Destiny Doll (5 page)

The tentacles lifted, undulating like a basketful of snakes. The hoarse voice came out of a mouth which the tentacles surrounded.

"My legs are short," it said. "I sink. They do not carry me. With them I only churn up sand. I dig with them a deeper pit beneath me."

Two of the tentacles, with eyes attached to their tips, were aimed directly at me. They looked me up and down.

"I can hoist you out of there."

"It would be a useless gesture," the creature said. "I'd bog down again."

The tentacles which served as eye-stalks moved up and down, measuring me.

"You are large," it croaked; "Have you also strength?"

"You mean to carry you?"

"Only to a place," the creature said, "where there is firmness under me."

"I don't know of such a place," I said.

"You do not know . . . Then you are not a native of this planet."

"I am not," I said. "I had thought, perhaps, that you . . .

"Of this planet, sir?" it asked. "No self-respecting member of my race would deign to defecate upon such a planet."

I squatted down to face him.

"How about the ship?" I asked. "If I could get you back up the dune to it . . ."

"It would not help," he told me. "There is nothing there."

"But there must be. Food and water . . ."

And I was, I must admit, considerably interested in the water.

"No need of it," he said. "I travel in my second self and I need no food or water. Slight protection from the openness of space and a little heat so my living tissues come to no great harm."

For the love of God, I asked myself, what was going on? He was in his second self and while I wondered what it might be all about, I was hesitant to ask. I knew how these things went. First surprise or horror or amazement that there could exist a species so ignorant or so inefficient that it did not have the concept, the stammering attempt to explain the basics of it, followed by a dissertation on the advantages of the concept and the pity that was felt for ones who did not have it Either that or the entire thing was taboo and not to be spoken of and an insult to even hint at what it might entail.

And that business about his living tissues. As if there might be more to him than simply living tissues.

It was all right, of course. A man runs into some strange things when he wanders out in space, but when he runs into them he can usually dodge them or disregard them and here I could do neither.

I had to do something to help this creature out, although for the life of me I couldn't figure just how I could help him much. I could pick him up and lug him back to where the others waited, but once I'd got him there he'd be no better off than he was right here. But I couldn't turn about and walk away and simply leave him there. He at least deserved the courtesy of someone demonstrating that they cared what happened to him.

From the time I had seen the ship and had realized that it was newly crashed, the idea had arisen, of course, that aboard it I might find food and water and perhaps other articles that the four of us could use. But now, I admitted, the entire thing was a complete and total washout. I couldn't help this creature and he was no help to us and the whole thing wound up as just another headache and being stuck with him.

"I can't offer you much," I told him. "There are four of us, myself and three others. We have no food or water—absolutely nothing."

"How got you here?" he asked.

I tried to tell him how we had gotten there and as I groped and stumbled for a way to say it, I figured that I was just wasting my time. After all, what did it really matter how we had gotten there? But he seemed to understand.

"Ah, so," he said.

"So you can see how little we can do for you," I said. "But you would essay to carry me to this place where the others are encamped?"

"Yes, I could do that."

"You would not mind?"

"Not at all," I told him, "if you'd like it that way."

I did mind, of course. It would be no small chore to wrestle him across the sand dunes. But I couldn't quite see myself assessing the situation and saying the hell with it and then walking out on him.

"I would like it very much," the creature said. "Other life is comfort and aloneness is not good. Also in numbers may lie strength. One can never tell."

"By the way," I said, "my name is Mike. I am from a planet called the Earth, out in the Carina Cygnus arm."

"Mike," he said, trying it out, hooting the name so it sounded like anything but Mike. "Is good. Rolls easy on the vocal cords. The locale of your planet is a puzzle to me. The terms I've never heard. The position of mine means nothing to you, too. And my name? My name is complicated matter involving identity framework that is of no consequence to people but my own. Please, you pick a name for me. You can call me what you want. Short and simple, please."

It had been a little crazy, of course, to get started on this matter of our names. The funny thing about it was that I'd not intended to. It was something that had just come out of me, almost instinctively. I had been somewhat surprised when I'd heard myself telling him my name. But now that it had been done, it did make the situation a bit more comfortable. We no longer were two alien beings that had stumbled across one another's paths. It gave each of us, it seemed, a greater measure of identity.

"How about Hoot?" I asked. And I could have kicked myself the minute I had said it. For it was not the best name in the world and he would have had every reason for resenting it. But he didn't seem to. He waved his tentacles around in a snaky sort of way and repeated the name several times.

"Is good," he finally said. "Is excellent for creature such as me."

"Hello, Mike," he said.

"Hello, Hoot," I told him.

I slung the rifle on my shoulder and got my feet well planted and reached down to get both arms around him. Finally I managed to hoist him to the other shoulder. He was heavier than he looked and his body was so rounded that it was hard to get a grip on him. But I finally got him settled and well-balanced and started up the dune.

I didn't try to go straight up, but slanted at an angle. With my feet sinking to the ankles with every step I took and the sand sliding under me, and fighting for every inch of progress, it was just as bad, or worse, than I had thought it would prove to be.

But I finally reached the crest and collapsed as easily as I could, letting Hoot down gently then just lying there and panting.

"I cause much trouble, Mike," said Hoot. "I tax your strength, exceeding."

"Let me get my breath," I said. "It's just a little farther."

I rolled over on my back and stared up at the sky. The stars glittered back at me. Straight overhead was a big blue giant that looked like a flashing jewel and a little to one side was a dull coal of a star, a red supergiant, perhaps. And a million others—as if someone had sat down and figured out how to fill the sky with stars and had come up with a pattern.

"Where is this place, Hoot?" I asked. "Where in the galaxy?"

"It's a globular cluster," he said. "I thought you knew that."

And that made sense, I 'thought. For the planet we had landed on, the one that great fool of a Smith had led us to, had been well above the galactic plane, out in space beyond the main body of the galaxy—out in globular duster country.

"Is your home here," I asked.

"No. Far away," he said, and the way he said it, I asked him nothing more. If he didn't want to talk about where he'd come from, it was all right with me. He might be on the lam, he might be a refugee, or he might have been banished as an undesirable. All of these things happened. Space was full of wanderers who could not go home again.

 I lay looking at the stars and wondering exactly where we were. A globular cluster, Hoot had said, and there were a lot of them and it could be, I supposed, any one of them. Distance or proximity, I realized, would not make a great deal of difference when one was shunted from one place to another by the method that had been used to get us here.

Nor did it make a great deal of difference where we were. If we failed to locate water, we'd not be here for long. Food too, of course, but food was less critical than water. I wondered rather vaguely why I wasn't more upset. It might be, I told myself, that I had been in so many scrapes in so many alien places and had always, somehow, gotten out of them, that I had come to think I'd always be able to get out of them. Or maybe it was the ingrown realization that my margin of good luck had been more than overrun, that I was overdue to meet the end I had escaped so many times—a realization that someday some planet or some ornery critter would finally do me in. And realizing that, deciding that there was no great point to worry over it, for when that day came I'd had it and prior worry would not help at all.

I was trying to figure which it might be when something touched me softly on the shoulder. I switched my head and saw that Hoot was tapping me with one of his tentacles.

"Mike," he croaked, "you should take a look. We are not alone."

I jerked bolt upright, grabbing at the rifle.

A wheel was coming up over the dune behind us, the one on which Hoot's spacecraft had come to grief. It was a big wheel and a bright one and it had a green hub that glistened in the moonlight. I could see only part of it, but the monstrous, gleaming curve of it rose into the air above the dune a hundred feet or so. Its tread was broad—ten feet or more, I guessed—and it had the shine of polished steel. Hundreds of silvery spokes ran from the inside of the rim to the green and glistening hub.

It was not moving. It hung there in the air, poised above the dune. The moon-silvered ribs of Hoot's ship looked like a smashed toy when measured by its size.

"Living?" asked Hoot.

"Perhaps," I said.

"Then we best prepare to defend . . ."

"We sit right here," I snapped. "We don't raise a hand against it."

It was watching us, I was sure. Whatever it was, it might have come out to investigate the wreckage of Hoot's ship. There was nothing to indicate that any part of it was alive, but the greenish hub, for some reason I couldn't put a finger on, had the look of life about it. It might turn around in a little while and go away. And even if it didn't, we were in no position to start banging away at anything that moved.

"You better slide down into the trough," I told Hoot. "If we have to make a run for it, I can scoop you up."

He waggled a tentacle in disagreement. "I have weapon you may need."

"You said you had no weapon."

"Dirty lie," he booted, cheerfully.

"You could have taken me," I protested, angrily, "any time you wished."

"Oh, no," he said. "You came as my befriender. Had I told you, you might not have come."

I let it pass. He was a tricky devil, but for the moment he was on my side and I had no objections.

Someone called back of me and I swiveled my bead around. Sara stood on top of the next dune and off to the left of her, two heads poked above the ridge. She was planted on the crest, with her silly rifle at the ready and I was scared stiff that any minute she might start throwing lead.

"Are you all right, captain?" she called to me.

"I'm all right," I said.

"Can we be of any help?"

"Yes," I said. "You can lug my pal back to camp with you."

I said camp because, for the life of me, I could think of no other way to put it.

Out of the side of my mouth, I snarled at Hoot. "Cut out the goddamned foolishness and slide down into the trough."

I switched my attention back to the wheel. It stayed where it was. I still had the feeling that it was looking at me. I twisted around and got my feet planted under me, ready to take off if the situation should demand.

I heard Hoot go sliding down the slope. A moment later Sara called to me.

"What is this thing? Where did you find it?"

I looked around and she was standing over Hoot, staring down at him.

"Tuck," I yelled, "get down there and help Miss Foster. Tell Smith to stay exactly where he is."

I could envision that damn fool of a blind man trying to follow Tuck and getting all fouled up.

Sara's voice was plaintive and a little sharp. "But captain . . ."

"He's lost just like us," I told her. "He doesn't belong here and he's in trouble. Just get him back to camp."

I looked back at the wheel. It had finally started to move, revolving slowly, almost majestically, walking up the dune slope and looming higher every minute.

"Get out of here," I yelled at Tuck and Sara, without looking back.

The wheel stopped. It was almost at the crest. Very little of it was hidden by the dune. It loomed high into the sky.

Now that I had a better chance to look it over, I saw that the strange thing about it was that it was actually a wheel and not just something that might look like a wheel. Its outer rim was formed of some sort of very shiny substance, with a tread ten feet across, but perhaps no more than a foot thick. For all its massiveness, it had a slender look about it. As it had climbed slowly up the dune, the rim had picked up sand and carried it up its rearward surface, with the sand spilling free as the wheel moved forward. The greenish hub floated in the center of the wheel—and floated was the word for it, for the fragile spokes, despite the number of them, could not have held the hub in place. And now I saw that the spokes, thin as they were, were crisscrossed by even finer wires (if they, indeed, were wires) to make the entire area between the hub and rim a sort of spider web. The thought stopped there, however, for the hub itself had no semblance to a spider. It was simply a sphere of some sort, hanging in the center of the wheel.

I looked quickly over my shoulder and there was no sign of the others. The slope of the dune was scarred with deep tracks, where they had climbed it.

I got to my feet and went sliding down the slope and labored up the face of the dune. At the top, I turned and had a look. The wheel had stayed where it was. I went down the rope and climbed the dune behind which I had left the others. They were all down there, I saw, and the wheel still hadn't moved. Maybe this was the end of it, I thought. The wheel might have come out to have a look and now, satisfied at what it had seen, might go about its business.