On one occasion it was Dua who was angry—absolutely furious.
It began quietly. In fact, it was on one of the occasions when the two children were with them. Odeen was letting them play with him. He didn’t even mind when little-right Torun pulled at him. In fact, he let himself go in most undignified fashion. He didn’t seem to mind that he was all out of shape. It was a sure sign he was pleased. Tritt remained in a corner, resting, and was so satisfied with what was happening.
Dua laughed at Odeen’s misshapenness. She let her own substance touch Odeen’s knobbishness flirtatiously. She knew very well, Tritt knew, that the leftish surface was sensitive when out of ovoid.
Dua said, “I’ve been thinking, Odeen ... If the other Universe gets its laws into ours just a bit through the Positron Pump, doesn’t our Universe get its laws into theirs the same little bit?”
Odeen howled at Dua’s touch and tried to avoid her without upsetting the little ones. He gasped, “I can’t answer unless you stop, you mid-ling wretch.”
She stopped, and he said, “That’s a very good thought, Dua. You’re an amazing creature. It’s true, of course. The mixture goes both ways.... Tritt take out the little ones, will you?”
But they scurried off by themselves. They were not such little ones. They were quite grown. Annis would soon be starting his education and Torun was quite Parentally-blockish already.
Tritt stayed and thought Dua looked very beautiful when Odeen talked to her in this way.
Dua said, “If the other laws slow down our Sun and cool them down; don’t our laws speed up their suns and heat them up?”
“Exactly right, Dua. A Rational couldn’t do better.”
“How hot do their suns get?”
“Oh, not much; just slightly hotter, very slightly.”
Dua said, “But that’s where I keep getting the something-bad feeling.”
“Oh, well, the trouble is that their suns are so huge. If our little suns get a little cooler, it doesn’t matter. Even if they turned off altogether, it wouldn’t matter as long as we have the Positron Pump. With great, huge stars, though, getting even a little hotter is troublesome. There is so much material in one of those stars that turning up the nuclear fusion even a little way will make it explode.”
“Explode! But then what happens to the people?”
“What people?”
“The people in the other Universe.”
For a moment, Odeen looked blank, then he said, “I don’t know.”
“Well, what would happen if our own Sun exploded?”
“It couldn’t explode.”
(Tritt wondered what all the excitement was about. How could a Sun explode? Dua seemed angrier and Odeen looked confused.)
Dua said, “But if it did? Would it get very hot?”
“I suppose so.”
“Wouldn’t it kill us all?”
Odeen hesitated and then said in clear annoyance, “What difference does it make, Dua? Our Sun isn’t exploding, and don’t ask silly questions.”
“You told me to ask questions, Odeen, and it does make a difference, because the Positron Pump works both ways. We need their end as much as ours.”
Odeen stared at her. “I never told you that.”
“I feel it.”
Odeen said, “You feel a great many things. Dua—”
But Dua was shouting now. She was quite beside herself. Tritt had never seen her like that. She said, “Don’t change the subject, Odeen. And don’t withdraw and try to make me out a complete fool—just another Emotional. You said I was almost like a Rational and I’m enough like one to see that the Positron Pump won’t work without the other-beings. If the people in the other Universe are destroyed, the Positron Pump will stop and our Sun will be colder than ever and well all starve. Don’t you think that’s important?”
Odeen was shouting too, now. “That shows what you know. We need their help because the energy supply is in low concentration and we have to switch matter. If the Sun in the other Universe explodes, there’ll be an enormous flood of energy; a huge flood that will last for a million lifetimes. There will be so much energy, we could tap it directly without any matter-shift either way; so we don’t need them, and it doesn’t matter what happens—”
They were almost touching now. Tritt was horrified. He had better say something, make them get apart, talk to them. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Then it turned out he didn’t have to.
There was a Hard One just outside the cavern. No, three of them. They had been trying to talk and hadn’t made themselves heard.
Tritt shrieked, “Odeen. Dua.”
Then he remained quiet, trembling. He had a frightened notion of what the Hard Ones had come to talk about. He decided to leave.
But a Hard One put out one of his permanent, opaque appendages and said, “Don’t go.”
It sounded harsh, unfriendly. Tritt was more frightened than ever.
4a
Dua was filled with anger; so filled she could scarcely sense the Hard Ones. She seemed stifled under the components of the anger, each one filling her to the brim, separately. There was a sense of wrongness that Odeen should try to lie to her. A sense of wrongness that a whole world of people should die. A sense of wrongness that it was so easy for her to learn and that she had never been allowed to.
Since that first time in the rock, she had gone twice more to the Hard-caverns. Twice more, unnoticed, she had buried herself in rock, and each time she sensed and knew, and each time when Odeen would explain matters to her, she knew in advance what it was he would explain.
Why couldn’t they teach her, then, as they had taught Odeen? Why only the Rationals? Did she possess the capacity to learn only because she was a Left-Em, a perverted mid-ling? Then let them teach her, perversion and all. It was wrong to leave her ignorant.
Finally, the words of the Hard One were breaking through to her. Losten was there, but it was not he speaking. It was a strange Hard One, in front, who spoke. She did not know him, but she knew few of them.
The Hard One said, “Which of you have been in the lower caverns recently: the Hard caverns?”
Dua was defiant. They found out about her rock-rubbing and she didn’t care. Let them tell everybody. She would do so herself. She said, “I have. Many times.”
“Alone?” said the Hard One calmly.
“Alone. Many times,” snapped Dua. It was only three times, but she didn’t care.
Odeen muttered, “I have, of course, been to the lower caverns on occasion.”
The Hard One seemed to ignore that. He turned to Tritt instead and said sharply. “And you, right?”
Tritt quavered, “Yes, Hard-sir.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, Hard-sir.”
“How often?”
“Once.”
Dua was annoyed. Poor Tritt was in such a panic over nothing. It was she herself who had done it and she was ready for a confrontation. “Leave him alone,” she said. “I’m the one you want.”
The Hard One turned slowly toward her. “For what?” he said.
“For whatever it is.” And faced with it directly, she couldn’t bring herself to describe what she had done after all. Not in front of Odeen.
“Well, we’ll get to you. First, the right.... Your name is Tritt, isn’t it? Why did you go to the lower caverns alone?”
“To speak to Hard-One-Estwald, Hard-sir.”