"Half-breeds, yes, monsters, no! Very far from monsters. Luckily all minds have not been corrupted by Morre"s poison. A woman of the aliens chose to mate with Marson. Their son is true Ffallian. She brought him to Terra after her husband"s death to prove that point, beg help for her people. Now, years too late, we may succeed in making her mission worth while. We do not have the gifts of the aliens, but our sons and daughters will. As human time is reckoned it may take many years, but the Ffallian will increase in number, linking us with the aliens in a pattern of sharing which will give us both something close to immortality."
"You"re mad!" There was horrified conviction in Lennox"s answer. "Try urging people to mate with monsters and see how quickly you"ll have a war on your hands!"
"I said it would have to come slowly. We"ve already made a start. I head a colonization project in which we are educating a picked group. And we have pulled the whole subject out of hiding. The right kind of publicity is as good as the wrong kind, and we shall use the right."
"You can"t do it! They"ve fed you a pretty story and you"ve swallowed it. The real story is anything but pretty. Morre knew, he saw the results. You talk of supermen, he saw the devils that really issue from such cross-breeding."
"Devils? You have seen one of these "devils" too. In what way is he a monster? Does he resemble the ogres Morre dreamed up to support his edited records?"
Lennox"s head turned, his hot eyes fastened on Joktar. And then, when none of them expected such a move, he launched himself straight at the younger man, his hands reaching for the Terran"s throat. Reflexes trained on the streets moved in Joktar"s defense. But he was borne back across the ledge until his head cracked against the unbreakable substance of the window. In a matter of seconds the Terran knew that he was battling for his life against a man in a frenzy, a man who scratched, tore, snapped teeth in a hideous attempt to maim and kill. A little dazed by the madness of the other"s fury, Joktar fought back.
Then Lennox"s dusky color deepened, he snarled and whined, as his head was forced back by an arm clamped under his chin, levering him away from Joktar. He clawed at the air, fought against that merciless bar of flesh and bone closing off his breath. Joktar raised a hand to dripping scratches on his cheek and watched Hogan choke the commander into submission.
There was a scuffle as Cullan summoned patrolmen, had the half-conscious Lennox removed. But Joktar had turned his back on the room. He was trying to blot out what he had just heard. That old chill thrust of loneliness struck into him... spreading... walling him off from the men in the room behind him, and in a measure from the room itself. Monster... half-breed Monster... half-breed! Lennox had fastened those tags on him. And there would be hundreds... millions of others all around the galaxy to raise the same cry. He had been well tutored on the streets. Since the beginning of the human species there had been in them that dark and evil urge to turn upon and rend the one who was different, to hunt him down with a mob. And to be the hunted awoke in Joktar a wave of sheer terror which washed through his brain.
Loki"s sun was up now. A blaze above the golden brown of her sea... warmer than the sun which touched snow drifts on Fenris. The life of the streets had existed at night, there were few times when he had really looked at the sun.
A golden planet, a world where the sun was warm and kind...
Joktar heard movements in the room, closed his ears to them. They were all men there and he was something else. In those few moments of speech Lennox had raised a barrier between him and every living being he had ever known.
Sun on the waves... a golden world... well, he would have to face those others and his future some time. Joktar turned his back to the sun, his face to the room.
Only Hogan stood there. He was studying the younger man with the same searching measurement he had once used on Fenris. He spoke softly.
"But it isn"t that way at all, you know. Don"t let that poison Lennox spouted mean anything. You aren"t alone."
"Half-breed," Joktar said the ugly word.
"Ffallian," Hogan corrected. "It is very different. I know... believe me, I know."
"How?" challenged Joktar.
"Do you think that your father and Ksanga were the only humans to join the aliens? Four years ago... I came back."
"But you were on Fenris... a trader!"
"Hiding out... just as much of a wolfhead as if I were Ffallian. I was waiting for Kronfeld to move. He had to find you. That you existed, we knew. Where-that we had to discover. Yes, Lennox was wrong, pitifully horribly wrong. Do you believe me?"
And Joktar, seeing what lay in the other"s eyes, was moved to a conviction which banished all the wariness he had learned from his father"s unpredictable breed.