But to make sure, I asked Doggo on my pad: “Do Cupians read and write this kind of writing?”
And he answered: “Yes.”
At this I certainly did tackle my work with a vim. It was clear now that if I wished to communicate with her, I must perfect myself in the written language of the ants; and so I set myself assiduously to the task.
Every day at about the same hour she came and picked the blue and yellow flowers and the red and purple twig knobs of the garden below my window. And every day I sat in the window and watched her, and racked my brains for some tactful way in which to attract her attention.
Of course I raised the question with Doggo, but he kept putting me off by saying, in substance: “It is not yet time.”
This I took to mean that I could not yet write fluently enough to converse with her, and so I redoubled my efforts at my studies.
So rapid was my progress now, under the spur of my desire for human companionship, that within a very few days I was able to graduate from my primers and read real books.
One of the first real books which they brought me was a history of their world; and this interested me greatly, as it furnished a setting for the experiences which shortly were to crowd upon me. The book confirmed my theory that this world was the silver planet, Venus.
Finally I reached a point where my interest was such that I could not wait to wade further through the voluminous pages; so, taking my pad and pencil I asked Doggo: “Tell me briefly about the more recent events on Poros.” For so they called the planet, though of course, I did not yet know the sound of this word, nor even whether it had a sound. “Tell me more particularly about the great war.”
“Well,” he replied, also in writing, of course, “A little over five hundred years ago the entire inhabited part of the planet Poros, that is to say the continent which is surrounded by the boiling sea, was divided up into twenty or more warring kingdoms of Cupians and one small queendom of ant-men, namely Formia.