190 amphisbaena 



y: 



Well, I happen to remember, but who cares? What did these 

 people whom you call old-fashioned do to make their findings 

 known? 



o: 

 They published them. 



y: 



Published? Are you being jocular? Is this what you call aggres- 

 sive scholarship? Did they send out mimeographed copies of 

 their papers long before publication? Did they found base-pairing 

 clubs? Did they distribute neckties with suitable emblems? 



o: 



But who would want to spend his life dancing a minuet before 

 assembled science reporters? There still are people who do not 

 wish to join the noise boys; they have other concerns. When you 

 start on something new, you are all alone and it is so terribly 

 dark; and then, suddenly, you may come face to face v^th the 

 Winding whiteness of reality. There is nothing more exquisite, 

 nothing rarer in the world. Afterwards you have a choice: You 

 stay in the laboratory, hoping that it will happen again; but it 

 seldom does. Or you begin to travel through the country giving 

 minstrel shows. 



y: 



Anyway, even if the composition of DNA had been found entirely 

 different, we should have doubted the analysis, not our concept. 



o: 



I can see, you are a True Believer. It is with such deductions 

 that the road to the paradise of scientists is paved. But really, I 

 did not wish now to attack what one is pleased to call the "cen- 

 tral dogma", for I know that the mythopoeic urge of humanity 

 does not stop at the door of the laboratory. But let me continue, 



