flowed in an unhurried stream, soothing, distracting, keeping the
thread intact. At last the crises seemed behind them. "... So I can only
wait for you to absorb the emotional impact of what I've told you. I had
planned to prepare you, to break it gently if I could, but ... you
understand?" The voice paused, then repeated gently and insistently,
"You understand, don't you?"

"Uh ... yes. Homer--"

* * * * *

"He can't last much longer, and so of course I can't. I've landed one
kick after another right smack in your emotional solar plexus and you're
trying to catch your wind." Tim's hand casually struck a match for the
cigarette Phil had put unlit in his mouth and the man leaned forward
automatically, puffed, and automatically muttered a word of thanks. The
quiet voice went on, taking an even more casual note. "What with trying
to examine the implications of everything at once, you've stirred up a
fine old Irish stew of fears, resentments and envies, all of them trying
to reconcile the certain knowledge that I can be trusted and the
essentially neurotic fear that I'm playing you for an almighty sucker.

"Remember, it has been even harder for me to reconcile myself to you
human beings than it can possibly be for you to accept the existence
of the Challon. The concept of telepathy is not a completely new or
alien one to you, but the concept of a nontelepathic civilization was
dismissed by the Challon ages ago as a simple contradiction of terms,
a self-evident absurdity such as lifting oneself by one's bootstraps.

"It seemed so obvious that a civilized society could not develop without
the capacity for intelligent cooeperation, and intelligent cooeperation of
any real complexity was impossible without adequate communication. What
means of communication could adequately replace the direct linking of
mind and mind? Failing any answers short of fantasy, the proposition
always remained a sort of classroom joke with us. In fact, several
classic satires exist on the subject and one of the least
successful--because it seemed too ridiculous--suggested an elaborately
coded system of vocalizing. We have a very elementary spoken language
and a more complex code of inscriptions for essential records, but
neither the written nor the spoken system could possibly be called an
adequate means of communication.

"I realize now that one of the satires was not the rather frightening
effort that it seemed t