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"Why do you say 'down below'?"
'Why, you came up the Pillar."
"Yes, true-but I don't know when or how I was taken out of -the bathysphere, nor where they may have taken me. But go ahead. Let's have your idea."
"Well, but-OK-we don't know what may have happened to the rest of the human race. The fireballs may be picking them off one at a time, with no chance to fight back and no way of guessing what has been going on. We have some idea of the answer. It's up to us to escape and warn them. There may be some way of fighting back. It's our duty; the whole future of the human race may depend on it."
Graves was silent so long after Bill had finished his tocsin that Bill began to feel embarrassed, a bit foolish. But when he finally spoke it was to agree. "I think you are right, Bill. I think it quite possible that you are right. Not necessarily, but distinctly possible. And that possibility does place an obligation on us to all mankind. I've known it. I knew it before we got into this mess, but I did not have enough data to justify shouting. 'Wolf!'
"The question is," he went on, "how can we give such a warning-now?"
"We've got to escape!"
"Ah."
"There must be some way."
"Can you suggest one?"
"Maybe. We haven't been able to find any way in or out of this place, but there must be a way-has to be; we were brought in. Furthermore, our rations are put inside every day-somehow. I tried once to stay awake long enough to see how it was done, but I fell asleep-"
"So did I."
"Uh-huh. I'm not surprised. But there are two of us now; we could take turns, watch on and watch off, until something happened."
Graves nodded. "It's worth trying."
Since they had no way of measuring the watches, each kept the vigil until sleepiness became intolerable, then awakened the other. But nothing happened. Their food ran out, was not replaced. They conserved their water balls with care, were finally reduced to one, which was not drunk because each insisted on being noble about it-the other must drink it! But still no manifestation of any sort from their unseen Captors.
After an unmeasured and unestimated length of time-but certainly long, almost intolerably long-at a time when Eisenberg was in a light, troubled sleep, he was suddenly awakened by a touch and the sound of his name. He sat up, blinking, disoriented. "Who? What? Wha'sa matter?"
"I must have dozed off," Graves said miserably. "I'm sorry, Bill." Eisenberg looked where -Graves pointed. Their food and water had been renewed.
Eisenberg did not suggest a renewal of the experiment. In the first place, it seemed evident that their keepers did not intend for them to learn the combination to their cell and were quite intelligent enough to outmaneuver their necessarily feeble attempts. In the second place, Graves was an obviously sick man; Eisenberg did not have the heart to suggest another long, grueling, half-starved vigil.
But, lacking knowledge of the combination, it appeared impossible to break jail. A naked man is a particularly helpless creature; lacking materials wherewith to fashion tools, he can do little. Eisenberg would have swapped his chances for eternal bliss for a diamond drill, an acetylene torch, or even a rusty, secondhand chisel. Without tools of some sort it was impressed on him that he stood about as much chance of breaking out of his cage as his goldfish, Cleo and Patra, had of chewing their way out of a glass bowl.
"Doc?"
"Yes, son."
"We've tackled this the wrong way. We know that X is intelligent; instead of trying to escape, we should be trying to establish communication."
"How?"
"I don't know. But there must be some way."
But if there was, he could never conjure it up. Even if he assumed that his captors could see and hear him, how was he to convey intelligence to them by word or gesture? Was it theoretically possible for any nonhuman being, no matter how intelligent, to find a pattern of meaning in human speech symbols, if he encountered them without context, without background, without pictures, without pointing? It is certainly true that the human race, working under much more favorable circumstances, has failed almost utterly to learn the languages of the other races of animals.
What should he do to attract their attention, stimulate their interest? Recite the "Gettysburg Address"? Or the multiplication table? Or, if he used gestures, would deaf-and-dumb language mean any more, or any less, to his captors than the sailor's hornpipe?
"Doc?"
"What is it, Bill?" Graves was sinking; he rarely initiated a conversation these "days."
"Why are we here? I've had it in the back of my mind that eventually they would take us out and do something with us. Try to question us, maybe. But it doesn't look like they meant to."
"No, it doesn't."
"Then why are we here? Why do they take care of us?"
Graves paused quite a long time before answering: "I think that they are expecting us to reproduce."
"What!"
Graves shrugged.
"But that's ridiculous."
"Surely. But would they know it?"
"But they are intelligent."
Graves chuckled, the first time he had done so in many sleeps. "Do you know Roland Young's little verse about the flea:
"A fu
You ca
But He can tell-and so can She."
"After all, the visible differences between men and women are quite superficial and almost negligible-except to men and women!"
Eisenberg found the suggestion repugnant, almost revolting; he struggled against it. "But look, Doc-even a little study would show them that the human race is divided up into sexes. After all, we aren't the first specimens they've studied."
"Maybe they don't study us."
"Huh?"
"Maybe we are just-pets."
Pets! Bill Eisenberg's morale had stood up well in the face of danger and uncertainty. This attack on it was more subtle. Pets! He had thought of Graves and himself as prisoners of war, or, possibly, objects of scientific research. But pets!
"I know how you feel," Graves went on, watching his face, "It's... it's humiliating from an anthropocentric viewpoint. But I think it may be true. I may as well tell you my own private theory as to the possible nature of X, and the relation of X to the human race. I haven't up to now, as it is almost sheer conjecture, based on very little data. But it does cover the known facts.
"I conceive of the X creatures as being just barely aware of the existence of men, unconcerned by them, and almost completely uninterested in them."
"But they hunt us!"
"Maybe. Or maybe they just pick us up occasionally by accident. A lot of men have dreamed about an impingement of nonhuman intelligences on the human race. Almost without exception the dream has taken one of two forms, invasion and war, or exploration and mutual social intercourse.
Both concepts postulate that nonhumans are enough like us either to fight with us or talk to us-treat us as equals, one way or the other. I don't believe that X is sufficiently interested in human beings to want to enslave them, or even exterminate them. They may not even study us, even when we come under their notice. They may lack the scientific spirit in the sense of having a monkeylike curiosity about everything that moves. For that matter, how thoroughly do we study other life forms? Did you ever ask your goldfish for their views on goldfish poetry or politics? Does a termite think that a woman's place is in the home? Do beavers prefer blondes or brunettes?"