Stranger in a Strange Land

Boss? I've got both hands full of flim. Don't bother me."
                "You can talk, can't you? I noticed the pool is pretty murky."
                "Yeah. I'm going to add precipitant tonight and vacuum it in the morning."
                "How's the count?"
                "The count is okay, the water is safe enough to serve at the table. It just looks messy."
                "Let it stay murky for the time being. Test it as usual. I'll let you know when I want it cleaned up."
                "Hell, Boss, nobody likes to swim in a pool that looks like dishwater. I would have tidied it up long before this if there hadn't been so much hooraw around here this week."
                "Anybody too fussy to swim in it can stay dry. Quit jawing about it, Duke; I'll explain later. Films ready?"
                "Five minutes."
                "Good. Mike, do you know what a gun is?"
                "A gun," Smith answered carefully, "is a piece of ordnance for throwing projectiles by the force of some explosive, as gunpowder, consisting of a tube or barrel closed at one end, where the-"
                "Okay, okay. Do you grok it?"
                "I am not sure."
                "Have you ever seen a gun?"
                "I do not know."
                "Why, certainly you have," Jill interrupted. "Mike, think back to that time we were talking about, in the room with the grass on the floor-but don't get upset now! The big man hit me, you remember."
                "Yes."
                "The other man pointed something at me. In his hand."
                "Yes. He pointed a bad thing at you."
                "That was a gun."
                "I had thinked that the word for that bad thing might be 'gun.' The Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in-"
                "That's fine, son," Harshaw said hastily. "That was certainly a gun. Now listen to me carefully. If someone points a gun at Jill again, what will you do?"
                Smith paused rather longer than usual. "You will not be angry if I waste food?"
                "No, I would not be angry. Under those circumstances no one would be angry at you. But I am trying to find out something else. Could you make just the gun go away, without making the man who is pointing it go away?"
                Smith considered it. "Save the food?"
                "Uh, that isn't quite what I mean. Could you cause the gun to go away without hurting the man?"
                "Jubal, he would not hurt at all. I would make the gun go away, but the man I would just stop. He would feel no pain. He would simply be discorporate. The food he leaves after him would not damage at all."
                Harshaw sighed. "Yes, I'm sure that's the way it would be. But could you cause to go away just the gun? Not do anything else? Not 'stop' the man, not kill him, just let him go on living?"
                Smith considered it. "That would be much easier than doing both at once. But, Jubal, if I left him still corporate, he might still hurt Jill. Or so I grok it."
                Harshaw stopped long enough to remind himself that this baby innocent was neither babyish nor innocent-was in fact sophisticated in a culture which he was beginning to realize, however dimly, was far in advance of human culture in some very mysterious ways . . . and that these naive remarks came from a superman-or what would do in place of a "superman" for the time being. Then he answered Smith, choosing his words most carefully as he had in mind a dangerous experiment and did not want disaster to follow from semantic mishap.
                "Mike ... if you reach a-'cusp'----where you must do something in order to protect Jill, you do it."
                "Yes, Jubal. I will."
                "Don't worry about wasting food. Don't worry about anything else. Protect Jill."
                "Always I will protect Jill."
                "Good. But suppose a man pointed a gun at someone-or simply had it in his hand. Suppose you did not want or need to kill him . . , but you needed to make the gun go away. Could you do it?"
                Mike paused only briefly. "I think I grok it. A gun is a