And he didn’t know how.... Not without melting...
4c
Tritt remained alone in the room, frightened, frightened, but sturdily resolved to remain unmoved. He had his third baby. He could feel it within.
That was what counted.
That was all that counted.
Yet why, then, deep inside, did he have a stubborn faint feeling that it wasn’t all that counted?
5a
Dua was ashamed almost beyond endurance. It took a long time for her to battle down that shame; battle it down enough to give herself room to think. She had hastened— hastened—moving blindly out and away from the horror of the home-cavern; scarcely caring that she did not know where she was going or even where she was.
It was night, when no decent Soft One would be on the surface, not even the most frivolous Emotional. And it would be a considerable time before the Sun rose. Dua was glad. The Sun was food and at the moment, she hated food and what had been done to her.
It was cold, too, but Dua was only distantly aware of it. Why should she care about cold, she thought, when she had been fattened in order that she might do her duty— fattened, mind and body. After that, cold and starvation were almost her friends.
She saw through Tritt. Poor thing; he was so easy to see through; his actions were pure instinct and he was to be praised that he had followed them so bravely. He had come back so daringly from the Hard-caverns with the food-ball (and she—she herself had sensed him and would have known what was happening if Tritt hadn’t been so paralyzed at what he was doing that he had dared not think of it, and if she had not been so paralyzed at what she was doing and at the new depth of sensation it brought her that she would not take care to sense what most she needed to).
Tritt brought it back undetected and had arranged the pitiful booby trap, decorating her feeder to entice her. And she had come back, flushed with awareness of her rock-probing thinness, filled with the shame of it and with pity for Tritt. With all that shame and pity, she ate, and helped initiate birth.
Since then she had eaten but sparingly as was her custom and never at the feeder, but then there had been no impulse to. Tritt had not driven her. He had looked contented (of course) so there was nothing to reactivate the shame. And Tritt left the food-ball in place. He didn’t dare risk taking it back; he had what he wanted; it was best and easiest to leave it there and think of it no more.
—Till he was caught.
But clever Odeen must have seen through Tritt’s plan, must have spied the new connections to the electrodes, must have understood Tritt’s purpose. Undoubtedly, he said nothing to Tritt; that would have embarrassed and frightened the poor right-ling and Odeen always watched over Tritt with loving care.
Of course, Odeen didn’t have to say anything. He needed only to fill in the gaps in Tritt’s clumsy plan and make it work.
Dua was under no illusions now. She would have detected the taste of the food-ball; noticed its extraordinary tang; caught the way in which it began to fill her while giving her no sensations of fullness—had it not been that Odeen had occupied her with talk.
It had been a conspiracy between the two of them, whether Tritt was consciously part of it or not. How could she have believed that Odeen was suddenly a careful, painstaking teacher? How could she have failed to see the ulterior motive? Their concern for her was their concern for the completion of the new triad, and that in itself was an indication of how little they thought of her.
Well—
She paused long enough to feel her own weariness and she worked herself into a crevice in the rock that would shield her from the thin, cold wind. Two of the seven stars were in her field of vision and she watched them absently, occupying her outer senses in trivia so that she might concentrate the more in internal thought.
She was disillusioned.
“Betrayed,” she muttered to herself. “Betrayed!” Could they see no further than themselves? That Tritt would be willing to see all destroyed if he were but secure in his babies was to be taken for granted. But he was a creature of instinct. What of Odeen?
Odeen reasoned, and did that mean that for the purpose of exercising his reason, he would sacrifice all else? Was everything produced by reason its own excuse for being— at any cost? Because Estwald had devised the Positron Pump, did it have to be used in order that the whole world, Hard and Soft alike, be placed at its mercy, and at the mercy of the people of the other Universe? What if the other people stopped and if the world was left without a Positron Pump and with a dangerously cooled Sun?
No, they wouldn’t stop, those other people; for they had been persuaded to start and they would be persuaded to keep going until they were destroyed—and then they would be needed no longer by the Rationals, Hard or Soft —just as she, Dua, would have to pass on (be destroyed) now that she was needed no longer.
She and the other people, both being betrayed. Almost without being aware of it, she was cushioning deeper and deeper into the rock. She buried herself, out of sight of the stars, out of touch with the wind, unaware of the world. She was pure thought.
It was Estwald whom she hated. He was the personification of all that was selfish and hard. He had devised the Positron Pump and would destroy a whole world of perhaps tens of thousands without conscience. He was so withdrawn that he never made his appearance and so powerful that even the other Hard Ones seemed afraid of him. Well, then, she would fight him. She would stop him. The people of the other Universe had helped set up the Positron Pump through communications of some sort. Odeen had mentioned those. Where would such communications be kept? What would they be like? How could they be used for further communication?
It was remarkable how clearly she could think. Remarkable. There was fierce enjoyment in this, that she would use reason to overcome the cruel reasoners.
They wouldn’t be able to stop her, for she could go where no Hard One could go, where no Rational or Parental could—and where no other Emotional would.
She might be caught eventually, but at the moment she didn’t care. She was going to fight to have her way—at any price—at any price—though to do it meant she would have to go through rock, live in rock, skirt the Hard-caverns, steal food from their stored energy batteries when she had to, flock with the other Emotionals and feed on Sunlight when she could.
But in the end she would teach them all a lesson and after that they could do as they wished. She would even be ready to pass on then—but only then—
5b
Odeen was present when the new baby-Emotional was born, perfect in every way, but he had not been able to feel enthusiasm over it. Even Tritt, who cared for it perfectly, as a Parental must, seemed subdued in his ecstasies.
A long time had passed and it was as though Dua had vanished. She had not passed on. A Soft One could not pass on except when the whole triad did; but she was not with them, either. It was as though she had passed on, without passing on.
Odeen had seen her once, only once, not very long after her wild fight on the news that she had initiated the new baby.
He had passed a cluster of Emotionals, sunning themselves, when he was moving over the surface on some foolish notion that he might find her. They had tittered at the rare sight of a Rational moving in the vicinity of an Emotional cluster and had thinned in mass-provocation, with no thought among the foolish lot of them but to advertise the fact that they were Emotionals.