Pasztor moved through the side door and so came into the back of the cage. He unlocked the low barrier and walked up to the ETA's. They opened their eyes with what looked like infinite weariness.
"Don't worry, fellows. I'm sorry to trouble you, but a certain lady who has your interests at heart has given me. all unwittingly, a new line of approach. Look, fellows. I'm trying to be friendly, see. I do want to reach across, if it can be done.”
Removing his trousers, squatting close to them, speaking gently, the director of the Exozoo defecated on to the plastic floor.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"How far-seeing you were to christen this world Grudgrodd. Cosmopolitan,1' the third Politan said.
"I've explained several times my reason for thinking that we cannot any longer be on Grudgrodd," said the Sacred Cosmopolitan, as the two utods lay comfortably together.
"And I still say that I don't believe metal could be made strong enough to withstand launching into the star-realms. Don't forget I took a course in metal-fracture when I was a priestling. Besides, the metal thing wasn't the right shape for a spaceship. I know it doesn't do to be too dogmatic, but there are some points on which one has to make a stand: though I do it with regards to your cosmopolity only with apologies.”
"Say what you may, I have the feeling in my bones that the Triple suns no longer shine on these skies - not that these thin lifeforms ever permit us to see the skies.”
As he spoke, the Sacred Cosmopolitan swiveled one of his heads to watch the thin lifeform performing his natural function a few feet distant. He thought he recognized this thin lifeform as one of those whose habits did not arouse disgust; certainly he was not the one who came with an attachment that spurted a jet of cold water. Nor did he seem to be one of those who sat about with machines and two assistants (no doubt they were this world's equivalents of the priesthood) so palpably trying to seduce him and the third Politan into communication.
The thin lineform stood up and assembled the cloth over the lower part of his body.
"That is very interesting!" the Politan exclaimed. "It confirms what we were saying a couple of days ago.”
"In most particulars, yes. As we thought, they have two heads as we do, but one is for dunging and one for speaking.”
"What seems so laughable is that they have a pair of legs sticking out of their lower heads. Yes, perhaps after all you are right, father-mother; despite all logic, perhaps we really are spirited far away from the Triple Suns, for it is difficult to imagine any of this sort of horrid absurdity on the planets under their sway. Why do you think he came to perform a dung ritual here?”
The Cosmopolitan twiddled one of his fingers in a motion of bafflement.
"He can hardly regard this as a sacred seeding spot. It may be that he performed merely to let us see that we were not the only ones possessing fertility; or on the other hand, it may have been merely from curiosity, in order to see what we did. Here's a case again. I think, where for the time being we must admit that the thinlegs' ways of thought are too alien for us to interpret, and that any tentative explanation we may offer is bound to be utodomorphic. And while we're on the subject. ... I don't want to alarm you in any way ... no, as Cosmopolitan, I must keep these things to myself.”
"Please - since there have been only the two of us, you have told me many things from the rich store of your mind that you would not otherwise have told me. Snort on, I beg you.”
The alien lifeform was standing near by, watching. He was unable to maintain stillness for any length of time. Ignoring him, the Cosmopolitan began to speak cautiously, for he knew on what dangerous ground he trod. When one of his grorgs began to crawl under his belly, he slapped it back into position with a firmness that surprised even himself.
"I don't want you to be alarmed at what I am about to say, son, though I am aware that I may seem at first to strike at the very foundations of our belief. You remember that moment when the thinlegs came to us in the dark, when we were in the midden by the side of the star-realm-ark?”
"Though it seems a long while ago, I do not forget it.”
"The thinlegs came to us then and immediately translated the others Into their carrion stage.”
"I remember. I was startled at first. I crept close to you.”
"And then?”
"When they were taking us in their wheeled truck, to "the tall metal thing you say may have been a star-realm-ark, I was so overcome with shame that I had not been chosen to move further along the utodammp cycle, that I hardly took in any other impressions.”
The thinlegs was making signals with the mouth of his upper head, but they moved on to a higher audibility band, as was appropriate when discussing personal aspects, and ignored him from then on.
The Sacred Cosmopolitan continued. "My son, I find this difficult to say, since our language naturally does not hold the appropriate concepts, but these lifeforms may be as alien in thought as they are in shape: not just in their upper thoughts, but in their whole psychological constitution. For a long while I felt as you did, a sort of shame that our six companions had been chosen for translation while we hadn't But... supposing, Blug Lugug, that these lifeforms did not exercise choice, suppose they translated us at random.”
"Random? I'm surprised to hear you use such a vulgar word, Cosmopolitan. The fall of a leaf or the splash of a raindrop may be - er, random, but with higher lifeforms -everything higher than a mud snwitch - the fact that they form part of life cycles prevents anything random.”
"That applies to beings on the worlds of the Triple Suns. But these creatures of Grudgrodd, these thinlegs, may be part of another and conflicting pattern." At this point, the lifeform left them. As he disappeared, the light faded from their room. Quite uninterested in these minor phenomena, the Cosmopolitan continued to grope for words. "What I am saving is that in some ways these creatures may not have helpful intentions for us. There is a word from the Revolution Age that is useful here; these thinlegs may be bad. Do you know this word from your studies?”
"It's a sort of sickness, isn't it?" the Politan asked, recalling the years when he had wallowed through the mazes of mindsuckle in the epoch of Welcome White.
"Well, a special sort of sickness. I feel that these thin-legs are bad in a more healthy way.”
"Is that why you have not wished us to communicate with them?”
"Certainly not. I am no more prepared to converse with strangers bereft of my wallow than they would probably be prepared to converse with me bereft of the body materials that cover them. In the end, when they grasp that rudimentary fact, we may perhaps try to talk to them, though I suspect their brains may be quite as limited as their voice range suggests. But we shall certainly get no-where until they realize we have certain basic requirements; once they have grasped that, talk may be worth while.”
"This ... this business of bad. I'm alarmed you should think like this.”
"Son, the more I consider what has happened, the more I am forced to do so.”
Blug Lugug. who had been known for a hundred and eighty years as a third Politan, lapsed into a troubled silence.
He was recalling more and more about bad. In the Revolution Age, there had been bad. Even though the utods lived up to eleven hundred years, the Revolution Age was over three thousand generations ago; yet its effects still lingered in everyday life on Dapdrof.
At the beginning of that amazing age was born Manna Warun. It was significant that he had been hatched during a particularly cataclysmic entropic solar orbital disestablishment, the very esod, in fact, during which Dapdrof, changing from Saffron Smiler to Yellow Scowler, had lost its little moon, Woback, which now pursued its own eccentric course alone.