The Forever Man Page 9

  “Please go on in, ma’am, sirs.”

  Mary led them through the inner door, and for the second time Jim stepped into the enormous room that he had looked down into only from galleries for nearly twelve months. It was the same as it had been, the last time he had seen it. The plastic tent was still in place. But Mary led them to it, pulled back a flap of the plastic and let them into the enclosed interior which was lit by its own lamps hanging just under the fabric of its roof.

  By that light, the two ships Jim had seen on his first trip here still lay, side by side. La Chasse Gallerie was still a slashed and broken wreck. AndFriend was also exactly as she had been when he had last seen her. Or was she? She looked the same but there was an air about her as if she had just been washed or, at least, dusted.

  All Jim’s emotions called on him to head for her closed entry port at a run. But he was almost superstitiously afraid of something going wrong with his new right of access to her if he even showed his eagerness to be back inside her.

  “She looks good,” he commented, stopping because Mary and Mollen had both stopped, a good ten paces from either ship.

  “She’s been updated,” said Mollen. “You’re going to have to learn a lot of new things about her. And no, you can’t go aboard her now.”

  Jim had half-expected it, but the disappointment nonetheless was like a fist, hard, in the face.

  “Oh?” he said, “When can I, then, sir?”

  He looked at Mollen and then at Mary.

  “You’ll need some retraining first. We’ve got a special job for you to do,” Mary answered. “That’s one of the reasons AndFriend’s been improved the way she has. I’m afraid it could be a few weeks or more yet—”

  “A few weeks!” In spite of his good intentions, the words, in just the tone he had told himself he would avoid, popped out of Jim’s mouth.

  “I’m afraid so.” Mary turned. “Come along to my office, where we can talk.”

  They went out through a flap in another side of the tent and crossed the open floor to the bottom level of offices in the tower. Mary entered one of these, which had a trim, white-haired lady behind a desk, and chairs set up plainly for visitors, chairs which were presently empty.

  “There’ve been a number of phone calls,” said the lady.

  “No calls for a little while yet,” said Mary. “Tell anyone with urgencies it’ll be an hour or so before I can start making calls back. Come on, Jim, General.”

  She led them to an inner office which was spacious, with a desk even larger than Mollen’s and padded chairs even more comfortable and spacious than those in the general’s office But every available surface in the office except the floor itself was stacked with papers, and the chairs did not face the desk as they had in Mollen’s private office, but were in a rough circle facing each other.

  Mary took one of these, the general slipped into the one next to her, and Jim took one across from the two of them.

  “Do you want to talk to him first, Louis?” said Mary to the general. “Or shall I?”

  “I’ll say a few words first,” Mollen answered. He looked hard at Jim. “Jim, we’ve got plans to send you into space farther, faster, and for a longer time than anyone human—except Raoul—ever went. But it’s not going to be easy.”

  “I didn’t sign up for the Frontier thinking any part of it’d be easy, sir,” said Jim. “Where’s this you want me to go?”

  “That, you won’t be told until just before you’re ready to leave,” said Mollen. “But I’ll tell you this much. You’re going out around Laagi territory, and your ship’s been adapted accordingly. For one thing we’ve gone back to fusion engines for her.”

  “Fusion?” said Jim.

  Fusion engines had been discarded newly forty years before when an improved fission engine design made them no longer necessary. The drawback to fusion engines was that there was no possible way to shield them completely in something as small as a fighter ship; they had caused some bad physical effects in the pilots that flew ships with them, the least of which had been guaranteed sterility after a relatively few number of missions.

  “You’re going to make a Raoul Penard out of me, then, are you, sir?” said Jim, grinning.

  “I wish we could,” answered Mollen somberly. “Believe me, if it was possible for me to snap my fingers and turn you into something like Raoul, I’d do it. But we still don’t know how his mind got into the actual nonliving body of that ship of his, and maybe we’ll never know.”

  Jim himself sobered. He had automatically assumed that they would not be sending him out in a fusion ship unless they could do so safely, without the harmful effects the older ships of that type had had on their pilots. For the first time it occurred to him that the mission might be important enough so that they would expect him to put up with the effects. He thought of the paper he had signed in Mollen’s office.

  “It’s not as bad as you may be thinking, Jim,” said Mary. “We haven’t found out how Raoul Penard became part of a ship, and I don’t know when we will. I’m sure some people will someday—that is, provided Raoul stays around long enough. But while we haven’t answered that question, we’ve found out a number of valuable things we didn’t know before. Things that’ll make your mission possible.”

  “What things?”

  “I’m sorry,” Mary answered. “I’m going to have to answer you pretty much the way Louis just did, when you asked where you’d be going. You’ll get answers to most questions like that only when you’ve reached the point of needing to know. Everything about this is as secret as it’s possible to make it. Specifically, in answer to what you just asked, you’ll be finding out about these things as we work with you to get you ready for the mission.”

  “I can tell you a little more,” said Mollen. “Most of the past year’s been spent trying to find out what happened to Raoul from the last time the other pilots in his Wing saw him to the time we picked up his signals coming back through Laagi territory. But we know now he found something, in that time. Wherever he went, he ended up by finding something very interesting there; and our guesses about what it is are secret as hell. But we’re pretty sure it’s beyond the far side of Laagi space territory—in the other direction. Down-galaxy.”

  “And I’m to go see what it was and come back to tell you?” Jim said.

  “That’s about the size of it,” said Mollen. “Something else. We can’t be sure, but we think he was—that is, La Chasse Gallerie, with him being part of it, was—actually in Laagi hands for a while.”

  “They had him?” Jim stared. “What makes you think that?”

  Mollen looked at Mary, who nodded. A procedure that jarred on Jim, slightly, since it seemed to him it should be the other way around.

  “We’ve found a route of communication, so to speak, with him, with Raoul,” Mollen said. “Or rather, with what there is of him, which is mainly memories. The problem’s been that he suppressed the bad memories and remembered only the good ones. But Mary’s people did finally find a way to stimulate him to remember some of the things he’d rather forget—and one of those was of being on the surface of a planet, and examined by Laagi.”

  Mollen stopped, and looked at Mary again. She took over the conversation, briskly. “Possibly they had him on show there, in a sense. At any rate, we finally got him to reminisce about it, but what we could learn was limited. The trouble is, as you know, the part of his mind that came back isn’t capable of direct communication. The best we can do is stimulate him to talk out loud to himself. So the most we achieved that way was to prod his memory about this, and listen while he relived it, in his own mind.”

  “But that could be quite a bit,” said Jim.

  “It was. But with parts missing. Tantalizing parts,” Mary said.

  The arch of her eyebrows straightened out as the inner ends of them came together in a small frown when she concentrated. Jim had had a third grade teacher who had done the same thing.

  “He was talking to hi
mself, so he only referred to things that happened. He didn’t describe them or spell them out in any way. We can be fairly sure that for a while at least, he was essentially a Laagi prisoner. They’d be as fascinated as we are with the question of how a ship could absorb the mind of its pilot. They’re probably the ones who removed his dead body for examination. Which means that now, if they didn’t before, they’re one up on us by knowing what we’re like physically; and, since Laagi ships always destroy themselves if it looks like they’re going to be captured, we still don’t have any idea of their physical make-up.”

  “But you said he got away from them,” prodded Jim, more interested in what Raoul had done than in what the Laagi might have found out about him.

  “Well, probably,” said Mary, “they didn’t realize he could move the ship with his mind alone—and that’s something else we also haven’t yet found out; how he could do that. But his engines had almost certainly been destroyed before the Laagi got him; and so it undoubtedly took them by surprise when he suddenly simply decided to go home, lifted off from wherever he was, and headed back.”

  Jim shook his head.

  “This…” he began and ran out of words. “How does this all tie in with me?”

  “As I say,” said Mary, “we’ve found a way to stimulate his memory…”

  She touched one of the keys on her desk top console and they heard sounds of bird songs, leaves rustling in the wind, branches creaking against each other and, under all, the chuckling of running water.

  “What we did was record noises from up around the part of Canada where he grew up as a boy,” she said. “It was a sort of sonic, or if you like the word better, electronic way of medicating him, so he’d tell us what he remembered. From what we heard, we isolated more and more sound-cues until at last we were able to trigger off memories like the one that we think refers to his being in Laagi hands.”

  Jim nodded, still unsure about what this might have to do with him.

  “We’ll be using a developed version of the same techniques to put your mind as much in touch with his as possible,” Mary went on.

  “We want you to be able to think like Penard, think as if you were him,” said Mollen.

  “At the same time,” said Mary, “we’re going to use a variant of the same techniques to put your mind and mine as much in touch as possible. Now, with living human bodies like the two of us have, we can be given chemical medication by already established means—”

  She broke off, pressed a button of her desk console and spoke into the communications grill beside the console.

  “Ola,” she said, “has Dr. Neiss come in yet?”

  The voice of the white-haired lady said something unintelligible from the grille.

  “Dr. Neiss?” said Mary sharply. “He’s not there yet?”

  More unintelligible response from the grille.

  “Well, call me when Dr. Neiss gets here.” Once more the emphasis on the title of “doctor” could be heard in Mary’s voice. “Thanks, Ola. Yes. No, that’s all right. Just remember to announce him as I said.”

  She looked from the grille back at Jim and Mollen.

  “Dr. Neiss is someone you’ll meet in a moment, Jim. He’ll be taking care of you from now on. You go to him for any thing medical—even if it’s just a finger you cut on a piece of paper opening an envelope.”

  “You hear that, Jim?” said Mollen. “That’s an order. Come to think of it, you’d better remember that anything Mary tells you to do from now on has the effect of a military order from me.”

  “Yes sir,” said Jim. “But—”

  He broke off, went back and tried again.

  “Forgive me,” he said to Mary, “but I don’t understand why you and I need to have our minds put together, or however you say it?”

  “Simply so I can monitor your contact with Penard as fully as possible—” She broke off as the speaker grille on her console made noises again.

  “Yes?” Mary said. “Well, send him in, then.”

  The door from the outer office opened and a short, thin man in his late twenties or early thirties, with straight black hair and a sharp face, walked into the office. He leaned a little forward with his upper body as he walked, as if he would pugnaciously make the most of his height.

  “This is Dr. Amos Neiss,” said Mary. Jim got to his feet, uncertain as to how he should greet the newcomer. Neiss came up to him and they shook hands. Neiss’s grip was firm and energetic to the point of nervousness, like the rest of his appearance.

  “So you’re Jim Wander,” Neiss said. His voice had a slight upper East Coast edge to it.

  “That’s right,” said Jim.

  They sat down, Neiss in the chair at Jim’s right.

  “I take it we’re ready to go, then?” Neiss asked Mary.

  “Ready, yes,” said Mary. “That doesn’t mean we can start in the next five minutes—”

  The speaker grille interrupted her again.

  “Oh yes,” said Mary to it. “I forgot to tell you I’d asked him to come in this morning, too. Send him in.”

  The door opened once more. This time the man that came in was large-framed and a little overweight, even for his size. His face was square and blunt-nosed, under graying brown hair.

  “Colin, take a seat, will you?” Mary said, with more warmth in her voice than when she had introduced Neiss. “This is Jim Wander. Jim, this is Colin Eastoi. He’ll be sitting at my desk here while I’m spending time working with you and the doctor.”

  Colin walked heavily over to shake hands with Jim and take the chair on Jim’s other side.

  “So,” he said. He had an unexpected bass voice that seemed at odds with his easy-going face. “We’re all ready to start?”

  “That’s what Amos was just asking,” answered Mary. “So I’m glad you’re here. How soon can you pick up the reins for me?”

  “Right this moment, if you want,” said Colin. “My department’s been running itself for the past few weeks. Oh, you’ll have to bring me up-to-date on the last twenty-four hours or so, I suppose, if there’s things there I’ve got a need to know.”

  “We can do that the rest of today,” said Mary. “Tomorrow—”

  She switched her gaze to Amos Neiss.

  “—we’ll begin the lab work, Jim and I, with you,” she said.

  “I could make some preliminary tests on Colonel Wander today,” said Neiss. “That way—”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Mary. “He’s a human being and he needs a little time, just like the rest of us, to make the transition. What you can do is have lunch with him and lay out our work schedule for him, so if he has any suggestions, he can make them. Jim, you’ve got to give this work your wholehearted efforts. So if there’s something about what Amos has in mind you don’t like, tell us; and if it’s adjustable, we’ll adjust it. You remember that, Amos—we tailor around Jim, not around me, let alone around you and your staff.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Amos.

  Jim was watching the other man out of the corner of his eyes. Amos Neiss’s general appearance and the tone of his voice did not promise as easy an agreement as his words did.

  “Then,” said Mary, she looked at Mollen, “as far as I’m concerned, we can break up this meeting. General?”

  “Fine, far as I’m concerned,” Mollen grunted, getting to his feet. He was looking more tired than Jim had ever seen him look, and older.

  So Jim spent the morning happily running and working out, topping it all off with a game of handball. Then, feeling full of glowing good health, he went off to the Club to lunch with Amos Neiss.

  He was more than a little curious about the man, under whose auspices, apparently, both he and Mary were to be put through a training period. But when he actually came to the lunch he found Amos Neiss as sharp-faced as ever and concerned with talking about only one topic—the things he would require of Jim.

  “You’ve got it all straight, then?” said Neiss after what amounted to a m
onologue, and which had lasted through the main course of the meal to the point where they had just ordered dessert.

  “Right. There’s only one problem,” Jim said. “You’ll have to make some time for me each day, for exercising.”

  “Exercising? Well,” said Neiss, “well, I suppose. We could give you an hour before we begin in the morning.”

  “I’ll need more like three hours,” Jim said. He knew a bargainer when he met one.

  “We can’t possibly let you play for that much time,” said Neiss. “You don’t understand how crucial these tests and routines are. Oh, by the way, speaking of tests, I talked to Mary this morning after you left. You can come in after we leave here and we can use this afternoon to get some of the tests done for your preliminary profile.—"

  “Oh? Fine,” said Jim. “Would you excuse me for a minute? I just remembered I forgot to tell the switchboard operator at the front desk of the Club that I’d be here in the dining room. I’m expecting a call. It may have come, and there may be a message for me there. Be right back.”

  He got up and vanished before Neiss could object. Outside the dining room, however, he headed for a row of phones, and put through a call to Mary’s office.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel, she’s at lunch,” said the voice of the white-haired lady.

  “Look,” said Jim, “just in case she’s there and just not taking calls, will you tell her it’s vital I speak to her now? This is Jim Wander. She knows I wouldn’t call like this without good reason.”

  “Well… just a minute…”

  Silence took over at the far end of the line. The screen that had lit up to show the white-haired lady went suddenly back to a silvery-gray opaqueness. Jim waited.

  Abruptly the screen cleared to show the face of Mary.

  “What is it, Jim?” She sounded annoyed.

  “Amos Neiss just told me that you’d agreed with him he could start making some tests on me this afternoon. I just thought I’d check and make sure you actually did agree. He was careful not to say specifically that he’d got your permission.”