The Lovers   ::   Фармер Филип Хосе

and so, after we'd been going down that jungle river,' she was saying, 'they quit watching me so closely. We'd taken two months to get from my home, near where they'd captured me, so they thought I'd never dare to try to get home alone. There are too many deadly things in the jungle. They make the nightlifer look like a minor nuisance.'

She shuddered.

'When we got to a village which was on the very edge of their civilization, they let me wander around in the enclosure. By then I'd learned some of their language and they some of mine. But our conversation was on a very simple level. One of their party, a scientist named 'Asa"atsi, put me through all sorts of examinations and tests, physical and mental. There was a machine at the village hospital which took photographs of my insides. My skeleton, my organs. Maw tyuh! My everything.

'They said it was most interesting. Imagine that! I am exposed as no woman has ever been exposed, and to them I am just most interesting. Indeed!'

'Well.' Hal laughed. 'You can't expect them to take the viewpoint of a male mammal toward a female mammal... that is...'

She looked archly at him. 'And am I a mammal?'

'Obviously, unmistakably, indisputably, and enthusiastically.'

'For that, you get a kiss.'

She leaned over him and placed her mouth over his. He stiffened, reacting as he had when his ex-wife had offered to kiss him. But she must have anticipated this, for she said, 'You are a man, not a pillar of stone. And I am a woman who loves you. Kiss me back; don't just take my kisses.'

'Oh, not so hard,' she murmured. 'Kiss me. Don't try to ram your lips through mine. Go soft, melt, merge your lips with mine. See.'

She vibrated the tip of her tongue against his. Then she stood back, smiling, her eyes half-closed, her red lips wet. He was shaking and breathing hard.

'Do your people think the tongue is only to talk with? Do they think that what I did is wicked, unreal?'

'I don't know. Nobody ever discussed that.'

'You liked it, I know. Yet this is the same mouth with which I eat. The one I must hide behind a veil when I sit across the table from you.'

'Don't put the cap on.' he blurted. 'I have been thinking about that. There is no rational reason why we should be veiled when we eat. The only reason is that I have been taught it is disgusting. Pavlov's dog salivated when it heard the bell; I get sick when I see food go into a naked mouth.'

'Let's eat. Then we will drink and we will talk of us. And later do whatever we feel like doing.' He was learning fast. He didn't even blush.