Earthblood by Keith Laumer, Rosel George Brown Page B

of suspense that was almost pleasurable. Something was working at the latch to his door, and he looked about for a weapon, but there was nothing. Nothing but four stark walls and the used hay. Not even clothes: they had taken his tunic away; and he thought, I'll have to fight with my hands and teeth, and he crouched, ready.
    But the door didn't open; instead, a metal panel swung back and suddenly Roan was looking through bars into ocher eyes in an oval face with skin as pale and smooth as a Tay-tay leaf, and a cloud of soft hair the color of early sunshine.
    She laughed, a sound like soft night rain, and Roan stared at the tender red mouth, the white teeth, the tip of a pink tongue.
    "You're . . . " Roan said, "you're a human woman . . . " She laughed again, and he saw a delicate purple vein that throbbed faintly in her white throat. "No," she said in a voice that seemed to Roan like the murmur of evening wind in the crystalline leaves of the Never-never tree.
    "I'm a mule."
    Roan came close to the barred window. He looked at her: the slender neck, the shapes of yielding roundness under the silver clothes, the tiny waist, the long, slim lines of her thighs.
    "I've seen pictures," Roan said. His voice seemed to catch in his throat.
    "But I never, ever saw . . . "
    "You still haven't. But Pa said I could pass for Pure Strain in a bad light." She put her hands on the bars, and they were small and smooth, and Roan put out a hand and touched her.
    "A mule's a cross between two human strains that never should have got mixed up together in the first place," she said carelessly. "Mules are sterile." She looked at him.
    "You've cut your head. And you've been crying."
    "Will you—" Roan started, and swallowed "—will you take your tunic off?" The girl looked at him, still smiling, and then the pale cheeks quite suddenly were pink. She laughed, but it was a different laugh.
    "What did you say?"
    "Please—take off your tunic."
    For a long moment the ocher eyes looked into Roan's blue ones. Then she stepped back from the door, her soft hand slipping from under Roan's for a moment. She did things to the silver garment and it fell away, and she stood for a moment poised and straight, and then she turned slowly, all the way around.
    Roan's breath came hard through the turmoil in his chest.
    "I never dreamed anything could be so beautiful," he said. The girl drew a quick breath, then bent, snatched up her garment, and was gone. Roan pressed his face to the bars, caught a glimpse of her as she darted past a lumbering, bald humanoid who turned and stared after her, then came clumping up to the cell door. He looked angrily at Roan.
    "What the hell's wrong with Stel?" he barked. He looked down, clattering keys. "All right, Terry, the vacation's over. I'm Nugg. You work for me. I can use some help, the devil knows . . . "
    The door clanked open. Roan stepped out, measured the alien's seven foot height. The creature raised a fist like a stone club.
    "Don't get ideas, runt. Just do your work and you'll get along. You'll need some shoes, I suppose. And a tunic. Around this place clothes are the only way to tell the Freaks from the animals."
    "Who was she?" Roan said. "Where did she go?" Nugg glared at him. "Keep your mind off Stel; Stellaraire, to you. She dances. She's got no time for Freaks and scrapers. I know about you; you're a mean one. You watch your step, Terry, and tend to your scraping—and your greenface. Now come on."
    Roan followed the hulking humanoid along the echoing corridor, noisy with the rumble of ventilators, the clamor of voices, the thump of feet, to a dingy room of shelves heaped with equipment. Nugg hauled a large duffel bag of used clothing from a locker, dumped it out onto the floor. Roan discarded a bra affair that might have fitted a midget Stellaraire, a zippered tube that seemed to be made of human skin, a hexagonal wired corset, and a gauze veil before he came up with a simple buttoned tunic only a few sizes too