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he hadn't seen her check her instruments, and suspected she had done it on
what the Humans called "instinct."
"They all thought you what," Kazianna Hesh encouraged him, walking
around, glancing at his sketches, opening the other seams in her armor.
"Thought you too stoic, thought you too formidable, great Breetai? Treated you
so that you felt easier when you were either working or alone?"
She had always been deferential toward him, but now she sounded somehow
teasing. She had made her circuit of the tiny living room and stopped now to
flick the control that broke the seal on his own helmet. "They didn't see what
was there inside?"
She unsealed his helmet and lifted it off, having to rise on her tiptoes
to do it even though she was tall. The reinforced floor groaned beneath them.
Breetai was too astonished to speak, and the wall was behind his shoulders so
he couldn't retreat.
"Couldn't see the real Breetai?" she went on. "Well, my lord, I can."
She pulled his head down to her, like some Human, and he found himself being
thoroughly kissed. How had she learned about things like this, forbidden to
the Zentraedi?
Many of his race had spent time Micronized to Human size. Maybe that had
affected her somehow, or she had seen or heard something.
But he had little time to wonder about that. A kiss; the sight of such
an act had almost debilitated him once, when Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes
performed it on a Zentraedi meeting table. He was awkward at first,
self-conscious, but Kazianna didn't appear to mind and in fact didn't seem to
know a great deal more about it than he.
When the kiss ended, he would have caught her up in his arms for more,
but she held him off and began alternately popping the seals on his suit and
her own.
It suddenly came to him what she had in mind. "You...this is
proscribed."
"By whom? By Robotech Masters who have fled beyond the stars? By laws
that were never really ours?"
Breetai thought about that, and considered his hunger for her, too. The
bed was refurbished; he had slept there once or twice on his off-duty hours,
waiting for the past to filter into his mind once again.
Breetai put his arms around Kazianna and kissed her carefully, very
happy about it but aware that he had a great deal to learn. Then he took her
gauntleted hand and led her to his sleeping chamber. Since he had built the
house back in the early days of the Tiresian Overlords who were to become the
Robotech Masters, no one else had ever been in that room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In spite of her resistance, he presses her. His great evil is attracted to her
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
illuminating goodness, like some primal circling of forces.
Does he sense that he only continues to live on my sufferance? I believe so;
something in him is too animalistic to miss the emanations. But he has only a
little time to mend his ways.
Otherwise, I shall kill Edwards in the next day or so.
REF #666-60-937
"A little to the right. No, no! My right!"
The enlisted men hanging the REF SERVICE CLUB sign were certain that it
was centered and even, but not surprised that Minmei wasn't satisfied. The
club had been her obsession ever since the council had given her the go-ahead.
Her headache and her firstborn, all wrapped up in one.
Minmei tried to be patient and remind herself that the techs had
volunteered their own time to help. But the sign was just about the last thing
to take care of; the club would open that night. And she had been through a
lot to see her dream come true. But soon-in hours-she would be standing under
the spotlights again, singing out to the dim sea of faces, making contact with
fellow Human beings in the only way that had ever been possible for her,
really...
Speaking of ongoing problems-General Edwards's military limo pulled up
right behind her, almost tickling her bottom with one of the flags mounted on
its front fenders.
Edwards, in a rear seat bigger than some living quarters, lowered his
window with the touch of a button. "How's our nightingale's cage coming
along?"
She wished he would stop talking like that, but Minmei knew she was
walking a fine line again. Offending him would no doubt make him withdraw his
support from the project, and that might very well be the end of things. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]