The Forever Man

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “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 have—that 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 something to build our communication on,” said Jim. “That’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 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—any place 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 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 phase-shift 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.”

  “I 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 in the long run using it to navigate the stars… “

  Mollen threw up his hands in the air.

  “Even if you’ve got something more up your sleeve,” he said to Jim, “don’t tell me. Save it for the next time. Let’s go on a little longer pretending it’s business as usual. What was I just about to tell you when you sprang this last surprise package on me? Oh, yes. You and Mary are going to have to work separately—”

  “I don’t think that’d be the wisest idea, General,” said Jim. “I’d like to have Mary with me.”

  “No,” said Mary.

  “You can’t have her,” said Mollen.

  They had spoken almost in chorus, so promptly had the negative responses come from both of them.

  “You see, what needs to be done just as soon as one of those Laagi you’re teaching to communicate reaches the point where he can understand when we tell him why we’re doing something,” said Jim, ignoring what both of them had just said, “is for Mary and me to take him back into the territory of the mind-people and introduce the two races to each other with us translating. Start the ball rolling early, in effect.”

  “I told you if you had anything more up your sleeve to keep it there,” said Mollen. “Not only that, but you just heard the answer to your continuing to work with Mary. It was ‘no.’ “

  “Let me talk to him, Louis,” said Mary, still facing away from Jim. “Jim, whatever you might come up with in the way of plans, I’m not going to be part of them. That’s because I don’t want to be part of them, or connected with you in any way.”

  “Come to think of it, I just thought of something I have to step out of the office to take care of,” said Mollen. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “No, Louis. Please stay,” said Mary. “I want you to hear this, too, even though you know what I’m going to say. Jim—”

  Jim half rose from his chair.

  “Sit down, Colonel,” said Mollen. “And listen.”

  Jim sat down.

  “This isn’t easy; but it has to be said.” Mary’s voice came to his ears strangely from her turned-away face. Somehow the fact that she spoke with the back of her head turned to him put an unnatural distance between them. “Jim, listen to me. I’ve explained this to Louis and he understands. I’m not a nice person. I never have been, and I never will be. I felt for you when we had to put you through those months of hell to get you to where you wanted AndFriend more than anything else on Earth; and while we were out together in this last trip, I came as close to… enjoying being close to another human being as I ever have with any other person in my life. But it’s no good.”

  “Mary,” said Jim, “if you’ll listen for a second—”

  “No. It’s your turn now to sit and listen to me,” said Mary. “The trouble is we’re two different people. Worse than that, we’re the wrong kinds of two different people, too wrong to ever get along. I’m what I am, and you—you’re an idealist. You’re even worse than that. You’re an idealist who insists on acting as if his ideals were reality. You’re so caught up in seeing the universe as if through rose-colored glasses that you’re going to change the universe’s color to rose, if necessary, to make it so. Well, that sort of thing doesn’t work, particularly with people. Sooner or later you’ll run up against reality as it actually is: and since you can’t back down—in your own way you’re as stiff-necked as I am, or Squonk was, in his own fashion—you’ll go right on refusing to believe; and the reality’ll kill you. If I let myself stay around you, what would happen would kill me, too. And I don’t want that.”

  “Mary… ” Jim got to his feet again; and again Mollen rose from behind his desk.

  “Colonel,” he said. “You stay where you are. The lady wants it that way.”

  “I’m sorry, Jim, but I do want it that way.” The back of Mary’s head was immovable. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “No,” said Jim. “Because it’s not true.”

  “It is. Oh, it is.” Mary’s voice was bitter. “You don’t see even what’s right under your nose. Instead, you shift it around until it suits you; and you’re so good at it you don’t even know you’re doing it, most of the time.”

  “No,” said Jim. “If anyone sees things to suit herself, it’s you. You’re so determined to justify the shell you built up around you that you’ll cut off your nose to spite your face.”

  “Yes,” said Mary, “that’s the way you’d work it, wouldn’t you? You’d blame it on me, instead of yourself. Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve told you what I set out to tell you. I won’t work with you. I don’t want to see you again, and I don’t want you to try to see me.”

  “You don’t want me to try to see you—” Jim began to walk toward her and Mollen moved to get in the way. But while the will to stop Jim physically if necessary was there in the general, there was also the knowledge of the twenty years between them that left no doubt that if Jim really intended to force his way in to face Mary, the other man could not stop him. And he did so intend—both he and Mollen knew it.

  Mary saw Mollen moving to intercept Jim and knew it, too.

  “All right,” she said. “If you won’t be warned, you’ll have to find out the hard way. Out in the ship you told me you’d put together an image of my face in your mind. Let him come, Louis—was this the face, Jim?”

  Mollen stood aside and Jim reached her, just as she rose and turned. He looked down into her face, and there it was, with the same blue eyes, the same reddish blond hair, the straight lines at the side of the face coming in to the small, square jaw—just as it had been ever since he had walked into Mollen’s office and seen her there for the first time in ship-wear coveralls.

  He frowned, letting out his breath in one great gush of relief.

  “Thank God!” he said. “I thought something terrible must have happened to your body while we were gone—not that that would make any difference now that I know you mind to mind. But what’re you talking about? You look the same way you always have; even if I never really did get around to seeing it properly until I had to put that picture of you back together in my mind, out between the stars. You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  She stared up at him. She stared for a long, long moment. Then, slowly, her mouth crinkled at the corners, and the crinkles spread their way out into a wide smile that made her look, Jim thought, even more lovely. She threw back her head and began to laugh; and Jim found himself laughing with her. They laughed together until, at last, still gazing into each other’s eyes, they gradually sobered.

  “I am now,” she said.

  She put her arm through his, still smiling.

  "Forgive me, Louis," she said. She turned, still arm in arm with Jim, and they went out together.