The Lani People Part 16

Yet he enjoyed it. He looked at her and smiled. He was pleased with her. Perhaps--yet--she might find favor in his eyes. The hope was always there within her--a hope that was at once fear and prayer. And if she did--she would know what to do.

Kennon looked up. Copper's face was convulsed with a bright mixture of hope and pain. Never, he swore, had he saw anything more beautiful or sad. Involuntarily he placed his hand upon her arm. She flinched, her muscles tensing under his finger tips. It was though his fingers carried a galvanic current that backlashed up his arm even as it stiffened hers.

"What's the matter, Copper?" he asked softly.

"Nothing, Doctor. I'm just upset."

"Why?"

There it was again, the calm friendly curiosity that was worse than a bath in ice water. Her heart sank. She s.h.i.+vered. 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 G.o.d.

"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 encompa.s.sed 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 h.e.l.l! 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.lity which was a thousand times worse.

Although throughout most of the Brotherhood miscegenation was an unknown word, and even b.e.s.t.i.a.lity had become a loose definition on many worlds with humanoid populations, the words had definite meaning and moral force to a Betan. And--G.o.d 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.

It was odd, Kennon reflected bitterly, that humans could do with animals what their customs and codes prohibited them from doing to themselves.

For thousands of years--back to the very dawn of history when men had bred horses and a.s.ses to produce mules--men had been mixing species to produce useful hybrids. Yet a Betan who could hybridize plants or animals with complete equanimity shrank with horror from the thought of applying the same technique to himself.

What was there about a human being that was so sacrosanct? He shook his head angrily. He didn't know. There was no answer. But the idea--the belief--was there, ingrained into his att.i.tudes, a part of his outlook, built carefully block by block from infancy until it now towered into a mighty wall that barred him from doing what he wished to do.

It would be an easier hurdle if he had been born anywhere except on Beta. In the rest of the Brotherhood, the color of a man's skin, the shape of his face, the quality and color of his hair and eyes made no difference. All men were brothers. But on Beta, where a variant-G sun had already caused genetic divergence, the brotherhood of man was a term that was merely given lip service. Betans were different and from birth they were taught to accept the difference and to live with it. Mixing of Betan stock with other human species, while not actually forbidden, was so encircled with conditioning that it was a rare Betan indeed who would risk self-opprobrium and the contempt of his fellows to mate with an outsider. And as for humanoids--Kennon shuddered. He couldn't break the att.i.tudes of a lifetime. Yet he loved Copper.

And she knew he did!

And that was an even greater horror. He had fled from the office, from the glad light in her eyes, as a burned child flees fire. He needed time to think, time to plan. Yet his body and his surface thoughts wanted no plans or time. Living with a Lani wasn't frowned upon on Flora. Many of the staff did, nor did anyone seem to think less of them for doing so. Even Alexander himself had half-confessed to a more than platonic affection for a Lani called Susy.

Yet this was no excuse, nor would it silence the cold still voice in his mind that kept repeating sodomite--sodomite--sodomite with a pa.s.sionless inflection that was even more terrible than anger.

The five kilometers to Station One disappeared unnoticed beneath his feet as he walked, and he looked up in surprise to see the white walls and red roofs of the station looming before him.

"Good Lord! Doc! What's got into you?" the stationmaster said. "You look like you'd seen a ghost. And out in this sun without a helmet! Come inside, man, before you get sunstroke!"

Kennon chuckled without humor. "Getting sunstroke is the least of my worries, Al," he said, but he allowed Al Crothers to usher him inside.

"It's odd that you showed up right now," Al said, his dark face showing the curiosity that filled him. "I just had a call from Message Center not five minutes ago, telling me to have you call in if you showed up."

Kennon sighed. "On this island you can't get away from the phone," he said wryly. "O.K., where is it?"

"You look pretty bushed, Doc. Maybe you'd better rest awhile."

"And maybe it's an emergency," Kennon interrupted. "And probably it is because the staff can handle routine matters--so maybe you'd better show me where you keep the phone."

"One moment please," the Message Center operator said. There were a few clicks in the background. "Here's your party," she continued. "Go ahead, Doctor."

"Kennon?" a nervous voice crackled from the receiver.

"Yes?"

"You're needed out on Otpen One."

"Who is calling--and what's the rush?"

"Douglas--Douglas Alexander. The Lani are dying! It's an emergency!

Cousin Alex'll skin us alive if we let these Lani die!"

Douglas! Kennon hadn't thought of him since the one time they had met in Alexandria. That was a year ago. It seemed much longer. Since the Boss-man had exiled his cousin to that bleak rock to the east of Flora there had been no word of him. And now--he laughed a sharp bark of humorless annoyance--Douglas couldn't have timed it better if he had tried!

"All right," Kennon said. "I'll come. What seems to be the trouble?"

"They're sick."

"That's obvious," Kennon snapped. "Otherwise you wouldn't be calling.

Can't you tell me any more than that?"

"They're vomiting. They have diarrhea. Several have had fits."

"Thanks," Kennon said. "I'll be right out. Expect me in an hour."

"So you're leaving?" Al asked as he cradled the phone.

"That's a pract.i.tioner's life," Kennon said. "Full of interruptions. Can I borrow your jeep?"

"I'll drive you. Where do you want to go?"

"To the hospital," Kennon said. "I'll have to pick up my gear. It's an emergency all right."

"You're a tough one," Al said admiringly. "I'd hate to walk five kilos in this heat without a hat--and then go out on a call."

Kennon shrugged. "It's not necessarily toughness. I believe in doing one job at a time--and my contract reads veterinary service, not personal problems. The job comes first and there's work to do."

Copper wasn't in sight when Kennon came back to the hospital--a fact for which he was grateful. He packed quickly, threw his bags into the jeep, and took off with almost guilty haste. He'd contact the Hospital from the Otpens. Right now all he wanted was to put distance between himself and Copper. Absence might make the heart grow fonder, but at the moment propinquity was by far the more dangerous thing. He pointed the blunt nose of the jeep toward Mount Olympus, set the autopilot, opened the throttle, and relaxed as best he could as the little vehicle sped at top speed for the outer islands. A vague curiosity filled him. He'd never been on the Otpens. He wondered what they were like.