- Janie and Hip approach the old Mr. Kew mansion. Hip sees it as foreboding and sick. Janie agrees.
- Hip overhears Janie talk with someone behind a tree. It's one of the twins. She orders the twin to do something to keep her from dying.
- They walk down a long, narrowing corridor that has a side anteroom. Hip waits there while Janie meets with Gerry alone first.
- Alone in the anteroom, Hip orders himself not to waste time, but to think, create something in his mind before meeting Thompson.
- He thinks about the gestalt, the powerful next step up in human evolution. In contrast, his species, homo sapiens, seems weak and defenseless except for its brain. Hip realizes his species will die unless he comes up with a survival plan.
- He ponders how Janie wants the gestalt to acquire a moral system and thrive. He wonders if morals are a coded survival instinct. He considers that some societies have differing morals. Maybe, he thinks, morals just apply within their specific societies.
- He thinks that an ethos, on the other hand, is a creed by which an individual lives in order to help his species, something over and above morals.
- Hip defines morals as "Society's code for individual survival" and ethics as "An individual's code for society's survival." Hip thinks these definitions are a little too handy-dandy, but workable for his current purposes.
- He realizes the gestalt can't have a morality, because it's alone, without other life forms like it. Perhaps then, he reasons, the gestalt could choose an ethic which would serve all of humanity.
- Hip realizes he is fit to invent an ethic for the gestalt because his father was a strict, though abusive, doctor. He forgives his father. His focus seems to sharpen.
- Janie asks him to come in. Hip feels his answer about ethics is not quite ready, but he must continue ahead. It's time for Serious Cat.
- Hip enters the greenhouse-like room and meets Thompson/Gerry, who says that though Janie has warned him, he still feels surprised to meet Hip again. Hip says he isn't surprised, because homo sapiens is a surviving kind of creature and that he knew for seven years that he'd track him down.
- Thompson takes off his glasses and his eyes begin to spin. Janie stops him, showing him the small glass cylinder hanging between her lips. If he touches Hip, she'll bite down on it, killing herself and breaking his link to Baby.
- Hip thinks a question to Baby. He asks if Baby can be replaced. Janie delivers the yes answer and reminds him of the telepath with the corncob from the amusement park (Part 3, Section 7).
- Hip realizes that since Baby can be replaced, the gestalt is immortal. He suddenly figures out the ethic that the gestalt needs. But first he says aloud that Baby could replaced. Janie screams, "Don't tell him that!" meaning Gerry. Gerry says he already knew and tells her that she's unnecessary. She begs Hip to run away. Thompson, preparing his spinning eyes, approaches Hip.
- Suddenly a gabbling twin tackles Gerry. Hip hurries forward and punches Thompson out.
- The twin and Hip touch affectionately. Janie says the poison cylinder fell from her mouth. Hip says he hasn't killed Gerry, but asks Bonnie for a knife and cloth. Bonnie retrieves them, and Hip asks to be left alone. Janie flees. Hip prepares his thoughts at the front of his mind like a patterned drape.