Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov [106]
Gendibal sent out the standard signal, asking if a small delay were possible, and the "no emergency" call returned.
Without undue haste, then, Gendibal attended to the morning routine. He was still in the ship's shower--with the used water draining into the recycling mechanisms--when he made contact again.
"Compor?"
"Yes, Speaker."
"Have you spoken with Trevize and the other one?"
"Pelorat. Janov Pelorat. Yes, Speaker."
"Good. Give me another five minutes and I'll arrange visuals."
He passed Sura Novi on his way to the controls. She looked at him questioningly and made as though to speak, but he placed a finger on his lips and she subsided at once. Gendibal still felt a bit uncomfortable at the intensity of adoration / respect in her mind, but it was coming to be a comfortingly normal part of his environment somehow.
He had hooked a small tendril of his mind to hers and there would now be no way to affect his mind without affecting hers. The simplicity of her mind (and there was an enormous aesthetic pleasure to be found in contemplating its unadorned symmetry, Gendibal couldn't help thinking) made it impossible for any extraneous mind field to exist in their neighborhood without detection. He felt a surge of gratitude for the courteous impulse that had moved him that moment they had stood together outside the University, and that had led her to come to him precisely when she could be most useful.
He said, "Compor?"
"Yes, Speaker."
"Relax, please. I must study your mind. No offense is intended."
"As you wish, Speaker. May I ask the purpose?"
"To make certain you are untouched."
Compor said, "I know you have political adversaries at the Table, Speaker, but surely none of them--"
"Do not speculate, Compor. Relax. --Yes, you are untouched. Now, if you will co-operate with me, we will establish visual contact."
What followed was, in the ordinary sense of the word, an illusion, since no one but someone who was aided by the mentalic power of a well-trained Second Foundationer would have been able to detect anything at all, either by the senses or by any physical detecting device.
It was the building up of a face and its appearance from the contours of the mind, and even the best mentalist could succeed in producing only a shadowy and somewhat uncertain figure. Compor's face was there in mid-space, as though it were seen through a thin but shifting curtain of gauze, and Gendibal knew that his own face appeared in an identical manner in front of Compor.
By physical hyperwave, communication could have been established through images so clear that speakers who were a thousand parsecs apart might judge themselves to be face-to-face. Gendibal's ship was equipped for the purpose.
There were, however, advantages to the mentalist-vision. The chief was that it could not be tapped by any device known to the First Foundation. Nor, for that matter, could one Second Foundationer tap the mentalist-vision of another. The play of mind might be followed, but not the delicate change of facial expression that gave the communication its finer points.
As for the Anti-Mules--Well, the purity of Novi's mind was sufficient to assure him that none were about.
He said, "Tell me precisely, Compor, the talk you had with Trevize and with this Pelorat. Precisely, to the level of mind."
"Of course, Speaker," said Compor.
It didn't take long. The combination of sound, expression, and mentalism compressed matters considerably, despite the fact that there was far more to tell at the level of mind than if there had been a mere parroting of speech.
Gendibal watched intently. There was little redundancy, if any, in mentalist-vision. In true vision, or even in physical hypervision across the parsecs, one saw enormously more in the way of information bits than was absolutely necessary for comprehension and one could miss a great deal without losing anything significant.
Through the gauze of mentalist-vision, however,