“Is this another compliment—of sorts?”
“No ‘sorts’ about that one. I just didn’t like what I was being offered—until there was you. Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that. I just didn’t feel comfortable being with men I could … that I …”
“That you could challenge and defeat?”
She thought he would have taken offense at that just on principle for the male species, but he was smiling. “Maybe I should explain something, so you don’t get the wrong idea again about Kystrani men. I’m not your average Sec 1 trained in weapons and warfare. I took my training a lot farther than that, studying not only modern combat but the techniques of our Ancients, too. Such things had long been forgotten, powerful weapons making the old ways obsolete.” She frowned at his expression. “You don’t look like you’re getting the point.”
“Perhaps because I am not.”
“Then look at it this way. How confident would you feel in my presence if I were sitting here with a phazor pointed at you? Would you feel comfortable trying to seduce me, knowing that at any moment I might stun you? And remember, you’re not coming to my bed with a similar weapon on hand … well, I mean they aren’t.You,on the other hand, do have a similar weapon. Now do you see my point?”
“Your weapon is weaponless fighting? This is what your Kystrani men have forgotten the use of?”
“Exactly. Oh, they still know how to punch it out, but that’s kiddie stuff next to what I can do. And a Kystrani male wouldn’t raise his hand against a female anyway. So do you understand now why I was still unbreached?”
“Why you chose to be so, yes. Why you had not been claimed despite this, no. Does a man see what he wants and it is armed, he will find a way to disarm it.”
“Did you have to bring arrogance into this?” she said in disgust.“Youcan take that attitude, but a Kystrani male wouldn’t. And your weapon, friend, is your incredible size, and muscles like steel rods.” And she added a dose of her own arrogance. “Without that I’d have taken you, just as I did Kowan, a brother warrior of yours.”
He snorted. “This Kowan could not have been a warrior of Kan-is-Tra.”
“He isn’t,” she said, deciding not to elaborate if that pacified him, and it did. “Now can we go to sleep?”
“First do you explain your meaning of ‘fixing it.’ Did this imply you could have lessened the pain of a first joining?”
“Yes.”
“Such is not possible,” he snorted.
“Such is not only possible, it’s become standard procedure on Kystran. All it takes is about five seconds inside a meditech unit, and that little membrane you ripped to shreds could have been removed without my feeling a thing.”
“But you called it breaching, which signifies an opening.”
“’Breaching’ is an old word, used before women got smart and started visiting a meditech first when they were ready to start sex-sharing. The word now simple means ‘first experience.’”
“Then why did you not see to this painless removal when you came of age?”
“Because it would have gone on record as being done and I would have been expected to accept my first man shortly thereafter, and that, too, would have been duly recorded into my files. At least I don’t have to worry about the Age of Consent law anymore, though how I’m going to prove an old-fashioned breaching without a computer as witness, I don’t know. I suppose I’ll just have to do it again for Martha’s benefit when she finds me. That farden machine would never take me at my word about it.”
“Woman—”
“I know, I know, that went right over your head, but you don’t really want to hear about one of our more ridiculous laws, do you?”
“If such law pertains to you.”
“But it doesn’t anymore.”
“It is my right to protect my woman, and this cannot be done properly if she is subject to laws I am unaware of. Thus you will let me judge—”
“So the tyrant has joined us, has he? That’s a bad habit you have of letting him out—all right!” she gasped when his hand reached for her breast, and then she glared at him furiously, remembering he had promised they wouldn’t share any more sex tonight, and so being, his intent had been to punish her for trying to avoid the topic. “You fight dirty, don’t you? Don’t think I won’t remember—allright!”She dodged his hand as it came toward her again.
“Do you now explain.”
“It’s a stupid law, made by stupid men a long time ago, when it was first decided that sex-sharing was a farden cure-all for all kinds of minor ailments, and there was nothing for it but all women should benefit by it, whether they cared to or not. But it only applies to unbreached females, which I no longer am.”
“Was this so difficult to tell me?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, since it’s a subject that has disturbed me for a long time. But that’s not the point, Challen. I told you it didn’t pertain to me anymore. Why didn’t you just take me at my word and drop it?”
