16

"THIS is TERRIBLE!" SAID MARY. "HOW CAN WE SEE ANYTHING IF Squonk won't look at anything but what it's working on at the moment? Why didn't we think of a simple problem like this?"

"Because you didn't know you'd be putting the material from AndFriend into a creature that never looks at anything but what it's working at. Though, come to think of it, during work hours, a lot of us humans do the same thing," Jim answered.

"But what are we going to do about it?"

"I don't know," said Jim. "But I'm thinking. If you don't mind, I'd rather do that than talk."

"And another thing-" Mary was beginning; but he shut his mind to her mental voice, something that was easier to do because of the strange effect that made it sound now as if it came from some distance.

He did indeed want to think. In fact his mind had been running along certain lines since he had first started trying to find his way through the body of Squonk to the physical organ that was the seat of its mind.

He had been very lucky, he thought-there was no other word for it-to find the nerve, or conduit as Mary called it, to Squonk's vision. But the prospect of carefully examining,

179




180 I Gordon R. Dickson

millimeter by millimeter, some distance of sandy-hued pavement as Squonk dusted it was no more attractive to him than it was to Mary.
The first question, therefore, was what could be done about the situation-Mary's question just now. The second, and more important question, was what his own individual relationship was to Squonk in the first place.
Probably the first question could not be answered until the answer to the second question was found and understood. The second question had come to mind when he had suddenly begun to wonder-and this was the sort of thing he would have immediately begun to talk over with Mary under ordinary circumstances, but not now-why, looking out through Squonk's eyes, which were physically different in a large degree from his human eyes, he should still see the interior of AndFriend and the pavement outside his ship as a human would see them.
Which raised the interesting question: was he actually seeing what he was seeing through Squonk's eyes, at all?
Now, with AndFriend, he had seemed to be able to use the outside surface of its metal hull as eyes. And, come to think of it, not just as one eye or a hundred thousand eyes, covering the ship's outer surface area, but as a pair of human eyes might see. Not only that, hadn't he been able to look right through the opaque plastic of the tent enclosing the ship and La Chasse Gallerie when he first woke up as AndFriend, back at the Base?
Something was definitely not as he had originally assumed it to be.
Which brought him back to the question of whether he was actually seeing what he thought he was seeing, through Squonk's eyes. How was he actually seeing? Was it mechanical or physical seeing at all? Or was it, perhaps, something entirely different?
Mary herself had said that she and those like her had no idea of how his transfer to AndFriend had actually been accomplished. Had he really been sensitized to his ship, or had that been part of what Mary had called possible mumbo jumbo- nonsense masquerading as an explanation for something for which so far there was no known explanation?
Had he actually been in the scrapings that had been in-

THE FOREVER MAN / 181

jecfsd into Squonk, or had the scrapings been merely an excuse for more of the unexplainable magic that had allowed first Raoul, then him, to move their minds out of their bodies into something else?

Suppose it was all magic-call it "magic" for want of a better word. Or call it excorporal transport, to get away from the connotation that magic was something that had no rational explanation.

If it had nothing to do with the injected material, then perhaps he could do anything he wanted from the viewpoint of Squonk, generally. Look out through Squonk's skin and shell with his own accustomed human vision, as he had with AndFriend.

Why not?

It was worth a try.

The first thing to do, he told himself, was eradicate the illusion.

I am not seeing out through Squonk's eyes, he told himself firmly but silently. I am not seeing through Squonk's eyes. I am not connected to Squonk's eyes ....

Abruptly, he could see nothing at all.

"Jim!"

It was a cry of alarm from Mary.

"Jim!" she shouted at him again. "What's happened? Jim, can you answer me? Answer me!"

But he had no time to spare at the moment to answer anybody. On the verge of panic he was telling himself-I'm Squonk. I am Squonk. Squonk and I are one thing. I am Squonk. I am Squonk-he was trying very hard to feel like Squonk-Squonk is me. I am Squonk, just like I'm AndFriend. AndFriend-Squonk, no difference. I am Squonk-"

Equally suddenly and without warning, light flooded back in on him. But now he was able to look around at whatever he wanted to see and see it. With relief, he noticed that they were already a good third of the way to the dark green pathways, on which there were others like Squonk and also . . . his mind boggled. The bipeds he had briefly and distantly seen before, and which he was looking at now, couldn't be Laagis. They simply could not be the same race that had battled with humans so fiercely all these years

"..Aim!" It was pure alarm in Mary's voice. "Oh, my

182 / Gordon R. Dickson

God, Jim, are you all right? Answer me. If you can answer at all, speak to me!"

"It's all right," he said soothingly. "I just found out how to use all of Squonk's exterior surface as eyes, just as I do on AndFriend."

Mary was anything but soothed.

"Why didn't you answer me, if it's so all right?"

"Actually I could, but I was busy just at the moment=

"Busy, and you let me go on calling and calling-and thinking-how was I to know what'd happened to you? You just left me there imagining all kinds of things had happened to you and never stopped to think how I might be worrying . . . worrying what I was going to do if something had happened to you? You just forgot about me. Did you ever stop to think what it might be like for me, helpless here and calling, calling and still not getting any answer from you? Well, did you?"

"As a matter of fact=

"As a matter of fact, no. You didn't. All right, I know you've got no reason to worry about me after what we did to you to get you here; but to let me sit in the dark, without any answer, imagining no one knows what had happened . . . you could have said a word, just a word . . . ."

She stopped talking. There was a wave of emotion perceptible from her; and Jim found himself feeling far more guilty than he would have anticipated. Well, he had been busy..Of course, to her . . .

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think--2'

"You certainly didn't!"

"But the reason I wasn't answering wasn't because ofwell, because of what you and the rest did to get me here. It was because I had my hands full. I didn't know if I'd get sight back, myself. I was putting all my mind to doing that; and, to tell the truth, it never occurred to me you'd be frightened."

"I wasn't frightened! I was-yes, I was frightened. Of course I was frightened. You seem to keep forgetting I've got no control over anything, by myself. I'm completely dependent on you. What was I supposed to imagine when suddenly everything went dark and you wouldn't answer? Not that you condescend to answer me half the time, anyway . . . ."

She broke off suddenly. Her mental voice stopped. He tried

THE FOREVER MAN / 183

desperately to think of something to say which would mend matters and could think of nothing.
"Oh, Jim," she said after a long moment, while he was still searching and researching his mind for the proper words to make her feel better. "Never, never do that again!"
"I won't," he said.
"It was a lousy thing to do," she said, but less emotionally.
"I won't do it again," he said, trying the magic words for a second time, since they seemed to have had a good effect.
"If you do," she said coldly, in a totally different mental tone, "you might remember that there are things I can do, too, that you might not like. Don't push me too far, Jim. There's only the two of us and it's best for both of us if we're considerate of each other. Now, let's forget it. How did you manage to get this kind of seeing that doesn't use Squonk's eyes?"
"It's . . . well, it's not easy to explain," said Jim cautiously. "I don't know if I have the words. I guess I just exercised whatever it is that lets me use the outer surface of the hull of AndFriend to see with, as I said; but I don't know how I do that, so I really don't know how I did this. But about not answering you. If I could just explain to you how it was for me, switching over, just then-
"I said, let's forget it."
"Well, all right then," he said, "if that's what you want."
"Mat's what I want," she said.
They fell into silence again. Surreptitiously, Jim tried urging Squonk to abandon his cleaning of the surface and simply go directly to the nearest green path. Nothing happened. He tried again, and still nothing happened.
He considered giving up and simply waiting it out until they got there. He was refusing to look directly at the creatures he had suspected to be Laagi. He wanted a closer view of them before he let his mind acknowledge the unbelievable -that creatures like these were the enemies that he had shaped his whole life to face in space conflict. He concentrated on the minimal facts; that what was left in his mind from that first glimpse was a vague, uncertain image of upright bipeds of various heights with waving arms.
Mary, on her part, was also not saying anything-for which he was grateful. He had the feeling, though he could

184 l Gordon R. Dickson

not pin it down, that she was studying what could be seen ahead of them and lost in that.

They reached the first green path eventually, and Squonk turned to its left and headed off along it at an angle toward the nearest of the beehive-shaped buildings-which, now that they were closer, Jim could see had no windows. Or at least, those close enough for him to get a good look at showed no sign of windows. The doorways into them were apertures in the shape of a triangle with its vertical sides bulging outward, a shape that echoed the shape of the buildings themselves. Squonks and-well, call them Laagi for the moment, anyway, thought Jim-entered and emerged from these doorways to move out along one of the green paths. Between the buildings, he now saw, there was no space except that taken up by the green paths, the surfaces of which seemed to be soft and yielding under the red pads of hard flesh that passed for their own Squonk's feet, like padded carpeting.

"They must really be the Laagi," said Mary's voice in his mind, unexpectedly.

So she had been struggling with herself over believing that to be true, also.

Jim finally let himself look squarely at the closest of the biped figures.

Yes,' he agreed glumly. "But it doesn't make sense, does it?"

"It's certainly hard to believe," she said. "I suppose they could be another tame underspecies like the Squonks, but they don't act like Squonks. They act like this is their world. And look-those doors on the buildings are sized just right for them. The Squonks wouldn't need entrances that tall."

"Yes," said Jim. "But they look like gingerbread men in three dimensions."

"More like big rubber dolls," said Mary.

They were both right, Jim thought. The Laagi either varied in size and length of limb, or were able to vary, but outside of that, they seemed identical, with no differences that would indicate two or more sexes. They were gray-skinned, roundbodied and round-armed. To be more precise, their bodies looked like tanks covered with gray skin, their legs and arms were like thick sections of rubber hose attached two at the bottom of the tank and two at the top; like human legs and

THE FOREVER MAN / 185

arms, but unlike human limbs in that they seemed to have no joints, but to bend like the rubber hoses they resembled. Their legs ended in pads of muscle-but merely a darker gray, not red-colored like those of the Squonks-and their arms either seemed to end in stumps or stubby fingers, depending upon the individual.

They were all in motion, whether they were traveling one way or another on the green strips, or congregated in groups of two to half a dozen, in which case their legs were still, but their arms were in constant motion, waving up and down, stretching out or shrinking to a shorter length. Occasionally, the legs of one of those walking or standing would also lengthen or shorten, for no apparent reason.

Their heads were like small, absolutely round balls, covered by the same colored flesh and half-sunk into the wrinkled skin at the top of the tanklike body. They had, like the Squonks, two tiny but brilliant black eyes side by side and buried in the flesh of what might be called their faces; though they did not seem to move these eyes about individually, as the Squonk's eyes had on its entering AndFriend. There were as well a couple of vertical slits, slanting toward each other at the top, where a human nose would be, and a horizontal slit where a human mouth would be. This mouth opened slightly and shut itself again, from time to time, when they were standing congregated together. But their arms in particular were always in motion, waving up and down, bending, extending and shortening. But mostly waving.

And with all this, they made no sound to each other.

It was unnatural by human standards. There were the small noises made by Squonks and of Laagi walking along the paths; there was the sound of wind among the buildings; even something very small that could have been the alien equivalent of either a bird or insect whirred once across the path at about average Laagi height. But the Laagi mouths produced no words, nothing that could be considered sound at all.

"This is your department," said Jim. "I don't get it. Why do they bother getting together that way if they aren't going to talk? How can they be a civilized race in the first place if they don't communicate?"

"They're pretty clearly communicating," Mary's voice in his mind would have sounded almost disinterested if it had not

186 / Gordon R. Dickson

been for its undercurrent of emotion, an almost feverish thread of excitement he could feel from her. "There'd be no point in them getting together like that unless they were communicating. But it's not with sound. My first guess is they're signaling to each other."

"Signaling?" echoed Jim. He stared at the jerking and waving arms of the grouped Laagi. "I suppose you could make a fairly complex language out of body signals. But one good enough to discuss the technological and other aspects of a civilization that could produce fighter ships as good as ours -in some cases better?"

"Most of our own technology isn't really dealt with in verbal terms," said Mary. "We use mathematics, drawings, models-all sorts of means besides our common, everyday spoken language=

She broke off, for Squonk-their Squonk, THE Squonk, had suddenly turned slightly and headed into the midst of one of the groups of Laagi and to one in particular. It came to a halt before that Laagi and stretched its neck out in an absurd gesture that looked as if it was asking to have its head cut off.

The Laagi it had come to lowered one of its rubbery arms with a swiftness that made it look as if it intended to deliver a blow. But instead of landing heavily on the neck of Squonk, the skin of the descending arm barely touched the neck skin of the smaller creature and vibrated, so that through Squonk's nervous system, the feeling of touch that came to Jim was like that of a feather being rapidly tapped very lightly against the creature's neck.

"What in all the universe . . . ?" said Mary.

"I don't know. But it-Squonk-loves it," said Jim. "It must be-oops!"

The last ejaculation came from the fact that the Squonk had begun to shudder in what seemed an ecstasy of joy. It shortened its legs until its body was touching the ground and suddenly rolled over on its shell with its red feet sticking up in the air. The Laagi vibrated the underside of its arm against the soles of the Squonk's feet in turn, while the Squonk shuddered happily. Then the Laagi gave one of the upturned legs a soft shove, the Squonk rolled back, right side up, lengthened its legs and left the group.

THE FOREVER MAN / 18'7

"I think it was just praised," said Jim, after a little silence between himself and Mary.

"Or caressed, petted the way you might pet a dog."

"No, I really think praised is the word," said Jim. "Feel the way it's feeling right now. It's satisfied, iike someone who's just done something it felt good about doing."

There was the slightest pause.

"Jim," said Mary, and he got the definite feeling that she was not happy saying it. "I can't feel any kind of emotion from Squonk. Are you sure you can?"

"Of course I'm sure-you can't?" answered Jim, startled.

"I wouldn't say I couldn't if I didn't."

"No, of course not. But that's strange."

"Not so strange." Mary's mental voice was almost bitter. "I'm just a passenger in you, after all. I don't have any direct connection with Squonk."

"Do you with me? I mean, with the way I feel?"

"Some," she said. "Except when you shut yourself off from me."

"I don't do that!"

"You do it all the tune!" She hesitated. "Actually, it's probably a good thing we can shut each other out sometimes. You wouldn't want to know what I'm feeling all the time, would you?"

There was something tentative about this last question, as if the question had some hidden purpose.

"Well, no. Of course not," he said. "You're right, of course."

"Well." There was relief in her voice. "Mere you are. Now what were you about to say when Squonk went to get petted -or praised or whatever?"

"What was I going to say?" He frowned. "I don't think I can remember . . . oh, yes, I was going to say that Squonk was perhaps going to that particular Laagi for orders and we might learn something about how Squonks and Laagi work together by what Squonk does now. But Squonk was only there to get petted, after all."

"Wait a minute-maybe not," said Mary.

"Maybe not?"

"What the Laagi did with his arm in touching Squonk," said Mary. "Me Laagi could have been praising it, just as you

188 I Gordon R. Dickson

said. But he could also have been talking to it. In fact, he could have been giving it orders."

"You said you couldn't feel the Squonk's emotions," said Jim. "You should have, then. That Squonk was awfully happy for something just getting orders to do something. It was . . . ecstatic's a good word for what it seemed to me to be feeling."

"Maybe it likes to work."

"That much?"

"How do we know how much Squonks like to work?" demanded Mary. "A sheepdog likes to herd sheep. A sled dog likes to pull a sled with the rest of the team. A Squonk may be like that, only more so. How do we know?"

"We don't," said Jim. "But it's hard to believe."

"So we'll find out."

"Ask it, I suppose," said Jim.

"No. Just observe. What did you do when you were a boy?„

"Went to school. Played games," answered Jim. "What did you do when you were a girl?"

"That's the difference," said Mary. "I began observing and

studying from as far back as I can remember. I think I told you
I couldn't wait to. get away from home. My mother and
father- 2'

She broke off suddenly.

"I talk too much about them," she said.

Jim found himself not knowing what to say.

"I think you only mentioned them to me once before," he told her at last.

"Is that all? Well, it doesn't matter, anyway. All I was going to say was that they were completely useless people. What they did with their lives could have been done by any of millions of other people in the world and nobody would ever have known the difference. I decided as far back as I can remember it wouldn't be that way with me. I'd be a student and a worker; and I've been just that, ever since then. That's one of the differences between me and other people."

"Like me," said Jim.

"Well, if you want the truth, yes. Like you. You just grew up, didn't you? You let things happen?"

"Not exactly," said Jim. "All kids, as I might have said to

THE FOREVER MAN / 189

you at one time or another, want to be Frontier pilots. I stuck with it."
"That's commendable," said Mary, "that you stuck with it, I mean. There are better things to do than be a fighter pilot. But it's not quite what I'm talking about."
"What made you bring the subject up, then?"
"Because when I said we'll find out how much Squonk really likes working, you made a joke about it, as if it was something that couldn't be done. It can be done. By observation and deduction."
"I see. Sorry. I'll know better next time."
"And you don't need to be flip about it."
"Tell me," said Jim, "just what is it I've done lately to rub you the wrong way?"
"I'm ready to go to work and you're playing!" blazed Mary. "Do you mind shutting up and getting out of my way, if you can't be helpful?"
Jim thought of saying that he thought he had been, then decided saying so would merely continue an argument he could probably not win. Probably, in fact, there was no argument he could hope to win with Mary. So it would be wisest not to get into any. Not that he had planned to get into this one.
At any rate, he had his own plans, and his own work to think about.
"I wonder," said Mary, as if she had completely forgotten her emotion of a moment before, "just where Squonk is taking us."
They did not have long to wait for an answer, because very shortly, Squonk turned into the entrance of one of the larger, beehive-shaped buildings.