The Noowal Sales Log

I came to Noowal in 2110 to escape the punishment on Clarkl, my homeland, for a forbidden love.

Clarkl is a planet in the same star system as Noowal, but it is further away from our star. Whereas Noowal is warm and congenial, Clarkl is cold and unpleasant. To get entities from other planets to work on Clarkl, we have to pay them very well.

Noowal is known throughout this part of the universe as a place where outcasts can find a home, and in 2110 I needed a new situation.

I first met Somer Setonier at a technical seminar. To keep its subjects’ spirits up, my master, the Vlogo on Clarkl, made infrequent appearances at educational gatherings, receiving bows and handshakes before disappearing for months into its castle with its warm bathroom. I, as an offspring of the former Vlogo, was expected to attend these events to lend a tone. The more well-dressed attendants the Vlogo has, the longer it can reign.

The Vlogo is a Monarch, one of the seven intelligent types of entities on Clarkl. Monarchs come equipped with three or four ugly blobs of flesh springing from their heads, and they also come with a long tradition of reigning over all other Clarklians.

When a Monarch mates with another Monarch, any issue is always a new Monarch. This type of Clarklian is incredibly dumb, but the ruling families on Clarkl are made up of them. The dumber, the better. The Monarchs have little to do except to eat, sleep, and receive homage at infrequent functions.

I am a Batwig. My parents were a Monarch and a Seeker. Monarchs always keep their Batwig children in their castles to help them reign. Without us, the dumb Monarchs would allow everyone to starve or freeze. They have no organizational skills or, for that matter, no skills of any other kind.

We Batwigs are practical beings. We keep the civilization going by planning for harvests, housing, and commerce. We kiss a few Monarch fannies from time to time, but nearly everyone on Clarkl knows who is running things.

Like many products of a mixed union, I am sterile. A smart mule. I am short and very, very thin, with an enormous head.

Unlike most of our countryentities, we Batwigs do not spend much time looking for partners with whom to fornicate. We are too busy running things. This is not to say we do not have the equipment for mating, but, when you are sterile, there’s not much point to it.

The Drones on Clarkl are also sterile, but they have no occupation. For this reason, they hunt sexual partners night and day. We are thankful they have no offspring because the last thing we need on Clarkl is more mouths to feed.

Christian missionaries who visit Clarkl always try to talk the Drones out of these activities, with no success. What’s the harm in it, anyway? Christians like to sermonize, and Drones like to copulate.

Somer, a Seeker, is a highly educated scientist. All Seekers are intelligent, certainly as a class the smartest entities on Clarkl. We Batwigs are very clever, but we can’t hold a candle to the Seekers for the kind of intelligence that allows them to design and build devices of automation. Because of the work of the Seekers, manual labor is essentially unknown on Clarkl.

Love affairs between Batwigs and Seekers are not unheard of, of course. We meet at official functions, especially when the Seekers have new devices to show to the titular chiefs, the Monarchs. Usually these love affairs are over quickly, and the Batwigs get back to running things and the Seekers get back to designing things. Affairs between Batwigs and Seekers are not really good for the civilization because they take Seekers away from finding other Seekers to mate with. Creating more Seekers is very important, and one sure way to get a baby Seeker is to have two Seekers produce an offspring.

The mating of a Monarch and a Seeker will also produce a Seeker half the time, but the Seekers are too smart to take much interest in the stupid Monarchs. We rarely see a Seeker with a Monarch parent in our censuses.

But Somer and I would not let each other go.

After several years of this affair, with my sneaking out of the castle at night to meet Somer at its house, we decided to apply for a dwelling together.

All Clarklians are eligible for housing, with the desirability of that housing determined by the occupant’s rank in the civilization. The idle Drones are assigned small studio apartments, about sixteen feet square. Seekers are assigned two-bedroom detached houses in a nicer section of town. Batwigs have to live with the Monarchs in their castles, enormous dwellings of stone with no central heating. Couples can request housing that doubles the square footage allowed for the member of the pair lesser in rank.

The housing office was perplexed. What kind of dwelling should be assigned to a Seeker/Batwig couple? There was no precedent.

The request went up the chain of command. It finally reached the Batwig in charge of my unit, and that worthy called me into its office for a lecture.

“You have your work. Scientist Setonier has its important tasks. We can’t allow this relationship to get in the way of progress. Break it off. By the end of the week,” the senior Batwig ordered.

“I can’t do that,” I cried. “I can’t face life without Somer. I can’t go on. Everything is meaningless without Somer.”