MISC: The Girl Who Saved the World Part 57

[George Phillies]

“I find that the first lot is for the new manifesto from the League of 
Terran Justice,” Holmgren said.

“Must we consider their ravings?” Moeller asked. The IncoAztecan 
Ambassador nodded in agreement, then passed the talking stone to Count 
Ferencz.

“The new manifesto is very different,” Ferencz observed.“It is a book, 
not a broadsheet. It appeared nearly at the same time all around the 
world, in multiple translations. The number of copies sent out here and 
there is quite large. These features bespeak a much larger and 
better-organized League than some people had expected. Also, the 
document is either uniquely coherent, or uniquely incoherent. I will 
read from it, only a few short excerpts:

/We describe what should be in the world.It is the empty place between 
all thoughts, the full-lit shadow. It is the shape between the words 
that are not the shape. Imagine a rainbow. If there were no word for 
green, we could still say ‘the color between yellow and blue’.If there 
were no word for orange, we could still say “the color between yellow 
and red’. We, the League of Terran Justice, can imagine the political 
rainbow. We know the colors that cannot be named, the thoughts that have 
no name.We call for the political colors that have no name./

/We march for the thoughts that cannot be named, the thoughts that are 
not the void, the thoughts that are captive without form or substance./

/The Emperor is to Imperial decree as the people are to X. The Emperor 
says Go Forth! The people say Go Forth!/

/Between “the emperor is to the workers”and “the workers are to the 
emperor” is “how the people should be to each other. What is the ‘should 
be’?”/

“This goes on for over a hundred pages, filled with what seem to be 
analogies with missing words that you are to fill in for yourself.But 
there is no way to fill the gaps in. They do not make sense.” Ferencz 
shrugged and passed the talking stone to Saigo Shigetoshi, Legate for 
the Satsuma Daimyo. ToBuncombe’s ears, Ferencs appeared to have been 
speaking from a carefully memorized script. No one else seemed to have 
noticed.

“Interesting,” Saigo said. “I see perhaps a step toward the meaning of 
this book. Rather, my dear wife saw the step, and I was finally able to 
understand it.I am reminded of an aspect of Japanese philosophy. Ideas 
are like water- smoothed rocks.If you pile them nicely together, there 
are gaps between the rocks.The gaps have a shape that is not the 
spheroids of the rocks. The shape is the inverse.We cannot see the 
shape, because it is where there is nothing, but we know that it is a 
shape. We know that the shape is there.The shape is defined by where the 
rocks are not. We ponder the shape by pondering the absence of 
presence.From the absence of presence, we may learn. But I do not 
understand where my thought is leading me, other than to say that the 
words in the books are the stones in the puzzle, and the gaps in the 
stones are the words the author could not say. What are the words in the 
gaps?Why could the author not say them? This I do not know.”

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