Birkala stood at Erik's shoulder, his feet apart and his hands clasped behind him, and studied the unfinished painting critically. With a sure, light brush, Erik had captured the innocence of a young woman seated by a fountain. The style was so simple as to be almost calligraphic, yet a few lines and spots of paint portrayed to the eye the long curve of Spira's thigh, the tilt of her breasts, the candor and loveliness of her face.
Birkala's eyes dropped from the canvas to Erik's seated figure, and his expression altered from unwilling admiration to defiant scorn. The Earthman's short-sleeved smock was agape and exposed Erik's perfectly muscled body to the warm sunshine.
"Why are Earthmen so obsessed with nudity?" demanded Birkala. Birkala himself wore loose trousers, shiny boots with curled toes, a shirt with flowing sleeves, a scarf about his throat. Beneath this was under-clothing.
"We are not obsessed with nudity, Birkala," replied Erik gently. "The human body is natural and it is beautiful. We see nothing shameful about it, and we wear clothing only when needed for protection against the elements."
"That is all right for you to say. It would be all right for me to believe. But can you say a hunched body like Direka's is beautiful?"
"Not to unsympathetic eyes, perhaps. Poor Direka! But there will be a day when on Orcti, as on Earth, no one is born with a deformed body."
Birkala sat down on a rock, crushing a bunch of purple minita flowers beside it.
"Always in the future," he said bitterly. "Always promises, in the dim, distant future. You Earthmen know many things and have many things that you promise us, but why must these promises always be for our grandchildren's grandchildren?"
"We found you in mud huts, and now you live in clean cities," reproved Erik, beginning to wipe his brushes clean. "We found you driving oxen, and now you ride spaceships to the other planets of your system."
"Your lives are centuries long, and ours are three-score and ten," countered Birkala. "It is true we have spaceships, but you step into a beam transmitter and cross the galaxy in seconds."