"I'm not saying that at all," replied the termite, running. "I'm saying that if you took one milk bottle away from a table, and then another milk bottle away from a table, and then if you multiplied all the milk bottles that were left on the table together, you would get another milk bottle."

"That doesn't make sense, but it sounds like an excellent way to get free milk."

"Exactly! Captain Ramshackle is hoping to get a free bottle of milk, and more power to his elbow."

"He's going to drink the milk with his elbow?"

"Of course not," laughed Miss Computermite. "You're really rather stupid for a girl."

"And you're really rather large for a termite," said Alice.

"Au contraire," replied the termite (in French), "you're rather small for a girl." And as she listened to this answer, millions, indeed trillions of other termites thundered past Alice (some of them on bicycles) until Alice thought that she was caught up in a gigantic wave of termite frenzy.

"How on earth do you answer the questions?" Alice asked, still running.

"Well," Miss Computermite began, also still running, "it's all based on the beanery system."

"Whatever's that?"

"Well, a bean is either here, or it's not here. Don't you agree?"

"I agree entirely," replied the running Alice.

"So then, logically, if a bean is here it counts as one bean, and if it isn't here, it counts as a not bean. And from this knowledge, when the beans are arranged in patterns, it is possible to spell out many the question and many the answer. Why, with only a mere octet of beans (or not beans) one can spell out all of the numbers and all of the letters of the alphabet. And quite a few punctuation marks as well! So then, imagine a trillion beans! What problems you could work out with a trillion beans! And the same principle applies to termites of course: a termite is either here, or it isn't here. And we termites are even better than beans at being here or not being here because we've got legs, and therefore we can move much faster than beans."