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“I mean, what kind of animal do they come from?”

“Chicken. What else lay eggs?”

“Other birds.” He wished vaguely that he knew more about the fauna of Viornis. Chickens were well-nigh universal; they could live off almost anything. But other fowl fared pretty well, too. He shrugged it off; none of his business; leave that to the ecologists.

“Birds?” the woman asked. It was an unfamiliar word to her.

“Different kinds of chickens,” he said tiredly. “Some bigger, some smaller, some different colors.” He hoped the answer would satisfy her.

Evidently it did. She said, “Oh,” and went on with what she was doing.

The silence, after only a minute or two, became unbearable. The Guesser had wanted to yell at the woman to shut up, to leave him alone and not bother him with her ignorant questions that he could not answer because she was inherently too stupid to understand. He had wondered why he hadn’t yelled; surely it was not incumbent on a Three to answer the questions of a Six.

But he had answered, and after she stopped talking, he began to know why. He wanted to talk and to be talked to. Anything to fill up the void in his mind; anything to take the place of a world that had suddenly vanished.

What would he be doing now, if this had not happened? Involuntarily, he glanced at his wrist, but the chronometer was gone.

He would have awakened, as always, at precisely 0600 ship time. He would have dressed, and at 0630 he would have been at table, eating his meal in silence with the others of his class. At 0640, the meal would be over, and conversation would be allowed until 0645. Then, the inspection of the fire control system from 0650 until 0750. Then–

He forced his mind away from it, tried not to think of the pleasant, regular orderly routine by which he had lived his life for a quarter of a century and more.

When the woman’s voice came again, it was a relief.

“What’s a Guesser?”

He told her as best he could, trying to couch his explanation in terms that would be understood by a woman of her limited vocabulary and intelligence. He was not too sure he succeeded, but it was a relief to talk about it. He could almost feel himself dropping into the routine that he used in the orientation courses for young Guessers who had been assigned to him for protection and instruction.

“Accurate predicting of this type is not capable of being taught to all men; unless a man has within him the innate ability to be a Guesser, he is as incapable of learning Guessing as a blind man is incapable of being taught to read.” (It occurred to him at that moment to wonder how the Class Six woman had managed to read the Breach of Contract notice. He would have to ask her later.) “On the other hand, just as the mere possession of functioning eyes does not automatically give one the ability to read, neither does the genetic inheritance of Guesser potentialities enable one to make accurate, useful Guesses. To make this potentiality into an ability requires years of hard work and practice.

“You must learn to concentrate, to focus your every attention on the job at hand, to–“

He broke off suddenly. The woman was standing in the doorway, holding a plate and a steaming mug. Her eyes were wide with puzzlement and astonishment. “You mean me?“

“No … no.” He shook his head. “I … was thinking of something else.”

She came on in, carrying the food. “You got tears in your eyes. You hurt?”

He wanted to say yes. He wanted to tell her how he was hurt and why. But the words wouldn’t–or couldn’t–come. “No,” he said. “My eyes are just a little blurry, that’s all. From sleep.”

She nodded, accepting his statements. “Here. You eat you this. Put some stuffing in you belly.”

He ate, not caring what the food tasted like. He didn’t speak, and neither did she, for which he was thankful. Conversation during a meal would have been both meaningless and painful to him.