on home ground again. "A friend of mine, speaking about
a mutual acquaintance, once said, 'When they installed her circuits,
they put in such big feeling circuits that there was no room left
for any thinking circuits.' I think that's a perfect description of
what I estimate Svant mentality to be. Take these bronze knives, and
the musical instruments. Wonderful; the work of individuals trying
to express feeling in metal or wood. But get an idea like the wheel,
or even a pair of tongs? Poo! How would you state the First Law of
Motion, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in tickle-pinch-rub
terms? Sonny could grasp an idea like that. Sonny's handicap, if
you call it that, cuts him off from feel-thinking; he can think
logically instead of sensually."

He sipped his cocktail and continued: "I can understand why the
village is mounded up, too. I realized that while I was watching
Dave's gang bury the pump house. I'd been bothered by that, and by
the absence of granaries for all the grain they raise, and by the
number of people for so few and such small houses. I think the
village is mostly underground, and the houses are just entrances,
soundproofed, to shelter them from uncomfortable natural
noises--thunderstorms, for instance."

The horn was braying in the snooper-screen speaker; somebody
wondered what it was for. Gofredo laughed.

"I thought, at first, that it was a war-horn. It isn't. It's a
peace-horn," he said. "Public tranquilizer. The first day, they
brought it out and blew it at us to make us peaceable."

"Now I see why Sonny is rejected and persecuted," Anna was saying.
"He must make all sorts of horrible noises that he can't hear ...
that's not the word; we have none for it ... and nobody but his
mother can stand being near him."

"Like me," Lillian said. "Now I understand. Just think of the most
revolting thing that could be done to you physically; that's what I
do to them every time I speak. And I always thought I had a nice
voice," she added, pathetically.

"You have, for Terrans," Ayesha said. "For Svants, you'll just
have to change it."

"But how--?"

"Use an analyzer; train it. That was why I took up sonics, in
the first place. I had a voice like a crow with a sore throat,
but by practicing with an analyzer, an hour a day, I gave myself
an entirely different voice in a couple of months. Just try to
get some pump-sound frequencies into it, like Luis'."

"But why? I'm no use here. I'm a linguist,