"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. "n.o.body'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."

"Well, they did. And, of course, the obvious thing happened. Since they cooperated in some things, they cooperated in a lot of things, even fighting. That's how they could make war, you know--not the nice, social sort of fighting we do now. And you can imagine what happened.

You can kill an awful lot of people awful fast, if a gang gets together on it like that. If they didn't have the artificial bodies and the psi transfer transmitters to make them come alive, there wouldn't have been anybody left after a while. That cooperation is rough stuff."

"Obviously," she commented dryly.

"Well, that's the reason for everything, then. Pretty soon the factories couldn't turn out hypn.o.bodies fast enough and people had to fight in their protobodies sometimes. But after a few centuries, the leaders began to get civilized, and decided to put an end to all this cooperative killing. I guess they all got together and agreed not to cooperate with each other in anything in the future."

"It stands to reason," Mark concluded, "people had to learn to be civilized. They weren't just born that way. It's--it's culture."

"Pouf," said Jennette critically.

"All right," he growled, biting viciously into a pomegranate. "Let's hear your big story if it's so good."

Jennette stretched out her legs and contemplated her wiggling toes.

"Oh, I don't know. I don't have any real ideas. But I know better than to believe that sort of nonsense. People just aren't like that, and you know it." She hesitated thoughtfully, then continued. "Maybe a few of them got together now and then for a party or something like this.

But not hundreds of them."

When Mark did not reply, she laughed and said, "I guess I'm just feeling risque tonight."

"You sure are," he mumbled.

"Of course there are parts of the old mythology that seem rather interesting--beautiful, even--"

"It's not mythology."

"Like the part that deals with marriage."

She waited. Mark dutifully echoed, "Deals with what?"

"Marriage."

Mark considered it. Then he shook his head. "What's that?"

"See?" she taunted him. "You don't know everything like you think you do. Marriage," she explained, "was a sort of cooperative agreement that the ancient people were supposed to have entered into."

"Sure, just like I said," Mark stated with a.s.surance. "Hundreds of people did it. They got involved in this marriage agreement, and made war on each 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 rea.s.suringly 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--"