of his
own. You ask where is our culture? The culture of _all_ worlds is ours.
We don't have great cities and vast fleets. The wolf cubs build these
for us. They carry us across space and shelter us in their cities.

"Our own energies are expended in a thousand other and more profitable
ways. We have sought and learned a few of the secrets of life and mind.
With these we can move as you were moved, when we choose to do so. From
where I sit I can speak with any of our kind on this planet or any world
of the entire Nucleus. And a few of us, united in the effort, can touch
those in distant galaxies.

"What culture would you have us acquire, that we do not have?" Venor
finished.

* * * * *

Without answer, Cameron arose and strode slowly to the window, his back
to the room. He looked out upon the rude wooden huts and the towering
forest beyond. He tried to tell himself it was all a lie. Such things
couldn't be. But he could feel it now with increasing strength, as if
all his senses were quickening--the benign aura, the indefinable wash of
power that seemed to lap at the edge of his mind.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Joyce's face, almost radiant
as she, too, sensed it here in the presence of the Ids.

Love, as a genuine power, had been taught by every Terran philosopher of
any social worth. But it had never really been tried. Not in the way the
Ids understood it. Cameron felt he could only guess at the terrible
discipline of mind it required to use it as they did. The analogy of the
wolf cubs was all very well, and man had learned to go that far. But
there is a difference when your own kind is involved, he thought.

Perhaps it was out of sheer fear of each other that men continued to try
to sway with hate, the most primitive of all their weapons.

It's easy to hate, he thought. Love is hard, and because it is, the
tough humans who can't achieve it and have the patience to manipulate it
must scorn it. The truly weak ones, they're incapable of the stern and
brutal self-discipline required of one who loves his enemy.

But men had known how. Back in the caves they had known how to conquer
the wolf and the wild horse. Where had they lost it?

The vision of the buildings and the forest with its eternal peace was
still in his eyes. What else could you want, with the whole Universe in
the palm of your hand?

He turned sharply. "You tricked us into betraying ourselves to Marth