ve too much trouble with that,
if you're careful," she said gaily. "And I'm pretty good at that
myself."

Mark took a slow deep breath as he decided that she was just teasing
him. "I'm surprised at you, Jennette."

She shrugged. "I'm bored, I guess. I'd like to try something new, just
for excitement. Personally, sometimes I think the whole social system
we have is pretty silly, anyway."

"Atoms," Mark mumbled.

"No need to swear about it," she chided him. "Come on, Mark. Just
think about it for a minute. And be consistent."

"Consistency is all right for a free psi," he said. "It sure doesn't
do a protobody any good."

Jennette laughed scornfully. "I'll bet you believe all that stuff they
feed you in the Decanting Center about ancient history."

"'Course not," Mark said defensively.

"All right then. Why follow all these rules of social conduct if
there's no good basis for them?"

"Aw, but there is," he replied seriously. "There was a big war--way
back centuries before we were decanted out at Center."

"Hah," said Jennette.

"Sure. And it was a whole lot of people who cooperated with each other
in it. There must have been hundreds of them--it was an awfully big
war. Hundreds of people, all on one side, all fighting together
against the other side."

"I don't believe it."

"It's true, I tell you," Mark insisted religiously. "Hundreds and
hundreds of people. Maybe even as many as a thousand, all dressed
alike--with clothes, I mean. And they didn't shoot each other--they
just killed the people they were fighting--the hundreds of people on
the other side."

"Other side of what?"

Mark frowned. "Oh, I guess that is just an expression. But that's what
happened, anyway. Before civilization got started, people cooperated
like that."

"That's just a whole lot of theory," Jennette insisted. "Nobody's
going to make me ever believe people used to act like that. Besides,
there just aren't enough people around to have all those mythical
wars."

Patiently, Mark continued. "I'm telling you, Jennette, this is more
than theory. There are still some records left from those days."

"Prove it."

"All right. That's not hard. Somebody had to build the factories,
didn't they? And the Decanting Centers?"

"Robots."

"Who built the first robot factory?"

Jennette considered. Then she shrugged petulantly. "Oh all right.
Maybe a few people did cooperate. But not hundreds of them. People
just don't act like that."