Alvah, who had been holding his own as long as machines were the topic, wasn’t sure he could keep it up―or, more correctly, down. “All right, two hours,” he said. “The animals feed themselves and water themselves, no doubt.”
“They do, but that comes under upkeep. Our animals forage, most of them―all the big ones. The rest are cheap and easy to feed. Your machines have to be fueled. Our animals repair themselves, like any living organism, only better and faster. Your machines have to be repaired and serviced. More man-hours. Incidentally, if you and Swifty took a ten-hour trip, you in your runabout, him on his Morgan, you’d spend just ten hours steering. Swifty would spend maybe fifteen minutes all told. And now we come to the payoff―”
“Some other time,” said Alvah irritably.
“This is important. When your runabout―”
“I’d rather not talk about it any more, said Alvah, raising his voice. Do you mind?”
“When your runabout breaks down and can’t be fixed, she said firmly, you have to buy another. Swifty’s mare drops twins every year. There. Think about it.”
THE door opened and Bither came in, looking more disheveled than ever. “Hello, Beej, Alvah. Beej, I think we shoulda used annelid stock for this job. These F3 batches no good at―you two arguing?”
Alvah recovered himself with an effort. “Rhodopalladium,” he said thickly. “I need about a gram. Have you got it?”
“Not a scrap,” said Bither cheerfully. “Except in the nests, of course.”
“I told him I didn’t think so,” B. J. said.
Alvah closed his eyes for a second. “Where,” he asked carefully, are the nests?”
“Wish I knew, Bither admitted. It’s frustrating as hell. You see, we had to make them awful small and quick, the metallophage. Once you let them out of the sacs, there’s no holding them. We did so good a job, we can’t check to see how good a job we did.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Of course, that’s beside the point. Even if we had the metals, how would you get the alloy you need?”
“Palladium,” said the girl, “melts at fifteen fifty-three Centigrade. I asked the hand bird.”
“Best we can get out of a salamander is about six hundred, Bither added. Isn’t good for them, either ― they get esophagitis.”
“And necrosis,” the girl said, watching Alvah intently.
His eyes were watering. It was hard to see. “Are you telling―”
“We’re trying to tell you,” she said, “that you can’t go back. You’ve got to start getting used to the idea. There isn’t a thing you can do except settle down here and learn to live with us.”
Alvah could feel his jaw working, but no words were coming out. The bulge of nausea in his middle was squeezing its way inexorably upward.
Somebody grabbed his arm. “In there!” said Bither urgently.
A door opened and closed behind him, and he found himself facing a hideous white-porcelain antique with a pool of water in it. There was a roaring in his ears, but before the first spasm took him, he could hear the girl’s and Either’s voices faintly from the other room:
“Eight minutes that time. Beej, I don’t know.”
“We can do it!”
“Well, I suppose we can, but can we do it before he starves?”
There was a sink in the room, but Alvah would sooner have drunk poison. He fumbled in his disordered kit until he found the condenser canteen. He rinsed out his mouth, took a tonus capsule and a mint lozenge. He opened the door.
“Feeling better?” asked the girl.
Alvah stared at her, retched feebly and fled back into the washroom.
WHEN he came out again. Either said, “He’s had enough, Beej. Let’s take him out in the courtyard till he gets his strength back.”
They moved toward him. Alvah said weakly, but with feeling, “Keep your itchy hands off me.” He walked unsteadily past them, turned when he reached the doorway. “I hate to urp and run, but I’ll never forget your hospitality. If there’s ever anything I can do for you―anything at all―please hesitate to call on me.”
He heard muttering voices and an odd scraping sound behind him, but he didn’t look back. He was halfway down the aisle between the cages when something furry and gray scuttled into view and sat up, grinning at him.
It looked like an ordinary capuchin monkey except for its head, which was grotesquely large. Go away, said Alvah. He advanced with threatening gestures. The thing chattered at him and stayed where it was.
The aisle behind him was deserted. Very well, there were other exits. Alvah followed his nose back into the plant section and turned right.
There was the monkey―thing again.
At the next intersection of aisles, there were two of them. Alvah turned left.
And right.
And left.
And emerged into a large empty space enclosed by buildings.
“This is the courtyard,” said Either, coming forward with the girl behind him. Now be reasonable. Alvah. You want to get back to New York, don’t you?”
This did not seem to call for comment. Alvah stared at him in silence.
“Well,” said Bither, “there’s just one way you can do it. It won’t be easy―I don’t even say you got more than a fighting chance. One thing, though―it’s up to you just how hard you make it for yourself.”
“Get to the point,” Alvah said.
“You got to let us decondition you so you can eat our food, ride on our animals. Now think about it, don’t just―”
Alvah swung around, looking for the fastest and most direct exit. Before he had time to find it, a dizzying thought struck him and he turned back.
“Is that what this whole thing has been about?” he challenged. He glared at Bither, then at B. J. “Is that the reason you were so helpful? Did you engineer that fight?”
BITHER clucked unhappily.
“Would we admit it if we did? Alvah, I’ll admit this much―of course we interested in you for our own reasons. This is the first time in thirty years we had a chance to study a City man. But what I just told you is true. If you want to get back home, this is your only chance.
“Then I’m a dead man,” said Alvah.
“You is if you think you is,” Bither told him. “Beej, you try.”
She looked at Alvah levelly. “You think what we suggesting isn’t possible. Right?”
“Discounting Doc’s grammar,” Alvah said sourly, “that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
She said, “Doc’s grammar is all right―yours is sixty years out of date. But I guess you already realize that your people are backward compared to us.”
Half angry, half curious, Alvah demanded, “Just how do you figure that?”
“Easy. You probably don’t know much biology, but you must know this much. What’s the one quality that makes human beings the dominant race on this planet?”
Alvah snorted. “Are you trying to tell me I’m not as bright as a Muckfoot?”
“Not intelligence. Try again. Something more general―intelligence is only a special phase of it.”
Alvah’s patience was narrowing to a thin and brittle thread.
“You tell me.”
“All right. We like to think intelligence is important, but you can’t argue that way. It’s special pleading―the way a whale might argue that size is the measuring stick, or a microbe might say numbers. But―”
“Control of environment,” Alvah said.
“Right. Another name for it is adaptability. No other organism is so independent of environment, so adaptable as Man. And we could live in New York if we had to, just as we can live in the Arctic Circle or the tropics. And, since you don’t dare even try to live here …”