We'll have a little food.We'll have a little food." "Do I have to wear anything?" I asked. She laughed. "No, dear, you don't have to wear anything, and you don't have to go naked." I gulped. Curiosity, both personal and scientific, overwhelmed me. "Okay, I'll be there." She touched my cheek gently. "I knew you would." They say sentience and instincts don't mix... that sentient peoples have no use for instinct, that instinct will in fact be contradictatory to the needs of a technological people. Now there are cases where this is true. The aerodynamics of powered flight, for instance. If a plane that depends upon air over a wing for lift stalls, the instinct is to pull up, to pull the plane out of the oncoming nosedive. People who do this die. The correct response is to push into the stall, getting more air over the wing by the fall, and then pull. Now, it can be argued that for many Pendorians, instinct is either completely lacking, because they're genetically engineered persons, and it can also be argued that for many Pendorians instinct should be much stronger since they're engineered in many cases from more animal origins. But that doesn't explain me. I'm just a base Terran human. And every instinct in my body was telling me I should be getting the Hell out of here. |