"Probably. He's just the type, though, who's a push-over for a set-up like that; pretty faces and figures go to his head. He and the Shannil, for instance, were...."
Newhouse listened while MacAuliffe talked.
The cultural level of the city-state of Oassi was similar in many ways to that of Egypt in the fifteenth century B.C., or that of pre-classical Athens or Sparta. It differed strongly, however, in that it was essentially a matriarchy. Since the natives of Dynak were oviparous, the women were freed from the temporary disability that child-bearing brought to viviparous species. In the more savage tribes, the females suckled the young and cared for them from hatching until they were old enough to fend for themselves; in Oassi, however, most of the care of the young had been handed over to the males while the females ran the state. The fighters were of both sexes, carefully segregated into male and female battalions, but the top officers were all females.
Dynak Base had been built well away from Oassi; one of the strict rules of Earth was that no indigenous culture should be subjugated or influenced any more than necessary. Before any contact was made, a study of the more savage tribes had to be made.
Nonetheless, rumors had come out of the jungle that a strange group of aliens had built a fortress near the banks of the Ngong River, and the people of Oassi were aware of the presence of the Earthmen long before any contact had been made by the Earthmen themselves.
Eventually, diplomatic relations between the Earthmen and the Oassi people had been established simply because the Oassi army had sent an expeditionary force to find out the intentions of the strangers. There had been no actual fighting; the female general in charge of the troops had decided that it would be futile to attack Dynak Base and had asked, instead, for a parley.
The upshot of the whole incident was a decision to send a diplomatic party to Oassi itself. And Boccaccio di Vino had been a member of that party.
The trouble was that, at that time, di Vino and the others didn't know a great deal about the customs and mores of the Oassi. More exactly, di Vino didn't know that just holding hands with an Oassi girl was tantamount to a formal engagement. And di Vino hadn't just stopped with holding hands. After the party had been in the city sixty-three days, di Vino found himself legally married to Oanella, the daughter of the Shann and Shanni of Oassi, and heir to the throne. When the old Shanni died, Oanella would become Shanni, and di Vino, as her consort, would become Shann whether he liked it or not.