"_Bath_ rooms, yes. Just bathing went on in there. And outside, where the little house in back ought to be ... nothing." Rowley tamped the ashes in his pipe, withdrew a blackened finger. "We take that sort of thing for granted, you know. We assume proper facilities are around someplace and don't give them a second thought. They weren't present in the stage setting because they weren't needed." "Come, now...!" "Fact. Another fact: grass growing in the streets. The way those kids played on it, it would have been worn away in a week. Slim evidence, but it's part of the picture." * * * * * "What I'm interested in," said Spliid, "is the death. Did you learn what they did with the body?" "You were right," Rowley said. "There wasn't any. I saw Torl the next day, alive and kicking. That's what put me off on the immortality tangent." Spliid grunted. "Another act in the play?" "Yes, and badly directed. The director didn't understand death as we do." Spliid shook himself. "Now, wait...!" "Honest and truly. How do we think of death--most of us? We believe in somehow living on after death takes place--immortality of the soul. Can you visualize how a stage director who didn't understand that concept would cast it?" "What do you think I am, a percie? Get on with it." "Consider this, then. I gambled with my emotional adjustment conditioning. There was one angle I hadn't exploited, because of that conditioning. Sex." "If you are trying to tell me you unloaded the conditioning _we_ give you," Spliid interrupted, "I won't believe it!" "No--I wouldn't. But, in the interest of ethnological investigation, I _could_ grab a kiss. So I did." "I see," drily. "Not yet, you don't. I got no reaction. Like embracing a tree. Anyway, I kissed her. Somehow...." He hesitated. "Her garment...." "No wonder you made no report," growled Spliid. "Believe me, Cliff, I'm going to have that conditioning process looked into!" Rowley laughed, briefly. "No need for that. It's sound. You'll be interested in what that slipping garment revealed." "Another time, another place...." "I saw a perfect, living statue!" Spliid's eyes alerted. "A what?" Spliid relaxed. "I think I know what you mean. Go on." Rowley drew heavily on his pipe. A brooding look shadowed his lean face. "I learned about Yanek then. I learned about Tsu and Smarin and Torl and all the rest of them. If we weren't such damned prudes, Commander, and I had flipped a sarong sooner, we'd have found everything out long ago. You've heard about the sinner who was told he could remain in Heaven only on condition he could pick Adam out of the crowd? He chose the only man he could find ... without a navel." "Maybe they lay eggs," Spliid suggested. "Oviparous." Rowley gave him a look of humorous scorn. "Do statues lay eggs?" Spliid's expression cleared. "By God! Now I _really_ understand you!"