"With the other polyps," Mater corrected him primly. She detested slang. Pater was eyeing Junior with ominous calm. "And where," he asked, "did you get that stone?" Junior contracted guiltily. The surfstone slipped from his tentacles and plumped to the sea-floor in a flurry of sand. He edged away, stammering, "Well, I guess maybe ... I might have gone a little ways toward the beach...." "You guess! When I was a polyp," said Pater, "the small fry obeyed their elders, and no guess about it!" "Now, dear--" said Mater. "And no spawn of mine," Pater warmed to his lecture, "is going to flout my words! Junior--COME HERE!" Junior paddled cautiously around the homesite, just out of tentacle-reach. He said in a small voice, "I won't." "DID YOU HEAR ME?" "Yes," admitted Junior. The neighbors stared. The three maiden aunts clutched one another with muted shrieks, savoring beforehand the language Pater would now use. But Pater said "Ulp!"--no more. "Now, dear," put in Mater quickly. "We must be patient. You know all children go through larval stages." "When I was a polyp ..." Pater began rustily. He coughed out an accidentally inhaled crustacean, and started over: "No spawn of mine...." Trailing off, he only glared, then roared abruptly, "SPRAT!" "I won't!" said Junior reflexively and backpaddled into the coral shadows of the reef. "That wallop," seethed Pater, "wants a good polyping. I mean...." He glowered suspiciously at Mater and the neighbors. "Dear," soothed Mater, "didn't you _notice_?" "Of course, I.... Notice what?" "What Junior was doing ... carrying a stone. I don't suppose he understands _why_, just yet, but...." "A stone? Ah, uh, to be sure, a stone. Why, my dear, do you realize what this _means_?" * * * * * Pater was once more occupied with improving Mater's mind. It was a long job, without foreseeable end--especially since he and his helpmeet were both firmly rooted for life to the same tastefully decorated homesite (garnished by Pater himself with colored pebbles, shells, urchins and bits of coral in the rather rococo style which had prevailed during Pater's courting days as a free-swimming polyp). "Intelligence, my dear," pronounced Pater, "is quite incompatible with motility. Just think--how could ideas congeal in a brain shuttled hither and yon, bombarded with ever-changing sense-impressions? Look at the lower species, which swim about all their lives, incapable of taking root or thought! True Intelligence, my dear--as distinguished from Instinct, of course--pre-supposes the fixed viewpoint!" He paused. Mater murmured, "Yes, dear," as she always did obediently at this point. Junior undulated past, swimming toward the abyss. He moved a bit heavily now; it was growing hard for him to keep his maturely thickening afterbody in a horizontal posture.