The Forever Man (36 page)

There was something driving the Laagi, as a race, Jim thought. They were concerned with something more than just survival and increasing their population by settling more worlds. Perhaps, he thought, they had some sort of racial vision, some sort of dream that was strong enough to drive them all—perhaps strong enough to drive them forever.

They were too advanced, too civilized, not to be headed somewhere. The war with the human race, the endless work, all that was a product of the older part of their brains. But there was more to them than those obvious things. Both he and Mary had come to feel that the rooms in which many Laagi sat and observed one of their number apparently in conversation with the picture of another Laagi on a screen, as well as the “clubs” where they gathered and communicated in anything from pairs up to small groups, had to do with learning and decision-making; and almost surely, if those first two were present activities, with speculation as well.

Like humans they must wonder where it all led to, and what was the right way to go. And if they attacked that question with the relentless effort they brought to everything else they did, they could have made admirable progress, even by this time, possibly in some ways humanity had not even considered.

He found himself admitting to himself that he had come to admire the Laagi in certain ways, just as he had come to admire Squonk in some of the attitudes and efforts which that little creature showed. Mary was right. He and she must observe and deduce and come to understand this alien race. Just as technologically-advanced races on Earth had at first been blind to what could be learned from races who appeared technologically backward until they began to learn better in the twentieth century, so it would be easy now to be blind to what the Laagi must have discovered and put to use that humanity had not even imagined.

Whatever the Laagi were, they had things to teach us….

Somewhere along the way with that thought, Jim himself fell asleep. He continued to sleep and think, alternately, as time passed and he waited for Mary and Squonk to recover.

After all, there was nothing else he could do. There was no possibility in any case of going anywhere without Squonk, and Squonk was clearly in no shape to move. They all waited, therefore, for the better part of two days.

Once a day, as closely as Jim could figure time here, one of the squonks who acted as attendant in the ward would come around with a container filled with pink cubes about the size of a child's toy block.

These looked rather as if they had been made out of strawberry jelly. The attendant squonk gave one to each of the patients, including Squonk. Squonk ate it with every appearance of appetite and seemed to be fully satisfied as far as food was concerned until the attendant came around with another cube the next day. Jim used the visits of the attendant with food as one of the means to estimate the passage of time here indoors.

He remembered that it had been late afternoon, local time, when Squonk had been carried to the hospital. Jim made his best estimate of the hours that had gone by since then. In the situation they now found themselves, if anything was to be done once Squonk was able to move, Jim wanted to do it at night.

Twice—according to Jim's reckoning, it was during the early morning hours—a Laagi came through the room and examined each squonk that was a patient there. Most he merely glanced at. In about a dozen cases the squonk he examined was able to stretch its neck out in the customary action of one of its race waiting to accept orders. When this happened, the visiting Laagi vibrated his arm above the proffered neck; and, in two instances, the squonk so spoken to got to its feet, stepped down off the raft that had been its hospital bed, and left the room. In all other cases, the squonk touched went back to sleep.

There was one incident, however, that varied from this usual pattern. During the second Laagi visit—Jim had no way to tell if it was the same alien as the last time—at one of the beds, as the Laagi stopped to look at its occupant, but without extending his arm, the squonk lying there began to struggle to move and managed to get up on its feet, although its legs were still not extended. The squonk shakily stretched out his neck toward the Laagi and reached out fumblingly with his tentacles to encircle the Laagi's arm. Most of the tentacles slipped off, but two managed to maintain their grasp on the Laagi's arm. Effortfully, the squonk pulled the arm into position over his extended neck.

For a second the Laagi merely stood there. Something about the way he stood seemed to signal to Jim—he did not know why—a feeling of sorrow or sadness. Then he began to vibrate his held arm over the extended neck, and as he did so the squonk shivered ecstatically and one of its legs managed to extend itself slightly. It was only then that Jim saw that the hand at the end of the other arm of the Laagi was stealthily approaching the underside of the extended neck, dark thumb stiffly upraised like the end of a blunt club. As the squonk seemed to bask under the vibrations of the Laagi arm above him this thumb came to within inches of the underside of the neck—and suddenly thrust upward.

The blow was a more violent one than Jim had expected, testifying to a strength in the Laagi arm he had not suspected those aliens of possessing. There was an audible crack, as of something breaking in the squonk's neck, and it suddenly dropped, to lie still with its head at an angle to its neck.

Two of the attendant squonks that were presently in the ward had started forward when the bedridden squonk had first started to struggle to its feet, but halted when the Laagi extended his arm over the sick one's neck. Now the Laagi turned away, and they came forward, lifted the obviously dead body between them and carried it off.

The Laagi moved on to examine the next patient. It may have been Jim's imagination, but it seemed to him the Laagi still radiated sadness, an emotion Jim had never before seen in one of the aliens. He found himself happy, for some obscure reason, that Squonk—their Squonk—had slept through the whole incident. In fact, Squonk had been unhesitatingly obedient in composing himself again for sleep whenever he woke up and Jim urged him back into slumber.

Squonk had been awake when a visiting Laagi had entered the room the first time, but Jim had urged him then to go back to sleep; and in docile fashion, Squonk had. He was therefore still asleep when the visiting Laagi got to him. The Laagi gave him a quick glance and went on. Jim had not been holding his breath only because he had no breath to hold; but a great relief washed over him as the Laagi moved on to the next patient.

For a second Jim was almost tempted to wake Mary—who had also slept through it all—to share that relief and the story of how they had escaped a closer examination of Squonk. But prudence held him back. He let Mary sleep on.

The second day when the Laagi—or some Laagi; it was impossible to tell if it was the same one that had come the day before—entered the ward, Mary was awake and witnessed the death, and Jim was able to tell her how the previous visit had gone. Once more he was successful in convincing Squonk to be asleep when the visiting physician, veterinarian or whatever, came by.

“…But that,” said Jim to Mary after the Laagi had left them, “is probably the last time I'll be able to make Squonk sleep when that visitor comes. Squonk's definitely getting slept up and beginning to feel restless. He may not be ready to go back to work, but he certainly feels like it. That means we have to make a break for it tonight.”

“Why tonight?” asked Mary. “Why not right now?”

“I want to be sure that Laagi who inspects here has left this part of the hospital for the day. He just might be able to identify Squonk from other squonks, and remember that our Squonk was supposed to be in this hospital. At the same time I want us to have as much time as possible to be free before he comes again and finds Squonk's bed empty.”

“What're you planning to do once we get out of here?” Mary asked.

“Go back to
AndFriend
. Maybe we can get the Laagi to assume that Squonk's been doing his regular duties if they come looking for him and find him back, cleaning the ship—or even trying to clean her. Or, once back at
AndFriend
we might decide to leave Squonk to go his own way and rejoin the ship itself—temporarily, at least.”

“Why?”

“I'm not sure. We're going to have to make decisions as we go along. Maybe the ship'll turn out to be safer for us. Maybe Squonk won't be able to do any more than get us back to her before he dies. Maybe just about anything. Don't ask me for answers now. Let's get out of here and then see what the situation is.”

“All right. Call me when time for decisions… ” Mary's voice trailed off, and within seconds Jim was sure she was asleep again.

From the first, since Squonk had been carted off to the hospital, she had woken up suddenly, like someone startled out of a nightmare or roused by the internal signal of some habitual duty clamoring against the need to oversleep. Lately, the occasions of her waking had been less frequent; and the time she was awake before sleep took her again, becoming shorter. It would be too much to ask, thought Jim, but wouldn't it be wonderful if she slept all the time it took to get them back to
AndFriend
?

He waited until he felt it must be dark outside the hospital building, then roused Squonk, taking as much care as was possible to do that with the image in the back of his mind and not think out loud, as it were, which might rouse Mary.

He succeeded.

“Good Squonk,” he mentally whispered at the awakened creature. “Is Squonk able to get up from this place and go somewhere else?”

Squonk stretched his neck and flailed his tentacles about affirmatively.

“Good,” said Jim. “Quietly, then, so that we don't disturb these poor, sick squonks all around us. Get up off this thing you're lying on and we'll leave the building. Oh, and pick up a container of those food cubes on the way out.”

He steered Squonk out of the room. They had to hunt around, but eventually they found a room containing a number of empty baskets and a machine ending in a large hopper that was filled with the pink cubes. At Jim's order, Squonk filled a basket and, on his own initiative, balanced the basket on his shell, holding it in place with three of his tentacles. They left the room and went down the most deserted corridors they could find until Jim saw a doorway that gave on to the outside of the building. But he still did not let himself relax until they were safely out on one of the green pathways and the hospital was being left behind among its fellow structures.

He considered Squonk. As far as could be told from the way the other was covering ground, the small alien was in as good shape as ever; but Jim suspected that, like Mary, Squonk had recovered only a portion of his normal energy and might easily collapse, once that was used up.

“We're going to the ship, Squonk,” Jim said. “The ship needs cleaning again. Go slow and if you start to feel tired, just stop. Do you understand? Stop if you start to feel tired.”

Squonk made affirmative physical signals and they proceeded. But he did not stop, or perhaps he did not feel the need to stop, until they were once more back inside
AndFriend
. Jim sighed mentally with relief as the ship's port clanged shut behind them; and Mary woke.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“At the ship. Go back to sleep. Squonk's got to rest and so do I,” said Jim.

The last bit was a lie. He intended to do anything but rest.

“It'll be hours yet before anyone at the hospital notices Squonk is missing,” he said, “and I don't want to start him on the cleaning too soon, even if he's physically up to it. It'll be best if anyone hunting for him comes in and finds him actively at work here.”

“Oh. All right….” Mary was off to slumberland again.

So was Squonk. The urge to wake the small alien was strong in Jim, but he made himself hold off. There was no telling how the trip here had taken it out of Squonk's recovered physical powers, and these would be needed, later. He let the others sleep for half an hour by the ship's time-keeping system.

His first act after waking the little alien was to have him store the cubes of food where acceleration forces could not send them tumbling around the interior of the ship. The second was to teach him how to use the system installed aboard for the disposal of human waste. It was a difficult and troublesome task to teach Squonk how to make use of what was to him the unnatural apparatus, but it turned out not to be impossible, which was a relief to Jim. He had been afraid that he might not have time later on for giving such lessons, if they turned out to be necessary.

With that much done, his neat move was to transfer his point of view back into the structure of
AndFriend
. He had nothing to go on but guesses as to how this might be done, and he had planned to have Squonk put his tentacle back into the same hidden drawer in which it had picked up some of
AndFriend
's substance, so that Jim and Mary could become part of the small creature instead of the vessel. He had conceived of the switch back as an all-out effort of will; and he had tried, without success, to come up with some plan that would let him make such an effort without waking a sleeping Mary, which he was sure it would.

To his surprise, however, there was nothing to it. Once back in the ship, he found himself naturally wanting to be part of it again, and, having wished, found himself where he wanted to be. It was so easy that he decided to gamble on trying it again. He found it almost as easy to slip back into Squonk and, having done so, to once more return to being part of the ship.

It was so easy, he found himself being suspicious of it. The only reason it could be so little trouble, he finally decided, was that, in effect, he was actually in both places at once at all times, since the material of
AndFriend
was both in the form of the spaceship and in the flesh of Squonk; and it was merely a matter of his own internal point of view which host body he looked out of.