Slan

"Very well, sir," said Davy. He walked off without a backward glance. But his thought came to Kathleen: "See you later, Kathleen."

She thought not. Not really. And if they did see each other, it would always be different.

As soon as they were alone, Jem Lorry said sarcastically, "I thought a slan girl in her teens was much too old mentally for a human of her own age."

He was jealous. She turned her back on him, and gazed out over the great city. She had often thought of Lorry as one of the more attractive men in the government hierarchy. But his philosophy was so twisted by the intrigues of his ascent to power that every contact she had with him was offensive in some way. Ignoring his comment, she said now, "I sense you're still planning to rape me one of these days."

Silence from behind her. Finally: "Yes," he said quietly.

"I don't understand it," said Kathleen looking at him. "You are probably, next to Mr. Gray, the most honest and decent man in the cabinet, yet you can have a plan like that."

"The words, honesty, and decency," said Jem Lorry, "are meaningless words. I'm surprised that you use them. There is no significance to the universe. Therefore, we have man's will functioning in an environment where the only danger is the superstition and emotional reaction of less aware human beings. My will, my desire, is that you become my mistress. As soon as I can figure out how to overcome certain superstitions people might have about that, then – your situation and mine being what it is – I shall possess you." His fingers grabbed at her shoulder, pressed tightly. "Do you deny the truth of what I have said? Do you maintain that there is significance?"

Kathleen said, "Remember what Newton said about the law of gravitation?"

Jem Lorry let go of her shoulder. "Newton is dead," he said good-naturedly.

"He said," Kathleen went on, "and I quote: 'I have not been able,' he said, 'to discover those properties of gravitation from phaenomena, and (therefore) I frame no hypothesis.' Paraphrasing, Mr. Lorry, I have not been able to discover the properties of life from phenomena, and I frame no hypothesis. But I do observe that people act as if life is significant. Even you, as you talk no significance act significance."

"You can quote Newton?" asked Jem Lorry. He sounded troubled.

"Word for word, page for page, book for book."

"And you understand it?"

"Better than he ever could."

Behind her, Jem Lorry drew a deep breath. "You can see why a woman who can do such things, and who is besides showing all the signs of becoming a great beauty, is desirable."

"I can't see that," said Kathleen. "After all, I have no physical attraction other than what human women have. You could only achieve the same kind of intercourse with me as you already have with three women who are as beautiful as I ever will be. And they love you."

"They do?" He seemed surprised. "All of them?"

She had to smile at that. "If you mean, why are they giving you such a hard time, if they love you, the answer is, each knows about the others, and that puts them in grief and jealousy. But each keeps hoping that you will make her your exclusive sweetheart."

"Women don't understand a man like me," said Jem Lorry. "I have a strong desire to make love to all the beautiful and desirable women in the world before I die. I can only guess that that is one of the properties of life in the human male, and I don't have to have an hypothesis about it either. For me, what could be more desirable than a slan girl who is already possessed of a mind superior to that of any human being."

For just a moment, then, his guard was down. She caught a kaleidoscope of pictures from his mind. For that moment the barriers were down, and she saw... a little boy unloved, insatiable for an unobtainable parental love... Parents absorbed in their own intense feelings. Too late they tried to win the child. He had turned. He no longer wanted anything from them. But presently in his teens, the inverted desire inverted again, and found its love satisfaction from sex victories with one girl, then woman, after another. Indiscriminate at first, it became more selective. Soon, he made love only to women who could help his rise to power, and in a way that was still the situation. One of his mistresses was the wife of the general commanding the armed forces of the planet. Another was the wife of one of the other cabinet ministers. He used both of these women as spies on their husbands. The third woman was a young widow, and he was trying to persuade her to marry an important government figure, but she was reluctant, indeed downright rebellious, because she wanted to marry him.

She had been so intent on reading his mind, that she turned to face him. She said now, earnestly, "I don't see what happiness you could expect from having a cold, antagonistic woman."

Jem Lorry smiled, and it made his face light up, in a way that was extremely attractive. He said, "Kathleen, you astonish me. I can't imagine a man having a greater sense of triumph in a conquest of a woman than possession of a slan woman. It's like a beggar having a queen."

Kathleen said, "I thought human beings hate slans."

'The rabble," he said contemptuously. "They don't dare not to; we see to that. But you're missing the point of this slan-human conflict. If slans were allowed freedom, human beings would become nothing. It's a no-solution situation, so we keep killing them off because – " he, shrugged – "there's nothing else to do."

It was time to end this futile conversation. Kathleen said firmly, 'The one thing any woman, slan or human, has to have is choice as to who makes love to her. Since I am the one woman to whom you do not intend to allow choice, you become a man who is totally barred from any consideration by me in terms of an intimate relationship. Meanwhile, Kier Gray is my protector. Even you don't dare go against him."

Jem Lorry pondered that. Finally: "Your protector, yes. But he has no morals in the matter of a woman's virtue. I don't think he'll object if you become my mistress, but he will insist on my finding a propaganda-proof reason. He's become quite antislan these last few years. I used to think he was proslan. But now he's almost fanatic on the subject of having nothing to do with them. He and John Petty are closer on the subject now than they ever were. Funny!"

He mused on that for a moment; then: "But don't worry, I'll find a formula. I – "

A roar from a radio loud-speaker cut off Lorry's voice: "General warning! An unidentified aircraft was seen a few minutes ago, crossing the Rocky Mountains, headed eastward. Pursuing machines were rapidly outdistanced, and the ship seems to be taking a straight-line course toward Centropolis. People are ordered to go home immediately, as the ship – believed now to be of slan origin – will be here in one hour, according to present indications. The streets are needed for military purposes. Go home!"

The speaker clicked off; and Jem Lorry turned to Kathleen, a smile on his handsome face. "Don't let that arouse any hopes of rescue. One ship cannot carry important armaments, unless it has a mass of factories behind it. The old-style atomic bomb, for instance, could not possibly be manufactured in a cave, and besides, to be quite frank, the slans did not use it in the slan-human war. The disasters of that century, and earlier, were caused by slans, but not in that way."

He was silent for a minute, then: "Everybody thought those first bombs had solved the secret of atomic energy – " He stopped. Then: "It looks to me as if this trip was designed to give the more simple-minded human beings a scare, preliminary to an attempt to open negotiations."