The Forever Man Read online

  “We won’t guess,” said Mary firmly. “There’s no indication so far if it’s bisexual, unisexual, or what, let alone something else. As I say, I call him Squonk because the janitor in our apartment building was named Skwaconsky—and—we all called him Squonk. But it remains to be seen what, if any, sex this creature is.”

  “Yeah,” said Jim. He had remembered his anger toward her and was once more being stirred by it. The tenor of his feelings must have been clear to Mary, for she said nothing more.

  For the first time, however, he realized he had not looked beyond the walls of the ship, except for that first view from the center of a flat, empty area of what looked like concrete, except that it was the light brown color of sandy soil on Earth. It was an irregular area, and beyond its borders were dark green strips that seemed to be pathways or roads. Beyond these in turn were beehive-shaped buildings of sizes varying from something the size of a single-family house to something that might have covered the largest sports arena on Earth, all the color of honey. These structures seemed to merge together in the distance, either because they were actually connected or because his unaided vision could no longer see the spaces between them. Overhead the sky had a light greenish cast.

  Moving about on the dark green strips were more Squonks and other figures that varied amazingly in size and length of limb but went on two legs and were vaguely human-shaped.

  Automatically Jim mentally ordered the main screen in front of his command chair to show the outside scene with telescopic magnification, so that he could get a closer look at the humanlike figures. But nothing happened—and he was suddenly aware that this, too, must be part of what he was blocked off from in his ability to control the ship.

  For a second he was tempted to ask Mary to let him at least have control of the screens, if she could without setting him completely free. But the thought was followed almost immediately by a feeling of revulsion at the thought of asking any favors.

  Mentally, he forced himself to put his anger aside.

  “Are those Laagi, those critters outside there that don’t look like Squonk?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said. “Would you like to watch them close up?”

  “It doesn’t make any difference to me,” he said.

  “It does to me,” she said sadly. “I’d give a lot to be able to see them up close, in the tank of the screen. I’d like to examine the whole city around us that way. But I can’t without turning you loose.”

  “That’s right,” he answered grimly. “What makes you so sure they’re Laagi, then?”

  “It was some like that who came aboard us out in space, before they locked AndFriend in the midst of them and shifted her here. Only two or three of them have come and looked inside the ship since she’s been here. I don’t know whether the ones who came and looked at her here were high officials or scientists, or specialists of some kind, or just that the general Laagi public’s not interested in us. But those were all who came.”

  “Specialists or people with rank,” said Jim. “I’d bet on it. You don’t think we’d let the general public swarm over a Laagi ship we’d captured? And our general public’d certainly be eager to do just that.”

  “There’s always the danger of anthromorphosizing,” she answered. “We don’t really know them enough even to guess at a reason they’d do anything.”

  “No reason not to, either,” he said.

  They went back into silence. Jim because he did not want to talk to her any more than he had to; and she, he presumed, because she knew how he was feeling and did not want to give him any unnecessary chances to tell her what he thought of her—and the general and the people behind him. But most of all of the general and her, who may have been under pressure to do what they had done to him, but who had certainly agreed to betray him.

  Squonk continued to go over the interior of the ship, and Jim found himself becoming fascinated with the creature. He had never in his life seen such a thorough search for whatever should not be there. Within the captive atmosphere of the ship—even when that captive atmosphere was that of an alien planet—there was no way for dirt to accumulate. But the almost microscopic search of every surface in the ship by Squonk was as thorough as if it was cleaning an operating theater in a hospital; and, compact as a fighter ship had to be, there were endless niches and crannies to be searched into.

  Apparently, while dirt could not find its way onto the surfaces of the ship’s interior, tarnish resulting from contact with the unusual atmosphere was possible. Jim saw Squonk several times fish back in under its shell with the end of one tentacle and come out with a small spongy-ended blue rod perhaps fifteen millimeters in length; and that spongy end, rubbed over any metallic surface, made it brighter. Then the blue rod was tucked away again.

  Interesting as this was, even more interesting was a fact it took Jim a little while to notice—and that was that Squonk’s legs seemed to lengthen or shorten to order, to make it easier for it to get into particular crannies.

  “Jim.” The voice of Mary interrupted him as he was fascinatedly watching this happen for perhaps the dozenth time.

  “What?” he asked absently, his animosity for the moment forgotten.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know more about these Squonks, and the Laagi, and everything on this world?”

  He did not answer immediately, thinking it over. Of course he wanted to know. But saying so would almost sound as if he regretted his words earlier.

  “I know, Jim.” Mary’s voice was sad, but also it was weary. “You’re absolutely right. We treated you terribly from the beginning. You don’t even know half of what we did to you. We deliberately put you under mental stress; we held you back from the only thing you loved; all of it done deliberately to break you down. We fogged your mind up with drugs, and we finally sent you out under the illusion you were volunteering to do something when actually you were sent to do something entirely different.”

  He did not answer.

  “If it helps—and I know it doesn’t,” she went on after a while, “I’d never have done it that way, knowing you the way I do now, knowing how much AndFriend means to you, how much space means to you. I couldn’t do it, if I was asked to do it over again, to anyone. It was the worst sort of misuse of a human being. In a good cause—but misuse all the same—”

  "Nevermind," he said. “All right. I feel the way I feel. But we won’t talk about it anymore. You want to study the Laagi and you need my help. I won’t fight you on the fact that it’s a good thing to do. I won’t run away from what we can do here. You’ll have to trust me that I mean that, meanwhile. You can believe it or not, but if I’d been told the truth from the beginning I’d probably have thought you all were crazy to suppose we could even get to a Laagi world alive, but I’d have agreed to try. It’s not that different from what I signed up to do in the first place. It’s just sticking my neck way out in a different way.”

  He stopped. She did not answer immediately.

  “Well?” he said. “Did that convince you? Do you trust me enough now to turn me loose?”

  “No,” she said. The thought from her was like a sigh. “I do believe you, Jim. But I’ve got my own duty, and I can’t let you go just on your word alone. You’ve got to do something first to prove it.”

  It took a few seconds for the import of her words to sink in on him.

  “Prove it—” he echoed. “How can I do something like that, hogtied the way you’ve got me?”

  “By wanting enough to be a squonk to make something work.”

  “Wanting to be a squonk?”

  “Yes.”

  His mind whirled.

  “Why, for God’s sake—even if I could be one, what makes you want me to?”

  “So we can really study the Laagi, up close. So we can go into their buildings—into their homes, if they have homes. So we can move around here as invisible observers—”

  “Hold on!” he said. Her words had been rising on a tide of enthusiasm that
he mistrusted. “I think I know what you’ve got in mind. You want me to become part of this critter the same sort of way you made me part of AndFriend, is that it? So I can travel with him when he leaves this place and we can get a look at what’s outside?”

  “We, not just you,” she said. “Where you go, I’ll be going, too, of course.”

  “All right. We. Just how do you figure to make me part of an alien animal like that, even if I agree? It’s not a piece of nonliving metal.”

  “I’m not sure it’ll work, but I think it might if you’ll do your part,” she said patiently. “You see, we still really don’t know how Raoul’s mind—what’s left of it—became part of La Chasse Gallerie. All we ever had was our guess that two things, his love for his ship and his physical contact with it over a period of time, caused the two to blend. Even the physical contact may not have been necessary. That, like the scrapings from AndFriend we put under your skin, may be only a sort of black magic, a symbolic sort of thing that helps the mind believe it can migrate to what it’s touching. But we do know that the mind has to want to go where it goes—want it badly enough to make the change. Everything else may be so much mumbo jumbo, but you wanted AndFriend more than you wanted life.”

  “That’s true enough,” he said soberly. For a second, he remembered his exhaustion and his desperation just before he had left his human body behind for what he now was.

  “Also,” Mary went on, “there could be other factors we can’t even guess at. The fact you and Raoul had spent time in interstellar space may have something to do with the ability to move your mind. The fact both of you and your ships had fought for your lives together could have something to do with it. For all those reasons, there’s not much more than a hope you can shift your mind into this alien animal, as you call it. But I’ve got a few things I haven’t told you about. We knew I’d be helpless, physically, once I inhibited your command of AndFriend. So, the command that took your ability to control away was designed with exceptions—what you could call holes in it; or perhaps “windows” would be a better word. If I turn you loose to use a particular window—and I can with the proper hypnotic command—you can give one, but only one, series of commands through it; and one of those windows lets you use your ship’s robot.”

  “The robot?”

  “That’s right. But don’t get your hopes up,” she said. “You’ll only be able to tell it to do certain things, none of which are going to help you get back command of the ship as a whole, or do anything to help you to phaseshift it. As it happens, most of what the robot needs to do to try putting your mind into Squonk has already been done. Before we left Earth it was equipped with scrapings from the interior of AndFriend, and these’ve been stored in him all this time. What you’ll be able to do if I open one of those windows for you is use Fingers to inject some of that scraping under the skin of Squonk.”

  “Inject? What makes you think, even if Fingers can do it, that Squonk isn’t going to feel the scrapings being injected and immediately head to the Laagi equivalent of a veterinarian to have them taken out?”

  “We don’t, of course,” said Mary. “But the scrapings are microscopic, and the process of injection wouldn’t be felt by a human. We just have to hope it won’t be felt by Squonk, either.”

  Jim sat thinking about it.

  “Craziest thing I ever heard of,” he grumbled. “If, if, and if… if right is left and up is down, then maybe we’ll all turn into orange trees with the next word I speak.”

  “That’s not the point,” said Mary, still patiently. “The point is, will you try it? Will you try, honestly try, to consciously move your mind into Squonk?”

  “You’ll turn me loose if I do?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I’d start to believe that you wanted to stay and find out about the Laagi, if you try—really try. Remember, if you’re not trying, I’ll know it. That’s the advantage of my mind being in yours, the way it is.”

  “I’ll try, of course,” said Jim. “I don’t have much choice.”

  “Jim, of course you’ve got a choice! If you simply sit here refusing to do anything, and I finally become convinced you never are going to help, and so we’ll never learn anything more about the Laagi and Squonk and the rest of it than we do now, then I’ll turn you loose and we’ll go home with that. Maybe back there there’s some other pilot who’ll bring me out to be captured again and—”

  “That’s a low blow,” he said.

  “Well,” she answered, “if you’re the one that doesn’t want to stay, can you complain if someone else does want to?”

  “I told you I wanted to stay,” said Jim. “It’s just that—forget it. I’m willing to try putting myself into this creature with the maniac housekeeping tendencies. What do I do first?”

  “Nothing,” she answered. “First, I have to open up the window for you to command Fingers to inject the scrapings. Which I will now do. Go-Cane! Now, first you’ll find you can give the robot the order to inject the material. But it’ll have to wait for a chance to do it when Squonk’s close but unsuspecting. Second, once the material’s in Squonk you try to make the connection. Ready to try it?”

  “Ready,” answered Jim.

  The robot was standing motionless tucked into his storage niche at the back end of AndFriend’s interior, as it had been ever since it had last been put to use. Squonk had started its cleaning down the side of the ship from the entry port and would apparently be cleaning up the other side in due course. Before that he would reach the robot and clean it.

  Jim concentrated on the small scrapings from AndFriend that were to be injected into Squonk. He must, he told himself, have been feeling them there in the robot all the time, but paid no attention to them since Fingers himself was part of AndFriend. But now that he knew they were there…

  With the ability to feel, rather than see the ship around him, he searched the robot for something that was not part of Fingers’ normal working equipment. It would be very tiny, but different… ah, he had located it. It was in a tiny drawer hidden under the end of one of the multiple arms used by the robot, at the end of the lowest of the extensions at the end of the arm extensions, capable of taking as attachment any number of small tools.

  The scrapings were from the control console in front of the pilot’s seat; and they were already loaded into a tiny, hollow, diamond-pointed needle that should be able to penetrate any living substance, even horn or bone, to a depth, if necessary, of fifteen millimeters.

  Jim’s point of view was now within the scrapings them selves, inside the robot. Once he would have told Mary about this, but now there was a barrier between them. If there were things she had seen fit not to tell him, he thought, there could be things he saw fit not to tell her. From the motionless, silent mechanical, Jim watched the alien cleaner getting closer and closer. Even at the slow, careful, deliberate pace Squonk was maintaining, it was now very near to the robot.

  “All right,” said the voice of Mary. “Prepare the robot to inject the material. Tell it. Say ‘on the words “Go in,” inject the ship’s material, now in the second finger of your lowest right hand, into the living creature before you. Inject to a depth of nine millimeters into the upper part of one of the folds of living tissue on the creature’s left leg, just below the shell on its back. Do this as quickly as you can and if possible without attracting the creature’s attention. Then return to “Still” position.’ “

  “I can give the order with a lot less words than that,” said Jim, still holding his point of view inside Fingers.

  “Just repeat the words I gave you, please,” said Mary. “On the words ‘Go in,’ inject…“

  “I remember. You don’t have to go through it again,” said Jim.

  “Good,” said Mary. “Because unless you use the words I just gave you, the window won’t work and the robot won’t act. So you’ve been warned. If your memory does fail you, just pause, and I’ll prompt you. I’ll also tell you when to start giving the command. So
wait for my order.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” said Jim.

  Mary ignored the emphasis on Jim’s last word. Together they waited. Squonk finally reached the robot and began to search its head for anything needing cleaning.

  “Ready now,” Mary’s voice sounded in Jim’s mind. “All right—say ‘Go—One, now!’ “

  “Go—One, now!” repeated Jim.

  Even though he was watching for it, Jim barely saw the movement of the hand with the needle. It was out and in, the finger with the material having seemed to barely approach the back of Squonk’s leg—and then the robot continued to stand in perfect stillness for the rest of the grooming being given it by Squonk.

  Squonk showed no sign of noticing what had been done to it. It continued with its cleaning.

  “Jim?” said Mary. “Jim, did it work? I’m blind, all of a sudden.”

  “It worked. But we’re in a strange country,” said Jim. “Now we’ve got to find our way to the capital city.”

  “What?”

  “Come on, now,” said Jim. “A scientist and technologist like you ought to be able to figure out that one. We’re in Squonk all right, but its body tissue’s not human—it’s unfamiliar territory. Now I’ve got to find my way to wherever its mind lives and in its mind hook up with its vision. You didn’t think of this.”

  “We thought of it, but… ” Mary’s voice was oddly distant, without being any harder to hear for that reason. “We thought it’d either work or not work, since any part of AndFriend acts like eyes and ears for you, like every part of La Chasse Gallerie does for Raoul. So once we got an alien injected, we thought we’d either be able to get the input of its senses right away, or the try’d be a failure.”

  “Well, it’s not a failure. But I can’t see, hear, smell or whatever—yet,” said Jim. “I’d say that’s because I haven’t got all the parts connected together, the way I had with AndFriend. Here, I’ve got a little part of myself buried in opaque, surrounding alien material. What I’m seeing is that opaque, surrounding alien material. Anyway, I think that’s it. Sit back and let me work on this.”