The Forever Man (32 page)

Squonk was plainly still puzzled. But he started to move again. They went some distance and passed a number of buildings without the creature turning into any of them.

“I figured he'd understood the sort of place we wanted to search for the key next,” said Jim. “But I didn't expect him to go this kind of distance. Maybe he was thinking of a place that's not in this city at all.”

“All to the good if he is,” said Mary. “We'll find out about their local transportation system.”

Their destination, however, turned out not to require transportation to another city. After some distance along a complicated route through the pathways, Squonk turned into one more entrance.

It was as close to what Jim had envisioned as made no difference. In an area almost as large as one of the auditoriums—but under a less lofty ceiling and upon a level floor, Laagi stood or sat in groups, gesticulating at others in the same group. Squonks were moving about and through the crowd. Those Laagi seated were perched on one of the cup-shaped seats, each on a slanted support, like those in the Laagi spaceships and elsewhere. About the only difference seemed to be that these particular seats were movable. Apparently at signals which Jim and Mary could not separate from the other movements of their body languages, a squonk would come scurrying up to the Laagi who wished to sit with one of the seats, the lower end of which seemed to adhere to the floor the moment it was set down. Abandoned seats were also picked up and carted away to the wall of the room by squonks.

In fact, squonks were everywhere, and included a group that seemed to be continuously at work doing nothing else but cleaning the floor and lower walls of the room. Jim could see now why Squonk had doubted that this would be a place to find the strange thing that the invisible Laagi commanding him wanted to be found.

“This is more like it!” said Mary grimly.

“If conversations between Laagi are what you want, it certainly is,” said Jim. “It does look like some kind of club.”

“Or political grouping.”

“Or a think tank of some sort,” said Jim.

“Well, whatever it really is remains to be found out,” said Mary. “Why don't you go back to sleep or something? I'll be busy. I can wake you when I'm ready to dictate a report.”

“Thank you,” said Jim clearly and precisely, “but I'm not tired at the moment. Thank you just the same, though.”

Mary laughed. There was as much excitement as humor in her mental voice at the moment.

“Bet you go to sleep anyway,” she said.

Jim did not answer that. Mary evidently settled down to wordless observing, and Squonk continued his diligent search along the base of the wall.

Jim was left with leisure to take a better look at the place and its occupants himself. Light seemed to flood the place from all angles, so that there were no visible sources. It was the same deep yellow of the sunlight outside, so that it might have been daylight somehow piped in or introduced. The floor was a deep, rich red, much darker than the footpads of the squonks. The chair seats were a dark green and the walls started as dark brown at the base and changed gradually toward yellower and lighter shades as they mounted toward the apex of the domed ceiling.

There was a sudden horrendous clatter, to which no one in the room seemed to pay any attention except the unfortunate squonk which had been the cause of it. Certainly, thought Jim, Laagi must be absolutely without a sense of hearing; and probably the squonks were, too. What he had heard had been the very noisy result of two of the chair-carrying squonks colliding to send the chairs they had been carrying crashing to the floor.

What had happened had clearly been an accident. The tentacles of a squonk appeared extremely nimble, but there was obviously a limit to the amount of strength they possessed. One squonk seemed able to carry one chair comfortably by curling all its tentacles around the shaft that supported the seat. One squonk was also all that was needed to set the chair upright when it had been brought to the Laagi wanting it. The lower end of the support rod fastened itself by some invisible means firmly and automatically to the floor when the chair was set up. Apparently this adhesive, or otherwise self-fastening end, of the shaft of the chair being carried by one squonk had touched and fastened itself to the leg of one carried by mother. Tripped up, or perhaps overbalanced by the unexpected double weight, both chairs and the squonk that carried one had tumbled to the floor.

One squonk hurried off, leaving things as they were. The other pushed itself back to its feet, using its tentacles. It then tried to pick up the chair it had originally been carrying and found it firmly attached to the other chair. After a few seconds of futilely trying to lift the awkward structure composed of the two joined chairs, the squonk put it down and scurried over to another squonk headed away after having just delivered another chair.

The second squonk stopped, the two entwined the ends of their tentacles momentarily, and the second squonk hurried away, while the first returned to the tangle of the joined chairs. After a few minutes, the second squonk—at least Jim thought it was the second squonk, since the creatures all looked so much alike that it was difficult to be sure—returned with what looked like a small rod with a sort of pistol grip at one end, held in one tentacle.

The second squonk touched the far tip of the rod to the point at which the chairs joined, both squonks took hold of a chair apiece and pulled with what seemed to be considerable effort; and the two chairs parted. Taking a chair apiece they trotted off and were lost in the crowd from the point of view afforded Jim by Squonk himself.

Jim watched them disappear, fascinated. It was the first time he had seen anything resembling communication or teamwork among the squonks. He continued to watch the room carefully, hoping for some further evidence of squonk cooperation, but no reason for such activity evidently occurred. He had seen, however, two squonks not only communicate, but solve a problem on their own without specific orders from any of the Laagi standing around; and that, he told himself, was food for thought.

“Jim.
Jim
!”

“All right, all right,” said Jim, “I heard you the first time. What is it?”

“You were sleeping again.”

“I was not. I was thinking. Nevermind… what do you want now?”

“I want you to stop Squonk,” said Mary. “Make him stand still—or better yet make him back up about two meters. There's a pair of Laagi I particularly want to keep observing.”

“I don't know if I can,” said Jim.

“Why not?”

“Well, I mean, I probably can tell him to stop searching, but I'm trying to think of a reason for it that'll make sense. The way we had to work out a way of sending him hunting for something, that made sense to him. Also, have you thought that if he suddenly just stops doing anything out here where he is, he may attract attention to himself?”

“What if he does?”

“If he attracts the attention of the Laagi, one or more of them might just come over to find out what he's doing here.”

“We haven't seen any evidence that squonks can talk to Laagi,” said Mary.

“No, but maybe there're other ways a Laagi could find out what Squonk's doing here. The Laagi might be able to identify Squonk as the one of his kind who's supposed to be cleaning
AndFriend
periodically and has a part-carrying job elsewhere; and so might wonder what he's doing here, instead. Even if the Laagi doesn't do any more than wonder, he might end up ordering Squonk back to his parts-carrying and Squonk might well listen to that Laagi and obey it, in spite of whatever I could say to him. Do you want that?”

“No. No, of course not.” Mary paused. “But I've absolutely got to keep observing these two Laagi awhile longer. They're acting different from any others we've seen so far.”

“These two right next to us?”

“That's right.”

“All right,” said Jim. He pulled the now familiar trick of imagining himself as a Laagi giving gesticulated orders to Squonk.

“Good Squonk,” he thought. “Stop. Wait just where you are for the moment. I may have new orders for you in just a little bit.”

Agreeably, Squonk froze in position, which at the moment was the one best adapted to minutely searching the open floor of the room along a line that was carrying him away from the two Laagi Mary had indicated.

“There. See?” said Mary. “There's no problem in stopping him.”

“Stopping him wasn't what I was worried about,” Jim said. “What I was worried about—”

“Will you please not talk for a few minutes?” said Mary. “These two are definitely unusual. I want to be able to concentrate on them and I can't do that with you jabbering.”

On the verge of arguing, Jim suddenly realized what had really bothered him about the peremptory order had been Mary making sure she had the last word—as usual. He kept his silence accordingly and took a closer look at the two Laagi himself. They were both seated and they were by themselves—a group of two. Not only that, but the space around them was larger than around any of the other groups, as if the other Laagi were politely avoiding any intrusion on them.

The two also gave the impression of being very punctilious in their communication. When one gesticulated, the other did not—of course that was the way it was also more or less, but only more or less, among the other Laagi. But what was unlike anything Jim had seen between these aliens before was that each time one of the two stopped talking, there was a moment of complete motionlessness on the part of both individuals before the one who had not been gesticulating started to reply.

“Did you notice how they pause?” Jim asked Mary.

“Of course,” said Mary. “But there's more than that going on here, different from ordinary Laagi conversation. If you notice, the gestures of these two are slower and more deliberate than those we've been seeing.”

“Maybe they're a couple of old Laagi,” said Jim.

“Perhaps,” murmured Mary quite seriously. “Also, their gestures are more emphatic—look there!”

The one of the two who was currently gesticulating had suddenly pulled his head down completely out of sight into the top skin-folds of his body and ceased movement entirely. After a long moment his head slowly came out once more.

Unexpectedly, Mary laughed; and Jim found himself with the sort of feeling that in the flesh would have signaled a grin. At the same time he was not exactly sure why what they had seen had struck them both as so funny. He finally decided it was the jack-in-the-box effect of the head pulling in that had triggered off the sense of ridiculousness in both Mary and himself. It was as if two human heads of state had been discussing a serious political matter with all the normal solemnity of rhetoric; and one of them had suddenly stood on his head to underline the point he had just made.

In any case, the one who had just pulled in his head—

“Call him ‘A,'” said Jim thoughtfully.

“Call who ‘A'?” demanded Mary.

“The one who just pulled his head in,” said Jim, “and call the other one ‘B.' Now, it looks as if A's made his point and is through arguing for the moment.”

“How do we know they're arguing?” said Mary. “You're right, though. Now, B's starting to talk.”

B was indeed beginning to gesticulate. But its movement were both slow and large, involving much lengthening and shortening of its limbs and body. After a relatively small number of gestures, B also swiftly and definitely pulled his head down out of sight, kept it there for perhaps a full minute, and then stuck it out again. Both Laagi rose from their seats and went off in different directions.

“Some sort of conclusion achieved,” said Mary.

“Or the breakup of a lifelong friendship over some matter of principle—” began Jim. But he was interrupted.

A squonk had come up to Squonk and was running the tips of its tentacles over Squonk's motionless body. Around them, it seemed that every other squonk in view who was not burdened with a chair or otherwise obviously occupied, was also headed in Squonk's direction.

“Squonk, go back to what you were doing!” said Jim hastily.

Squonk started to move. He lifted his head, exchanged a brief tentacle-touch with the other squonk who had been feeling him over, and went back to his careful search of the floor before him. The squonk who had been examining him went away. Those others in the distance who had been headed toward them also turned off in other directions.

“You see?” demanded Jim. “The minute a squonk—or a Laagi—stops doing anything, it attracts attention.”

“You're right,” said Mary briskly. “However, it's all fixed. Now, I've got a report to dictate. Are you ready?”

“Ready as I ever will be,” said Jim.

Mary began dictating. There was some general data on the other Laagi she had observed in communication, in the room they were now in; but the bulk of her report, once she got into it, was to all effects almost a gesture-by-gesture recounting of the exchange between the two Laagi they had just been watching.

Mary's reports, Jim had noted, came out in short, declarative sentences. The words she chose were simple and the meaning unmistakably clear. She did not ramble. She must, thought Jim as he carefully repeated after her, have had considerable experience dictating such reports. The thought, for some unknown reason, reminded him of a question that had occurred to him from time to time lately. He waited until Mary was done to ask it.

“Tell me,” he said then, “when do you sleep?”

“When you do,” answered Mary.

“Oh?” Jim thought this over. “And why don't I ever catch you doing it?”

“Because I don't sleep as much as you do,” said Mary. “I never did sleep much. I could get by on four or five hours a night indefinitely when I was in my body; and I think I can do a lot better now, if I want to. So I just wait until you're asleep before dropping off myself—and only then if there's nothing going on I want to observe.”