Chapter Five
Aliens
“Celibacy is preferable to procreation sex.”—Woman unknown
It took ten years to create a city.
The male Settlers controlled the education; the Incomers the jobs; the Foreigners recycling, statues, and “production lines”; while women developed prolapses and soon forgot how to use a screwdriver.
The Aliens were sent to the outer lands to experiment with cropping, which they took to like they were born to it. In fact, they felt so comfortable in the outer lands that they were hardly seen—just the odd sighting at the trading post, where plants and meat were exchanged for tools or the odd bit of comfy furniture.
Soon they had developed superb farming techniques, the sort of techniques that could turn a dust bowl fertile, not that any from the city appreciated it.
In f
