Mr. Coar stared toward the empty demonstration bench, wrinkled his forehead in concentration, and was again rewarded by the pot-of-geraniums-made-manifest. "See?" he asked rhetorically. "It becomes anything you want it to."
"Curious." Mr. Formeller glared toward the table. A small, orange insect appeared. The biology teacher bent over it and counted the spots on the orange anterior wings. "Six spots. A real bipunctata, of a common local variety, or I don't know my Coleoptera." An idea struck him, and he backed rapidly away from the bench. He turned to Mr. Tedder. "I wouldn't go too close to the thing, if I were you. It creates these things for a purpose. I believe that this hallucinative power, as you call it, is the logical development of protective coloration, mimicry, and similar devices used by earthly creatures to elude their enemies and to lure their prey."
"You mean, this beast on the table top mimics what we're thinking about in hopes of drawing us close enough to seize us and eat us?" asked Miss MacIntire.
"Roughly, yes." Mr. Formeller nodded. "We've no way of knowing the metabolic processes, the thought patterns, or even the true form of the creature. Its action in creating a pleasant picture may be as automatic as the Starrkrampf reflex, or playing 'possum, is to foxes and oppossums and Leptinotarsum decemlineatae." Mr. Formeller paused, hoping that his erudition was showing.
Miss MacIntire, who had seated herself back at a third-row desk, remarked, "I do wish that the beast were a rational creature."
There was a flurry in the air above the demonstration bench as a togaed Greek gentleman came into being. He raised a portentious index finger, exclaimed an involved Greek observation and disappeared.
"It can talk!" Mr. Coar marveled.
"It said, 'You've got an eel by the tail'." Miss MacIntire translated. "Greek."
"Like having a bull by the horns, or an armful of greased pig," Stetzel commented.