"Yes?"
"Mark, you like me a lot, don't you?"
Mark squirmed uncomfortably, and stared at the artificial moon.
"Don't you?" she insisted. "More than you ever have anybody else?"
"Well, guess that's right," he admitted lamely. "A whole lot more than
I should."
She reassuringly patted his hand with her little one. "That's all
right, Mark. I won't tell anybody. Besides, I feel just the same way
about you."
Mark nodded without speaking, worriedly studying the vague markings on
the bright luminous disk in the simulated sky.
"Mark, don't you ever want to see the real me?" she inquired urgently.
"Don't you sometimes feel kind of empty because you can never really
have me--know me, because all you ever see is a manufactured thing
that only somewhat resembles what I am really like?"
Mark blushed. She had come a little too close to the uncomfortable
truth. But he refused to admit it, at least to her. He mumbled an
indistinct denial.
"Are you sure?" she said, grabbing his hands, gazing intently into his
eyes, forcing him to look at her. "Wouldn't you sometime like to come
down to my transmitter quarters?"
"But--"
"And see and touch my protobody--the thing I really am?"
"Aw--"
"Scared?"
"Maybe I am."
"That's silly."
Mark swallowed and said stiffly, "Just because there is a no-fight
clause in your invitation tonight doesn't necessarily mean I have to
follow it, you know. You don't need weapons. I could strangle your
protobody easily."
"You wouldn't," she said confidently.
"You sure don't think much of me, do you?"
"I think just the same of you as you do of me," she said simply.
With impulsive hunger, Mark threw his arms around her, holding her
tightly against him, nuzzling her, smelling the perfume of her hair,
incoherently mumbling into her ear. "Jennette, Jennette," he sang, "I
think more of you than anything. I love you. I know it's wrong, but I
would never even shoot you, because sometimes it hurts you, and I
wouldn't want you to feel even the slightest discomfort." He stopped,
took a deep breath, and added meekly, "I'm sorry."
"But Mark," she whispered. "Why is it really so wrong?"
"You know."
"Suppose I told you that this body is my protobody right now?" she
asked earnestly.
"But it isn't."
"It is," she said faintly.
Mark's breath hissed as he gasped. Jennette was blushing all over her
body, heightening the golden color of it. He let her go, and she slid
off his lap onto the shadowed grass beside him. She bit her lip. "I
didn't really mean to tell you--yet."