The Totems of Abydos by John Norman Page A

particular to a given species, and a key to the universe.”
    “One thousand is a nice, round number,” said Brenner.
    “I agree,” said Rodriguez, “but I do not know if the captain would. He might prefer five hundred and twelve.” The captain, it might be mentioned, had four digits on the forward appendages. The six-digited rear appendages were not used for precision gripping. “The Pons, of course, would presumably side with us,”
    “You are doing these calculations in your head?” asked Brenner.
    “Of course,” said Rodriguez. “They are simple multiples.”
    Brenner then began to understand why Rodriguez was so unpopular with many of his colleagues, why they scrutinized his works for the tiniest of errors, why they pounced like Chian zibits on sentences which did not seek to conceal their power, their significance, and passion, why they disdained his affection for the odd, the real, the ancient, and the beautiful, as though orchards and roses, and old clocks, might be less perfect than subway stations and plastic cups, why they were eager to disparage what they could not equal, why they were eager to denounce as execrable insights of which they were incapable. To be sure, Brenner was well aware that these casual calculations were little more than parlor tricks, such things, and many more of their sort, far more complex, being well within the reach of many idiot savants.
    “They are indeed beautiful,” said Rodriguez, regarding the vast lamplit night, “the suns, and the worlds.”
    Rodriguez had spoken of strong worlds and weak worlds. Brenner had attempted to twist this distinction into one of diversities of stratification, which was a perspective adequate in its way, but yet perhaps slightly awry. Certainly one might have explicitly stratified worlds which might not be aptly characterized as “strong”; they might be rigid, degenerate, fossilized, brittle, arrested, frozen into obsolescent social crystallizations, worlds dominated by perpetuated but failed aristocracies, worlds closed to the fresh blood of the more knowing, the higher and the more meaningful, those capable of the greatest pain, the most profound agonies, and the ecstasies of the most unspeakable joys. Once, Brenner recalled, long ago, in ancient times, on some worlds, the word ‘democracy’ had meant horizons, and the opening of a thousand doors; it had constituted not a denial of the aristocracy of nature, but had projected a path to its achievement. To be sure that would be a path which few, even of those capable of the ascent, would care to climb. The trail is narrow and steep, and dangerous. The mountains do not issue their call to all alike. There are some musics which can be heard only by the ear that is born to hear them. One might have spoken, as well, Brenner supposed, of natural worlds as opposed to artificial worlds, of reality worlds as opposed to convention worlds, or even of harmonious worlds, worlds which were harmonious wholes, worlds with social ecosystems, the parts fitting one to the other, in a whole grander than any part in itself. A democracy of opportunity is one thing, thought Brenner. A democracy of fictionalized sameness, of hypocritical pretense, was something different. One was an interesting, if precarious, possibly dangerous, social experiment, dangerous for many reasons, because of its likelihood to lead to instability, to conflict, to the subordination of the best interests of the whole to those of certain more determined, or better organized, or less scrupulous parts of the whole, to the eventual compromise with quality, to the undermining of difference and meaning, to the putative obliteration of distinctions, to the subtle control of a manipulated mass, regulated by secret Caesars, to the world of the hive. The other was a lie. But then, thought Brenner, perhaps it is better to be lied to than told the truth. Surely there was no particular reason to suppose that the truth must be in the best