The Forever Man (35 page)

“That's right. I know you aren't doing it deliberately; but all the same you've been setting up a situation in which, to take a leaf out of your own deductions, his racial imperative to work himself to death is controlling him.”

“I don't believe it. This is some plan of yours to wind up my work here, so I'll turn you loose to get back to Earth.”

“Sorry,” said Jim. “If you won't believe me, you won't believe me; but I think you've forgotten who controls Squonk. Me. He needs rest and he's going to get it. Have you thought what kind of situation we'd be in if he died? I don't know how we'd go about switching to another squonk or getting back to
AndFriend
.”

He broke off and spoke directly to Squonk through his usual Laagi image.

“Squonk, good Squonk, you can stop searching now. Time to sleep, Squonk, then we'll go right back to finding that key. But for now, Squonk, time to rest.”

(?) said Squonk's emotions.

It was the first time the creature had done anything like trying to communicate directly with the invisible Laagi he now obeyed, and Jim read the unusual action as a sign of considerable confusion and upset in Squonk.

“Sleep!” said Jim. “Squonk, go sleep!”

Squonk, who had stopped searching at Jim's first communication, hesitated. He put his head down, backed up and began searching again over the floor ahead of him, then stopped and stood uncertainly. He looked over at the nearest wall of the room and back at the floor.

“Sleep!” ordered Jim.

Squonk turned toward the wall. He wavered a little on his feet as he went, and as soon as he bumped into the wall itself, he pulled in his head, legs and tentacles all at once and literally fell over backwards. He rocked for a moment and then lay still.

“—What are you doing?” Mary was storming at Jim. There was fury, pain and outrage all at once radiating from her. “You're doing this deliberately to slow me down. I don't believe a word of what you say—”

“Mary,” said Jim. “Squonk's asleep. There's nothing more you can do until he wakes up, except observe from against the wall, here; which you already did, when we first came into this place. So why don't you sleep, too?”

“Sleep? Why should I sleep? Who're you to tell me when I need or want to go to sleep?” An explosion of mixed emotions was riding on her mental voice.

“I'm sorry,” said Jim, “but I'm not going to let you kill Squonk and I'm not going to let you kill yourself. You've already done a mountain of work here. Face it, it actually is time we headed back to Base and Earth.”

“That's what all this is about!” Mary's voice was raw with anger. “It's all a ploy of yours to get me to turn you loose, so you can phase-shift
AndFriend
out from under those metal arches they've got her pinned down with. Well, it's not going to work. We're staying here until I decide my work's done enough to leave. We'll stay years if we have to. We'll stay a lifetime, if necessary.”

“Don't say that,” said Jim as gently as he could. “You'll force me to find a way to get
AndFriend
loose and take her home without paying any attention to what you still need or want to do.”

“Don't try it!” Mary's mental voice was savage and a welter of emotions. “Don't try to fight me, Jim, or you'll find you've bitten off more than you can chew. I mean that! I was only six years old when I knew what I wanted to do—and that was something that had some meaning to it. Can you understand something like that?”

Jim decided not to answer but simply let her talk herself out. And in a moment, sure enough, she went on without needing an answer from him.

“When I was six years old—the age for first grade—I was already beginning to understand what my parents were. Do you know what they were—my mother and father? My mother spent her time killing time with other women as empty-headed as she was. My father was just as empty-headed. He was a real estate salesman, and made money at it—lots of money. And they put in their lives trying to pretend that what they did was of some use, that it made one damn bit of difference to the world. Actually, if they'd died at birth the world would never have gained or lost a thing—except for the fact they had a child.”

She stopped.

“Why don't you say something?” she demanded. “All right, don't answer. I know you're listening. You have to listen to me whether you want to or not, so you might as well learn something. When I was six years old I'd already made up my mind that whatever I did with my life, it'd add up to something. It'd matter to the future of the world whether I lived or died. I wasn't going to be a cipher like my parents. I was going to be someone who did something.”

She paused again. Jim still said nothing.

“And I've stuck to that decision ever since. And I've done what I said I'd do. That's why I couldn't wait to get away from my family and begin to build something on my own. I picked a work and I worked at it. And I built it until it brought me here. And here is where I'm going to stay until I've answered all the important questions about the Laagi. Do you understand that? And you're going to stay with me, and so is Squonk, because I need you both. So don't try to go against me, Jim. I've spent my life taking care of whatever got in my way; and if you get in my way, I'll take care of you. Think of that. And keep thinking about it!”

She stopped. This time it seemed for good. Because she said nothing more; and, after a time, the sensitivity that Jim had been developing to her sleep periods seemed to indicate to him that now, finally, she slept.

As for himself, he had had to take what she said at its face value. She was determined to stay until she killed herself; and end by killing herself, she certainly would, because the job of understanding the Laagi was not something that could be done by a single human, or even by a generation of humans, studying that race. It would take millennia, perhaps, before humanity would finally be able to say that it understood these people with whom it had been locked in battle for over a hundred years. If Mary would only stop to recognize the fact, she would realize that she had already left her mark on the history of the human race by what she had done here so far on the Laagi world. It was not necessary for her to try to do the impossible.

But, clearly, she was not about to recognize that; and she was not willingly going to free him to take
AndFriend
home. That meant he must decide himself what to do to get the ship loose and with both of them aboard it, in spite of her and against her will. No more than she doubted herself, did he doubt he could find a way to do that. But there was a lot yet to be thought over and worked out.

Two days later, Laagi time, Squonk stumbled and fell in the process of searching along the wall of one of those enclosures Mary and Jim had come to call “discussion rooms” from the fact that they seemed to have no other purpose than to provide a place for the Laagi to gather and communicate. Such rooms had become favorite observation places for Mary.

Squonk immediately got back on his feet and resumed searching. But he seemed confused; and, after a moment, he straightened, backed up several times his own length and began to search again over the base of the wall he had just covered. But before he could complete a second search of the same area, he drifted away from the wall and began searching apparently at random out into the open floor where the discussions were going on.

“Squonk!” ordered Jim sharply, “rest. Time to sleep. Stop!”

Squonk obediently rose, headed back toward the wall, pulled his limbs in as he usually did when preparing to sleep, but checked himself before he had rolled over on his back. He extended his limbs again and started blindly searching the base of the wall beside him.

By this time, other squonks in the room were converging upon him. Jim again ordered Squonk to sleep, but now Squonk did not seem to hear him. A moment later, other squonks had surrounded Squonk and were feeling him over with their tentacles.

Fumblingly, Squonk began to search them back, as if they were part of the wall he had just been exploring. The surrounding squonks wrapped their tentacles around his legs and head and tried to push them back into the skin folds on his body from which they emerged. But Squonk struggled to keep these body parts out where they were, his tentacles meanwhile searching, searching, up and down the very tentacles that were trying to compress his body together.

The cluster of squonks had finally attracted the attention of some of the nearby Laagi. One of these left his discussion group and came over, pushing his way among the squonks, who made room for him as soon as they realized the superior life form was there. The Laagi stood over Squonk, and from the waves of emotion Jim picked up from Squonk, he guessed that the Laagi was giving Squonk orders.

“What's the Laagi doing? What's happening?” Mary was asking in the recesses of Jim's mind.

“Hold the questions for now, will you please?” said Jim irritably. “Squonk is being ordered to sleep by the Laagi, but he's not responding, any more than he was responding to me.”

The Laagi turned and reached toward one of the nearby squonks, who immediately stretched out his neck and held it there, while the Laagi vibrated his arm above it, undoubtedly sending some kind of order in the same sort of feather touches Jim had first believed were only a form of praise, when on their first leaving the ship, Squonk had sought out a particular Laagi for what Jim had then thought was only attention. Now Jim suspected that the faint touches of the vibrating Laagi arm were used far more to order than to praise. In fact, their most common use, he now strongly suspected, was to make a major alteration in the current work orders under which a squonk had been operating, and to put it on an entirely new job.

The Laagi waded out of the crowd of squonks and returned to his group. The squonk he had touched dashed off. The other squonks continued to surround Squonk, although they had now ceased to try to push his legs and head back into his body and simply contented themselves with stroking all of his body that was not protected by the shell on his back.

This stroking seemed to have at least a partial calming effect on Squonk, although he still tried, erratically and feebly, to search any surface that came within reach of his tentacles. The squonk that had left returned, riding a sort of flat-bed truck or raft which floated just above the floor, held there by some force, perhaps antigravity, perhaps something that merely repelled the floor's surface.

The other squonks coaxed and pushed Squonk up onto this raft and the squonk which had brought it drove it off, with Squonk now trying to search the bed of the raft.

They left the building, moved down one of the green pathways and through a tangle of other, connecting paths into a hospital building. Here, the raft was driven to a large, dormitory-like room Jim and Mary had not found in other such hospitals they had visited, although they had never really searched any of them in detail. Their destination now was a ward, plainly, for squonks only. Long rows of rafts with unmoving squonks on them, like the one on which Squonk was being carried, floated just above the floor of the room; and the driver of their raft maneuvered it into position on the end of one row. The driver then departed, leaving the raft there, with Squonk still mindlessly searching the surface of the vehicle's platform.

Almost immediately another squonk appeared, carrying what looked like a large piece of mosquito netting, and threw it over both Squonk and the raft. Looking out through the meshes, which were so large and flimsy they barely obscured the view, Jim noticed what he had been too concerned with Squonk to notice before; and that was that a good share of the other vehicle-beds had their occupants enclosed by similar nettings.

Almost immediately, the netting began to radiate a mild heat, and this seemed to have a calming effect on Squonk. He pulled in his extendible body parts, stood for a little while unmoving, then rolled over on his back and abandoned wakefulness.

“He's asleep?” asked Mary. It was the first word she had said since Jim had peremptorily shut her up in the discussion room.

“Yes,” said Jim. “Which means we're all right for the present.”

“Why only for the present?” Mary echoed.

“Because Squonk'll either die or get well,” said Jim. “If he dies, we're stuck in a dead body—and we've seen what they do with dead bodies here. We'll probably end up in some trash pit or incinerator—I'll bet on the incinerator rather than the pit.”

“And if he lives?” Mary's voice was controlled and even.

“If he lives, I can imagine some Laagi checking up on what made him sick enough to end up here. I've no idea how detailed the information might be that a Laagi can get out of a squonk. Have you? But if the Laagi learns that all this time, Squonk's been searching for something that's missing from
AndFriend
, and that he's been getting his orders from a Laagi that's not there in the flesh, what do you think's going to happen?”

“I've no idea,” said Mary, still levelly. “But I imagine nothing good—for us. You were right and I was wrong about overworking Squonk. Aside from that, everything I said earlier still goes. And now, since there's nothing much for me to observe here, and because I really could use some sleep right now, I'm going to fold up. Wake me if you need me.”

She stopped talking, and a moment later Jim felt sure that he was once more picking up the mental signals from her that indicated she was truly slumbering.

He himself was wide awake with no desire to sleep at all. It was strange to be so alert, while his two companions were out of it, so to speak. They were asleep, around him all the other invalid squonks were asleep and no squonk attendants were in the room. He was literally alone with his thoughts.

He let them run free, accordingly. They flitted from speculation over how long Squonk would take to get rested, and how long Mary would take to rest up; and ended up speculating about things he and she had observed in their exploration of this Laagi city. Eventually, they ended up in speculation about the Laagi themselves.