lie behind Lithian reasoning—all utterly unprobed, although in other respects the Lithians are very subtle. Look at what they've done in solid-state chemistry, for instance. It's a structure of the purest kind of reason, and yet when you get down to its fundamental assumptions you discover the axiom: 'Matter is real.' How can they know that? How did logic lead them to it? It's a very shaky notion, in my opinion. If I say that the atom is just a-hole-inside-a-hole-through-a-hole, how can they controvert me?"
"But their system works," Cleaver said.
"So does our solid-state theory—but we work from opposite axioms," Michelis said. "Whether it works or not isn't the issue. The question is, what is it that's working? I don't myself see how this immense structure of reason which the Lithians have evolved can stand for an instant. It doesn't seem to rest on anything. 'Matter is real' is a crazy proposition, when you come right down to it; all the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction."
"I'm going to tell you," Ruiz-Sanchez said. "You won't believe me, but I'm going to tell you anyhow, because I have to. It stands because it's being propped up. That's the simple answer and the whole answer. But first I want to add one more fact about the Lithians:
"They have complete physical recapitulation outside the body."
"What does that mean?" Agronski said.
"You know how a human child grows inside its mother's body. It is a one-celled animal to begin with, and then a simple metazoan resembling the fresh-water hydra or a simple jellyfish. Then, very rapidly, it goes through many other animal forms, including the fish, the amphibian, the reptile, the lower mammal, and finally becomes enough like a man to be born. I don't know how this was taught to you as a geologist, but biologists call the process recapitulation.
"The term assumes that the embryo is passing through the various stages of evolution which brought life from the single-celled organism to man, but on a contracted time scale. There is a point, for instance, in the development of the fetus when it has gills, though it never uses them. It has a tail almost to the very end of its time in the womb, and rarely it still has it when it is born; and the tail-wagging muscle, the pubococcygeus, persists in the adult—in women it becomes transformed into the contractile ring around the vestibule. The circulatory system of the fetus in the last month is still reptilian, and if it fails to be completely transformed before birth, the infant emerges as a 'blue baby" with patent ductus arteriosus, the tetralogy of Fallot, or a similar heart defect which allows venous blood to mix with arterial—which is the rule with terrestrial reptiles. And so on."
"I see," Agronski said. "It's a familiar idea; I just didn't recognize the term. I had no idea that the correspondence was that close either, come to think of it."
"Well, the Lithians, too, go through this series of metamorphoses as they grow up, but they go through it outside the bodies of their mothers. This whole planet is one huge womb. The Lithian female lays her eggs in her abdominal pouch, the eggs are fertilized, and then she goes to the sea to give birth to her children. What she bears is not a miniature of the marvelously evolved reptile which is the adult Lithian; far from it: instead, she hatches a fish, rather like a lamprey. The fish lives in the sea a while, and then develops rudimentary lungs and comes to live along the shore lines. Once it's stranded on the flats by the tides, the lungfish's pectoral fins become simple legs, and it squirms away through the mud, changing into an amphibian and learning to endure the rigors of living away from the sea. Gradually their limbs become stronger, and better set on their bodies, and they become the big froglike things we sometimes see down the hill, leaping in the moonlight, trying to get away from the crocodiles.
"Many of them do get away. They carry their habit of
"But their system works," Cleaver said.
"So does our solid-state theory—but we work from opposite axioms," Michelis said. "Whether it works or not isn't the issue. The question is, what is it that's working? I don't myself see how this immense structure of reason which the Lithians have evolved can stand for an instant. It doesn't seem to rest on anything. 'Matter is real' is a crazy proposition, when you come right down to it; all the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction."
"I'm going to tell you," Ruiz-Sanchez said. "You won't believe me, but I'm going to tell you anyhow, because I have to. It stands because it's being propped up. That's the simple answer and the whole answer. But first I want to add one more fact about the Lithians:
"They have complete physical recapitulation outside the body."
"What does that mean?" Agronski said.
"You know how a human child grows inside its mother's body. It is a one-celled animal to begin with, and then a simple metazoan resembling the fresh-water hydra or a simple jellyfish. Then, very rapidly, it goes through many other animal forms, including the fish, the amphibian, the reptile, the lower mammal, and finally becomes enough like a man to be born. I don't know how this was taught to you as a geologist, but biologists call the process recapitulation.
"The term assumes that the embryo is passing through the various stages of evolution which brought life from the single-celled organism to man, but on a contracted time scale. There is a point, for instance, in the development of the fetus when it has gills, though it never uses them. It has a tail almost to the very end of its time in the womb, and rarely it still has it when it is born; and the tail-wagging muscle, the pubococcygeus, persists in the adult—in women it becomes transformed into the contractile ring around the vestibule. The circulatory system of the fetus in the last month is still reptilian, and if it fails to be completely transformed before birth, the infant emerges as a 'blue baby" with patent ductus arteriosus, the tetralogy of Fallot, or a similar heart defect which allows venous blood to mix with arterial—which is the rule with terrestrial reptiles. And so on."
"I see," Agronski said. "It's a familiar idea; I just didn't recognize the term. I had no idea that the correspondence was that close either, come to think of it."
"Well, the Lithians, too, go through this series of metamorphoses as they grow up, but they go through it outside the bodies of their mothers. This whole planet is one huge womb. The Lithian female lays her eggs in her abdominal pouch, the eggs are fertilized, and then she goes to the sea to give birth to her children. What she bears is not a miniature of the marvelously evolved reptile which is the adult Lithian; far from it: instead, she hatches a fish, rather like a lamprey. The fish lives in the sea a while, and then develops rudimentary lungs and comes to live along the shore lines. Once it's stranded on the flats by the tides, the lungfish's pectoral fins become simple legs, and it squirms away through the mud, changing into an amphibian and learning to endure the rigors of living away from the sea. Gradually their limbs become stronger, and better set on their bodies, and they become the big froglike things we sometimes see down the hill, leaping in the moonlight, trying to get away from the crocodiles.
"Many of them do get away. They carry their habit of
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