C H A P T E R

24



THEY WENT. IT WAS A MAGNIFICENT BUT SURPRISINGLY BRIEF
trip. Outside the ship as they now were, they were at the head of the comet's tail of invisible yet rainbow-colored fireflies that were those of 71 's race which had chosen to come along. They went like a comet's tail to the nearest yellow pinpoint in the firmament surrounding them-but not directly.
For aesthetic reasons, Jim found himself understanding through some wordless channel of communication, they approached the star of their destination in a delicate curve. He was a little disappointed that they arrived there almost as quickly as if the star in question had been no farther away than the length of AndFriend.
A few minutes later, they were hovering just above the soil of a very Earthlike world. One which looked as if, with no more than relatively simple terraforming, it could be made habitable.
But the portion of it they could see, at least, was disappointingly far from qualifying as a paradise in any human terms. They appeared to have landed-if that word fitted the situation=on a dry, desertlike surface of black sand with some awkward, green-brown growths poking up here and there through the soil to no more than three or four meters in
279

THE FOREVER MAN / 281
-what a marvelous solution, just because we see the same things..."
	"No, ?1," said Jim. "Forgive me for contradicting you"
I'm picking up the way they talk now, he thought a little
wildly, not for the first time= "but it's not that we see the
same thing, it's that we feel the same thing. Just as, right now,
Mary and I were feeling for Raoul, when he was here with
you."
"Feel! Of course, feel! How obvious!" fizzed and crackled ?1. "A solution to all incomprehension-to feel alike. How simple. How easy. How natural! I'll learn to feel as you feel, dear friends-for you are dear friends, obviously-and there'll be no end to the wonderful conversations between you and us-"
"There'll have to be at some time in the future," said Jim. "Mary and I are going to have to get back to our people, if we can make it safely around the Laagi."
"The Laagi are your friends-I apologize, your not-quite-the-same friends-the living holes we had to tell to not come any farther this way? Why would they not want you to go to a place that moves you as deeply as you and Raoul were moved? Surely they would be moved as well?"
"Almost certainly not," said Mary. "They live on a different world and see things differently."
"But we live on no holes at all and see things very differently from you; and we were all deeply moved just now that you should be so moved by what you and Raoul saw."
"It's hard to explain," said Mary. "To begin with, Raoul did see what you felt us reacting to. But we were just imagining what he saw, not really seeing it. Also-"
"But you made us see it all over again, what we saw Raoul see that was not there."
Mary hesitated and Jim stepped quickly into the moment of nonconversation.
"At a guess," he said, "you either had what you'd seen through Raoul's mind triggered again in your own by our feelings; or you took our feelings and associated them with the picture you remembered picking up from Raoul."
	"Nonetheless, we do have a tool for understanding between
us, do we not? Isn't that true?" 	-
"Yes," said Mary and Jim together.


282 / Gordon R. Dickson
"Marvelous!" said ?1. "That was very well answered. Are you beginning to learn to talk and listen at the same time, then, as we do?"
"I doubt it," said Jim drily. ",That was an accident. We just happened to answer you at the same time. That sort of thing happens because we can't read each other's mind, instead of the opposite."
"I'm so sorry."
"It's not your fault," said Jim.
"Nonetheless, we're sorry. We're all sorry you should be so crippled and deprived."
"Thank you," said Mary. "But as it happens we humans prefer it this way."
"Prefer to be crippled!"
"We prefer the privacy of not having our fellow humans reading our mind all the time."
"Another blank," said ?1 sadly, "just when I thought I was doing so well in understanding you."
"I've no idea what blank you mean," said Mary.
"I think he's talking about `privacy,"' said Jim.
"What is this concept, `privacy'?"
"It's the pleasure of being alone, and the right to be so," said Mary.
"But you like being together! Just like we do!"
"That's true," said Jim, "but we also like being alone, sometimes."
"How can you have pleasure in company when you also have pleasure in isolation? Doesn't one cancel out the other?"
"You see," said Jim, "we humans are individuals-"
"But so are we-I'm song, I interrupted."
"As a result," said Jim, "when we're alone we often want to be with others and when we're with others, we can want very much to be alone."
"You baffle me completely," said ?1. "Such a mixed-up existence! However, let's let the difficult question of how you enjoy two diametrically opposed states wait until we understand each other better. I think I understand `Christmas tree' better now. But what is `snow'. . .?"
So, for some little time Jim and Mary were busy trying to give meaning to the vision ?1 and his people had picked up from the battered mind of Raoul when he had been with them.


THE FOREVER MAN / 283

"Is the rest of this planet's surface all like this?" Jim asked ?I, once they had done their best with explanations.
"By no means," said ?1. "Every part of it differs, of course."
"Why did you bring us here, then?" asked Mary.
"But I thought that was obvious. It was Raoul's favorite
per.„
"Did he have other favorite places?" asked Jim.
"Not on this planet. But many on other planets. Do you want to see them?"
"Yes," said Jim.
So ?1 and his friends took them to the other places Raoul had cherished-the places he had referred to later as Paradise.
They were spots on some twelve different Earthlike worlds -and three of them were indeed so Earthlike that if the atmosphere had been adequate for humans and there were no unknown dangers hiding undiscovered there, it was conceivable that humans might have landed on them the next day and started building. The rest were such as to require terraforming -as much, in some cases, as it might take to clear the cloud cover from Venus, lower that world's temperatures and turn it into a green and fruitful planet. Four of the worlds they visited were almost all ocean.
But each had at least one spot that had triggered off in Raoul a vision of one of the fondly remembered scenes from the Canada of his youth. In most cases his mind had had to play tricks with the local scenery to make it into the place of his memory. But some came so close to being Earthlike that only the imaginative equivalent of a squinting of the eyes was necessary, even for Jim and Mary, to see it as a part of their home world.
A tree-filled valley, a steep, bare cliffside, a riverside, a lake-even one area of desert, filled with wind-sculpted rocks, which Raoul's imagination had transformed into the appearance of the houses and buildings of his own home town. All these were shown to Jim and Mary by ?1 and their innumerable escort of living minds. And as they went, Jim found himself getting more and more able to see in the alien realities of these locations the familiar shapes and outlines Raoul had imagined in them.
In proportion, ?1's understanding of what went on in Jim


284 I Gordon R. Dickson

and Mary's mind improved with remarkable speed. Steadily, the immaterial alien found more and more words with which to talk meaningfully to them and seemed to grasp ever more quickly what they meant by the words they thought at him. Privately, Jim was amazed at ?1's ability to learn. He was strongly tempted to compliment the alien on it, calling on Mary to back him up-except that Mary had grown more and more silent as they went along; and, having had some experience with her now, Jim hesitated to draw her into a conversation unless he knew certainly that she wished to be drawn. On the other hand, he had become more and more convinced that there were things he and she needed to discuss.
He decided to bull ahead.
"The subject of privacy and our human desire for it came up awhile back," he said to ?1. He was finally getting used to the idea that if he thought of himself as speaking to ?1, that alien immediately realized he was being spoken to. How this understanding was managed, Jim did not have the slightest idea, but since it seemed to work there was no reason not to use it. Accordingly, he had fallen into the habit of doing so, to the extent that occasionally he forgot and thought at Mary, without remembering to specify that it was her he was addressing.
"Yes, I remember, of course," said ?1.
"Tell me, would there be some way in which I could talk with Mary privately? That is, without at the same time talking to you and your friends`.' Maybe I'm not putting it clearly enough. What I'm trying to say is that I want to talk to Mary, now, and not have anyone else hear what we say."
"If you like, of course," said ?1, "none of us will listen. If you speak to Mary, alone, it becomes obvious to the rest of us that it would be very unkind-indeed, unthinkable-for one of us to listen."
"Oh . . . good," said Jim. "I'll just keep in mind, then, that I'm talking to Mary alone, and you tell me that none of the rest of you will hear what we say?"
"Naturally," said ?1.
"What is it, Jim?" asked Mary.
"Well, I . . . " Jim, would have liked some reaction, some signal from ?1 and the rest in the comet tail, that they were really not listening to what he was about to say, but evidently


THE FOREVER MAN / 285
that was so unnecessary that none of them, including ?1, thought to make it. It was rather like the finding that it was unnecessary to say "I'm through" when a speaker was finished talking and ready to listen to an answer.
"Well," he said again. "About these worlds we've been looking at. They aren't the paradise Raoul's mind made them out to be, of course; but they could certainly be settled by humans, a few even without ten-aforming. But with the same kind of thinking, it's easy to see that the Laagi could settle them just as well with about an equivalent amount of terraforming to make most of them habitable to their race."
"Yes," said Mary. "Of course. What of it?"
"Why, it brings up a question of our responsibility toward claiming these worlds as soon as possible for our own race," said Jim. "I'm song-I don't mean to sound pompous; but these are, literally, worlds that both we and the Laagi can use; and we're presently on speaking terms with the race that controls them, even if they don't have any use for them, themselves. The question is what should we do about it?"
"If you want my opinion," said Mary, "I certainly think we ought to tell our present friends we badly need the worlds and we'd like to settle on them, and find out if our settling on them would disturb them. But that's just my opinion. I'm going to leave all the dealing with ? 1 and the rest up to you."
"Me?"
"That's what I said."
..Why me?„
"I'll tell you why you. Jim, I've had time to do a lot of resting and a lot of thinking since we ended up in that Laagi hospital="
"Yes, but what I'm talking about right now="
"Let me finish. Be patient, it'll all tie together when I've had my say. To begin with you were right. I'd been overworking.„
"Well..."
"More than that," said Mary determinedly, "I'd lost my perspective. I've learned a lot from you and Squonk-yes, from Squonk, too. You were right when you compared me to him. Part of me was like him, and like the Laagi, in general. That's why I did so much better a job of understanding them from the first than you did."


286 / Gordon R. Dickson
Jim thought of saying something, then decided not to.
"You were right. I live to work, and they live to work; and I liked them for that. I admired them for that. And, toward the end, this started to affect my judgment. Unconsciously, I was out to prove that I and they were on the right track and all the rest of the human race was wrong. I began wanting to justify everything they did; and I began to anthropomorphize. I began to find human reasons and emotions in them that weren't there, just to prove how right their way of life was."
She paused.
"Do you remember that Laagi in the hospital who killed that squonk that was asking to be put back to work, when it wasn't able to work and never would be again?" she asked. "Remember the Laagi made the sort of gestures for praising a squonk and giving it orders, then killed it at the very moment when it was being most happy over being sent back to work after all?"
"I remember," said Jim.
"Well, when he killed that squonk, part of me was shocked beyond words, because he'd lied to the squonk by essentially promising it what it wanted while all the time he was planning to kill it. But at the same time another part of me was agreeing with him for putting out of the way a worker that wasn't any use anymore. I missed the real meaning of what was going on in his mind. He killed the squonk not because it couldn't work anymore, but because it was in misery for that reason; and he praised it and gave it a work order just before it died so it would be as happy as possible at the moment he ended its life. So that it died happy. Do you understand?"
"Yes," said Jim. "Yes, in fact, that part I understood then, when it happened."
"All right. I didn't until later, when you told me our Squonk couldn't live much longer and he'd be happiest hunting for that nonexistent key as long as he lived. It was then I faced up to the fact that I could approach an understanding of the Laagi and squonk reaction to work, but I'd never really understand it, even if I worked myself to death, trying. It's a different order of things. So I saw my limits."
"Limits got nothing to do with it," said Jim. "You did a magnificent job there on the Laagi planet. I used to be amazed

THE FOREVER MAN / 281
watching and listening and seeing how you put things together and understood them."
"Limits have got everything to do with it. We've got to face the fact that each of us, individuals that we are, can have a particular knack or gift or ability for understanding a particular type of alien that other humans don't have. I had it for the Laagi. You've got it for ?1 and his little friends."
"Oh, I don't know that I'm any better at it than you are... 11
"Let's not play polite games!" said Mary. "You're better here, and you know it. I know it. I was the best one of the two of us to investigate the Laagi and you're the best to investigate the . . . the mind-people. I don't know why. Maybe the fact you've always been fascinated with space gives you something in common with them I don't have; but I've been listening to you and watching you; and I'm the one who's been amazed at how quickly my partner is picking up information -putting two and two together to get four where I can't."
"Hell!" said Jim.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I'm bowled over, if you want to know. I never thought. . . " Jim ran out of words.
"You never thought to find me admitting somebody else was better at something than I was, let alone you being that person."
"Er...yes."
"Well, now you have. And now, let me tell you something more about talking to the mind-people about humans on these worlds of their territory. What I dictated to notes through you, back on the Laagi planet, were facts. I kept my conclusions to myself, partly because I wanted to sneer at you for not being able to make them for yourself- I've no direct evidence, but my own strong personal opinion is that the Laagi live on only one home world, too-just like we do."
"You think so?" Jim waited for an explanation and when none was forthcoming, prodded for it. "Why?"
"For a number of reasons. We're overpopulated on Earth to the breaking point. People are cheap. But it takes all our people, working like beavers, to keep enough manned fighting ships on the Frontier to match the Laagi there. All the evidence that I could glean seemed to add up that the Laagi have

288 I Gordon R. Dickson
fewer cities on a much less rich world than Earth-but their population per city is much, much higher than ours. And both they and the squonks have a work ethic we can't match, plus not having the internal dissensions that still go on, even in our present-day United World, where no nation fights nation, or group fights group, anymore because the battle with the Laagi comes first. But in spite of this the battle on the Frontier hasn't resulted in their winning, any more than it has in our winning. In short, the Laagi are only able to produce enough ships and personnel to match our production. One planet's worth. So they need to expand to other planets as badly as we do; and in fact that's why they've been hammering so hard in our direction after finding they couldn't come down-galaxy this way, because of the mind-people."
"Whoof!" said Jim, which in thought-language came out rather like an invisible exclamation mark.
"So, I suggest-I only suggest, mind you; the actual decision's up to you-that if the mind-people are willing to have these planets settled by us, we might even suggest that one or more of them be opened to the Laagi, too, provided we can reach an agreement with them. Then we could go back to the Laagi, and after we'd found out how to talk to them, tell them that through friendship with us, only, they had a chance to settle on the new worlds they've always wanted, down-galaxy. There's no hurry about getting all this done. The worlds for the Laagi are going to have to be terraformed for them as much as most of the worlds we get are going to need to be fixed up for us, so we've got plenty of time to hammer out a way to talk to them. But if that idea works we'll have peace with them, as well as new worlds for both our races. Plus, from our viewpoint, we'd have two other intelligent races as friends and neighbors in case we run into a really unfriendly one, later on."
Jim thought about it.
"What about this business of ?1 and his friends finding it painful the way the Laagi can't see or hear them?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Mary cheerfully. "You're the expert in this area. I'll leave it to you to come up with an answer to that problem."
"Thanks," said Jim.

THE FOREVER MAN / 289

"You're entirely welcome," answered Mary. "Now, hadn't we better be getting back into contact with ?1 and the others?"
"I guess we should."
He paused for a second, puzzling over just how the getting back in contact should be accomplished. Finally he decided it couldn't require much more than simply announcing that he and Mary were once more ready to engage in general conversation.
"? 1," he said (or thought), "are you there?"
"Of course," said ?1. "Though I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean by 'there."'
"Neither do I," said Jim. "So let's not get into that. The point is, you're close enough so that we can talk, now that Mary and I are through with our private conversation."
"You have completed your private conversation? Excellent. We welcome you back into conversation with us. Happy! Happy!"
"We say `hurrah'-or at least, some of us say 'hurrah!"'
"I fail to see the difference between that and 'happy!' However, if you wish-'hurrah!"'
"Come to think of it, I guess there isn't any difference," said Jim. "Happy! Happy!"
A general chorus of "Nappies!" poured in on his mind.
"On this subject of 'there,"' said ?1, "you seem to relate it to being physically close enough so that speech is possible. But speech is possible at any distance in the universe. How otherwise could the large holes, and the congregations of large holes, be able to tell each other which way they were dancing?„
"Say that again?" asked Jim.
?1 good-naturedly said it again, word for word.
"To my way of thinking," said Jim, "you seem to be confusing physics with communication."
"But isn't all dancing a form of communication?" said ?1. "Forgive me if my limited capacity to understand confuses this subject between us."
"No, it's not you." Jim tried to think of ways of explaining what he meant. Then he thought of human dancing, real dancing, and he had to admit to himself that in essence, it was communication in a sense.
"But large holes have no minds," he said. "Therefore they


290 / Gordon R. Dickson
don't communicate the way we do. If I understand what you mean by their dancing, it's simply that they're moving in response to the forces acting on them from the rest of the solid matter in the universe. All the other holes, I mean-from the very beginning when there was only one big hole that's since broken up into all the other ones."
"Was there only one big hole in the beginning? How interesting," said ?1.
"Well, we think there was. You mean you people don't know? I was under the impression you knew everything there was to know about the physical universe, holes and space and all..,
'Oh, no!" said ?1. "We understand very little. That's why we're so eager to indulge in the pleasure of learning from you."
"We're-well, I'm complimented," said Jim. `But I have to admit we don't really know how the solid universe started, either. We only have theories-hypotheses-like the one I just told you."
"A hypothesis, only?"
"I'm afraid so."
"I'm devastated. Nevermind, though. Perhaps it will prove to be a fact."
"Yes," said Jim, "and since we're on the subject of facts, I meant to ask you about your stopping the Laagi-those you call our other friends-from coming down into your space, here?"
"You'll remember I explained that," said ?1. 'They would not see or hear us; and, this being very painful, we told them not to come any farther."
"You say it was painful," Jim said. "Let me suggest another concept that might fit it better. `Uncomfortable'?"
"No," said ?1, "that approaches the concept as we know it, but only partially, as your concept 'painful' approaches it only partially. Surely, you must know what we mean, though. Is it completely unknown to you and your friends, the effect of being not-seen and not-heard?"
"Well, yes and no," said Jim. "It's been used as a sort of punishment by social groups among us probably since we first began to band together in social groups. To be ignored and cut


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off from ail communication is unpleasant for an individual. I think I know what you mean."
"Yes," said ?1, "to an extent I think you do know what we mean. We are extremely sensitive to that sort of unpleasantness, ourselves. It disturbs us all greatly when we must use it to discipline one of our own members."
"You do that sort of thing to one of your own?"
"Alas," said ?1. "Every people must have their rules."
"What could one of you do to the others to require that kind of reaction?" asked Jim.
There was a momentary hesitation on ?1's part.
"I don't think it can be explained to you," he said finally, "at your present stage of understanding of us."
"I suppose," said Jim.
He thought he could imagine what it must be like for one of these eagerly friendly little creatures to be suddenly treated by all the others as if he or she or it did not exist. "How long a session of that does it take to bring one of them back to proper behavior?"
"Oh, forever, of course," said ?1. "Once we have ceased to see or hear them, they no longer exist for us. Even their memory is put away."
Jim felt the mental equivalent of an unexpected chill on the back of his neck.
"You don't mean you shut them out permanently?" he said. "What do they do? Where do they go?"
"Who knows?" said ?1. "Since they no longer exist, in fact, what does it matter? But you wished to talk to me about these friends of yours called Laagi?"
"Yes," said Jim. He was still shaken by the idea of some living thing like ? 1 being shut out from the society of its kind forever. There was an indifference in the attitude of ?1 which reminded him forcibly, suddenly, of how alien the other mind he spoke to was.
"You see," he went on, "like us the Laagi are holes who live on one of the larger holes called a planet; and you have planets in your space on which either they, or we, could live, after the world had been changed some physically-they and we would change a world to suit ourselves in different ways, you understand. So probably the reason they were headed this way was to find other worlds on which they could live."

292 / Gordon R. Dickson

"You think so? How interesting! But it makes sensebeing holes, all of you seem to prefer holes as environment. I should say, being physical beings, you seem to prefer physical environments. Did I get that right?"
"You did, indeed;" said Jim. "Now, the question I wanted to ask was whether, if they or we occupied the surface of some of these planets, that would bother you, in this not-seeing, not-hearing way."
"I don't know," said ? 1. "Possibly not . . . yes, we think possibly not, since they and you would be part of the holesbut of course, you do see and hear us, so the question doesn't arise."
"You're seeing Mary and me out of our bodies-out of our personal holes-" said Jim. "The rest of our people are still in theirs. Maybe, as physical entities, they won't be able to see or hear you either."
"No, no!" said ?1: "Your own ability to see and hear us reached out through the hole where you were with your third friend who did not see or hear us. You radiated to us, and of course we radiated back. As you are, so must others like you be, I'm sure. If so, you wouldn't bother us at all occupying any of the planets in this area of ours. But to answer your question, even your Laagi friends might not bother us once they were a part of a planet, since by definition, such a hole is outside our universe. But why do you ask me this?"
"For a rather complicated set of reasons," said Jim. "You see, the Laagi have been having a war with us=
"A what? Even improving as I now am in experience with your way of thinking, that last came across as a complete blank."
"Say, a serious disagreement," suggested Jim.
"Ah, a disagreement. Yes, and therefore--2'
"Well, therefore when we arrived here, the Laagi had just been chasing us. Tell me, how did you get them to stop right at the border of your space like that?"
"Oh, we simply told them to stop. You must remember, I've already given you that information."
"And they just quit? Gave up coming any farther?"
"Oh, yes. Of course."
Jim thought that behavior of that sort did not seem to fit what he had seen of the Laagi. He returned to the question.


THE FOREVER MAN / 293

"Just because you asked them to stop where they were?"
"Dear friend, I have told you twice now," said ? 1, with distress rather than anger, "we did not ask them to stop where they were. We told them to stop there."
Suddenly, Jim understood. The chill that he had felt earlier when ?1 had talked about his race refusing to see or hear one of their own kind who had violated a law of their society should have prepared him for this, but it had not. Now it was back-but a hundred times stronger.
"Jim, what is it?" said Mary.
"If I had a body to do it with," answered Jim greenly, "I think I'd be sick."