She laughed. "You looked so pretty sleeping there, I didn't want to disturb you." She came over to the bed and kissed me, just a quick brush of the lips. I grabbed her arm and pulled her back to me.

"I have an idea," I said. "If you'll promise not to talk with your mouth full, I'll show you how far I can stick out my tongue." When she stopped laughing, she grabbed me and kissed me, and this time she did it right. She held on to me as hard as she could and kissed me until the last drop of blood drained out of my brain. She let the towel fall to the floor, forgotten, as she climbed in bed next to me and we wrapped ourselves around each other. For a while, we just let our fingers do the talking.

"Do we have time for this?"

"Shut up and kiss me."

I surrendered to a superior force. Well, a superior idea, anyway. After a much longer while, we stopped to catch our breaths. "I can answer your question now," she said.

"What question?"

"Do you remember once you asked me why I loved you?"

"I was very insecure about you. About us."

"Don't be," she said, rolling over on top of me and pinning me happily beneath her. "Because now I finally know the answer. The real answer. Are you ready? I'm going to tell you the real reason why I love you so much, my sweet little boy in mama's silk nightie. Partly because I like the way you blush-but mostly because you're the best playmate I ever had."

I looked up at her, astonished. "Do you mean that?"

"Yes, I mean that," She punctuated it with a kiss. "You're not afraid, you're not ashamed. You're willing to play just as hard as me." She smiled shyly. "Sometimes I get all kinds of silly, kinky ideas-they don't mean anything, and I want to do them anyway. You're the only man I've ever known who was willing to keep up with me. You're fun, Jim, because you don't worry about looking foolish. So it's all right for me to be foolish with you. And besides, you look better in my nightie than I do."

"No, I don't," I protested. "You make it stick out in two nice places. I only make it stick out in one."

"It's all a matter of taste," she said, and for some reason that struck us both so funny that we started laughing and couldn't stop. We laughed so hard we nearly choked. The paroxysms of hilarity swept us helplessly away. And every time either one of us started to catch our breath, the laughter of the other one sent us both off again. She lay on top of me, holding on for dear life as wave after wave of hysterical spasms rolled over us both. We chuckled and giggled and guffawed and hiccuped and choked and exhausted ourselves silly.

And when we finally came down again, too spent even to catch our breaths, I grinned foolishly up at her and admitted it. "Wanna know something? I like getting into your nightie-" I meant it in both senses.

"I like you getting into my nightie too."

She let her fingers go exploring then, down and up again, inside, until she found the single part of me that had the smoothest skin. She traced the length of it gently. Her fingertips were like velvet.

"You keep that up," I moaned, "and I'm coming out of your nightie."

"You keep that up," she said meaningfully, "and I'm coming in after you."

"Do it!" I said. "I dare you!"

So she did, and I did, and we did. Twice.

Later, Lizard ordered breakfast in bed. Shaun delivered it. We had fresh eggs, scrambled in butter! And orange juice! And real coffee! Compliments of the captain. Shaun was a perfect gentleman. He served the meal with gracious style and didn't react at all to my attire. Probably he'd already seen a lot more than I could imagine. I was too polite to ask.

He did point out, though, that I had it on backward. He glanced at my neckline and said, "It fits better if you wear it with the label in back. Call me if you need anything else."

Lizard managed to hold back her laughter until after the door slid closed. Then she nearly spewed her coffee all over the blanket. "Oh, my dear-" she choked. "Are you going to have a reputation."

"Jealousy," I sniffed. "It's just jealousy. Say, do you think I could get this in pink?"

"Hot Seat," April 3rd broadcast: (cont'd)

ROBISON:… All right; Dr. Foreman. Let's get back to this Core Group of yours. The Chtorran infestation is the perfect cover for your operation. You have a secret plan, don't you?

FOREMAN: If I told you, it wouldn't be a secret, would it?

ROBISON: Aha!

FOREMAN: That was a joke, John. You do remember jokes, don't you?

ROBISON: But you do have a secret plan, don't you?

FOREMAN: There's no secret. That's the plan.

ROBISON: Huh-?

FOREMAN: The secret plan is that there is no secret plan. The Core Group isn't about control. It's about the operating context. If I may allow myself a small pun, context is everything.

ROBISON: (skeptical look to the camera) Cut the crapola, Doc. If you want to talk about ways to fight the worms, I'm right there with you. But when you start talking about your contextual domains, I just fall asleep again. All you're really saying is that we won't defeat the worms unless we have the right attitude. And you're using that as an excuse to exert undue influence on the elected decision makers. Well, I want to know, who elected you?

FOREMAN: There! That skepticism is what's keeping you apart. You keep thinking that you're outside the domain. You don't recognize that you and your show and this discussion are all part of the process, so you don't act as if anything else in the domain is your responsibility.

ROBISON: Hold it, hold it right there-remember our agreement? If you're going to live on this planet, you have to speak our language. Now what did you just say? Could you translate that into English?

FOREMAN: Sorry. I keep forgetting. I apologize for overestimating your intelligence. Let's take it a little slower. Imagine a circle, right? Here, I'll draw one in the air for you. The act of drawing a line is the act of making a distinction: You're separating one set of concepts from another set of concepts. Once you've drawn the line, then you can start sorting-this set of ideas goes on this side, the inside of the circle; this set of ideas goes on the outside of the circle.

Now, what we've done is we've made the distinction that everything in this domain is part of the process of defeating the Chtorran infestation and restoring the Earth, and everything outside is not. You keep reacting to this discussion as if you're outside of the circle; but you're not. You're in the same circle with the rest of us, because you want to defeat the Clatorrans and restore the Earth too-even if you do think I'm a charlatan and a phony. So this conversation isn't really about our differences, John; it's about the two of us looking for something we can align on.

ROBISON: Cute. All right, so you've got a circle full of ideas. What if I come into your circle with an idea that you think doesn't belong? I get "sorted out," like Dorothy Chin, right?

FOREMAN: It's not my circle. It's our circle. It belongs to all of us. I can't sort you out; you sort yourself out. Look, the circle-the context-is a distinction that we created when we agreed on the goal. We're aligned on context. Now, this is the hard part. People don't disagree on goals; not if the vision is large enough to include their personal agendas; people disagree on methods. A call to action almost always bogs down in debate. Instead of results, we get political parties.

ROBISON: So, if I understand you correctly, you're about to advocate the elimination of opposing political points of view

FOREMAN: There you go again

ROBISON: Oh, not in so many words, of course, but isn't it true that your training sessions create a clique mentality? Here's this whole group of people who've shared a very intense experience. Of course the survivors are going to feel a special comradeship-the kind that you get when misery is shared.