"Call me Tim. I don't think of myself as Homer and my Challon identification is a mental-verbal linkage. Even 'Challon' is a compromise simplification." "I guess it would be. Those cracks I made--" "Forget them. To what you call the hag-ridden moron jittering out of sight in your mind, so many things equate to a threat to survival. And so many survival reactions outlast their usefulness, becoming essentially antisocial and antisurvival. For a telepathic race there are no false fronts or motives or impulses. In a nontelepathic society, nothing but false faces are ever seen." "It's beginning to get home to me ... what about that night near the swamp?" "My poor Challonari. The shockwave of 'my' death left it alert but bewildered. It could not recognize nontelepathic intelligences and tried to turn them aside like the first one. Their deaths are on my head--or on the organic dust that eight years ago was a Challon. The Challonari was confused by the contradictions of my present identity, subtly altered as it has been by Homer's channeling mind, and went insane when faced with a basic conflict of duties. It was like ... losing a simple child." "So we return to Timmy." "And to you." "Me? I'm going downhill fast. Let's have it before I hit rock-bottom and _really_ get around to reacting. And let's have a few straight answers. You could have by-passed the first block that makes Timmy an idiot. O. K., why didn't you?" "I would have lost control of him at once, of course. For one thing, as an ordinary child his mind would be closed to me just as yours is and I would be a voiceless animal with no protector, my existence likely to end at the bottom of a river in a weighted sack." "No dice. Remember, I know you too well to believe you'd place your own interests first, much as I hate to admit it." "As Homer I might, survival being a basic drive. As the Challon-Homer, however, I needed a better reason than simple self-preservation. I have that better reason. It lies in you, in Timmy, and in all your kind. Perhaps you'll see the connection when I tell you that although the Challon are the most intelligent race yet known to exist, Homo sapiens is _at present_ not far behind them. Only more efficient communication and the great strides that it makes possible has advanced the Challon culture and science so disproportionately far beyond your own." * * * * * "So the Challon are a bit brighter and a lot more advanced than we are. O. K., they seem like a good bunch ... or are they? Come to think of it, I saw them from your viewpoint which was predisposed to favor them." Another thought struck him and he fell silent for a moment. "You say we are almost their equal _at present_. What happens--if this inhibited potential you speak of--is released--if Man is made whole?" [Illustration] The answer came quietly. "You would have no equal in the known universe."