Koban Universe 1 by Stephen W. Bennett Page B

two? Didn’t you display any restraint or discretion?”
    Carol slugged her husband’s arm. “You made it sound li ke we did something in public!”
    She looked at Aldry, red faced. “It was passionate, but very private. We’d never disturb our neighbors.”
    Aldry grinned. “I assumed as much. I was making a point.
    “ The normal tact you would use to guard your privacy is exactly the sort of mental privacy you maintain when using Mind Taps with friends, family, and of course with nosey strangers. You don’t accidentally reveal your personal and intimate thoughts to them because you wouldn’t want to do so.
    “ Parents have made quiet love with children in the next room, or even the same room, for as long as there have been people. You won’t warp a fragile little mind with your adult thoughts, because you wouldn’t want to do that. It won’t get past the mental privacy all of us with Mind Tap ability maintain continuously. Before birth, it won’t easily get past the placental sac to the fetus anyway.”
    She grinned wickedly. “I shook hands with you both when I arrived and sensed nothing. I had no idea you were such animals.”
     
    ****
     
     
    Four years later, Ryan Seeker, the human ripper, as he thought of himself, was playing in his fully enclosed compound in the backyard of his mom and dad’s settlement home. He had played all morning with Kam, the young male ripper his parents had recently adopted, only a year after they moved out of the more congested Prime City dome. They thought Ryan would bond better with Kam in a more natural setting than an enclosed dome. As if that was even in doubt. Of course, he and Kam had instantly bonded.
    At age n ine months, Kam had been weaned for three months, and he liked his surrogate temporary mom, but he knew she was not to be his permanent family. He was the sole survivor of his litter, and was told his wild mother had died in a rhinolo stampede when he was four months old. Aunt Beverly was nice to him, but she wouldn’t let the little orphan get out and run in the woods and plains. She had made it clear that he soon would have a permanent mother and father. An actual human family pride to join.
    Playing outside was s omething Kam knew wild rippers a little older than himself were allowed to do. Aunt Beverly was only protecting him she said. There were bad things outside that he wasn’t ready to face. Nonsense, he was a ripper! He could face any threat.
    Ryan had been begging his own mom and dad to adopt a ripper cub since he’d turned two, over a year and a half ago. One of his other kindergarten friends had a cub in her family now, and she was younger than he was! He was ready to take care of a cub!
    The only outside playtime he had at home was often spent alone, at their isolated gazelle ranch. He stayed cooped up in the “baby” box that ran the seventy five foot width of their house, extending thirty feet back. Anytime his mom or dad didn’t have the time to play with him, he was placed there to watch them work on the gazelle ranch. The enclosure was made of transparent and extremely tough flexible plastic, with side vent holes too small for him to pass through. That way his mom or dad could work outside in the feedlot or near the barn and still see him. The clear plastic curved up and twenty feet overhead, to attach to the back of the house, under the edge of the second floor roof.
    It was a stupid box! For babies! He was almost four, and he felt insulted, treated as if he was still a helpless infant. Their nearest neighbor’s house was a half mile away, and that single mom, “Aunt” Gretchen was always home alone (her husband had died fighting the Krall he had learned), but she had an empty-headed eighteen-month-old daughter that Ryan wasn’t allowed to Mind Tap. They knew he’d share more thoughts than her mother would want Ingrid to know about yet.
    Ryan’s dad was often off planet, also involved with something to do with the fight against