But get an idea like the wheel,
or even a pair of tongs? Poo! How would you state the First Law of
Motion, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in tickle-pinch-rub
terms? Sonny could grasp an idea like that. Sonny's handicap, if
you call it that, cuts him off from feel-thinking; he can think
logically instead of sensually."
He sipped his cocktail and continued: "I can understand why the
village is mounded up, too. I realized that while I was watching
Dave's gang bury the pump house. I'd been bothered by that, and by
the absence of granaries for all the grain they raise, and by the
number of people for so few and such small houses. I think the
village is mostly underground, and the houses are just entrances,
soundproofed, to shelter them from uncomfortable natural
noises--thunderstorms, for instance."
The horn was braying in the snooper-screen speaker; somebody
wondered what it was for. Gofredo laughed.
"I thought, at first, that it was a war-horn. It isn't. It's a
peace-horn," he said. "Public tranquilizer. The first day, they
brought it out and blew it at us to make us peaceable.
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