C H A P T E R 28 "INTERPRETERS?" MOLLEN WAS FROWNING. BUT JIM NO LONGER seemed to read any inclination to humor Jim in the general's voice. "That's right," said Jim. "Stop and think about it. We can talk to the Laagi-just barely, so far, but we can talk. And we can talk to the mind-people, but as far as mutual understanding goes, what we have there is just barely, too." "Right. What about it?" asked Mollen. "But the mind-people and the Laagi can't talk to each other at all. It's worse for them-much worse than the problems you mentioned they had with teaching artificial languages to dolphins. The Laagi and the mind-people don't have anything in common-no common ground at all. The only way they'll be able to communicate is through us humans." "Go on," said Mollen. "For example, we've got bodies and a technological civilization, at least, in common with the Laagi. And now we've got the ability to move around as free minds, thanks to Raoul Penard, in common with the mind-people. There's other things on both sides. We've got a work ethic-not one as basically ingrained as the Laagi have, but we've got one in common with them. We've got a concept of art, which is 338 THE FOREVER MAN / 339 expressed entirely differently from what the mind-people express in their 'dancing,' but at least we can begin to understand how they could be that attached to the dancing. What do you want to bet that one of the concepts we'll never be able to get across to the Laagi, even when we come to be able to talk with them pretty well, will be the concept of an art?" "That's all well and good," grunted Mollen, "but what happens when the Laagi learn to free their minds from their bodies the way Raoul, you and Mary've done? Once they do that they can talk directly to the mind-people. And since, according to your information on the debriefings, the mind-people talk mind to mind directly and can be understood directly that way, the Laagi'll be able to make their own agreements with them." "Well, to begin with," said Jim, "I don't think, unless and until they develop a much larger attitude toward existence than they have now, that the Laagi are going to be able to get any of their minds free of their bodies. Our experience is you have to want pretty badly to leave your body before you can do it; and for a Laagi to do it, if one of them moved his mind out of his body, on the instinctive level he'd be abandoning the only tool with which he can do the work that justifies his existence." "But suppose one of them did manage it?" said Mollen. "They could deal directly with the mind-people then." "I don't think so," answered Jim. "So many of their concepts would be incomprehensible to the mind-people, and so many of the mind-people's concepts would be incomprehensible to them, that both sides would be hearing mainly blanks when they tried to talk to each other. Mary and I just barely managed to establish an understanding with the mind-people and they'd already had Raoul to practice on; plus, as I say, we've got a lot in common with them that Laagi don't havethat the Laagi can't have, without violating their own picture of the universe. Can you imagine yourself trying to describe a symphony to a Laagi, as I say?" "But what we call art isn't really what the mind-people are concerned with," said Mollen. "No. But it's close enough to their dancing so that it gave Mary and me a concept in common with them, even if we both used it to mean largely different things. It gave us some- 340 I Gordon R. Dickson thing to build our communication on," said Jim. "Mat's the point I'm trying to make. We're like enough to the mind-people so that there's something there for us to build on. And like enough to the Laagi to have something to build on there, too. But I can't see anything the Laagi or the mind-people have in common, enough so that their two races could build a communication on it. But even assuming it turns out I'm wrong and they can, they're still both going to communicate better with us than they do to each other; which still gives us a chance to mediate between them." "Mary?" said Mollen, looking over at her. "I'm sorry, Louis," her voice came back at him, "but I'm afraid he's right, at least as far as the way the Laagi seem to look at things. Of course, we've really only scratched the surface of getting to know about them, so far. But if I had to go on what I know so far, I'd have to say he's right." "I see," said Mollen. His face had become thoughtful. "By God, if you actually are right and the human race can act as a broker between two other races like that. . . " His eyes, which had been focusing thoughtfully on nothing, came suddenly and sharply back on Jim. "Even if it's possible, there's the question of how to do it, what to offer who," he said. "Which brings me back to one point, Colonel. You weren't sent out with any authority to go making treaties or arrangements with races we'd never met before. What do you mean threatening these mind-people with the possibility that the Laagi, or even we, could move stars? That's the wildest piece of impossibility anybody ever offered anybody else!" "With due respect, sir," said Jim. "I was on my own out there and had to do something right away. I had to play it by ear. Also, why don't we check with some of the people who'd know about such things? We're an engineering race; and so are the Laagi. Sooner or later, we've been able to move anything we tried to move; and the Laagi've been comparable to us in all sorts of other ways. You might just suggest to the people you talk to on this that we look into the possibility of moving a star by using phase-shift physics on it. You know it takes only as much energy to shift a command ship as a fighter ship; and once the shift is set up and activated, no more force is needed to move either one of them ten light-years than ten THE FOREVER MAN / 341 inches, because in effect, in a physical sense, no mass has been moved-it's just been defined as having a different position in the universe. Why shouldn't we be able to do the same thing with a star?" Mollen looked fiercely at him. "Do you know what a box of demons you're proposing to open?" he said. "If it became possible to move a star-or a planet-anyplace you wanted it, you'd have . . . I'm not even going to try to speculate on what you might have!" "Well, maybe it's not possible, particularly in practice. Or maybe there'd be too high a price to pay for moving it. But I thought it was something that could be mentioned to the experts as a possibility, anyhow. Besides, we don't really want to move any suns about. In fact, I've got a hunch that as we come to understand what the mind-people call the dance of the holes in the galaxy, we may not want to disturb that dance under any circumstances because of what might result. All we really want to do is have the mind-people considering that we-or the Laagi-might eventually be able to do such a thing." "Oh, of course," said Mollen. "Well, now, if that winds up the firecrackers you've got to set off under my nose today, let me give you some idea of what you'll be doing from here on out. You and Mary are going to be working separately from now on- "If you'll forgive me for interrupting, sir," said Jim, "just one more firecracker." "One more?" Mollen stared at him. "Nothing on the order of what you just hit me with, I hope." "It might be," said Jim apologetically. "In fact, it might be even bigger." "Holy Jerusalem!" Mollen threw himself back in his chair. 'All right. Go on!" "The mind-people can't get lost anyplace in the galaxy, evidently," said Jim. "Maybe they can't get lost anyplace in the universe, but I don't really know about that. But they're definitely oriented anyplace in our galaxy because they see what they call the 'pattern' of gravitic forces set up around them, at least, by the larger bits of matter like stars and planets, and maybe right on down to dust fragments. It's that pattern they weave their 'dances' around and they can use it as 842 I Gordon R. Dickson well to find their way from anywhere to anywhere. Also, they seem to be able to see things of any size at light-years of distance, possibly across the whole width of the galaxy." "Can they?" said Mollen. He stared at Jim for a second. "That's something, if true. All right, I'll give you credit for having had another firecracker equally big up your sleeve. Now-" "I'm not finished yet, sir," said Jim. "The firecracker's yet to come. I think we can learn to see that same pattern, too. That means we could give up this business of navigating by a theoretical line to the center of the galaxy's mass, and phaseshift any distance in one jump, hitting our target point right on the nose." Mollen simply looked at him for a long moment. "I'm afraid to ask," he said at last. "But I will. What makes you think that if there actually is such a pattern, we can see and use it, too?" ' "Because both when the mind-people took Mary and me dancing and when I came in from AndFriend to Base, I thought I could see the pattern around me. Particularly, coming in from AndFriend to my body, I could see or feel-it's hard to describe what the perception of it's like-the threads or skeins or whatevers from the Sun and Earth, in particular." "1 think," said Mollen, "I'm going to want to have the psych people look you over and give me a certificate of sanity on you; not only for my own use, but to have in hand before I pass along to anyone higher up these things you've been suggesting. Mary, did you see anything like this pattern he's talking about?" "Not coming back into Base from AndFriend," she answered. "But during the dance with ?1 and the others, I thought I did." "So it could really exist. As to seeing it better, and maybe...
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