Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure, Thrillers, Suspense, Alien Contact, sf
ISBN: 9780307792389
Google: zZr1VZNlOUYC
Amazon: 0553288105
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1972-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

5b

Odeen was present when the new baby-Emotional was born, perfect in every way, but he had not been able to feel enthusiasm over it. Even Tritt, who cared for it perfectly, as a Parental must, seemed subdued in his ecstasies.

A long time had passed and it was as though Dua had vanished. She had not passed on. A Soft One could not pass on except when the whole triad did; but she was not with them, either. It was as though she had passed on, without passing on.

Odeen had seen her once, only once, not very long after her wild fight on the news that she had initiated the new baby.

He had passed a cluster of Emotionals, sunning themselves, when he was moving over the surface on some foolish notion that he might find her. They had tittered at the rare sight of a Rational moving in the vicinity of an Emotional cluster and had thinned in mass-provocation, with no thought among the foolish lot of them but to advertise the fact that they were Emotionals.

Odeen felt only contempt for them and there was no answering stir along his own smooth curves at all. He thought of Dua instead and of how different she was from all of them. Dua never thinned for any reason other than her own inner needs. She had never tried to attract anyone and was the more attractive for that. If she could have brought herself to join the flock of empty-heads she would be easily recognized (he felt sure) by the fact that she alone would not thin, but would probably thicken, precisely because the others thinned.

And as he thought that, Odeen scanned the sunning Emotionals and noted that one indeed had not.

He stopped and then hastened toward her, oblivious to the Emotionals in his way, oblivious to their wild screeching as they flicked smokily out of his path and chattered desperately in their attempts to avoid coalescing one with the other—at least not in the open, and with a Rational watching.

It was Dua. She did not try to leave. She kept her ground and said nothing.

“Dua,” he said, humbly, “aren’t you coming home?”

“I have no home, Odeen,” she said. Not angrily, not in hate—and all the more dreadfully for that reason.

“How can you blame Tritt for what he did, Dua? You know the poor fellow can’t reason.”

“But you can, Odeen. And you occupied my mind while he arranged to feed my body, didn’t you? Your reason told you that I was much more likely to be trapped by you than by him.”

“Dua, no!”

“No, what? Didn’t you make a big show of teaching me, of educating me?”

“I did, but it wasn’t a show, it was real. And it was not because of what Tritt had done. I didn’t know what Tritt had done.”

“I can’t believe that.” She flowed away without haste. He followed after. They were alone now, the Sun shining redly down upon them.

She turned to him. “Let me ask you one question, Odeen? Why did you want to teach me?”

Odeen said, “Because I wanted to.

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