really that bad for you?” he asked, but she merely shook her head, indicating not a negative reply but that she no longer wanted to talk about it. Instead she propped herself higher on her elbow, her thigh sliding over him as she moved, and stared down at him in a languid but intent way that finally reminded him—with an odd thrill of embarrassment—that she could see much better in the dark than he could. She touched his face with her fingertips, gently tracing the ridge of his eyebrows, his cheekbones, the line of his massive jaw. “So strange,” she said dreamily, “so strange. Like an animal, almost. Bestial. Like one of the scurrying little rockbabies who live in the western hills.” Farber, who had seen a rockbaby, realized that she was comparing him to the closest analog of an ape that Weinunnach possessed, and—after the initial half-amused flash of pique—it startled him to hear that she thought of him as ape-like, because he had often thought how much like a cat she was; a cat, or an otter, perhaps: some sleek, graceful animal, self-possessed and beautiful. Bestial, yes. Like a beast. Like him. Feeling obscurely guilty, he reached up and touched her cheek, the silken, crackling cascade of her hair. She blazed up at his touch like tinder. They made love in a desperate hurry, Liraun forcing the pace, as though she feared the ceiling would fall in or the ground swallow them before they could finish.
Afterwards they rested in each other’s arms, the cat and the ape (neither was either, though both were aliens)—but Liraun slept fitfully, tossing and moaning as she worked her way through the turbulent country of her dreams, and Farber, who held her and stroked her throughout the night, slept not at all.
6
It took Farber a few more days to dig out the cause of Liraun’s ostracism, but at last, after much persistence and persuasion, the story came out in disjointed sections. Pieced together, it looked like this: Cian morality saw nothing wrong with an unmarried girl taking a lover, even an alien lover, as long as she did not conceive; there was no special premium on virginity—rather the opposite, in fact. Until she was married, however, she was expected to live by herself, or in her father’s house. There was a special symbolism to this—a girl was said to go “from under her father’s roof to her husband’s.” It was a matter of ownership, plain and simple, of transference of title, and there was no room in the equation for her accepting the protection of any other male. So Liraun’s sin was not that she was sleeping with Farber—a matter of utter indifference to most of the other Cian—but that she was living with him , “under the roof” of a man who was not her husband. Odd as this seemed to Farber, it was serious enough to get her ostracized.
All this gave Farber another sleepless night. If he had been born thirty years earlier, or ten years later, he probably wouldn’t have worried about Liraun’s welfare at all, but amorality had gone out of fashion, as it periodically did, and along with their Horatio Alger optimism and drive to succeed, his generation had rediscovered humanism—limited to their own class of people, of course, i.e.: “humans”—and a sort of studied naiveté. So he stayed up to figure out the Decent Thing To Do. On the one hand, he sincerely loved Liraun, didn’t want her hurt on his behalf—but he didn’t want to lose her, either. On the other hand, he was as terrified of marriage as most young men of his day, especially the artists and the intelligentsia. But no matter how he nagged it, it always came down to that: he should either marry her, or leave her; nothing else would help her situation.
Toward dawn, he decided—rather cold-bloodedly, but a man can often identify cold-bloodedness as practicality if he squints at it hard enough—that the best thing to do would be to marry Liraun, but only under the Cian rites. That would make her a respectable woman
Afterwards they rested in each other’s arms, the cat and the ape (neither was either, though both were aliens)—but Liraun slept fitfully, tossing and moaning as she worked her way through the turbulent country of her dreams, and Farber, who held her and stroked her throughout the night, slept not at all.
6
It took Farber a few more days to dig out the cause of Liraun’s ostracism, but at last, after much persistence and persuasion, the story came out in disjointed sections. Pieced together, it looked like this: Cian morality saw nothing wrong with an unmarried girl taking a lover, even an alien lover, as long as she did not conceive; there was no special premium on virginity—rather the opposite, in fact. Until she was married, however, she was expected to live by herself, or in her father’s house. There was a special symbolism to this—a girl was said to go “from under her father’s roof to her husband’s.” It was a matter of ownership, plain and simple, of transference of title, and there was no room in the equation for her accepting the protection of any other male. So Liraun’s sin was not that she was sleeping with Farber—a matter of utter indifference to most of the other Cian—but that she was living with him , “under the roof” of a man who was not her husband. Odd as this seemed to Farber, it was serious enough to get her ostracized.
All this gave Farber another sleepless night. If he had been born thirty years earlier, or ten years later, he probably wouldn’t have worried about Liraun’s welfare at all, but amorality had gone out of fashion, as it periodically did, and along with their Horatio Alger optimism and drive to succeed, his generation had rediscovered humanism—limited to their own class of people, of course, i.e.: “humans”—and a sort of studied naiveté. So he stayed up to figure out the Decent Thing To Do. On the one hand, he sincerely loved Liraun, didn’t want her hurt on his behalf—but he didn’t want to lose her, either. On the other hand, he was as terrified of marriage as most young men of his day, especially the artists and the intelligentsia. But no matter how he nagged it, it always came down to that: he should either marry her, or leave her; nothing else would help her situation.
Toward dawn, he decided—rather cold-bloodedly, but a man can often identify cold-bloodedness as practicality if he squints at it hard enough—that the best thing to do would be to marry Liraun, but only under the Cian rites. That would make her a respectable woman
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