It must have amused them. But it soon tired George. He stopped.
He needed all his remaining energy to think with. He knew these teardrops were sentient. They were curious, they communicated with each other, and they danced. They had minds, therefore.
George remembered hearing that Man had danced even before he learned to speak, in a primitive effort to express his feelings. He knew some birds dance, too—as a courtship procedure. Insects, even.
But why did the teardrops dance?
What was the significance of rhythmic motion between a pebble and a watch? A tin lid and a man's hand? What did the pebbles mean?
The pebble was a native object, known to be lifeless, inanimate. The watch was a strange something that moved. The can-lid did not move. The hand—gloved, though they could not know that—was an object that moved.
The dance was a question, therefore. Alive, or dead? The teardrops wanted to know. Is the watch that moves by itself alive? The strangely symmetrical lid of a can, is it alive? The oddshaped hand?
These teardrops had good minds—could grasp abstractions. In a sense, George felt, the difference between animate and inanimate objects is an abstraction. In his dying state, the notion amused him.
Smiling, he placed a pebble on the watch, another on the lid. He sat up, moved his weakened body so they could perhaps tell it was a unit. He picked up a teardrop in each hand, held them at his visor, rolled his eyes, and opened and shut his mouth. He spoke to them. He sang to them. He swayed with them to show he too could dance.