"Oh," nodded Jonathan, and wondered if he looked blank.
"What is the ultimate goal of evolution but perfection?" resumed the reptile. "On Earth Nature has experimented with the dinosaur, the bird, the fish. One by one she discarded them because they were not fit to survive their environment. But all the while Nature was learning. It was making strides. It tested and discarded. The reptile and the early forms of bird and fish and insect life were tossed into the discard. Nature knew there was something lacking.
"She made man. She gave man the inherent ability to fit himself to any environment. She gave man a brain, a brain that gave off energy in the form of thought. Measured energy. Electrical energy. Energy that can be measured and graphed. But Nature, prodigal in her gifts, was also prodigal with man's mind. She gave man nine million brain cells—far more than he ever used. Only a great genius used one percent of those cells!
"Then why was Nature so lavish? In man she had reached her absolute ultimate. There only remained for man to perfect the tremendous, unguessed power of his brain. By thought! By sending out beams of sheer solid thought, by dipping into those millions of brain cells for the ultimate power, the power that would make man—perfect!"
Jonathan closed his eyes, shuddering. He opened his eyes and looked at Shar Bytu.
"How do you know all this?" he whispered.
He thought in the frightened core of him of changes in the space-time continuum, that unguessable eons may have rolled past since last he left the Earth. That Earth was old beyond thought—
Shar Bytu chuckled, "No, I do not have the gift of prophecy, nor am I repeating history. Except by analogy. For as Nature has treated us of a hundred and sixteen suns, so Nature will treat man. Nature and evolution are inexorable, being linked with time. And so she will produce the perfect man—the man absolutely adapted to his own environment.
"We of Neeoorna did this to you, by certain—ah—methods. We operated on you by means known to our scientists for ages. When we have an atavar in our clinics, we open his mind fully to enable him to throw off all connection with past ages. So it was with you. It was not difficult.