“What is it? I mean what do you believe in, generally speaking? Simple terms: we can save the philosophy for later.”
After the lapse of an interval which I felt I could approximate as a “while,” I said again, very cautiously: “Yes.”
“Huh? Cut the comedy on this lot, if you know what’s good for you. Just because I told you not to disagree with me when I’m thinking out loud—No sloppy gags when I ask you a direct question!”
I apologized and tried to explain my seeming impudence in terms of the simple conditions under which we Plookhh live. After all, when a tkan flies in frantically to warn a family that a pack of strinth are ravening in its direction, no one thinks to take the message in other than its most literal form. Communication, for us, is basically a means of passing along information essential to survival: it must be explicit and definitive.
Human speech, however, being the product of a civilized race, is a tree bearing many different fruits. And, as we have discovered to our sorrow, it is not always easy to find the one intended to be edible. For example, this mind-corroding intangible that they call a pun—
Shlestertrap waved my explanations back at me. “So you’re sorry and I forgive you. Meanwhile, what’s your belief about a life after death?”
“We don’t exactly have a belief,” I explained slowly, “since no Plookh has returned after death to assure us of the possibilities ahead. However, because of the difficulties we experience in the one life we know and its somewhat irritating shortness of duration—we like to think we have at least one additional existence. Thus, we have not so much a Belief as a Hope.”
“For an animal without lungs, you sure are long-winded. What’s your Hope, then?”
“That after death we emerge into a vast land of small seas, marshes and mountains. That throughout this land are the pink weeds we find so succulent. That, in every direction as far as an optical organ can see, there are nothing but Plookhh.”
“And?”