Div`s and Dav`s home was a rustic affair made of what seemed to be hand sawed lumber.
Nonetheless, the sod roof contained solar panels. Their property was a jumble of junk,
compost, outbuildings, chickens, ducks, horses, cows, and flower gardens. Behind the house
were deep woods. To one side was a large vegetable garden. Nonetheless, the interior was
quite spacious, clean and well furnished, although the decorations were a bit garish and
frilly for Hermann`s taste. He had lived as a bachelor for a long time and liked
sparseness in his furnishings. Wood paneling and lounging chairs was his style.

His room was on the second floor, the back part of which was the servant`s quarters.
After Dav showed him his room, she introduced him to the other servants. There were two, a
teenage girl, named Leem, and an android, Klept. Klept had an expressionless plastic face
and spoke like a mentally challenged person. It was obvious that it could only do limited
tasks that required not much thought. Hermann noted that it had useless bulges in the
chest area. It was obviously made in the image of its creators.

Except for Klept, who did not eat, the servants dined with Dav and Div. Again, the meal
was strictly vegetarian. By that time, Hermann had gotten used to meals without meat,
although he longed for a nice juicy steak made on a grill. During the dinner conversation,
he asked Div how a society of all women has children.

"By cloning. How did women have children in your time?"

Hermann smacked his head. "Cloning, I should`ve guessed. That why you and Dav look
alike. And why many women in the hospital seemed to be twins. Then, you and Dav are not
sisters exactly."

"I don`t know what you mean. We have the same donator mother but different birth
mothers. Sisters would be from the same birth mother. But, Joe, you did not answer my
question."

"We had children the natural way--with ... by make love."

"I don`t understand. What does love making have to do with making children."
Hermann was at a loss of how to explain without words for the male or parts of a male.

Dav helped him out. "When we were walking back from the hospital, he told me that he
was built like animals. You know, that growth that we saw between his legs."

Div made a wry face. "You mean that some women of your time had those growths and
that they reproduced in the manner of animals?"

"Yes."

"Ugh. How awful. This is not a proper conversation for dinner. I`m losing my
appetite thinking about it."

This remark disappointed Hermann. Here he was the only man in the world as far as he
could tell. An enviable position, you would think, but not if all the women were horrified
with the idea of sex between male and female. This was especially disappointing since he
found Dav and Div extremely attractive women and had wondered whether it was possible to
seduce one or the other. Now that he was well, his hormones began kicking in.

* * * *

The next day Div took him on a tour of their property. "Until we can prepare to
return to the site where we found you--and you must not tell anyone about that place; it
is a secret we wish to share with no one--you will be doing general farm work. Tomorrow,
we`ll get you up early to milk the cows. At breakfast we`ll assign your duties for the
day, such as feeding the livestock, cleaning the barn and chopping wood for fuel."

She put him right to work that afternoon, hoeing the garden. Because his muscles had
atrophied a lot during his illness, at first the work was extremely hard for him. Each
night he fell into bed aching and exhausted. His hands blistered, became raw and finally
callused. After a few weeks, however, he gained strength and became used to the work. He
began to enjoy the physical labor, sunshine and fresh air. As he gained body weight, he
outgrew the clothing that Dav had given him in the hospital. Div, who was quite good at
sewing and tailoring, made him a couple of new outfits, including underwear. He implored
her not to put so many frills on the garments and to use darker colors.
During this time, his grasp of their language also improved enormously. He asked them
many questions about their civilization and the history of the past three thousand years,
but they could tell him little. They only knew about events that had occurred in their
lifetimes and a few years before. Neither woman was interested in history, especially
what, to them, was ancient history.
Div said, "Someday Dav and I will take you to the temple in Eastville. The
priestesses of Medis are very scholarly and know a lot of ancient history. There you may
be able to find out what you want to know." Eastville was the village where the
hospital was located.

"Tell me, Div, who is in charge of ... everything?" It was difficult to frame
his question properly as he knew no words in their language for "government" or
"state" or "country."

"What do you mean, Joe? Everyone is charge of themselves, except people like you who
owe money they cannot pay and must work off their debt."

"I mean who makes the..." Again he was stuck. There was no word for
"laws." He gave up and swearing to himself that soon he would get her to take
him to this temple place where he could get answers.

* * * *

One task he found particularly odious. The toilet was above a septic tank, which had to
be emptied and cleaned weekly. Its contents were placed into a larger container along with
animal manure all of which was composted and disinfected using ultraviolet rays from the
sun. The output was used for fertilizer. Eventually he got used to the stench and handling
of human excrement. It made him realize that Div and Dav did not waste anything. Care of
the environment had been so much a part of their early upbringing that it was an ingrained
habit done without thought.

One thing really bothered Hermann a lot. Div and Dav were beautiful women, with
attractive bodies, who showed little modesty. Often they would walk around in their
underwear or sheer nightgowns with no thought how it would affect him. They often
undressed in front of him.

One hot day, as he and Dav worked side by side, she took off her blouse and worked
topless. He kept taking peeks at her, noticing how rivulets of sweat ran down her breasts
to drip off of her prominent nipples. When she noticed, she chastised him. "What`s
wrong with you, Joe? Stop staring at my chest, and let`s get these tomatoes picked."

He looked down at the ground, cursing himself for turning into a perverted voyeur.
"Sorry."

On another occasion, Div called him from the bathroom. She was sitting naked in a tub of
hot water. She handed him a bar of soap and a sponge. "Scrub my back, Joe."

She leaned forward. Hermann lathered up the sponge and rubbed it all over her back.
Occasionally, the tips of his fingers would touch her flesh, which was smooth and soft. He
had to turn sideways so that she could not see what was happening to the front of his
jeans.

"Ah, that feels good," she said. "Scrub harder."

When he became too frustrated, he went into the woods to masturbate.

* * * *

One morning in early autumn, as the leaves began to change colors, Hermann helped Div
take an ill horse to the veterinarian. It was a five-mile walk during which they conversed
about many things. Div asked Hermann about his world.

"It was much different back in those days. You seem to think of Eastville as a large
place."

"Yes, it has the greatest population of any village in this section of the
continent. Almost three thousand women live in Eastville."

"In my world that would be considered a tiny place, practically rural. Albany, where
I lived, had a population in the hundreds of thousands. The largest city in this area was
New York. It had a population of over ten million women." He had adopted the mode of
using their word for women to mean people.

"Ten million? Surely you exaggerate. I don`t believe that there are that many women
in the whole world."

"Nonetheless, it was true. Where did they all go? Also, what happened to the animal
women like me? In my world, over half the women were animal women."

"I do not know. Perhaps, someday Dav or I will take you to a priestess of Medis.
Priestesses have much knowledge of ancient times. But tell me, where was this New York
located?"

"If you follow the great river that runs through these parts south to where it joins
the ocean, there are four large islands. The great city was on those islands."

"Ah. I know the place. I`ve been there. There are a great many ruins there. Some
very tall buildings are left from ancient times. There has been a lot of controversy about
whether to preserve them as historical monuments or tear them down for the material they
contain. The priestesses want to preserve them; everyone else wants to tear them down.
Much metal has been mined from those islands. But now they`ve been played out except for
the couple of tall buildings I mentioned. There`s little metal left."

"I`d like to see it. I wonder whether they melted down the Statue of Liberty."

"Tell me about the animal women. Did the women keep them as one would a pet?"

Hermann laughed. "In some cases. But mostly the relationship between an animal man
and a woman was like that between you and Dav. They were partners in an institution we
called marriage."

"Really. How interesting. And when they made love, the animal woman would put her
penis inside the woman like animals do when they mate?"

"Yes, that`s how it was done. And sometimes the woman would get impregnated and have
a baby. Cloning of women was illegal at the time I lived."

Div stopped in her tracks, and her eyes went wide. "That`s very strange. So one did
not have to be rich to have a baby. No wonder there were so many women in the world in the
olden days."

Hermann glanced at her slyly. "Would you like a demonstration of how we did
this?"

Div chuckled nervously. "You mean you would stick that thing of yours in a woman and
let me watch."

"I didn`t exactly mean that. I wondered whether you would like me to demonstrate on
you."

Div`s mouth gaped in horror. "I don`t think so. No. I don`t wish to be rude or speak
ill of you, but the idea repulses me."

After that bit of conversation, they continued on in silence. But Hermann caught Div
staring at him contemplatively at times, especially in the area of his crotch.