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listen, Mia..."
    "No, you listen to me! I'm no pleasure girl, Piet. I'm not from the Ginza. I'm a worker from Haneda. I'm old enough to have had two children at least already, and another coming soon. But I didn't have them, because I hadn't met my children's father. Now I have. Isn't that right?"
    He sighed, exasperated. "Oh, stop talking like an ingenuous kid! As a doctor . . . I've made certain promises..."
    "When you didn't know the value of those promises. We said all that And as for your doctor's promises, once upon a time they'd have said that in taking this capsule out you were doing the right thing."
    "Shut up for God's sake!" he cried. "There's so much to this—the Corps point of view, the medical point of view... and you go on chattering as though we were the only two human beings in the entire universe, as though..."
    "As though you loved me in the way I love you?" There were tears in her eyes, but a sudden bitter sharpness in her voice. "Love sees its own reflection, but maybe you just broke the mirror for me. Perhaps all you needed was a new bedmate with just that hint of extra piquancy because of the danger of crossing ranks, Officer Pig! In the past month I could have comforted a dozen good Eastern-born crewmen, and have been glad to do it, but no—I was a fool I fell in love with the cold European, so much in love that I thought I could teach him what he lacked in feeling. Now I see that I can't! Well, go to your big lanky European women, then! Go and mount one or two of them— they look like horses, anyway!"
    He grabbed her before she got to the door, and held her by the wrists as she struggled, avoiding an upthrust knee which would have put him out in a flash. He had never imagined her capable of such burning anger, and yet he knew that surely he himself was to blame, because he was such a stranger in the country of love.
    He wanted to tell her so much, to explain, but instead he remained mute, holding onto her, keeping his eyes closed for some reason he barely understood. And soon she stopped struggling, and she spoke to him as she used to speak. "Piet... Piet, love.... Open your eyes."
    He obeyed.
    "Oh, Piet—you're crying. Oh love, love, were you crying because I hurt you?" Her deep affection welled up again in a warm flood, drowning anger. She made him sit down, and held him like a child, stroking his hair, letting him sob until he had no more tears.
    Then she said: "Forgive me—I said such bitter things. I know you love me."
    "There's nothing to forgive. I deserved it, Mia. I'm a coward; I've always been a coward. . . ." He watched as she rose, took his instrument case, and sat down beside him again. She unzipped the case, and gazed with childish wonder at the array of gleaming equipment. Then she clapped her hands.
    "I know! Let's do it together. You said it was easy. What's first?"
    The warmth of her love melted his fear, and he realized that he could not do less than measure up to her determination. He took up the instrument. "The freezer," he explained. "It cleans and anesthetizes, so that you won't feel the electric cutter. Are you sure you want to watch?"
    And she laughed at the first touch of the freezer, and said that it tickled.
    Soon the capsule was out, emptied of its estrogen solution and put back in place. When the neat incision was covered by a fast-drying plastiflesh spray he put away his instruments, and washed his hands again from habit.
    Turning back to Mia he saw that she had removed her zipsuit and was lying on the bed, her exquisite, golden body completely naked.
    "Now, Piet, love!" she whispered. "This time for real, with no barrier between your seed and mine."
    It was not true, of course. The estrogens would remain in her bloodstream for several days until eliminated by the natural processes. But symbolically, at least, it was true.
    Eager, thrilling to the promise of new-found experience, he removed his own clothes and slid into her waiting arms. Arriving there, he lay quite