Brittany opened her mouth to protest, then snapped it shut. She did want to know what they'd meant by punishment, but she'd be damned if she'd ask now. The Sha-Ka'ani didn't exist, she wasn't in a spaceship, none of this was the least bit real. But where the hell did they find fifty giants to participate in this bizarre scam?

"TEDRA ISN'T FROM SHA-KA'AN?"

"No indeed, she was hatched on the planet Kystran in the Centura star system, which is fortunate for you, doll. I'm sure she'll set you up with all the modern conveniences from other worlds that she enjoys, which most Sha-Ka'ani refuse to introduce to their daily lives. Kystran is a major exporter of luxuries, a member of the Centura League of Confederated Planets."

Brittany had settled into a chair near the entrance to the Rec Room, with a monitor on the wall behind her. She wasn't about to proceed any farther into that room with all those giants lounging about, and Dalden not among them. She had felt the chair move under her when she sat on it, shrinking somewhat, but wasn't going to comment on it.

Martha was less reticent, had remarked nonchalantly, "The beds here adjust to size as well, just so you know. When you're ready to crawl into one usually isn't the time for such explanations."

Brittany hadn't thanked her for the warning. She'd been too busy trying to keep down her unease of being in a room with so many huge men. Those men were ignoring her for the most part, but that didn't reassure her one bit. Some were watching what looked like war movies on really big screens. Others were involved in wrestling matches. Still others were exercising on mats. Actually, most of them were doing things that should have been done in the gym instead…

"They hate the gym," Martha said, back to reading minds rids. "It's filled with things that are foreign to them, and like Dalden, none of them really like things that are unnatural to their own world. They'll play the war games on the ship's entertainment system, because they understand they are just games, but when it comes to workouts, they'll do it their own way. They'd be practicing with swords like they do at home if I hadn't forbid it."

Swords-warriors. Brittany still found it incredulous that they'd found this many huge men for this convince-at-no-expense project. All of them were over six and a half feet; one looked even taller than seven!

She had mentioned Dalden's mother to get her mind off what she was viewing. And much as she didn't want to appear curious, she couldn't let that "hatched" comment pass.

"Are you going to try to convince me now that your Tedra isn't human?"

"Put the brakes on," Martha said, injecting surprise in her tone. "Where'd you get that from?"

"Your 'hatched' instead of born. Either you don't know that 'hatched' implies a hard-shelled egg, which I doubt, or you were being cute to confuse the issue."

A good bit of soft chuckling floated about Brittany. "Can't deny I do have my 'cute' moments." More chuckling. "But I was just calling it like it is in this case. Kystram are a species so far advanced that they long ago did away with natural childbirth as you know it."

"They couldn't have. They'd be extinct, yet you don't talk of them in the past tense."

"They did almost come to extinction during the Great Water Shortage many years ago. They lost most of their plant and animal life, but didn't abandon the planet. They are one of many colony planets founded by the original Ancients more than two thousand years ago, so they got a lot of help from their sister planets. They adapted because of the shortage, created waterless baths, new food sources, oxygen, liquid, and with the bad comes the good. They now have the technology to populate barren, resource-deprived planets. "

"You get an A-plus in distraction, Martha."

"Now who's being cute? And I wasn't avoiding the subject, merely supplying a little history. They've done away with natural childbirth for the simple reason that it's painful and dangerous. It also isn't selective breeding, and Kystrani prefer to cultivate intelligence that can better their way of life."

"But how?"

"Give it a little thought," Martha replied, "and your best guess would probably be right, since your own planet is starting to experiment in the same area."

"Cloning?"

"Close. You call it artificial insemination. The Kystrani took that one step further by eliminating the female from being the holding tank, using man-made artificial wombs instead. Add to that worldwide birth control that's not left to individual choice, but administered in all food and drink on the planet, and donors from only the most intelligent. The whole process is monitored by Population Control. The children are then raised in Child Centers, where they are tested to determine their best match for life careers."

"It sounds very-cold."

"Tedra would agree with you. Child Centers teach everything a child needs, they just don't supply what only a child's parents could. Tedra had to go to Sha-Ka'an for that missing ingredient."

"You're talking about love, right?"

"You betcha."

"Then you're contradicting yourself," Brittany was quick to point out. "Or didn't you just try to convince me awhile ago that the Sha-Ka'ani have their emotions mastered to near nonexistence?"

"The males do, not the females," Martha clarified. "But I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Warriors truly are convinced that they can't love. Caring, yes, but not the deeper emotion of love. But my Tedra upset that notion all to hell with her lifemate, Challen. He loves her to pieces even though he tried to deny it to begin with. It was what she was missing in her life, so you don't think that I would have let her stay there with him if he wasn't going to supply it in big doses, do you? But she had to almost die before he owned up to it. So expect a lot of frustration if you're going to try to make your warrior admit it."

"Thanks tons," Brittany said. "Just what I needed to hear."

"Now, don't get discouraged, doll. I like you. I'm not going to steer you wrong. And I've just given you a major advantage where your warrior is concerned: he might try to convince you that it's impossible for warriors to love, but you now know that isn't so. Just don't push it, would be my advice. He's Tedra's son, after all, which makes him quite a bit different from other Sha-Ka'ani, so he's likely to figure it out on his own, whereas most pure Sha-Ka'ani never do. Their own women don't buck the way things are. It takes off-worlders to stir things up and show them that ingrained beliefs aren't always what's real."

"So my role is to be teacher?"

Martha laughed. "That's a good one, and not even close. These men don't take to learning new ways, they think their way is the best way. I said show, not teach, and I meant your lifemate, not the whole planet. Tedra has tried to change things there, with little luck. Believe me, she hates their rules and laws just as much as you will. But you're stuck with them because their women don't mind them-yet. Your own people have followed the same path, subject to a male-dominated society up until they finally got tired of being treated like children and did something to change it. Sha-Ka'ani women just haven't reached that point yet."

"Talking to you, Martha, can be really depressing. God, I'm glad none of this is really real."

Martha sighed. "If it's any consolation, Tedra has been very happy with her warrior all these years. She wouldn't want to live anywhere but with him."

"In other words, she got converted to their ways rather than them learning from hers."

"No way. She just knows when to ignore things she can't change-and help where she can. She's gotten quite a few of their women off-planet and living where they can feel useful and needed."