Mike had caught the flavor of her thought but not the concept; it was too alien to Martian ideas. «Jill? Do you want to stop and get married?»

She thought about it. «It's Sunday, we couldn't get a license.»

«Tomorrow, then. I grok you would like it.»

«No, Mike.»

«Why not, Jill?»

«We wouldn't be any closer, we already share water. That's true both in English and Martian.»

«Yes.»

«And a reason just in English. I wouldn't have Dorcas and Anne and Miriam — and Patty — think that I was trying to crowd them out.»

«Jill, none of them would think so.»

«I won't chance it, because I don't need it. Because you married me in a hospital room ages and ages ago.» She hesitated. «But there is something you might do for me.»

«What, Jill?»

«Well, you might call me pet names! The way I do you.»

«Yes, Jill. What pet names?»

«Oh!»She kissed him quickly. «Mike, you're the sweetest, most lovable man I've ever met — and the most infuriating creature on two planets! Don't bother. Just call me “little brother” occasionally … it makes me all quivery inside.»

«Yes, Little Brother.»

«Oh, my! Let's get out of here — before I take you back to bed. Meet me downstairs; I'll be paying the bill.» She left suddenly.

They caught the first Greyhound going anywhere. A week later they stopped at home, shared water for a few days, left without saying good-by-good-by was one human custom Mike resisted; he used it only with strangers.

Shortly they were in Las Vegas, stopping in a hotel off the Strip. Mike tried the games while Jill killed time as a show girl. She couldn't sing or dance; parading in a tall improbable hat, a smile, and a scrap of tinsel was the job suited to her in the Babylon of the West. She preferred to work if Mike was busy and, somehow, Mike always got her the job she picked. Since casinos never closed, Mike was busy almost all the time.

Mike was careful not to win much, keeping to limits Jill set. After he had milked each casino for a few thousand he put it all back, never letting himself be the big-money player. Then he took a job as a croupier, letting the little ball roll without interference and studying people, trying to grok why they gambled. He grokked a drive that felt intensely sexual — but he seemed to grok wrongness in this.

Jill assumed that the customers in the palatial theater-restaurant where she worked were just marks — and, as such, did not count. But to her surprise she actively enjoyed displaying herself in front of them. With increasing Martian honesty she examined this feeling. She had always enjoyed being looked at with admiration by men whom she found attractive enough to want to touch — she had been irked that the sight of her body meant nothing to Mike even though he was as devoted to her body as a woman could dream of-

-if he wasn't preoccupied. But he was generous even then; he would let her call him out of trance, shift gears without complaint and be smiling and eager and loving.

Nevertheless, there it was — one of his strangenesses, like his inability to laugh. Jill decided, after her initiation as a show girl, that she enjoyed being visually admired by strangers because this was the one thing Mike did not give her.

Her perfecting self-honesty soon washed out that theory. The men in the audience were mostly too old, too fat, too bald for Jill to find them attractive — and Jill had always been scornful of «lecherous old wolves» — although not of old men, she reminded herself; Jubal could look at her, even use crude language, and not give her any feeling that he wanted to get her alone and grope her.

But now she found that these «lecherous old wolves» did not set her teeth on edge. When she felt their admiring stares or outright lust — and she did feel it, could identify the sources — she did not resent it; it warmed her and made her smugly pleased.

«Exhibitionism» had been to her just a technical term — a weakness she held in contempt. Now, in digging out her own and looking at it, she decided that either this form of narcissism was normal, or she was abnormal. But she didn't feel abnormal; she felt healthier than ever. She had always been of rugged health — nurses need to be — but she hadn't had a sniffle or an upset stomach in she couldn't remember when… why, not even cramps.

Okay, if a healthy woman liked to be looked at, then it follows as the night the day that healthy men should like to look, else there was just no darn sense to it! At which point she finally understood, intellectually, Duke and his pictures.

She discussed it with Mike — but Mike could not understand why Jill had ever minded being looked at. He understood not wishing to be touched; Mike avoided shaking hands, he wanted to be touched only by water brothers. (Jill wasn't sure how far this went; she had explained homosexuality, after Mike had read about it and failed to grok — and had given him rules for avoiding passes; she knew that Mike, pretty as he was, would attract such. He had followed her advice and had made his face more masculine, instead of the androgynous beauty he had had. But Jill was not sure that Mike would refuse a pass, say, from Duke — fortunately Mike's male water brothers were decidedly masculine, just as his others were very female women. Jill suspected that Mike would grok a «wrongness» in the poor in-betweeners anyhow — they would never be offered water.)

Nor could Mike understand why it now pleased her to be stared at. The only time their attitudes had been roughly similar had been as they left the carnival, when Jill had become indifferent to stares. She saw now that her present self-knowledge had been nascent then; she had not been truly indifferent to masculine stares. Under the stresses of adjusting to the Man from Mars she had shucked off part of her cultural conditioning, that degree of prissiness a nurse can retain despite a no-nonsense profession.

But Jill hadn't known that she had any prissiness until she lost it. At last she was able to admit to herself that there was something inside her as happily shameless as a tabby in heat.

She tried to explain this to Mike, giving her theory of the complementary functions of narcissist display and voyeurism. «The truth is, Mike, I get a kick out of having men stare at me … lots of men and almost any man. So now I grok why Duke likes pictures of women, the sexier the better. It doesn't mean that I want to go to bed with them, any more than Duke wants to go to bed with a photograph. But when they look at me and tell me — think at me — that I'm desirable, it gives me a warm tingle right in my middle.» She frowned slightly. «I ought to get a real naughty picture taken of me and send it to Duke… to tell him I'm sorry I failed to grok what I thought was a weakness in him. If it's a weakness, I've got it, too — girl style. If it is a weakness — I grok it isn't.»

«All right. We'll find a photographer.»

She shook her head. «I'll apologize instead. I won't send such a picture; Duke has never made a pass at me — and I don't want him getting ideas.»

«Jill, you would not want Duke?»

She heard an echo of «water brother» in his mind. «Hmm … I've never thought about it. I guess I've been “being faithful” to you. But I grok you speak rightly; I wouldn't turn Duke down — and I would enjoy it, too! What do you think of that, darling?»

«I grok a goodness,» Mike said seriously.

«Hmm … my gallant Martian, there are times when human females appreciate a semblance of jealousy — but I don't think there is any chance that you will ever grok “jealousy”. Darling, what would you grok if one of those marks made a pass at me?»

Mike barely smiled. «I grok he would be missing.»

«I grok he might. But, Mike — listen, dear. You promised you wouldn't do anything of that sort except in utter emergency. If you hear me scream, and reach into my mind and I'm in real trouble, that's another matter. But I was coping with wolves when you were still on Mars. Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's partly her fault. So don't be hasty.»