01 Taxilas Children

TAXILA'S CHILDREN
They dropped their packs, kicked off their sandals, pulled of their tunics and waded into
the inviting water. It seemed to be all one movement. They looked back enquiringly, he didn't
need a further invitation. He gasped as he hit the water, it felt like ice after the warmth of the
afternoon air.
"It comes from the rocks."
Danyk's amiableness had returned after the sulks of the previous day. Zayez kept a sedate
distance while the rest splashed around. Steve eyed his companions frankly, the water had
pinned their hair back from the softening lines it usually had about the face. He could see
how accentuated the feline features were. The hairline was high and the forehead a flat width
above arched eyebrows. Their ears were small and slightly pointed - like you see on some
earth men. The eyes were wide and green, like the water - above a short, wide nostrilled nose.
The mouth was wide and full lipped above a firm chin. Danyk looked as tough as nails, his
body hard and muscled and evenly tanned. Steve shook his head mentally, it was incredible
that in all essentials, they had the same physiology. Danyk reminded him of a drawing he had
seen once, where someone had created an imaginative picture to illustrate a historical book. It
showed ancient, blond barbarians - naked and ferocious - who had surged across Europe, two
thousand years before the Pollution. He realised that he was thinking aloud again. Danyk
stood knee deep in the water watching him. There was a glint of mocking humour in his cat's
eyes.
They dried off in the warm air and it was pleasant to lay back and feel the warmth seep into
tired muscles. He dozed off, it seemed for just a second or two and was awaked by a none too
gentle toe in the ribs.
"No time for sleeping. Time to make camp."
Steve groaned and rolled away from another ruthless prod. They spent a more convivial
evening than the previous one. The two accompanying Adepts maintained their silence, even
with each other. Steve felt that their journey was becoming more important than simply to
visit some lost city in the forest. He asked no questions as to why the timetable had been
rearranged - Zayez had said that they would camp there on the second night and that hadn't
transpired. From the viewpoint of personal relationships, their journey was breaking down
barriers. Zayez had schemed well and he had taken a gamble that they wouldn't all be at each
other's throats.
His sleep was restless, a combination of unaccustomed noises from the nocturnal
wanderings of the forest and rocks around the campsite that somehow wandered under his
blanket. The evening's conversation around the fire had stimulated him as well and in
between swearing about the uncomfortable conditions and evicting stones, he thought over
the plight of the Lynxe. His limited contact with them showed them to be a magnificent race,
it seemed inconceivable that they should simply disappear from the face of their perfect
world and that the reason wouldn't be because of war or disease, simply that they found it
impossible to reproduce themselves.
He thought back to Mars and the Asteroids and the prodigious sums spent on contraceptive
shots, aimed at preventing determined sperms from reaching eager ova. There were those
who still practised secretly the indescribable methods of abortion. The Lynxe would have
given their right arms to be in a position to overpopulate, but then, they were avoiding the
excess population that had bedevilled Old Earth before man pruned himself with extravagant
disregard for the consequences of his wastes. He wondered how it felt to belong to a society
that was going into the red, dropping below zero population growth. Fewer and fewer to
replace their dead, no sound of children. Men and women losing hope for a child, as the years
of their fecundity dwindled - that would be pitiful.
Something walked across his stomach, not only was his train of thought interrupted; he
shrieked blue murder. He didn't take kindly to unknown creatures walking across any part of
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