“Why?”
There it was again, the calm friendly curiosity that was worse than a bath in ice water. Her heart sank. She shivered. She would never find her desire here. He was cold—cold—cold! He wouldn’t see. He didn’t care. All right—so that was how it had to be. But first she would tell him. Then he could do with her as he wished. “I hoped—for the past year that you would see me. That you would think of me not as a Lani, but as a beloved.” The words came faster now, tumbling over one another. “That you would desire me and take me to those worlds we cannot know unless you humans show us. I have hoped so much, but I suppose it’s wrong—for you—you are so very human, and I—well, I’m not!” The last three words held all the sadness and the longing of mankind aspiring to be God.
“My dear—my poor child,” Kennon murmured.
She looked at him, but her eyes could not focus on his face, for his hands were on her shoulders and the nearness of him drove the breath from her body. From a distance she heard a hard tight voice that was her own. “Oh, sir—oh please, sir!”
The hands withdrew, leaving emptiness—but her heartbeat slowed and the pink haze cleared and she could see his face.
And with a surge of terror and triumph she realized what she saw! That hard bright look that encompassed and possessed her! The curved lips drawn over white, white teeth! The flared nostrils! The hungry demand upon his face that answered the demand in her heart! And she knew—at last—with a knowledge that turned her limbs to water, that she had found favor in his eyes!
CHAPTER XI
Mixed emotion! Ha! The author of that cliche didn’t even know its meaning! Kennon strode furiously down the dusty road toward Station One trying to sublimate his inner conflict into action. It was useless, of course, for once he stopped moving the grim tug-of-war between training and desire would begin again, and no matter how it ended the result would be unsatisfactory. As long as he had been able to delude himself that he was fond of Copper the way a man is fond of some lesser species, it had been all right. But he knew now that he was fond of her as a man is of a woman—and it was hell! For no rationalization in the universe would allow him to define her as human. Copper was humanoid—something like human. And to live with her and love her would not be miscegenation, which was bad enough, but bestiality which was a thousand times worse.
Although throughout most of the Brotherhood miscegenation was an unknown word, and even bestiality had become a loose definition on many worlds with humanoid populations, the words had definite meaning and moral force to a Betan. And—God help him—he was a Betan. A lifetime of training in a moral code that frowned upon mixed marriages and shrank appalled from even the thought of mixing species was nothing to bring face to face with the fact that he loved Copper.