Heinlein, Robert A – Have Space Suit will Travel

Then we would stumble. Joe would stop and throw me a sample scene, his best guess of what I meant. The pictures appeared in the air, positioned for my comfort-if I turned my head, the picture moved to accommodate me. The pix were color-stereo-television with perfect life and sharpness-well, give us another twenty years and we’ll have them as realistic. It was a good trick to have the projector concealed and to force images to appear as if they were hanging in air, but those are just gimmicks of stereo optics; we can do them anytime we really want to-after all, you can pack a lifelike view of the Grand Canyon into a viewer you hold in your hand.

The thing that did impress me was the organization behind it. I asked Joe about it. He sang to his microphone and we went on a galloping tour of their “Congressional Library.”

Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just as math is the key-and that we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn’t look glamorous to me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth.

This “library” had hundreds, maybe thousands, of Vegans viewing pictures and listening to sound tracks, each with a silvery sphere in front of him. Joe said they were “telling the memory.” This was equivalent to typing a card for a library’s catalog, except that the result was more like a memory path in brain cells-nine-tenths of that building was an electronic brain.

I spotted a triangular sign like the costume jewelry worn by the Mother Thing, but the picture jumped quickly to something else. Joe also wore one (and others did not) but I did not get around to asking about it, as the sight of that incredible “library” brought up the word “cybernetics” and we went on a detour. I decided later that it might be a lodge pin, or like a Phi Beta Kappa key-the Mother Thing was smart even for a Vegan and Joe was not far behind.

Whenever Joe was sure that he understood some English word, he would wriggle with delight like a puppy being tickled. He was very dignified, but this is not undignified for a Vegan. Their bodies are so fluid and mobile that they smile and frown with the whole works. A Vegan holding perfectly still is either displeased or extremely worried.

The sessions with Joe let me tour places from my bed. The difference between “primary school” and “university” caused me to be shown examples. A “kindergarten” looked like an adult Vegan being overwhelmed by babies; it had the innocent rowdiness of a collie pup stepping on his brother’s face to reach the milk dish. But the “university” was a place of quiet beauty, strange-looking trees and plants and flowers among buildings of surrealistic charm unlike any architecture I have ever seen-I suppose I would have been flabbergasted if they had looked familiar. Parabolas were used a lot and I think all the “straight” lines had that swelling the Greeks called “entasis”-delicate grace with strength.

Joe showed up one day simply undulating with pleasure. He had another silvery ball, larger than the other two. He placed it in front of me, then sang to his own. (“I want you to hear this, Kip!”)

As soon as he ceased the larger sphere spoke in English: “I want you to hear this. Kip!”

Squirming with delight, Joe swapped spheres and told me to say something.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked.

(“What do you want me to say?”) the larger sphere sang in Vegan.

That was my last session with Prof Joe.

Despite unstinting help, despite the Mother Thing’s ability to make herself understood, I was like the Army mule at West Point: an honorary member of the student body but not prepared for the curriculum. I never did understand their government. Oh, they had government, but it wasn’t any system I’ve heard of. Joe knew about democracies and representation and voting and courts of law; he could fish up examples from many planets. He felt that democracy was “a very good system, for beginners.” It would have sounded patronizing, except that is not one of their faults.