Intelligent knock ignorant
Dark Robadurs sin is Light Robadur’s grace and the two are one, Krebs said. You know, the Institute has made a science of myth. Dark Robadur is the species personality, instinct personified. Light Robadur is the human potential of these people. He binds Dark Robadur with symbols and coerces him with ritual. He does it in love, to make his people human.” By hook or crook then, I was almost safely through the second phase of my journey. For, awesome as the interstellar reaches may be to the lone traveler, or even to the caravan which must track those Saharas of cosmic dust, there had come a point in my journey when it was the destination which became the dread. Did they really have water in a liquid state? I could not survive without it. Should I have trusted them, when they reported themselves as beings with the same needs as I, molded by the same natural forces? Not that I was suspicious of their intent— but after all, they were only a third-generation star. Young as they were, must one not have a low view of intellectual powers which had taken all of their history to discover other presences, and the possible pulsings between them? Granted We and They had mutually significant symbols and meanings, but imagine Our dismay when informed that they still read and wrote! Could beings like Us, who are in Ourselves practicallyall electronic meaning, go backward as far as these beings on the other side of their Milky Way thought they had gone forward; could we mutate enough, and quickly so, to touch arc on their planet? To dare to do this, I had gone against all home Opinion. And so far, with the help of arrangements-in-waiting, plans had gone remarkably. But, as I peered outside that glass door, I remembered my misgivings just a few moments before landing. Behind me, improbably far along the empyrean reaches, Ours, that long teardrop of a planet, lay somewhere shrouded as I had last seen it, nestling deep in its filtered atmospheres, a jewel once upon a time massively wept. As I had reined in on Yours, a mere toy ball lost on its cloud stubble, waiting to be picked up again in play— my last thought had been: yes, I can land Here — but can I live? Isnt that the essence of intelligence? I asked. To analyze new situations, and master them?” And, when the transmutation of this second spaceship had been completed, right over the thirsty gray sands, the Twerlik proudly addedpermeability to its vocabulary. The earliest ultrasonic recordings had met with resistance, even ridicule. Radio programs consisting of nothing but silence interrupted at half-hour intervals by commercial breaks seemed absurd. But gradually the public discovered that the silence was golden, that after leaving the radio switched to an ultrasonic channel for an hour or so a pleasant atmosphere of rhythm and melody seemed to generate itself spontaneously around them. When an announcer suddenly stated that an ultrasonic version of MozartsJupiter Symphony or Tchaikovsky’sPathetique had just been played the listener identified the real source.* * * * I insisted that I be dressed up for the interview in my best shirt and even a tie, though I never wore one; also, I never had the top button of my shirt buttoned, for you can imagine to what uses I have to put my neck. I wished, then, I had a jacket and a pair of real pants for the occasion. I thought they might be stretched out beyond me and a pair of shoes stuck into the pants legs. After all, so much of what we do is for show; why not, out of deference, do a little something extra? But Number One thought not. Still, she arranged a quilt very prettily up around my waist, made tea, brought out a box of pastries, combed my hair, wiped the sweat off my forehead. A pity I had no toes to tap, no knuckles to suck nervously, hardly anything to fidget until she came, but I chewed on my upper lip and posed myself as calmly and as aesthetically as I could manage, twisting slightly in a sort of reclining contraposto. "Yes, our decomputer takes a computerised trademark and tells us whether its too close to known marks or names to be registrable." Sonderberg had brought the satchel inside with him; there could be no mistaking that. Whoever had shot him had made off with it; that, too, was plain enough. But how the devil could the assassin have committed the crime and then escaped from not one but two sealed rooms in the clutch of seconds that had passed between the triggering of the fatal shots and Quincannons entry into the side passage? intelligent knock ignorant "Any food coupons?" said a voice in my ear. Civilization? Hitchcock wondered, awed. You do? How I was to find out by myself what this test was for a few paltry minutes perplexed me, until it occurred to me that I need only put my trust inwhat I now had, and perhaps it would already be influential enough to instruct me how to test it. It was time for a little self-exhortation. "I am straight— " I said to myself, "very straight." And I am strong, perhaps notvery, but ... quite? I feel certain that I am about to be— whatever it is that I am about to be. DAY AT THE BEACH It was a one-way passage. Get a hold of yourself, said the razor. There could be no normal colony of man here on Libo— no children. Yet the goonies, so unspeakably resembling man, could breed and bear. It gave the tenderfoot a smoldering resentment against the goonie which a psychologist could have explained; that wild, unreasoning fury man must feel when frustration is tied in with prime sex—submerged and festering because simple reason told the tenderfoot that the goonie was not to blame. FOURTH YEAR COURSE: Not a hope; but Ive got a pretty good idea of the picture now. And incidentally, aren’t you afraid that I’ll spill the beans? A well-dressed man in dark blue, carrying an attaché case, stepped forward and set the case down on a table with a solidclunk that riveted attention. Carlos nodded again and said nothing. It was never easy to know just what Swifty Zavrakos eyes were doing, with all his tics, but I had the feeling that he kept glancing at me. And I must say I wasn’t reassured—something wasn’t right, there was a misunderstanding somewhere—I felt a vague apprehension, a kind of foreboding..
