The Lani People Part 11

CHAPTER VIII

"Wake up, Doctor, it's six A.M." A pleasant voice cut through Kennon's slumber. He opened one eye and looked at the room. For a moment the strange surroundings bothered him, then memory took over. He stirred uncomfortably, looking for the owner of the voice.

"You have your morning calls at seven, and there's a full day ahead,"

the voice went on. "I'm sorry, sir, but you should get up." The voice didn't sound particularly sorry.

It was behind him, Kennon decided. He rolled over with a groan of protest and looked at his tormentor. A gasp of dismay left his lips, for standing beside the bed, a half smile on her pointed face, was Copper--looking fresh and alert and as disturbing as ever.

It wasn't right, Kennon thought bitterly, to be awakened from a sound sleep by a naked humanoid who looked too human for comfort. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I'm supposed to be here," Copper said. "I'm your secretary." She grinned and flexed a few curves of her torso.

Kennon was silent.

"Is there anything wrong?" she asked.

For a moment Kennon was tempted to tell her what was wrong--but he held his tongue. She probably wouldn't understand. But there was one thing he'd better settle right now. "Now look here, young lady--" he began.

"I'm not a lady," Copper interrupted before he could continue. "Ladies are human. I'm a Lani."

"All right," Kennon growled. "Lani or human, who cares? But do you have to break into a man's bedroom and wake him in the middle of the night?"

"I didn't break in," she said, "and it isn't the middle of the night.

It's morning."

"All right--so it's morning and you didn't break in. Then how in Halstead's sacred name did you get here?"

"I sleep next door," she said jerking a thumb in the direction of an open door in the side wall. "I've been there ever since you dismissed me last night," she explained.

The explanation left Kennon cold. The old cliche about doing as the Santosians do flicked through his mind. Well, perhaps he would in time--but not yet. The habits of a lifetime couldn't be overturned overnight. "Now you have awakened me," he said, "perhaps you'll get out of here."

"Why?"

"I want to get dressed."

"I'll help you."

"You will not! I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I've been dressing myself for years. I'm not used to people helping me."

"My--what a strange world you must come from. Haven't you ever had a Lani before?"

"No."

"You poor man." Her voice was curiously pitying. "No one to make you feel like the G.o.ds. No one to serve you. No one to even scrub your back."

"That's enough," Kennon said. "I can scrub my own back."

"How?--you can't reach it."

Kennon groaned.

"Weren't there any Lani on your world?"

"No."

"No wonder you left it. It must be quite primitive."

"Primitive!" Kennon's voice was outraged. "Beta has one of the highest civilizations in the Brotherhood!"

"But you don't have Lani," she said patiently. "So you must be primitive."

"Halstead, Fleming, and Ochsner!" Kennon swore. "Do you believe that?"

"Naturally, isn't it obvious? You can't possibly be civilized unless you take responsibility for intelligent life other than your own race.

Until you face up to your responsibilities you are merely a member of a dominant race, not a civilized one."

Kennon's reply caught in his throat. His eyes widened as he looked at her, and what he was about to say remained unspoken. "Out of the mouths of humanoids--" he muttered oddly.

"What does that mean?" Copper asked.

"Forget it," Kennon said wildly. "Leave me alone. Go put on some clothes. You embarra.s.s me."

"I'll go," Copper said, "but you'll have to be embarra.s.sed. Only household Lani wear cloth." She frowned, two vertical furrows dividing her dark brows. "I've never understood why inhouse Lani have to be disfigured that way, but I suppose there's some reason for it. Men seldom do anything without a reason."

Kennon shook his head. Either she was grossly ignorant, which he doubted, or she was conditioned to the eyeb.a.l.l.s.

The latter was more probable. But even that was doubtful. Her trenchant remark about civilization wasn't the product of a conditioned mind. But why was he worrying about her att.i.tudes? They weren't important--she wasn't even human. He shook his head. That was a sophistry. The fact that she wasn't human had nothing to do with the importance of her att.i.tude. "I suppose there is a reason," he agreed. "But I don't know it. I haven't been here long enough to know anything about such things."

She nodded. "That does make a difference," she admitted. "Many new men are bothered at first by the fact that we Lani are naked, but they adjust quickly. So will you." She smiled as she turned away. "You see,"

she added over her shoulder as she left the room, "we're not human.

We're just another of your domestic animals."

Was there laughter in her voice? Kennon wasn't sure. His sigh was composed of equal parts of relief and exasperation as he slipped out of bed and began to dress. He'd forgo the shower this morning. He had no desire for Copper to appear and offer to scrub his back. In his present state of mind he couldn't take it. Possibly he'd get used to it in time.

Perhaps he might even like it. But right now he wasn't acclimatized.

"Man Blalok called," Copper said as she removed the breakfast dishes.

"He said that he'd be right over to pick you up. He wants to show you the operation." "When did he call?"

"About ten minutes ago. I told him that you were at breakfast. He said he'd wait." She disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

"There's a nightmare quality to this," Kennon muttered as he slipped his arms into the sleeves of his tunic and closed the seam tabs. "I have the feeling that I'm going to wake up any minute." He looked at his reflection in the dresser mirror, and his reflection looked worriedly back. "This whole thing has an air of plausible unreality: the advertis.e.m.e.nt, the contract, this impossible island that raises humanoids as part of the livestock." He shrugged and his mirrored image shrugged back. "But it's real, all right. No dream could possibly be this detailed. I wonder how I'm going to take it for the next five years? Probably not too well," he mused silently. "Already I'm talking to myself. Without even trying, that Lani Copper can make me feel like a Sarkian." He nodded at his image.

The Sarkian a.n.a.logy was almost perfect, he decided. For on that grimly backward world females were as close to slaves as the Brotherhood would permit; raised from birth under an iron regimen designed to produce complaisant mates for the dominant males. Probably that was the reason Sark was so backward. The men, having achieved domestic tranquillity, had no desire to do anything that would disturb the status quo. And since no Sarkian woman under any conceivable circ.u.mstances would annoy her lordly master with demands to produce better mousetraps, household gadgetry, and more money, the technological development of Sark had come to a virtual standstill. It took two s.e.xes to develop a civilization.