How the Xala Make Chicks -- Without Making Love

We just came back from touring the hatching center. Such a crazy place! Hatching centers come in two parts. The important part, where the little Xala chicks go from mini cell to egg to hatchling is underground. According to my yela'kaja (and I assume the Ngana yela'kaja is saying the same) it's a security precaution. Eggs and hatchlings are very vulnerable, and an underground facility is easier to lock down than a flying one. We never actually got to see the flying part of the place, which is mostly just for training the older chicks in basic skills, especially flight. We were told that there was some training going on up there and it would be best not to disturb the young ones.

The first level (that is the top one) has the actual hatchlings running around. They're kinda cute little chicks, but you've got to be careful. One of the Ngana didn't pay much attention to the warnings he was given and started playing with one of the chicks. He had fun for a while, letting the chick bluster and spread its wings, but when he tried to catch the little guy he got a nasty bite. Some of the Xala working there -- the ones that look over the hatchlings are called roa'gogo, egg-tenders -- took him away to get fixed up. We were told that a hatchling's bite wasn't as bad as an adult's, but all Xala pack some serious bacteria in their mouths that some other races can't handle, so it's best to avoid getting bit, or to clean it up real good if you do.

The next level has the incubators. They don't actually look all that remarkable. Little metal boxes, heated from underneath by a little electrical heater. It's probably the first device here I've seen that wasn't entirely operated with crystals.

According to the yela'kaja, incubators are kept at different temperatures to promote different traits. Apparently, when Xala still did things the natural way, their sex was determined by the temperature of the egg. But now most don't have genitalia, so they are just going for masculine or feminine traits. It's kinda odd what's "masculine" and what's "feminine" to a Xala. The feminine traits include higher intelligence, greater agility, and more physical strength. The big burly guys that hauled the pallets of my equipment were "feminine", and so are the yela'kajas and the roa'gogos. "Masculine" Xala are usually weak and take submissive roles that don't require great strength or a wide range of knowledge. The "janitors" and the pilots on our transport are "masculine".

Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that. Obviously the guys hauling those pallets around don't need to be so smart, so they're engineered so that their brains don't develop as quickly. Yela'kajas don't need lots of muscle (in fact, they tell me it can be a liability) so their engineered not to grow as bulky a build?

Understand so far? I hope so. It took me a lot to get that much figured out to write on paper, but I'm a reporter here. I gotta do these things.

The biggest question, of course, is where the eggs come from in the first place. According to the yela'kaja, there are two more levels -- where kaja aren't allowed -- with samples of all the cloning lines (or castes, as they sometimes call them) in storage, ready for DNA to be transferred and embryos to be produced. Roa'gogo are rare among Xala in that they really do have a sex, or at least the necessary organs. They are designed to have active ovaries, where other Xala have ineffective sex organs if they have any at all, so that embryos can be implanted and grow into eggs, which are later laid either directly into an incubator or into one of the stasis chambers on one of the lower levels. Don't ask me why they store eggs in stasis -- sounds like trouble to me -- but the fact that they won't let us down there makes me suspect that there's some stuff going on with the genetic engineering and those suspended eggs that they'd rather not let us know about.

Anyway, we're headed out to the crystal mine next. The Kesata opted out of this tour, but I hear that their fishy smell will be with us in the next one. I hear that the mine we're going to has some new equipment that the Kesata want to check out before they agree to let Xala use it on their planet. I don't know what that is, but apparently we'll find out.