She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do--and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage--what
advantage?--for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children--and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over--no,
_through_--everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry--onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
* * * * *
There were no immediate results from the puppet performance and so
it was repeated at intervals. After the third time, Firmon reported,
coming in as Halden pored over the meager biological data he'd gathered
on the unknown ancestor. Wild guesses mostly, not one real fact in all
the statistics. After two hundred thousand years, there wasn't much
left to work with.