"Oh, you're just joining in with the chorus!" Mona said sharply to Dolly Jean. "Drink your Amaretto and leave me alone!"
"Mona," said Quinn as amiably as he could. "There are things we do need to know for your sake. Does it hurt so much to listen to Rowan?"
"Very well," Mona replied miserably, and she sat back in the chair. She wiped at her face with one of her thousands of handkerchiefs. She glared at me.
I glanced at her, then back to Rowan.
Rowan was watching all this with a remote expression, her face more relaxed than it had been all evening. Dolly Jean took another drink of Amaretto and sat back and closed her eyes. Michael was studying the three of us. Stirling waited, but our cross words had fascinated him.
"Rowan," I said. "Can you tell us what the Taltos is? We lack that basic knowledge. Can you give it to us?"
"Yes," she answered in a resigned voice. "I can tell you as much as anyone can. "
Chapter 18
18
HER EXPRESSION REMAINED PLACID, though she looked away, her inner focus gathering.
"A mammal," she said, "evolved totally apart from Homo sapiens, on a volcanic island in the North Sea thousands of years before us. We share perhaps forty-five percent of our genes in common. The creatures look like us except that they tend to be taller and more long of limb. Their bone structure is almost entirely what we would call cartilage. When the pure creatures mate, the female ovulates on demand and
the fetus develops within a matter of minutes or hours, it isn't clear to me-but whatever the case, it puts tremendous stress upon the mother. Birth is accompanied by severe pain, and the infant unfolds as a small adult and begins to grow to maturity immediately. "
Mona's entire demeanor changed at these words. She moved closer to Quinn, and he put his arm around her once more, kissing her quietly.
"The Taltos craves its mother's milk in order to grow," said Rowan. "And without that milk it cannot develop properly. In the hour right after birth it runs the risk of being stunted forever. With that milk, and with its mother's full telepathic nurture, the baby reaches its full height within that hour. Six and a half feet is the usual. The males can be seven feet. It will go on drinking its mother's milk as long as it can. Weeks, months, years. But the toll on the mother is heavy. "
Rowan stopped. She put her hand up to support her forehead. A deep sigh came out of her. "The milk . . . " she said. "The milk has curative properties. The milk can work a cure in humans. " Her voice broke apart. "Nobody really knows what that milk could do. . . . "
Deliberate flash of images. A bedroom with an elaborate half-tester bed and Rowan in the bed, sitting up, taking milk from the breast of a young female. Shut out. Gunfire. Several shots. Flash of Rowan digging in this very yard. Michael with her. Rowan wouldn't let go of the shovel. Body of the young female lying limp in the moist earth. Heartbreak.
Rowan began again, voice strong, automatic:
"Nobody knows the lifespan of a pure Taltos. It could be thousands of years. Females clearly can become infertile in time. I've seen one who was past her prime. She was a simpleton. She was found in rural India. Males? I know of only one in existence-the one who took Morrigan. They may remain potent till they die. Taltos tend in their natural state to be extremely naive and childlike. In ancient times, many died through clumsiness and accidents. " She paused for a moment and then went on:
"The Taltos is telepathic, curious by nature and hardwired with a tremendous amount of basic historical and intellectual knowledge. It is born 'knowing,' as they say, all about the species itself, the island continent from which they came, and the places in the British Isles to which they migrated after the island was destroyed by the same volcano that created it. The glen of Donnelaith in Scotland was one of those strongholds. Maybe one of the last.
"That's what the Taltos was . . . when it was pure, before it knew about humankind or had any mixture with it. The population was culled by accidents, occasional pestilence, the females by overbreeding. "
"What does this mean, hardwired?" I said. "I want to be sure I understand you. "
"We're not hardwired," she said. "We don't come into this world knowing how to build a house or speak a
language. But a bird is hardwired to build its nest, to do a mating call, or a mating dance. A cat is hardwired to hunt for food, care for its kittens-even to eat them if they are weak or deformed. "
"Yes, I see," I said.
"The Taltos is a highly intelligent primate that is hardwired with a tremendous fund of knowledge," she said. "That and its extraordinary reproductive advantage are what make it so dangerous. Its naivete, its simplicity and lack of aggression are its vulnerabilities. It's also extremely sensitive to rhythm and music. You can almost paralyze a Taltos when you utter a long rhyme or sing a rhythmic song. "
"I understand," I replied. "How did they become mixed with humans?" I asked.
She seemed at a loss. "Medically," she said, "I don't know the answer. I only know that it happened. "
"Humans inevitably came to the British Isles," said Michael. "And there is a long history of "the tall people" and their fight with their more aggressive invaders. Interbreeding occurred. For human females it's almost always fatal. The woman conceives and then miscarries and bleeds to death. You can imagine the hatred and fear this inspired. As for the other way around, a human male would bring about an insignificant hemorrhage in a female Taltos. Nothing important there, except that if it happens repeatedly over years and years, it will use up the female's eggs. " He paused, caught his breath and went on:
"Some successful breeding occurred and the offspring gave rise both to malformed 'little people' and Taltos with human genes, and humans with the genes of the Taltos. And as the centuries passed, all this became a matter of superstition and legend. "
"Not so very neatly," said Rowan. Her voice was firmer than before, though her eyes still moved feverishly. "There were terrible wars and massacres and unspeakable bloodshed. The Taltos, being far less aggressive than humans by nature, lost out to the new species. The Taltos were scattered. And they went into hiding. They pretended to be humans. They concealed their birthing rites. But as Michael said, couplings with humans did happen. And unbeknownst to the early inhabitants of the British Isles, there developed a kind of human who carried a giant helix of genes, twice the number of a normal human, and capable at any time of giving birth to the Taltos or a malformed elfin child struggling to be one. When two such humans happened to mate, a Taltos birth was even more likely. "