Bill never realized that sex was the cause of it all. If the sun that morning
had not been burning so warmly in the brassy sky of Phigerinadon II, and if
he had not glimpsed the sugar-white and wine-barrel-wide backside of
Inga-Maria Calyphigia, while she bathed in the stream, he might have paid more
attention to his plowing than to the burning pressures of heterosexuality and
would have driven his furrow to the far side of the hill before the seductive
music sounded along the road. He might never have heard it, and his life would
have been very, very different. But he did hear it and dropped the handles of