Part 2

He paused. "It occurred to me a long time ago, when I was a student, that if anything ever did fold us up, it wouldn't be a gang of monsters breathing pure fluorine and squirting death rays from every tentacle, it would be an idea. You can kill monsters, but you can't kill an idea. From Genghis Khan to Hitler, not one of the real conquerors--the guys who just wanted to grab everything in sight--hung onto a-half-credit's worth of what they got. But the Roman Empire was an idea; so was Islam, Christendom, Communism and Anticentrism.

"Two, I don't know what we can do about it. I'll tell you some things we can't do. We can't make war on the Kassids. If we did, everything we've got in this Slice, from shipyards to outhouses, would be buried under crowds of howling neuters in about two seconds. I don't think we can quarantine them, or ourselves, forever. There isn't anything they want in the universe, except to spread the Word, so I don't see how we could make any kind of a deal with them."

* * * * *

He took a deep breath. "Let me tell you what else I found out, and maybe something will occur to you. I said before that the idea is complicated. That's why ethics go up with intelligence, maybe. And that's why the races we've met, that remember the Kassids, aren't Kassids themselves. They're not bright enough. That explains something that's had us wondering for the last six centuries--why there isn't a single race in our part of the galaxy that rates higher than a fairly bright twelve-year-old on our scale. There isn't any correlation between sexual reproduction and intelligence, as my wife and some others would have you believe. It's simply that the others grasped the idea--became Kassids. Eventually the Kassids had done all the proselytizing they could. That was roughly fifteen thousand years ago. Either they missed us altogether, or we weren't much better than an ape's cousin at that stage; otherwise they made a clean sweep of the galaxy. Do you know what happened then? Do you know where they went?" He paused for breath again. "They went to the nearer Magellanic Cloud, and that's where they've been all this time. Some of the forms I saw are from there. The same thing happened--eventually they absorbed all the intelligence there was. So they came back, hoping some had grown in this galaxy--and they found us." He sighed. "Over."

Harlow's voice came back. "Sounds stinking. Anything else?"

"One more thing," Samson told him. "This slip of plastic they handed me as a souvenir. They gave me a verbal translation, and I remember it word for word. It's a dictionary entry: '_Man, noun. A pentagonal, dipolar, monoplane dominant of intelligence 96_'--that's on their scale with the average Kassid race at 100--'_native of District so-and-so_.' The significance of it, from their point of view, is the '96.' It's the first time they've been able to make an entry over 75 in the last twelve or fourteen hundred years."

He frowned. "When I first got back and Midge neutralized the drugs, I thought of it, and it seemed to me there might be an answer there. A definition describes the observer as well as the thing observed. That seemed like a brilliant thought to me at the time, but I can't see any help in it now." He blinked unhappily. "All it seems to say is that they've got a superficial and oversimplified system of classification, meaning that physical structure isn't important to them--which we know already ... my guess would be, incidentally, that the one who talked to me was picked because the Kassids thought I'd feel at home with it. It had five extremities, although none of them was a head; it had a top and bottom and it faced in one direction. Ergo, it looked just like a man. Over."

Midge said thoughtfully, "It's funny. If they were so geometrical about it, why didn't they say bisexual?"

Samson chortled. "You _would_--" he began, and stopped abruptly, with a stricken expression. "Wait a minute," he said. "Cancel the over. Everybody shut up, even you, Harlow. The Midget has said something."

Midge seemed to be trying to look indignant, pleased in spite of herself.

"Harlow, Midge," said Samson slowly after a time, "there's one other thing about life in this universe that's been puzzling us for the last six centuries. We know now that it has nothing to do with the intelligence level, but we still don't know why everybody else but us reproduces by simple division, budding, spores or conjugation--and in consequence, lives a damn sight longer than we do, almost long enough to make up for their low native intelligence. But just suppose that Earth really is a freak planet--suppose that even the Kassids have never run into a bisexual organism before. I didn't mention it to them, and I'm willing to bet Jackson didn't either. You know how tough it is to explain to a xeno--it generally takes ten days to convince them you're not kidding. And, Harlow--suppose that I go down there again, and take Midge along...."

* * * * *

When they re-entered the ship, Harlow's voice was saying, "Are you there, Charles and Midge? Speak up, dammit. Over."

The Samsons looked at each other, glassy-eyed. "With you in a minute, Harlow," Samson croaked, and lurched after Midge into the sick bay. Both of them were full of arnophrene--Samson's second dose within two hours, and an extra-heavy one for Midge.

They staggered into the living chamber again, some time later, and collapsed on opposite sides of the couch.

"Never again," said Midge faintly.

Samson wet his lips. "It worked, Papa. They swallowed it. I gave Midge enough of the stuff to make her about twice as disconnected as usual. I walked in with a long face and told them that the change had started in my absence. They wanted to know what change. I pointed to Midge, and we stripped for them. They may not be interested in shapes, but there was enough difference there to make them take notice. They called a conference, and probed and poked and x-rayed us. I told them the story of the caterpillar and the butterfly. Or the nymph and the waterbug, I should say. You're the ugliest and dumbest member of this family, Midge."

Midge made an inarticulate sound.

"I told them we're a two-stage organism," Samson said. "One stage builds all the tall buildings, writes all the novels, does all the high-class thinking. The other stage reproduces. I said we have a forty-thousand-year cycle, half to each, but the first stage always tries to retard the metamorphosis, because the second stage is so stupid that it ruins our civilization every time, and we have to start from scratch. I said I was awfully sorry, but the change had come earlier than we expected this time, and there was nothing we could do about it ... they're going off to the great nebula in Andromeda. Maybe they'll find sixteen quintillion brainy races there, and they'll never come back. The other way, at least we've got twenty thousand years to think up another gag."

He sighed. "All right, Papa. Over."

Fourteen slow minutes went by. Samson and his wife looked at each other and said nothing.

The Kassids had tried converting Midge, to see if she were as moronic as described. Midge had reacted properly, being so befuddled that she could hardly work her way through a sentence; but she had heard a faint echo of the Word.

Harlow said, "I don't know what to say to you, kids. You'll be remembered for this, both of you. A long time. History's been a dull subject for the last few centuries, but this will liven it up. I don't think anybody will hesitate to call it a major victory. Over."

Samson smiled, bitterly and sadly.

"That depends," he said, "on how you define 'victory'."