,"
she added over her shoulder as she left the room, "we're not human.
We're just another of your domestic animals."

Was there laughter in her voice? Kennon wasn't sure. His sigh was
composed of equal parts of relief and exasperation as he slipped out of
bed and began to dress. He'd forgo the shower this morning. He had no
desire for Copper to appear and offer to scrub his back. In his present
state of mind he couldn't take it. Possibly he'd get used to it in time.
Perhaps he might even like it. But right now he wasn't acclimatized.

* * *

"Man Blalok called," Copper said as she removed the breakfast dishes.
"He said that he'd be right over to pick you up. He wants to show you
the operation." "When did he call?"

"About ten minutes ago. I told him that you were at breakfast. He said
he'd wait." She disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

"There's a nightmare quality to this," Kennon muttered as he slipped his
arms into the sleeves of his tunic and closed the seam tabs. "I have
the feeling that I'm going to wake up any minute." He looked at his
reflection in the dresser mirror, and his reflection looked worriedly
back. "This whole thing has an air of plausible unreality: the
advertisement, the contract, this impossible island that raises
humanoids as part of the livestock." He shrugged and his mirrored image
shrugged back. "But it's real, all right. No dream could possibly be
this detailed. I wonder how I'm going to take it for the next five
years? Probably not too well," he mused silently. "Already I'm talking
to myself. Without even trying, that Lani Copper can make me feel like a
Sarkian." He nodded at his image.

The Sarkian analogy was almost perfect, he decided. For on that grimly
backward world females were as close to slaves as the Brotherhood would
permit; raised from birth under an iron regimen designed to produce
complaisant mates for the dominant males. Probably that was the reason
Sark was so backward. The men, having achieved domestic tranquillity,
had no desire to do anything that would disturb the status quo. And
since no Sarkian woman under any conceivable circumstances would annoy
her lordly master with demands to produce better mousetraps, household
gadgetry, and more money, the technological development of Sark had come
to a virtual standstill. It took two sexes to develop a civilization.

Kennon shrugged. Worlds developed as they did because people were as
they were, and while passing