"You do not show respect to your god, Otho," Tyr grinned dangerously. "Nor to a woman. At least, you might be courteous, if you are not religious."
Tyr listened to the mumble that came from the man's mouth, watched him crawl away. He turned to Katha, "That is the governor Mason gave the Trylla."
Katha let her hip rest against the onyx tabletop as her white fingers sought for an hydroette. The end came greenly alive at her first intake of breath. Blowing green smoke from between her red lips she leaned back and laughed softly.
"You know, you are a god in some ways. Your very bigness, the titanic strength and speed of you. If you swore allegiance to the ardth, you would rise fast. You would be a space commander in a few years."
"Is that a promotion over being a god?"
"Tyr, listen to me. Be sensible. Use that brain of yours. You have a brain, and a good one. It is untutored, but it sops up knowledge as a Venusian sponge does water! I saw your eyes moving in that laboratory of mine. You deduced the uses of the fluoroscope, the electronic microscope. You needed only to see them in action—"
She caught her breath. The skin around her lips showed white, as her mouth tightened. "Perhaps you could even duplicate them, given time and the materials, just from seeing them. Could you, Tyr?"
Tyr wondered, himself. His mind held a confused jumble of plates and wires, and remembrances of diagrams he had seen in books in the Tower. Left alone, he rather imagined he could do what Katha hinted. Especially if he worked in sunlight. For the sun would open the facets of his mind, make his brain as keen and alive as his body, give it that subconscious awareness of knowledge that awed him.
"It may be racial memories," he said slowly. "In most men those are buried too deeply for practical use. But with me it may be different. I do know that things do not long remain a mystery with me, once I ponder on them."
Katha walked across the room, staring at the cushions that she kicked idly aside. Her thin brows were puckered.