"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?"