Larkan Hi’salnik tried to contain her disgust, and irritation, as she watched Thapar Ki’dmulik sidle through the spaceship lounge, his long tail sliding sinuously behind him, periodically touching – of course, just by accident – one of the dancing girls, who squealed in delight. If she had to sit through any more of this idiot’s adolescent prancing, thought Larkan, she would throw up.

 

As far as she was concerned, Thapar was just another pretentious and entitled bore, a rich kid born with an iridium spoon in his mouth, even though he was handsome, in a rakish kind of way, what with the scar on his tail, which he pretended he had gotten on a moon in the Dilurean system while fighting against rebels who had kidnapped a princess, but which Larkan knew had actually been the result of a sexual encounter with a Salarian walrus that had gone all wrong, because Thapar, being Thapar, and over-eager to savor the feel of the walrus’ whiskers more intimately, had moved too close to the tusks, with predictable results – she had been there, and his howling had been amazingly loud and ear-splitting.

 

Still, she had promised the High Council that she would assess, monitor, and audit Thapar’s World impartially, which is why she was trapped on this damn spaceship, and it was better to make the best of it.

 

She still remembered her misgivings when Harlok Xi’markudi, the head of the Council, had summoned her, rather unceremoniously, in the middle of the night, when she had been safely ensconced in her nest. Had the Council somehow found out about her less than legal deals?

 

“Aah, well,” Harlok had said to her, his glasses perched rather precariously on his snout, “how can I start? Thapar…you know Thapar, right?”

 

She nodded, her apprehensions reducing drastically. None of her questionable deals involved Thapar, so maybe this was not going to be as bad as she had feared.

 

“Well,” Harlok continued, “you know he has already amassed seven planets, and we applaud him for that, and bear him no ill will. None at all.”

 

Yea, sure, she thought. You are the head of the Council, and you only have three. I absolutely believe that you bear him no ill will. But she kept her mouth shut.

 

“However,” Harlok said, “how can I put this? Thapar has an unfortunate tendency to get, um, too involved with a planet’s life forms.” He pushed the glasses up his snout, from where they promptly started sliding down. “I don’t have to tell you too much, I mean, for instance, there was that unfortunate incident with the walrus in the Salarian system, and…” His words were cut off abruptly as the glasses slid down his snout and fell to the floor. Haarlok instinctively tried to follow them, and fell off his perch, landing on the glasses, which shattered with a small grinding sound under his behind. Wincing with pain, he clambered back onto his perch.

 

Larkan tried hard not to look at the shattered remains of the glasses on the floor, which were now tinged blue with blood. She wanted to laugh, mostly because she was really relieved, but could think of very few things that were worse than seeming to laugh at the Council head. Instead, she pretended to cough gently, while covering her snout with her paws, her claws curling around her mouth, coughing and laughing at the same time. Luckily, Harlok could not see much without his glasses.

 

“Anyway,” Harlok said, now brusque in tone, “we want you to go and check out this latest planet he has acquired. Something he calls Thapar’s World.”

 

“OK, I can do that,” she replied, “and report back to you. But what exactly is it that I am looking for? I mean, what concerns do you have?” She didn’t really care about the Council’s concerns, but would be able to charge a hefty fee for her services. This was turning out much better than she had expected.

 

“Well, we believe that the planet has somewhat intelligent life forms, and he is taking advantage of them…in some fashion.” Harlok gave her a grave look, trying to be serious without saying much, though the effect was somewhat spoilt by the fact that he was looking in the wrong direction. The guy really, really needed his glasses.

 

“What do you mean, taking advantage?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.

 

“We believe, um, that he is associating with them, in a manner that is unbecoming.”

 

Oh, my stiffening, uncomfortable perches, thought Larkan, finally getting the point. Did Thapar have no limits? She could not believe how prolific, non-discriminatory, and expansive his taste was.

 

Owning planets with intelligent species was frowned upon, with many bureaucratic hurdles to go through, though rich kids like Thapar always managed to get around them. But physical contact with an intelligent species? That was a no-no – if the species became sentient, the potential side effects were too awful to contemplate. It would not do, just never do, to have a sentient species know that off-world beings existed for real, until the species was fully prepared for that knowledge, as the dragons had once been. This was part of the compact that had been made by the dragons’ ancestors with the Founding Fathers.

 

On the other hand, so far, not a single one of the known intelligent species had progressed to true sentience on their own, so the Council’s concerns still seemed a bit over the top.

 

“I know,” Larkan said, “that we discourage this sort of thing, but isn’t this a bit excessive? You know, property rights and all that. And isn’t intelligence different from sentience? Is there anything to suggest that this particular species is sentient?”

 

Even the dragons had only progressed to sentience when the Founding Fathers and Founding Mothers had come from space, and administered the sacred herb.

 

“No,” Harlok said, “we don’t believe they are sentient, and normally we would shut one eye to this sort of thing. But now, he’s planning to take tourists.”

 

“Tourists? You mean…?” Larkan was shocked. Not only was Thapar having fun with other species, he was now planning to turn this into a business. Had the walrus not taught him anything? Anything at all?

 

“Yes,” Harlok said. “He’s even formed a company, let me see, what is it called, aah, here it is…Grand Eden Holidays Inc.” He held out his pad, still looking in the wrong direction. But even at a distance, Thapar could see that the brochure looked really nice, with holograms in psychedelic colors changing shape and seeming to drop over the edges of the pad, like a waterfall.

 

And so, this is how she now found herself on the first tourist jaunt to that planet. She had to admit, in spite of all her reservations about Thapar, that he was giving his customers the best of everything. The spaceship was a giant, with multiple decks and large, cavernous interiors. The food was excellent and plentiful, with sumptuous buffets five times a day, and regular shows complete with muscular showmen flying from perch to perch, creating rings of fire as they were moving, while showgirls danced and pirouetted in between. It was really staggering, the amount of rhodium this man had spent. Whatever his proclivities, he did it with style.

 

She had not tried to book under an assumed name, as Thapar knew her personally, so she was not at all surprised that he found her after one of the shows, and slid up to her, almost gliding on the floor.

 

“My, my,” he said, looking at her with his big, seductive eyes. “You look even more beautiful than when I saw you the last time.” She recalled that there had been one whole issue of Brood Magazine – a thoroughly illegal and underground publication – devoted to him, with special emphasis on his large…wink, wink…eyes, and how they could drive any female crazy. In spite of herself, she found herself melting into them, her hormones starting to fire.

 

Appalled at this sacrilegious behavior, she tried to divert herself by remembering the admonitions of the Founding Mothers:

 

Be it known that conjugation

Is only for procreation

And not, not, not for recreation!

 

It did not work. The hormone levels continued to increase. This is exactly what the Founding Mothers had worried about – that dragons were too obsessed with conjugations. Desperate now, she shut her eyes briefly, and then imagined a pair of glasses on Thapar’s face sliding off his snout, followed by his butt hitting the floor, and blue blood spreading on the carpet, with the coup de grace provided by a Salarian walrus waddling over, screeching with joy, and then hugging him, complete with whiskers and tusks.

 

This worked almost instantaneously, though it made her feel a bit guilty that the sacred admonitions had not been the ones that did the trick. Perhaps she had not put enough sincerity into them. Anyway, that had been a close one, she thought, sighing with relief.

 

“So, you decided to join the cruise, eh?” Thapar continued, apparently oblivious to the turmoil he had just created within her. Then his smile disappeared, though the look in his eyes – like she was the only female on that ship – did not. “You aren’t thinking of taking my planet away from poor old me, now, are you?”

 

“Oh, absolutely not,” she replied, very much aware of the fire which continued to glow dimly in her nostrils. “This is purely for pleasure.”

 

She had actually been in the Salarian system on behalf of an interested client, and had been incensed, really incensed, when she had found his agents there already, making a deal with the previous owner. Still, she had tried to meet up with Thapar and had found him on the beach, just when the walrus had decided to shake some water off its head. After that, there was no way that Thapar would even entertain the possibility of selling the planet.

 

She had neither forgiven him for that snub, nor the lost commission.

 

“But what exactly,” she said, “will we be experiencing?”

 

“What do you mean, experiencing?” he asked. Damn those eyes. And that look.

 

“Well, I mean this,” she said, pointing to the brochure in the pad she was holding.

 

‘JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT COULD NOT GET ANY WILDER

This is a planet unlike any other…it has semi-intelligent life forms!

Yes, you sensed this right.

And the life forms are extremely friendly.

And cuddly.

And they looooooooooove dragons.

Come with us, and experience the planet intimately.’

 

The part about the life forms being semi-intelligent was particularly clever – Thapar was telling his clients that the planet had intelligent beings, but without breaking the law.

 

“Oh, psst,” Thapar replied, “this is just marketing. The life forms are not very interesting. It’s the planet itself that we will be focusing on. You know, broaden people’s minds, and all that.”

 

“These semi-intelligent life forms,” she said, smiling sweetly now, “do they have tusks?”

 

“Harrumph,” he replied, his eyes suddenly glowing with irritation, “they do not.” Pause. “You do remember that this is my ship?” The last few words were spoken with a hint of menace.

 

She decided to keep her distance after that.

 

The planet itself was a bit of a disappointment, not very large, and overly too blue for her liking.

But the terrain, she had to admit, was interesting. There were large mountains in one area, and deep canyons in another, as they flew in and out from one place to another, one sightseeing tour piled on another, until her mind was spinning, and she had no idea of the time. After a few days of this relentless sightseeing, she was thoroughly bored, as the novelty of the planet wore off. Even worse, as far as she could see, there was nothing to report here, nothing that would get Thapar into trouble.

 

The other tourists, she noticed, were also starting to chafe. This was obviously not what they had come for.

 

“Where are the cuddly life forms?” some old lady asked, when they were having their buffet in one of the forest areas, which had been set up with a net covering, because, well, flies. This planet seemed to have plenty of them.

 

“We will meet them today,” Thapar said, seeming to appear out of nowhere. “Make sure you put some translators in your ears, their language is unusually harsh and guttural, and you don’t want to hear the sounds they emit.” Then, with a flourish, he moved forward, twisting his hands elegantly in the direction of the forest.

 

That is when the intelligent life forms came out of the forest edge. Larkan noticed two things right away. Firstly, the life forms displayed absolutely no hesitation or trepidation upon seeing the dragons; in fact, they were squealing with delight. Thapar had obviously been here many times before, and had prepped them well.

 

But the second thing was shocking. The life forms were bipedal, furless, and large. Really big. Scintillating, glowering perches, what the hell had Thapar gotten into this time? She had thought that the walrus was a bit on the high side, almost twice as big as Thapar, but these beings, they were…they were…huge. No intelligent species was supposed to reach this size, according to the biologists.

 

Damn, damnable, damned Thapar. She realized that he had deliberately shown them pictures of the beings without any context, which is why they had all assumed, like on any other planet, that these beings were similar in size to the dragons.

 

But none of the other passengers seemed to mind. In fact, they positively started cooing and crooning, the eyes dimming, the nostrils becoming cold, almost icy cold, as they coiled themselves into huggable and squeezable shapes, ready to be picked up. Larkan realized that this had probably been discussed in one of the on-board seminars she had missed, or perhaps Thapar had deliberately not invited her to that particular seminar.

 

The life forms almost jumped on them, falling over each other to get at them. Larkan felt herself grabbed by one of the life forms, a female by the looks of it, from the lack of an appendage. She wanted to squeal and fly out, but the hands were so…comforting, and warm, and silky smooth, as the female cuddled her, and kissed her, and ran her hands over Larkan’s fur and feathers.

 

“Oh, that is so nice,” the female said, cooing with delight, “you are so cutie cutie cute.” Larkan felt herself being kissed all over, making her tingle with delight. “Come to Mamie.”

 

All around her, she saw the other dragons curling themselves into balls of fur and feathers, slinking and sliding across the bodies of the beings. She saw ecstasy etched into their bodies, the shapes shifting sinuously, experiencing, sensing, reaching a high level of hormonal intensity. She felt her own body starting to vibrate under the touch, in a way that she rarely experienced with another dragon, as she merged deeper into the realms of her senses, colors and sounds activated from the deepest recesses of her mind, sliding, flying, merging, primal memories that intensified with pleasure, until…

 

Later, in fact, quite a while later, Larkan found herself lying next to the female, safely ensconced in what appeared to be a nest built on the ground. The female was asleep, and she wanted to stay there, against the warmth, the warmth that the dragons had given up when they made the transition to sentience, when past and future had become more important than the present. It was the price, the Founding Fathers and Founding Mothers had said, for acquiring complete intelligence, for becoming sentient. And they, as a species, had agreed to pay the price. But this is what they had lost. True feeling.

 

That is when she woke up with a start. This was not right. This was not permitted. This had been explicitly forbidden. Thapar had planned this trip with the express intent of giving them all a good time, in complete violation of the Founding Mothers’ admonitions – to give up on the senses, and become purely intellectual. These people, who had come on the trip, even Larkan herself, had regressed. And Thapar had taken advantage of the poor intelligent beings of this planet. He had spoilt them, and turned them into sensual playthings.

 

This was wrong, she thought, now fully rational again, and coldly furious. How dare Thapar do this? But simply reporting this to the Council was not going to do much good, because Thapar would simply argue that the beings were only semi-intelligent, and tie up the proceedings for years, while minting rhodium out of the tourist trips in the meantime. This had to be stopped now. He had to lose the planet immediately. In fact, he deserved to lose it.

 

And she knew exactly how she was going to do it.

 

Later, much later, when she found herself before the High Council again, she knew she was in serious trouble, because this time all fifty-three members were there, sitting in the shadows, though it was only Harlok who spoke at first.

 

“What did you do?” he said, wailing plaintively. “What did you do?”

 

“What did you do? What did you do?” the remaining members started wailing, one by one, mimicking Harlok’s tone.

 

At the twentieth member, she finally decided to go on the offensive, and screamed. “I got the point, OK? I got the freaking point! Now can you shut up and listen to me?”

 

There was an astonished silence, followed by the sound of three members dropping off their perches. No one, it seems, had ever talked to them like this before. Old fogies, she thought with contempt.

 

“I saved those beings from being exploited,” she said, “that is what I did.”

 

“But you gave them the sacred herb!” Harlok said. “You were not supposed to do that.”

 

“I know,” she said, “that is what you believe. But they were being taken advantage of, and they did not realize it. They were not aware.”

 

“The sacred herb was a gift from the Founding Fathers,” Harlok said. “We were not told to spread it!”

 

“Yes, yes, I know all that,” she said. A pregnant pause, and then she hit them with the key question. “But were we told not to spread it?”

 

There was a scurry of movement, as multiple members of the Council started going through their pads, colors spilling over and out like rivers, and shapes forming above the pads. One by one, the glow died out. No one spoke.

 

“Well?” she said, impatient now. “Were we told not to spread it?”

 

“Harrumph,” Harlok said, “it doesn’t matter, it is implied.”

 

“Well,” she said, her wings folded back stubbornly, “I was not going to let those poor beings be exploited by Thapar and his tourists. So I did what was not forbidden. I gave them the ability to live in the past as well as the future. I gave them the gift of time.”

 

“But now they are sentient!” Harlok said, his wings fluttering with anxiety. “They no longer live only in the now! They will remember us! They will know us! The Founding Fathers specifically forbade this! That you cannot deny, that you cannot deny.”

 

“That you cannot deny, that you cannot deny,” each member started speaking, in turn, complete with fluttering wings. It looked like a wave going through the throng of the seated members.

​

The sound was cut off abruptly as Larkan stood up again, her nostrils glowing with fire.

 

“That, aah, well, strictly speaking, um, you cannot deny,” said the nineteenth member. “Right, everyone?” He was looking at her warily, probably wishing that the wave had not stopped at him.

 

When no one spoke, the nineteenth continued, his voice now quivering with nervousness. “But the sacred herb, um, creates epigenetic changes which get passed on to offspring. So now you have made the species sentient forever.” The voice became stronger. “And the sentient shall overcome the merely intelligent, so they will soon all be sentient. They will remember. They will remember us, the visitors from space! This was forbidden by the Founding Fathers!”

 

“No, they won’t,” she said, flicking her wings so hard that this time five members fell off their perches. “They won’t remember a thing.”

 

“How can you be so sure?” Harlok asked.

 

“There are not that many of them, and they don’t have pads – hell, even inventing writing will take them many generations. Their kids will remember nothing, and even if they do, will their grandkids? Guys, don’t worry about it, OK?”

 

She still remembered how the idea had come to her. The sacred herb connected a mind to the fourth dimension, so that it could mentally traverse the past as well as the future, making the species sentient and self-aware. Give it to the intelligent beings on a planet, and it would become completely off-limits – this was something the Founding Fathers had made very, very clear.

​

Once she had made her mind up, the next steps had been really simple. She had just used the synthesizers on the ship, gotten a good supply of the herb ready, and laced a large quantity of fruits. Then she had gone to her female, and placed a whole basket of the fruits in front of her.

 

“Psst, you want one of these?” she had asked the female, offering her an avocado.

 

“Actually, not really,” the female said. “It makes me feel really full, and then I have to go potty.”

 

“Oh, really?” Larkan said, now perched on a tree branch, so she could whisper directly into the female’s ears. “But I promise you that it will be worth it. It will make you see the truth.”

 

“In my potty?” the female said, making Larkan wince. We really need to redefine how we define intelligence, she thought sourly.

 

“No, not there,” she said patiently, “but in your mind. In your heart.”

 

“Really?” the female said, looking at her with large and innocent eyes, as she reached for an apple instead.

 

“Yes, really,” Larkan whispered. “Passssss it to your friends too.”

 

And that is all it had taken. Now harboring sentient beings, the planet automatically became off limits, and Thapar lost his world. Good riddance, she thought, gloating with delight. The bastard…she hoped that he had lost a lot of money.

 

As for the beings on the planet, she wasn’t worried at all. After a few generations, who among them would remember the story of the apple laced with the sacred herb, or the dragon from a different world?

 

Nah…there was nothing to worry about.

​