“Don’t be angry, Terry,” Garth put in, the amusement in his voice softened but still there. “Len wasn’t serious about that comment, he was just trying to get a rise out of you. We’re not used to seeing you this quiet.”
“She isn’t angry,” Len said, his voice considerably more sober than it had been. “She feels—no, she won’t let me resolve the mixture. Terry, are you sure you’re all right? I don’t like seeing you like this.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” I answered, watching my hands finally reach the bottom with Tammad’s sleeping furs. I hesitated the barest fraction of an instant before touching them, but realized immediately that being idiotic wouldn’t get the job done. I started them fast, still watching my hands, and added to Len, “I’m sorry if you two are disappointed in me again.”
I could sense the disapproval in Garth’s mind, but Len jumped in before the Kabra could say anything.
“Terry, don’t be stupid!” my brother empath said harshly, pulling me up to face him. “Expecting people to be disappointed in you is a way of giving up! I know the punishment you got wasn’t easy for you, but it wasn’t bad enough to make you give up!”
His blue eyes were as hard as his mind was angry, but % didn’t know what he had to be angry about. I met the hardness in his eyes very briefly, then looked down.
“Expecting disappointment isn’t giving up when you cats feel that disappointment.” I shrugged. “You can’t lie to me about how you feel, Len, and neither can anyone else here. Are you trying to deny that that’s what you felt?”
“Yesterday, no,” he said with a headshake, loosening his grip on my arms but not letting go. “Today’s a different story. And while we’re discussing yesterday’s disappointments, I want to mention the one you thought you felt in Tammad, when he said he no longer got pleasure from your presence. I know you couldn’t have read him accurately through that flash of hurt you felt, so let me tell you what I got. He was trying to bring you back down to earth, Terry, to make you sorry for what you did. He wasn’t telling the truth about how he felt.”
Garth was silent but expectant behind me, Len was silent but attentive in front of me, and all around us people bustled about preparing the day’s first meal and getting ready to break camp. A small flight of birds passed across the sky to my left, happy and free in their own special way, visualizing nesting places just left and fat bugs just eaten and endless sky to fly in before darkness fell again. The first rays of the sun were growing longer and more golden, less and less of the red of anger showing in them. I stared at Len’s chest, wondering why it looked so much broader without a shirt covering it, and nodded my head.
“It was good of you to tell me that, Len,” I said. “Please accept my thanks.”
“Damn it, you don’t believe me,” he growled, tightening his grip again to shake me. “Can’t you see I’m not lying to you Terry? Can’t you see I’m telling the truth?”
“Hold it a minute, Len,” Garth interrupted, his voice quiet and concerned. “Maybe she—felt—what went on last night in the pavilion and is making the same mistake we made. Tell her what we found out—about all of last night.”
“I shouldn’t have to,” Len sighed, his fingers relaxing again. “She isn’t as new to this world as we are. Look, Terry, once Loddar took you to his tent last night, the first thing
Tammad did was send for Gay King and tell her she was spending the night with him. Garth and I both immediately assumed that he’d gotten rid of you to leave a clear road for Gay, and I suppose he saw it in our faces. He asked us what was bothering us and finally talked us into voicing our nasty suspicions.”
“Terry, he laughed,” Garth said. “He laughed as if he were really enjoying himself, but when he saw we weren’t sharing the fun he tried to explain. And the first thing he said was that we were still looking at things like off-worlders.”
“The men of Rimilia do as they please without having to make excuses,” Len said, taking his turn. “Gay was given to Tammad as a gift, and according to the way he looks at things, he has the right to use her any time he pleases. The only reason he gave you to Loddar was that you owed Loddar some exercise and he wanted to see you pay up. If you hadn’t owed Loddar anything, he might have given you to one of us or even kept you there while he played Gayms, but the choice would have been his.”
“And his choice doesn’t affect the way he feels about you,” Garth said, reaching out to touch my face. “He asked two of his men to let us use their women for a few reasons, but one of them was to show us that using a woman doesn’t commit you to anything beyond the general sense of responsibility all men feel toward women. On Alderan a man is supposed to at least pretend he feels true love for any woman he beds; here it isn’t necessary.”
They stopped their alternating duet and stared down at me, but I couldn’t understand what they were so obviously waiting for. Len had been right in thinking I knew what the prevailing attitude on Rimilia was, but I didn’t see what difference it made.
“Well?” Len demanded, frowning. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“What would you like me to say?” I asked, standing still between his hands.
“Anything!” he burst out, frustration burning in his mind. “Argument or agreement, I don’t care which, as long as you show me you’re still alive inside! You haven’t reacted to anything we said one way or the other; I don’t like the way your mind doesn’t seem to care.”
“Just what is it I’m supposed to care about?” I asked, beginning to feel annoyed. “What difference will my caring make when it comes to what happens to me? Will caring get me back to Central or even to the embassy? Will caring change the way these barbarians think? Nothing makes them change, they make everyone else change. If you don’t believe it, see if you can find a mirror. I doubt if you’ll recognize what you see.”
They were both staring at me again, this time with whirling emotions fighting within, the usual prelude to the beginnings of an argument. Before any words could come pouring forth, though, the conversation was broken up by higher authority.
“Terril, come here,” Tammad called, and we all turned our heads to see him standing in front of his pavilion with Gay King. Gay was wrapped around his left arm, her body pressed tightly to it, her mind a nauseating mixture of extreme satisfaction and smug accomplishment. She was looking at me with a very superior smile, no more than a faint ghost-shadow left of the fear she had felt. Len and Garth stepped back away from me, freeing me to answer the summons, so I walked over to the cozy pair. Refusing to do so would have been a waste of time.
“Terril, you have an unfinished matter to attend to with the Gaynor King,” I was told when I stopped in front of the barbarian. “Do you now see to this matter—in the same manner you have heretofore used.”
He stared down at me with his usual calm expression, his mind under the same easy, calm control. I could feel Gay’s superior smile spread into a smirk, but I didn’t bother looking at her. Tammad had told me I had to apologize to her, from my knees, the same way I’d done with the men, and she knew it. The only thing she didn’t know was what my answer would be.
“I won’t do it,” I told the barbarian, surprising myself almost as much as I surprised him. “I’m sorry if you don’t like that answer, but I simply won’t do it.”
“You have not been given the choice of refusing,” he answered, keeping the surprise from showing on his face the way Gay’s fury showed on hers. “You will do as you have been bidden to do, and that at once. I have little patience left for you, wenda.”