other with it."

"What a dope. Marriage was an agreement between just two people. And
that much I might believe. Hundreds is too much."

"It was hundreds," Mark insisted.

"It was not. It was just two. And what's more, it was between a man
and a woman. They lived together with their protobodies and agreed to
cooperate together, and they made children and took care of them until
they grew up."

"Why that's thirty or forty years," Mark exclaimed. "Even the wars
didn't last that long. That's really nonsense. Besides, you can only
make children in the Decanting Centers. And it's all done by
machines."

"Well, maybe it is a little far fetched. But I think it's cute."

"Humph."

There was a few minutes silence. Then Jennette said softly, "Mark--"

"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, holdin