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“It’s a way of making characters, of forming visual equivalents of sound, without using electricity. The writer, as he’s called, employs a black liquid and a pointed stick called a pen. I know about this because one hobby of mine is ancient means of communication.”

Krumbine frowned and shook his head. “Communication is a dangerous business, Potshelter, especially at the personal level. With you and me, it’s all right, because we know what we’re doing.”

He picked up a third blue tranquilizer. “But with most of the hive-folk, person-to-person communication is only a morbid form of advertising, a dangerous travesty of normal newscasting—catharsis without the analyst, recitation without the teacher—a perversion of promotion employed in betraying and subverting.”

The frown deepened as he put the blue pill in his mouth and chewed it. “But about this pen—do you mean the fellow glues the pointed stick to his tongue and then speaks, and the black liquid traces the vibrations on the paper? A primitive non-electrical oscilloscope? Sloppy but conceivable, and producing a record of sorts of the spoken word.”