And that is the way it is with us, thought Bishop. We write the half-truth and the half-lie in our letters home. We conceal a truth or we obscure a fact, or we add a line or two that, if not a downright lie, is certainly misleading.
We do not face up to facts, he thought. We gloss over the man crawling in the grass, with his torn-out guts snagging on the brambles. We write in the Taillefer.
And if we only did it in our letters, it would not be so bad. But we do it to ourselves. We protect our pride by lying to ourselves. We shield our dignity by deliberate indignation.
"Here," he said to the cabinet, "have a drink on me."
He set the glass, still full, on the top of the cabinet.
The cabinet gurgled in surprise.
"I do not drink," it said.
"Then take it back and put it in the bottle."
"I can't do that," said the cabinet, horrified. "It's already mixed."
"Separate it, then."
"It can't be separated," wailed the cabinet. "You surely don't expect me - "
There was a little swish, and Maxine stood in the center of the room.
She smiled at Bishop.
"What goes on?" she asked.
The cabinet wailed at her. "He wants me to unmix a drink. He wants me to separate it, the liquor from the mix. He knows I can't do that."
"My, my," she said, "I thought you could do anything."
"I can't unravel a drink," the cabinet said primly. "Why don't you take it off my hands?"
"That's a good idea," said the girl. She walked forward and picked up the drink.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked Bishop. "Turning chicken on us?"
"I just don't want a drink," said Bishop. "Hasn't a man got a right to - "
"Of course," she said. "Of course you have."
She sipped the drink, looking at him above the rim.
"What happened to your hand?"
"Burned it."
"You're old enough not to play with fire."
"You're old enough not to come barging into a room this way," Bishop told her. "One of these days you'll reassemble yourself in the precise spot where someone else is standing."
She giggled. "That would be fun," she said. "Think of you and me - "
"It would be a mess," said Bishop.
"Invite me to sit down," said Maxine. "Let's act civilized and social."
"Sure, sit down," said Bishop.
She picked out a couch.
"I'm interested in this business of teleporting yourself," said Bishop. "I've never asked you before, but you told me - "
"It just came to me," she said.
"But you can't teleport. Humans aren't parapsychic - "
"Some day, Buster, you'll blow a fuse. You get so steamed up."
He went across the room and sat down beside her.
"Sure, I get steamed up," he said. "But - "
"What now?"
"Have you ever thought... well, have you ever tried to work at it? Like moving something else, some object - other than yourself?"
"No, I never have."
"Why not?"
"Look, Buster. I drop in to have a drink with you and to forget myself. I didn't come primed for a long technical discussion. I couldn't, anyway. I just don't understand. There's so much we don't understand."
She looked at him and there was something very much like fright brimming in her eyes.
"You pretend that you don't mind," she said. "But you do mind. You wear yourself out pretending that you don't mind at all."
"Then let's quit pretending," Bishop said. "Let's admit - "
She had lifted the glass to drink and now, suddenly, it slipped out of her hand.
"Oh - "
The glass halted before it struck the floor. It hovered for a moment, then it slowly rose. She reached out and grasped it.
And then it slipped again from her suddenly shaking hand. This time it hit the floor and spilled.
"Try it again," said Bishop.
She said: "I never tried. I don't know how it happened. I just didn't want to drop it, that was all. I wished I hadn't dropped it and then - "
"But the second time - "
"You fool," she screamed, "I tell you I didn't try. I wasn't putting on an exhibition for you. I tell you that I don't know what happened."
"But you did it. It was a start."
"A start?"
"You caught the glass before it hit the floor. You teleported it back into your hand."
"Look, Buster," she said grimly, "quit kidding yourself. They're watching all the time. They play little tricks like that. Anything for a laugh."
She rose, laughing at him, but there was a strangeness in her laughing.
"You don't give yourself a chance," he told her. "You are so horribly afraid of being laughed at. You got to be a wise guy."
"Thanks for the drink," she said.
"But Maxine - "
"Come up and see me sometime."
"Maxine! Wait!"
But she was gone.
Watch for the clues, Morley had said, pacing up and down the room. Send us back the clues and we will do the rest. A foot in the door is all we expect from you. Give us a foot inside the door and that is all we need.
Let us look for facts.
The Kimonians are a race more culturally advanced than we are, which means, in other words, that they are further along the road of evolution, farther from the ape. And what does it take to advance along the evolutionary road beyond the high tide of my own race of Earth?
Not mere intelligence alone, for that is not enough.
What then would it take to make the next major stride in evolution?
Perhaps philosophy rather than intelligence - a seeking for a way to put to better use the intelligence that one already had, a greater understanding and a more adequate appreciation of human values in relation to the universe.
And if the Kimonians had that greater understanding, if they had won their way through better understanding to closer brotherhood with the galaxy, then it would be inconceivable that they'd take the members of another intelligent race to serve as puppy dogs for children. Or even as playmates for their children, unless in the fact of playing with their children there be some greater value, not to their child alone, but to the child of Earth, than the happiness and wonder of such association. They would be alive to the psychic damage that might be done because of such a practice, would not for a moment run the danger of that damage happening unless out of it might come some improvement or some change.
He sat and thought of it and it seemed right, for even on his native planet, history showed increasing concern with social values, with the improvement of the culture.
And something else.
Parapsychic powers must not come too soon in human evolution, for they could be used disastrously by a culture that was not equipped emotionally and intellectually to handle them. No culture which had not reached an adult stage could have parapsychic powers, for they were nothing to be fooled around with by an adolescent culture.
In that respect at least, Bishop told himself, the Kimonians are the adults and we are the adolescents. In comparison with the Kimonians, we have no right to consider ourselves any more than children.
It was hard to take.
He gagged on it.
Swallow it, he told himself. Swallow it.
The cabinet said: "It is late, sir. You must be getting tired."
"You want me to go to bed?"
"It's a suggestion, sir."
"All right," he said.
He rose and started for the bedroom, smiling to himself.
Sent off to bed, he thought - just as a child is sent.
And going.
Not saying: "I'll go when I'm ready."
Not standing on your adult dignity.
Not throwing a tantrum, not beating your heels upon the floor and howling.
Going off to bed - like a child when it is told to go.