Out it came, and fresh butter was spread on it, and in went two shiny white beds, for some more doste.
Little Oley watched in fascination. And now he reached for the tremendous glass sitting on the table in front of him. But his fingers didn’t quite make it. Somehow, the glass was heavy and slippery, and it eluded him, rolled over on its side, and spilled the bright purple juicy contents out across the table in a huge swish.
Oley wasn’t dismayed, but watched with a researcher’s interest as the bright purple juice swept across the table toward the busily ticking doster. Momma, of course, wasn’t here, or she would have been gruff about it. She’d just gone into the other room.
The juice spread rapidly at first, and then more and more slowly, making a huge, circuitous river spreading across the table, first toward the doster and then away from it toward the frayed power-cord lying on the table. It touched and began to run along the cord. Not a very eventful recording so far, but Oley watched, charmed.
As he watched, a few bubbles began to appear near the frayed spot. A few wisps of steam. And then, suddenly, there was a loud, snarling splatt—and Momma screamed from the doorway. “That juice is making a short!”
The information, of course, was duly recorded. Juice makes shorts.
It was a minor item of information, mixed into a jumble of others, and nothing else was added to this particular file for nearly another week.
Oley was playing happily on the living room floor that night. Here there was much to explore, though an adult might not have thought twice about it. Back in the corner metal caught Oley’s attention. Bigger on one end than the behind Momma’s doing bachine a bright, slender piece of other, but not really very big anywhere, the sewing machine determined that it worked like a tooth by biting himself needle proved fascinating. As a first experiment, Oley with it. After that he went around the room, biting other things with it. Information, of course, is information, and to be obtained any way one can.
The brown, snaky lamp cord was the end of this experiment. Oley bit it, viciously, with his new tooth, and had only barely observed that it had penetrated completely through when there was a loud splatt, and all the lights in the room went out.
In the darkness and confusion, of course, Oley moved away, seeking other new experiences. So the cause of the short that Momma and Poppa yakked so loudly about was never attributed to Oley’s actions, but only to “How could a needle have gotten from your sewing machine into this lamp cord, Alice?”
But the sum of information had increased. Neatles stuck into lamp cords had something to do with shorts.
More time passed. And this time the file on shorts was stimulated by Poppa. The big, rough, booming voice had always scared Oley a bit when it sounded mad, like now.
“Alice, I’ve just got to have some more shorts!”
Poppa was rummaging in a drawer far above Oley’s head, so he couldn’t see the object under discussion. But all he already knew about shorts—the information passed in review before him.
Shorts are useful. They help electrics to work harder.
Shorts you wear, and they are electrics.
Wires are electrics.
Shorts can be made by juice.
Shorts can be made by neatles, that bite like teeth.
Poppa needs more shorts.
But Oley wasn’t motivated to act at the moment. Just sorting out information and connecting it with other information files in the necessarily haphazard manner that might eventually result in something called intelligence, although he didn’t know that yet.
It was a week later in the kitchen, when Momma dropped a giant version of the neatle on the floor, that his information file in this area increased again.
“Is that a neatle?” Oley asked.
His mother laughed quietly and looked fondly at her son as she put the ice pick back on the table.
“I guess you could call it a needle, Oley,” she told him. “An ice needle.”
Oley instinctively waited until Momma’s back was turned before taking the nice neatle to try its biting powers; and instinctively took it out of the kitchen before starting his experiments.
As he passed the cellar door he heard a soft gurgling and promptly changed course. Pulling open the door with difficulty, he seated himself on the cellar stairs to watch a delightful new spectacle—frothing, gurgling water making its way across the floor toward the stairs. It looked wonderfully dirty and brown, and to Oley it was an absorbing phenomenon. It never occurred to him to tell Momma.
Suddenly above him the cellar door slammed open, and Poppa came charging down the stairs, narrowly missing the small figure, straight into the rising waters, intent, though Oley couldn’t know it, on reaching the drain pipe in the far corner of the cellar to plug it before water from the spring rains could back up farther and really flood the cellar out.
Halfway across the cellar, Poppa reached up and grasped the dangling overhead light to turn it on, in order to see his way to the drain—and suddenly came to a frozen, rigid, gasping stop as his hand clamped firmly over the socket.
Little Oley watched. There was juice in the cellar. Poppa had hold of an electric. Was Poppa trying to make the shorts he needed?
Oley wasn’t sure. He thought it probable. And from the superior knowledge of his four years, Oley already knew a better way to make shorts. Neatles make good shorts. Juice don’t do so well.
Suddenly, Oley decided to prove his point. Nice neatles probably made even better shorts than other neatles—and there was a big electric running up the side of the stairs— an electric fat enough to make a real good shorts. Maybe lots of shorts.
Raising his nice neatle, Oley took careful aim and plunged it through the 220-volt stove feeder cable.
Oley woke up. The strange pretty lady in white was a new experience. Somebody he hadn’t seen before. And there seemed to be something wrong with his hand, but Oley hadn’t noticed it very much, yet.
“Well, my little Hero’s awake! And how are you this morning? Your Momma and Poppa will be in to see you in just a minute.”
The pretty lady in white went away, and Oley gazed around the white room with its funny shape, happily recorded the experience, and dozed off again.
Then suddenly he was awakened again. Momma was there; and Poppa. And Sven. But they all seemed different somehow this morning. Momma had been crying, even though she was smiling bravely now. And Poppa seemed to have a new softness that he’d seldom seen before. Sven was looking puzzled.
“I still say, Pop, that he’s a genius. He must have known what he was doing.”
“Oley,” Poppa’s voice was husky—gruff, but kinder and softer than usual. “I want you to answer me carefully. But understand that it’s all right either way. I just want you to tell me. Why did you put the ice pick through the stove cable? You saved my life, you know. But I’d like to know how you knew how.”
Little Oley grinned. His world was peaceful and wonderful now. And all the big adults were bending and leaning down and talking to him.
“Nice neatle,” he said. “Big electric. Poppa needed shorts.”
The distinctions of chemistry, gravity, atmosphere, temperature, nourishment, technology, and overall biological organization between the Ul Kworn, for example, and an Earth man are obvious; either one would find it nearly impossible to visualize the other’s existence as anything other than a fantasy.