Understood.

“I’ll make it simple. Grandmother had to go out, so she left the children in the house, telling them they must make sure the door is shut and not to open it to anyone but her. On the road, Grandmother met a wolf, which ate her, and then put on her clothing and assumed her appearance. Then it went to the house and came up to the door, and said to the children, ‘I’m your grandmother. I’ve come back. Open the door for me.’ The children looked through the crack in the door and saw what looked like their grandmother, and so they opened the door, and the wolf came in the house and ate them. Do you understand this story, my Lord?”

Not the slightest bit.

“Then maybe I’ve guessed right.”

First of all, the wolf wanted all along to enter the house and eat the children, correct?

“Correct.”

It engaged in communication with the children, correct?

“Correct.”

This is what’s incomprehensible. In order to achieve its own aims, it shouldn’t have communicated with the children.

“Why?”

Isn’t it obvious? If there was communication between them, the children would have known that the wolf wanted to come in and eat them, and they wouldn’t have opened the door.

Evans stayed silent for a while. “I understand, my Lord. I understand.”

What do you understand? Isn’t what I said obvious?

“Your thoughts are completely exposed to the outside world. You can’t hide.”

How can thoughts hide? Your ideas are confusing.

“I mean, your thoughts and memories are transparent to the outside world, like a book placed out in public, or a film projected in a plaza, or a fish in a clear fishbowl. Totally exposed. Readable at a glance. Er, maybe some of the elements I just mentioned are…”

I understand them all. But isn’t all that perfectly natural?

Evans was silent again. “So that’s it.… My Lord, when you communicate face-to-face, everything you communicate is true. It’s impossible for you to cheat or lie, so you can’t pursue complicated strategic thinking.”

We can communicate over significant distances, not just face-to-face. The words “cheating” and “lying” are another two that we have had a hard time understanding.

“What sort of a society is it when thought is completely transparent? What sort of culture does it produce? What sort of politics? No scheming, no pretending.”

What are “scheming” and “pretending”?

Evans said nothing.

Human communication organs are but an evolutionary deficiency, a necessary compensation for the fact that your brains can’t emit strong thought waves. This is one of your biological weaknesses. Direct display of thought is a superior, more efficient form of communication.

“A deficiency? A weakness? No, my Lord, you are wrong. This time you are totally wrong.”

Is that so? Let me think about it. It’s a shame you can’t see my thoughts.

This time the interruption was longer. When twenty minutes had passed and no more text had appeared, Evans strolled from bow to stern, watching a school of fish leaping out of the ocean, tracing an arc on the surface that glittered silver under the starlight. Several years ago, he had spent some time on a fishing boat in the South China Sea investigating the effect of overfishing on coastal life. The fishermen called this phenomenon “the passing of dragon soldiers.” To Evans, they looked like text projected on the eye of the ocean. Then text appeared before his own eyes.