o be, but a brilliant scientific prediction of
the probable development and history of a race of highly intelligent
nontelepaths. The composer of the epic pointed out that where the
culture and character of the Challon neither permitted nor desired
concealment of any sort, a race that lacked adequate communication would
have no choice but to live as disharmonious groups of strangers, never
truly knowing either their fellows or themselves. He postulated what
you now call traumatic experiences which, unrecognized and, therefore,
untreated, would fester in secrecy from childhood onward until they
manifested as compulsive drives or inhibitive complexes. He invented
deranged emotions which you describe as 'guilt' and 'shame' and he
showed how they would cause buried memories to erupt in changed form,
lead to cankerous misunderstandings, cause unhealthy repressions, and
foster frustrations.

* * * * *

"But his master-stroke--and this was pure genius, for it was almost
inconceivable--was when he traced the development of his 'nontelepathic
civilization' to the point where he predicted criminals, criminal and
moral codes of unbelievable complexity, and a great multitude of harmful
and illogical taboos, local customs, and regional superstitions.
It was a superb achievement of creative imagination and scientific
deduction--but not even its creator thought it was more than an exercise
in fantasy and perhaps not in the best of taste. The basic assumption
was simply too absurd for serious consideration."

"Yeah. I guess we were as indigestible to you as you are to me. Maybe
I'm getting over it. Sorry ... uh ... Homer."

"Call me Tim. I don't think of myself as Homer and my Challon
identification is a mental-verbal linkage. Even 'Challon' is a
compromise simplification."

"I guess it would be. Those cracks I made--"

"Forget them. To what you call the hag-ridden moron jittering out of
sight in your mind, so many things equate to a threat to survival.
And so many survival reactions outlast their usefulness, becoming
essentially antisocial and antisurvival. For a telepathic race there
are no false fronts or motives or impulses. In a nontelepathic society,
nothing but false faces are ever seen."

"It's beginning to get home to me ... what about that night near the
swamp?"

"My poor Challonari. The shockwave of 'my' death left it alert but
bewildered. It could not recognize nontelepathic intellig