"All right." Stern rose from his chair, placed his left hand horizontally above his head, his right vertically against his stomach, and started reciting the nonsense words. Each time he came to baker man, he changed the rotational direction of one or both hands. Then he reversed the placement of the hands themselves. Unsmiling, after about a dozen changes, he said: "Now you try it, Crawford. No, I'm not kidding around. Every time I reach baker there'll be a change. If I say left baker man only your left will reverse its rotation. Or I may say right baker man. Or I may not indicate a hand and then you'll reverse rotation for both. Then when I say change baker man, put the right hand where the left is and vice versa and continue the same rotation as before the command—that is, if the right hand was above your head, going clockwise, when I say change, your left hand, as soon as it's shifted above your head, will turn clockwise."
Crawford hesitantly got up, crowding the little cabin until Stern sat down. He held his hands just as Stern had at the start of the exercise. "Makes me feel a little silly," he grinned, rolling his eyes upward to the raised hand.
"Maybe it is in itself—but not in its implications. Okay, Patty cake, patty cake, baker man. And now Patty cake, patty cake, left baker man. And Patty cake, patty cake, change baker man!"
As the last instruction was given, Crawford, hopelessly tangled, flailed his arms about. "Can't keep them turning in the right direction!" Annoyed with himself, he stopped altogether. "Let's start again. I'll get it yet."
"No, I think the point's been made. After a while you might learn to do it right but it would take practice."
"A matter of coordination, isn't it?" Stern nodded. "Then those hand-wrigglings of the Nodarians were actually purposeful exercises."
"Right. And now that they've mastered really complex maneuvers, the hand-wrigglings are probably games, too, a part of play."
"Why should they have bothered at all with something like that?"
"Because it's one tiny part of a much wider set of disciplines. They have made themselves totally ambidextrous, not a trace of left- or right-handedness left. Not just physical exercise and disciplines, though, all processes dealing with attention are involved."
Crawford's eyes widened. "That would mean both halves of the brain are equally used! They might be able to do twice the thinking we do."