Whipping Star seems to be the only Herbert novel which is related to a definitely separate short story; that is, while parts of other of his novels have first appeared as short stories before being incorporated into the novel, Whipping Star and “The Tactful Saboteur” bear no such relation. The short story is set some seventeen years before the action of Whipping Star and introduces the characters of Napolean Bildoon and Jorj X. McKie, as well as detailing the history, purposes, and nature of the Bureau of Sabotage. As in “The Tactful Saboteur,” the major focus in Whipping Star is on the attempt to establish real communication between two sentient species who perceive things in extremely different ways. Urgency is given to this attempt by the fact that most sentient life known to us may die unless such communication is established. All of these things combine to create an interesting story which is also one of the better science-fiction explorations of the problems of establishing real, mutually meaningful communication between sentient forms of life.
The intelligent life form that is the focus of all this activity is a Caleban. At the beginning of the novel, very little is known about them other than the facts that they “live” in hard spherical objects that they prefer to anchor in water, that no one has ever really seen one or established meaningful contact, and that they offered all beings the use of the S’eye Effect. The S’eye Effect, in practice, is a means of instantaneously moving from one place to another, no matter what the distance; it is obvious that a far-flung confederacy, such as that portrayed in this novel, would have great use for such a “device” but would fall apart if it were suddenly removed. Though it is extremely useful, no one in ConSent (the Confederacy of Sentients) understands what it is and how it works.
Another facet of the problem is that the Calebans have been disappearing without warning, somehow leaving a wake of insanity and death because they have left. Naturally, the government wants to know why and gives the problem to BuSab, which gives it on Jorj X. McKie. There is some feeling that this disappearance may be due to the fact that Mliss Abnethe has hired a Caleban so that she can indulge her sadistic urges and still avoid the laws of ConSent. Since BuSab is interested in this in its own right, it gives them a second reason to try to contact a Caleban.
Mliss Abnethe is an interesting case, as well as a thorn in the side of BuSab and Jorj X. McKie. She is an overwhelmingly rich woman who uses her money to get her own way in everything. For example, when BuSab begins investigating, its agents find that her influence extends into many, many parts of the government, and to all levels. She can buy the best of legal, medical, and beauty care to maintain her and to prevent signs of aging, as well as protection against interference with her designs; in this last area, though, McKie proves to be slipperier than either her lawyers or her bodyguards. However, the aspect of Mliss Abnethe that is most important for this novel is her sadomasochism. That is, she has a long history of delight in inflicting pain on others. Although she has been treated for this condition, it only made her unable to bear the thought of pain in other sentients without removing the causes of her behavior; consequently, she is driven by contrary states of mind, accepting mental anguish in exchange for fulfillment of her need to inflict punishment. Thus, for her purposes, the Caleban is perfect, for it would be difficult to prove in a court of law that the Caleban suffers pain or that its idea of discontinuity equals death, and there seems to be no evidence that the contract between Abnethe and the Caleban is either involuntary or causing a public disturbance.
However, very early in his conversation with the Caleban, who gives herself the name Fanny Mae, she tells McKie that her home (the Beachball) contains the Master S’eye and that all sentients who have become entangled with her will share her fate if discontinuity overtakes her; then she explains that anyone who has used the S’eye “jumpdoors” has become entangled with her. Furthermore, Fanny Mae tells McKie that the floggings will cause her ultimate discontinuity after an indefinite number, but approximately ten, of further whippings. With this information, McKie and BuSab feel a sense of great urgency, and they might be able to move against Mliss Abnethe except for two problems: They need to establish more definitely that their interpretation of what the Caleban communicates is accurate, and they need to find out just where Mliss is if they are to confront her in court.
These two problems, finding the location of Mliss Abnethe’s hideaway and establishing accuracy of understanding between human and Caleban, occupy McKie and other BuSab agents throughout the novel as they attempt to prevent the destruction of nearly all sentients, with gains in communication furthering their search for Mliss. The term which seems to represent the difficulties of understanding is “connectives”; behind this term, however, lie great differences in the ways Calebans and humans (and other members of ConSent) perceive things. Eventually it becomes clear that humans see things only on a single plane and in a strictly linear order, whereas the Caleban seems to have all time and space laid out before it, with intersections and nodes indicating points of contact between things, beings, and events; the refined differences between these are the connectives. Once McKie begins to grasp this difference in perception and hence the meaning of the term “connectives,” he can go on to consider what a Caleban is and how discontinuity might be prevented. It is, however, only very near the end of the novel that McKie puts together several of the things that Fanny Mae has said to realize that the Calebans manifest themselves in this plane of existence as stars. Once he makes this connection, he then also connects this with the idea that the Calebans seek energy here and that this is somehow related to what is happening with the whippings. This is verified electronically, and Fanny Mae is identified as the star known as Thyone, in the Pleides, to humans. Then, McKie proceeds to the idea of opening an immense “jumpdoor” into space so that Fanny Mae can ingest great amounts of free hydrogen and thus replenish her substance. It also leads to the realization that a Caleban manufactures emotion with its energy, that they are nearly pure emotion and pure creativity, and that the whip focused the emotion of hate behind it. With these realizations and the actions they bring about, the safety of great numbers of sentients is ensured, as is the continuity of Thyone/Fanny Mae.
Although the evidence begins to pile up that Mliss Abnethe and her followers are not to be found within the basic time-frame of the society, it is only after McKie begins to understand the meanings of connectives that he, first, and then others at BuSab can begin to consider this as a serious possibility. This evidence includes such things as McKie’s journey to that hideaway, where he sees Boers and blacks in a situation reminiscent of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Africa. The analysis of the bullwhip, the rope, and the sword they have gained also lead in this direction. Nevertheless, the idea that the Caleban can see through space and time, and thus can act in those “dimensions,” is necessary before BuSab can begin to believe the possibility. However, further realizations—the fact that the Calebans can perceive the psyche of other sentients, the fact that the Calebans can “see” individuals to their real homes or to places they visualize, the fact that they are creative, and so on—refine this possibility. That is, the place where Mliss Abnethe is is the creation of her mind, her visualization of the Earth of the past, rather than actually existing in the past. It is the failure to realize all the implications of this, though he realizes some of them, that brings about the downfall of Abnethe’s principle associate, Cheo, the ego-frozen Pan Spechi. Thus, he realizes that they do not exist in the real past but in a figment of Abnethe’s imagination made real through the power of the Calebans; he does not, however, realize that Mliss is necessary to the contract with the Calebans and that her death will “discontinue” their existence. Or rather, he only begins to realize this when, on her death at his orders, the world begins to fade around him.
Although the search for Mliss Abnethe’s hiding place provides nearly all of the action in the novel, it is the exploration of the difficulties of communication between species that defines the solution to the problems and that is the real focus of interest in the novel. It should be noted that this process of establishing mutual understanding is much more difficult than this discussion could possibly indicate, involving a great many attempts, a great many frustrations, and a great deal of intuition and good will; it is, after all, a process that takes the entire novel and results in broad understandings but very little detail.
It might also be noted that, although we have no Calebans and no other sentient species to try to communicate with, this problem is a current problem, for it is quite firmly established that different languages (for example, English and Chinese or Russian) also imply different ways of viewing things; therefore, we, as Jorj X. McKie did, must learn not only the words of another language but also the perceptual system behind them if we are to achieve real communications with other human beings. Just as McKie’s world’s survival depended on his achieving such communication, so also does our world’s survival depend on achieving real communication.