11.
 Between the Ramyon family—the retainers and their families, the soldiers whose families lived outside the walls, and the servants and slaves—some 500 persons lived in Castle Ramyon. In those close quarters, Jory could not help but learn the intimate details of Shurian reproduction. Although the men were often away fighting wars, it was their duty to come live as husbands for at least a few months of each kjir. Usually, that was in the Lissom Season, when Shur was inclined slightly more toward its star, and the gas giant glowed more aqua than usual, and spirits were said to mellow as the gods and demons relaxed from their fighting to loll on the meadows of heaven. Then the male would come to the female's bedroom and court her before hours of frequent love play. The younger, attractive females were usually slender and sensuous in their movements. They walked with a swaying step, each finger sending a signal, each cock of the hip or stride of the thigh an invitation to the Shurian male. Since they did not give milk, the Shurian females had no breasts—that was one of the functions of the baba—but they had vestigial nipples, like the males, that helped arouse. The baba stayed out of sight during the Lissom Season, busy with last season's offspring.
Shurians mated much like humans, though the kjoni thing was higher up rather than part of the pissing area, and the male's organ was correspondingly half way to the navel, so that the motions and amount of effort were comparable to those of humans—as were the passions, the sounds, the promises, the endearments. Jory and Ramy secretly whispered about these matters as their changes began, but neither thought of the other in such a light.
At 13, Ramy was married in a great ceremony to a warrior prince, aged 15, of the Dumonhi family a day's journey along the Obayyo. They were a wealthy, powerful family, and the marriage was considered auspicious by both sides. The new husband ignored Jory all of the time, and Ramy most of the time, for he was a favorite son, and his father was training him to be a great general.
Everything about the babas was disgusting to Jory, no matter how they tried to placate him with gifts of human candy and shining fungal balls called honeyed sea foam that tasted subtly like caramel. At least once each rotation of Shur around the gas giant, Ramy went to the quarters of her baba sister. There— Jory had never been to those quarters, and didn't want to go—the two females did something where they lay down together—with much the same passions and sounds, and endearments and so forth—and the baba thrust a long, thin quill from her mouth deep into Ramy's neck. As Ramy lay paralyzed and enraptured, the baba slowly sucked out the fruits of Ramy's lovemaking with Dumonhi.
The baba would eat liberally at table—she was the favored recipient of the castle kitchen's stocks—and her babies would grow. After gestation, she would lie down while other babas tended to her. The newborns would slip out, encased in a transparent protein membrane. In more primitive times, the mother baba licked the membrane off and swallowed it—anything to feed her offspring. Nowadays, the attending babas would place the membrane on a ceramic plate and place it in a wall shrine with votive candles to baba-Oba, the goddess of the world and of birth and of women. Ba meant 'sister,' and even the great island of life on Shur was named Oba.
If the birth was male, it might be one or two twin boys. If, on the other hand, the offspring were female, it was always one girl and one baba, not twins exactly, but very closely interwoven females, the baba being about twice the size of the egg-carrying baby. Thus, Ramy and her baba had been born. Every Shurian woman had her baba. In olden times, if the baba died, the sister was put to death. Nowadays it meant she would simply never marry, and she would have no status, but her life was respected nonetheless—and at least nah filth like humans were beneath her status. The system caused sisters to take excellent care of each other. This was why Jory and Ramy never thought that, even if she discovered their actions, Ramy's baba would betray them.
The men of Shurian society respected their babas as mothers, nurturers, witches, cooks, and so forth, but as adults hardly ever went near them. Men never slept with babas—that was the domain of their sisters. Shurians were amazed that humans could give birth to mixed male and female litters—further proof of their low animal natures. Shurians were also disgusted that human sex organs mingled physiologically with excretory organs. All three Shurian genders used the anus, situated like the human anus, for all excretion. The long ago sage had summed it up when he said: "To qif a lizard is to tenderize good meat for tomorrow's dinner. To qif a human is to qif what a lizard qifs."
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