Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [142]
"Very funny," she said coldly, making Miles wonder for a wild moment if she'd been equipped with the telepathy complex—no, she pre-dated that—"but I'm not even human. Or hadn't you heard?"
Miles shrugged carefully. "Human is as human does." He forced himself to reach out and touch her damp cheek. "Animals don't weep, Nine."
She jerked, as from an electric shock. "Animals don't lie. Humans do. All the time."
"Not all the time." He hoped the light was too dim for her to see the flush in his face. She was watching his face intently.
"Prove it." She tilted her head as she sat cross-legged. Her pale gold eyes were suddenly burning, speculative.
"Uh . . . sure. How?"
"Take off your clothes."
" . . . what?"
"Take off your clothes, and lie down with me as humans do. Men and women." Her hand reached out to touch his throat.
The pressing claws made little wells in his flesh. "Blrp?" choked Miles. His eyes felt wide as saucers. A little more pressure, and those wells would spring forth red fountains. I am about to die. . . .
She stared into his face with a strange, frightening, bottomless hunger. Then abruptly, she released him. He sprang up and cracked his head on the low ceiling, and dropped back down, the stars in his eyes unrelated to love at first sight.
Her lips wrinkled back on a fanged groan of despair. "Ugly," she wailed. Her clawed nails raked across her cheeks leaving red furrows. "Too ugly . . . animal . . . you don't think I'm human—" She seemed to swell with some destructive resolve.
"No, no, no!" gibbered Miles, lurching to his knees and grabbing her hands and pulling them down. "It's not that. It's just, uh—how old are you, anyway?"
"Sixteen."
Sixteen. God. He remembered sixteen. Sex-obsessed and dying inside every minute. A horrible age to be trapped in a twisted, fragile, abnormal body. God only knew how he had survived his own self-hatred then. No—he remembered how. He'd been saved by one who loved him. "Aren't you a little young for this?" he tried hopefully.
"How old were you?"
"Fifteen," he admitted, before thinking to lie. "But . . . it was traumatic. Didn't work out at all in the long run."
Her claws turned toward her face again.
"Don't do that!" he cried, hanging on. It reminded him entirely too much of the episode of Sergeant Bothari and the knife. The Sergeant had taken Miles's knife away from him by superior force. Not an option open to Miles here. "Will you calm down?" he yelled at her.
She hesitated.
"It's just that, uh, an officer and gentleman doesn't just fling himself onto his lady on the bare ground. One . . . one sits down. Gets comfortable. Has a little conversation, drinks a little wine, plays a little music . . . slows down. You're hardly warm yet. Here, sit over here where it's warmest." He positioned her nearer the broken duct, got up on his knees behind her, tried rubbing her neck and shoulders. Her muscles were tense—they felt like rocks under his thumbs. Any attempt on his part to strangle her would clearly be futile.
I can't believe this. Trapped in Ryoval's basement with a sex-starved teenage werewolf. There was nothing about this in any of my Imperial Academy training manuals. . . . He remembered his mission, which was to get her left calf muscle back to the Ariel alive. Dr. Canaba, if I survive, you and I are going to have a little talk about this. . . .
Her voice was muffled with grief and the odd shape of her mouth. "You think I'm too tall."
"Not at all." He was getting hold of himself a bit; he could lie faster. "I adore tall women, ask anyone who knows me. Beside, I made the happy discovery some time back that height difference only matters when we're standing up. When we're lying down it's, ah, less of a problem. . . ." A rapid mental review of everything he'd ever learned by trial and error, mostly error, about women was streaming uninvited through his mind. It was harrowing. What did women want?
He shifted around and took her hand, earnestly. She stared back equally earnestly, waiting for . . . instruction. At this point the