Butler, Octavia - Survivor

“There are* no customs here that apply to you,” he said. “You have no rights, no freedoms that I do not allow. Without the blue, you are like an animal among us.”

I glared at him. “How could you want a woman who is like an animal?”

And his blue grew suddenly lighter with a great deal of white. “To see for myself that she is truly a woman.”

My fear was drowned in anger and humiliation. It was an experiment then. The creature wanted to see for itself what it was like to make love with an ugly distorted woman. I was here to satisfy its curiosity. “I wish I had the words to tell you how deformed and ugly you are to me, Tehkohn Hao. No animal could be as terrible.” He would hit me. I didn’t care.

He did not hit me. He stood up and hauled me to my feet. “We have traded insults. Now we will go and prove to each other how little our differences matter.”

He led me into the other room where there was another fireplace-more luxury—more wooden chests and a wide wooden platform strewn with furs. It took me a moment to realize that the platform was actually the first bed that I had seen in the Tehkohn dwelling. I stood staring at it mindlessly until Diut opened my robe. Then I looked at him.

In that instant, he must have sensed just how much I suddenly hated him. He drew back warily.

“Be careful, Alanna.”

There had been a wild human on Earth—a man fast enough to run me down to get what he wanted. He got it. Then I smashed his head with a rock. As I faced Diut now, I hardly saw his ugliness. It was as though he was wearing the face of that wild human. It was as though he had brought me the pain that man brought me. He put his hands on me again and I lunged for his eyes.

He jerked his head back and in the moment that he was off balance, I came to my senses. I turned and ran for the corridor door. But he was fast—blindingly fast. I was fast myself and he caught me before I’d gone five steps.

He grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled me backward against him. I kicked back hard into his knee.

He flared yellow with pain and relaxed his hold on me for an instant. I broke free and ran again.

He was not so quick this time as he came limping after me, but I could not find the outside door. I could have found it if I had not been so frantic. I didn’t have much trouble with hidden doors any more because, normally, I memorized their location in relation to other objects. This one I had been too frightened to memorize.

Diut came up behind me, caught me by the neck, and threw me to the floor. “Will you make me kill you, Alanna?”

I had no doubt at all that he would do it. I lay there looking up at him.

“Get up.”

I rose slowly, faced him. He knocked me down again with a single openhanded blow. My head rang with the strength of it. And again:

“Get up.”

I stayed where I was, waiting for my head to clear. I wondered why he didn’t just grab me and rape me the way the wild human had. It would be simple enough. It would even be simple for me. I would not dare to kill him. I knew that now. Not unless I was also ready to kill myself—before his people caught me. My moment of unthinking rage had passed. Now why didn’t he just take what he wanted and get it over with.

He kicked me. “You will get up.”

Bruised and furious, I stood up, half expecting to be knocked down again. Instead, as though nothing had interrupted his earlier attempt, he opened my robe again, slipped it off me, and stripped off my other clothing.

He walked around me, inspecting me much as Gehnahteh and Choh had on my first day with them. I stood glaring at him. At least I could glare at him now, without turning away. He was becoming for me nothing more than an extremely ugly man. His size and strength were more impressive now than his appearance.

“Well, get on with it,” I said. “You are an animal and you want to mate. Mate then.”

His coloring whitened. “People kept coming to me telling me that you were a fighter.”

“I am a thing. A thing that you have become curious about. Satisfy your curiosity.”

He took me by the shoulder and led me back into the bedroom to the bed. I lay down among the furs waiting for him, not looking at him.

Nothing happened.

After a while, I looked at him, saw that he had sat down on the edge of the bed and was watching me. He spoke quietly.

“It is a custom among the Garkohn to capture Tehkohn fighters and force them to eat meklah.”

I frowned, wondering what that had to do with anything.

“Sometimes my fighters starve themselves, refusing to trust any food offered them. Sometimes the Garkohn let them starve themselves to death. Other times though, it’s more amusing to the Garkohn to wait until my fighters are weak, and then force meklah down their throats.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because your behavior with me is much like the behavior of my captured fighters. When they are forced to give in, they continue to speak arrogantly, challengingly. When they can no longer fight with their bodies, they continue to fight with words.”

“What else can they do?”

“Nonfighters submit at once. Abjectly.”

I sat up looking at him. “Garkohn humiliate Tehkohn because the two are enemies. Why do you humiliate me?”

“There need be no humiliation in this for you, Alanna. I am the leader of my people.” He paused for a moment, then flashed white blindingly. “And you have distinguished yourself. You are the only woman ever to try to refuse me.”

And he flashed white on that. It amused him.

“What do you want of me?” I asked. “Only the night?”

“Many nights. And many days. I’ll continue your teaching—help you live as a fighter among us. As I have said, you will be Tehkohn when you leave me. Tehkohn, and your own person, not dependent on others to guide or guard you.”

I frowned, re-evaluating him in spite of myself. “I will be free? It will be as though I had some blue in my coloring?”

“Yes.”

Watching him, I suddenly realized that if he closed his eyes, they would probably vanish entirely. As it was, he seemed to look through slanted holes in thick fur. “You should have told me that before,” I said. “That I would be free, I mean.”

He hesitated. “It was what I had planned for you but I was not certain that it was what you wanted, that it would calm you.”

I said nothing. I was calmer now because I was able to control my reaction to his appearance, but there was no need to tell him that.

“And anyway,” he said, whitening, “I have never bargained for a mate before. I had to find my way.” He pulled me back on the bed, clearly ready now to see how good a bargain he had made.

He covered me with the thick, very soft blanket of his fur and hurt me as he forced his way into my body, an intruder too large and much unwelcome. Alien as we were to each other, he must have been able to read my pain in my expression.

“I always give pain before I give pleasure,” he said. “Your body will accustom itself to me.”

And if it didn’t, that was my problem. I put my teeth together and closed my eyes and waited for it to be over. He startled me once, bit me just at the throat. Not hard, not painfully, but he let me feel his teeth more than I would have preferred. I was surprised enough to grab a handful of his head fur to pull his head away. But in doing that, I looked at him and saw that his body had gone luminescent white. He continued to bite me, but more gently.

I let go of his fur, smoothed it unnecessarily. Left alone, it would smooth itself but I found it pleasant to touch. His one good feature.

“You like my fur,” he said later as we lay together, side by side.

“To touch,” I said. “It’s good to touch.”