He sighed. The breed of man must have been tough in the old days—and he’d soon be finding out if any of that ancient toughness remained.
He opened the door to his quarters.
Copper was sitting in his favorite chair, a pile of completed assemblies neatly stacked beside her, and a disorderly file of crumpled cloth at her feet. Her face was sullen as she looked up at him. “I’ve had about all of this I’m going to take,” she said mutinously as she stirred the heap of cloth with a bare foot. “Not even you are going to make me wear those—things!”
Kennon sighed. It was the same old story. For months he had been trying patiently to indoctrinate Copper with a minimum of civilized habits, but she was quite literally a savage. In her entire lifetime she had never worn clothing, and to encase her body in hose, kilts, blouse, and sandals was a form of torture. She scratched, wiggled, and twisted at the garments until she looked as bad as she felt, and would usually finish a session by tearing off the offending clothes and sulking. She was doing it now.
“You must act like a civilized human being,” Kennon said mildly. “You’re simply going to have to learn to wear these clothes properly.”
“Why? I’m more comfortable as I am.”
“That’s not the point. You are going to be living in human society and you must act human. The only planet where you could get away with nudity is Santos, and we’re not going there.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve explained it time and again. We’ll have to go to Beta. That’s the only place I know where you’ll have a fair hearing. And on Beta people wear clothes. They have to. It’s cold, even in summer, and in the wintertime, there’s snow.”
“What’s snow?”