She had put off getting to know him, feeling uneasy about actually having to meet socially with a male. Yet she already knew a lot of what she had been taught about men was untrue. She could see the tales of men had grown in the telling. She could not imagine ever learning to be comfortable with him, but if they were to make this trip together, she should try to understand him better.

That was turning out to be hard to do, and she berated herself for it. It was not his fault. He seemed open enough. She just could not bring herself to talk to him. It was a lot easier talking to the Titanides. They did not seem as alien as he.

So instead of talking, she looked at the water dripping from the edge of the tent fly they had suspended between two trees. There was not a breath of wind. The rain fell straight down, hard and steady, but the rude shelter was enough to keep them dry. The fire was for the coffee and the Wizard; it was quite warm, though not unpleasantly so.

"Hyperion gets a lot darker on a cloudy day than California does," Chris said.

"Does it? I hadn't realized."

He smiled at her, but it was not patronizing. He seemed to want to talk, too.

"The light here's deceptive," he said. "It seems bright, but that's because your eyes open to accommodate it. Saturn only gets about a hundredth as much light as the Earth does. When something blocks most of that, you notice the difference."

"I wouldn't know about that. We handle things differently in the Coven. We keep the windows open for weeks at a time to make the crops grow better."

"No kidding? I'd like to know more about it."

So she told him about life in the Coven and found one more example of a quality that was the same for men and women: it was easy to talk to anyone if he or she was a good listener. Robin knew she was not and was not ashamed of the fact, but she respected someone who, like Chris, could make her feel as if his whole attention were on her, as if he really were absorbing what she had to say. At first this respect, grudging as it was, made her nervous in itself. This was a male, damn it. She no longer expected him to assault her twice a day, but it was disorienting to realize that without that stubble of beard and breadth of shoulder, he did not look or act like anything but a sister.

She could tell that he thought many things about the Coven were strange, though he avoided expressing it. That bothered her at first-how could someone from peckish society think her world was weird?-but trying to be fair, she had to admit that all customs must look strange to one who was unused to them.

"Then those ... tattoos? Everyone has them in the Coven?"

That's right. Some have more than I; some, less. Everyone has the Pentasm." She tossed her head to show him the design around her ear. "Usually it is centered on the mother's mark, but my womb is defiled and..." He was frowning his incomprehension. The-" what was it Gaby called it?- "the belly button." She laughed, remembering. "What a silly name! We call it the first window of the soul because it marks the holiest bond, that between mother and daughter. The windows of the head are the mind's windows. I have been accused of heterodoxy for putting my Pentasm in guard over my mind rather than my soul, but I successfully defended myself before the tribunal because of my defilement. The windows of the soul lead to the womb, here and here." She put her hands to her belly and her crotch, then hastily took them away when she recalled the difference between herself and the man.

"I'm afraid I don't understand the defilement."

"I can't have children. They would have what I have, or so the doctors say."

"I'm sorry."

Robin frowned. "I don't understand this custom of apologizing for things one didn't do. You never worked at the Semenico Sperm Bank in Atlanta, Gah, did you?"

"That's Georgia," he said, smiling. "Gee Ay stands for Georgia. No, I didn't work there."

"Someday I might meet the man who did. His death would be unusual."

"I wasn't really apologizing," he said. "Not that way. We often say, I'm sorry, just to offer sympathy."

"We don't wish sympathy."

"Then I withdraw the offer." His grin was infectious. Soon she had to smile with him. "God knows I get too much of it myself. I usually just let it pass, unless I'm feeling nasty." Robin wondered how he could say it so carelessly. Peckish people varied a lot. Some hardly understood what honor meant. Others could be very touchy. She had submitted to indignities upon arrival that she would never have accepted from one of her own people, and the reason was she presumed these folk didn't know any better. At first she assumed they all had no self-respect, but she thought Chris had some-though not a lot-and if he were willing to accept sympathy without protest, he must not see it as always encroaching on his own sense of self-reliance.

"I have been accused of being too nasty," she admitted. "By my sisters, that is. There are times when we can accept sympathy with no loss of honor, so long as it implies no patronization."

"Then you have my sympathy," he said. "As one sufferer to another."

"Accepted."

"What does 'peckish' mean?"

"It comes from our word for your ... we'd better not talk about that."

"Okay. Then why do you want to kill that man in Georgia?" She found herself launched on an explanation of what had been done to her, why it had been done, and that led into an explanation of the peckish power structure and how it operated. It dawned on her that she was speaking to a supposed member of that very power structure. Oddly, she was embarrassed. She had been saying some pretty terrible things, and after all, he had done nothing to her personally. Did that matter? She was no longer sure. "At least I think I know what 'peckish' means now," he said.

"I didn't mean to accuse you of anything," she said. "I'm sure you see it differently because of the way you were brought up, so-"

"Don't be so sure," he said. "I don't admit to any big conspiracy, you understand. If there is one, nobody's invited me to the meetings. And I do think you ... your Coven is operating from an obsolete world picture. If I read you right, you'd agree to that at least partially yourself."

She shrugged, noncommittally. He was right, partially. "When your group cut itself off from the rest of the human race, things might have been as bad as you say. I wasn't around, and I guess if I had been, I would have been part of the oppressor class and think it was the way things should be. But I have been told that things are a lot better now. I won't say they're perfect. Things don't get perfect. But most of the women I know are happy. They don't think there's many battles left to fight."

"You'd better stop there," Robin cautioned. "Most women have always been happy with the way things were, or at least they said so. That goes back to before peckish society allowed women to vote. Just because we of the Coven believe some things that I now know are overstated or incorrect, don't draw the conclusion that we are foolish about everything. We know that the majority is always willing to let things remain as they are until they are led to something better. A slave may not be happy with her lot, but most do nothing to improve it. Most do not believe it can be improved."

He spread his hands and shrugged. "You've got me there. And I wouldn't see oppression because I'd be the benefactor of it. What do you think? How bad does it look to you, as a sort of visitor from another planet?"

"Frankly, it is much better than I had hoped. On the surface anyway. I've had to discard a lot of preconceptions."

"Good for you!" he said. "Most people would rather die than discard a preconception. When Gaby told me about where you came from, the last thing I expected you to have was an open mind. But what do ... uh, peckish women think?"