Stranger in a Strange Land

passed across his. She discovered that, with Mike present, the warm, pleased sensation she had been enjoying nightly was greatly amplified-she suspected that, if the lights were out, she would glow in the dark.
                When the parade stopped and the girls formed a tableau, Mike was no more than ten feet from her-she had been promoted her first week to a front position. The director had looked her over on her fourth day with the show and had said, "I don't know what it is, kid. We've got girls around town begging for just any job with twice the shape you've got-but when the lights hit you, you've got what the customers look at. Okay, I'm moving you up where they can see better. The standard raise . . . and I still don't know why."
                She posed and talked with Mike in her mind. ("Feel anything?")
                ("I grok but not in fullness.')
                ("Look where I am looking, my brother. The small one. He quivers. He thirsts for me.')
                ("I grok his thirst ")
                ("Can you see him?") Jill stared straight into the customer's eyes and gave him a warm smile . . . not alone to increase his interest in her but also to let Mike use her eyes, if possible. As her grokking of Martian thought had increased and as they had grown steadily closer in other ways they had begun to be able to use this common Martian convenience. Not fully as yet, but with increasing ease-Jill had no control over it; Mike could see through her eyes simply by calling to her, she could see through his only if he gave it his attention.
                ("We grok him together," Mike agreed. ("Great thirst for my little brother.")
                ("!!!!")
                ("Yes. Beautiful agony.")
                A music cue told Jill to break her pose and resume her slow strut. She did so, moving with proud sensuousness and feeling lust boil up in herself in response to emotions she was getting both from Mike and from the stranger. The routine caused her to walk away from Mike and almost toward the rutty little stranger, approaching him during her first few steps. She continued to lock eyes with him.
                At which point something happened which was totally unexpected to her because Mike had never explained that it was possible. She had been letting herself receive as much as possible of the stranger's emotions, intentionally teasing him with eyes and body, and relaying what she felt from him back to Mike- -when suddenly the circuit was completed and she was looking at herself, seeing herself through strange eyes, much more lavish than she considered herself to be-and feeling the primitive need with which that stranger saw her.
                Blindly she stumbled and would have fallen flat had not Mike instantly sensed her hazard, caught her, lifted her, straightened her up, and steadied her until she could walk unassisted, second-sight gone.
                The parade of beauties continued on through exit. Once off stage the girl behind her said, "What the devil happened to you, Jill?"
                "Caught my heel."
                "Happens. But that was the wildest recovery I ever saw. For a second there you looked like a puppet on strings."
                (-and so I was, dear, and so I was! But we won't go into that.) "i'm going to ask the stage manager to check that spot. I think there's a loose board. A gal could break her leg."
                For the rest of the show whenever she was on stage Mike gave her quick glimpses of how she looked to various men while always making sure that she was not again taken by surprise. Jill was amazed to discover how varied were their images of her: one noticed only her legs, another seemed fascinated by the undulations of her torso, a third saw only her proud bosom. Then Mike, warning her first, let her look at other girls in the tableaux. She was relieved to find that Mike saw them as she saw them-but sharper.
                But she was amazed to find that her own excitement did not diminish as she looked at, second hand, the girls around her; it increased.
                Mike left promptly at the finale, ducking out ahead of the crowd as she had warned him to do, She did not expect to see him again that night since he had asked for relief from his job as croupier only long enough to see his