“They’ll make everything better. Different isn’t always worse. Anyway, Estwald is responsible. He’s very bright. I get the feeling.”

“Then why don’t you like him?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like him.”

“You feel as though you don’t like him.”

“Oh, nothing of the sort, Tritt. It’s just that somehow— somehow—” Odeen laughed. “I’m jealous. Hard Ones are so intelligent that a Soft One is nothing in comparison, but I got used to that, because Losten was always telling me how bright I was—for a Soft One, I suppose. But now this Estwald comes along, and even Losten seems lost in admiration, and I’m really nothing.”

Tritt bellied out his foreplane to have it just make contact with Odeen, who looked up and smiled. “But that’s just stupidity on my part. Who cares how smart a Hard One is? Not one of them has a Tritt.”

After that they both went looking for Dua after all. For a wonder, she had finished wandering about and was just heading down again. It was a very good melting though the time lapse was only a day or so. Tritt worried about meltings then. With Annis so small, even a short absence was risky, though there were always other Parentals who could take over.

After that, Odeen mentioned Estwald now and then. He always called him “the New One” even after considerable time had passed. He still had never seen him. “I think I avoid him,” he said one time, when Dua was with them, “because he knows so much about the new device. I don’t want to find out too soon. It’s too much fun to learn.”

“The Positron Pump?” Dua had asked.

—That was another funny thing about Dua. Tritt thought. It annoyed him. She could say the hard words almost as well as Odeen could. An Emotional shouldn’t be like that.

So Tritt made up his mind to ask Estwald because Odeen had said he was smart. Besides, Odeen had never seen him. Estwald couldn’t say, “I’ve talked to Odeen about it, Tritt, and you mustn’t worry.”

Everyone thought that if you talked to the Rational, you were talking to the triad. Nobody paid attention to the Parentals. But they would have to this time.

He was in the Hard-caverns and everything seemed different. There was nothing there that looked like anything Tritt could understand. It was all wrong and frightening. Still, he was too anxious to see Estwald to let himself really be frightened. He said to himself, “I want my little-mid.” That made him feel firm enough to walk forward.

He saw a Hard One finally. There was just this one; doing something; bending over something; doing something. Odeen once told him that Hard Ones were always working at their—whatever it was. Tritt didn’t remember and didn’t care.

He moved smoothly up and stopped. “Hard-sir,” he said.

The Hard One looked up at him and the air vibrated about him, the Odeen said it did when two Hard Ones talked to each other sometimes. Then the Hard One seemed really to see Tritt and said, “Why, it’s a right. What is your business here? Do you have your little-left with you? Is today the start of a semester?”

Tritt ignored it all. He said, “Where can I find Estwald, sir?!”

“Find whom?”

“Estwald.”

The Hard One was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “What is your business with Estwald, right?”

Tritt felt stubborn. “It is important I speak to him. Are you Estwald, Hard-sir?”

“No, I am not.... What is your name, right?”

“Tritt, Hard-sir.”

“I see. You’re the right of Odeen’s triad, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

The Hard One’s voice seemed to soften. “I’m afraid you can’t see Estwald at the moment. He’s not here. If anyone else can help you?”

Tritt didn’t know what to say. He simply stood there.

The Hard One said, “You go home now. Talk to Odeen. He’ll help you. Yes? Go home, right.”

The Hard One turned away. He seemed very concerned in matters other than Tritt, and Tritt still stood there, uncertain. Then he moved into another section quietly, flowing noiselessly. The Hard One did not look up.

Tritt was not certain at first why he had moved in that particular direction. At first, he felt only that it was good to do so. Then it was clear. There was a thin warmth of food about him and he was nibbling at it.

He had not been conscious of hunger, yet now he was eating and enjoying.

The Sun was nowhere. Instinctively, he looked up, but of course he was in a cavern. Yet the food was better than he had ever found it to be on the surface. He looked about, wondering. He wondered, most of all, that he should be wondering.

He had sometimes been impatient with Odeen because Odeen wondered about so many things that didn’t matter. Now he himself—Tritt!—was wondering. But what he was wondering about did matter. Suddenly, he saw that it did matter. With an almost blinding flash he realized that he wouldn’t wonder unless something inside him told it did matter.

He acted quickly, marveling at his own bravery. After a while, he retraced his steps. He moved past the Hard One again, the one to whom he had earlier spoken. He said, “I am going home, Hard-sir.”

The Hard One merely said something incoherent. He was still doing something, bending over something, doing silly things and not seeing the important thing.

If Hard Ones were so great and powerful and smart, Tritt thought, how could they be so stupid?

3a

Dua found herself drifting toward the Hard-caverns. Partly it was because it was something to do now that the Sun had set, something to keep her from returning home for an additional period of time, something to delay having to listen to the importunities of Tritt and the half-embarrassed, half-resigned suggestions of Odeen. Partly, too, it was the attraction they held for her in themselves.

She had felt that for a long time, ever since she was little in fact, and had given up trying to pretend it wasn’t so. Emotionals weren’t supposed to feel such attractions. Sometimes little Emotionals did—Dua was old enough and experienced enough to know that—but this quickly faded or they were quickly discouraged if it didn’t fade quickly enough.

When she herself had been a child, though, she had continued stubbornly curious about the world, and the Sun, and the caverns, and—anything at all—-till her Parental would say, “You’re a queer one, Dua, dear. You’re a funny little midling. What will become of you?”

She hadn’t the vaguest notion at first of what was so queer and so funny about wanting to know. She found, quickly enough, that her Parental could not answer her questions. She once tried her left-father, but he showed none of her Parental’s soft puzzlement. He snapped, “Why do you ask, Dua?” and his look seemed harshly inquiring.

She ran away, frightened, and did not ask him again.

But then one day another Emotional of her own age had shrieked “Left-Em” at her after she had said—she no longer remembered—it had been something that had seemed natural to her at the time. Dua had been abashed without knowing why and had asked her considerably older left-brother, what a Left-Em was. He had withdrawn, embarrassed—clearly embarrassed—mumbling, “I don’t know,” when it was obvious he did.

After some thought, she went to her Parental and said, “Am I a Left-Em, Daddy?”

And he had said, “Who called you that, Dua? You must not repeat such words.”

She flowed herself about his near corner, thought about it awhile, and said, “Is it bad?”

He said, “You’ll grow out of it,” and let himself bulge a bit to make her swing outward and vibrate in the game she had always loved. She somehow didn’t love it now, for it was quite clear that he hadn’t answered her, really. She moved away thoughtfully. He had said, “You’ll grow out of it,” so she was in it now, but in what?

Even then, she had had few real Mends among the other Emotionals. They liked to whisper and giggle together, but she preferred flowing over the crumbled rocks and enjoying the sensation of their roughness. There were, however, some raids who were more friendly than others and whom she found less provoking. There was Doral, who was as silly as the rest, really, but who would sometimes chatter amusingly. (Doral had grown up to join a triad with Dua’s right-brother and a young left from another cavern complex, a left whom Dua did not particularly like. Doral had then gone on to initiate a baby-left, a baby-right, in rapid succession, and a baby-mid not too long after that. She had also grown so dense that the triad looked as though it had two Parentals and Dua wondered if they could still melt.... Just the same Tritt was always telling her, pointedly, what a good triad Doral helped make up.)