ghtly pregnant," she said. "You either are or you
aren't."

Gerd van Riebeek was talking at the same time. "This sapience question is
just as important in my field as yours, Ruth. Sapience is the result of
evolution by natural selection, just as much as a physical characteristic,
and it's the most important step in the evolution of any species, our own
included."

"Wait a minute, Gerd," Rainsford said. "Ruth, what do you mean by that?
Aren't there degrees of sapience?"

"No. There are degrees of mentation--intelligence, if you prefer--just as
there are degrees of temperature. When psychology becomes an exact science
like physics, we'll be able to calibrate mentation like temperature. But
sapience is qualitatively different from nonsapience. It's more than just
a higher degree of mental temperature. You might call it a sort of mental
boiling point."

"I think that's a damn good analogy," Rainsford said. "But what happens
when the boiling point is reached?"

"That's what we have to find out," van Riebeek told him. "That's what I
was talking about a moment ago. We don't know any more about how sapience
appeared today than we did in the year zero, or in the year 654 Pre-Atomic
for that matter."

"Wait a minute," Jack interrupted. "Before we go any deeper, let's agree
on a definition of sapience."

Van Riebeek laughed. "Ever try to get a definition of life from a
biologist?" he asked. "Or a definition of number from a mathematician?"

"That's about it." Ruth looked at the Fuzzies, who were looking at their
colored-ball construction as though wondering if they could add anything
more without spoiling the design. "I'd say: a level of mentation
qualitatively different from nonsapience in that it includes ability to
symbolize ideas and store and transmit them, ability to generalize and
ability to form abstract ideas. There; I didn't say a word about
talk-and-build-a-fire, did I?"

"Little Fuzzy symbolizes and generalizes," Jack said. "He symbolizes a
damnthing by three horns, and he symbolizes a rifle by a long thing that
points and makes noises. Rifles kill animals. Harpies and damnthings are
both animals. If a rifle will kill a harpy, it'll kill a damnthing too."

Juan Jimenez had been frowning in thought; he looked up and asked, "What's
the lowest known sapient race?"

"Yggdrasil Khooghras," Gerd van Riebeek said promptly. "Any of you ever
been on Yggdrasil?"

"I saw a man shot once on Mimir, for calling anothe