“How?”
“The way you hide your knowledge of this ship from the others. I know you better than anyone else on this island, and yet you would fool me.”
“We Lani are used to hiding things. You men have been our masters for centuries, yet you do not know our redes. Nor do you know what we think, We obey you, but there are parts of us you do not own. It is easy to hide a little thing like this.”
Kennon nodded. It figured. He seated another bolt. Three more and the drive room would be restored and they could start on the control circuits. “I wish you were as clever about adopting human customs as you are about hiding guilty knowledge,” he said.
Copper laughed. “You mean those silly things you have been teaching me? Why should I learn them? I’m happy as I am. I love you, you love me, and that is all that matters.”
“It’s not all that matters. Can’t you get it through your head that civilized customs are necessary in a civilized society?” He gave the next-to-last bolt an extra-vicious wrench. “You’ll have to know them if you expect to get along on Beta.”
“But I will never see Beta.”
“I am going there when my duty here is over. And you’re going with me.”
“When will that be?”
“Three years.”