The Forever Man (44 page)

“We're to take it then that your people already know everything?” Mary asked.

Since she had said nothing for a very long time indeed, her reappearance in the conversation jolted Jim and seemed to throw even ?1 and his friends momentarily for a loss. There was a perceptible pause before she was answered.

“Not everything, of course,” said ?1, “but anything that's at all important.”

“Important to you, that is?” demanded Mary.

“Of course, what is important to us… I see, you're implying that there may be knowledge which is important, even though it doesn't concern us directly. As a theoretical possibility, that could be true. But even if it were true in any practical sense, why should we concern ourselves with it if it's unimportant to us?”

“Because it may become important to you,” she said.

“In the memory of our people, that has never happened.”

“Doesn't mean it couldn't happen,” said Mary.

“There is really nothing new anywhere—”

“Oh, you've encountered people like Jim and me before?”

“No. Of course not. But in the sense of something new and important—if we should simply shut you and the Laagi out, how could our own way of life in any sense be affected?”

“It might,” said Jim, “if, after you had shut us out, you suddenly discovered that one or more of the large holes in this area of the galaxy that you like so much had been moved from its accustomed orbit, with the result that the dance of the holes in this area as a unit had been altered. Wouldn't that cause some alterations in your own dancing with the local pattern of those forces?”

“WHAT?”

The voice was still the single voice of ?1, to Jim and Mary's perceptions, but it was as if that voice had suddenly increased to incredible proportions.

“I think we got the attention of all of them at once with that question, Mary,” Jim said.

“You can't move large holes from their orbits,” said the voice of ?1, back at ordinary volume.

“I'm not so sure,” said Mary. “We're holes ourselves, remember. We know things about holes that were unimportant to you and so you never learned them, while we're learning more every day. I'd say it won't be too long before we're able to move even the largest of holes from their orbits.”

“You would have absolutely no right, no right at all to do such a thing!” said ?1.

“Perhaps not. It depends on your definition of what's right and what isn't,” said Jim. “In any case I don't think a people like ours would ever do such a thing. Mary just brought that up as an example of information that you may have considered unimportant, but which might turn out not to be so, after all.”

“These Laagi,” said ?1, “do you suppose they might eventually be able to move large holes?”

“We'd only be guessing if we tried to answer that,” said Jim. “But of course they're holes, themselves, just as we are, so they'd be interested in the same sort of information.”

“We must find out this information at once,” said ?1.

“Can you?” said Jim. “We holes don't actually have it, ourselves, yet, as I say. But even if you did find out, it might be that being nonholes, you might not be equipped to understand, let alone use, such knowledge.”

“But this is terrible! Perhaps we should go to the world of these Laagi right away and command them to never leave their planet again, just as we commanded them never to come any closer to our area of space.”

“Are you sure that would work with a whole race?” said Jim. “Forgive me. I don't mean to trouble you with unpleasant possibilities, but when you stopped them from coming any closer before, there were a lot of you speaking to just a few of them. Would your command be so powerfully effective, do you think, if you were speaking to just about as many minds as you are, yourselves?”

“Oh, there's no doubt of it. None. I'm sure there couldn't be any doubt of it. Not to be successful commanding them is practically unthinkable. Practically… “

“Well, then, you can do that. I'm sure there wouldn't be any bad consequences,” said Jim.

“What bad consequences? How could there be any bad consequences from an order given and obeyed?”

“None, of course. None I can think of anyway,” said Jim. “Though the Laagi are a little on the combative side, by nature. After all, they've been fighting us for quite some time over a frontier situation rather like the one you have with them. I was just thinking, if you commanded them and it didn't work, and afterwards they found out how to shift the larger holes… Well, of course at the moment they don't know you exist, but if you commanded them not to leave their planet and it didn't take, they'd know you were here and would probably come not only to get at the empty planets in your area, but to find out more about you so they could pay you back for what you did to them earlier.”

“But we did nothing at all to them, but tell them to stay out of our territory. They couldn't resent a small thing like that, surely? You, dear friends, none of your race would let yourselves be bothered by a little act like that?”

“If any did,” said Jim, “I assure you, I'd be the first to put your view of the situation most strongly to him or her.”

“There. You see? And yet, it was these Laagi friends of yours you were suggesting we allow in here to settle on some of the planets of our space!”

“It just might be a good way to keep them under control,” said Jim.

“Keep them under control? But how?”

“Well, of course,” said Jim, “I'm assuming, as I said, that we also had some of our own people also settling on planets here at the same time. I'm not sure, mind you, that there are some of our people who'd be willing to do this. But if there were, and once we got able to talk to the Laagi, using the method they use to converse since they can't converse our way, those of us who were here could watch the Laagi settlers and point out to them that what they were doing was wrong, if it turned out to be something that might be undesirable to you.”

“You say,” said ?1, “you don't know if your people might want to come here? But as I remember, you earlier suggested that they would be eager to settle on some of our planets.”

“Did I use the concept ‘eager'? Forgive me. I was actually just exploring the possibility with you first, before we go back and suggest it to them,” said Jim. “I think you and I got off on other topics and I never did get around to explaining that I'd have to ask them, first. You see, the rest of our people don't know that we've found livable worlds here. Oh, they know it's possible we might, and if by some strange chance we never went back to them, they'd eventually get around to sending other individuals to see what the situation is as regards livable holes, here; but at the moment they don't know definitely about these planets, and they most definitely do not know what a wonderful people you all are. I'm sure they'll take to you at once, from what we'll be able to tell them, and want to come. I just don't have the right to say certainly that they will come when I haven't yet talked to them.”

“But you would talk to them?”

“It'd be the first thing we'd do, on getting home.”

There was a silence on ?1's part that extended for some seconds at least.

“Jim,” said Mary softly, in this moment, “have you any idea what kind of forces would need to be involved in moving a star out of its orbit?”

“Shh,” said Jim. “Little pitchers… “

“What?”

“Small fireflies have long antennae.”

“But he said they wouldn't… oh!”

“Exactly.”

“I understand. A verbal promise only…” said Mary. “You're right. But, by the way, you called them butterflies last time you described them.”

“Did I? ‘Fireflies' is better.”

“Actually,” said Mary, “I think you're right about that, too.”

“We must, I believe,” said ?1, breaking in on them, “think this matter over. Meanwhile, will you dance with us?”

“Dance?” said Mary and Jim together.

“You hesitate? In all our memory, out of the millions of dances we have done, there are five we remember as classic. We will do one of those, together.”

“Forgive us,” said Jim. “But we aren't hesitating because we don't want to dance with you. But you should be told that I, at least, don't really know what you mean by ‘dancing'.”

“I'd realized there was somewhat of an ignorance on your part where dancing was concerned,” said ?1. “But I did not understand it could be so complete. You really are not aware of what dancing is? I told you, it is a weaving of patterns around the threads of force set up by holes in their movements through the universe.”

“Yes, but that only defines it,” said Mary. “What Jim means is we've got no conception of how you weave such patterns, let alone an appreciation of them. We've never seen such things in all our experience.”

“You really have not? It's incredible!” said ?1. “And yet you seem like such dear friends and nice people. Tell me, aren't you aware at this moment of the skein of developing and shifting forces about and through us, at this moment?”

“No,” said Mary. “Jim?”

“Neither am I,” said Jim. “I'm sorry.”

“Unbelievable! But it's so hard for me to grasp that you're basically holes, in nature. You seem so rational, so intelligent, so nice, that I fail to keep your limitations sharply in perspective. Do you really feel nothing of the forces? Look at that white star over there. Don't you feel the powerful, moving pull of it like a great arm sweeping through all of the universe?”

“Hold on,” said Jim. “Let me concentrate. Maybe I can feel it.”

“I'll try, too,” said Mary.

Jim honestly tried. He was a competitor by nature, and his first reaction to this sort of situation was that if someone else could do something, he could do it, too. Feel… he told himself, concentrating on the pinpoint of light that was the white star,
feel
…

“Yes!” he said finally. “There's something there, a sort of soft pressure—Mary, you know how it feels when you've been in the shadow of a cloud and it passes away from the sun, and you feel the warmth of the sunlight as it creeps across you?”

“Yes. I've got it myself, now,” answered Mary. “Just a touch, though. And if I tried to do anything else but concentrate on it, let alone whatever you call dancing, ?1, I'd lose it.”

“Quite incredible,” said ?1. “It's obvious one of our great dances would be entirely wasted on you. Five of them, can you understand that tremendous fact? Five great dances winnowed out of millions, over a time equal to all the memory we as a people share between us? These five great patterns of movement that reflect the greatness of accomplishment of our race! You must understand at least a little of what that means.”

“I think we do,” said Mary seriously.

“In any case, as I say,” said ?1, “any of those five would be wasted on you. But we can carry you, as we carried you to look at the places that Raoul saw differently and loved, through one of our simple little dances that we have for the new-budded minds among us that have everything yet to learn. Will you come? Are you ready?”

“Why not?” said Jim to Mary. “Shall we dance?”

“I'd love to, thank you,” said Mary.

“…But it's like skating!” said Mary,” like skating at a billion miles a second!”

“Like riding a bobsled down a bobsled run!” shouted Jim. He had no need to shout. It was the excitement in him making him do it.

“Like skating down a bobsled run, then,” Mary shouted back, “without having to worry about hurting yourself!”

A yellow point of light in the far distance grew almost instantly into a huge golden sun as they dived toward it, then swept past, with the galaxy full of stars pinwheeling around them, toward a white giant of a sun past which they curved in turn. It was indeed like traveling at unimaginable speeds, for they were literally in motion. It was not like phase-shifting where you ceased to be at one point, were spread out throughout the universe and reassembled at a different place, all in literally no time at all… but it was fast, faster than imagination could believe.

And it was in fact a dance, all graceful swirls and turns across enormous spaces, as if they actually danced in a mighty ballroom where the stars were lamps. But it was more than just a dance. The creativity of it reached into Jim and woke all sorts of emotions and yearnings in him, building him inwardly toward an understanding of he knew not what. Also, he was actually beginning to feel the skeins of gravitic forces reaching out through space, the natural forces about which the dance was woven; like a piece of silk with threads so fine as to be invisible, woven on a magical loom that could be known, but neither viewed nor touched.

I'm skating out here with the stars, In space with the stars, with the stars
… sang Mary.

“Jim!” she cried. “I'm making my own music to go with it. Are you doing that, too?”

“I'm doing something—or it's doing something to me!” Jim shouted back.

The dance built to a climax; and in Jim's mind a realization broke like a shower of colored lights from a skyrocket bursting far overhead. It came to him suddenly that he had found his blue mountain. For a long time now the Forever Road had been inclining upward; its steepness had increased without his noticing that he was going uphill. But now he understood that he had, and understood why. Because the road had brought him not only to his mountain but to the very top of it.

For the blue mountain was the universe. Not just this one galaxy, but the whole universe; and he stood at the highest point of it. From where he was he looked out and down in all directions to the universe's end. He was at the point he had searched and traveled to come to—and, then, just as he was beginning to believe that he could see the shape of the dance and the forces it was woven about, it crescendoed. It completed its statement. It ended.