“Watch the others,” murmured Kidder. I did. One by one they imitated John’s pose, sank their tiny fractions of inches to the pounded floor.
“I’m damned!”
Kidder looked at me for a long moment. “You are,” he said.
“I’ve never seen ants like these!”
“No one has,” he said. “There never have been any.”
“They—they think like primitive men!”
“They think. Men are also creatures that think. At the risk of seeming to belabor a point, Mr. Egan, let me put it this way; men and these ants are creatures which think. Grant a living thing intelligence and it will conduct itself as a thinking being. Ant or human or anything else, there can be no basic difference. Varying details—yes. You don’t plan the same period furniture for a sestoped that you do for a biped. You have no heating to plan for ant architecture, for ants are without body heat. For humans there is a whole art and science dedicated to clothing. For ants, there is an art and industry to oviparous eugenics. But by and large, the results are the same when the bases are the same.”
“But—” I licked my lips, swallowed. “That may be true. But—ants! They can’t think. They’re creatures of instinct!”
“Quite right, Egan. Quite right. But not these ants.”
“Why not?”
“Because they have intelligence. Come—I’ll show you more.” He took my elbow and led me to the next window.
BOOKS BY THEODORE STURGEON
Without Sorcery (1948)
The Dreaming Jewels [aka The Synthetic Man] (1950)
More Than Human (1953)
E Pluribus Unicorn (1953)
Caviar (1955)
A Way Home (1955)
The King and Four Queens (1956)
I, Libertine (1956)
A Touch of Strange (1958)
The Cosmic Rape [aka To Marry Medusa](1958)
Aliens 4 (1959)
Venus Plus X (1960)
Beyond (1960)
Some of Your Blood (1961)
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)
The Player on the Other Side (1963)
Sturgeon in Orbit (1964)
Starshine (1966)
The Rare Breed (1966)
Sturgeon Is Alive and Well… (1971)
The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon (1972)
Sturgeon’s West (with Don Ward) (1973)
Case and the Dreamer (1974)
Visions and Venturers (1978)
Maturity (1979)
The Stars Are the Styx (1979)
The Golden Helix (1979)
Alien Cargo (1984)
Godbody (1986)
A Touch of Sturgeon (1987)
The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff (1989)
Argyll (1993)
Star Trek, The Joy Machine (with James Gunn) (1996)
THE COMPLETE STORIES SERIES
1. The Ultimate Egoist (1994)
2. Microcosmic God (1995)
3. Killdozer! (1996)
4. Thunder and Roses (1997)
5. The Perfect Host (1998)
6. Baby Is Three (1999)
7. A Saucer of Loneliness (2000)
8. Bright Segment (2002)
9. And Now the News… (2003)
10. The Man Who Lost the Sea (2005)
11. The Nail and the Oracle (2007)
12. Slow Sculpture (2009)
13. Case and the Dreamer (2010)
Microcosmic God Page 46