“Please, dear. It’s windy and chilly outdoors.”

“Up easy.” He levitated her a couple of feet. “Pants. Stockings. Garter belt. Shoes. Down you go and lift your arms. Bra? You don’t need a bra. And now the dress—and you’re decent again. And you’re pretty, whatever that is. You look good. Maybe I can get a job as a lady’s maid if I’m not good for anything else. Baths, shampoos, massages, hair styling, make-up, dressing for all occasions—I’ve even learned to do your nails in a fashion that suits you. Will that be all, Modom?”

“You’re a perfect lady’s maid, dear. But I’m going to keep you myself.”

“Yes, I grok I am. You look so good I think I’ll toss it all away again and give you a massage. The growing-closer kind.”

“Yes, Michael!”

“I thought you had learned waiting? First you have to take me to the zoo and buy me peanuts.”

“Yes, Mike. Jill will buy you peanuts.”

It was cold and windy out at Golden Gate Park but Mike did not notice it and Jill had learned that she didn’t have to be cold or uncomfortable if she did not wish it. Nevertheless it was pleasant to relax her control by going into the warm monkey house. Aside from its heat Jill did not like the monkey house too well—monkeys and apes were too much like people, too depressingly human. She was, she thought, finished forever with any sort of prissiness; she had grown to cherish an ascetic, almost Martian joy in all things physical. The public copulations and evacuations of these simian prisoners did not trouble her as they once had; these poor penned people possessed no privacy, they were not at fault. She could now watch such without repugnance, her own impregnable fastidiousness untouched. No, it was that they were “Human, All Too Human”—every action, every expression, every puzzled troubled look reminded her of what she liked least about her own race.

Jill preferred the Lion House—the great males arrogant and sure of themselves even in captivity, the placid motherliness of the big females, the lordly beauty of Bengal tigers with jungle staring out of their eyes, the little leopards swift and deadly, the reek of musk that airconditioning could not purge. Mike usually shared her tastes for other exhibits, too; he would spend hours in the the Aviary, or the Reptile House, or in watching seals—once he had told her that, if one had to be hatched on this planet, to be a sea lion would be of greatest goodness.

When he had first seen a zoo, Mike had been much upset; Jill had been forced to order him to wait and grok, as he had been about to take immediate action to free all the animals. He had conceded presently, under her arguments, that most of these animals could not stay alive free in the climate and environment where he proposed to turn them loose—that a zoo was a nest . . . of a sort. He had followed this first experience with many hours of withdrawal, after which he never again threatened to remove all the bars and glass and grills. He explained to Jill that the bars were to keep people out at least as much as to keep the animals in, which he had failed to grok at first. After that Mike never missed a zoo wherever they went.

But today even the unmitigated misanthropy of the camels could not shake Mike’s moodiness; he looked at them without smiling. Nor did the monkeys and apes cheer him up. They stood for quite a while in front of a cage containing a large family of capuchins, watching them eat, sleep, court, nurse, groom, and swarm aimlessly around the cage, while Jill surreptitiously tossed them peanuts despite “No Feeding” signs.

She tossed one to a medium-sized monk; before he could eat it a much larger male was on him and not only stole his peanut but gave him a beating, then left. The little fellow made no attempt to pursue his tormentor; he squatted at the scene of the crime, pounded his knucks against the concrete fioor, and chattered his helpless rage. Mike watched it solemnly.

Suddenly the mistreated monkey rushed to the side of the cage, picked a monkey still smaller, bowled it over and gave it a drubbing worse than the one he had sufiered—after which he seemed quite relaxed. The third monk crawled away, still whimpering, and found shelter in the arm of a female who had a still smaller one, a baby, on her back. The other monkeys paid no attention to any of it.

Mike threw back his head and laughed—and went on laughing, loudly and uncontrollably. He gasped for breath, tears came from his eyes; he started to tremble and sink to the floor, still laughing.

“Stop it, Mike!”

He did cease folding himself up but his guffaws and tears went on. An attendant hurried over. “Lady, do you need help?”

“No. Yes, I do. Can you call us a cab? Ground car, air cab, anything—I’ve got to get him out of here.” She added, “He’s not well.”