Book 2: Chapter 11: Mating Dance
Bob
November 2169
Delta Eridani
The Deltans were coming into their breeding season, and the tension in Camelot was climbing. In the past, stressors like the gorilloid threat had kept things low-key. It’s hard to get amorous when you’re looking over your shoulder every few seconds. But this year the Deltans were top dogs in their environment. The gorilloids had finally figured out the new pecking order. There hadn’t been an attack in almost a month.
A lot of that was due to the busters. Any gorilloid coming within a certain distance of Camelot was met head-on by a forty-pound ball of steel. The encounter was fatal to both, but I could produce more busters faster than the gorilloids could produce more gorilloids. The Deltans rarely even looked up any more at the occasional sonic boom.
I knew more or less what to expect from previous years. Male Deltans vied for the attentions of the females in any of a number of ways. Wrestling matches, mock battles, tests of skill, even good old fashioned bluff and bluster. It was great fun to watch, and generally no one got badly hurt.
This year, though, Archimedes had introduced a new test of skill: spear-chucking. And you couldn’t refuse a challenge. But that wasn’t working out entirely in Archimedes’ favor. The other young males had figured out that they should avoid that particular contest with him, so they were challenging Archimedes first, based on contests of strength. Unfortunately, Archimedes was rather bookish, as Deltans went. I wondered if nerd-dom was a universal thing.
After Archimedes got dropped on his head in a couple of encounters, I decided to teach him some basic jujitsu. It turned out to be harder than expected, because the Deltan skeletal system didn’t always bend the same way as a human’s would. We had to improvise a few locks and throws based on their different physiology.
But the principles were still applicable, and Archimedes was motivated. We narrowed it down to the five or so most useful moves. He spent a day going through the steps in pantomime, establishing the muscle-memory, before he rejoined the circus.