that would also lead up into the hills, seeing that there were quite a few little camps built up along it so it was almost a side path thru a pass to the hills. As he passed the temple, wishing he could afford such a luxury, he noticed a sign that said labor offerings were welcome.

After seeing the pretty Pixies, a Tahmote temple sounded like a very pleasant place to spend the dark, especially if they were accepting labor offerings. The temple seemed a sleepy place, in spite of the grandeur of its structure. The pleader was an aging gent with long white hair and a lined face. If you looked at Kordel and him together you would have thought he might have been her grandfather. Dharmon wondered if he would be suspicious of someone with a smooth face and dark hair. He shouldn’t, those with the means to make large offerings would keep themselves young, those who asked about labor offerings would not be wealthy enough to keep themselves young and so could have only gotten their youth naturally.

The work was simple enough, pedaling a foot loom for twenty minute blocks twenty minutes apart, no more effort than continuing his hike. His legs stayed just as sore. The temples often accepted labor offerings, he’d frequented one in Honaseka since being evicted from Kordel’s home and bed. It had tasks sawing planks, much sweatier labor than pedaling a foot loom. He pedaled three stints while waiting for the ceremony to begin. There were no other labor offerings so far so there was no one to spell him. The girl who ran the loom pedaled it herself for a few minutes while he took a break, one of the acolytes spelled him a few minutes another time, and Dharmon’s breaks were much shorter than ten minutes. The loom was finely made, it was probably a new one manufactured in MqNeer but no doubt to Elvish blueprints.

The girl stopped for the day a little while before the ceremony was to begin. As quiet as this place was, she might be the girl who conducted the rites also. If that was so he was a bit disappointed. The Megnor girls on the riverboat were more attractive than this girl. She wasn’t actually bad, a thin Enurate blond, intelligent enough and in pretty good condition with a flat belly and muscular thighs, no doubt she peddled it a lot herself. She would still be a better companion for the sleep than himself, but there would probably be a few other guys with money or food offerings waiting by now and she would be very tired by the time it was his turn, especially after her day at the loom.

When he got back upstairs Dharmon found he was still the only one here. The pleader made him understand that all the temple girls had the sterility plague and they would provide protection if he didn’t bring his own or say he already had the plague. Dharmon wished commercial girls were that honest. It was a bitter truth that Dharmon had been able to wave that warning away for ten years now.

He sat in front of the trysting bed in the grand ceremonial room of this fine stone temple and watched the land ever so slowly darken as the great sun Kortrax sank behind the hills. From here he could see out the temple gates, over the grand steps and the rows of stalls and huts in front of them. To the south, the face of the hills went straight to MqNeer but out to the east were two bends in the river, one bend in the towpath. Kortrax was now behind the top of the hill, this land lay in shadow, though the hill was only a few hundred feet high. Far out on the curve of the river the trees on the far side were still lit deep red. The scene was quiet and still but for a few small dactyls that swooped over the river, flashing into Kortrax’s rays at the tops of their arcs. The filmy-wings still danced above the river but they were tiny specks from this distance. Far beyond them the dim red shapes of thunder heads marched across the Hoolingies, miles beyond the Lunstran to the east.

He couldn’t believe this whole grand and sumptuous room was empty, even though the dusk ceremony was about to begin. The temple was supported by ‘offerings’ from ‘believers’ who gave their donations to honor the goddess of fertility and participate in the holy sacrament of sexual union with the temple girls. The alter of this church was the great bed, a plush square two feet longer on a side than a tall man, just the height of a woman’s legs off the top dais step. He wondered if the empty room meant the girls of this temple were lacking in some way? He wouldn’t be at all disappointed at having the weaver to himself for the sleep. Her lips were thick and her nose was really wide but she had cute freckles on it. Her blond hair was a bit thin and limp, but compared to a model in a glossy magazine. She would still be the prettiest woman queued at the average vegetable stand.

As the girl entered the room, he could see that this was not the girl who ran the loom and she was not lacking in beauty. This girl was as much Nycoba as he, she had the arched eyebrows that came together in a long dainty point down the bridge of her nose, with dainty little fuzz to the very tip. Even across this large room he could see the delicate features and the grace of that race. She had far too pronounced a figure to be purebred Nycoba, and far too lush lips. Her chest jutted firm and proud and full, her hips were slim and sensuous and her waist strong. Her legs were long and slim with firm round thighs, tapered calves and small feet. Her hair was long and thick like a Megnor’s, but forest bronze as a Nycoba’s and as wavy as an Enurate’s. Her eyes were shining Nycoba bluish old bronze also, sloped down at her nose. Her color was of thick cream, lit by the pink light reflected off those distant thunderheads.

Welcome to our worship of Tahmote, she said as she walked across the room to him, goddess of fertility and pleasure.

She was a rather small girl who stood directly in front of him with her legs slightly spread, her slim arm straight out before her. He was sitting on the top step of the dais at the foot of the bed, this carpet was much plusher than the seats he frequented. Her straight fingertips rested on top of his head. She was dressed in a form fitting tunic of soft, white, elastic yaffa which reached just below her hips where it was tied with flowing ribbons in the maroon of the temple. A thin flowing robe trailed out from beneath it, long enough so it’s tails were just below her knees, tapering to mingle with the ribbons.

There is no uniform for Tahmote’s temple girls as long as the dominant colors are maroon, trimming white. The temples are popular because the women who work the temples have an excuse to believe in what they do. The women are sometimes not as pretty as pure commercial girls, but they are often more fun. The temples often make enough that the girls do well, but this temple was in an area where there wasn’t much money to be had. In spite of that, this girl was much prettier than the average commercial girl, astoundingly, exotically, delicately, beautiful. If there was any money to be had in this area, she should have claimed it all.

I am Zhanene, and you are… she pointed directly at him, her slender arm extended perfectly straight towards his nose. She did this even though he was the only one present. Many temple girls have a ritual to their service and practice it. Their rituals are not the same, some girls have more than one routine. Some will go thru them no matter what the size of the audience. Many are in trance, often drug-induced.

Dharmon; out of Honaseka.

She asked no further questions, she was clearly inside herself at this time like someone involved in a challenging athletic event, concentrating on her shot. Watch, while I begin our celebration of life, she seemed to pretend there was a whole audience here and she was holding them all as enchanted as he was. She had probably rehearsed these lines til they were automatic. In the Honaseka Tahmote temple, when the turnout is very low, the girls don’t even bother to take bids, one will say something like, ‘OK, just gimme what you got and we’ll make an evening of it,’ and they would proceed to use up all their dicks had to offer. This girl was going to go on with the show like the room was full.

An acolyte started the music. Dharmon knew there was a booth with a peep-hole to the room where someone started a tape as she raised her hand. The temples had been early in adopting recorded music and had claimed it as magic four generations ago. By now everyone knew it was Elvish devices, and not very good quality by today’s standards. This was probably one of the old analog string models. The music started gentle and melodious, and she began to sway as she brought her arm down. It was a sweet and glad song of rich croplands nearing harvest, small birds flying slowly in the thickening air of a dusk in the deep basin. The church of Tahmote’s origin’s are much deeper than the Forty Cities, down in Megnor lands. As voices in the song came chanting akimbo from secret huts in the music, Zhanene began to prance and twirl. On a spin her jacket opened at the top, the thin robe beneath could not conceal the beauty of her dark nibs, could not conceal the fact that they were erect.

Dharmon began to smell the smoke that wafted into the room. They weren’t using much this evening, with only one worshiper, but since Dharmon hardly ever smoked and couldn’t often afford yaag these last couple years, it was enough to let him see the movie she danced to. This girl was very good and very athletic, in perfect time with the music. She was not only prettier than any of Tahmote’s girls back in the Honaseka Temple, she was a much better dancer and a MUCH better athlete. Her dance was about the building energy for the harvest. On her first handspring the jacket flew and she was wrapped in a sheer cloud, silhouetted plainly within it.

The man in the booth faded to a different tape that invoked the harvest celebration in his mind. This music must have been something from the worlds outside. Only Elven wizardry could produce such awesome sound, but it had the pounding beat of something Nordic or Troll, but also the sound of huge crystal bells shaken by a quake and all in a vast stone hall that could have only been the work of Dwarves.

Her dance became a flurry of motion and bare glances within her veils. A row of cartwheels left her outer skirt behind and she spun one eighties on each hand and foot while cartwheeling so he saw first an upside down view of her smooth bottom thru the sheer fabric, then her dark diamond upside down, then her butt right side up, and then her velvety crotch.

She writhed close to him now passing her cheeks and her breasts across his face, she spun and her top was open, she passed her bare breasts across his face again, then stood in front of him and bounced them off his face in perfect synchronization to a bridge in the music which sounded like primitive tribesmen beating old skin drums with thigh bones. Then she tumbled back and out of her wrap entirely. Proudly naked she entered the frenzied climax of her dance, invoking the great bonfire of the harvest celebration. The last screaming note of the of the song brought her thudding to a stop on the bottom step of the dais at the end of a final twisting, well-spread tumbling run, her flat belly only a foot and a half from his face, her body perfectly still except for her heaving chest with her glistening vulva inches from his face.

When he noticed her looking down at him, he spoke. I am truly enchanted by your celebration. That performance was stunning.

It is my belief. She smiled in formal Mythra as she sank into his lap, straddling him and putting her hands behind his neck. I am of Tahmote, feel Tahmote within me.

She kissed his forehead and rubbed her breasts on his face again, much more slowly this time, tickling each cheek with a nipple in turn. He took them in his hands and sucked the nipples. Her soft curls tickled his leg as she moved up and down it. She slowly stood and he kissed and nibbled his way down her body as she did, thru her navel, down her left hip then back to the smooth lips, bringing a wide pink smile. She pulled him up and lead him onto the large bed he had been leaning against. His clothes seemed to fall away at her touch, he’d been too enthralled to be conscious of the fact that he was fully erect.

She pushed him back down on the bed and took it in both hands, while his hands caressed her everywhere. Her skin was perfect everywhere, and welcomed his hands wherever they went. She licked the glans once, then put it within her, both of them watching as it disappeared inside. Now her true skills became apparent as she kept him on the knife edge of orgasm for almost an hour. They were sitting up, arms around each other and bouncing breathless when she finally let him go, as she went herself with a soft but firm grip.

They collapsed against each other, he was gasping, she wasn’t breathing as hard as she had been after that thud at the end of her dance. He lay flat on his back and she stretched out beside him, her chin and hand on his chest, the firm mound of her left breast on his belly.

Wow, he was finally able to squeak out.

That was most pleasing union, she said, and curled to kiss his nipple. I’m grateful to have you as my celebrant for my last Rites at this temple, she continued in Nycoba.

He panted a little more, then followed her with Nycoba and said, Not as glad as I am. I thank my spirits that I didn’t camp in those woods up ahead and didn’t wait til next week to make this trip.

You are on your way from Honaseka to where? She spoke fluent High Nycoba with a sweet, almost Markailian accent in a voice with the tone of fine glassware.

Dharmon was fluent enough in that language to be comfortable in a conversation, though he would hardly be chosen to teach its vocabulary and grammar. She was the trained temple girl in Mythra, but seemed to be more herself in this tongue so Dharmon was glad he could continue in it. Nunstalle. I’m a stonemason, I’ve heard there might be work in Nunstalle for one with skills for tall structures.

I admire your skills with tall structures already, she breathed and kissed his shoulder this time, resting her cheek on it. It is still a day’s hike to Nunstalle from here. You can sail the Lunstran down to MqNeer and then work your way up the Var, or go as passenger for an iron, or hike overland thru the Hununts twenty three miles by the path I’m taking. I’m making that hike this Morningday, I wouldn’t take any steep side path in the dark.

I don’t have an iron, I was just plodding the towpath.

You’ll be all next week getting to Nunstalle that way and you’ll get all dusty in the traffic before you reach the upper locks of MqNeer.

I was told Nunstalle was only thirty two miles from Honaseka.

This is Honaseka, you are still among the dusty shacks and camps by the river are you not?

I’ve been in that for at least twenty miles since I left my dusty camp early from Noonsleep.

"Whoever told you that, thinks as I do, that all this stuff down along the river is still part of Honaseka. Main Honaseka is only a wider mudflat with more squatter camps and shacks on it farther upstream. Nunstalle is a real city with a wall and membership cards, with paved streets and plumbing."

Sounds interesting. I wasn’t born in Honaseka, I was actually born in the village of Korstek up in the Hyfong valley. Don’t bother remembering those because you’re never going to meet another person who’s heard of them in your life. I sailed downstream thru thousands of valley towns for twenty one years on the Lunstran. Klendenst was the first city I stopped at.

Nothing more than Honaseka, just farther upstream, she said.

There’s the works up there. They give its whole valley a darkness. Being right below the great locks like that also makes it seem even gloomier than Honaseka.

Plus they made those spires out of that obsidian, she cringed and laughed at the same time. You’ll like Nunstalle, it’s cheerful with music and the people are pretty. You’ll find more Nycoba and Megnor and a lot less Enurate. You’ll find work as a stonemason, your friend was right about that, and for high work also. Best of all for detail and engraving.

I can do fine work also, but have no guild.

You’ll do well there, each tradesman works to his own reputation. You’ll soon have a nice wooden house above some stone-built business with thick timbers and separate rooms to sleep in under a gabled dormer and you’ll light it with lanterns.

He could imagine what she was talking about, the homes of the fine families of Korstek looked like that, at the top of the dell the village was in. Of course they didn’t have four stories of business stone beneath them, just a row of stone blocks. I would like to live in a place like that. All I was living in was a platform on stakes and some sapling sticks and tent, with enough extra land for a few salad fixings.

In Nunstalle you’ll buy your fresh stuff in the market from the farmers of the Hununts and Var Terrene. You might grow a little vine on a balcony rail, but if you’re inside the wall there’s no room for gardens.

He contemplated that. It would be pure city, like MqNeer but on a smaller scale. He hadn’t pictured it quite that way.

Have you ever seen an actual map of all the 40 cities? he asked.

She got up from him, No, I didn’t know anyone ever made one. I didn’t think anyone’s ever made a map of Honaseka.

I don’t think you can, there’s hardly enough of anything permanent enough. But by now she was in the washroom.

He was glad to be leaving that giant camp site of bazaars, shacks, strapped-up marketplaces and cook’s stands in a sea of flimsy tents. Even the most permanent buildings, such as Kordel’s home, were of logs and built on logs sticking out of the sand. The docks and strap-ups along them were pretty permanent, especially the stone piers. What business offices there were, were mainly on the waterfronts. They were often second floors above the bait shacks and used goods dealers along the Honaseka docks. Now there were even a few not made out of used packing material. If it wasn’t for the compost cans of the gas men, the city would fester with disease. As it was, the young archwood roots soaked up quite a bit of the extra waste from those who pissed on any ground off the actual paths and camps. The roots of the larorlie vines coiled over the more permanent parts of Honaseka.

Zhanene returned from the washroom and took his mind off the camp city. Do you mind if I spend the sleep with you here in the worship room?

I would certainly enjoy that, but you may find I can’t leave you alone.

I am used to joining an average of six times when I have the Rites, but this temple has been very slow in recent decades. She was back on the bed with him again, still nude. She lay against him with her leg over his, her fluff tickling his thigh.

I’m sure I don’t have the stamina for six. He’d never had, even when just turning three.

Whenever you feel desire, it would be my pleasure to satisfy it.

I’m sure it would be my pleasure too.

He caressed her butt as he said that, she moved it in his hand, sometimes tensing it, sometimes leaving it soft and supple, usually somewhere in between so it swayed and writhed in his hand. She pointed her tongue and ran it around his nipple. He stroked the dainty fuzz on the bridge of her nose, and her lips curled in a smile. He could tell she was proud of her Nycoba ancestry, and no doubt that aided in attracting her to him. It was exotic after a decade with an Enurate woman.

While he was thinking of this, and how smooth and warm her skin was, she asked, Why are you in Honaseka?

I worked on the new pier, I did the torch poles.

I’ve not been to the wide flats since that got started, this temple is closer to MqNeer. How long did that take?

It took almost a year to carve each one, I was paid four coppers for each.

Rich as well as beautiful, she said. She was playing with a curl of his hair with her other hand.

I have none of it left, I’ll need to do temp work to eat. As I told the temple pleader, I must work at the temple looms as my offering.

So you will leave late in Nightday?

No. I will work all of Nightday at the loom to earn two sleeps and two meals and set out for Nunstalle when light returns.

You shall accompany me, she told him with an air of finality. We’ll hike the Hununts together.

Are you sure you want to do that? All we know of each other is your role at the temple.

About all there is to me right now, I have no more to my life. I practice my dance, there is a lot of practice involved. I must manage my share of the labor pool, though we rarely question the Holy Mother here.

Why are you leaving the Temple? Is it a problem of faith?

Oh no, I believe in fertility, sensuality and pleasure, but I don’t kid myself that the temple is anything more than a whorehouse that latched onto that Megnor goddess as a gimmick.

Which is older, the goddess or the church?

"The goddess by at least a hundred centuries. Long before people could write, they carved images of Tahmote. Fecundity was really important back when all people were ephemeral."

Did this mean she had no problem admitting that she wasn’t? This was unusual, at least in Honaseka where most of the population was still ephemeral, where you still saw elderly tottering openly along the aisles and alleys. Actually Dharmon was still ephemeral, he had taken no medication to alter his age of any price or reputation but he knew he would do so if he could as he got older. How would he feel if he saw an old person then? Most people who extended their youth tried to keep quiet about it in public since there could always be someone around who couldn’t afford it. Of course laying quietly wrapped around each other wasn’t very public was it?

She was taking his mind off these musings by slowly writhing over him, sliding her curves over various parts of his body. It was soon clear that once wasn’t enough for Zhanene, for she was soon the instigator of another round. This time slower, not as athletic, but probably taking even longer. They didn’t get up from this one. Please stay within me, she whispered as they passed into sleep.

2. A Meeting at Bef Lazahn

Centuries of foot traffic had worn grooves in the stone floor of the building where Dumaang was to meet Narbla, a long-time friend from a shared youth in Honaseka. It was a shame that much of the fine original stonework had been covered over by much cruder redevelopment so now it wasn’t obvious what purpose had originally put these stones here. What Dumaang could see of the original space had the look of a Bulgite temple from the Ten Cities era of thirty centuries ago. There were blackened signs from when this must have been a bureaucracy centuries after that, probably during the late Sky People’s age. Today this was a great public hall, plaza, or square buried in the basements of the city of Bef Lazahn. It was called Ch’buke, which meant approximately ‘cellar stairs’ in Old Beleetain, a tongue Dumaang knew had been common in Bef Lazahn about four centuries ago.

The hoards of the city’s undercarriage thronged in this space. The old shuffled along, towed by their grandchildren. Dozens of shills hawked wares they could lead their quarry to, sometimes even as they were swept along in the crush. Some carried samples, some had even dared to set up booths in the corners of the plaza if what they were selling was light enough. There were a few hookers about, they would go topless in the basements of Bef Lazahn and no one even tried to stop them any more. They were dark Enurate beauties for the most part. He wished he had time for one and wished he dared keep himself young enough to really have fun with her.

The journey from Nunstalle had not been as difficult as he imagined it would be, but it had still taken both light days of week K’shitn. He hadn’t really traveled in an ephemeral generation and wondered what banditry was about at this time. His coach mates said there was more to fear from pestilence in the inns than there was from banditry in recent times. There were no threats at all on the trip, so he felt a bit silly with that ugly little short sword under his jacket. And though he didn’t keep himself looking very young, he kept himself in reasonable condition. The aging but not aged Megnor bull was his persona.

There were less people looking for trouble than there used to be in the towns, but there were more people drinking. More drinking yaag in the towns, but not in the Kluboeb countryside itself. That inn had a nice keg of it. Dumaang had already noticed that those who drink the Elven brew were less prone to confrontation than others. Barmen were noticing that too and putting more permanent fixtures on their premises since they began tapping it.

But in some ways the lawlessness was even worse this generation. For instance, back behind the half-naked hookers in the depths of Bef Lazahn, his view of the faded ‘no cooking’ signs in several languages, some of them now dead, was momentarily cut off by a big old brute wheeling a cauldron filled with wood and supplies down the steps into the room. Laws that didn’t involve some force of nature to enforce them did not get enforced very often any more. The Bef Lazahn city court might pass lots of laws and resolutions and get lots of signs put up if they paid someone to actually go out and do it, but there was just no one to go out and actually put force to a government edict that wasn’t enforced by some law of nature.

The successful cities today were run voluntarily, either by a council of businesses like MqNeer, a citizen’s compact like Nunstalle or herd instinct like Honaseka. Bef Lazahn was sliding into the ‘herd instinct’ form of city government, decorated with the pomp of twenty-century-old ceremony. No one felt personally threatened or responsible for the cook, they all went on their way across the plaza as he found a place to set up.

The cook dumped the wood out, arranged it, lit it, and when it got to a good roar, worked the well-greased bottom of the cauldron down on top of it. As the grease flared and the thin modern ceramic cauldron heated, he splashed the bottom with fresh oil and began making up a hearty stew. Soon the aroma filled the whole cavern and Dumaang wondered if Narbla would follow his nose to that side of the space.

Dumaang made his way over toward the cook. When he first got the directions to this plaza, he didn’t imagine it being quite this large or this far underground or this old. Dozens of generations had probably looked at the smoke buildup on this ceiling and thought someone should do something about it. Hundreds of people if not thousands had probably been hit by falling ash and soot that built up over the generations as the smoke sought its way up out of here. If he and Narbla didn’t meet at some landmark within the plaza, they could very well miss each other in the size and crush of this space.

He wondered how much structural science had gone into this latest build-over when it was opened back out. He guessed, ‘It’s holdin’ ain’t it?’ was about the extent of structural research that was done. He wondered if there was any crystal reinforcement in any of this. He wondered how much anyone important cared if this chamber collapsed. Only if there was an important building above it. He noticed that he had reached the cook and saw that he was not getting a lot of business even though the smells were tantalizing and the traffic was heavy.

The cook spotted him looking and made a pitch in common Mythra. Are you dining sir?

I’m waiting for an old friend, I’m using you as a landmark. Your cooking smells superb and is sure to draw his nose.

A snack while you wait perhaps?

He may have dining in mind when we meet, if so, maybe we will make you our chef for the evening, I’ll see what he has in mind. Dumaang moved off a little way into the crowd, knowing it would be too inconvenient to talk over duskmeal standing in this plaza. This cook should find a much better space. The cook and a few booths on the far side were the only points of interest in this plaza. He would have to stay by one or the other. He could stand here and watch both. Some of the girls were certainly worth watching in this plaza and some of those who were not selling their sex were still very pretty. He would often watch the ones with small babies in their arms, they often wore something they could open easily.

Narbla could have met him at a place that wasn’t this large or this busy where he would have a better chance of seeing him. He was wondering why he picked it when he spotted him across the plaza in front of a few booths selling trinkets from the Bleezard, Mufang and Messiah Ohmmomeezie churches. Even from here he could see that the girl at the Ohmmomeezie booth was exceptionally cute and had a blouse that was exceptionally thin. Narbla’s interest in the trinket’s on display was obviously a ruse to rub up on the girl, telling him why Narbla picked this spot. Narbla looked a lot younger than he used to, though it had been decades since he had seen him. Dumaang kept his eye on Narbla as best he could and moved in that direction. Once he started getting closer he began waving.

Narbla is a purebred Nycoba, compact, slender, with brown curls and the full Nycoba feathering of his nose. He looks to be in his tenth or eleventh decade now, but Dumaang knew he was now well over twenty and probably would have been gone if it wasn’t for genetic medicines.

"Ah, you are still here, Narbla said, I was so late."

I’ve been here less than an hour. There’s someone cooking here if you’re interested.

"Oh no, no, no, no, no. If we’re to discuss this over food, let me take you to Dcharvy’s my good friend."

I can be persuaded to discuss this wherever you like. He had never heard the name before. Bef Lazahn was poor, but it did have some thick veneers of old rich. It was a very stratified society with a struggling middle class, like Narbla, caught between a large ephemeral serving class and a pampered elite. Bef Lazahn was famous for gourmet dining from all over the known world and Narbla was the type to seek it.

Then let’s make our way, Dumaang said and began to move in the direction Narbla indicated. They pushed thru the throngs in this deep old plaza, away from the cook who might not get much business here. Ch’buke was where all the low-priced used, or even stolen, goods markets came together in the basement of the city. Those that shopped down here tended to buy their food simple and in bulk and cook it plain and offer thanks to their deity that they had any at all. This was how the no-cooking rule was actually enforced in Ch’buke today.

They toiled up at least four flights of stairs, each getting wider and lighter, until they came to a street open to the darkening purple sky. They walked this wide street til they came out in one of the arms of the city’s central court. The court was shaped more like a thirteen-armed klizhorn than the star it was named for, the arms were crooked and branched and bent around to point at the docks, the lake or one of the main locks, even though they were each over a mile away. All the arms and such had been added century by century since the current court was founded. The central court was open, artistically paved, and studded with deeply eroded monuments from the days when the king of Bef Lazahn was an important power thruout the known world.

Now the city’s king was an important entertainment figure, sometimes announcing at large festivals using pneumatic amplification, often leading parades in a lavishly decorated royal carriage or sedan-chair. The king and the city government were housed in the imposing but rambling maze of mossy stone towers in the center of the park in the center of this thirteen-pointed star. The remainder of the park was trees and a high fence with lots of ornamental but dangerous theiropsoid animals inside like hyadunes, hakkens and feral mindunes.

Narbla led Dumaang across the central court, around the hoary castle and its pincer-clacking pets and finally down a lane off the end of one of the arms. It was a narrow lane of four-story stone town homes with beautiful cast-stone candle-lanterns over the front doors, most of them lit. The street had the feel of one which rested on solid ground but this just meant there were solid stone arches beneath, because he knew the whole city was riddled with underground structures, tunnels and catacombs where the underclass lived. The park in the center of the star had once been on a hill above the old stone city, the one that seemed buried. But the lower city reached the sky behind the facades of these fine town homes. These buildings were two, three or four stories higher on the back side.

Narbla explained to him that the city had repealed street lighting laws altogether. The custom had become front lantern off when shutting down the house, whether commercial or residential. If that left it too dark, use your own torch to find your way. But in this area nearly every lantern was lit at the climax of duskmeal. Only a block or so off the main business street, Dcharvy had a large wood and plastic sign, lit by a mantled lantern within. It seemed to be carved from a single big wooden block that had been sawed rough from a tree four feet in diameter, a slice a foot thick and roughly split rectangular into a sign about four by three feet. The Elvish syllable Dchar was carved large and fat and well lit at the top of the sign, visible from both sides. The vy was a subscript in Dchar’s syllable space on the sign.

The building was synthetic granite cast over a stone ruin that looked even older than Ch’buke, but probably also from the ten cities era. Dumaang had recently read that the writing of that civilization had never been decoded. The modern fake granite was probably decorated to look like the halls carved into the cliffs of Sindeal along the North Toumda but it was now covered with the clawing roots and vines of that Elvish bioengineered grown tree-building that was now thriving in several of the cities. Dcharvy’s didn’t seem to extend up into that, that growth seemed to be all residential above Dcharvy’s upper floor.

The interior of Dcharvy’s was very chic, decorated in lush vegetation of the deeps, with subtle lantern light mimicking the dim light of the deep sky at duskmeal. The atmosphere was of being outdoors down there in a shady forest on a late duskmeal or maybe a Nightday in a great city. It was staffed by beautiful and shapely pure-blooded Megnor women with their classic silky, shiny, black hair, snow white complexions, black eyes and eyebrows, the tiny dimpled chins and tiny, precise fingers that get them called Pixies. The interior décor was ornate and ancient, from a civilization of the deeps that pre-dated the Energy Age but was much more sophisticated than what was happening in Bef Lazahn back then. There were partitions of delicate airy carvings shiny with deep varnish separating tables into small semi-private rooms. Canopies were carved with vines which looked almost real. But this wasn’t any Elvish growth, it was copies of ancient Megnor carvings from the chieftain-halls in the northeastern most deeps, probably around the Klet-tssa dynasty. That was when the Sindeal cliffs were carved, when Bef Lazahn was an important city for the first time, sending exploration parties to those areas and involved in making the whole known world a civilized world. The deeps were far ahead of the midlands in those ages.

An exquisite Pixie lead them to a table, taking both of their elbows on her pronounced firm points. She was so small that she poked him halfway to his wrist. She was costumed as a harem girl from those days. He imagined himself an ancestor hundreds of generations ago getting lead to a bedroom by this girl and felt a stirring in his groin.

On the table they were lead to was the most fanciful cast stone lantern Dumaang had yet seen, built into the top of an ancient four-hoser. That had probably been made in the deeps also, but probably no more than three or four centuries ago when the deeps were very decadent with norrot. The hoses were clear and clean however, and clean mouthpieces went in place of the corks. Dumaang noted that Narbla picked up two mouthpieces, but certainly Elvish pipe weed instead of norrot.

You know it wasn’t really the Elves who came up with this, Narbla told him as he packed it into the bowl. It was first cultivated by one of the minor races of their old lands, a race called the Hobbits.

Well a good job of it they did, Dumaang said, but it was the Elves who brought it here, he continued, so it will always be connected with them.

The lantern atop this hookah had a way of burning lazily in here, it was some kind of trick fuel, but it was an enchanting atmosphere and lent a certain authenticity to the decor of the deeps. The girls were very, very cute and as soon as they had taken a few tokes off the hookah, got even cuter. The girls plied the aisles with gas-fired cooking carts, different ones doing different dishes. The girls are always artful at pressing you as they serve their delicacies. They got started with a little loaf of the excellent bread with spiced oil that Bef Lazahn is known for and the attentions of a cute little pixie who giggled as she poked them.

Dumaang and Narbla settled in for an evening of tasting, toking and conversing about the ways of the modern world. If you start talking about changes in the modern world, you inevitably wind up talking about the Elves. We have to take the reality of Elven technology into account, Dumaang said. What they’ve invented does work and does do what they say it does, even though it sounds like pure magic.

Oh I won’t bother arguing with that. I confess I’ve used it, and I see that you’ve used it since I’ve seen you last.

This is all true, Dumaang admitted. We certainly wouldn’t be enjoying this evening’s entertainment as much if we had not been using it.

So we defy the fundamentalists?

The Kluboeb churches have very few followers who can afford to live, Dumaang said.

Their own hierarchy are the only ones in the church who can afford it and they use it, Narbla said. Some of the most extreme Kluboebs, those fundamentalists who look like they will succumb to their age any minute, have looked that way for three or four generations.

Dumaang got distracted by the way one of the serving girls was working over another customer, she got both eyes and his lips with each. Her gossamer drape was a bit damp when she was done. He wondered if that guy was a regular here.

Meanwhile, left to wander in the pipe-weed by himself, Narbla argued the opposing side. I’ll never call them on that for fear it would give their people incentive.

That brought his attention back to the conversation. Dumaang was quite surprised, What do you mean by that? Do you think we should remain ephemeral?

What would the population be if the people of the country stopped aging? Narbla asked. He tried to sound all sympathetic while trying to make Dumaang face reality.

Was he agreeing to keep people from it who could afford it? Dumaang knew the actual truth of reality. Growing half as fast, Dumaang said.

I don’t think so, I think they would just keep on reproducing...

The plague...

The virginity cults, Narbla countered with. The churches urge them to breed their children at younger ages to get some babies. They fight every form of population control. Dumaang was concerned. Narbla thought the Kluboeb churches were part of a cabal that controlled the peasants. He didn’t pursue it however, Narbla was full of grandiose expressions like that. He continued with one more, The Kluboeb churches want the city to pass a law making it a capital offense to use life extending treatments in the city of Bef Lazahn.

Dumaang bellowed with laughter at the thought of the elitist council of Bef Lazahn passing such a rule. That is just more evidence of how out of touch the Kluboeb churches are if they think that has a chance. I’m sure every member of the council knows that every member of the council uses something to preserve their youth.

What do you think the percentage is that have purchased youth here? Narbla asked.

In Bef Lazahn? The whole city and not just the council members?

Yes.

I would think over a third of the population.

It is less than half that, less than a sixth, Narbla told him. Over a third of the population suffers with age. That is the highest of the Forty Cities."

Actually that’s the good news of our time, Dumaang told him. "It is only a third. It is not those doomsday scenarios with two thirds of the population aged and unable to care for themselves. Bef Lazahn is a poor city, in Nunstalle two thirds of