The young of the species are not conditioned to live in the completer world of their parents. Having developed sufficiently, they enter that world. Later they breed.
The fertilized eggs are buried in the sand, far up the river, where later they hatch.
And they learn. Instinct alone is fatally slow. Especially in the case of a specialized genus, unable to cope even with this world, unable to feed or drink or survive, unless someone has foresightedly provided for those needs.
The young, fed and tended, would survive. There would be incubators and robots.
They would survive, but they would not know how to swim downstream, to the vaster world of the ocean.
So they must be taught. They must be trained and conditioned in many ways.
Painlessly, subtly, unobtrusively. Children love toys that do things— and if those toys teach at the same time—
In the latter half of the nineteenth century an Englishman sat on a grassy bank near a stream. A very small girl lay near him, staring up at the sky. She had discarded a curious toy with which she had been playing, and now was murmuring a wordless little song, to which the man listened with half an ear.
"What was that, my dear?" he asked at last.
"Just something I made up, Uncle Charles."
"Sing it again." He pulled out a notebook.
The girl obeyed.
"Does it mean anything?"
She nodded. "Oh, yes. Like the stories I tell you, you know."
"They're wonderful stories, dear."
"And you'll put them in a book some day?"
"Yes, but I must change them quite a lot, or no one would understand. But I don't think I'll change your little song."
"You mustn't. If you did, it wouldn't mean anything."
"I won't change that stanza, anyway," he promised. "Just what does it mean?"
"It's the way out, I think," the girl said doubtfully. "I'm not sure yet. My magic toys told me."
"I wish I knew what London shop sold those marvelous toys!"
"Mamma bought them for me. She's dead. Papa doesn't care."
She lied. She had found the toys in a box one day, as she played by the Thames.
And they were indeed wonderful.
Her little song—Uncle Charles thought it didn't mean anything. (He wasn't her real uncle, she parenthesized. But he was nice.) The song meant a great deal. It was the way. Presently she would do what it said, and then—
But she was already too old. She never found the way.
Paradine had dropped Holloway. Jane had taken a dislike to him, naturally enough, since what she wanted most of all was to have her fears calmed. Since Scott and Emma acted normally now, Jane felt satisfied. It was partly wishful-thinking, to which Paradine could not entirely subscribe.
Scott kept bringing gadgets to Emma for her approval. Usually she'd shake her head. Sometimes she would look doubtful. Very occasionally she would signify agreement. Then there would be an hour of laborious, crazy scribbling on scraps of note paper, and Scott, after studying the notations, would arrange and rearrange his rocks, bits of machinery, candle ends, and assorted junk. Each day the maid cleaned them away, and each day Scott began again.
He condescended to explain a little to his puzzled father, who could see no rhyme or reason in the game.
"But why this pebble right here?"
"It's hard and round, dad. It belongs there."
"So is this one hard and round."
"Well, that's got vaseline on it. When you get that far, you can't see just a hard round thing."
"What comes next? This candle?"
Scott looked disgusted. "That's toward the end. The iron ring's next."
It was, Paradine thought, like a Scout trail through the woods, markers in a labyrinth. But here again was the random factor. Logic halted— familiar logic—at Scott's motives in arranging the junk as he did.
Paradine went out. Over his shoulder he saw Scott pull a crumpled piece of paper and a pencil from his pocket, and head for Emma, who was squatted in a corner thinking things over.
Well- Jane was lunching with Uncle Harry, and, on this hot Sunday afternoon there was little to do but read the papers. Paradine settled himself in the coolest place he could find, with a Collins, and lost himself in the comic strips.
An hour later a clatter of feet upstairs roused him from his doze. Scott's voice was crying exultantly, "This is it, Slug! Come on—"
Paradine stood up quickly, frowning. As he went into the hall the telephone began to ring. Jane had promised to call—
His hand was on the receiver when Emma's faint voice squealed with excitement.
Paradine grimaced. What the devil was going on upstairs?
Scott shrieked, "Look out! This way!"
Paradine, his mouth working, his nerves ridiculously tense, forgot the phone and raced up the stairs. The door of Scott's room was open.
The children were vanishing.
They went in fragments, like thick smoke in a wind, or like movement in a distorting mirror. Hand in hand they went, in a direction Paradine could not understand, and as he blinked there on the threshold, they were gone.
"Emma!" he said, dry-throated. "Scotty!"
On the carpet lay a pattern of markers, pebbles, an iron ring—junk. A random pattern. A crumpled sheet of paper blew toward Paradine.
He picked it up automatically.