“But there must be some constant!” McKie exploded.

“Connectives possess aspect of this constant you seek,” the Caleban said.

“What are connectives?”

“No . . .”

“Referents!” McKie stormed. “Then why use the term?”

“Term approximates. Tangential occlusion another term expression something similar.”

“Tangential occlusion,” McKie muttered. Then, “tangential occlusion?”

“Fellow Caleban offers this term after discussion of problem with Laclac sentient possessing rare insight.”

“One of you talked this over with a Laclac, eh? Who was this Laclac?”

“Identity not conveyed, but occupation known and understandable.”

“Oh? What was his occupation?”

“Dentist.”

McKie exhaled a long, held breath, shook his head with bewilderment. “You understand—dentist?”

“All species requiring ingestion of energy sources must reduce such sources to convenient form.”

“You mean they bite?” McKie asked.

“Explain bite.”

“I thought you understood dentist!”

“Dentist—one who maintains system by which sentients shape energy for ingestion,” the Caleban said.

“Tangential occlusion,” McKie muttered. “Explain what you understand by occlusion.”

“Proper matching of related parts in shaping system.”

“We’re getting nowhere,” McKie growled.

“Every creature somewhere,” the Caleban said.

“But where? Where are you, for example?”

“Planar relationships unexplainable.”

“Let’s try something else,” McKie said. “I’ve heard you can read our writing.”

“Reducing what you term writing to compatible connectives suggests time-constant communication,” the Caleban said. “Not really certain, however, of time-constant or required connectives.”

“Well . . . let’s go at the verb to see,” McKie said. “Tell me what you understand by the action of seeing.”

“To see—receive sensory awareness of external energy,” the Caleban said.

McKie buried his face in his hands. He felt dispirited, his brain numbed by the Caleban’s radiant bombardment. What would be the sensory organs? He knew such a question would only send them off on another empty label chase.

He might as well be listening to all this with his eyes or with some other organ rude and unfitted to its task. Too much depended on what he did. McKie’s imagination sensed the stillness which would follow the death of this Caleban—an enormous solitude. A few infants left, perhaps—but doomed. All the good, the beautiful, the evil . . . everything sentient . . . all gone. Dumb creatures which had never gone through a jumpdoor would remain. And winds, colors, floral perfumes, birdsong—these would continue after the crystal shattering of sentiency.

But the dreams would be gone, lost in that season of death. There would be a special kind of silence: no more beautiful speech strewn with arrows of meaning.

Who could console the universe for such a loss?

Presently he dropped his hands, said, “Is there somewhere you could take this . . . your home where Mliss Abnethe couldn’t reach you?”

“Withdrawal possible.”

“Well, do it!”

“Cannot.”

“Why?”

“Agreement prohibits.”

“Break the damned agreement!”

“Dishonorable action brings ultimate discontinuity for all sentients on your . . . suggest wave as preferred term. Wave. Much closer than plane. Please substitute concept of wave wherever plane used in our discussion.”

This thing’s impossible, McKie thought.