It doesn't help.It doesn't help. There seems to be an issue here of standards. These people want to enforce a sexual standard, namely that of some kind of heterosexual, infraspecies behavior as a minimum." I sighed. "Anything I could do to help?" "A position paper?" he asked, smiling. "It's not the point. I don't want Vatare' Shardik to come down off his throne and preach to the masses. It would help, but I think we'd see some resentment there as well." "I'd be a bad example. I still have sex with human women." He nodded. "I know. Speaking of which, how's your new roommate?" "P'nyssa?" I laughed. "She's hardly human. She's fine, I guess. It's funny how after even two or three years we're still playing 'Getting to Know You' games." "Ken... Back on your world, Terra, where you came from... Do they have this kind of problem?" I looked Jahn over and sighed. "It's worse there." "Worse? How much worse?" "Entalie' of any kind are routinely hounded, assaulted... in some districts, having a single Entalie' encounter can engender a death sentence." Jahn whistled low. "You're not joking, are you?" "Not in the least." "Oh." He looked down at his desk. "At least here it's just a war of words. Nobody's gotten hurt yet, although I did get a report last month of a femSatryl being harassed." "Nothing serious?" "Not really." He rubbed his eyes again. "So, let's ignore the serious stuff for a moment and ask you what's the purpose of this visit?" "Well," I said, my nervousness returning, "I need a favor of you." "A favor?" he asked, smiling. "What kind of favor?" I thought for a second. "Jahn, tonight, well, in a few hours, Pendor as we know it is going to change." His expression held rock steady. "Something's going to happen, but I'm not going to say what. I've been keeping it a secret for some time now. Nobody's going to get hurt, but we're going to have a new field of science, and it should be interesting." "So why are you here?" he asked calmly. |