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"Well, there's this girl..."
"There's always a girl."
"You wouldn't understand."
"Oh, no. I suppose I wouldn't. What would a lion know about females? We only keep a pride of seven to ten of 'em happy at a time. Anybody could do that!"
Will put down his book. "And where are they now, this pride or yours?"
"I have the happy honor of informing you that currently they are in labor."
'What? All of them? At once?"
"You wouldn't want me to play favorites!" the lion said indignantly. "Every wife, every night, as often and as long as they please. That is the way to promote marital harmony. Take my word on it, so long as you adhere to this simple regimen, your marriages will never fail."
"If they're in labor, shouldn't you be with them?"
The lion smiled pityingly. "Flesh is transient but stone endures. To us, you guys are as fleeting as the glimmer of moonlight on a summer lake. No wonder you never get anything done! Our lives, however, are long enough to be savored. When I was young, there was only one continent. Imagine my astonishment when a rivulet so narrow I used to hop across it without a second thought widened and became a sea! How dizzied I felt when one land broke into many and went whizzing to all corners of the globe! Sometimes I would have to shut my eyes and clutch the ground with all twenty claws for a few thousand years just to stop my head from spi
"Unluckily for me, I was courting at the time, and my intended brides wound up on a different continental plate from me. I was beside myself with anxiety. Had I been as rash as one of you flesh-folk, I would have plunged at once into the water and drowned in a misguided attempt to swim across the ocean floor to rejoin them. But though lionesses demand passion, the one trait they value above all others is dependability and thus they despise impulsiveness. So I was patient. I waited. And after what seemed, even to me, to be an ungodsly great deal of time, my continent and theirs closed in upon one another again. I stood by the shore and watched the waters narrow. I saw the lands collide and a mighty range of mountains rise up where they met. When things had settled, I located the least difficult pass between their continental plate and mine. "Then I sat down.
"The decades passed like ticks on a stopwatch. Centuries flowed like water. No lady likes to appear anxious over a male. Long eons later nine lionesses came ambling casually by. Eight walked past me without a glance. The last and youngest was about to follow when she noticed me with a start. 'Oh!' she said. 'Have you been here all along?'
" 'Sweet and maneless one, I have,' said I.
"The others came circling back. Their bodies were rangy and tense. Their paws made no sound as they touched the ground. In an offhanded way, the eldest said, 'Perhaps you remember us.'
" 'Oh, tawny goddesses, I have thought of nothing else in all the millions of years of our separation!'
"Closer they circled and closer until they were brushing casually against each other and lightly bumping against me as they endlessly paced around and around. Their murderous golden eyes flashed. The smell of their privates was intoxicating. Coyly, they showed their sharp white teeth. Here, I knew, was my greatest moment of danger, for they had waited long for me and were I to show weakness or impatience they would turn on me and rend me from limb to limb in their disappointment.
" 'Aren't you going to ask if we've been faithful co you?' asked she who was the best huntress. She nipped me lightly on the flank.
" 'Carnivore of my delight, I would not have fallen in love with you
had I needed to ask that question.'
" 'But have you been faithful to us?' asked she who was the most intelligent.
" 'I'm still alive, aren't I?' I said. Oh I was fearless! I shook out my mane so they could admire it. I stood and stretched so they could see the muscular perfection of my body. 'A glance would have told you I was unworthy. Your teeth would have met in my throat. Your claws would have ripped open my hide, so that my blood would fountain upon the ground. Yet still I live.'
"Great was their arousal at my words. A collective growl rose up from them all. Finally, the shyest of them all stood forward and murmured, 'Then you may have us.' "I did not move. 'When?' I asked.
"A look of mingled amusement and appreciation passed around the circle and I knew that I had passed their final and most cu
"So we celebrated our nuptials then and there in that very spot and instant, and long has our marriage been, and happy as well. Then —not long ago as I reckon these things, but beyond the memory of your kind — my ladies became pregnant. Now, the female is at her most vulnerable when she is pregnant and though there are few creatures that would dare attack ones such as they... Well, when your gestation period is measured in eons, it pays to take no chances. So in the ma
"I stood guard.
"Sometime I wandered away briefly to hunt or on a call of nature, but never for long. Before I left. I would plant an apple's worth of seeds to measure the time. Always I returned before the resulting orchard had died. Such was my vigilance.
"But one day I returned from a brief excursion to discover the mountain half carved away and masons and carpenters and stonecutters at work on a massive edifice atop the very spot where my beloved wives lay buried! Overseeing it all was a monarch who was large of stature by your standards, though a mere pippin of a creature by mine.
"What's this?" I asked the little king. He was one of the flesh folk and they were new to the world at that time.
Rather nervously—for I had knocked him over and placed a paw on his chest lest he attempt to escape—Nimrod (for such, he said, was his name) explained his great project, its sacred purpose, the many prophesies of its central place to the Thousand Races and inevitable domination of the globe, the elegance of its architecture, and so on and on. During the course of our conversation several of his soldiers loosed spears and arrows, which of course rattled harmlessly off my sides, and I waited until they had drawn carelessly close and crushed them to jelly. But Nimrod I did not destroy, for even in the face of outrage my self-control is absolute.
"With the aid of his draftsmen, the blueprints, and many a fervent oath, Nimrod was able to convince me that the foundations of Babel did nor delve deeply enough to harm my sleeping brides. Indeed, upon reflection, it occurred to me that planting a massive city overtop their sheltering-space only made them all the more secure from harm.
"So I stayed my wrath.
"Now at last my wives' time has come. Sometimes you may feel a tremor that lightly shakes the Tower and makes its steel-beam framework moan. That means that one is experiencing a contraction. Someday—tomorrow, perhaps, or a hundred thousand years from now—they will go into the true labor that takes no time to speak of and is over in a week. Then shall they shake off the weight of stone and mortar that lies atop them, and the Dread Tower shall fall and all those who dwell within it will die. My wives will burrow to the surface and feast on the bodies, and I shall lick my cubs into life. But that happy day is not yet, so I abide I took this job guarding the library, and though the salary is small, my needs are few. It suffices. However long I must endure, I shall. I am patience incarnate."
Will was silent for a while. Then he nodded toward the other lion and said. "And your associate? I assume his story is much the same?"
"Him?" the lion said, surprised. "I wouldn't know. I never asked."