“You want too much,” Copper said softly. “But if it makes you happy to try to get it, I shall help. And if we do not succeed you will at least be happier for trying. And if you are happy”—she shrugged—“then the rest makes little difference.”
That was the crux of the matter, Kennon reflected bitterly. He was convinced she was human. She was not. And until her mind could be changed on that point she would help him but her heart wouldn’t be in it. And the only thing that would convince her that she was human would be a child—a child of his begetting. He could perhaps trick her with an artificial insemination of Lani sperm. There were drugs that could suspend consciousness, hypnotics that would make her believe anything she was told while under their influence.
But in the end it would do no good. All witnesses in Brotherhood court actions were examined under psychoprobe, and a hypnotic was of no value against a lie detector that could extract the deepest buried truth. And he would be examined too. The truth would out—and nothing would be gained. In fact—everything would be lost. The attempt at trickery would prejudice any court against the honest evidence they had so painfully collected.
He sighed. The only thing to do was to go on as they were—and hope that the evidence would hold. With Betan legal talent at their back it might. And, of course, they could try to produce a child as nature had intended. They could try—but Kennon knew it would not succeed. It never had.
CHAPTER XV
Copper had been acting strangely of late, Kennon thought as he rolled over in his bed and watched her standing before the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. She pivoted slowly before the glass, eying herself critically, raising her arms over her head, holding them at her sides, flexing her supple spine and tightening muscles that moved like silken cords beneath her golden skin.
“What are you trying to do—become a muscle dancer?” Kennon asked idly.
She whirled, a crimson blush deepening the tan of her face. “You were supposed to be asleep,” she said.
“I’m an unregenerate heel,” he replied, “and I don’t sleep too well nowadays unless you’re beside me.”