(Names of the Four First Mares, what have you gotten yourself into now, Thariinye?)
(Is this what you consider “having an inconspicuous look round”?)
(I told you he was too immature to be trusted with this responsibility.)
Wincing, Thariinye closed his mind to further contact. All right, his mental powers were as acute as ever … but what he heard from the three enraged ladies on board the ship was not in the least reassuring! He would just as soon take his chances with the barbarians. After all, they were a puny lot; he could crush this man’s skull with one kick from his powerful hooves, if he chose to.
(Thariinye! You’ll do no such thing!) ,
(I am shamed that any blood kin of mine should even contemplate such a khievii action.)
(Much too immature. I told you so.)
“Oh, do stop nattering at me!” Thariinye snapped aloud, but in Linyaari.
“Don’t know what kind of foreign gabble that is, mister,” the stolid security guard said, “but iggerance of the law ain’t no excuse. If’nyou don’t speak Basic, you’ll get a interpreter.”
“You can’t take the Lady away!” one of the pestiferous brats around them cried out.
“Kid, this guy ain’t no lady,” the guard said. “Now git on back toyer mining class. I’m takin’ him straight to Mr. Li.”
The tallest girl nodded slowly. “I see … this is not Acorna.” She glared down the protests of the other children. “I know the Lady, and she is like this one, but… different. Mr. Li will know what to do.”
The guard hurried Thariinye away before the children could start any more fuss.
“What… law … of yours … do I break … by existing … in this form?” Thariinye had to concentrate to get the words out;
it was a harsh, tongue-mangling language, this “Basik.”
The guard looked Thariinye straight in the chest … about where his eyes would have been if he’d been the same height as this puny biped. So that much of the projection was still working! The man certainly behaved as if he saw nothing unusual in Thariinye s appearance … so what was it that had alerted him?
“I ain’t interested in your beoootiful form and figure, mister, and neither are them kids back there. But since you DO speak Basic, you oughta know better than to go flashin’ in a public place. Specially kids,” he added. “Right down on molesting kids, Mr. Li is, and who’d blame him, seein’ what them kids already been through? If’n it was up to me, I’d have you deported without a space suit.”
The guard s anger lifted his thought-stream momentarily out of the dull “grubble, grubble, grubble” of normal thoughts and gave Thariinye a devastatingly clear image of a tall, handsome, silver-haired biped making sexual overtures to a group of shrieking children, followed by associated images so disgusting he hastily closed his mind against them. He was so shocked that he did not even try to persuade the guard to forget his memories and let him go.
(You idiot, Thariinye! They must have a nudity taboo.) (Nobody TOLD me!) (I knew we should have taken longer to study the culture.)
“Lucky for you Mr. Giloglie ordered you brought directly to Delszaki Li’s private rooms,” the guard said, steering them through a side corridor that opened onto an antechamber lined in crimson silk, -with yellow patterns on the hangings. “There’s some as would have you lynched for even thinkin’ about what you just done.”
He nodded at ayoung man sitting to one side behind a carved wooden console, and an oval opening in front of Thariinye widened like the pupil of a Linyaari eye to admit them.
“Very good, Barnes. You may return to your regular duties now,” said a slender, darktopped biped standing in a tense attitude of expectation just inside the next room, a spacious chamber furnished with soft couches and small tables.
Thariinye ducked to get through the oval opening and redoubled the force of his projections.
(You aren’t seeing anything unusual. I’m really very boring. You want me to go away.) The darktopped biped swayed and put one hand to its forehead. The gesture tightened the fabric across its chest so that Thariinye was able to see its enlarged mammaries, large enough to indicate it was of the same gender as Khariinya but nothing to compare with hers. Perhaps it was an immature member of the species … a nymphet?