"What was so damned funny?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why were you laughing?"
"Oh. Because you don't follow the rules of Batesian mimicry, and you should, you know."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm not a scientist."
"You said that already."
The man giggled, then recited, "It takes place in the same region and at the same season, according to Bates, and the mimicking species must not itself be protected, according to Bates, and it must be rarer than its model, Bates says, and it must differ from its own species by external characteristics clearly visible and able to create an illusion, Bates says that, too, and its mimicking characteristics should be only superficial and should produce no fundamental change in the species, Bates notes. He Worked with butterflies, you know."
"Are you nuts?"
"Yes, but I follow the rules."
"Move over into the light, where I can see you better."
The man did.
"Yeah, you got a nutty look about you. What's this Bates crap?"
"It's a thing certain creatures do for purposes of self-protection: Batesian mimicry. They make themselves look like something they're not, so nothing will bother them. Now, if you had been smart, you'd never have grown that beard, you'd wash your face and comb your hair, you'd garb yourself in a dark suit and a white shirt and a necktie, and you'd carry a briefcase. You'd make yourself look like everybody else. Then nobody'd bother you. Then you could do whatever you wanted without molestation. You'd resemble the protected species. You wouldn't be forced into danger."
"How do you know I've been forced into danger?"
"There is a look about you, a smell, a certain jumpiness..."
"And if I'd looked square, this wouldn't have happened?"
"Probably not."
"What's your excuse?"
The man laughed, seemed to relax.
"Do you hate scientists?"
"No more than anybody else."
"What if I were a scientist?"
"Nothing."
"Okay. I'm a scientist."
"So what?"
"They lumped us all together. I'm a biologist."
"I don't dig you."
"It was the physicists who did this to us," he gestured upward, outward..."and some chemists and mathematicians. Not the biologists."
"You mean the war?"
"Yes. No! I mean the world, the way it is now."
"I wasn't around when it happened. I don't know. Or care. What're you trying to say?"
"You shouldn't have blamed all the professors in all the disciplines for what happened."
"I didn't. I don't. I don't even know what happened. Not really. What _did_ happen?"
"War, that's all. Mad and devastating. Lots of bombs and rockets, with a result nobody had predicted: This!" He gestured toward the outside once more. "Then what happened? Why, the survivors visited the remaining universities that I knew of and killed the remaining professors, English, sociology, physics, it didn't matter what they taught, because the professors had obviously been responsible, because they had been professors. That's why Batesian mimicry means so much to me. They shot them, they tore them apart, they crucified them. But not me. No. Not me. I was them, the mob. So I lived. I'm Biology, Room six-oh-four, Benton Building." He laughed again.
"You mean you helped them when they killed your friends?"
"They weren't my friends. They were in different disciplines. I hardly knew them."
"But you helped?"
"Of course. That's why I'm still alive."
"So how's life?"
The man raised his hands to his face and began to dig his nails into his cheeks.
"I can't forget it," he finally said.
"So that's what your damned mimicry gets you, hung up by trying to be something else, too much. No thanks. I know what I am."
"What?"
"I'm me. I'm an Angel. I don't have to pretend to be anything else. If they don't like me, they can cut me down, if they're able to. So far, they haven't been able to. So screw 'em all! I don't dig this mimic bit. No thanks. Not at all. They can go to hell, every motherin' one of 'em!"
"A species can't make it that way."
"Screw species. I'm out to preserve me."
"That's the wrong attitude."
"Who says?"