"You are not nearly as different from us in mental processes and customs as I should have thought. Such an intriguing life form, with such amusing complications. Just strange enough to be exciting. Come over here and sit by me."
She beckoned coyly, like a flirtatious girl, and winked one youthfully glowing eye at me. The effect, in that ruin of a face, was appalling. I stayed where I was.
"Oh," she said in a hurt tone, "you don't like me? And you seemed so attractively receptive at first. How can we communicate completely on your plane if you are to be so aloof?" She stopped and seemed to concentrate a moment. I felt as if something gave my thoughts a brisk stirring with a long swizzle stick.
"Damn it," I snapped, "quit that, you hear me? You've got to stop messing around in my mind. It's an outrageous invasion of—"
"All right, all right," she said. "I won't do it again, I promise. Unless—well, never mind." A typically feminine-type promise. "But now I see that it is simply this body that offends you. Except for this, you are quite ready to love me."
That was putting it a little strongly. I had to admit though, that she was a pretty interesting proposition.
"It is odd to attach such importance to form. A chemical life characteristic, I suppose. I do note that your own structure has its—well. There is no reason for this present form of mine being a problem between us. I shall simply change it."
"Oh?" Like changing a dress, she made it sound. It wasn't quite that easy.
"You must make it clear to me what sort of body you prefer. Oh, I see. That tall, widely curved one with the red hair. Yes, I see the image ... my ... and so lightly clad. Very well. I will have this body for you."
She was reading my mind again, the back corner section where I was keeping a few brightly descriptive memos on Venus de Lite, that luscious, languorous, long-legged new stripper-exotic dancer downtown at the Roma. "That," I told her, not without a touch of wistful regret, "is a live body. You cannot take live bodies. And stop reading my mind."