CHAPTER ONE
If only they would not make such a spectacle of the thing.
That was Agena Morrow’s only exception to what had brought her to the planet Lacerta. Why must the Courting Lottery be such a spectacle?
Truth be told, Agena was well accustomed to loud, raucous, and clamorous public displays. She was a professional athlete, an interstellar champion of the game of Sphereball. She was accustomed to roaring, cheering, hooting, howling, screeching, and sometimes even rioting crowds of humans and many other species friendly to Earth-kind. She was accustomed to millions of eyes being upon her on whatever planet she happened to be competing and across the transmitted media of thousands of planets. It was a routine part of her life.
But that was the nature of competition and of the fans and culture that surrounded athletes and sporting events. And in the context of her sport and her champion status, she welcomed it.
But for the purpose that had brought her to the planet Lacerta, it felt like an intrusion, an invasion, an imposition, a nuisance—even an annoyance. She wished that in this of all endeavors, it could be kept personal because it was the most personal thing in the world.
This was not about competition. It was not about winning, not about claiming a prize, and not about the acclaim of the masses of the galaxy. This was about her future, and it was a much more intimate thing. Or, to her mind, it should be.
It happened that the Governing Aerie of Lacerta felt otherwise, and it was all done according to their laws and their customs or not at all. Agena could live with it, or she could go seeking what she wanted somewhere else. And she had no desire to look elsewhere. If she were to find what she was seeking, she would find it here, on this planet, with these people. So, she would do it their way.
Agena stood on the stone balcony of the Courting Chateau, leaned on the railing, and looked out across the cityscape of Silverwing, the capital of the planet. Fittingly for a planet whose inhabitants could all fly, Silverwing was a city designed to grow upward. It was a place of gleaming towers and turrets, with arches and bridges built between them, interspersed with high domes.
Entrances and exits were not all at ground level. Many were high on building facades and on rooftops. If one did not happen to be one of the locals, one got around from place to place via air sled, and Agena could see a number of these vehicles zipping about over the streets and between the buildings, occupied by terrestrial humans like herself and by off-worlders of various species. The natives did not require air sleds unless they were in an off-world company. The natives had their own means of transportation.
She saw hundreds of them swooping and soaring amid the architecture spread out before her. The natives of Lacerta, those she could see from her present vantage, had wings—mighty, leathern wings that stretched out like living sails, beating at the air and buoying themselves up in it. They had massive tails with scales and stripes, beating and undulating behind them as they went.
Their limbs were muscular, sinewy things, adorned with scales as well, and their hands were fearsomely taloned claws. Their necks were long and serpentine, scaled and striped to match the tails, and adorned with rows of spines. And their heads were the heads of great, fantastic reptiles, etched with scalation and crowned with regal horns. The men and women who built the proud, elegant civilization of the planet Lacerta had arrived as human colonists—and had become a race who were both human and dragon.
Peering down to the street below, Agena could make out some Lacertans in their human form who might morph to humanoid dragons and claim the air at any moment or any whim. Lacertans customarily wore garments that looked not so much woven from fabric as forged or spun from shining metal. The backs of their clothing were always open, exposing the skin and permitting the wings to unfurl from the upper back and the tail to extend from the lower back when they transformed.
The planetary climate control lent itself to this custom; everywhere on Lacerta, the average temperature ranged from twenty-four to twenty-nine degrees Centigrade, which was one of the things that made Lacerta a popular destination for travelers. Another thing, of course, was the Lacertans themselves.
Something about their long-ago mutation into dragon metamorphs had made the Lacertans a race of beautiful-looking beings, whether in their human form or their semi-reptile shape. It was almost enough to recall ancient superstitions from Earth and make one suspect they had been deliberately designed that way. Humans had long ago used genetic engineering and molecular and cellular surgery to select certain qualities out of their gene pool and perfect their bodies.
Somehow, being both human and dragon had naturally refined for the Lacertans the process that people on Earth had accomplished artificially. Lacertans were never homely, never bald, and never obese. They were perfect: lean, toned, muscular and sinewy, and hypnotically beautiful of face and features, every last one of them, and they needed no modification of their genes or other procedures to make them so. Physically, they were the envy of human civilization—which was part of what had brought Agena to this planet.
Agena looked carefully among the figures walking about below her and those flying so effortlessly beyond her; she looked for a particular kind of figure. At one moment, three of them came soaring by her, clad in silver garments decorated with dragon-claw symbols. These she recognized as the color and symbols reserved for a specific group among the Lacertans. Only the Dragon Corps wore silver from shoulders to feet and were adorned with those symbols. These, then, were the planetary peacekeepers, trained to patrol Lacerta and maintain internal law and order on the planet.
Except for the Ruling Aerie, only one body of Lacertans held a higher authority than the Corps. Agena could see none of them at the moment, but she knew that their global headquarters lay at the place they called the Spires, nearer the center of Silverwing than where her Chateau stood. It made her skin tingle to think of them, the dragon men and women who ranked higher than the Corps and were the enforcers of justice not only on this planet but everywhere in the galaxy that Lacertans lived and traveled. She knew that somewhere nearby, the capital was under the vigilant watch of the Knights of Lacerta.
The Knights of Lacerta: even the mention of their name commanded respect across known space. Like the Corps, they dressed in metallic foil and armor uniforms, but their symbols were dragon heads, and the hilt of each knight’s formidable weapon was wrought in that shape. The Knights wore an array of colors in combinations and patterns reserved especially for them. The lowest-ranking Knights wore single-color suits.
The higher one’s rank, the more of four different colors—black, red, silver, and gold—they wore. The highest ranking of the Knights were decked in all four colors. Whatever their rank, the Knights of Lacerta were known as the fiercest, strongest, most powerful and indomitable warriors in or out of human space.
Their legendary prowess in battle, coupled with their shocking physical beauty, made them figures of the greatest renown. They were synonymous not only with justice, but with valor, honor, pride, and victory. Reputation had it that only their foes ever tasted defeat, and very few in the galaxy doubted it.
It was no wonder, then, that Lacertans in general, and the Corps and the Knights in particular, were the most sought-after, coveted, and prized lovers in known space. For many humans, to share the bed of a Lacertan was the ultimate fantasy or the ultimate symbol of their own desirability as a mate. Those who actually married Lacertans were among the most envied people in the galaxy. But to sleep with one of the Corps, or especially with a Knight, or to marry such a partner, was the rarest prize of all, virtually a Holy Grail.
Agena stepped off the balcony and back into her suite, a place designed for maximum comfort. Every piece of furniture was all organic lines with no hard edges or sharp corners. Every piece of fabric was the softest and most luxurious thing to be found anywhere in space. Every color was selected either for its warm, gentle, or relaxing hue.
Every part of the spacious room was designed as a place where a coupling could take place, from the bed that could as easily accommodate four people as two, to the plush chairs and sofas, to the rugs, to the nooks in the windows that could double as sleeping (or not sleeping) spaces, to the pillows and cushions surrounding the sunken fireplace. It was a room designed for sex.
A full-length mirror was set into one wall. Agena studied herself in it. She was dressed in a form-fitting body suit of solid colors with patterns that showed off her curves. Her hair was auburn-colored and pulled back into a single thick braid down her back. Her face was soft lines except for a strong jaw. Like all Sphereball players, Agena’s most impressive bodily feature was her legs. She was tall, and her legs were perfectly sculpted things of feminine muscle, honed by the months that it had taken her to train for a game played in a circular room wearing magnetic boots designed and engineered specifically for her sport. Agena was trained to run up and across walls and play while suspended upside-down. She had an Amazon’s legs, and the rest of her, including her balance, her reflexes, and her hand-to-eye coordination, were conditioned to match.
She had come to this planet to find one of the most desirable partners in the galaxy, and her superb physical condition and Sphereball championship status had put her in the running to claim exactly that. Only the best possible partners were chosen as candidates for the most superb, the most magnificent possible mates.
Inspecting herself in the glass, Agena was confident that her journey to Lacerta would not be in vain. There was nothing random about her, not a flaw, not a departure from excellence in any way. The only thing random would be in the method of the choosing. That was the only thing that was out of her hands. But since she had taken everything else about herself and her life into her own hands and made it the best it could possibly be, she assured herself that this one last thing would soon fall into place.
She turned from the mirror to inspect her accommodations again. Agena smiled softly, fully expecting to put this suite to good use.
_______________
The life of a Knight of Lacerta was not a life of leisure. The dragon men and women who kept the known galaxy under their watch took their rest when they could, when they could.
For Thrax Helmer, at this moment, that meant lying quietly in his sleeping tube aboard the cruiser bound for home.
The streaks of bent light outside the window port that ran half the length of the tube were his only reminder, in the relaxing stillness and quiet, they were the only thing to tell him that the cruiser, bearing hundreds of passengers besides himself to his home planet, was moving through warp space. That was all to the good. His passage had started out smoothly and was staying that way, as interstellar journeys almost invariably did.
Statistically, warp travel from one star system to another was held to be safer than a weredragon flying under his own power in a planet’s atmosphere. However, one did not become a Knight to play things safe. Thrax appreciated calm times as much as he did those times when duty called.
Thrax had cast off the top portion of his red, black, and silver armor skin and laid his powerblade and badge on the bed by his side. He rested now, bare from the waist up, contemplating what he would do when he reached Lacerta. His mind was not in the here and now; in his thoughts, he was already at his destination.
Absently stroking the sculpted and honed pecs and triceps of his human frame, he thought of how good it would be to see home again, if only for the short time he’d be spending there. Even by the standards of dragon Knights, Thrax Helmer was a head-turner. He was a tall and imposing tower of pure muscle, seemingly wrought from iron and marble and turned to hard, hot flesh. When he moved with those incredible muscles --, not too massive and not too lean but absolutely perfect -- anyone who saw him might almost swear the sinews under his man-flesh were singing with every gesture.
His pecs were fantastic slabs bristling with hair; his abs like the underbelly scutes of a mighty dragon, even when he was human. His arms looked fit to pulverize stone with a shrug. Topping it all off was an absolutely arresting face, crowned with a sweeping wave of almost black hair. His brows were perfectly horizontal, his eyes narrow and dark and smoldering as if filled with the fire of a mythical dragon’s breath.
His jawline was perfectly cut at an angle, not too broad and not too sharp, and it and his upper lip was shadowed with the stubble of a beard that he never allowed to grow out fully. Thrax always looked as if he were just getting out of bed—or ready to invite someone to join him there.
At the moment, however, what he loved to do in bed—at every opportunity—was not the uppermost thing on Thrax Helmer’s mind. For now, there were other priorities, and he hoped to dispatch them as quickly, albeit thoroughly, as possible.
The condition of his body in its present state depended on what had brought him on this trip home. It was time for his life swim, the fateful swim in the lakes of Lacerta on which all of his kind depended for their health. Much of the regular traffic to and from the planet consisted of dragon-shifter men and women in need of a swim in the waters that were the source of their metamorphic powers.
Generations ago, colonizing ships of human settlers had left Earth and were lost in the sudden and violent outrush of hydrogen clouds from the nova burst of a white dwarf. Their ships’ propulsion and communication systems damaged, they could not call for help and were immensely lucky to find and land upon an Earthlike planet other than the one for which they were headed. And that was where an unexpected new life had begun.
The planet that would one day be called Lacerta had once had an age of reptiles, much like what prehistoric Earth was believed to have gone through before it was determined that dinosaurs were more birdlike than reptilian. The ancient beasts of this planet truly were mighty reptiles, and some ecological disaster had rendered them extinct. But their DNA remained in the soil and the water, and another factor had come into play when the colonists had taken possession of the planet.
Lacerta abounded with a mildly radioactive mineral compound, which the colonists would name Draconite. Exposure to this compound, which was dissolved in lakes and streams, caused a reaction between the reptilian fossil DNA present in the planet’s waters and the human genome. Draconite had thus mutated the lost Earth colony into the first generation of Lacertan weredragons.
Their mutation had one other effect. The Lacertans found that if they did not periodically bathe or swim in those lakes containing the highest concentration of Draconite, they were prone to a degenerative illness. The disease would cause progressive lesions of the skin and breakdown of muscle tissue and organs from a rapid deterioration of their genes, with life-threatening results. Thus, at many times in a Lacertan’s life, a swim in one of those lakes or streams was essential, and those who lived on other planets traveled home to return to the life-renewing waters.
As a Knight of Lacerta, Thrax was responsible for returning home for his gene-rejuvenating swim before any symptoms ever showed. As he did every other duty, he took it seriously.
As much as Thrax loved patrolling other planets in the line of his duty, he loved coming home. Returning to Lacerta meant flying through its skies once more, feeling its winds caress his scales and his wings, swooping and diving over its towers and its forests, and skimming and diving into its lakes. It meant bonding with his brother Knights. It meant sleeping with Lacerta’s females, or with comely humans who expressed an interest (as they always did).
He only wished he could spend a little more time on the planet of his birth. But there were reasons he made himself scarce on Lacerta, and he expected to make this as short a visit as he possibly could, the better to evade the one duty for which he had no love…
And no sooner had the thought entered his mind than his badge chimed, as if on cue.
Thrax had shut off the comm link on his badge, hoping to travel as incommunicado as possible. All that he wanted was to make it home, take his renewal swim, perhaps find a bedmate, and be back in space in as little time as it took to tell the tale. He had feared his hope was for naught—and hearing the chime of his badge, he feared he was right.
With a sigh, he picked up the badge and pressed his thumb into the surface. The edges of the badge lit up, and a cordial voice that he recognized as belonging to the cruiser’s female human comm officer (whom he would not have minded having as the aforementioned bedmate) announced, “Sir Thrax, inbound communication from Lacerta. Priority Level.”
Thrax sighed again, knowing who it must be. If they could not page him directly, of course they would check the passenger manifests of all inbound cruisers and hail his ship. “Very well, put them through.”
A hologram flickered into view in front of him. The face of the party hailing him was male, older than Thrax by about twenty years, handsome but gaunt, with strands of gray mixed in with his sandy hair. “Sir Thrax,” the man said, “welcome home in advance.”
“Thank you, Mentor,” said Thrax, acknowledging one of the trainers and delegators who taught the Knights and gave them their marching—or flying—orders. The Mentor’s armor skin was of all four colors, distinguishing him as one of the highest-raking Knights. “I hadn’t planned on staying long. Just long enough to have my needed swim in Lake Shimmershine and be back in space in a couple of days.”
“Sir Thrax,” said the Mentor, “we’ll be requiring you to extend your stay this time. I’m sure you know the reason.”
In deference to the Mentor and out of respect for the older man’s position, Thrax stifled his reaction, else he would have rolled his eyes and groaned in protest. “Mentor,” he said, “I’m sure I’ll be of much better use just getting directly back to regular duty once I’ve finished reinvigorating myself. I’ve already scheduled my flight out from Lacerta and…”
The Mentor politely but firmly cut him off. “Cancel your flight, Sir Thrax. We’ll need you to stay, take part in the Lottery, and proceed from there. We’ve already entered your code into the system. You’ll have time before your visit to Lake Shimmershine to report to the local Stadium.”
“Mentor,” Thrax pressed, “I’d like to invoke my Deferment privileges.”
“Your Deferment privileges have already been extended as many times as permitted, Sir Thrax,” said the Mentor. “The only reason we haven’t summoned you to the Lottery before now, as you well know, is that your duty supersedes the Lottery until you return home for your rejuvenation. Now that you’re coming home for that, you’re expected to report and be matched.”
At last, an edge of protest did come into Thrax’s voice. “Mentor, please. There is no lack of able-bodied dragons on Lacerta. The gene pool is always well stocked. And as a Knight, my first and best service is out there, doing as I was trained to do. I love serving, Mentor. Please don’t ask me…”
And the Mentor cut him off again. “I know very well how you love to serve. You are the pride of the Knighthood, Thrax, exemplary in every way. But we cannot exempt any heterosexual citizen from participating in the Lottery and what that participation entails. Our own planet and our own people need you as much as the other planets you serve. We cannot spare our best and brightest. You must join the Lottery. Those are your orders, and you will be expected. Is that understood?”
Thrax slumped his shoulders in a most un-Knightly manner and said in a weary and resigned voice, “Yes, Mentor.” And he could not keep the heaviness of his heart out of his tone when he said, “I’ll be there at the appointed time, as required.”
“Very good, Sir Thrax,” said the Mentor. “We have every belief you will acquit yourself well in the days to come. Lacerta looks forward to welcoming the issue of your service. Spires out.” And with that, the hologram of the Mentor shimmered away, leaving Thrax in silence once more.
Thrax’s groan broke the silence as he leaned back his head mournfully. “Bane and damn,” he cursed. “Why me?”
The question was futile. It was always going to be Thrax, sooner or later. It was only that he had done everything to make it later, and now his supply of “later” was exhausted. There would be no more “later.” There would be only now.
“Now” meant submitting himself to the duty from which no dragon man or woman on Lacerta, whether Knight, Corps, or civilian, was exempt as long as he or she was capable of mating with the opposite sex. Allowances were made for same-sex-attracted citizens only. There was one other critical effect of their Draconite mutation, one that meant the difference between the stagnation and eventual failure or continued robustness of the colony. Lacertans were able to breed with each other, but their population growth and rate of viable pregnancies was slow and sporadic.
It threatened to make their economy, their very world, unsustainable. They bred much more reliably and consistently with “pure” humans who lacked the dragon-shifting mutation. And so, on a regular basis, humans from Earth and its other colonies were invited to Lacerta to be paired in Lotteries with dragon males and females. Once the selections of couples were made, the courtship followed.
Marriage and procreation were not mandatory; it was not a state of reproductive slavery. But Lacerta did everything to encourage the production of offspring in the Lotteries for the survival of the civilization that they had hewn out of the planet.
Thrax had never cared for the idea of the Lotteries. He understood what they meant to his world, but to him, they stood for certain principles that he deplored. In his heart, he knew that he was not meant for the kind of life that would follow a “successful” courtship. It meant giving up a life that he loved for something he did not want. Thrax’s true calling was to be out there in space, traveling to distant worlds, protecting and serving, bringing wrongdoers to heel, administering justice for those victimized and wronged, and helping those in need. That, he had believed for all his life, was what he was meant to do. A Knight was what he was meant to be.
He had done everything to postpone his entrance into the Lottery. Let someone else be responsible for maintaining the population. Thrax’s place was to maintain the peace.
But there was no escaping it anymore. The Lottery was upon him, and with it, the possibility of the end of his life as he knew it.
“Bane and damn,” he repeated bitterly.
_______________
Of course, there were reasons why the Lacertan Courting Lottery was done in the way that it was. And of course, they were considered entirely valid and legitimate reasons. But that did not make the whole business any more palatable to Thrax.
The Silverwing Stadium was one of the largest sporting places on Lacerta. It was built in the shape of an immense geode, whose bowl held seating for thousands of people, or beings as the case may be. When it was not used for games and tournaments, however, it was one of the venues across the planet where the Courting Lotteries were held.
The Lotteries were almost as well attended as the sporting events. For the Lottery, two structures were erected in the center of the playing field: a stage and a platform, with a bridge constructed between them. On the stage stood the prospective suitors and suitresses, waiting to be paired by computer selection with aspirants from Lacerta and other planets across human space.
There was a separate, preliminary Lottery in which men and women interested in courting a Lacertan entered their names and genetic backgrounds. Once they were approved for selection, their data was entered into the Lottery computer system along with the stored genetic data of Lacertans selected to participate. Then, aspirants, suitors, and suitresses assembled at the final Lottery to be matched by computer and presented to each other—and to the entire planet and the galaxy beyond—for courtship.
The dozen Lacertans gathered on the stage were all Knights and members of the Corps, Thrax among them. They all stood in uniform, looking strong and proud and handsome and beautiful, under the anxious gaze of thousands of attendees and the clamor and hubbub they made from the seats.
The Lotteries for courtship with the Knights and Corps members always attracted the largest number of spectators, for the Lacertans who patrolled the planet and the galaxy beyond were held to be the most desirable dragon men and women of all -- the finest, most spectacular specimens of dragon-morphing masculinity and femininity. They were the best of the best, the most sought-after of their world.
Thrax turned and looked over the heads and shoulders of the comrades standing with them. What a throng they were, occupying the tiers of seats surrounding the playing field. They were mostly human and Lacertan, but there were also curiosity seekers of other species. Hovering and swooping overhead, across the playing field and the stadium seats, were the gleaming recorder drones that captured and transmitted the event across the planet and into space beyond. The glow and flashing of their lights made them seem like a vast miniature star system made of hundreds of satellites. With them processing and disseminating the Lottery, no one would miss a moment of what was about to unfold.
Such was the constant hubbub of the crowd that Thrax could not have heard his own voice if he had chosen to speak up, nor the voices of any of the ones with him on the stage. If he could talk to them, he would ask them whether they felt as he did. Do you feel like a prize being auctioned off? Do you feel as if you were livestock being presented for sale to the highest bidder? Do you feel as if you were a side of meat hung on a hook, being held up for consumption by some hungry patron?
That is the way this thing makes me feel. For so many years, I’ve dreaded this day. I’ve done everything to postpone it, to hold it at bay. I’ve been a stranger to my planet, to my home. And I’ve done it in the name of service and duty, which I love. It isn’t selfishness; my heart is in being a Knight and the feeling of pride in helping and protecting others. I’d lay down my life for my world or for any defenseless being. It’s what I’ve wanted to do ever since I first saw a Knight, strong and proud and brave, wielding his blade for justice. Even as a boy, I looked forward to the day when I would join these ranks.
But this thing…this has always left a cold place in my heart. Why do we do this? Why does our world sanction this, and why do we submit to it, and even celebrate it? We are men and women and dragons, not beasts for auction. Why do we do it?
The reasons for it were well known. Everyone knew in what small numbers the Lacertans bred without benefit of the Lotteries. And the civilized galaxy also knew what else this planet had to offer besides the most fabulous of all potential mates. The mutagenic mineral Draconite was not the planet’s only extraordinary property.
Lacerta was also rich with one of the rarest elements in space. Odysseum in its natural state was mildly radioactive. But under particle bombardment, it underwent a miraculous change, becoming unstable not only in mass but in space and time.
Odysseum was a uniquely powerful energy source for interstellar travel, and any planet possessing it in abundance was of strategic importance to Earth and all of its territories and allies. The Lacertan Courting Lotteries were not only a lavish mating display. They were a statement to all the known galaxy that this planet, while its population growth was the smallest and slowest among civilized worlds, was still strong and robust and not an easy target.
And the Lotteries of the Knights and Corps in particular were a signal to the outside galaxy that Lacerta was prepared to build and maintain its strength against all comers. Provoke a dragon and prepare to be shredded.
Thrax turned his attention across the bridge to the platform, beyond which lay a section of boxed seating where the prospective partners waited. He looked at the people in those seats. This spectacle would go on all day until those seats were emptied and all those people were paired off with Lacertan males and females. And the Lacertans would be brought up twelve or thirteen at a time to be presented for pairing.
Some of his fellow Lacertans actually welcomed this process. Some of them did not see it at all in the way Thrax did. For them, it represented easily obtained and abundant sex without any of the rituals and protocols otherwise necessary to get it. They would immediately go off with their selected partners and fall directly into bed.
If their exuberant copulating produced a child, they would marry or not, and if the dragon child was raised with a single parent, at least it would be another member of the population of Lacerta. That was an ironclad part of the agreement -- any child produced by a Lottery couple would be raised on Lacerta and add to its commonwealth, and the colonial economy was such that no one wanted for anything. It was seen as a beneficial arrangement for everyone concerned.
Some people saw the whole thing as a soulless affair, and some spoke out against it --for naught. The needs of the colony superseded all objections. Thrax himself had spoken up against it, but never publicly. A Knight voicing dissent against the policy would be seen as disloyal, dishonorable, and potentially derelict in his duties.
It would be a black mark against him, a sign of disgrace. Knights such as Thrax were not silenced or censured, and they held their place of honor in society—as long as they kept their dissent within the Knighthood and it went no further.
And so Sir Thrax Helmer, Knight of honor and distinction, held his silence and looked out into that mass of humans, some residents of Lacerta and others from outside planets, including Earth itself, wondering with which one of them his duty would demand that he change his whole life in service to his people.
Perhaps he would be fortunate. Perhaps he would be called upon to lie with some female in the hopes of conceiving and it would not happen. If, after a requisite period of time, no conception took place, both partners would be released from their obligation. In that event, Thrax would return to his right and proper life with no harm done, and he would never be called upon to serve himself up as a dragon stud again.
But the odds were against it.
Thrax’s heart was heavy. In all his life, the only thing he had ever loved as much as Knighthood was sex. Now, for the first time, the prospect of sex lay before him, and he did not necessarily welcome it. Sex was the only pleasure in his life that was not also a duty—until now.
In the seating box, Agena Morrow looked out across the bridge to the stage at the Knights and Corps members standing there, and she wondered which of the males would be chosen to be hers. Of the Knights before her, none wore fewer than two colors, and she spotted some wearing three. There was some prime material over there. As soon as that thought entered her mind, she frowned a little bit.
As excited as she was at the prospect of lying with one of those males and trying to become pregnant with him, she reminded herself that they were not, after all, just prize bulls and stallions. They were people. They were men.
Yes—men. Some of the most gorgeous men that the Milky Way had to offer, with faces and bodies in which she could lose herself in rapture and bliss. It would be a rapture and bliss with a purpose other than pleasure, but then the pleasure would be beyond compare. As a champion Sphereball player and a celebrity who was considered one of the galaxy’s most attractive women, Agena was accustomed to having her pick of eminently desirable men with whom to bed down.
She had actually slept with a few Lacertan Knights in her travels. They had come directly to her, or she directly to them, and the sex was magnificent but otherwise unproductive: for a Knight of Lacerta was so bound to duty that upon assuming the Knighthood, he or she swore an oath of non-matrimony and underwent a reversible sterilization.
After being paired in the Lottery, the Knight with whom she was matched would be released from his vow and have his sperm production resumed. Then it would be only a matter of time, or so she hoped. In the meantime, she would offer him the shagging of his life as much as he wanted, for as long as it took to produce a new little athlete, or a new little defender of the colony, or whatever else their child turned out to be.
And to get it, all she had to do was get through this most public exhibition of what should be the most private matter in her life.
Agena had never been shy or timid, qualities that did not lend themselves to the career and life that she wanted. She had always been confident, competitive, and assertive -- the proverbial “go-getter.” When she saw things that she wanted, she went after them. That was her way, and it had served her well. And yet, she did believe that there were spaces in a woman’s life—in anyone’s life—that ought to be for her alone. Choosing a lover, a mate, and a spouse; becoming a mother; and raising a family: those were not things that one did in an arena with thousands of people watching and shouting. Those were not things that one did with the entire galaxy watching. Those were private things.
When this whole loud, voyeuristic display was over, she looked forward to pulling down a curtain over her life and then doing with the Lacertan who was chosen for her what she always did. She would go and get him and let him know in no uncertain terms that she wanted him and wanted his child. And when she got him into bed, she would make it very worth his while. Who knew—perhaps they would even fall in love. It was a big galaxy. Stranger things had happened.
From out of one of the competitors’ entrances to the playing field, a bowl-shaped floating carriage appeared and maneuvered itself over the turf toward the bridge between the stage and the platform, where it settled into a hover. In the hollow of the bowl stood a male Lacertan in dragon form, his green scales turned grayish and dull and his spines turned a golden brown, signifying his elder status.
In their reptilian bodies, their bipedal, upright body carriage was the only indicator of their human selves. The elder, a Lottery Master, carried a glowing, two-pronged staff that symbolized his office. He surveyed the crowd, the suitors and suitresses, and the aspirants before he spoke, an audio unit in his garment amplifying his voice so that it carried out loudly over the entire arena: “Welcome, one and all, of all genders, species, and planets of origin, to the Silverwing Stadium! The week’s first Courting Lottery of the Knights and Dragon Corps of Lacerta will now begin!”
And a raucous, shrill, and ringing cheer welled up from every direction, with a mighty stamping of thousands of feet and pedal appendages, and a clapping and waving and clicking of thousands of hands, tendrils, claws, and manual extremities. The crowd was clearly ready for the sport of couples coming together for the first time.
Some of the aspirants had already signed contracts to allow their entire courtship to be transmitted to curious onlookers all over known space. Even edited portions of their actual coupling would be made available for viewing. Agena had not signed any such agreement -- the thought of it made her blood run cold and made her want to hurt someone. As long as one member of the couple did not give his or her consent, their courtship would be kept completely private.
Agena did not expect her prospective suitor to object to her disinterest in a transmitted courtship. The Knights and the Corps frowned on such a thing as unseemly, unbecoming of their position and rank. For that, Agena was grateful.
The Lottery Master intoned, “Let the selection interface appear!”
From a nook on the floor of the platform, a metallic stalk appeared and rose into view until the broad tip of it, which held an electronic control surface, was just a little higher than the midsection of an average human. This was the device by which each aspirant, in turn, would identify himself or herself to the Lottery computer, which would then access its memory and select the Knight or Corps member with whom that person would be paired.
What the process lacked in romance, it made up for in technical efficiency. Romance would come later, assuming the rapport between both members of the couple was right. If not romance, then at least lots of very purposeful copulating.
A holographic display twinkled into view before the Lottery Master. Agena knew this was the list of all the aspirants in the Lottery, arranged in random order so that no one—not even the audience, many of whom had aspirant lists that they kept as scorecards—knew whose name would be called when. It was more suspenseful that way. The Master called out, “The first aspirant will now take the platform.” And after a moment of dramatic hush, the old weredragon announced the first name.
Another raucous cheer exploded from the stands as a woman of about Agena’s age leaped up from a seat in front of her and ran down the steps on one side of the box. She quickly made her way across the grass to another stairway at the base of the platform, then up to where the interface waited. It was all a grand ritual, and one in which Agena would have to wait her turn.
Agena watched as one of her fellow aspirants after another was called and made the trip down to the playing field and up to the platform. In turn, each one laid a hand on the glowing surface of the device on the stalk. The computers identified each participant in the Lottery by his or her handprint, then the results of the selection were relayed to the Master on another hologram.
One by one, each suitor or suitress walked across the bridge from stage to platform when called, and every walk bore its own cacophonous din of shouts and applause. The paired couples then left the platform, on foot or by wing at their own discretion, and walked or flew out of the Stadium to begin courtship. With every successive pairing, Agena’s heart beat a little faster, then slowed down for the next, then sped up again. Her mouth went dry with anticipation, waiting for her turn.
The Lottery Master read the next name from his list: “Agena Morrow!”
And perhaps it was only her imagination, but the deafening whoop that greeted her name seemed a little louder than those for the ones who had gone before her. She was the only celebrity participant in the Lottery so far. To be sure, many of those in the stands knew who she was and had been waiting for her name to be called almost as anxiously as she had been. She could imagine that she had some fans in the Lottery audience today.
As heads in the selection box turned in her direction and the hovering recorder drones zeroed in on her, strobing and flashing, Agena put on her best smiling celebrity face and stood, waving to the crowd as was expected of her. And through the flashing of the drones, she saw a great many people in the roaring throng waving back. Brushing all this off, she made her way down to the field and up to the platform with the same speed as the others, or perhaps a little bit faster.
When she reached the platform, it was definitely not her imagination that there was no hush of expectation. The ear-splitting whoop of the crowd dwindled to a strong and steady murmur but did not fade altogether. Yes, she had fans here, all right, and they were most keenly interested in knowing which weredragon would now be mated with their favorite Sphereball player.
Agena laid her hand on the brightly lit surface of the selection interface and held her breath. The light pulsed under the palm of her hand. She held her breath. Except for the murmur all around her, it seemed as if everything on Lacerta were standing still. And then the Master’s voice rang out:
“Sir Thrax Helmer!”
On the stage, Thrax’s company had grown sparse. The sound of his name being called hit him like a lightning bolt. The four Lacertans who still shared the stage with him nodded and bowed their respects as if sending him off into battle. A couple of them clapped him on the shoulders. Thrax numbly acknowledged them. Then he turned and looked across the bridge, facing his fate.
The cheers of the crowd moved through him like breaking waves of sound as he made the fateful walk across the structure separating him only for the moment from the woman whom an impersonal computer had chosen to be his immediate, if not long-term, future. He strode past where the Master hovered and on across the way until he at last reached the platform, where the tall and—he had to admit at first glance—athletic and beautiful human female awaited him with a quiet smile.
A Knight and a gentleman to the last, Thrax Helmer held out his gauntleted hand to Agena Morrow. She stepped from behind the interface and took the hand he offered. With the uproar of the crowd seeming to make cliffs of noise all around them, Thrax and Agena met each other’s eyes for the first time. In each other, they saw beauty, strength, and possibilities. The hours and days to come would tell exactly what those possibilities might be.