Ttomalss had stopped stalking around Sitneff looking for befflem to boot. Kassquit would do whatever she did. If it brought her emotional and physical satisfaction, well and good. If it brought her emotional travail… she was an adult, and would have to cope with it as best she could.

So the psychologist told himself, anyhow. If a small, mean part of him rather hoped his former ward ran into emotional travail, he had the grace to be ashamed of that part. He did his best not to let it affect his thinking or his actions.

It wasn’t as if he had nothing else on his mind. One morning-early one morning-Pesskrag telephoned him and said, “I hope you know you are responsible for commencing the unraveling of work thought to be truth for tens of millennia.”

“Am I?” Ttomalss said around a yawn. “And how should I feel about this-besides sleepy, I mean?”

“You are-you and that other psychologist back on Tosev 3, that Felless,” Pesskrag said. “If you two had not brought the Big Uglies’ research to our attention, we might have remained ignorant of these developments… forever.”

“Now that you know of them, what can you do with them?” Ttomalss’ eye turrets were beginning to decide they would work together after all. Once he got some breakfast, he probably would be capable of rational thought. He wouldn’t have bet on that when the telephone first hissed for his attention.

“That is why my colleagues and I have been experimenting so diligently: to begin to find out what we can do,” the physicist answered. She went on, “We are not altogether sure we believe what we are finding.”

“I have asked you before-just what is so startling about these Tosevite discoveries?” Ttomalss said. “Are you in a better position to tell me than you were the last time we spoke?”

“We may see more change in the next two to five hundred years than we have seen at any time in our history since Home was unified,” Pesskrag said.

“What sort of change?” Ttomalss demanded. “How will things be different?” He hoped for concrete answers.

Pesskrag remained resolutely abstract. “Senior Researcher, at present I have no idea. But, as we evaluate each experiment, it will suggest others, and we will probably have a much better notion of exactly where we are going in a few more years.”

“There are times when I believe you are doing your best to addle me with frustration,” Ttomalss said. Pesskrag laughed and made the negative gesture. Ttomalss made the affirmative one. “Yes, I do believe that. Will you not give me at least some idea of how much you have learned since we last spoke?”

Laughing still, the physicist replied, “It shall be done, superior sir. Last time we spoke, I believe I said our knowledge was like a new hatchling, still wet with the juices from its egg. We have indeed advanced from that point. Now, in my opinion, our knowledge is like a new hatchling on which the sun has dried the juices from its egg.”

“I thank you so very much.” Ttomalss’ pungent sarcasm set Pesskrag laughing all over again. Ttomalss stubbornly persisted: “How far is the gap from fascinating experiment to workable new technology?”

“I am very sorry, Senior Researcher, but I have no way to judge that,” Pesskrag replied. “It will be a while. Technology that induces such major changes will have to be investigated with unusual care. That will slow its implementation. We will need a good many lifetimes before we can fully evaluate it.”

She’d said that before, too. “Suppose we were reckless. Suppose we were reckless to the point of being addled.” Ttomalss tried to force on her a mental exercise he’d used before. “Suppose we knew whatever it is you now think we know. Suppose we cared nothing for consequences, only for getting the maximum use from this new knowledge. How soon after your discoveries could we have workable new technology?”

He had to give Pesskrag credit. She did try to imagine that, though it was alien to all her thinking patterns. “We would have to be completely addled to work in that way,” she said. “You do understand as much?”

Ttomalss used the affirmative gesture. “Oh, yes. That is part of the assumption I am asking you to make.”

“Very well.” Pesskrag’s eye turrets both turned up toward the ceiling. Ttomalss had seen that gesture in many males and females who were thinking hard. He used it himself, in fact. After a little while, the physicist’s eyes swung toward him again. “You understand my estimate is highly provisional?”

Now Ttomalss had all he could do not to laugh. However wild Pesskrag was trying to be, she remained a typical, conservative female of the Race. He could not hold it against her. “Yes, I understand that,” he said gently. “I am only looking for an estimate, not a statement of fact.”

“Very well,” she said. “Always bearing that in mind, if I were as wild as a wild Big Ugly-for that is what you have in mind, is it not? — I might find something useful within, oh, a hundred fifty years. This assumes no disasters in the engineering and no major setbacks.”

“I see. I thank you.” Ttomalss was willing to bet the Tosevites would be faster than that. The question was, how much faster than that would they be? Pesskrag was pretending to a wildness she did not have. The Big Uglies did not have a great many things, but they had never lacked for wildness. She’d given Ttomalss an upper limit. He had to figure out the lower limit for himself.

She said, “I thought I would shock you. I see I do not.”

“No, you do not,” Ttomalss agreed. “Your expertise is in physics. Mine is in matters pertaining to the wild Big Uglies. I admit the field lacks the quantitative rigor yours enjoys. Even so, what I do know of the Tosevites persuades me that your answer is believable.”

“That is truly frightening,” Pesskrag said. “I have trouble taking my own estimate seriously, and yet it fazes you not at all.”

“Oh, it fazes me, but not quite in the way you mean,” Ttomalss said. How long had the Big Uglies been working on this line of experiments before Felless noticed they were doing it? How much of their research had never got into the published literature for fear of drawing the Race’s notice-or, come to that, for fear of drawing rival Tosevites’ notice? Those were all relevant questions. He had answers to none of them. He found another question for Pesskrag: “If the Big Uglies do succeed within the timeframe you outline, could we quickly match them?”

“Maybe.” Her voice was troubled. “If so, though, we would have to abandon the caution and restraint we have come to take for granted. That would produce even more change than I have outlined.”

“I know,” Ttomalss said.

Pesskrag said, “If we are forced to change as rapidly as the Big Uglies, will we become as unstable as they are?”

“I doubt it. I doubt we could. But we would have to become more changeable than we are, I think. To some degree, this has already happened with the colonists on Tosev 3,” Ttomalss answered.

“As far as I am concerned, that is not a recommendation,” Pesskrag said. “I have read of the colonists’ strange perversions inspired by Tosevite drugs. I have even read that some of them prefer living among the wild Big Uglies to staying with their own kind. Can such things be true?”

“They can. They are,” Ttomalss said. “As is often true when examining social phenomena, though, causation is more complex than it is in the purely physical world.”

“I do not care,” Pesskrag said stoutly. “Why would any sensible male or female want to live among alien barbarians? Anyone who does such a thing cannot possibly be worthwhile, in my opinion.”

“Why? Some males and females who were good friends beforehand become addicted to ginger together. They formed mating bonds like those common among the Big Uglies,” Ttomalss said. Pesskrag let out a disgusted hiss. Ttomalss shrugged. “Like them or not, these things have happened on Tosev 3. For a long time, we reckoned such mated pairs perverts, as you say, and were glad to see them go-”

“As well we should have been!” Pesskrag broke in.

“Perhaps. We certainly thought so when these pairs first came to our attention,” Ttomalss said. “But ginger is widespread on Tosev 3, and a surprising number of close friends of opposite sexes have become more or less permanent mating partners: so many that we saw we were losing valuable males and females to the Big Uglies by driving all such pairs into exile. These days, there is a sort of tacit tolerance for them on Tosev 3, as long as they do not behave too blatantly in public.”

“Disgusting!” Pesskrag added an emphatic cough. “Bad enough that the Big Uglies have revolting habits. But they are as they have evolved to be, and so I suppose they cannot help it. If our own males and females on that planet are no longer fit to associate with decent members of the Race, though, we have a real problem.”

“Tosev 3 has presented us with nothing but problems ever since the conquest fleet got there,” Ttomalss said. “And yes, I think our society on that world will be different from the way it is elsewhere in the Empire-unless ginger becomes so widespread here and on our other worlds that we begin to match patterns first seen there.”

“I hope with all my liver that this does not happen,” Pesskrag said.

“So do I. I am a conservative myself, as any sensible male past his middle years should be,” Ttomalss said. “But you were the one who said we would see change in the relatively near future. Is it a surprise that some of this change would be social as well as technological?”

“I understand technological change. I understand how to manage it,” Pesskrag said. “I am not sure anyone knows how to manage social change. Why should anyone? The Race has little experience with it, and has not had any to speak of since Home was unified.”

“Do you know who has experience managing social change?” Ttomalss asked.

Pesskrag made the negative gesture, but then said, “The colonists on Tosev 3?”

“That is astute, but it is not quite what I meant. Close, but not quite,” the psychologist said. “As a matter of fact, I had in mind the Tosevites themselves. Their whole history over the past thousand of our years has involved managing major social changes. They have gone from slave-owning agrarians to possessors of a technical civilization that rivals our own, and they have not destroyed themselves in the process.”

“Too bad,” the physicist said.

“You may be right. If we had stayed away for another few hundred years, they might have solved our problem for us,” Ttomalss said. “Then again, if we had stayed away for another few hundred years, they might have come to Home anyway. In that case, all the problems we have with them now would seem trivial by comparison.”