«Gee, I think so too, Uncle Max. And the Captain Space program too. Gee, this afternoon he was fighting with green people with heads like lions on a plan-net of Sir—Sir—»
«Sirius?»
«That’s it, Sirius. Do you think there are really green people like that up there?»
I grinned at him. «I’ll show you where you can go to find out, Billy.»
And I pointed out Sirius to him, the brightest star in the sky.
M’bassi got back the following Wednesday evening. I went to the field to meet his stratojet. I grinned at the way he towered over the other passengers walking up the ramp from the landing area. «Hi, Licorice Stick,» I said.
He smiled and his big white teeth flashed. «Max. It is good to see you.» Then his face sobered. «I heard the news, about Ellen. I cannot say how sorry I am.»
We had a drink at the airport bar. Wine for M’bassi; he drinks only wine and in moderation. Then I suggested my apartment for a game of chess, and we went there.
We took off our coats, and through the almost transparent nylon shirt M’bassi wore I could see that he’d lost weight; his ribs stood out like the ridges of a washboard.
He guessed what I was thinking and smiled. «It is nothing, Max. A ten-day fast, but I ended it four days ago. I am beginning to regain. You’ve lost a little weight yourself, my friend.»
I had, from hardly eating the first few weeks after Ellen’s death. But I was beginning to regain now, too.
I got the chessboard and men and while M’bassi set them up I poured us each a small glass of sauterne to sip at while we played.
Pawn to the king’s fourth, he moved. I reached for my king’s pawn and then remembered.
«M’bassi,» I said, «when I talked to Ellen in the hospital she said that even you had an interstellar drive, and that some time I should ask you what you were mystical about. What did she mean?»
«She spoke truly, Max. Our goals are the same. We travel different roads in trying to reach them.»
«You mean you’re a starduster? Why didn’t you ever tell me?»
«You never asked me.» He smiled gently. «And you would not understand my road because you call it mysticism and call me a mystic; and those words form a curtain through which you cannot see. To call the study of the spirit and its capabilities mysticism is to say that the body of a man is something which we are capable of understanding whereas the mind of man must ever be a mystery to us. And that is not true, my friend.»
«But what’s that got to do with getting to the stars?»
«Your plan for reaching the stars is to send your body there, causing your body to carry your spirit—I’ll call it your mind, so you will not object to the terminology, my materialistic friend—along with it. Mine is to send my mind there, causing it to carry my body along.»
I opened my mouth and shut it again.
M’bassi said, «The idea should not be new to you. You have read early science fiction, I know. Certainly you must have read Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote the stories of John Carter on Mars—Princess of Mars, I believe, was the first, and there were at least half a dozen sequels to it.»
«I read them,» I said. «They were Godawful tripe.»
«If they were Godawful tripe why did you read them?»
«Because I read them before I was old enough to know how bad they were. While I was a kid. M’bassi, you’re not trying to tell me you think those stories were good ones, are you?»
«No, I am not. Your estimate of their literary quality is, I will admit, entirely correct. But do you recall that there was one thing about them that distinguished them from all of the other early space stories?»
«Not offhand, M’bassi. What was it?»
«The method by which Burroughs’ protagonist John Carter reached Mars. Do you remember that?»
I had to think hard—it had been damn near fifty years ago, back around nineteen fifty, that I’d read Burroughs.
I said, «I remember. He just looked up at Mars one night and wished he was there, and suddenly he was. Of all the—»
I started to laugh and made myself stop because I didn’t want to hurt M’bassi’s feelings.
«Laugh if you wish,» M’bassi said. «It does sound funny if you put it that way. And certainly Burroughs’ method was an oversimplification, but what if it was an oversimplification of something that will someday be possible for us to do? Let me translate into language that will not offend your materialism by calling it teleportation, the ability to transport a physical body through space without physical means.»
«But there’s been no authenticated case of teleportation, M’bassi.»
«Nor has there been an authenticated case of travel by means of subspace or a space warp or any of the other shortcut methods science fiction writers have predicated to enable themselves to write about interstellar travel. But there is a considerable body of evidence in support of telekinesis, the ability of the mind to affect physical objects without physical means—to control dice, for example. Teleportation is merely extension of telekinesis, Max. If one is possible then the other is.»
«Maybe,» I said. «I’ll take rockets. I know rockets work.»
«Rockets work. For planetary travel, they work. But for the stars, Max?»
«When we get the ion drive—»
«With any drive a rocket cannot even closely approach the speed of light. Unified field theory proves that, Max, no matter how mystical you think unified field theory is. And what of the stars that are hundreds of thousands of light-years away? Are we going to take hundreds of thousands of years to reach them?»
He took a sip of his wine and put the glass back down. He said, «Thought is instantaneous, my friend. If we can learn to travel with the power of thought we then travel with the speed of thought, not like snails at the speed of light or less. If we solve the secret of teleportation, we can travel to the farthest galaxy in exactly the same length of time it would take us to travel a single inch.»
The chess game stood forgotten, one pawn moved, for the rest of the evening while we talked. M’bassi told me about his trip to Tibet. It had been to see a famous guru there who was studying teleportation. He had studied and fasted with the guru.
«And did he teleport for you?» I asked.
«I—would rather not answer that question, Max. Something happened, or else I imagined that something happened, on the ninth day of our fast together. But hallucinations are common after extended fasting. The thing that happened, if it really happened, my guru was unable to repeat, so we have no proof and of what I am not certain myself-that I really saw, I would rather not talk. You will forgive me?»
I damn well had to forgive him, because I couldn’t talk him into changing his mind. The only other facts about it that I could get out of him were that on the tenth day of fasting the guru had become so weak that further abstinence became too dangerous for him and the experiment had ended.
«And he is a very old man, Max, one hundred and seven years old. It may be impossible for him ever to try again, in that manner. But if he does I shall have word from him and I shall go to him again immediately, even if I must spend all my life’s saving on a chartered rocket to enable me to reach him in time.»
I stared at him. «M’bassi, damn your beautiful jet hide, how could you possibly have not told me these things before I asked you? Look at all the time we’ve spent together and wasted playing chess or talking about unimportant things. Why didn’t you tell me?»
«At first, Max, there was a reason. Ellen suggested it when she arranged for me to coach you in field theory. She said that if I let myself be drawn into arguments about interstellar travel, I’d get no coaching done. Since then, well, we had fallen into the habit of discussing other things and it did not occur to me to change things. And I knew that I could never bring you to my way of thinking any more than you can ever bring me to yours. Not that I disapprove of your way. I may be wrong, and your way of reaching the stars may be the only one we shall ever know.» He sighed. «I wish only that I had your faith. It is you, my friend, who of the two of us is a mystic.»