With everyone watching us and Dr. Schein setting the pace, we completed the job in a more professional way. I felt guilty and embarrassed about that mad rush, and when Dr. Horkkk hopped into the pit for a closer look at the globe, I couldn’t bear to face him. It took another half an hour to free the globe. Pilazinool, Dr. Schein, and Dr. Horkkk conferred about it in the pit; they all agreed it was some kind of High Ones machine and that it was by far the largest High Ones artifact ever found, but they had no more idea than I did of what it was. No one offered congratulations to me for having made the best discovery in this field since the finding of the first site. I didn’t feel awfully proud of myself, considering the chimpo way I had carried on during the excavating work.
When the conference broke up, Mirrik reverently scooped the globe up on his tusks — it weighs about as much as a man, he says — and carried it to the lab. That was three hours ago. Dr. Schein, Dr. Horkkk, and Pilazinool have been in there all this time. With them is 408b; Saul Shahmoon has been going in and out. Each time he comes out he looks more excited than the time before, but he isn’t saying a thing except that nothing definite has been learned yet.
Mirrik, Kelly, Steen Steen, and Leroy Chang have gone back to the dig. Leroy’s face is a little bruised and he looks pretty sour about things. Jan and I were assigned to cleanup detail for the afternoon, she in her shack and I in mine.
That’s a great reward for making a big find, isn’t it?
Two hours later. The conference in the lab is still going on. I’d love to know what’s up, but if they wanted apprentices in there, they’d invite us. Saul hasn’t come out for a long time. The diggers are still at work, though they haven’t found anything unusual. Kelly and Mirrik would dig all night, if we’d let them.
When I finished my cleanup I went across to talk to Jan.
She was less interested in discussing the strange ancient globe than she was in talking about Leroy Chang’s uncouth behavior. I’d say that that’s just like a girl, but I’d probably offend you, and besides I’m not sure I’m right.
“You saw him pawing me,” Jan accused. “Why didn’t you do something?”
“I didn’t realize anything serious was going on.”
“Serious? How much more serious could it have been? He practically had my clothes ripped off!”
“Good old Leroy. He sure knows how to coax a girl along.”
“Very funny. Suppose he had raped me?”
“He didn’t get very close to succeeding, did he?”
“No thanks to you. Down there in the pit digging like a madman, and me screaming for help.”
I said, “You know, they say that rape isn’t really possible unless the victim cooperates. I mean, all she has to do is defend herself, and if she’s a girl of normal strength and her attacker isn’t some kind of superman, she’ll be able to fight him off. So when a rape happens, it’s either because the girl is paralyzed with fear, or else because she secretly wants to be raped. Besides, I don’t remember hearing you scream.”
“I don’t find your two-credit psychology very convincing,” Jan said. “I don’t know where you got that half-baked theory, but I can tell you it just isn’t so. Like most men you don’t have the first idea of what a woman’s viewpoint is in such things.”
“I suppose you’ve been raped a couple of times, so you know all about it.”
“Can we change the subject? I can think of several hundred thousand subjects I’d rather discuss. And, no, I haven’t been raped, and I mean to keep it that way, thank you.”
“How did you discourage Leroy?”
“I hit him in the face. I didn’t slap. I hit. Then I kicked.”
“And he gave in. Which proves my theory that—”
“We were changing the subject.”
“You were the first one who started talking about rape,” I said.
“I don’t want to hear that word again!”
“Right.”
“And I still think it was foul of you to go on digging when Leroy began to — to attack me.”
“I apologize. I got wrapped up in what I was doing.”
“What was that thing, anyway?”
“I wish I knew,” I said. “Shall we go over to the lab and see if they have any answers yet?”
“We’d better not. They don’t want us there.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I didn’t mean to do so much cranking just now, Tom,” she said. “It’s just that Leroy scared me. And when nobody helped out—”
“Are you going to complain to Dr. Schein about him?”
She shook her head. “Leroy won’t bother me again. There’s no sense making a scandal out of it.”
I admire Jan’s attitude. I also may as well admit here that I admire Jan, too. So far in these letters I’ve been a little sketchy about that. Part of it is because I’ve only been slowly discovering how interesting a girl Jan really is, as well as being attractive in a physical way and all that. The other part is — well, forgive me, Lorie — I’ve always been uneasy about discussing my love life with you. Not because it embarrasses me to share such things with you, but because I’m afraid of hurting you.
There. It’s out. Though maybe I’ll blot this from the cube before I give it to you.
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to touch on certain aspects of life that are closed to you on account of your condition. Like love and marriage and such. It’s bad enough that I can lead an active physical life, going places and doing things, and you can’t. But the whole social and emotional thing — dating, falling in love, taking out a temporary or a permanent marriage — you’re cut off from that, and it makes me queasy to remind you of it by talking about my own adventures with girls, which are adequate and numerous enough, even if Mom thinks that at my age I ought to be more serious with somebody.
Isn’t that great? How tactfully I explain to you why it is that I don’t want to tell you certain things — even going out of my way to say that I don’t like reminding you of matters which I proceed to remind you of. Swell. I will certainly blot this section of the cube as soon as I can figure out some more roundabout way of making it clear why I’m vague about such stuff.
Do you know why I’m more interested in Jan than I was at the beginning of this expedition?
No, wise one, it isn’t because I’m getting hard up after all these weeks. It’s because she told me last week that she’s part non-human. Her grandmother was a Brolagonian.
Somehow that makes her more exotic. And more desirable than if she were an ordinary Swede. I’ve always been fascinated by the slightly unusual.
Brolagonians are humanoid aliens, you know, with shiny gray skins and more toes and teeth than we have. They are one of about six or seven alien races in the galaxy that are able to mate successfully with Homo sapiens, owing to extremely close parallel evolution. It takes a lot of DNA manipulation and other genetic surgery to bring about a fertile mating, but it can be done, and it is done, despite the agitation of the League for Racial Purity and other reactionary groups.
Jan comes from a long line of diplomats. Her grandfather was our ambassador to Brolagon about sixty years ago and fell in love with a local girl. They married and had four children, and one of them was Jan’s father. Who married a fellow Swede, but the Brolagonian genes are in the family for keeps.
Jan showed me some of the signs of her mixed blood. I blush to say I hadn’t noticed any of them before.
“I have dark eyes,” she said. “Instead of blue ones to go with the blonde hair. That isn’t all that strange, really. But this is.” She opened her sandals. She has six toes on each foot. Lovely toes, too. But six. “I also have forty teeth,” she went on. “You can count them, if you don’t believe me.”