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ent's knowledge and abilities, plus a sizable quantity of the
parent's judgment. As a result, she's perfectly capable of
carrying out whatever commands the parent may have im-
planted in her embryo-mind at the beginning of incubation. In
the case of my Gizeh offspring, the commands which I im-
planted were three in number: Take over the Terran capital of
Kafr el Haran, establish immediate contact with the Terran
Space Navy and order all of its units to return to base at once;
then retain control of the Terran government until otherwise
advised. The commands which my sister implanted in her
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offspring were basically the same, and her three offspring
carried out the Uvel end of the operation at roughly the same
time mine were carrying out the Terran end of it. Conse-
quently, both governments are now under the dominion of
Pornos, and moreover they will remain under the dominion of
Pomos until such time as the million-year peace treaty is
signed. Since my sister just notified me that her scout has
already agreed to cooperate, the fate of the long-range aspect
^,vf our plan is now in your hands, Daniel Halt.
Hall sighed. Oh, I'll go along with you, I suppose I'd be
pretty much of a heel iff didn't. But before we get down to
brass tacks, how about relieving my mind on a certain little
matter? Granted, I'm half in love with Ahura, and maybe
she's half in love with me as you say, but there has to be
more to it than that for marriage to work. Now that the crisis
is past, how about taking a peek a little ways into the future
and finding out whether Ahura and I are going to hit it off the
way a married couple should?
I'll try, Daniel Hall, said the Sphinx. She looked straight
ahead, and Hall could tell from the serious expression on her
face that she was concentrating with all her might. A few
minutes passed. Then the Sphinx turned to him and winked.
UNICORN
The unicorn is a legendary one-horned creature. Almost
all horned animals have two horns, one on each side of the
head. An exception is the rhinoceros, which has a single
horn on the nose, and there is some thought that the
legend of the unicorn in the Middle East and in Europe
originated with vague tales of rhinoceroses in India.
Much more likely is thai it originated with Assyrian
representations of wild bulls in profile. In profile, natu-
rally, the two horns overlapped and only one was visible.
Somehow this gave rise to the thought of one-horned bulls.
In the Bible, mention is made of a creature named re-em
in Hebrew. The reference was to the wild bull (called an
aurochs in Europe) which is the primitive ancestor of
domestic cattle, and which is now extinct. It was described
as immensely powerful.
In the Greek translation of the Bible, re-em was trans-
lated as monokeros ("one-horn"), the reference being to
the Assyrian representations in profile. This became
unicomis (also "one-horn") in Latin, and the legend was
fixed.
Somehow, the unicorn tale became preltied up. Instead
of a one-horned bull remarkable for its strength, it became
a one-horned horse, or horselike antelope, remarkable for
its beauty and swiftness. It began to symbolize purity and
virginity; it could be caught only by a virgin woman.
Its horn is now pictured as a tight spiral, extending
forward and slowly tapering. This is actually the "horn"
307
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8 Theodore Sturgeon
(really, the tooth) of the narwhal, a species of whale. The
narwhal tooth was brought back by sailors and sold as a
unicorn horn for large sums, since such a horn was con-
sidered a powerful aphrodisiac.
The following story deals with the unicorn at its prettiest.
THE SILKEN SWIFT
Theodore Sturgeon
There's a village by the Bogs. and in the village is a Great
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