Rog Phillips

“ Thus, a new generation came into being in the scattered herds, and by 2010 A.D. a new problem had come into being. Thanks to impurities in the moron strain or to wandering renegades—or both—a few normally intelligent offspring were appearing in the herds. There was danger of these recontaminating the race, if they left the herds, learned to speak, wear clothes....
In 2010 the government attempted a mass sterilization of the herds but the herds were too wild by now, and the males too dangerous, so the sterilization program was abandoned and a new plan substituted. ”

“ Elf became so excited he almost forgot to keep hidden. If you had more than one It, then if something happened to one you would still feel secure!
He resisted the urge to return to the stream and search for another little It to give him extra security. If he did that he might never again find these creatures that were so like men and yet so different. So instead, he filed the idea away to use at the earliest opportunity and followed the strange creatures, keeping well hidden from them. ”

“ Elf had never been this far from the stream. Big One more or less led the men, and always more or less followed the same route in cross country trips.
The creatures didn't spend hours stumbling along impossible paths. They looked ahead of them and selected a way, and took it. Also they didn't have a heavy It to transport, fifty feet at a time. Elf began to sense they had a destination in mind. Probably the place they lived.
Just ahead was a steep bank, higher than a man, running in a long line. The creatures climbed the bank and vanished on the other side. ”

“ If the contamination had not been weeded out of the race one fourth of every generation for all the future would have been without any intelligence whatever.
But here and there had been natural births, unattended by a doctor; and parental love coupled with fear of being sterilized and thus denied further parenthood had brought into existence a few thousand unsterilized morons, hidden away in attic rooms or in basements. And to these parents the Preserves offered the logical solution too—drive into the nearest Preserve and turn the child loose with its kind. ”

“ Elf was different in another way, too. He could make more sounds than the others. Sometimes he would keep a little It with him until it gave him a feeling of security almost as strong as the big It, then wander off alone with It and play with making sounds. ”

“ He shouted, but the creatures didn't hear him—or perhaps they were so overcome with fright that they were frozen. Yes, that must be it.
Elf ran after the big It. If he could only catch up with it he would gladly join the creatures in their fate. Better to die with them than to lose them! ”

“ When they walk right up to us and want to be friends with us it's too much like plain murder, except that they can't talk, and only make moronic sounds like 'Bdl-bdl-bdl.' Even so, it gets me when we kill them. ”

“ In the wilds the morons banded into small herds that showed no inclination to roam. By 1985 no more of the morons were being born, thanks to the sterilization of all parents carrying the contaminated gene. ”

“ The men never went farther than twenty feet from the big It. But as the women came closer the men grew surly toward one another. By noon two of them were trying to pick a fight with anyone who would stand up to them.
Elf clutched his little It closely and moved cautiously downstream until he was twenty feet from the big It. Tentatively he went another few feet—farther than any of the men dared go from the big It. ”

“ They can't be absorbed into the race again, and any intelligent offspring they get from mating with a renegade would start a long line of descendents, at least one fourth of whom would be mindless idiots. ”

“ Leaves are thin and pliable and can be wrapped around small objects like pebbles. Could it be that these creatures were really men of some sort, with bodies like men, covered with something thin like leaves are thin? ”

“ And one renegade."
"The renegades are growing scarcer every time. Another ten or twenty years and they'll be extinct."
"Then there won't be any more intelligent offspring in these colonies."
"Let's get going. It'll be dark in another hour or so."
The creatures were hiding some of their Its under their skin, in their carrying cases. There was a feeling about them of departure. Elf waited until they were on the move, back the way they had come, then he followed at a safe distance. ”

“ Besides, each of them carried so many Its that they would feel just as secure without this one.
So many Its! One of the creatures held a flat white It in one hand and a very slim It shaped like a straight section of a bush stem, pointed at one end, with which he scratched on the white It at times, leaving black designs.
"There're fourteen males," the one called Joe whispered. The other wrote it down.
The way these creatures did things, Elf decided, was very similar to the way Big One and the other men went at moving the big It. They were very much like men in their actions, these creatures. ”