“That’s why I’ve come tonight,” said Sayona. “I’ve got something to tell you . . . if I can ask you a question after I’m through?”

“What kind of question?” she queried sharply.

“Let me tell you first,” he said. “Then you can answer or not, whichever you like. It’s nothing that can touch you—now. Only I should have told you before. I’m afraid I’ve put it off, until . . . well, until there was no more putting off possible. What do you know about your own gene history, Anea?”

“Why,” she looked at him, “I know all about it.”

“Not this part,” said Sayona. “You know you were bred for certain things—” he put one old, slim hand on the edge of her float in a gesture that begged for understanding.

“Yes. Mind and body,” she answered, watching him.

“And more,” said Sayona. “It’s hard to explain in a moment. But you know what was behind Montor’s science, don’t you? It treated the human race as a whole, as a single social entity, self-repairing in the sense that as its individual components die off they are replaced by the birth of new components. Such an entity is manipulable under statistical pressures, in somewhat the same manner that a human being may be manipulated by physical and emotional pressures. Increase the temperature of a room in which a man stands, and he will take off his jacket. This was William’s key to power.”

“But—” she stared at him. “I’m an individual—”

“No, no. Wait,” Sayona held up his hand. “That was Monlor’s science. Ours on the Exotics had somewhat the same basis, but a differing viewpoint. We regarded the race as manipulate through its individuals, as an entity in a constant state of growth and evolution by reason of the birth of improved individuals among the mass that constituted it. Gene-selection, we believed, was the key to this—both natural or accidental, and controlled.”

“But it is!” said Anea.

“No,” Sayona shook his head slowly. “We were wrong. Manipulation by that approach is not truly possible; only analysis and explanation. It is adequate for an historian, for the meditative philosopher. And such, Anea, have we of the Exotics been, wherefore it seemed not only valid, but complete, to us.

“But manipulation by that means is possible only in small measure—very small. The race is not controllable from within the race; such gene-selection as we did could use only those characteristics which we already knew and understood. And it repelled us from those genes which we detected, and could not understand, and, of course, we could not work with ones we did not know existed, or could exist.