“What do you mean?” Keren asked.

“The lengths your sisters take to be with the one they love. The one they choose to love. How trying it must be for you.” He flashed to a memory of his own Time of Knowing, when he received the identities of his bondmates, how terrifying and exhilarating it was to find out who he would be bonded to. What if it was someone he hated? Or someone dull-witted and stupid? In hindsight, his youthful fears seemed simplistic.

“Ah! Ensign ch’Thane has a consort waiting for him back in the Alpha Quadrant,” Keren teased. “Tell me about it while we walk.” She dragged him to his feet and they resumed walking up the hillside.

“It’s a long story. Something we don’t usually talk about outside our species.”

“But you seem to come from such an open society,” Keren said.

“True, but even my people are unique within the Federation. Our physiology, our rigid social customs dictate that we keep to ourselves those issues relating to family life.”

“I’ve heard Ensign Juarez use the word ‘family,’ is that like a House?”

“A smaller unit-where adults nurture young who are usually related to them. Because most humanoids where I come from carry their offspring within them until they are ready to live semi independently, the identities of the parents are rarely in question. Such children can’t properly develop apart from their parents, unlike Yrythny.”

“It would be as if I returned from my year in the water to live with the consorts who laid me,” Keren clarified.

“Yes. Exactly,” Shar said, thinking for a brief moment that being raised in a large group—like the Yrythny younglings were—might be easier than being tied to a parent. Pleasing his zhaveywas complicated, but he couldn’t imagine living his life without her.

“What about your family, Thirishar?” Keren prodded gently.

From his first night on Luthia, Keren had openly shared her life with him. The underground. Her career. Shar’s sense of fair play dictated that he ought to reciprocate. After all, wasn’t he prying into the most intimate threads holding their society together? He took a deep breath. “On my world, we don’t have ‘pairs,’ we have quads. I have three bondmates.”

“Three?” Keren looked surprised.

“Shathrissía, Thavanichent, and Vindizhei,” he said, seeing their faces flash before him as he said their names. “You have two sex chromosomes. Andorians have four sex chromosomes—we have four genders. It’s challenging for most two-sex species to delineate the physiological differences between us, so we accept being called

‘he’ and ‘she’ rather than try to explain why those pronouns are an oversimplification.”

“What areyou supposed to be called?”

Shar smiled and rapidly reeled off a series of Andorii words, enjoying the confused expression on Keren’s face as he said them.

“Do you mind if I think of you as ‘he’? Like Jeshoh is a ‘he.’” Keren asked sincerely, “I don’t mean any offense by it.”

“I’ve spent so many years away from Andor that I rarely think about it anymore. Sometimes, I even think of myself as ‘he.’”

“I don’t know what’s harder—not having any parents—as we Yrythny—or having four.”

Shar agreed, but felt that was a discussion for another time. “Among my kind, producing offspring isn’t as simple as a female laying eggs and a male fertilizing them, as it is with your people.”

Keren considered him thoughtfully. “I can imagine. Tell me about it. We have a long way to go.”

They had cleared another stretch of trail as they walked; Shar admitted to himself that talking had made the hike go faster. Why not?“In recent times, my people endured a horrific biological holocaust, resulting in wide-scale chromosomal mutations. More zhaveysmiscarried; more offspring were born with trisomy or hexsomy complications. In short, reproduction became much more difficult, when it was learned that the window of an individual’s fertility had narrowed to a scant five years.

“Our scientists initiated a comprehensive gene-mapping project. Every family’s genetic history was decoded, recorded and added to a database. The scientists’ intention was to track genetic drift, to note when mutations occurred and to repair what abnormalities they could.”

“I see why the Other’s Turn Key is so fascinating to you,” she said.

Shar nodded. “It might be that the genetic engineering that allowed the Yrythny to successfully evolve might also be applied to shoring up Andorian chromosomal problems.”

Keren latched onto this idea of gene mapping, peppering Shar with questions. The more he talked to Keren, the more he hoped that this trip would help him locate the information he needed to help the Yrythny. Intuitively, he knew he’d find their answers written into the elegant helices of deoxyribonucleic acid, though gene mapping hadn’t readily yielded any solutions for his people. He explained this to Keren.

“In spite of science’s efforts to prevent or correct genetic disorders,” Shar went on, “our reproductive problems persisted; population numbers continued slipping.

“Another approach was taken: instead of trying to genetically engineer a way out of the problem, scientists used the database to match mates with the highest likelihood of success. When I was born, my genetic profile was matched with those of three compatible bondmates.”

Incredulous, Keren clicked her tongue against her teeth. “You didn’t choose your consorts?”

Shar shook his head. “And once the matches are made, our focus is on providing a stable homelife for a child, placing the child in a community where he can grow up naturally with his bondmates. Without knowing I was bound to them, I’d worked side by side with my bondmates in school—since I was two and three years old.”

“For all the trouble your people went to, I hope it worked.”

If only you knew how complicated that statement was,Shar thought, recalling years of classwork, all-night study sessions, papers and days on end of lab work, focused on just that question. But Keren didn’t need to know how the answer to her question had shaped his life. This time was about her world—not his. “Our population stabilized for a time, but in recent generations, new genetic ailments appeared. Weaknesses in certain chromosomal segments left us vulnerable to a host of maladies; these new mutations proved elusive to identify and fix. Bondmate matching has becoming merely a stopgap measure.”

“And so…” the sober expression on Keren’s face revealed that she expected what Shar would say next.

“Barring a permanent solution, we face extinction.” Why is it easier to say these things to Keren, a stranger, and not Nog or any of my other Starfleet colleagues?It felt good to say the words aloud, especially since he usually checked every word he said, being careful to shield his people from outsider curiosity. Not once had Keren made a face or snickered; Shar couldn’t say the same for several of his Academy roommates.

The unique dynamics of Andorian sexuality meant the most intimate parts of their lives could easily be misunderstood or exploited. In truth, Andorian familial structures demanded a far more conservative approach to sexuality than most humanoids employed. Shar had been amazed by the number of partners humanoids “tried on” before finding the right fit. Because his gender identity wasn’t easily quantifiable to those enmeshed in cultures that defined reproductive relationships by twos, it had been easier to rebuff interest expressed by his peers, either as a potential romantic partner or in his unusual physiology, than try to explain himself. Modesty was a natural outgrowth of his culture. Keren seemed to understand that.

The telling of his story lasted the duration of the hike and they arrived at Valley Gap about the time he’d finished. Finding a relatively dry spot in a hollowed-out tree root, they broke for lunch; Shar ate another ration bar, Keren brought bread and fruit. Sunshine broke through the towering evergreen forest canopy, dappling the scrub brush and carpet of fallen leaves in light and shade. Occasional wind gusts rustled the highest boughs sending dried needles and flaking bark scattering to the ground.