JК
The Lovers :: Фармер Филип Хосе
Страница: 122 из 127As long as she had enough liquor before copulation, the photokinetic nerve – very susceptible to alcohol – would be anesthetized. Thus, orgasm but no pregnancy. No death from the life within her. But when you diluted the beetlejuice with Easyglow... unknowing, of course–'
Macneff burst into a high-pitched laughter. 'What irony! Truly it has been said that the wages of unrealism are death!'
20
Fobo spoke loudly. 'Go ahead, Hal. Cry, if you like. You'll feel better. You can't, eh? I wish you could.
'Very well, I continue. The lalitha, no matter how human she looks, cannot escape her arthropod heritage. The nymphs that develop from the larvae can easily pass for babies, but it would pain you to see the larvae themselves. Though they are not any uglier than a five months' human embryo. Not to me, anyway.
'It is a sad thing that the lalitha mother must die. Hundreds of millions of years ago, when a primitive pseudoarthropod was ready to hatch the eggs in her womb, a hormone was released in her body. It calcified the skin and turned her into a womb-tomb. She became a shell. Her larvae ate the organs and the bones, which were softened by the draining away of their calcium. When the young had fulfilled the function of the larva, which is to eat and grow, they rested and became nymphs. Then they broke the shell in its weak place in the belly.
'That weak point is the navel. It alone does not calcify with the epidermis but remains soft. By the time the nymphs are ready to come out, the soft flesh of the navel has decayed. Its dissolution lets loose a chemical which decalcifies an area that takes in most of the abdomen. The nymphs, though weak as human babies and much smaller, are activated by instinct to kick out the thin and brittle covering.
'You must understand, Hal, that the navel itself is both functional and mimetic. Since the larvae are not connected to the mother by an umbilical cord, they would have no navel. But they grow an excrescence that resembles one.
'The breasts of the adult also have two functions. Like the human female's, they are both sexual and reproductive. They never produce milk, of course, but they are glands. At the time the larvae are ready to hatch from the eggs, the breasts act as two powerful pumps of the hormone which carries out the hardening of the skin.
'Nothing wasted, you see – Nature's economy. The things that enable her to survive in human society also carry out the death process.'
'I can understand the need for photogenes in the humanoid stage of evolution,' Hal said.
Macneff burst into a high-pitched laughter. 'What irony! Truly it has been said that the wages of unrealism are death!'
20
Fobo spoke loudly. 'Go ahead, Hal. Cry, if you like. You'll feel better. You can't, eh? I wish you could.
'Very well, I continue. The lalitha, no matter how human she looks, cannot escape her arthropod heritage. The nymphs that develop from the larvae can easily pass for babies, but it would pain you to see the larvae themselves. Though they are not any uglier than a five months' human embryo. Not to me, anyway.
'It is a sad thing that the lalitha mother must die. Hundreds of millions of years ago, when a primitive pseudoarthropod was ready to hatch the eggs in her womb, a hormone was released in her body. It calcified the skin and turned her into a womb-tomb. She became a shell. Her larvae ate the organs and the bones, which were softened by the draining away of their calcium. When the young had fulfilled the function of the larva, which is to eat and grow, they rested and became nymphs. Then they broke the shell in its weak place in the belly.
'That weak point is the navel. It alone does not calcify with the epidermis but remains soft. By the time the nymphs are ready to come out, the soft flesh of the navel has decayed. Its dissolution lets loose a chemical which decalcifies an area that takes in most of the abdomen. The nymphs, though weak as human babies and much smaller, are activated by instinct to kick out the thin and brittle covering.
'You must understand, Hal, that the navel itself is both functional and mimetic. Since the larvae are not connected to the mother by an umbilical cord, they would have no navel. But they grow an excrescence that resembles one.
'The breasts of the adult also have two functions. Like the human female's, they are both sexual and reproductive. They never produce milk, of course, but they are glands. At the time the larvae are ready to hatch from the eggs, the breasts act as two powerful pumps of the hormone which carries out the hardening of the skin.
'Nothing wasted, you see – Nature's economy. The things that enable her to survive in human society also carry out the death process.'
'I can understand the need for photogenes in the humanoid stage of evolution,' Hal said.