The Gods Themselves

1a

Dua did not have much trouble leaving the others. She always expected trouble, but somehow it never came. Never real trouble.

But then why should it? Odeen objected in his lofty way. “Stay put,” he would say. “You know you annoy Tritt.” He never spoke of his own annoyance; Rationals didn’t grow annoyed over trifles. Still, he hovered over Tritt almost as persistently as Tritt hovered over the children.

But then Odeen always let her have her way if she were persistent enough, and would even intercede with Tritt. Sometimes he even admitted he was proud of her ability, of her independence. ... He wasn’t a bad left-ling, she thought with absent-minded affection.

Tritt was harder to handle and he had a sour way of looking at her when she was—well, when she was as she wished to be. But then right-lings were like that. He was a right-ling to her, but a Parental to the children and the latter took precedence always.... Which was good because she could always count on one child or the other taking him away just as things grew uncomfortable.

Still, Dua didn’t mind Tritt very much. Except for melting, she tended to ignore him. Odeen was another thing. He had been exciting at first; just his presence had made her outlines shimmer and fade. And the fact that he was a Rational made him all the more exciting somehow. She didn’t understand her reaction to that; it was part of her queerness. She had grown used to her queerness—almost.

Dua sighed.

When she was a child, when she still thought of herself as an individual, a single being, and not as part of a triad, she was much more aware of that queerness. She was much more made aware of it by the others. As little a thing as the surface at evening—

She had loved the surface at evening. The other Emotionals had called it cold and gloomy and had quivered and coalesced when she described it for them. They were ready enough to emerge in the warmth of midday and stretch and feed, but that was exactly what made the midday dull. She didn’t like to be around the twittering lot of them.

She had to eat, of course, but she liked it much better in the evening when there was very little food, but everything was dim, deep red, and she was alone. Of course, she described it as colder and more wistful than it was when she talked to the others in order to watch them grow hard-edged as they imagined the chill—or as hard-edged as young Emotionals could. After a while, they would whisper and laugh at her—and leave her alone.

The small sun was at the horizon now, with the secret ruddiness that she alone was there to see. She spread herself out laterally and thickened dorso-ventrally, absorbing the traces of thin warmth. She munched at it idly, savoring the slightly sour, substanceless taste of the long wave lengths. (She had never met another Emotional who would admit to liking it. But she could never explain that she associated it with freedom; freedom from the others, when she could be alone.)

Even now the loneliness, the chill, and the deep, deep red, brought back those old days before the triad; and even more, quite sharply, her own Parental, who would come lumbering after her, forever fearful that she would hurt herself.

He had been carefully devoted to her, as Parentals always were; to their little-mids more than to the other two, as always. It had annoyed her and she would dream of the day when he would leave her. Parentals always did eventually; and how she had missed him, when one day, he finally did.

He had come to tell her, just as carefully as he could, despite the difficulty Parentals had in putting their feelings into words. She had run from him that day; not in malice; not because she suspected what he had to tell her; but only out of joy. She had managed to find a special place at midday and had gorged herself in unexpected isolation and had been filled with a queer, itching sensation that demanded motion and activity. She had slithered over the rocks and had let her edges overlap theirs. It was something she knew to be a grossly improper action for anyone but a baby and yet it was something at once exciting and soothing.

And her Parental caught her at last and had stood before her, silent for a long time, making his eyes small and dense as though to stop every bit of light reflected from her; to see as much as he could of her; and for as long as possible.

At first, she just stared back with the confused thought that he had seen her rub through the rocks and was ashamed of her. But she caught no shame-aura and finally she said, very subdued, “What is it, Daddy?”

“Why, Dua, it’s the time. I’ve been expecting it. Surely you have.”

“What time?” Now that it was here, Dua stubbornly would not let herself know. If she refused to know, there would be nothing to know. (She never quite got out of that habit. Odeen said all Emotionals were like that, in the lofty voice he used sometimes when he was particularly overcome with the importance of being a Rational.)

Her Parental had said, “I must pass on. I will not be with you any more.” Then he just stood and looked at her, and she couldn’t say anything.

He said, “You will tell the others.”

“Why?” Dua turned away rebelliously, her outlines vague and growing vaguer, trying to dissipate. She wanted to dissipate altogether and of course she couldn’t. After a while, it hurt and cramped and she hardened again. Her Parental didn’t even bother to scold her and tell her that it would be shameful if anyone saw her stretched out so.

She said, “They won’t care,” and immediately felt sorrowful that her Parental would be hurt at that. He still called them “little-left” and “little-right,” but little-left was all involved with his studies and little-right kept talking about forming a triad. Dua was the only one of the three who still felt— Well, she was the youngest. Emotionals always were and with them it was different.

Her Parental only said, “You will tell them anyway.” And they stood looking at each other.

She didn’t want to tell them. They weren’t close any more. It had been different when they were all little. They could hardly tell themselves apart in those days; left-brother from right-brother from mid-sister. They were all wispy and would tangle with each other and roll through each other and hide in the walls.

No one ever minded that when they were little; none of the grown-ups. But then the brothers grew thick and sober and drew away. And when she complained to her Parental, he would only say gently, “You are too old to thin, Dua.”

She tried not to listen, but left-brother kept drawing away and would say, “Don’t snuggle; I have no time for you.” And right-brother began to stay quite hard all the time and became glum and silent. She didn’t understand it quite then and Daddy had not been able to make it clear. He would say every once in a while as though it were a lesson he had once learned—“Lefts are Rationals, Dua. Rights are Parentals. They grow up their own way.”

She didn’t like their way. They were no longer children and she still was, so she flocked with the other Emotionals. They all had the same complaints about their brothers. They all talked of coming triads. They all spread in the Sun and fed. They all grew more and more the same and every day the same things were said.

And she grew to detest them and went off by herself whenever she could, so that they left and called her “Left-Em.” (It had been a long time now since she had heard that call, but she never thought of that phrase without remembering perfectly the thin ragged voices that kept it up after her with a kind of half-wit persistence because they knew it hurt.)

But her Parental retained his interest in her even when it must have seemed to him that everyone else laughed at her. He tried, in his clumsy way, to shield her from the others. He followed her to the surface sometimes, even, though he hated it himself, in order to make sure she was safe.

She came upon him once, talking to a Hard One. It was hard for a Parental to talk to a Hard One; even though she was quite young, she knew that much. Hard Ones talked only to Rationals.

She was quite frightened and she wisped away but not before she had heard her Parental say, “I take good care of her, Hard-sir.”

Could the Hard One have inquired about her? About her queerness, perhaps. But her Parental had not been apologetic. Even to the Hard One, he had spoken of his concern for her. Dua felt an obscure pride.

But now he was leaving and suddenly all the independence that Dua had been looking forward to lost its fine shape and hardened into the pointed crag of loneliness. She said, “But why must you pass on?”

“I must, little mid-dear.”

He must. She knew that. Everyone, sooner or later, must. The day would come when she would have to sigh and say, “I must.”

“But what makes you know when you have to pass one? If you can choose your time, why don’t you choose a different time and stay longer?”

He said, “Your left-father has decided. The triad must do as he says.”

“Why must you do what he says?” She hardly ever saw her left-father or her mid-mother. They didn’t count any more. Only her right-father, her Parental, her daddy, who stood there squat and flat-surfaced. He wasn’t all smooth-curved like a Rational or shuddery uneven like an Emotional, and she could always tell what he was going to say. Almost always.

She was sure he would say, “I can’t explain to a little Emotional.”

He said it.

Dua said in a burst of woe, “I’ll miss you. I know you think I pay you no attention, and that I don’t like you for always telling me not to do things. But I would rather not like you for telling me not to do things, than not have you around to tell me not to do things.”

And Daddy just stood there. There was no way he could handle an outburst like that except to come closer and pinch out a hand. It cost him a visible effort, but he held it out trembling and its outlines were ever so slightly soft.

Dua said, “Oh, Daddy,” and let her own hand flow about it so that his looked misty and shimmery through her substance; but she was careful not to touch it for that would have embarrassed him so.

Then he withdrew it and left her hand enclosing nothing and he said, “Remember the Hard Ones, Dua. They will help you. I—I will go now.”

He went and she never saw him again.

Now she sat there, remembering in the sunset, and rebelliously aware that pretty soon Tritt would grow petulant over her absence and nag Odeen.

And then Odeen might lecture her on her duties.

She didn’t care.

1b

Odeen was moderately aware that Dua was off on the surface. Without really thinking about it, he could judge her direction and even something of her distance. If he had stopped to think of it, he might have felt displeasure, for this inter-awareness sense had been steadily deadening for a long time now and, without really being certain why, he had a sense of gathering fulfillment about it. It was the way things were supposed to be; the sign of the continuing development of the body with age.

Tritt’s inter-awareness sense did not decrease, but it shifted more and more toward the children. That was clearly the line of useful development, but then the role of the Parental was a simple one, in a manner of speaking, however important. The Rational was far more complex and Odeen took a bleak satisfaction in that thought.

Of course, it was Dua who was the real puzzle. She was so unlike all the other Emotionals. That puzzled and frustrated Tritt and reduced him to even more pronounced inarticulacy. It puzzled and frustrated Odeen at times, too, but he was also aware of Dua’s infinite capacity to induce satisfaction with life and it did not seem likely that one was independent of the other. The occasional exasperation she produced was a small price to pay for the intense happiness.

And maybe Dua’s odd way of life was part of what ought to be, too. The Hard Ones seemed interested in her and ordinarily they paid attention only to Rationals. He felt pride in that; so much the better for the triad that even the Emotional was worth attention.

Things were as they were supposed to be. That was bedrock, and it was what he wanted most to feel, right down to the end. Someday he would even know when it was time to pass on and then he would want to. The Hard Ones assured him of that, as they assured all Rationals, but they also told him that it was his own inner consciousness that would mark the time unmistakably, and not any advice from outside.

“When you tell yourself,” Losten had told him—in the clear, careful way in which a Hard One always talked to a Soft One, as though the Hard One were laboring to make himself understood, “that you know why you must pass on, then you will pass on, and your triad will pass on with you.”

And Odeen had said, “I cannot say I wish to pass on now, Hard-sir. There is so much to learn.”

“Of course, left-dear. You feel this because you are not yet ready.”

Odeen thought: How could I ever feel ready when I would never feel there wasn’t much to learn?

But he didn’t say so. He was quite certain the time would come and he would then understand.

He looked down at himself, almost forgetting and thrusting out an eye to do so—there were always some childish impulses in even the most adult of the most Rational. He didn’t have to, of course. He would sense quite well with his eye solidly in place, and he found himself satisfactorily solid; nice, sharp outline, smooth and Curved into gracefully conjoined ovoids.

His body lacked the strangely attractive shimmer of Dua, and the comforting stockiness of Tritt. He loved them both, but he would not change his own body for either. And, of course, his own mind. He would never say so, of course, for he would not want to hurt their feelings, but he never ceased being thankful that he did not have Tritt’s limited understanding or (even more) Dua’s erratic one. He supposed they didn’t mind for they knew nothing else.

He grew distantly aware of Dua again, and deliberately dulled the sense. At the moment, he felt no need for her. It was not that he wanted her less, but merely that he had increasing drives elsewhere. It was part of the growing maturity of a Rational to find more and more satisfaction in the exercise of a mind that could only be practiced alone, and with the Hard Ones.

He grew constantly more accustomed to the Hard Ones; constantly more attached to them. He felt that was right and proper, too, for he was a Rational and in a way the Hard Ones were super-Rationals. (He had once said that to Losten, the friendliest of the Hard Ones and, it seemed to Odeen in some vague way the youngest. Losten had radiated amusement but had said nothing. And that meant he had not denied it, however.)

Odeen’s earliest memories were filled with Hard Ones. His Parental more and more concentrated his attention on the last child, the baby-Emotional. That was only natural. Tritt would do it, too, when the last child came, if it ever did. (Odeen had picked up that last qualification from Tritt, who used it constantly as a reproach to Dua.)

But so much the better. With his Parental busy so much of the time, Odeen could begin his education that much the earlier. He was losing his baby ways and he had learned a great deal even before he met Tritt.

That meeting, though, was surely something he would never forget. It might as well have been yesterday as more than half a lifetime ago. He had seen Parentals of his own generation, of course; young ones who, long before they incubated the children that made true Parentals of them, showed few signs of the stolidity to come. As a child he had played with his own right-brother and was scarcely aware of any intellectual difference between them (though, looking back on those days, he recognized that it was there, even then).

He knew also, vaguely, the role of a Parental in a triad. Even as a child, he had whispered tales of melting.

When Tritt first appeared, when Odeen saw him first, everything changed. For the first time in his life, Odeen felt an inner warmth and began to think that there was something he wanted that was utterly divorced from thought. Even now, he could remember the sense of embarrassment that had accompanied this.

Tritt was not embarrassed, of course. Parentals were never embarrassed about the activities of the triad, and Emotionals were almost never embarrassed. Only Rationals had that problem.

“Too much thinking,” a Hard One had said when Odeen had discussed the problem with him and that left Odeen dissatisfied. In what way could thinking be “too much”?

Tritt was young when they first met, of course. He was still so childish as to be uncertain in his blockishness so that his reaction to the meeting was embarrassingly clear. He grew almost translucent along his edges.

Odeen said, hesitantly, “I haven’t seen you before, have I, right-fellow?”

Tritt said, “I have never been here. I have been brought here.”

They both knew exactly what had happened to them. The meeting had been arranged because someone (some Parental, Odeen had thought at the time, but later he knew it was some Hard One) thought they would suit each other, and the thought was correct.

There was no intellectual rapport between the two, of course. How could there be when Odeen wanted to learn with an intensity that superseded anything but the existence of the triad itself, and Tritt lacked the very concept of learning? What Tritt had to know, he knew beyond either learning or unlearning.

Odeen, out of the excitement of finding out about the world and its Sun; about the history and mechanism of life; about all the abouts in the Universe; sometimes (in those early days together) found himself spilling over to Tritt.

Tritt listened placidly, clearly understanding nothing, but content to be listening; while Odeen, transmitting nothing, was as clearly content to be lecturing.

It was Tritt who made the first move, driven by his special needs. Odeen was chattering about what he had learned that day after the brief midday meal. (Their thicker substance absorbed food so rapidly, they were satisfied with a simple walk in the Sun, while Emotionals basked for hours at a time, curling and thinning as though deliberately to lengthen the task.)

Odeen, who always ignored the Emotionals, was quite happy to be talking. Tritt, who stared wordlessly at them, day after day, was now visibly restless.

Abruptly, he came close to Odeen, formed an appendage so hastily as to clash most disagreeably on the other’s form-sense. He placed in upon a portion of Odeen’s upper ovoid where a slight shimmer was allowing a welcome draft of warm air as dessert. Tritt’s appendage thinned with a visible effort and sank into the superfices of Odeen’s skin before the latter darted away, horribly embarrassed.

Odeen had done such things as a baby, of course, but never since his adolescence. “Don’t do that, Tritt,” he said sharply.

Tritt’s appendage remained out, groping a little. “I want to.”

Odeen held himself as compactly as he could, striving to harden the surface to bar entry. “I don’t want to.”

“Why not?” said Tritt, urgently.

“There’s nothing wrong.” Odeen said the first thing that came into his mind. “It hurt.” (It didn’t really. Not physically. But the Hard Ones always avoided the touch of the Soft Ones. A careless interpenetration hurt them, but they were constructed differently from Soft Ones, completely differently.)

Tritt was not fooled by that. His instinct could not possibly mislead him in this respect. He said, “It didn’t hurt.”

“Well, it isn’t right this way. We need an Emotional.”

And Tritt could only say, stubbornly, “I want to, anyway.”

It was bound to continue happening, and Odeen was bound to give in. He always did; it was something that was sure to happen even to the most self-conscious Rational. As the old saying had it: Everyone either admitted doing it or lied about it.

Tritt was at him at each meeting after that; if not with an appendage, then rim to rim. And finally Odeen, seduced by the pleasure of it, began to help and tried to shine. He was better at that than Tritt was. Poor Tritt, infinitely more eager, huffed and strained, and could achieve only the barest shimmer here and there, patchily and raggedly.

Odeen, however, could run translucent all over his surface, and fought down his embarrassment in order to let himself flow against Tritt. There was skin-deep penetration and Odeen could feel the pulsing of Tritt’s hard surface under the skin. There was enjoyment, riddled with guilt.

Tritt, as often as not, was tired and vaguely angry when it was all over.

Odeen said, “Now, Tritt, I’ve told you we need an Emotional to do this properly. You can’t be angry at something that just is.”

And Tritt said, “Let’s get an Emotional.”

Let’s get an Emotional! Tritt’s simple drives never led him to anything but direct action. Odeen was not sure he could explain the complexities of life to the other. “It’s not that easy, right-ling,” he began gently.

Tritt said abruptly. “The Hard Ones can do it. You’re friendly with them. Ask them.”

Odeen was horrified. “I can’t ask. The time,” he continued, unconsciously falling into his lecturing voice, “is not yet come, or I would certainly know it. Until such time—” Tritt was not listening. He said, “I’ll ask.”

“No,” said Odeen, horrified. “You stay out of it. I tell you it’s not time. I have an education to worry about. It’s very easy to be a Parental and not to have to know anything but—”

He was sorry the instant he had said it and it was a lie anyway. He just didn’t want to do anything at all that might offend the Hard Ones and impede his useful relationship with them. Tritt, however, showed no signs of minding and it occurred to Odeen that the other saw no point or merit in knowing anything he did not already know and would not consider the statement of the fact an insult.

The problem of the Emotional kept coming up, though. Occasionally, they tried interpenetration. In fact, the impulse grew stronger with time. It was never truly satisfying though it had its pleasure and each time Tritt would demand an Emotional. Each time, Odeen threw himself deeper into his studies, almost as a defense against the problem.

Yet at times, he was almost tempted to speak to Losten about it.

Losten was the Hard One he knew best; the one who took the greatest personal interest in him. There was a deadly sameness about the Hard Ones, because they did not change; they never changed; their form was fixed. Where there eyes were they always were, and always in the same place for all of them. Their skin was not exactly hard, but it was always opaque, never shimmered, never vague, never penetrable by another skin of its own type.

They were not larger in size, particularly, than the Soft Ones, but they were heavier. Their substance was much denser and they had to be careful about the yielding tissues of the Soft Ones.

Once when he had been little, really little and his body had flowed almost as freely as his sister’s, he had been approached by a Hard One. He had never known which one it was, but he learned in later life that they were all of them curious about baby-Rationals. Odeen had reached up for the Hard One, out of nothing but curiosity. The Hard One had sprung backward and later Odeen’s Parental had scolded him for offering to touch a Hard One.

The scolding had been harsh enough for Odeen never to forget. When he was older he learned that the close-packed atoms of the Hard One’s tissues felt pain on the forcible penetration of others. Odeen wondered if the Soft One felt pain, too. Another young Rational once told him that he had stumbled against a Hard One and the Hard One had doubled up but that he himself had felt nothing —but Odeen wasn’t sure this was not just a melodramatic boast.

There were other things he could not do. He liked rubbing against the walls of the cavern. There was a pleasant, warm feeling when he allowed himself to penetrate rock. Babies always did it, but it got harder to do as he grew older. Still, he could do it skin-deep and he liked it, but his Parental found him doing it and scolded him. He objected that his sister did it all the time; he had seen her.

“That’s different,” said the Parental. “She’s an Emotional.”

At another time, when Odeen was absorbing a recording—he was older then—he had idly formed a couple of projections and made the tips so thin, he could pass one through the other. He began to do it regularly when he listened. There was a pleasant tickling sensation that made it easier to listen and made him nicely sleepy afterward.

And his Parental caught him at that, too, and what he had said still made Odeen uncomfortable in remembering it.

No one really told him about melting in those days. They fed him knowledge and educated him about everything except what the triad was all about. Tritt had never been told, either, but he was a Parental so he knew without being told. Of course, when Dua came at last, all was clear, even though she seemed to know less about it even than Odeen.

But she didn’t come to them because of anything Odeen did. It was Tritt who broached the matter; Tritt, who ordinarily feared the Hard Ones and avoided them mutely; Tritt, who lacked Odeen’s self-assurance, in all but this respect; Tritt, who on this one subject was driven; Tritt—Tritt—Tritt—

Odeen signed. Tritt was invading his thoughts, because Tritt was coming. He could feel him, harsh, demanding, always demanding. Odeen had so little time to himself these days, just when he felt that he needed to think more than ever, to straighten out all the thoughts—

“Yes, Tritt,” he said.

1c

Tritt was conscious of his blockiness. He didn’t think it ugly. He didn’t think about it at all. If he did, he would consider it beautiful. His body was designed for a purpose and designed well.

He said, “Odeen, where is Dua?”

“Outside somewhere,” mumbled Odeen, almost as though he didn’t care. It annoyed Tritt to have the triad made so little of. Dua was so difficult and Odeen didn’t care.

“Why do you let her go?”

“How can I stop her, Tritt? And what harm does it do?”

“You know the harm. We have two babies. We need a third. It is so hard to make a little-mid these days. Dua must be well fed for it to be made. Now she is wandering about at Sunset again. How can she feed properly at Sunset?”

“She’s just not a great feeder.”

“And we just don’t have a little-mid. Odeen,” Tritt’s voice was caressing, “how can I love you properly without Dua?”

“Now, then,” mumbled Odeen, and Tritt felt himself once more puzzled by the other’s clear embarrassment at the simplest statement of fact.

Tritt said, “Remember, I was the one who first got Dua.” Did Odeen remember that? Did Odeen ever think of the triad and what it meant? Sometimes Tritt felt so frustrated he could—he could— Actually, he didn’t know what to do, but he knew he felt frustrated. As in those old days when he wanted an Emotional and Odeen would do nothing.

Tritt knew he didn’t have the trick of talking in big, elaborate sentences. But if Parentals didn’t talk, they thought. They thought about important things. Odeen always talked about atoms and energy. Who cared about atoms and energy? Tritt thought about the triad and the babies.

Odeen had once told him that the numbers of Soft Ones were gradually growing fewer. Didn’t he care? Didn’t the Hard Ones care? Did anyone care but the Parentals?

Only two forms of life on all the world, the Soft Ones and the Hard Ones. And food shining down on them.

Odeen had once told him the Sun was cooling off. There was less food, he said, so there were less people. Tritt didn’t believe it. The Sun felt no cooler than it had when he was a baby. It was just that people weren’t worrying about the triads any more. Too many absorbed Rationals; too many silly Emotionals.

What the Soft Ones must do was concentrate on the important things of life. Tritt did. He tended to the business of the triad. The baby-left came, then the baby-right. They were growing and flourishing. They had to have a baby-mid, though. That was the hardest to get started and without a baby-mid there would be no new triad.

What made Dua as she was? She had always been difficult, but she was growing worse.

Tritt felt an obscure anger against Odeen. Odeen always talked with all those hard words. And Dua listened. Odeen would talk to Dua endlessly till they were almost two Rationals. That was bad for the triad.

Odeen should know better.

It was always Tritt who had to care. It was always Tritt who had to do what had to be done. Odeen was the friend of the Hard Ones and yet he said nothing. They needed an Emotional and yet Odeen would say nothing. Odeen talked to them of energy and not of the needs of the triad.

It had been Tritt who had turned the scale. Tritt remembered that proudly. He had seen Odeen talking to a Hard One and he had approached. Without a shake in his voice, he had interrupted and said, “We need an Emotional.”

The Hard One turned to look at him. Tritt had never been so close to a Hard One. He was all of a piece. Every part of him had to turn when one part did. He had some projections that could move by themselves, but they never changed in shape. They never flowed and were irregular and unlovely. They didn’t like to be touched.

The Hard One said, “Is this so, Odeen?” He did not talk to Tritt.

Odeen flattened. He flattened close to the ground; more flattened than Tritt had ever seen. He said, “My right-ling is over-zealous. My right-ling is—is—” He stuttered and puffed and could not speak.

Tritt could speak. He said, “We cannot melt without one.”

Tritt knew that Odeen was embarrassed into speech-lessness but he didn’t care. It was time.

“Well, left-dear,” said the Hard One to Odeen, “do you feel the same way about it?” Hard Ones spoke as the Soft Ones did, but more harshly and with fewer overtones. They were hard to listen to. Tritt found them hard, anyway, though Odeen seemed used to it.

“Yes,” said Odeen, finally.

The Hard One turned at last to Tritt. “Remind me, young-right. How long have you and Odeen been together?”

“Long enough,” said Tritt, “to deserve an Emotional.” He kept his shape firmly at angles. He did not allow himself to be frightened. This was too important. He said, “And my name is Tritt.”

The Hard One seemed amused. “Yes, the choice was good. You and Odeen go well together, but it makes the choice of an Emotional difficult. We have almost made up our minds. Or at least I have long since made up my mind, but the others must be convinced. Be patient, Tritt.”

“I am tired of patience.”

“I know, but be patient, anyway.” He was amused again.

When he was quite gone, Odeen uplifted himself and thinned out angrily. He said, “How could you do that, Tritt? Do you know who he was?”

“He was a Hard One.”

“He was Losten. He is my special teacher. I don’t want him angry with me.”

“Why should he be angry? I was polite.”

“Well, never mind.” Odeen was settling into normal shape. That meant he wasn’t angry any more. (That relieved Tritt though he tried not to show it.) “It’s very embarrassing to have my dumb-right come up and speak out to my Hard One.”

“Why didn’t you do it, then?”

“There’s such a thing as the right time.”

“But never’s the right time to you.”

But then they rubbed surfaces and stopped arguing and it wasn’t long after that that Dua came.

It was Losten that brought her. Tritt didn’t know that; he didn’t look at the Hard One. Only at Dua. But Odeen told him afterward that it was Losten that brought her.

“You see?” said Tritt. “It was I who talked to him. That is why he brought her.”

“No,” said Odeen. “It was time. He would have brought her even if neither of us had talked to him.”

Tritt didn’t believe him. He was quite sure that it was entirely because of himself that Dua was with them.

Surely, there was never anyone like Dua in the world. Tritt had seen many Emotionals. They were all attractive. He would have accepted any one of them for proper melting. Once he saw Dua, he realized that none of the others would have suited. Only Dua. Only Dua.

And Dua knew exactly what to do. Exactly. No one had ever shown her how, she told them afterward. No one had ever talked to her about it. Even other Emotionals hadn’t, for she avoided them.

Yet when all three were together, each knew what to do.

Dua thinned. She thinned more than Tritt had ever seen a person thin. She thinned more than Tritt would ever have thought possible. She became a kind of colored smoke that filled the room and dazzled him. He moved without knowing he was moving. He immersed himself in the air that was Dua.

There was no sensation of penetration, none at all. Tritt felt no resistance, no friction. There was just a floating inward and a rapid palpitation. He felt himself beginning to thin in sympathy, and without the tremendous effort that had always accompanied it. With Dua filling him, he could thin without effort into a thick smoke of his own. Thinning became like flowing, one enormous smooth flow.

Dimly, he could see Odeen approaching from the other side, from Dua’s left. And he, too, was thinning.

Then, like all the shocks of contact in all the world, he reached Odeen. But it wasn’t a shock at all. Tritt felt without feeling, knew without knowing. He slid into Odeen and Odeen slid into him. He couldn’t tell whether he was surrounding Odeen or being surrounded by him or both or neither.

It was only—pleasure.

The senses dimmed with the intensity of that pleasure and at the point where he thought he could stand no more, the senses failed altogether.

Eventually, they separated and stared at each other. They had melted for days. Of course, melting always took time. The better it was the longer it took, though when it was over all that time seemed as though it had been an instant and they did not remember it. In later life, it rarely took longer than that first time.

Odeen said, “That was wonderful.”

Tritt only gazed at Dua, who had made it possible.

She was coalescing, swirling, moving tremulously. She seemed most affected of the three.

“We’ll do it again,” she said, hurriedly, “but later, later. Let me go now.”

She had run off. They did not stop her. They were too overcome to stop her. But that was always the way afterward. She was always gone after a melting. No matter how successful it was, she would go. There seemed something in her that needed to be alone.

It bothered Tritt. In point after point, she was different from other Emotionals. She shouldn’t be.

Odeen felt differently. He would say on many occasions, “Why don’t you leave her alone, Tritt? She’s not like the others and that means she’s better than the others. Melting wouldn’t be as good if she were like the others. Do you want the benefits without paying the price?”

Tritt did not understand that clearly. He knew only that she ought to do what ought to be done. He said, “I want her to do what is right.”

“I know, Tritt, I know. But leave her alone, anyway.”

Odeen often scolded Dua himself for her queer ways but was always unwilling to let Tritt do so. “You lack tact, Tritt,” he would say. Tritt didn’t know what tact was exactly.

And now— It had been so long since the first melting and still the baby-Emotional was not born. How much longer? It was already much too long. And Dua, if anything, stayed by herself more and more as time went on.

Tritt said. “She doesn’t eat enough.”

“When it’s time—” began Odeen.

“You always talk about it’s being time or it’s not being time. You never found it time to get Dua in the first place. Now you never find it time to have a baby-Emotional. Dua should—”

But Odeen turned away. He said, “She’s out there, Tritt. If you want to go out and get her, as though you were her Parental instead of her right-ling, do so. But I say, leave her alone.”

Tritt backed away. He had a great deal to say, but he didn’t know how to say it.

2a

Dua was aware of the left-right agitation concerning her in a dim and faraway manner and her rebelliousness grew.

If one or the other, or both, came to get her, it would end in a melting and she raged against the thought. It was all Tritt knew, except for the children; all Tritt wanted, except for the third and last child; and it was all involved with the children and the still missing child. And when Tritt wanted a melting, he got it.

Tritt dominated the triad when he grew stubborn. He would hold on to some simple idea and never let go and in the end Odeen and Dua would have to give in. Yet now she wouldn’t give in; she wouldn’t—

She didn’t feel disloyal at the thought, either. She never expected to feel for either Odeen or Tritt the sheer intensity of longing they felt for each other. She could melt alone; they could melt only through her mediation (so why didn’t that make her the more regarded). She felt intense pleasure at the three-way melting; of course she did, it would be stupid to deny it; but it was a pleasure akin to that which she felt when she passed through a rock wall, as she sometimes secretly did. To Tritt and Odeen, the pleasure was like nothing else they had ever experienced or could ever experience.

No, wait. Odeen had the pleasure of learning, of what he called intellectual development. Dua felt some of that at times, enough to know what it might mean; and though it was different from melting, it might serve as a substitute, at least to the point where Odeen could do without melting sometimes.

But not so, Tritt. For him there was only melting and the children. Only. And when his small mind bent entirely upon that, Odeen would give in, and then Dua would have to.

Once she had rebelled. “But what happens when we melt? It’s hours, days sometimes, before we come out of it. What happens all that time?”

Tritt had looked outraged at that. “It’s always that way. It’s got to be.”

“I don’t like anything that’s got to be. I want to know why.”

Odeen had looked embarrassed. He spent half his life being embarrassed. He said, “Now, Dua, it does have to be. On account of—children,” He seemed to pulse, as he said the word.

“Well, don’t pulse,” said Dua, sharply. “We’re grown now and we’ve melted I don’t know how many times and we all know it’s so we can have children. You might as well say so. Why does it take so long, that’s all?”

“Because it’s a complicated process,” said Odeen, still pulsing. “Because it takes energy. Dua, it takes a long time to get a child started and even when we take a long time, it doesn’t always get started. And it’s getting worse.... Not just with us,” he added hastily.

“Worse?” said Tritt anxiously, but Odeen would say no more.

They had a child eventually, a baby-Rational, a left-let, that flitted and thinned so that all three were in raptures and even Odeen would hold it and let it change shape in his hands for as long as Tritt would allow him to. For it was Tritt, of course, who had actually incubated it through the long pre-forming; Tritt who had separated from it when it assumed independent existence; and Tritt who cared for it at all times.

After that, Tritt was often not with them and Dua was oddly pleased. Tritt’s obsession annoyed her, but Odeen’s —oddly—pleased her. She became increasingly aware of his—importance. There was something to being a Rational that made it possible to answer questions, and somehow Dua had questions for him constantly. He was readier to answer when Tritt was not present.

“Why does it take so long, Odeen? I don’t like to melt and then not know what’s happening for days at a time.”

“We’re perfectly safe, Dua,” said Odeen, earnestly. “Come, nothing has ever happened to us, has it? You’ve never heard of anything ever happening to any other triad, have you? Besides, you shouldn’t ask questions.”

“Because I’m an Emotional? Because other Emotionals don’t ask questions?—I can’t stand other Emotionals, if you want to know, and I do want to ask questions.”

She was perfectly aware that Odeen was looking at her as though he had never seen anyone as attractive and that if Tritt had been present, melting would have taken place at once. She even let herself thin out; not much, but perceptibly, in deliberate coquettishness.

Odeen said, “But you might not understand the implications, Dua. It takes a great deal of energy to initiate a new spark of life.”

“You’ve often mentioned energy. What is it? Exactly.”

“Why, what we eat.”

“Well, then, why don’t you say food.”

“Because food and energy aren’t quite the same thing. Our food comes from the Sun and that’s a kind of energy, but there are other kinds of energy that are not food. When we eat, we’ve got to spread out and absorb the light. It’s hardest for Emotionals because they’re much more transparent; that is, the light tends to pass through instead of being absorbed—”

It was wonderful to have it explained, Dua thought. What she was told, she really knew; but she didn’t know the proper words; the long science-words that Odeen knew. And it made sharper and more meaningful everything that happened.

Occasionally now, in adult life, when she no longer feared that childish teasing; when she shared in the prestige of being part of the Odeen-triad; she tried to swarm with other Emotionals and to withstand the chatter and the crowding. After all, she did occasionally feel like a more substantial meal than she usually got and it did make for better melting. There was a joy—sometimes she almost caught the pleasure the others got out of it—in slithering and maneuvering for exposure to Sunlight; in the luxurious contraction and condensation to absorb the warmth through greater thickness with greater efficiency.

Yet for Dua a little of that went quite a way and the others never seemed to have enough. There was a kind of gluttonous wiggle about them that Dua could not duplicate and that, at length, she could not endure.

That was why Rationals and Parentals were so rarely on the surface. Their thickness made it possible for them to eat quickly and leave. Emotionals writhed in the Sun for hours, for though they ate more slowly, they actually needed more energy than the others—at least for melting.

The Emotional supplied the energy, Odeen had explained (pulsing so that his signals were barely understood), the Rational the seed, the Parental the incubator.

Once Dua understood that, a certain amusement began to blend with her disapproval when she watched the other Emotionals virtually slurp up the ruddy Sunlight. Since they never asked questions, she was sure they didn’t know why they did it and couldn’t understand that there was an obscene side to their quivering condensations, or to the way in which they went tittering down below eventually—on their way to a good melt, of course, with lots of energy to spare.

She could also stand Tritt’s annoyance when she would come down without that swirling opacity that meant a good gorging. Yet why should they complain? The thinness she retained meant a defter melting. Not as sloppy and glutinous as the other triads managed, perhaps, but it was the ethereality that counted, she felt sure. And the little-left and little-right came eventually, didn’t they?

Of course, it was the baby-Emotional, the little-mid, that was the crux. That took more energy than the other two and Dua never had enough.

Even Odeen was beginning to mention it. “You’re not getting enough Sunlight, Dua.”

“Yes I am,” said Dua, hastily.

“Genia’s triad,” said Odeen, “has just initiated an Emotional.”

Dua didn’t like Genia. She never had. She was emptyheaded even by Emotional standards. Dua said, loftily, “I suppose she’s boasting about it. She has no delicacy. I suppose she’s saying, ‘I shouldn’t mention it, my dear, but you’ll never guess what my left-ling and right-ling have gone and went and done—’ ” She imitated Genia’s tremulous signaling with deadly accuracy and Odeen was amused.

But then he said, “Genia may be a dunder, but she has initiated an Emotional, and Tritt is upset about it. We’ve been at it for much longer than they have—”

Dua turned away. “I get all the Sun I can stand. I do it till I’m too full to move. I don’t know what you want of me.”

Odeen said, “Don’t be angry. I promised Tritt I would talk to you. He thinks you listen to me—”

“Oh, Tritt just thinks it’s odd that you explain science to me. He doesn’t understand— Do you want a mid-ling like the others?”

“No,” said Odeen, seriously. “You’re not like the others, and I’m glad of it. And if you’re interested in Rational-talk, then let me explain something. The Sun doesn’t supply the food it used to in ancient times. The light-energy is less; and it takes longer exposures. The birth rate has been dropping for ages and the world’s population is only a fraction of what it once was.”

“I can’t help it,” said Dua, rebelliously.

“The Hard Ones may be able to. Their numbers have been decreasing, too—”

“Do they pass on?” Dua was suddenly interested. She always thought they were immortal somehow; that they weren’t born; that they didn’t die. Who had ever seen a baby Hard One, for instance? They didn’t have babies. They didn’t melt. They didn’t eat.

Odeen said, thoughtfully, “I imagine they pass on. They never talk about themselves to me. I’m not even sure how they eat, but of course they must. And be born. There’s a new one, for instance; I haven’t seen him yet— But never mind that. The point is that they’ve been developing an artificial food—”

“I know,” said Dua. “I’ve tasted it.”

“You have? I didn’t know that!”

“A bunch of the Emotionals talked about it. They said a Hard One was asking for volunteers to taste it and the sillies were all afraid. They said it would probably turn them permanently hard and they would never be able to melt again.”

“That’s foolish,” said Odeen, vehemently.

“I know. So I volunteered. That shut them up. They are so hard to endure, Odeen.”

“How was it?”

“Horrible,” said Dua, vehemently. “Harsh and bitter. Of course I didn’t tell the other Emotionals that.”

Odeen said, “I tasted it. It wasn’t that bad.”

“Rationals and Parentals don’t care what food tastes like.”

But Odeen said, “It’s still only experimental. They’re working hard on improvements, the Hard Ones are. Especially Estwald—that’s the one I mentioned before, the new one I haven’t seen—he’s working on it. Losten speaks of him now and then as though he’s something special; a very great scientist.”

“How is it you’ve never seen him?”

“I’m just a Soft One. You don’t suppose they show me and tell me everything, do you? Someday I’ll see him, I suppose. He’s developed a new energy-source which may save us all yet—”

“I don’t want artificial food,” said Dua, and she had left Odeen abruptly.

That had been not so long ago, and Odeen had not mentioned this Estwald again, but she knew he would, and she brooded about it up here in the Sunset.

She had seen that artificial food that once; a glowing sphere of light, like a tiny Sun, in a special cavern set up by the Hard Ones. She could taste its bitterness yet.

Would they improve it? Would they make it taste better? Even delicious? And would she have to eat it then and fill herself with it till the full sensation gave her an almost uncontrollable desire to melt?

She feared that self-generating desire. It was different when the desire came through the hectic combined stimulation of left-ling and right-ling. It was the self-generation that meant she would be ripe to bring about the initiation of a little-mid. And—and she didn’t want to!

It was a long time before she would admit the truth to herself. She didn’t want to initiate an Emotional! It was after the three children were all born that the time would inevitably come to pass on, and she didn’t want to. She remembered the day her Parental had left her forever, and it was never going to be like that for her. Of that she was fiercely determined.

The other Emotionals didn’t care because they were too empty to think about it, but she was different. She was queer Dua, the Left-Em; that was what they had called her; and she would be different. As long as she didn’t have that third child, she would not pass on; she would continue to live.

So she wasn’t going to have that third child. Never. Never!

But how was she going to stave it off? And how would she keep Odeen from finding out? What if Odeen found out?

2b

Odeen waited for Tritt to do something. He was reasonably sure that Tritt would not actually go up to the surface after Dua. It would mean leaving the children and that was always hard for Tritt to do. Tritt waited, without speaking for a while, and when he left, it was in the direction of the children’s alcove.

Odeen was almost glad when Tritt left. Not quite, of course, for Tritt had been angry and withdrawn so that interpersonal contact had weakened and the barrier of displeasure had arisen. Odeen could not help but be melancholy at that. It was like the slowing of the life-pulse. He sometimes wondered if Tritt felt it, too.... No, that was unfair. Tritt had the special relationship with the children.

And as for Dua, who could tell what Dua felt? Who could tell what any Emotional felt? They were so different they made left and right seem alike in everything but mind. But even allowing for the erratic way of Emotionals, who could tell what Dua—especially Dua—felt?

That was why Odeen managed to be almost glad when Tritt left, for Dua was the question. The delay in initiating the third child was indeed becoming too long and Dua was growing less amenable to persuasion, not more. There was a growing restlessness in Odeen himself, that he could not quite identify, and it was something he would have to discuss with Losten.

He made his way down to the Hard-caverns, hastening his movements into a continuous flow that was not nearly as undignified as the oddly exciting mixture of wavering and rushing that marked the Emotional curve-along, or as amusing as the stolid weight-shift of the Parental—

(He had the keen thought-image of Tritt clumping in pursuit of the baby-Rational, who, of course, was almost as slippery, at his age, as an Emotional, and of Dua having to block the baby and bring him back, and of Tritt cluckingly undecided whether to shake the small life-object or enfold him with his substance. From the start, Tritt could thin himself more effectively for the babies than for Odeen and when Odeen rallied him about that, Tritt answered gravely, for of course he had no humor about such things, “Ah, but the children need it more.”)

Odeen was selfishly pleased with his own flow and thought it graceful and impressive. He had mentioned that once to Losten, to whom as his Hard-teacher, he confessed everything, and Losten had said, “But don’t you think an Emotional or a Parental feels the same about his own flow-pattern? If each of you think differently and act differently, ought you not to be pleased differently? A triad doesn’t preclude individuality, you know.”

Odeen wasn’t sure he understood about individuality. Did that mean being alone? A Hard One was alone, of course. There were no triads among them. How did they stand it?

Odeen had still been quite young when the matter had come up. His relationship with the Hard Ones had only been beginning, and it suddenly struck him that he wasn’t sure that there were no triads among them. That fact was common legend among the Soft Ones, but how correct was the legend? Odeen thought about that and decided one must ask and not accept matters on faith.

Odeen had said, “Are you a left or a right, sir?” (In later times, Odeen pulsed at the memory of that question. How incredibly naive to have asked it, and it was very little comfort that every Rational asked the question of a Hard One in some fashion, sooner or later—usually sooner.)

Losten answered quite calmly, “Neither, little-left. There are no lefts or rights among the Hard Ones.”

“Or mid-1— Emotionals?”

“Or mid-lings?” And the Hard One changed the shape of his permanent sensory region in a fashion that Odeen eventually associated with amusement or pleasure. “No. No mid-lings either. Just Hard Ones of one kind.”

Odeen had to ask. It came out involuntarily, quite against his desire. “But how do you stand it?”

“It is different with us, little-left. We are used to it.”

Could Odeen be used to such a thing? There was the Parental triad that had filled his life so far and the sure knowledge that he would at some not-too-distant time form a triad of his own. What was life without that? He thought about it hard now and then. He thought about everything hard, as it came up. Sometimes he managed to catch a glimpse of what it might mean. That Hard Ones had only themselves; neither left-brother, nor right-brother, nor mid-sister, nor melting, nor children, nor Parentals. They had only the mind, only the inquiry into the Universe.

Perhaps that was enough for them. As Odeen grew older, he caught bits of understanding as to the joys of inquiry. They were almost enough—almost enough—and then he would think of Tritt and of Dua and decide that even all the Universe beside was not quite enough.

Unless— It was odd, but every once in a while it seemed that there might come a time, a situation, a condition, when— Then he would lose the momentary glimpse, or, rather, glimpse of a glimpse, and miss it all. Yet in time it would return and lately he thought it grew stronger and would remain almost long enough to be caught.

But none of that was what should involve him now. He had to see about Dua. He made his way along the well-known route, along which he had first been taken by his Parental (as Tritt would soon take their own young Rational, their own baby-left.)

And, of course, he was instantly lost in memory again.

It had been frightening, then. There had been other young Rationals, all pulsing and shimmering and changing shape, despite the Parental signals on every side to stay firm and smooth and not disgrace the triad. One small left, a playmate of Odeen, had, in fact, flattened thin, baby-fashion, and would not unflatten, despite all the efforts of his horribly embarrassed Parental. (He had since become a perfectly normal student.... Though no Odeen, as Odeen himself could not help realizing with considerable complacency.)

They met a number of Hard Ones on that first day of school. They stopped at each, in order that the young-Rational vibration pattern might be recorded in several specialized ways and for a decision to be reached as to whether to accept them for instruction then, or to wait another interval; and if then, for what kind of instruction.

Odeen, in a desperate effort, had drawn himself smooth as a Hard One approached, and held himself unwavering.

The Hard One said (and the first sound of the odd tones of his voice almost undid Odeen’s determination to be grown-up), “This is quite a firm-held Rational. How do you represent yourself, left?”

It was the first time Odeen had ever been called “left” instead of in the form of some diminutive, and he felt firmer than ever as he managed to say, “Odeen, Hard-sir,” using the polite address his Parental had carefully taught him.

Dimly, Odeen remembered being taken through the Hard-caverns, with their equipment, their machinery, their libraries, their meaningless, crowding sights and sounds. More than the actual sense perceptions, he remembered his inner feeling of despair. What would they do with him? His Parental had told him that he would learn, but he didn’t know what was really meant by “learn” and when he asked his Parental, it turned out that the older one didn’t know either.

It took him a while to find out and the experience was pleasurable, so pleasurable, and yet not without its worrisome aspects.

The Hard One who had first called him “left” was his first teacher. The Hard One taught him to interpret the wave recordings so that after a while what seemed an incomprehensible code became words; words just as clear as those he could form with his own vibrations.

But then that first one didn’t appear any more and another Hard One took over. It was a time before Odeen noticed. It was difficult in those early days to tell one Hard One from another, to differentiate among their voices. But then he grew certain. Little by little, he grew certain and he trembled at the change. He didn’t understand its significance.

He gathered courage and finally asked, “Where is my teacher, Hard-sir?”

“Gamaldan? ... He will no longer be with you, left.” Odeen was speechless for a moment. Then he said, “But Hard Ones don’t pass on—” He did not quite finish the phrase. It choked off.

The new Hard One was passive, said nothing, volunteered nothing.

It was always to be like that, Odeen found out. They never talked about themselves. On every other subject they discoursed freely. Concerning themselves—nothing.

From dozens of pieces of evidence, Odeen could not help but decide that Hard Ones passed on; that they were not immortal (something so many Soft Ones took for granted). Yet no Hard One ever said as much. Odeen and the other student-Rationals sometimes discussed it, hesitantly, uneasily. Each brought in some small item that pointed inexorably to mortality of the Hard Ones and wondered and did not like to conclude the obvious, so they let it go.

The Hard Ones did not seem to mind that hints of mortality existed. They did nothing to mask it. But they never mentioned it, either. And if the question was asked directly (sometimes it was, inevitably) they never answered; neither denying nor affirming.

And if they passed on, they had to be born also, yet they said nothing of that and Odeen never saw a young Hard One.

Odeen believed the Hard Ones got their energy from rocks instead of from the Sun—at least that they incorporated a powdered black rock into their bodies. Some of the other students thought so, too. Others, rather vehemently, refused to accept that. Nor could they come to a conclusion for no one ever saw them feeding in any way and the Hard Ones never spoke of that either.

In the end, Odeen took their reticence for granted—as part of themselves. Perhaps, he thought, it was their individuality, the fact that they formed no triads. It built a shell about them.

And then, too, Odeen learned things of such grave import that questions concerning the private life of the Hard Ones turned to trivia in any case. He learned, for instance, that the whole world was shriveling—dwindling—

It was Losten, the new teacher, who told him that.

Odeen had asked about the unoccupied caverns that stretched so endlessly into the bowels of the world and Losten had seemed pleased. “Are you afraid to ask about that, Odeen?”

(He was Odeen now; not some general reference to his left-hood. It was always a source of pride to hear a Hard One address him by personal name. Many did so. Odeen was a prodigy of understanding and the use of his name seemed a recognition of the fact. More than once Losten had expressed satisfaction at having him as a pupil.)

Odeen was indeed afraid and, after some hesitation, said so. It was always easier to confess shortcomings to the Hard Ones than to fellow-Rationals; much easier than to confess them to Tritt, unthinkable to confess them to Tritt.... Those were the days before Dua.

“Then why do you ask?”

Odeen hesitated again. Then he said slowly. “I’m afraid of the unoccupied caverns because when I was young I was told they had all sorts of monstrous things in them. But I know nothing of that directly; I only know what I have been told by other young ones who couldn’t have known directly either, I want to find out the truth about them and the wanting has grown until there is more of curiosity in me than fear.”

Losten looked pleased. “Good! The curiosity is useful, the fear useless. Your inner development is excellent, Odeen, and remember it is only your inner development that counts in the important things. Our help to you is marginal. Since you want to know, it is easy to tell you that the unoccupied caverns are truly unoccupied. They are empty. There is nothing in them but the unimportant things left behind in times past.”

“Left behind by whom, Hard-sir?” Odeen felt uneasily compelled to use the honorific whenever he was too obviously in the presence of knowledge he lacked that the other had.

“By those who occupied them in times past. There was a time thousands of cycles ago when there were many thousands of Hard Ones and millions of Soft Ones. There are fewer of us now than there were in the past, Odeen. Nowadays there are not quite three hundred Hard Ones and fewer than ten thousand Soft Ones.”

“Why?” said Odeen, shocked. (Only three hundred Hard Ones left. This was surely an open admission that Hard Ones passed on, but this was not the time to think of that.)

“Because energy is diminishing. The Sun is cooling. It becomes harder in every cycle to give birth and to live.”

(Well, then, did not that mean the Hard Ones gave birth, too? And did it mean that the Hard Ones depended on the Sun for food, too, and not on rocks? Odeen filed the thought away and dismissed it for now.)

“Will this continue?” Odeen asked.

“The Sun must dwindle to an end, Odeen, and someday give no food.”

“Does that mean that all of us, the Hard Ones and the Soft Ones, too, will pass on?”

“What else can it mean?”

“We can’t all pass on. If we need energy and the Sun is coming to an end, we must find other sources. Other stars.”

“But, Odeen, all the stars are coming to an end. The Universe is coming to an end.”

“If the stars come to an end, is there no food elsewhere? No other source of energy?”

“No, all the energy-sources in all the Universe are coming to an end.”

Odeen considered that rebelliously, then said, “Then other Universes. We can’t give up just because the Universe does.” He was palpitating as he said it. He had expanded with quite unforgivable discourtesy until he had swelled translucently into a size distinctly larger than the Hard One.

But Losten merely expressed extreme pleasure. He said, “Wonderful, my left-dear. The others must hear of this.”

Odeen had collapsed to normal size in mingled embarrassment and pleasure at hearing himself addressed as “left-dear,” a phrase he had never heard anyone use to him—except Tritt, of course.

It had not been very long after that that Losten himself had brought them Dua. Odeen had wondered, idly, if there had been any connection, but after a while wonder burned itself out. Tritt had repeated so often that it was his own approach to Losten that had brought them Dua, that Odeen gave up thinking about it. It was too confusing.

But now he was coming to Losten again. A long time had passed since those earlier days when he first learned that the Universe was coming to an end and that (as it turned out) the Hard Ones were resolutely laboring to live on anyway. He himself had become adept in many fields and Losten confessed that in physics there was little he could any longer teach Odeen that a Soft One could profitably learn. And there were other young Rationals to take in hand, so he did not see Losten as frequently as he once did.

Odeen found Losten with two half-grown Rationals in the Radiation Chamber. Losten saw him at once through the glass and came out, closing the door carefully behind him.

“My left-dear,” he said, holding out his limbs in a gesture of friendship (so that Odeen, as so often in the past, experienced a perverse desire to touch, but controlled it). “How are you?”

“I did not mean to interrupt, Losten-sir.”

“Interrupt? Those two will get along perfectly well by themselves for a time. They are probably glad to see me go, for I am sure I weary them with over-much talk.”

“Nonsense,” said Odeen. “You always fascinated me and I’m sure you fascinate them.”

“Well, well. It is good of you to say so. I see you frequently in the library, and I hear from others that you do well in your advanced courses, and that makes me miss my best student. How is Tritt? Is he as Parentally stubborn in his ways as ever?”

“More stubborn every day. He gives strength to the triad.”

“And Dua?”

“Dua? I have come— She is very unusual, you know.”

Losten nodded, “Yes, I know that.” His expression was one that Odeen had grown to associate with melancholy.

Odeen waited a moment, then decided to tackle the matter directly. He said, “Losten-sir, was she brought to us, to Tritt and myself, just because she was unusual?”

Losten said, “Would you be surprised? You are very unusual yourself, Odeen, and you have told me on a number of occasions that Tritt is.”

“Yes,” said Odeen, with conviction. “He is.”

“Then oughtn’t your triad include an unusual Emotional?”

“There are many ways of being unusual,” said Odeen, thoughtfully. “In some ways, Dua’s odd ways displease Tritt and worry me. May I consult you?”

“Always.”

“She is not fond of—of melting.”

Losten listened gravely; to all appearances unembarrassed.

Odeen went on. “She is fond of melting when we melt, that is, but it is not always easy to persuade her to do so.”

Losten said, “How does Tritt feel about melting? I mean, aside from the immediate pleasure of the act? What does it mean to him besides pleasure?”

“The children, of course,” said Odeen. “I like them and Dua likes them, too, but Tritt is the Parental. Do you understand that?” (It suddenly seemed to Odeen that Losten couldn’t possibly understand all the subtleties of the triad.)

“I try to understand,” said Losten. “It seems to me, then, that Tritt gets more out of melting than melting alone. And how about yourself? What do you get out of it besides the pleasure?”

Odeen considered. “I think you know that. A kind of mental stimulation.”

“Yes, I know that, but I want to make sure you know. I want to make sure you haven’t forgotten. You have told me often that when you come out of a period of melting, with its odd loss of time—during which I admit I sometimes didn’t see you for rather long periods—that suddenly you found yourself understanding many things that had seemed obscure before.”

“It was as though my mind remained active in the interval,” said Odeen. “It was as though there was time which, even though I was unaware of its passing and unconscious of my existence, was necessary to me; during which I could think more deeply and intensely, without the distraction of the less intellectual side of life.”

“Yes,” agreed Losten, “and you’d come back with a quantum-jump in understanding. It is a common thing among you Rationals, though I must admit no one improved in such great jumps as you did. I honestly think no Rational in history did so.”

“Really?” said Odeen, trying not to seem unduly elated.

“On the other hand, I may be wrong”—and Losten seemed slightly amused at the other’s sudden loss of shimmer—“but never mind that. The point is that you, like Tritt, get something out of the melt beside the melt itself.”

“Yes. Most certainly.”

“And what does Dua get out of the melt besides the melt?”

There was a long pause. “I don’t know,” said Odeen.

“Have you never asked her?”

“Never.”

“But then,” said Losten, “if all she gets out of a melt is the melt, and if you and Tritt get out of it the melt plus something else, why should she be as eager for it as you two are?”

“Other Emotionals don’t seem to require—” began Odeen, defensively.

“Other Emotionals aren’t like Dua. You’ve told me that often enough and, I think, with satisfaction.”

Odeen felt ashamed. “I had thought it might be something else.”

“What might that be?”

“It’s hard to explain. We know each other in the triad; we sense each other; in some ways, all three of us are part of a single individual. A misty individual that comes and goes. Mostly it’s unconscious. If we think about it with too great a concentration, we lose it, so we can never get real detail. We—” Odeen stopped rather hopelessly. “It’s hard to explain the triad to someone—”

“Nevertheless, I am trying to understand. You think you have caught a portion of Dua’s inner mind; something she has tried to keep secret, is that it?”

“I’m not sure. It is the vaguest impression, sensed with a corner of my mind just now and then.”

“Well?”

“I sometimes think Dua doesn’t want to have a baby-Emotional.”

Losten looked at him gravely. “You only have two children so far, I think. A little-left and a little-right.”

“Yes, only two. The Emotional is difficult to initiate, you know.”

“I know.”

“And Dua will not trouble to absorb the necessary energy. Or even try to. She has any number of reasons but I can’t believe any of them. It seems to me that for some reason she just doesn’t want an Emotional. For myself—if Dua really didn’t want one for a while—well, I would let her have her way. But Tritt is a Parental, and he wants one; he must have one; and somehow I can’t disappoint Tritt, not even for Dua.”

“If Dua had some rational cause for not wanting to initiate an Emotional, would that make a difference with you?”

“With me, certainly, but not with Tritt. He doesn’t understand such things.”

“But would you labor to keep him patient?”

“Yes, I would, for as long as I could.”

Losten said, “Has it occurred to you that hardly any Soft Ones”—here he hesitated as though searching for a word and then he used the customary Soft-One phrase—“ever pass on before the children are born—all three, with the baby-Emotional last.”

“Yes, I know.” Odeen wondered how Losten could possibly think him ignorant of so elementary a bit of knowledge.

“Then the birth of a baby-Emotional is equivalent to the coming of time to pass on.”

“Usually, not till the Emotional is old enough—”

“But the time for passing on will be coming. Might it not be that Dua does not want to pass on?”

“How can that be, Losten? When the time comes to pass on, it is as when the time comes to melt. How can you not want to?” (Hard Ones didn’t melt; perhaps they didn’t understand.)

“Suppose Dua simply wants never to pass on? What would you then say?”

“Why, that we must pass on eventually. If Dua merely wants to delay the last baby, I might humor her and even persuade Tritt to, perhaps. If she wants never to have it— that simply cannot be allowed.”

“Why so?”

Odeen paused to think it out. “I can’t say, Losten-sir, but I know we must pass on. I know it more and feel it more with each cycle, and sometimes I almost think I understand why.”

“You are a philosopher, I sometimes think, Odeen,” said Losten dryly. “Let’s consider. By the time the third baby comes and grows, Tritt will have had all his children and can look forward to passing on after a fulfilled life. You yourself will have had the satisfaction of much learning and you, too, can pass on after a fulfilled life. But Dua?”

“I don’t know” said Odeen, wretchedly. “Other Emotionals cling together all lifelong and seem to get some pleasure out of chattering with each other. Dua, however, will not do that.”

“Well, she is unusual. Is there nothing she likes?”

“She likes to listen to me talk about my work,” mumbled Odeen.

Losten said, “Well, don’t be ashamed of that, Odeen. Every Rational talks about his work to his right and his mid. You all pretend you don’t, but you all do.”

Odeen said, “But Dua listens, Losten-sir.”

“I’m quite sure she does. Not like other Emotionals. And does it ever seem to you that she understands rather better after a melt?”

“Yes, I have noticed that at times. I didn’t particularly pay any attention, though—”

“Because you are sure Emotionals can’t really understand these things. But there seems to be considerable of the Rational in Dua.”

(Odeen looked up at Losten with sudden consternation. Once Dua had told him of her childhood unhappiness; only once; of the shrill calls of the other Emotionals; of the filthy name they had called her—Left-Em. Had Losten heard of that, somehow?... But he was only looking calmly at Odeen.)

Odeen said, “I have sometimes thought that, too.” Then he burst out, “I am proud of her for that.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” said Losten. “Why not tell her so? And if she likes to pamper the Rationalness in herself, why not let her? Teach her what you know more intensively. Answer her questions. Will it disgrace your triad to do that?”

“I don’t care if it does.... And why should it, anyway? Tritt will think it a waste of time, but I’ll handle him.”

“Explain to him that if Dua gets more out of life and a truer sense of fulfillment, she might not have the fear of passing on that she now has and might be more ready to have a baby-Emotional.”

It was as though an enormous feeling of impending disaster had been lifted from Odeen. He said, hurriedly, “You’re right. I feel you’re right. Losten-sir, you understand so much. With you leading the Hard Ones, how can we fail to continue succeeding in the other-Universe project?”

“With me?” Losten was amused. “You forget it is Estwald who is guiding us now. He is the real hero of the project. It would be nowhere without him.”

“Oh, yes,” said Odeen, momentarily discomfited. He had never yet seen Estwald. In fact, he had not yet met a Soft One who had actually met him though some reported having seen him in the distance now and then. Estwald was a new Hard One; new, at least, in the sense that when Odeen had been young, he had never heard him mentioned. Didn’t that mean that Estwald was a young Hard One, had been a child Hard One when Odeen had been a child Soft One?

But never mind that. Right now, Odeen wanted to get back home. He couldn’t touch Losten in gratitude, but he could thank him again and then hasten away joyfully.

There was a selfish component to his joy. It was not just the distant prospect of the baby-Emotional and the thought of Tritt’s pleasure. It was not even the thought of Dua’s fulfillment. What counted with him at this very moment was the immediate gleeful prospect ahead. He was going to be able to teach. No other Rational could feel the pleasure of so doing, he was sure, for no other Rational could possibly have an Emotional like Dua as part of the triad.

It would be wonderful, if only Tritt could be made to understand the necessity. He would have to talk to Tritt, somehow persuade him to be patient.

2c

Tritt had never felt less patient. He did not pretend to understand why Dua acted the way she did. He did not want to try. He did not care. He never knew why Emotionals did what they did. And Dua didn’t even act like the other Emotionals.

She never thought about the important thing. She would look at the Sun. But then she would thin out so that the light and food would just pass through her. Then she would say it was beautiful. That was not the important thing. The important thing was to eat. What was beautiful about eating? What was beautiful?

She always wanted to melt differently. Once she said, “Let’s talk first. We never talk about it. We never think about it.”

Odeen would always say, “Let her have her way about it, Tritt. It makes it better.”

Odeen was always patient. He always thought things would be better when they waited. Or else he would want to think it out.

Tritt wasn’t sure he knew what Odeen meant by “think it out.” It seemed to him it just meant that Odeen did nothing.

Like getting Dua in the first place. Odeen would still be thinking it out. Tritt went right up and asked. That was the way to be.

Now Odeen wouldn’t do anything about Dua. What about the baby-Emotional, which was what mattered? Well, Tritt would do something about it, if Odeen didn’t.

In fact, he was doing something. He was edging down the long corridor even as all this was going through his mind. He was hardly aware he had come this far. Was this “thinking it out”? Well, he would not let himself be frightened. He would not back away.

Stolidly, he looked about him. This was the way to the Hard-caverns. He knew he would be going that way with his little-left before very long. He had been shown the way by Odeen once.

He did not know what he would do when he got there this time. Still, he felt no fright at all. He wanted a baby-Emotional. It was his right to have a baby-Emotional. Nothing was more important than that. The Hard Ones would see he got one. Hadn’t they brought them Dua when he had asked?

But who would he ask? Could it be any Hard One? Dimly, he had made up his mind not any Hard One. There was the name of one he would ask for. Then he would talk to him about it.

He remembered the name. He even remembered when he had first heard the name. It was the time when the little-left had grown old enough to begin changing shape voluntarily. (What a great day! “Come, Odeen, quickly! Annis is all oval and hard. All by himself, too. Dua, look!” And they had rushed in. Annis was the only child then. They had had to wait so long for the second. So they rushed in and he was just plastered in the corner. He was curling at himself and flowing over his resting place like wet clay. Odeen had left because he was busy. But said, “Oh, he’ll do it again, Tritt.” They had watched for hours and he didn’t.)

Tritt was hurt that Odeen hadn’t waited. He would have scolded but Odeen looked so weary. There were definite wrinkles in his ovoid. And he made no effort to smooth them out.

Tritt said anxiously, “Is anything wrong, Odeen?”

“A hard day and I’m not sure I’m going to get differential equations before the next melting.” (Tritt didn’t remember the exact hard words. It was something like that Odeen always used hard words.) “Do you want to melt now?”

“Oh, no. I just saw Dua heading topside and you know how she is if we try to interrupt that. There’s no rush, really. There’s a new Hard One, too.”

“A new Hard One?” said Tritt, with distinct lack of interest. Odeen found sharp interest in associating with Hard Ones, but Tritt wished the interest didn’t exist. Odeen was more intent on what he called his education than any other Rational in the area. That was unfair. Odeen was too wrapped up in that. Dua was too wrapped up in roaming the surface alone. No one was properly interested in the triad but Tritt.

“He’s called Estwald,” said Odeen.

“Estwald?” Tritt did feel a twinge of interest. Perhaps it was because he was anxiously sensing Odeen’s feelings.

“I’ve never seen him, but they all talk about him.” Odeen’s eyes had flattened out as they usually did when he turned introspective. “He’s responsible for that new thing they’ve got.”

“What new thing?”

“The Positron Pu— You wouldn’t understand, Tritt It’s a new thing they have. It’s going to revolutionize the whole world.”

“What’s revolutionize?”

“Make everything different.”

Tritt was at once alarmed. “They mustn’t make everything different.”

“They’ll make everything better. Different isn’t always worse. Anyway, Estwald is responsible. He’s very bright. I get the feeling.”

“Then why don’t you like him?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like him.”

“You feel as though you don’t like him.”

“Oh, nothing of the sort, Tritt. It’s just that somehow— somehow—” Odeen laughed. “I’m jealous. Hard Ones are so intelligent that a Soft One is nothing in comparison, but I got used to that, because Losten was always telling me how bright I was—for a Soft One, I suppose. But now this Estwald comes along, and even Losten seems lost in admiration, and I’m really nothing.”

Tritt bellied out his foreplane to have it just make contact with Odeen, who looked up and smiled. “But that’s just stupidity on my part. Who cares how smart a Hard One is? Not one of them has a Tritt.”

After that they both went looking for Dua after all. For a wonder, she had finished wandering about and was just heading down again. It was a very good melting though the time lapse was only a day or so. Tritt worried about meltings then. With Annis so small, even a short absence was risky, though there were always other Parentals who could take over.

After that, Odeen mentioned Estwald now and then. He always called him “the New One” even after considerable time had passed. He still had never seen him. “I think I avoid him,” he said one time, when Dua was with them, “because he knows so much about the new device. I don’t want to find out too soon. It’s too much fun to learn.”

“The Positron Pump?” Dua had asked.

—That was another funny thing about Dua. Tritt thought. It annoyed him. She could say the hard words almost as well as Odeen could. An Emotional shouldn’t be like that.

So Tritt made up his mind to ask Estwald because Odeen had said he was smart. Besides, Odeen had never seen him. Estwald couldn’t say, “I’ve talked to Odeen about it, Tritt, and you mustn’t worry.”

Everyone thought that if you talked to the Rational, you were talking to the triad. Nobody paid attention to the Parentals. But they would have to this time.

He was in the Hard-caverns and everything seemed different. There was nothing there that looked like anything Tritt could understand. It was all wrong and frightening. Still, he was too anxious to see Estwald to let himself really be frightened. He said to himself, “I want my little-mid.” That made him feel firm enough to walk forward.

He saw a Hard One finally. There was just this one; doing something; bending over something; doing something. Odeen once told him that Hard Ones were always working at their—whatever it was. Tritt didn’t remember and didn’t care.

He moved smoothly up and stopped. “Hard-sir,” he said.

The Hard One looked up at him and the air vibrated about him, the Odeen said it did when two Hard Ones talked to each other sometimes. Then the Hard One seemed really to see Tritt and said, “Why, it’s a right. What is your business here? Do you have your little-left with you? Is today the start of a semester?”

Tritt ignored it all. He said, “Where can I find Estwald, sir?!”

“Find whom?”

“Estwald.”

The Hard One was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “What is your business with Estwald, right?”

Tritt felt stubborn. “It is important I speak to him. Are you Estwald, Hard-sir?”

“No, I am not.... What is your name, right?”

“Tritt, Hard-sir.”

“I see. You’re the right of Odeen’s triad, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

The Hard One’s voice seemed to soften. “I’m afraid you can’t see Estwald at the moment. He’s not here. If anyone else can help you?”

Tritt didn’t know what to say. He simply stood there.

The Hard One said, “You go home now. Talk to Odeen. He’ll help you. Yes? Go home, right.”

The Hard One turned away. He seemed very concerned in matters other than Tritt, and Tritt still stood there, uncertain. Then he moved into another section quietly, flowing noiselessly. The Hard One did not look up.

Tritt was not certain at first why he had moved in that particular direction. At first, he felt only that it was good to do so. Then it was clear. There was a thin warmth of food about him and he was nibbling at it.

He had not been conscious of hunger, yet now he was eating and enjoying.

The Sun was nowhere. Instinctively, he looked up, but of course he was in a cavern. Yet the food was better than he had ever found it to be on the surface. He looked about, wondering. He wondered, most of all, that he should be wondering.

He had sometimes been impatient with Odeen because Odeen wondered about so many things that didn’t matter. Now he himself—Tritt!—was wondering. But what he was wondering about did matter. Suddenly, he saw that it did matter. With an almost blinding flash he realized that he wouldn’t wonder unless something inside him told it did matter.

He acted quickly, marveling at his own bravery. After a while, he retraced his steps. He moved past the Hard One again, the one to whom he had earlier spoken. He said, “I am going home, Hard-sir.”

The Hard One merely said something incoherent. He was still doing something, bending over something, doing silly things and not seeing the important thing.

If Hard Ones were so great and powerful and smart, Tritt thought, how could they be so stupid?

3a

Dua found herself drifting toward the Hard-caverns. Partly it was because it was something to do now that the Sun had set, something to keep her from returning home for an additional period of time, something to delay having to listen to the importunities of Tritt and the half-embarrassed, half-resigned suggestions of Odeen. Partly, too, it was the attraction they held for her in themselves.

She had felt that for a long time, ever since she was little in fact, and had given up trying to pretend it wasn’t so. Emotionals weren’t supposed to feel such attractions. Sometimes little Emotionals did—Dua was old enough and experienced enough to know that—but this quickly faded or they were quickly discouraged if it didn’t fade quickly enough.

When she herself had been a child, though, she had continued stubbornly curious about the world, and the Sun, and the caverns, and—anything at all—-till her Parental would say, “You’re a queer one, Dua, dear. You’re a funny little midling. What will become of you?”

She hadn’t the vaguest notion at first of what was so queer and so funny about wanting to know. She found, quickly enough, that her Parental could not answer her questions. She once tried her left-father, but he showed none of her Parental’s soft puzzlement. He snapped, “Why do you ask, Dua?” and his look seemed harshly inquiring.

She ran away, frightened, and did not ask him again.

But then one day another Emotional of her own age had shrieked “Left-Em” at her after she had said—she no longer remembered—it had been something that had seemed natural to her at the time. Dua had been abashed without knowing why and had asked her considerably older left-brother, what a Left-Em was. He had withdrawn, embarrassed—clearly embarrassed—mumbling, “I don’t know,” when it was obvious he did.

After some thought, she went to her Parental and said, “Am I a Left-Em, Daddy?”

And he had said, “Who called you that, Dua? You must not repeat such words.”

She flowed herself about his near corner, thought about it awhile, and said, “Is it bad?”

He said, “You’ll grow out of it,” and let himself bulge a bit to make her swing outward and vibrate in the game she had always loved. She somehow didn’t love it now, for it was quite clear that he hadn’t answered her, really. She moved away thoughtfully. He had said, “You’ll grow out of it,” so she was in it now, but in what?

Even then, she had had few real Mends among the other Emotionals. They liked to whisper and giggle together, but she preferred flowing over the crumbled rocks and enjoying the sensation of their roughness. There were, however, some raids who were more friendly than others and whom she found less provoking. There was Doral, who was as silly as the rest, really, but who would sometimes chatter amusingly. (Doral had grown up to join a triad with Dua’s right-brother and a young left from another cavern complex, a left whom Dua did not particularly like. Doral had then gone on to initiate a baby-left, a baby-right, in rapid succession, and a baby-mid not too long after that. She had also grown so dense that the triad looked as though it had two Parentals and Dua wondered if they could still melt.... Just the same Tritt was always telling her, pointedly, what a good triad Doral helped make up.)

She and Doral had sat alone one day and Dua had whispered, “Doral, do you know what a Left-Em is?”

And Doral had tittered and compressed herself, as though to avoid being seen, and had said, “It’s an Emotional that acts like a Rational; you know, like a left. Get it! Left-Emotional—Left-Em! Get it!”

Of course Dua “got” the phrase. It was obvious once explained. She would have seen it for herself at once if she had been able to bring herself to imagine such a state of affairs.

Dua said, “How do you know?”

“The older girls told me.” Doral’s substance swirled and Dua found the motion unpleasant. “It’s dirty,” Doral said.

“Why?” asked Dua.

“Because it’s dirty. Emotionals shouldn’t act like Rationals.”

Dua had never thought about the possibility, but now she did. She said, “Why shouldn’t they?”

“Because! You want to know something else that’s dirty?”

Dua couldn’t help being intrigued. “What?”

Doral didn’t say anything, but a portion of herself expanded suddenly and brushed against the unsuspecting Dua before the latter could concavize. Dua didn’t like it. She shrank away and said, “Don’t do that.”

“You know what else is dirty? You can go into a rock.”

“No, you can’t,” said Dua. It had been a silly thing to say for Dua had often moved through the outer surface of the rock and liked it. But now in the context of Doral’s snickering, she felt revolted and denied the whole thing, even to herself.

“Yes, you can. It’s called rock-rubbing. Emotionals can do it easy. Lefts and rights can only do it as babies. When they grow up, they do it with each other.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re making it up.”

“They do, I tell you. Do you know Dimit?”

“No.”

“Sure you do. She’s the girl with the thick corner from Cavern c.”

“Is she the one who flows funny?”

“Yes. On account of the thick corner. That’s the one. She got into a rock all the way once—except for the thick corner. She let her left-brother watch her do it and he told their Parental and what she got for that. She never did it again.”

Dua left then, quite upset. She didn’t talk to Doral again for a long time, and never really grew friendly again, and yet her curiosity had been aroused.

Her curiosity? Why not say her Left-Emmishness?

One day when she was quite sure her Parental wasn’t in the vicinity, she let herself melt into a rock, slowly, just a little. It had been the first time she had tried it since she was quite young, and she didn’t think she had ever dared go so deep. There was a warmness about the sensation, but when she emerged she felt as though everyone could tell, as though the rock had left a stain on her.

She tried it again now and then, more boldly, and let herself enjoy it more. She never sank in really deeply, of course.

Eventually, she was caught by her Parental, who clucked away in displeasure, and she was more careful after that. She was older now and knew for certain fact that despite Doral’s snickering, it wasn’t in the least uncommon. Practically every Emotional did it now and then and some quite openly admitted it.

It happened less frequently as they grew older and Dua didn’t think that any Emotional she knew ever did it after joining a triad and beginning the proper meltings. It wasone of her secrets (she never told anybody) that she had kept it up, and that once or twice she had tried it even after triad-formation. (Those few times she had thought: What if Tritt found out? ... Somehow that seemed to present formidable consequences and rather spoiled the fun.)

Confusedly, she found excuses for this—to herself—in her ordeal with the others. The cry of “Left-Em” began to follow her everywhere in a kind of public humiliation. There was one period in her life when she had been driven into an almost hermit-like isolation to escape. If she had begun with a liking for aloneness, that had confirmed it. And being alone, she found consolation in the rocks. Rock-rubbing, whether it was dirty or not, was a solitary act, and they were forcing her to be solitary.

At least, so she told herself.

She had tried to strike back once. She had cried out, “You’re a bunch of Right-Ems, a bunch of dirty Right-Ems,” at the taunting raids.

They had only laughed and Dua had run away in confusion and frustration. They were. Almost every Emotional, when she was getting on to the age of triad-formation, became interested in babies, fluttering about them in Parental imitation which Dua had found repulsive. She herself had never felt such interest. Babies were only babies; they were for right-brothers to worry about.

The name-calling died as Dua grew older. It helped that she retained a girlishly rarefied structure and could flow with a smoky curl no other could duplicate. And when, increasingly, lefts and rights showed interest in her, the other Emotionals found it difficult to sneer.

And yet—and yet—now that no one ever dared speak disrespectfully to Dua (for it was well known through all the caverns that Odeen was the most prominent Rational of the generation and Dua was his mid-ling), she herself knew that she was a Left-Em past all redemption.

She didn’t think it dirty—not really—but occasionally she caught herself wishing she were a Rational and then she was abashed. She wondered if other Emotionals did— ever—or just once in a while—and if that was why—partly—she didn’t want a baby-Emotional—because she wasn’t a real Emotional herself—and didn’t fill her triad-role properly—

Odeen hadn’t minded her being a Left-Em. He never called her that—but he liked her interest in his life—he liked her questions and he would explain and he liked the way she could understand. He even defended her when Tritt grew jealous—well, not jealous, really—but filled with a feeling that it was all unfit in his stubborn and limited outlook on the world.

Odeen had taken her to the Hard-caverns occasionally, eager to posture before Dua, and openly pleased at the fact that Dua was impressed. And she was impressed, not so much with the clear fact of his knowledge and intelligence, but with the fact that he did not resent sharing it. (She remembered her left-father’s harsh response that one time she had questioned him.) She never loved Odeen so much as when he let her share his life—and yet even that was part of her Left-Emmishness.

Perhaps (this had occurred to her over and over), by being Left-Emmish, she moved closer to Odeen and farther from Tritt, and this was another reason Tritt’s importunities repelled her. Odeen had never hinted at anything like that, but perhaps Tritt felt it vaguely and was unable to grasp it completely but did so well enough to be unhappy over it without being able to explain why.

The first time she was in a Hard-cavern she had heard two Hard Ones talking together. She didn’t know they were talking of course. There was air vibration, very rapid, very changing, that made an unpleasant buzz deep inside her. She had to rarefy and let it through.

Odeen had said, “They’re talking.” Then, hastily, anticipating the objection. “Their kind of talk. They understand each other.”

Dua had managed to grasp the concept. It was all the more delightful to understand quickly because that pleased Odeen so. (He once said, “None of the other Rationals I’ve ever met have anything but an empty-head for an Emotional. I’m lucky.” She had said, “But the other Rationals seem to like empty-heads. Why are you different from them, Odeen?” Odeen did not deny that the other Rationals liked empty-heads. He just said, “I’ve never figured it out and I don’t think it’s important that I do. I’m pleased with you and I’m pleased that I’m pleased.”)

She said, “Can you understand Hard-One talk?”

“Not really,” said Odeen. “I can’t sense the changes fast enough. Sometimes I can get a feel for what they’re saying, even without understanding, especially after we’ve melted. Just sometimes, though. Getting feels like that is really an Emotional trick, except even if an Emotional does it, she can never make real sense out of what she’s feeling. You might, though.”

Dua demurred. “I’d be afraid to. They might not like it.”

“Oh, go on. I’m curious. See if you can tell what they’re talking about.”

“Shall I? Really?”

“Go ahead. If they catch you and are annoyed, I’ll say I made you do it.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Feeling rather fluttery, Dua let herself reach out to the Hard Ones, and adopted the total passivity that allowed the influx of feelings.

She said, “Excitement! They’re excited. Someone new.”

Odeen said, “Maybe that’s Estwald.”

It was the first time Dua had heard the name. She said, “That’s funny.”

“What’s funny?”

“I have the feeling of a big sun. A really big sun.”

Odeen looked thoughtful. “They might be talking about that.”

“But how can that be?”

It was just at that time that the Hard Ones spied them. They approached in a friendly manner and greeted them in Soft-One fashion of speech. Dua was horribly embarrassed and wondered if they knew she had been sensing them. If they did, though, they said nothing.

(Odeen told her afterward that it was quite rare to come upon Hard Ones talking among themselves in their own fashion. They always deferred to the Soft Ones and seemed always to suspend their own work when Soft Ones were there. “They like us so much,” said Odeen. “They are very kind.”)

Once in awhile he would take her down to the Hard-caverns—usually when Tritt was entirely wrapped up in the children. Nor did Odeen go out of his way to tell Tritt that he had taken Dua down. It was sure to evoke some response to the effect that Odeen’s coddling simply encouraged Dua’s reluctance to sun herself and just made the melting that much more ineffective. ... It was hard to talk to Tritt for more than five minutes without melting coming into the conversation.

She had even come down alone once or twice. It had always frightened her a little to do so, though the Hard Ones she met were always friendly, always “very kind,” as Odeen said. But they did not seem to take her seriously. They were pleased, but somehow amused—she could feel that definitely—when she asked questions. And when they answered it was in a simple way that carried no information. “Just a machine, Dua,” they would say. “Odeen might be able to tell you.”

She wondered if she had met Estwald. She never quite dared ask the names of the Hard Ones she met (except Losten, to whom Odeen had introduced her, and of whom she heard a great deal). Sometimes it seemed to her that this Hard One or that might be he. Odeen talked about him with great awe and with some resentment.

She gathered that he was too engaged in work of the deepest importance to be in the caverns accessible to the Soft Ones.

She pieced together what Odeen told her and, little by little, discovered that the world needed food badly. Odeen hardly ever called it “food.” He said “energy” instead, and said it was the Hard-One word for it.

The Sun was fading and dying but Estwald had discovered how to find energy far away, far beyond the Sun, far beyond the seven stars that shone in the dark, night-sky. (Odeen said the seven stars were seven suns that were very distant, and that there were many other stars that were even more distant and were too dim to be seen. Tritt had heard him say that and had asked of what use it was for stars to exist if they couldn’t be seen and he didn’t believe a word of it. Odeen had said, “Now, Tritt,” in a patient way. Dua had been about to say something very like that which Tritt had said, but changed her mind after that.)

It looked, now, as, though there would be plenty of energy forever; plenty of food—at least as soon as Estwald and the other Hard Ones learned to make the new energy taste right.

It had only been a few days ago when she had said to Odeen, “Do you remember, long ago, when you took me to the Hard-caverns and I sensed the Hard Ones and said I caught the feeling of a big sun?”

Odeen looked puzzled for a moment. “I’m not sure. But go ahead, Dua. What about it?”

“I’ve been thinking. Is the big Sun the source of the new energy?”

Odeen had said, happily, “That’s good, Dua. It’s not quite right, but that’s such good intuition for an Emotional.”

And now Dua had been moving slowly, rather moodily, during all this time of reveries. Without particularly noting the passage of either time or space she found herself in the Hard-caverns and was just beginning to wonder if she had really delayed all she safely could and whether she might not turn home now and face the inevitable annoyance of Tritt when—almost as though the thought of Tritt had brought it about—she sensed Tritt.

The sensation was so strong that there was only one confused moment in which she had thought that somehow she was picking up his feelings far away in the home cavern. No! He was here, down in the Hard-caverns with her.

But what could he be doing here? Was he pursuing her? Was he going to quarrel with her here? Was he foolishly going to appeal to the Hard Ones? Dua didn’t think she could endure that—

And then the feeling of cold horror left her and was replaced by astonishment. Tritt was not thinking of her at all. He had to be unaware of her presence. All she could sense about him was an overwhelming feeling of some sort of determination, mixed with fear and apprehension at something he would do.

Dua might have penetrated farther and found out something, at least, about what it was he had done, and why, but nothing was further from her thoughts. Since Tritt didn’t know she was in the vicinity, she wanted to make sure of only one thing—that he continued not to know.

She did, then, almost in pure reflex, something that a moment before she would have sworn she would never dream of doing under any circumstances.

Perhaps it was (she later thought) because of her idle reminiscences of that little-girl talk with Doral, or her memories of her own experiments with rock-rubbing. (There was a complicated adult word for it but she found that word infinitely more embarrassing than the one all the children had used.)

In any case, without quite knowing what she was doing or, for a short while afterward, what she had done, she simply flowed hastily into the nearest wall.

Into it! Every bit of her!

The horror of what she had done was mitigated by the perfect manner in which it accomplished its purpose. Tritt passed by within almost touching distance and remained completely unaware that at one point he might have reached out and touched his mid-ling.

By that time, Dua had no room to wonder what Tritt might be doing in the Hard-caverns if he had not come in pursuit of her.

She forgot Tritt completely.

What filled her instead was¹ pure astonishment at her position. Even in childhood she had never melted completely into rock or met anyone who admitted she had (though there were invariably tales of someone else who had). Certainly no adult Emotional ever had or could. Dua. was unusually rarefied even for an Emotional (Odeen was fond of telling her that) and her avoidance of food accentuated this (as Tritt often said).

What she had just done indicated the extent of her rarefaction more than any amount of right-ling scolding and for a moment she was ashamed and sorry for Tritt.

And then she was swept by a deeper shame. What if she were caught? She, an adult—

If a Hard One passed and lingered— She could not possibly bring herself to emerge if anyone were watching but how long could she stay within and what if they discovered her in the rock?

And even as she thought that, she sensed the Hard Ones and then—somehow—realized they were far away.

She paused, strove to calm herself. The rock, permeating and surrounding her, lent a land of grayness to her perception but didn’t dim it. Instead, she sensed more sharply. She could still sense Tritt in his steady motion downward as sharply as though he were by her side, and she could sense the Hard Ones though they were a cavern complex away. She saw the Hard Ones, every single one of them, each in his place, and could sense their vibratory speech to the fullest detail, and even catch bits of what they were saying.

She was sensing as she never had before and never dreamed she could.

So, though she could now leave the rock, secure in the knowledge she was both alone and unobserved, she did not; partly out of amazement, partly out of the curious exultation she felt at understanding and her desire to experience it further.

Her sensitivity was such that she even knew why he was sensitive. Odeen had frequently remarked how well he understood something after a period of melting, even though he had not understood it at all before. There was something about the melted state that increased sensitivity incredibly; more was absorbed; more was used. It was because of the greater atomic density during melting, Odeen had said.

Even though Dua was not sure what “greater atomic density” meant, it came with melting and wasn’t this present situation rather like melting? Hadn’t Dua melted with rock?

When the triad melted, all the sensitivity went to Odeen’s benefit. The Rational absorbed it, gained understanding, and retained that understanding after separation. But now Dua was the only consciousness in the melt. It was herself and the rock. There was “greater atomic density” (surely?) with only herself to benefit.

(Was this why rock-rubbing was considered a perversion? Was this why Emotionals were warned off? Or was it just Dua because she was so rarefied? Or because she was a Left-Em?)

And then Dua stopped all speculation and just sensed—in fascination. She was only mechanically aware of Tritt returning, moving past her, passing in the direction back from which he had come. She was only mechanically aware—scarcely feeling the vaguest surprise—that Odeen, too, was coming up from the Hard-caverns. It was the Hard Ones she was sensing, only they, trying to make more out of her perceptions, trying to make the most out of them.

It was a long time before she detached and flowed out of the rock. And when that time came, she was not concerned overmuch as to whether she would be observed. She was confident enough of her sensing ability to know she wouldn’t be.

And she returned home deep in thought.

3b

Odeen had returned home to find Tritt waiting for him, but Dua still hadn’t returned. Tritt did not seem disturbed at that. Or at least he seemed disturbed, but not at that. His emotions were strong enough so that Odeen could sense them clearly, but he let them go without proving. It was Dua’s absence that made Odeen restless; to the extent that he found himself annoyed at Tritt’s presence simply because Tritt was not Dua.

In this he surprised himself. He could not deny to himself that it was Tritt who, of the two, was the dearer to him. Ideally, all members of the triad were one, and any member should treat the other two exactly on a par—both with each other and with him (her) self. Yet Odeen had never met a triad in which this was so; least of all among those who loudly proclaimed their triad to be ideal in this respect. One of the three was always a little left out, and generally knew it, too.

It was rarely the Emotional, though. They supported each other cross-triad to an extent that Rationals and Parentals never did. The Rational had his teacher, the proverb went, and the Parental his children—but the Emotional had all the other Emotionals.

Emotionals compared notes and if one claimed neglect, or could be made to claim it, she was sent back with a thin patter of instructions to stand firm, to demand! And because melting depended so much on the Emotional and her attitude, she was usually pampered by both left and right.

But Dua was so non-Emotional an Emotional! She didn’t seem to care that Odeen and Tritt were so close, and she had no close friendships among the Emotionals to make her care. Of course that was it; she was so non-Emotional an Emotional.

Odeen loved having her so interested in his work; loved having her so concerned and so amazingly ready of comprehension; but that was an intellectual love, lie deeper feeling went to steady, stupid Tritt, who knew his place so well and who could offer so little other than exactly what counted—the security of assured routine.

But now Odeen felt petulant. He said, “Have you heard from Dua, Tritt?”

And Tritt did not answer directly. He said, “I am busy. I will see you later. I have been doing things.”

“Where are the children? Have you been gone, too? There is a been-gone feel to you.”

A note of annoyance made itself plain in Tritt’s voice.

“The children are well-trained. They know enough to place themselves in community-care. Really, Odeen, they are not babies.” But he did not deny the “been-gone” aura that he faintly exuded.

“I’m sorry. I’m just anxious to see Dua.”

“You should feel so more often,” Tritt said. “You always tell me to leave her alone. You look for her.” And he went on into the deeper recesses of the home cavern.

Odeen looked after his right-ling with some surprise. At almost any other occasion he would have followed in an attempt to probe the unusual uneasiness that was making itself quite evident through the ingrained stolidity of a Parental. What had Tritt done?

—But he was waiting for Dua, and growing more anxious by the moment, and he let Tritt go.

Anxiety keened Odeen’s sensitivity. There was almost a perverse pride among Rationals in their relative poverty of perception. Such perception wasn’t a thing of the mind; it was most characteristic of Emotionals. Odeen was a Rational of Rationals, proud of reasoning rather than feeling, yet now he flung out the imperfect net of his emotional perception as far as he could; and wished, for just a moment, that he were an Emotional so that he could send it out farther and better.

Yet it eventually served his purpose. He could detect Dua’s approach, finally, at an unusual distance—for him —and he hastened out to meet her. And because he made her out at such a distance, he was more aware of her rarefaction than he ordinarily was. She was a delicate mist, no more.

—Tritt was right, Odeen thought with sudden, sharp concern. Dua must be made to eat and to melt. Her interest in life must be increased.

He was so intent on the necessity of this that when she flung herself flowingly toward him and virtually engulfed him, in utter disregard of the fact that they were not in private and might be observed, and said, “Odeen, I must know—I must know so much—” he accepted it as the completion of his own thought and did not even consider it strange.

Carefully, he slipped away, trying to adopt a more seemly union without making it seem he was repulsing her. “Come,” he said, “I’ve been waiting for you. Tell me what you want to know. I will explain all I can.”

They were moving quickly homeward now, with Odeen adapting himself eagerly to the characteristic waver of the Emotional flow.

Dua said, “Tell me about the other Universe. Why are they different? How are they different? Tell me all about it.”

It did not occur to Dua she was asking too much. It did occur to Odeen. He felt rich with an astonishing quantity of knowledge and was on the point of asking, How do you come to know enough about the other Universe to grow so curious about it?

He repressed the question. Dua was coming from the direction of the Hard-caverns. Perhaps Losten had been talking to her, suspecting that despite everything Odeen would be too proud of his status to help his mid-ling.

Not so, thought Odeen gravely. And he would not ask. He would just explain.

Tritt bustled about them when they returned home. “If you two are going to talk, go into Dua’s chamber. I will be busy out here. I must see to it that the children are cleaned and exercised. No time for melting now. No melting.”

Neither Odeen nor Dua had any thought of melting, but there was no thought in either mind of disobeying the command. The Parental’s home was his castle. The Rational had his Hard-caverns below and the Emotional her meeting places above. The Parental had only his home.

Odeen therefore said, “Yes, Tritt. We’ll be out of your way.”

And Dua extended a briefly loving part of herself and said, “It’s good to see you, right-dear.” (Odeen wondered if her gesture was part relief over the fact that there would be no pressure to melt. Tritt did tend to overdo that a bit; even more than Parentals generally.)

In her chamber, Dua stared at her private feeding-place. Ordinarily, she ignored it.

It had been Odeen’s idea, He knew that such things did exist and, as he explained to Tritt, if Dua did not like to swarm with the other Emotionals, it was perfectly possible to lead Solar energy down into the cavern so that Dua might feed there.

Tritt had been horrified. It wasn’t done. The others would laugh. The triad would be disgraced. Why didn’t Dua behave as she should?

“Yes, Tritt,” Odeen had said, “but she doesn’t behave as she should, so why not accommodate her? Is it so terrible? She will eat privately, gain substance, make us happier, become happier herself, and maybe learn to swarm in the end.”

Tritt allowed it, and even Dua allowed it—after some argument—but insisted that it be a simple design. So there was nothing but the two rods that served as electrodes, powered by Solar energy, and with room for Dua in between.

Dua rarely used it, but this time she stared at it and said, “Tritt has decorated it ... Unless you did, Odeen.”

“I? Of course not.”

A pattern of colored-clay designs was at the base of each electrode. “I suppose it’s his way of saying he wishes I would use it,” Dua said, “and I am hungry. Besides, if I’m eating, Tritt wouldn’t dream of interrupting us, would he?”

“No,” said Odeen, gravely. “Tritt would stop the world if he thought its motion might disturb you while you were eating.”

Dua said, “Well—I am hungry.”

Odeen caught a trace of guilt in her. Guilt over Tritt? Over being hungry? Why should Dua feel guilty about being hungry? Or had she done something that had consumed energy and was she feeling—

He wrenched his mind away from that impatiently. There were times when a Rational could be too Rational, and chase down the tracks of every thought to the detriment of what was important. Right now, it was important to talk to Dua.

She seated herself between the electrodes and when she compressed herself to do so, her small size was only too painfully evident. Odeen was hungry himself; he could tell because the electrodes seemed brighter than they ordinarily did; and he could taste the food even at that distance and the savor was delicious. When one was hungry, one always tasted food more keenly than otherwise and at a greater distance. ... But he would eat later.

Dua said, “Don’t just sit silently, left-dear. Tell me. I want to know.” She had adopted (unconsciously?) the ovoid character of a Rational, as though to make it clearer that she wanted to be accepted as one.

Odeen said, “I can’t explain it all. All the science I mean, because you haven’t had the background, I will try to make it simple and you just listen. Later, you tell me what you didn’t understand and I’ll try to explain further. You understand, first, that everything is made up of tiny particles called atoms and that these are made up of still tinier subatomic particles.”

“Yes, yes,” said Dua. “That’s why we can melt.”

“Exactly. Because actually we are mostly empty space. All the particles are far apart and your particles and mine and Tritt’s can all melt together because each set fits into the empty spaces around the other set. The reason matter doesn’t fly apart altogether is that the tiny particles do manage to cling together across the space that separates them. There are attractive forces holding them together, the strongest being one we call the nuclear-force. It holds the chief subatomic particles very tightly together in bunches that are spread widely apart and that are held together by weaker forces. Do you understand that?”

“Only a little bit,” said Dua.

“Well never mind, we can go back later.... Matter can exist in different states. It can be especially spread out, as in Emotionals; as in you, Dua, It can be a little less spread out, as in Rationals and in Parentals. Or still less so, as in rock. It can be very compressed or thick, as in the Hard Ones. That’s why they’re hard. They are filled with particles.”

“You mean there’s no empty space in them.”

“No, that’s not quite what I mean,” said Odeen, puzzled as to how to make matter clearer. “They still have a great deal of empty space, but not as much as we do. Particles need a certain amount of empty space and if all they have is that much, then other particles can’t squeeze in. If particles are forced in, there is pain. That’s why the Hard Ones don’t like to be touched by us. We Soft Ones have more space between the particles than are actually needed, so other particles can fit in.”

Dua didn’t look at all certain about that. Odeen hastened onward. “In the other Universe, the rules are different. The nuclear-force isn’t as strong as in ours. That means the particles need more room.”

“Why?”

Odeen shook his head, “Because—because—the particles spread out their wave-forms more. I can’t explain better than that. With a weaker nuclear-force, the particles need more room and two pieces of matter can’t melt together as easily as they can in our Universe.”

“Can we see the other Universe?”

“Oh, no. That isn’t possible. We can deduce its nature from its basic laws. The Hard Ones can do a great many things, though. We can send material across, and get material from them. We can study their material, you see. And we can set up the Positron Pump. You know about that, don’t you?”

“Well, you’ve told me we get energy out of it. I didn’t know there was a different Universe involved.... What is the other Universe like? Do they have stars and worlds the way we do?”

“That’s an excellent question, Dua.” Odeen was enjoying his role as teacher more intensely than usual now that he had official encouragement to speak. (Earlier he always had the feeling that there was a kind of sneaking perversion in trying to explain things to an Emotional.)

He said, “We can’t see the other Universe, but we can calculate what it must be like from its laws. You see, what makes the stars, shine is the gradual combination of simple particle-combinations into more complicated ones. We call it nuclear fusion.”

“Do they have that in the other Universe?”

“Yes, but because the nuclear-force is weaker, fusion is much slower. This means that the stars must be much, much bigger in the other Universe otherwise not enough fusion would take place to make them shine. Stars of the other Universe that were no bigger than our Sun would be cold and dead. On the other hand, if stars in our Universe were bigger than they are, the amount of fusion would be so great it would blow them up. That means that in our Universe there must be thousands of times as many small stars as there are larger stars in theirs—”

“We only have seven—” began Dua. Then she said, “I forgot.”

Odeen smiled indulgently. It was so easy to forget the uncounted stars that could not be seen except by special instruments. “That’s all right. You don’t mind my boring you with all this.”

“You’re not boring me,” said Dua. “I love it. It even makes food taste so good.” And she wavered between the electrodes with a kind of luxurious tremor.

Odeen, who had never before heard Dua say anything complimentary about food, was greatly heartened. He said, “Of course, our Universe doesn’t last as long as theirs. Fusion goes so fast that all the particles are combined after a million lifetimes.”

“But there are so many other stars.”

“Ah, but you see they’re all going at once. The whole Universe is dying down. In the other Universe, with so many fewer and larger stars, the fusion goes so slowly that the stars last thousands and millions of times as long as ours. It’s hard to compare because it may be that time goes at different rates in the two Universes.” He added, with some reluctance, “I don’t understand that part myself. That’s part of the Estwald Theory and I haven’t got to that very much so far.”

“Did Estwald work out all of this?”

“A great deal of it.”

Dua said, “It’s wonderful that we’re getting the food from the other Universe then. I mean, it doesn’t matter if our Sun dies out, then. We can get all the food we want from the other Universe.”

“That’s right.”

“But does nothing bad happen? I have the—the feeling that something bad happens.”

“Well,” said Odeen. “We transfer matter back and forth to make the Positron Pump and that means the Universes mix together a little. Our nuclear-force gets a tiny bit weaker, so fusion in our Sun slows up a little and the Sun cools down a little faster.... But just a little, and we don’t need it any more anyway.”

“That’s not the something-bad feeling I have. If the nuclear-force gets a tiny bit weaker, then the atoms take up more room—is that right?—and then what happens to melting?”

“That gets a tiny bit harder but it would take many millions of lifetimes before it would get noticeably harder to melt. Even if someday melting became impossible and Soft Ones died out, that would happen long, long after we would all have died out for lack of food if we weren’t using the other Universe.”

“That’s still not the something-bad—feeling—” Dua’s words were beginning to slur. She wriggled between her electrodes and to Odeen’s gratified eyes she seemed noticeably larger and compacter. It was as though his words, as well as the food, were nourishing her.

Losten was right! Education made her more nearly satisfied with life; Odeen could sense a kind of sensual joy in Dua that he had scarcely ever felt before.

She said, “It is so kind of you to explain, Odeen. You are a good left-ling.”

“Do you want me to go on?” asked Odeen, flattered and more pleased than he could easily say. “Is there anything else you want to ask?”

“A great deal, Odeen, but—but not now. Not now, Odeen. Oh, Odeen, do you know what I want to do?”

Odeen guessed at once, but was too cautious to say it openly. Dua’s moments of erotic advance were too few to treat with anything but care. He hoped desperately that Tritt had not involved himself with the children to the point where they could not take advantage of this.

But Tritt was in the chamber already. Had he been outside the door, waiting? He did not care. There was no time to think.

Dua had flowed out from between the electrodes and Odeen’s senses were filled with her beauty. She was between them, now, and through her Tritt shimmered, with his outlines flaming in incredible color.

It had never been like this. Never.

Odeen held himself back desperately, letting his own substance flow through Dua and into Tritt an atom at a time; holding away from the overpowering penetrance of Dua with every bit of strength; not giving himself up to the ecstasy, but letting it be wrenched from him; hanging on to his consciousness to the last possible moment; and then blanking out in one final transport so intense as to feel like an explosion echoing and reverberating endlessly within him.

Never in the lifetime of the triad had the period of melt-unconsciousness lasted so long.

3c

Tritt was pleased. The melting had been so satisfactory. All previous occasions seemed skimpy and hollow in comparison. He was utterly delighted with what had happened. Yet he kept quiet. He felt it better not to speak.

Odeen and Dua were happy, too. Tritt could tell. Even the children seemed to be glowing.

But Tritt was happiest of all—naturally.

He listened to Odeen and Dua talk. He understood none of it, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t mind that they seemed so pleased with each other. He had his own pleasure and was content to listen.

Dua said, on one occasion. “And do they really try to communicate with us?”

(Tritt never got it quite clear who “they” might be. He gathered that “communicate” was a fancy word for “talk.” So why didn’t they say “talk”? Sometimes he wondered if he should interrupt. But if he asked questions, Odeen would only say, “Now, Tritt,” and Dua would swirl impatiently.)

“Oh, yes,” said Odeen. “The Hard Ones are quite sure of that. They have markings on the material that is sent us sometimes and they say that it is perfectly possible to communicate by such markings. Long ago, in fact, they used markings in reverse, when it was necessary to explain to the other-beings how to set up their part of the Positron Pump.”

“I wonder what the other-beings look like. What do they look like, do you suppose?”

“From the laws we can work out the nature of the stars! because that is simple. But how can we work out the nature of the beings? We can never know.”

“Couldn’t they communicate what they look like?”

“If we understood what they communicated, perhaps we could make out something. But we don’t understand.” Dua seemed aggrieved. “Don’t the Hard Ones understand?”

“I don’t know. If they do, they haven’t told me so. Losten once told me it didn’t matter what they were like, as long as the Positron Pump worked and was enlarged.”

“Maybe he just didn’t want you bothering him.” Odeen said, huffily. “I don’t bother him.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. He just didn’t want to get into those details.”

By that time Tritt could no longer listen. They went on arguing for quite awhile over whether the Hard Ones should let Dua look at the markings or not Dua said that she could sense what they said, perhaps.

It made Tritt a little angry. After all, Dua was only a Soft One and not even a Rational. He began to wonder if Odeen was right to tell her all he did. It gave Dua funny ideas—

Dua could see it made Odeen angry, too. First he laughed. Then he said that an Emotional couldn’t handle such complicated things. Then he refused to talk at all. Dua had to be very pleasant to him for a while till he came around.

On one occasion it was Dua who was angry—absolutely furious.

It began quietly. In fact, it was on one of the occasions when the two children were with them. Odeen was letting them play with him. He didn’t even mind when little-right Torun pulled at him. In fact, he let himself go in most undignified fashion. He didn’t seem to mind that he was all out of shape. It was a sure sign he was pleased. Tritt remained in a corner, resting, and was so satisfied with what was happening.

Dua laughed at Odeen’s misshapenness. She let her own substance touch Odeen’s knobbishness flirtatiously. She knew very well, Tritt knew, that the leftish surface was sensitive when out of ovoid.

Dua said, “I’ve been thinking, Odeen ... If the other Universe gets its laws into ours just a bit through the Positron Pump, doesn’t our Universe get its laws into theirs the same little bit?”

Odeen howled at Dua’s touch and tried to avoid her without upsetting the little ones. He gasped, “I can’t answer unless you stop, you mid-ling wretch.”

She stopped, and he said, “That’s a very good thought, Dua. You’re an amazing creature. It’s true, of course. The mixture goes both ways.... Tritt take out the little ones, will you?”

But they scurried off by themselves. They were not such little ones. They were quite grown. Annis would soon be starting his education and Torun was quite Parentally-blockish already.

Tritt stayed and thought Dua looked very beautiful when Odeen talked to her in this way.

Dua said, “If the other laws slow down our Sun and cool them down; don’t our laws speed up their suns and heat them up?”

“Exactly right, Dua. A Rational couldn’t do better.”

“How hot do their suns get?”

“Oh, not much; just slightly hotter, very slightly.”

Dua said, “But that’s where I keep getting the something-bad feeling.”

“Oh, well, the trouble is that their suns are so huge. If our little suns get a little cooler, it doesn’t matter. Even if they turned off altogether, it wouldn’t matter as long as we have the Positron Pump. With great, huge stars, though, getting even a little hotter is troublesome. There is so much material in one of those stars that turning up the nuclear fusion even a little way will make it explode.”

“Explode! But then what happens to the people?”

“What people?”

“The people in the other Universe.”

For a moment, Odeen looked blank, then he said, “I don’t know.”

“Well, what would happen if our own Sun exploded?”

“It couldn’t explode.”

(Tritt wondered what all the excitement was about. How could a Sun explode? Dua seemed angrier and Odeen looked confused.)

Dua said, “But if it did? Would it get very hot?”

“I suppose so.”

“Wouldn’t it kill us all?”

Odeen hesitated and then said in clear annoyance, “What difference does it make, Dua? Our Sun isn’t exploding, and don’t ask silly questions.”

“You told me to ask questions, Odeen, and it does make a difference, because the Positron Pump works both ways. We need their end as much as ours.”

Odeen stared at her. “I never told you that.”

“I feel it.”

Odeen said, “You feel a great many things. Dua—”

But Dua was shouting now. She was quite beside herself. Tritt had never seen her like that. She said, “Don’t change the subject, Odeen. And don’t withdraw and try to make me out a complete fool—just another Emotional. You said I was almost like a Rational and I’m enough like one to see that the Positron Pump won’t work without the other-beings. If the people in the other Universe are destroyed, the Positron Pump will stop and our Sun will be colder than ever and well all starve. Don’t you think that’s important?”

Odeen was shouting too, now. “That shows what you know. We need their help because the energy supply is in low concentration and we have to switch matter. If the Sun in the other Universe explodes, there’ll be an enormous flood of energy; a huge flood that will last for a million lifetimes. There will be so much energy, we could tap it directly without any matter-shift either way; so we don’t need them, and it doesn’t matter what happens—”

They were almost touching now. Tritt was horrified. He had better say something, make them get apart, talk to them. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Then it turned out he didn’t have to.

There was a Hard One just outside the cavern. No, three of them. They had been trying to talk and hadn’t made themselves heard.

Tritt shrieked, “Odeen. Dua.”

Then he remained quiet, trembling. He had a frightened notion of what the Hard Ones had come to talk about. He decided to leave.

But a Hard One put out one of his permanent, opaque appendages and said, “Don’t go.”

It sounded harsh, unfriendly. Tritt was more frightened than ever.

4a

Dua was filled with anger; so filled she could scarcely sense the Hard Ones. She seemed stifled under the components of the anger, each one filling her to the brim, separately. There was a sense of wrongness that Odeen should try to lie to her. A sense of wrongness that a whole world of people should die. A sense of wrongness that it was so easy for her to learn and that she had never been allowed to.

Since that first time in the rock, she had gone twice more to the Hard-caverns. Twice more, unnoticed, she had buried herself in rock, and each time she sensed and knew, and each time when Odeen would explain matters to her, she knew in advance what it was he would explain.

Why couldn’t they teach her, then, as they had taught Odeen? Why only the Rationals? Did she possess the capacity to learn only because she was a Left-Em, a perverted mid-ling? Then let them teach her, perversion and all. It was wrong to leave her ignorant.

Finally, the words of the Hard One were breaking through to her. Losten was there, but it was not he speaking. It was a strange Hard One, in front, who spoke. She did not know him, but she knew few of them.

The Hard One said, “Which of you have been in the lower caverns recently: the Hard caverns?”

Dua was defiant. They found out about her rock-rubbing and she didn’t care. Let them tell everybody. She would do so herself. She said, “I have. Many times.”

“Alone?” said the Hard One calmly.

“Alone. Many times,” snapped Dua. It was only three times, but she didn’t care.

Odeen muttered, “I have, of course, been to the lower caverns on occasion.”

The Hard One seemed to ignore that. He turned to Tritt instead and said sharply. “And you, right?”

Tritt quavered, “Yes, Hard-sir.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, Hard-sir.”

“How often?”

“Once.”

Dua was annoyed. Poor Tritt was in such a panic over nothing. It was she herself who had done it and she was ready for a confrontation. “Leave him alone,” she said. “I’m the one you want.”

The Hard One turned slowly toward her. “For what?” he said.

“For whatever it is.” And faced with it directly, she couldn’t bring herself to describe what she had done after all. Not in front of Odeen.

“Well, we’ll get to you. First, the right.... Your name is Tritt, isn’t it? Why did you go to the lower caverns alone?”

“To speak to Hard-One-Estwald, Hard-sir.”

At which again Dua interrupted, eagerly, “Are you Estwald?”

The Hard One said briefly, “No.”

Odeen looked annoyed, as though it embarrassed him that Dua didn’t recognize the Hard One. Dua didn’t care.

The Hard One said to Tritt, “What did you take from the lower caverns?”

Tritt was silent.

The Hard One said, without emotion, “We know you took something. We want to know if you know what it was. It could be very dangerous.”

Tritt was still silent, and Losten interposed, saying more kindly, “Please tell us, Tritt. We know now it was you and we don’t want to have to be harsh.”

Tritt mumbled. “I took a food-ball.”

“Ah.” It was the first Hard One speaking. “What did you do with it?”

And Tritt burst out. “It was for Dua. She wouldn’t eat. It was for Dua.”

Dua jumped and coalesced in astonishment.

The Hard One turned on her at once. “You did not know about it?”

“No!”

“Nor you?”—to Odeen.

Odeen, so motionless as to seem frozen, said, “No, Hard-sir.”

For a moment the air was full of unpleasant vibration as the Hard Ones spoke to each other, ignoring the triad.

Whether her sessions at rock-rubbing had made her more sensitive, or whether it was her recent storm of emotions, Dua couldn’t tell, and wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to analyze; she simply knew she was catching whiffs -—not of words—but of understanding—

They had detected the loss some time ago. They had been searching quietly. They had turned to the Soft Ones as possible culprits with reluctance. They had investigated and then turned to Odeen’s triad with even greater reluctance. (Why? Dua missed that.) They did not see how Odeen could have had the foolishness to take it, or Dua the inclination. They did not think of Tritt at all.

Then the Hard One who had so far not said a word to the Soft Ones recalled seeing Tritt in the Hard-caverns. (Of course, thought Dua. It was the day she had first entered the rock. She had sensed him then. She had forgotten.)

It had seemed unlikely in the extreme, but finally, with all else impossible and with the time lapse having grown intolerably dangerous, they came. They would have liked to consult Estwald, but by the time the possibility of Tritt arose, he was unavailable.

All this Dua sensed in a gasp and now she turned toward Tritt, with a feeling of mingled wonder and outrage.

Losten was anxiously vibrating that no harm had been done, that Dua looked well, that it was a useful experiment actually. The Hard One to whom Tritt had spoken was agreeing; the other still exuded concern.

Dua was not paying attention to them only. She was looking at Tritt.

The first Hard One said, “Where is the food-ball now, Tritt?”

Tritt showed them.

It was hidden effectively and the connections were clumsy but serviceable.

The Hard One said, “Did you do this yourself, Tritt?”

“Yes, Hard-sir.”

“How did you know how?”

“I looked at how it was done in the Hard-caverns. I did it exactly the way I saw it done there.”

“Didn’t you know you might have harmed your mid-mate?”

“I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I—” Tritt seemed unable to speak for a moment. Then he said, “It was not to hurt her. It was to feed her. I let it pour into her feeder and I decorated her feeder. I wanted her to try it and she did. She ate! For the first time in a long while she ate well. We melted.” He paused, then said in a huge, tumultuous cry. “She had enough energy at last to initiate a baby-Emotional. She took Odeen’s seed and passed it to me. I have it growing inside me. A baby-Emotional is growing inside me.”

Dua could not speak. She stumbled back and then rushed for the door in so pell-mell a fashion that the Hard Ones could not get out of the way in time. She struck the appendage of the one in front, passing deep into it, and then pulled free with a harsh sound.

The Hard One’s appendage fell limp and his expression seemed contorted with pain. Odeen tried to dodge around him to follow Dua, but the Hard One said, with apparent difficulty. “Let her go for now. There is enough harm done. We will take care.”

4b

Odeen found himself living through a nightmare. Dua was gone. The Hard Ones were gone. Only Tritt was still there; silent.

How could it have happened, Odeen thought in tortured fashion. How could Tritt have found his way alone to the Hard-caverns? How could he have taken a storage battery charged at the Positron Pump and designed to yield radiation in much more concentrated form than Sunlight and dared—

Odeen would not have had the courage to chance it. How could Tritt; stumbling, ignorant Tritt? Or was he unusual, too? Odeen, the clever Rational; Dua, the curious Emotional; and Tritt, the daring Parental?

He said, “How could you do it, Tritt?”

Tritt retorted hotly. “What did I do? I fed her. I fed her better than she had ever been fed before. Now we have a baby-Emotional initiated at last. Haven’t we waited long enough? We would have waited forever, if we had waited for Dua.”

“But don’t you understand, Tritt? You might have hurt her. It wasn’t ordinary Sunlight. It was an experimental radiational source that could have been too concentrated to be safe.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying, Odeen. How could it do harm? I tasted the kind of food the Hard Ones made before. It tasted bad. You’ve tasted it, too. It tasted just awful and it never hurt us. It tasted so bad, Dua wouldn’t touch it. Then I came on the food-ball. It tasted good. I ate some and it was delicious. How can anything delicious hurt. You see, Dua ate it. She liked it. And it started the baby-Emotional. How can I have done wrong?”

Odeen despaired of explaining. He said, “Dua is going to be very angry.”

“She’ll get over it.”

“I wonder. Tritt, she’s not like ordinary Emotionals. That’s what makes her so hard to live with, but so wonderful when we can live with her. She may never want to melt with us again.”

Tritt’s outline was sturdily plane-surfaced. Then he said, “Well, what of it?”

“What of it? You ask. Do you want to give up melting?”

“No, but if she won’t she won’t. I have my third baby and I don’t care any more. I know all about the Soft Ones in the old days. They used to have two triad-births sometimes. But I don’t care. One is plenty.”

“But, Tritt, babies aren’t all there is to melting.”

“What else? I heard you say once you learned faster after you melted. Then learn slower. I don’t care. I have my third baby.”

Odeen turned away, trembling, and flowed jerkily out of the chamber. What was the use of scolding Tritt? Tritt wouldn’t understand. He wasn’t sure he understood himself.

Once the third baby was born, and grown a little, surely there would come a time to pass on. It would be he, Odeen, who would have to give the signal, who would have to say when, and it would have to be done without fear. Anything else would be disgrace, or worse, and yet he could not face it without melting, even now that all three children would have been formed.

Melting, somehow, would eliminate the fear.... Maybe it was because melting was like passing on. There was a period of time when you were not conscious, yet it did not hurt. It was like not existing and yet it was desirable. With enough melting, he could gain the courage to pass on without fear and without—

Oh, Sun and all the stars, it wasn’t “passing on.” Why use that phrase so solemnly? He knew the other word that was never used except by children who wanted to shock their elders somehow. It was dying. He had to get ready to die without fear, and to have Dua and Tritt die with him.

And he didn’t know how.... Not without melting...

4c

Tritt remained alone in the room, frightened, frightened, but sturdily resolved to remain unmoved. He had his third baby. He could feel it within.

That was what counted.

That was all that counted.

Yet why, then, deep inside, did he have a stubborn faint feeling that it wasn’t all that counted?

5a

Dua was ashamed almost beyond endurance. It took a long time for her to battle down that shame; battle it down enough to give herself room to think. She had hastened— hastened—moving blindly out and away from the horror of the home-cavern; scarcely caring that she did not know where she was going or even where she was.

It was night, when no decent Soft One would be on the surface, not even the most frivolous Emotional. And it would be a considerable time before the Sun rose. Dua was glad. The Sun was food and at the moment, she hated food and what had been done to her.

It was cold, too, but Dua was only distantly aware of it. Why should she care about cold, she thought, when she had been fattened in order that she might do her duty— fattened, mind and body. After that, cold and starvation were almost her friends.

She saw through Tritt. Poor thing; he was so easy to see through; his actions were pure instinct and he was to be praised that he had followed them so bravely. He had come back so daringly from the Hard-caverns with the food-ball (and she—she herself had sensed him and would have known what was happening if Tritt hadn’t been so paralyzed at what he was doing that he had dared not think of it, and if she had not been so paralyzed at what she was doing and at the new depth of sensation it brought her that she would not take care to sense what most she needed to).

Tritt brought it back undetected and had arranged the pitiful booby trap, decorating her feeder to entice her. And she had come back, flushed with awareness of her rock-probing thinness, filled with the shame of it and with pity for Tritt. With all that shame and pity, she ate, and helped initiate birth.

Since then she had eaten but sparingly as was her custom and never at the feeder, but then there had been no impulse to. Tritt had not driven her. He had looked contented (of course) so there was nothing to reactivate the shame. And Tritt left the food-ball in place. He didn’t dare risk taking it back; he had what he wanted; it was best and easiest to leave it there and think of it no more.

—Till he was caught.

But clever Odeen must have seen through Tritt’s plan, must have spied the new connections to the electrodes, must have understood Tritt’s purpose. Undoubtedly, he said nothing to Tritt; that would have embarrassed and frightened the poor right-ling and Odeen always watched over Tritt with loving care.

Of course, Odeen didn’t have to say anything. He needed only to fill in the gaps in Tritt’s clumsy plan and make it work.

Dua was under no illusions now. She would have detected the taste of the food-ball; noticed its extraordinary tang; caught the way in which it began to fill her while giving her no sensations of fullness—had it not been that Odeen had occupied her with talk.

It had been a conspiracy between the two of them, whether Tritt was consciously part of it or not. How could she have believed that Odeen was suddenly a careful, painstaking teacher? How could she have failed to see the ulterior motive? Their concern for her was their concern for the completion of the new triad, and that in itself was an indication of how little they thought of her.

Well—

She paused long enough to feel her own weariness and she worked herself into a crevice in the rock that would shield her from the thin, cold wind. Two of the seven stars were in her field of vision and she watched them absently, occupying her outer senses in trivia so that she might concentrate the more in internal thought.

She was disillusioned.

“Betrayed,” she muttered to herself. “Betrayed!” Could they see no further than themselves? That Tritt would be willing to see all destroyed if he were but secure in his babies was to be taken for granted. But he was a creature of instinct. What of Odeen?

Odeen reasoned, and did that mean that for the purpose of exercising his reason, he would sacrifice all else? Was everything produced by reason its own excuse for being— at any cost? Because Estwald had devised the Positron Pump, did it have to be used in order that the whole world, Hard and Soft alike, be placed at its mercy, and at the mercy of the people of the other Universe? What if the other people stopped and if the world was left without a Positron Pump and with a dangerously cooled Sun?

No, they wouldn’t stop, those other people; for they had been persuaded to start and they would be persuaded to keep going until they were destroyed—and then they would be needed no longer by the Rationals, Hard or Soft —just as she, Dua, would have to pass on (be destroyed) now that she was needed no longer.

She and the other people, both being betrayed. Almost without being aware of it, she was cushioning deeper and deeper into the rock. She buried herself, out of sight of the stars, out of touch with the wind, unaware of the world. She was pure thought.

It was Estwald whom she hated. He was the personification of all that was selfish and hard. He had devised the Positron Pump and would destroy a whole world of perhaps tens of thousands without conscience. He was so withdrawn that he never made his appearance and so powerful that even the other Hard Ones seemed afraid of him. Well, then, she would fight him. She would stop him. The people of the other Universe had helped set up the Positron Pump through communications of some sort. Odeen had mentioned those. Where would such communications be kept? What would they be like? How could they be used for further communication?

It was remarkable how clearly she could think. Remarkable. There was fierce enjoyment in this, that she would use reason to overcome the cruel reasoners.

They wouldn’t be able to stop her, for she could go where no Hard One could go, where no Rational or Parental could—and where no other Emotional would.

She might be caught eventually, but at the moment she didn’t care. She was going to fight to have her way—at any price—at any price—though to do it meant she would have to go through rock, live in rock, skirt the Hard-caverns, steal food from their stored energy batteries when she had to, flock with the other Emotionals and feed on Sunlight when she could.

But in the end she would teach them all a lesson and after that they could do as they wished. She would even be ready to pass on then—but only then—

5b

Odeen was present when the new baby-Emotional was born, perfect in every way, but he had not been able to feel enthusiasm over it. Even Tritt, who cared for it perfectly, as a Parental must, seemed subdued in his ecstasies.

A long time had passed and it was as though Dua had vanished. She had not passed on. A Soft One could not pass on except when the whole triad did; but she was not with them, either. It was as though she had passed on, without passing on.

Odeen had seen her once, only once, not very long after her wild fight on the news that she had initiated the new baby.

He had passed a cluster of Emotionals, sunning themselves, when he was moving over the surface on some foolish notion that he might find her. They had tittered at the rare sight of a Rational moving in the vicinity of an Emotional cluster and had thinned in mass-provocation, with no thought among the foolish lot of them but to advertise the fact that they were Emotionals.

Odeen felt only contempt for them and there was no answering stir along his own smooth curves at all. He thought of Dua instead and of how different she was from all of them. Dua never thinned for any reason other than her own inner needs. She had never tried to attract anyone and was the more attractive for that. If she could have brought herself to join the flock of empty-heads she would be easily recognized (he felt sure) by the fact that she alone would not thin, but would probably thicken, precisely because the others thinned.

And as he thought that, Odeen scanned the sunning Emotionals and noted that one indeed had not.

He stopped and then hastened toward her, oblivious to the Emotionals in his way, oblivious to their wild screeching as they flicked smokily out of his path and chattered desperately in their attempts to avoid coalescing one with the other—at least not in the open, and with a Rational watching.

It was Dua. She did not try to leave. She kept her ground and said nothing.

“Dua,” he said, humbly, “aren’t you coming home?”

“I have no home, Odeen,” she said. Not angrily, not in hate—and all the more dreadfully for that reason.

“How can you blame Tritt for what he did, Dua? You know the poor fellow can’t reason.”

“But you can, Odeen. And you occupied my mind while he arranged to feed my body, didn’t you? Your reason told you that I was much more likely to be trapped by you than by him.”

“Dua, no!”

“No, what? Didn’t you make a big show of teaching me, of educating me?”

“I did, but it wasn’t a show, it was real. And it was not because of what Tritt had done. I didn’t know what Tritt had done.”

“I can’t believe that.” She flowed away without haste. He followed after. They were alone now, the Sun shining redly down upon them.

She turned to him. “Let me ask you one question, Odeen? Why did you want to teach me?”

Odeen said, “Because I wanted to. Because I enjoy teaching and because I would rather teach than do anything else—but learn.”

“And melt, of course.... Never mind,” she added to ward him off. “Don’t explain that you are talking of reason and not of instinct. If you really mean what you say about enjoying teaching; if I can really ever believe what you say; then perhaps you can understand something I’m going to tell you.

“I’ve been learning a great deal since I left you, Odeen. Never mind how. I have. There’s no Emotional left in me at all, except physiologically. Inside, where it counts, I’m all Rational, except that I hope I have more feeling for others than Rationals have. And one thing I’ve learned is what we really are, Odeen; you and I and Tritt and all the other triads on this planet; what we really are and always were.”

“What is that?” asked Odeen. He was prepared to listen for as long as might be necessary, and as quietly, if only she would come back with him when she had said her say. He would perform any penance, do anything that might be required. Only she must come back—and something dim and dark inside him knew that she had to come back voluntarily.

“What we are? Why, nothing, really, Odeen,” she said lightly, almost laughing, “Isn’t that strange? The Hard Ones are the only living species on the face of the world. Haven’t they taught you that? There is only one species because you and I, the Soft Ones, are not really alive. We’re machines, Odeen. We must be because only the Hard Ones are alive. Haven’t they taught you that, Odeen?”

“But, Dua, that’s nonsense,” said Odeen, nonplused.

Dua’s voice grew harsher. “Machines, Odeen! Made by the Hard Ones! Destroyed by the Hard Ones! They are alive, the Hard Ones. Only they. They don’t talk about it much. They don’t have to. They all know it. But I’ve learned to think, Odeen, and I’ve worked it out from the small clues I’ve had. They live tremendously long lives, but die eventually. They no longer give birth; the Sun yields too little energy for that. And since they die very infrequently, but don’t give birth at all, their numbers are very slowly declining. And there are no young ones to provide new blood and new thoughts, so the old, long-lived Hard Ones get terribly bored. So what do you suppose they do, Odeen?”

“What?” There was a kind of fascination about this. A repulsive fascination.

“They manufacture mechanical children, whom they can teach. You said it yourself, Odeen. You would rather teach than do anything else but learn—and melt, of course. The Rationals are made in the mental image of the Hard Ones, and the Hard Ones don’t melt, and learning is terribly complex for them since they already know so much. What is left for them but the fun of teaching. Rationals were created for no purpose but to be taught. Emotionals and Parentals were created because they were necessary for the self-perpetuating machinery that made new Rationals. And new Rationals were needed constantly because the old ones were used up, were taught all they could be taught. And when old Rationals had absorbed what they could, they were destroyed and were taught, in advance, to call the destruction process “passing on” to spare their feelings. And of course, Emotionals and Parentals passed on with them. As long as they had helped form a new triad there was no further use for them.”

“But that’s all wrong, Dua,” Odeen managed to say. He had no arguments to pose against her nightmare scheme, but he knew with a certainty past argument that she was wrong. (Or did a little pang of doubt deep inside suggest that the certainty might have been implanted in him, to begin with?—No, surely no, for then would not Dua be certain with an implanted certainty, too, that this was wrong?—Or was she an imperfect Emotional without the proper implantations and without— Oh, what was he thinking. He was as crazy as she was.)

Dua said, “You look upset, Odeen. Are you sure I’m all wrong? Of course, now they have the Positron Pump and they now have all the energy they need, or will have. Soon they will be giving birth again. Maybe they are doing so already. And they won’t need any Soft-One machines at all, and we will all be destroyed; I beg pardon, we will all pass on.”

“No, Dua,” said Odeen, strenuously, as much to himself as to her. “I don’t know how you got those notions, but the Hard Ones aren’t like that. We are not destroyed.”

“Don’t lie to yourself, Odeen. They are like that. They are prepared to destroy a whole world of other-beings for their benefit; a whole Universe if they have to. Would they stop at destroying a few Soft Ones for their comfort?— But they made one mistake. Somehow the machinery went wrong and a Rational mind got into an Emotional body. I’m a Left-Em, do you know that? They called me that when I was a child, and they were right. I can reason like a Rational and I can feel like an Emotional. And I will fight the Hard Ones with that combination.”

Odeen felt wild. Dua must surely be mad, yet he dared not say so. He had to cajole her somehow and bring her back. He said with strenuous sincerity, “Dua, we’re not destroyed when we pass on.”

“No? What does happen then?”

“I—I don’t know. I think we enter another world, a better and happier world, and become like—like—well, much better than we are.”

Dua laughed. “Where did you hear that? Did the Hard Ones tell you that?”

“No, Dua. I’m sure that this must be so out of my own thoughts. I’ve been thinking a great deal about it since you left.”

Dua said, “Then think less and you’ll be less foolish. Poor Odeen! Good-by.” She flowed away once more, thinly. There was an air of weariness about her.

Odeen called out, “But wait, Dua. Surely you want to see your new baby-mid.”

She did not answer.

He cried out. “When will you come home?”

She did not answer.

And he followed no more, but looked after her in deepest misery as she dwindled.

He did not tell Tritt he had seen Dua. What was the use? Nor did he see her again. He began haunting the favored sunning-sites of the Emotionals in the region; doing so even though occasional Parentals emerged to watch him in stupid suspicion (Tritt was a mental giant compared to most Parentals).

The lack of her hurt more with each passing day. And with each passing day, he realized that there was a gathering fright inside himself over her absence. He didn’t know why.

He came back to home-cavern one day to find Losten waiting for him. Losten was standing there, grave and polite while Tritt was showing him the new baby and striving to keep the handful of mist from touching the Hard One.

Losten said, “It is indeed a beauty, Tritt. Derala is its name?”

“Derola,” corrected Tritt. “I don’t know when Odeen will be back. He wanders about a lot—”

“Here I am, Losten,” said Odeen, hastily. “Tritt, take the baby away; there’s a good fellow.”

Tritt did so, and Losten turned to Odeen with quite obvious relief, saying, “You must be very happy to have completed the triad.”

Odeen tried to answer with some polite inconsequence, but could maintain only a miserable silence. He had recently been developing a kind of comradeship, a vague sense of equality with the Hard Ones, that enabled them to talk together on a level. Somehow Dua’s madness had spoiled it. Odeen knew she was wrong and yet he approached Losten once more as stiffly as in the long-gone days when he thought of himself as a far inferior creature to them, as a—machine?

Losten said, “Have you seen Dua?” This was a real question, and not politeness. Odeen could tell easily.

“Only once, H—” (He almost said “Hard-sir” as though he were a child again, or a Parental.) “Only once, Losten. She won’t come home.”

“She must come home,” said Losten, softly.

“I don’t know how to arrange that.”

Losten regarded him somberly. “Do you know what she is doing?”

Odeen dared not look at the other. Had he discovered Dua’s wild theories? What would be done about that?

He made a negative sign without speaking.

Losten said, “She is a most unusual Emotional, Odeen. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” sighed Odeen.

“So are you in your way, and Tritt in his. I doubt that any Parental in the world would have had either the courage or the initiative to steal an energy-battery or the perverse ingenuity to put it to use as he did. The three of you make up the most unusual triad of which we have any record.”

“Thank you.”

“But there are uncomfortable aspects to the triad, too; things we didn’t count on. We wanted you to teach Dua as the mildest and best possible way in which to cajole her into performing her function voluntarily. We did not count on Tritt’s quixotic action at just that moment. Nor, to tell you the truth, did we count on her wild reaction to the fact that the world in the other Universe must be destroyed.”

“I ought to have been careful how I answered her questions,” said Odeen miserably.

“It wouldn’t have helped. She was finding out for herself. We didn’t count on that either. Odeen, I am sorry, but I must tell you this—Dua has become a deadly danger; she is trying to stop the Positron Pump.”

“But how can she? She can’t reach it, and even if she could, she lacks the knowledge to do anything about it.”

“Oh, but she can reach it.” Losten hesitated, then said, “She remains infused in the rock of the world where she is safe from us.”

It took awhile for Odeen to grasp the clear meaning of the words. He said, “No grown Emotional would— Dua would never—”

“She would. She does. Don’t waste time arguing the point.... She can penetrate anywhere in the caverns. Nothing is hidden from her. She has studied those communications we have received from the other Universe. We don’t know that of certain knowledge, but there is no other way of explaining what is happening.”

“Oh, oh, oh.” Odeen rocked back and forth, his surface opaque with shame and grief. “Does Estwald know of all this?”

Losten said, grimly, “Not yet; though he must know someday.”

“But what will she do with those communications?”

“She is using them to work out a method for sending some of her own in the other direction.”

“But she cannot know how to translate or transmit.”

“She is learning both. She knows more about those communications than Estwald himself. She is a frightening phenomenon, an Emotional who can reason and who is out of control.”

Odeen shivered. Out of control? How machine-like a reference!

He said, “It can’t be that bad.”

“It can. She has communicated already and I fear she is advising the other creatures to stop their half of the Positron Pump. If they do that before their Sun explodes, we will be helpless at this end.”

“But then—”

“She must be stopped, Odeen.”

“B—But, how? Are you going to blast—” His voice failed. Dimly, he knew that the Hard One had devices for digging caverns out of the world’s rock; devices scarcely used since the world’s population had begun declining ages ago. Would they locate Dua in the rock and blast it and her?

“No,” said Losten, forcefully. “We cannot harm Dua.”

“Estwald might—”

“Estwald cannot harm her, either.”

“Then what’s to be done?”

“It’s you, Odeen. Only you. We’re helpless, so we must depend on you.”

“On me? But what can I do?”

“Think about it,” said Losten, urgently. “Think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“I can’t say more than that,” said Losten, in apparent agony. “Think! There is so little time.”

He turned and left, moving rapidly for a Hard One, moving as though he did not trust himself to stay and perhaps say too much.

And Odeen could only look after him, dismayed, confused—lost.

5c

There was a great deal for Tritt to do. Babies required much care, but even two young-lefts and two young-rights together did not make up the sum of a single baby-mid— particularly not a mid as perfect as Derola. She had to be exercised and soothed, protected from percolating into whatever she touched, cajoled into condensing and resting.

It was a long time before he saw Odeen again and, actually, he didn’t care. Derola took up all his time. But then he came across Odeen in the corner of his own alcove, iridescent with thought.

Tritt remembered, suddenly. He said, “Was Losten angry about Dua?”

Odeen came to himself with a start. “Losten?—Yes, he was angry. Dua is doing great harm.”

“She should come home, shouldn’t she?”

Odeen was staring at Tritt. “Tritt,” he said, “we’re going to have to persuade Dua to come home. We must find her first. You can do it. With a new baby, your Parental sensitivity is very high. You can use it to find Dua.”

“No,” said Tritt, shocked. “It’s used for Derola. It would be wrong to use it for Dua. Besides, if she wants to stay away so long when a baby-mid is longing for her— and she was once a baby-mid herself—maybe we might just learn to do without her.”

“But, Tritt, don’t you ever want to melt again?”

“Well, the triad is now complete.”

“That’s not all there is to melting.” Tritt said, “But where do we have to go to find her? Little Derola needs me. She’s a tiny baby. I don’t want to leave her.”

“The Hard Ones will arrange to have Derola taken care of. You and I will go to the Hard-caverns and find Dua.”

Tritt thought about that. He didn’t care about Dua. He didn’t even care about Odeen, somehow. There was only Derola. He said, “Someday. Someday, when Derola is older. Not till then.”

“Tritt,” said Odeen, urgently, “we must find Dua. Otherwise—otherwise the babies will be taken away from us.”

“By whom?” said Tritt.

“By the Hard Ones.”

Tritt was silent. There was nothing he could say. He had never heard of such a thing. He could not conceive of such a thing.

Odeen said, “Tritt, we must pass on. I know why, now. I’ve been thinking about it ever since Losten— But never mind that. Dua and you must pass on, too. Now that I know why, you will feel you must and I hope—I think— Dua will feel she must, too. And we must pass on soon, for Dua is destroying the world.”

Tritt was backing away. “Don’t look at me like that, Odeen.... You’re making me.... You’re making me.”

“I’m not making you, Tritt,” said Odeen, sadly. “It’s just that I know now and so you must.... But we must find Dua.”

“No, no.” Tritt was in agony, trying to resist. There was something terribly new about Odeen, and existence was approaching an end inexorably. There would be no Tritt and no baby-mid. Where every other Parental had his baby-mid for a long time, Tritt would have lost his almost at once.

It wasn’t fair. Oh, it wasn’t fair.

Tritt panted. “It’s Dua’s fault. Let her pass on first.” Odeen said, with deadening calm, “There’s no other way but for all of us—”

And Tritt knew that was so—that was so—that was so—

6a

Dua felt thin and cold, wispy. Her attempts to rest in the open and absorb Sunlight had ended after Odeen had found her that time. Her feeding at the Hard Ones’ batteries was erratic. She dared not remain too long outside the safety of rock, so she ate in quick gulps, and she never got enough.

She was conscious of hunger, continuously, all the more so since it seemed to tire her to remain in the rock. It was as though she were being punished for all that long time in which she haunted the Sunset and ate so skimpily.

If it were not for the work she was doing, she could not bear the weariness and hunger. Sometimes she hoped that the Hard Ones would destroy her—but only after she was finished.

The Hard Ones were helpless as long as she was in the rock. Sometimes she sensed them outside the rock in the open. They were afraid. Sometimes she thought the fear was for her, but that couldn’t be. How could they be afraid for her; afraid that she would pass on out of sheer lack of food, out of sheer exhaustion. It must be that they were afraid of her; afraid of a machine that did not work as they had designed it to work; appalled at so great a prodigy; struck helpless with the terror of it.

Carefully, she avoided them. She always knew where they were, so they could not catch her nor stop her.

They could not watch all places always. She thought she could even blank what little perception they had. She swirled out of the rock and studied the recorded duplicates of the communications they had received from the other Universe. They did not know that was what she was after. If they hid them, she would find them in whatever new place. If they destroyed them, it didn’t matter. Dua could remember them.

She did not understand them, at first, but with her stay in the rocks, her senses grew steadily sharper, and she seemed to understand without understanding. Without knowing what the symbols meant, they inspired feelings within her.

She picked out markings and placed them where they would be sent to the other Universe. The markings were F-E-E-R. What that could possibly mean she had no idea, but its shape inspired her with a feeling of fear and she did her best to impress that feeling of fear upon the markings. Perhaps the other creatures, studying the markings, would also feel fear.

When the answers came, Dua could sense excitement in them. She did not always get the answers that were sent. Sometimes the Hard Ones found them first. Surely, they must know what she was doing. Still, they couldn’t read the messages, couldn’t even sense the emotions that went along with them.

So she didn’t care. She would not be stopped, till she was done—whatever the Hard Ones found out.

She waited for a message that would carry the feeling she wanted. It came: P-U-M-P B-A-D.

It carried the fear and hatred she wanted. She sent it back in extended form—more fear—more hatred— Now the other people would understand. Now they would stop the Pump. The Hard Ones would have to find some other way, some other source of energy; they must not obtain it through the death of all those thousands of other Universe creatures.

She was resting too much, declining into a kind of stupor, within the rock. Desperately she craved food and waited so that she could crawl out. Even more desperately than she wanted the food in the storage battery, she wanted the storage battery to be dead. She wanted to suck the last bit of food out of it and know that no more would come and that her task was done.

She emerged at last and remained recklessly long, sucking in the contents of one of the batteries. She wanted to withdraw its last, empty it, see that no more was entering —but it was an endless source—endless—endless.

She stirred and drew away from the battery in disgust. The Positron Pumps were still going then. Had her messages not persuaded the other Universe creatures to stop the Pumps? Had they not received them? Had they not sensed their meaning?

She had to try again. She had to make it plain beyond plain. She would include every combination of signals that to her seemed to carry the feeling of danger; every combination that would get across the plea to stop.

Desperately she began to fuse the symbols into metal; drawing without reserve on the energy she had just sucked out of the battery; drawing on it till it was all gone and she was more weary than ever: PUMP NOT STOP NOT STOP WE NOT STOP PUMP WE NOT HEAR DANGER NOT HEAR NOT HEAR YOU STOP PLEASE STOP YOU STOP SO WE STOP PLEASE YOU STOP DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER STOP STOP YOU STOP PUMP.

It was all she could. There was nothing left in her but a racking pain. She placed the message where it could be transferred and she did not wait for the Hard Ones to send the message unwittingly. Through an agonizing haze, she manipulated the controls as she had seen them do, finding the energy for it somehow.

The message disappeared and so did the cavern in a purple shimmer of vertigo. She was—passing on—out of sheer—exhaustion.

Odeen—Tri—

6b

Odeen came. He had been flowing faster than ever he had flowed before. He had been following Tritt’s sharp new-baby sense perception, but now he was close enough for his own blunter senses to detect her nearness. He could on his own account feel the flickering and fading consciousness of Dua, and he raced forward while Tritt did his best to clump along, gasping and calling, “Faster—faster—”

Odeen found her in a state of collapse, scarcely alive, smaller than he had ever seen an adult Emotional.

“Tritt,” he said, “bring the battery here. No—no— don’t try to carry her. She’s too thin to carry. Hurry. If she sinks into the floor—”

The Hard Ones began to gather. They were late, of course, with their inability to sense other life-forms at a distance. If it had depended only on them, it would have been too late to save her. She would not have passed on; she would truly have been destroyed—and—and more than she knew would have been destroyed with her.

Now, as she was slowly gathering life out of the energy supply, the Hard Ones stood silently near them.

Odeen rose; a new Odeen who knew what was happening exactly. Imperiously, he ordered them away with an angry gesture—and they left. Silently. Without objection.

Dua stirred.

Tritt said, “Is she all right, Odeen?”

“Quiet, Tritt,” said Odeen. “Dua?”

“Odeen?” She stirred, spoke in a whisper. “I thought I had passed on.”

“Not yet, Dua. Not yet. But first you must eat and rest.”

“Is Tritt here, too?”

“Here I am, Dua,” said Tritt.

“Don’t try to bring me back,” said Dua. “It’s over, I’ve done what I wanted to do. The Positron Pump will—will stop soon, I’m sure. The Hard Ones will continue to need Soft Ones and they will take care of you two, or at least the children.”

Odeen didn’t say anything. He kept Tritt from saying anything, either. He let the radiation pour slowly into Dua, very slowly. He stopped at times to let her rest a bit, then he started again.

She began to mutter, “Enough. Enough.” Her substance was writhing more strongly.

Still he fed her.

Finally, he spoke. He said, “Dua, you were wrong. We are not machines. I know exactly what we are. I would have come to you sooner, if I had found out earlier, but I didn’t know till Losten begged me to think. And I did; very hard; and even so it is almost premature.”

Dua moaned and Odeen stopped for a while.

He said, “Listen, Dua. There is a single species of life. The Hard Ones are the only living things in the world. You gathered that, and so far you were right. But that doesn’t mean the Soft Ones aren’t alive; it merely means we are part of the same single species. The Soft Ones are the immature forms of the Hard Ones. We are first children as Soft Ones, then adults as Soft Ones, then Hard Ones. Do you understand?”

Tritt said, in soft confusion, “What? What?”

Odeen said, “Not now, Tritt. Not now. You’ll understand, too, but this is for Dua.” He kept watching Dua, who was gaining opalescence.

He said, “Listen, Dua, whenever we melt, whenever the triad melts, we become a Hard One. The Hard One is three-in-one, which is why he is hard. During the time of unconsciousness in melting we are a Hard One. But it is only temporary, and we can never remember the period afterward. We can never stay a Hard One long; we must come back. But all through our life we keep developing, with certain key stages marking it off. Each baby born marks a key stage. With the birth of the third, the Emotional, there comes the possibility of the final stage, where the Rational’s mind by itself, without the other two, can remember those flashes of Hard One existence. Then, and only then, he can guide a perfect melt that will form the Hard One forever, so that the triad can live a new and unified life of learning and intellect. I told you that passing on was like being born again. I was groping then for something I did not quite understand, but now I know.”

Dua was looking at him, trying to smile. She said, “How can you pretend to believe that, Odeen? If that were so, wouldn’t the Hard Ones have told you long ago; told all of us?”

“They couldn’t, Dua. There was a time, long ages ago, when melting was just a putting together of the atoms of bodies. But evolution slowly developed minds. Listen to me, Dua; melting is a putting together of the minds, too, and that’s much harder, much more delicate. To put it together properly and permanently, just so, the Rational must reach a certain pitch in development. That pitch is reached when he finds out, for himself, what it’s all about: when his mind is finally keen enough to remember what has happened in all those temporary unions during melting. If the Rational were told, that development would be aborted and the time of the perfect melt could not be determined. The Hard One would form imperfectly. When Losten pleaded with me to think, he was taking a great chance. Even that may have been— I hope not—

“For it’s especially true in our case, Dua. For many generations, the Hard Ones have been combining triads with great care to form particularly advanced Hard Ones and our triad was the best they’d ever obtained. Especially you, Dua. Especially you. Losten was once the triad whose baby-mid you were. Part of him was your Parental. He knew you. He brought you to Tritt and me.”

Dua sat up. Her voice was almost normal. “Odeen! Are you making all this up to soothe me?”

Tritt broke in. “No, Dua. I feel it, too. I feel it, too. I don’t know what exactly, but I feel it.”

“He does, Dua,” said Odeen. “You will, too. Aren’t you beginning to recall being a Hard One during our melt? Don’t you want to melt now? One last time? One last time?”

He lifted her. There was a feverishness about her, and though she struggled a bit, she was thinning.

“If what you say is true, Odeen,” she gasped. “If we are to be a Hard One; then it seems to me you are saying we’ll be an important one. Is that so?”

“The most important. The best who was ever formed. I mean that... Tritt, over there. It’s not good-by, Tritt. We’ll be together, as we always wanted to be. Dua, too. You, too, Dua.”

Dua said, “Then we can make Estwald understand the Pump can’t continue. We’ll force—”

The melting was beginning. One by one, the Hard Ones were entering again at the crucial moment. Odeen saw them imperfectly, for he was beginning to melt into Dua.

It was not like the other times; no sharp ecstasy; just a smooth, cool, utterly peaceful movement. He could feel himself become partly Dua, and all the world seemed pouring into his/her sharpening senses. The Positron Pumps were still going—he/she could tell—why were they still going?

He was Tritt, too, and a keen sharp sense of bitter loss filled his/her/his mind. Oh, my babies—

And he cried out, one last cry under the consciousness of Odeen, except that somehow it was the cry of Dua. “No, we can’t stop Estwald. We are Estwald. We—”

The cry that was Dua’s and yet not Dua’s stopped and there was no longer any Dua; nor would there ever be Dua again. Nor Odeen. Nor Tritt.

7abc

Estwald stepped forth and said sadly to the waiting Hard Ones, by way of vibrating air waves, “I am permanently with you now, and there is much to do—”