.. it's
always so _nice_. About me, I mean. Complimentary. Flattering."

"You were right the first time. And you seem to be able to say what
you mean very clearly."

Which was just the trouble. Not only able to, but unable not to. It
didn't take any special planning or remembering to say or act the
necessary lies to other humans. But Larry was the least alien person
I'd ever known. Dishonesty to him was like lying to myself. Playing a
role for him was pure schizophrenia.

Right then, I knew it was a mistake. I should never have made that
date, or at least not nearly so soon. But even as I thought that, I
had no more intention of cutting it short or backing out than I did of
going back to the ship the next day. I just tried not to talk too
much, and trusted to the certain knowledge that I was as important to
him as he was to me--so perhaps whatever mistakes I made, whatever I
said that sounded _wrong_, he would either accept or ignore or
forgive.

But of course you can't just sit all night and say nothing. And the
simplest things could trip me up. Like when he asked if I'd like to
dance, and all I had to say was "No, thanks," and instead, because I
_wanted_ to try it, I said, "I don't know how."

Or when he said something about going to a movie, and I agreed
enthusiastically, and he gave me a choice of three different ones that
he wanted to see ... "Oh, anyone," I told him. "You're easy to
please," he said, but he insisted on my making a choice. There was
something he called "an old-Astaire-Rogers," and something else that
was made in England, and one current American one with stars I'd seen
on television. I wanted to see either of the others. I could have said
so, or I could have named one, any one. Instead I heard myself
blurting out that I'd never been to a movie.

At that point, of course, he began to ask questions in earnest. And at
that point, schizoid or not, I had to lie. It was easier, though,
because I'd been thoroughly briefed in my story, for just such
emergencies as this--and because I could talk more or less
uninterruptedly, with only pertinent questions thrown in, and without
having to react so much to the emotional tensions between us.

I told him how my parents had died in an automobile accident when I
was a baby; how my two uncles had claimed me at the hospital; about
the old house up on the mountainside, and the convent school, and the
two old men who hated the evils of the world; about the de