* * * * * I don't remember driving back to my room. I think I slept on the bed that night, without ever stopping to determine whether it was comfortable or not. And when I woke up in the morning, and looked out the window at a white-coated landscape, the miracle of snow (which I had never seen before; not many planets have as much water vapor in their atmospheres as Earth does.) in summer weather seemed trivial in comparison to what had happened to me. Trivial, but beautiful. I was afraid it would be very cold, but it wasn't. I had gathered, from the weather-talk in the place where I ate breakfast, that in this mountain-country (it was considered to be very high altitude there), snow at night and hot sun in the afternoon was not infrequent in the month of April, though it was unusual for May. It was beautiful to look at, and nice to walk on, but it began melting as soon as the sun was properly up, and then it looked awful. The red dirt there is pretty, and so is the snow, but when they began merging into each other in patches and muddy spots, it was downright ugly. Not that I cared. I ate oatmeal and drank milk and nibbled at a piece of toast, and tried to plan my activities for the day. To the library first, and take back the book they'd lent me. Book ... all right then, get a book on sex. But that was foolish; I _knew_ all about sex. At least I knew ... well, what did I know? I knew their manner of reproduction, and.... Just why, at that time and place, I should have let it come through to me, I don't know. I'd managed to stay in a golden daze from the time in the Garden till that moment, refusing to think through the implications of what Larry said. Sex. Sex is mating and reproduction. Dating and dancing and kissing are parts of the courtship procedure. And the television shows all stop with kissing, because the mating itself is taboo. Very simple. Also _very_ taboo. Of course, they didn't _say_ I couldn't. They never said anything about it at all. It was just obvious. It wouldn't even work. We were _different_, after all. Oh, technically, biologically, of course, we were probably cross-fertile, but.... The whole thing was so obviously _impossible_! They should have warned me. I'd never have let it go this far, if I'd known. Sex. Mating. Marriage. Tribal rites. Rituals and rigamaroles, and stay here forever. Never go back. _Never go back?_ There was an instant's sheer terror, and then the comforting knowledge that they wouldn't _let_ me do that. I had to go back. Baby on a spaceship? Well, _I_ was a baby on a spaceship, but that was different. How different? I was older. I wasn't born there. Getting born is complicated. Oxygen, gravity, things like that. You can't raise a _human_ baby on a spaceship.... _Human?_ What's human? What am I? Never mind the labels. It would be _my_ baby.... I didn't want a baby. I just wanted Larry to hold me close to him and kiss me.