"Yes. Because if they are brilliant thinkers, their thought is going to be remarkably different from our thought.”
"Check. And not that only. Philosophers who live in mud are not going to cut much ice with Earth; the masses have always been a deal more impressed by mud than by philosophers.”
"Fortunately, what the masses think won't affect us out here.”
"You think not? Heck, you're the cosmoclectic, Hilary, but I've been in TP before, and I know a strange psycho-logy rules on shipboard. It's like an exaggerated version of Kipling's 'East of Suez ...', how's it go now? 'Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, where there ain't no Ten Commandments....' The best are very like the worst when you step on a planet lying under another sun, Hilary. And you feel that - well, it's a sort of irresponsibility - you feel that you can do anything you like because nobody on Earth will judge you for it: while at the same tune, 'just what you like' is naturally part of what the masses of Earth would like to do, had they the license.”
Mrs. Warhoon tapped four pliant fingers on the table.
"You make it sound very sinister.”
"Hell, the irrational drives of man are sinister! Don't think I'm generalizing. I've seen this mood come over a man too often. It was probably that that undid Ainson. And I feel it in myself.”
"Now I'm afraid I don't see what you mean.”
"Don't look so offended. I could feel that your Quilter really enjoyed shooting our friends. The thrill of the chase! If I saw a bunch of 'em nipping over the veldt. I wouldn't mind a shot myself.”
Mrs. Warhoon's voice was slightly chilled.
"What do you intend to do if we find the ETA home planet?”
"You know what I intend to do: act according to logic and reason. This outfit is for business, not pleasure. But I'm also aware that there's a part of me saying; Lattimore, these creatures don't feel pain; how can anything have a spirit or a soul or be intelligent or appreciate some un-imaginable equivalent of Byron's poems or Borodin's Second Symphony if it does not suffer? And I say to my-self, whatever gifts it has, if it has not pain, then it is for ever beyond the reach of my comprehension.”
"But that is just the challenge, that is why we are having to try to comprehend, that -" She looked attractive with her fists clenched.
"I know all that. But you are talking to me in the voice of intellect," Lattimore said, leaning back in his chair. It was pleasurable shooting Hilary this all-male line. "I'm also hearing a sort of Quilter-voice, a vox populi, a cry not only from the heart but from the bowels. It says that whatever talents these critters may have, they are less than buffaloes or zebras or tigers, and the primitive urge comes up in me just as it did in Quilter, and I want to shoot them.”
She had eight ruby-tipped fingers drumming on the table now, but she managed to look into his face and laugh.
"You are playing an intellectual game with yourself, Bryant. I'm sure that even the base Quilter offered excuses for his actions. Therefore even he feels guilt for his actions; you, being more intelligent, can savor your guilt beforehand, and so control yourself.”
"East of Suez, an intelligent man can find more excuses for himself than a cretin can.”
Seeing vexation on her face, he relented.
"As you say, I'm probably playing a game with myself. Or with you.”
He placed a hand over her finger-tips as carelessly as if they were molybdenum crystals. She withdrew them.
"I wish to change the topic of conversation, Bryant I have a suggestion that I think may be fruitful. Do you think you could get me a volunteer?”
"For what?”
"To be marooned on a strange planet.”
Back on the strange planet called Earth, the third Politan called Blug Lugug was in a terrible state of mental confusion. He was strapped to a bench with a series of strong canvas straps that passed across what was left of his body. A number of wires and cables ran from machines that stood silent or gargled to themselves on one side of the room and climbed on to his body or into his various orifices. One cable in particular ran from one instrument in particular worked by one man in particular; the man was dressed in a white sort of clothing, and when he moved a lever with his hand, something without meaning happened in the third Politan's brain. This meaningless thing was more awful than anything the third Politan had known existed. He saw now how right the Sacred Cosmopolitan had been when he used to term bad to describe these thinlegs. Here was bad bad bad: it reared up before him sturdy and strong and hygienic, and gnawed away his intelligence bit by bit.
The something without meaning came again. A gulf opened where there had been something growing, some-thing delightful, memories or promises, who knows?, but something never to be replaced.
One of the thinlegs spoke. Mainly, in gasps, the Politan imitated what had been said: "noneural response there/ either. He doesn't have a pain response in his whole body!”
He still clung to the notion that when they realized he could imitate their speech, they would be intelligent enough to stop the things they were doing. Whatever they were doing, whatever inside their mad little minds they imagined they were doing, they were spoiling his chances of entering the carrion stage; for already they had removed two of his limbs with a saw - from the corner of his misting eyes he watched the bin in which they had been deposited - and since there were no ammp trees here, the possibility of his continuing the cycles of being was remote. Nothingness confronted him.
He cried an imitation of their words but, forgetting their limitations, pushed it high into his upper voice range. The sounds came distorted; his ockpu orifices were clogged with tiny instruments like leeches.
He needed comfort from the Sacred Cosmopolitan, his worshipped father-mother. But the Cosmopolitan had gone, no doubt to the same gradual dismemberment. The grorgs had gone; he caught their almost supersonic cries answering him in lament from a distant part of the room. Then the something without meaning burst over him again, so that he could no longer hear - but what was it that he had been able to... been able to what? Something else had gone.
In his dizziness, he saw that a new figure had joined the figures in white. In his dizziness, he thought he recognized the new figure. It was - or it was very like - the figure that had performed the dung ritual a brief time ago.
Now the figure cried something, and through the growing dizziness the Politan tried to cry the same thing back, to show it had recognized him: "I can't bear to watch you're doing something that should never be done!”
But the thinlegs, if it was that specific one, gave no sign of recognition. He covered the front part of his upper head with his hands and went fast from the room, almost as if- The something without meaning came again, and the white figures all looked eagerly at their instruments.
Tipped far back until his toes were level with his head, the Director of the Exozoo lay in his therapad and sucked a glucose mixture through a teat. He was being calmed by a young men. now a member of the Exploration Corps with an Explorer's certificate, who had once trained under him at the zoo. Gussie Phipps, who had flown in from Macao, offered comfort.
"You're not so tough as you used to be, Sir Mihaly. You ought to change to synthetic foods; they're better for you. Fancy letting a vivisection upset you! How many vivisections have you performed yourself?”
"I know, I know, you needn't remind me. It was just the sight of that particular poor creature there on the stone, slowly being chopped into little bits and not registering anything detectable as pain or fear.”