I stood very still. "Go on."
"Why should I? You already know the answer. Or if you don't, you haven't the mind ever to understand it."
Her hands drew into fists, then. Her words came in a furious rush: "I hated them, do you understand? I hated them more than you could ever dream of! I was on Bejak II! I saw the things they did—the way the people were slaughtered.
"Only I saw other things too, Mark Traynor! I saw it wasn't the Kel's fault, not all of it. We could have fought them off, if it hadn't been for the FedGov and its racked compulsory conditioning.
"That conditioning—it made us like so many sheep. It robbed us of our imagination, our lust for life, our fighting spirit. And then, later on, when my own patterns broke and I found what our world looked like when inhibition wasn't muting our senses and our feelings—"
Another change of mood, a shift in fervor. Warmth replaced rage. Pleading took the place of anger:
"That's why I did it, Mark. All at once it dawned on me I was hating the wrong thing, the wrong race. I thought that if even a few of our kind could break loose, throw off their patterns, there might be a chance for human freedom. And with freedom, we could beat the Kel.
"You know how I felt, Mark—because you've felt the same way! You hated going back, being reconditioned. Every time, it got harder for you to give up freedom. Only you didn't dare admit it, not even to yourself."
"So I took it out on the Kel, you mean?" It was an effort to keep my own voice steady. "You may be right."
"Then—"