The Forever Man (16 page)

“What was it? Animal, vegetable or mineral?”

“That's what we don't know.”

“I don't understand,” said Jim. “Granted that Raoul thinks it's in a paradise. If nothing more's known about it—”

“Sorry. Back up and start again,” said Mollen. “I'm doing a bad job of explaining. It's whatever else it is, and whether or not that's connected with the paradise part, that really interests us. Because we think it might also have something to do with how Raoul got to be part of
La Chasse Gallerie
—and because he claims the Laagi don't know it's there.”

“They don't?” said Jim. “Raoul claims they don't?”

“That's what we gather from what he says,” replied Mollen.

“How can the Laagi not know it's there if it's right on their back doorstep, if we're on their front doorstep, speaking in interstellar space terms. They ought to be able to see it, too, or at least, I assume the assumption is Raoul saw it.”

“I don't know. The best people we've put on it can't guess,” said Mollen. “But can you imagine what it'd mean if there was someone or something we could work with, that the Laagi couldn't even imagine, let alone see? It might mean the end of this long war with them after all. It might mean we could open the way we want to the inner parts of the galaxy.”

Jim /
AndFriend
lay thinking. The human race had been at war with the Laagi so long, over five generations, that the contest had become something that was almost as taken for granted as the physical facts of the universe itself. It seemed they had always been at war with the Laagi. They would always be at war with them… these aliens, these people no human had ever seen, whose worlds no human had ever seen; but only the hulls of their heavy-bellied space warships. It was almost as if Mollen had suggested altering all the continents of Earth into unfamiliar shapes.

It was not just what he wanted, of course. It was what everyone wanted. No more of this war which had drained Earth's resources and brought her nothing in return—unless it was the feeling of being safely entrenched behind a line of fighting spaceships. But with no more Laagi to fight, what was next?

Hopefully, they could then go out to colonize livable worlds, wherever these could be found, which had been what they had been engaged in when they found that there were no ready-to-live-on planets within practical phase-shifting distances, unless they were the worlds already occupied by the Laagi or in that area of space to which the Laagi barred the way.

No one even knew why the Laagi fought. They had attacked, on contact, the first unarmed human spaceships that had encountered them. Clearly, they would have followed this up by carrying their attacks against Earth, itself, if the aroused world had not hastily combined to arm and man the defensive line in space that was the Frontier. Clearly, the Laagi wanted colonizable planet—space, too; and in spite of the fact no human had ever seen one, Earth must be enough like their world or worlds to be usable.

In the early years after human and Laagi ships had first encountered each other, their ships had come close enough to be observed just outside Earth's atmosphere. But meanwhile Earth had been frantically building ships fitted for space combat; and by the time the first of these went up in effective numbers, hunting for the Laagi, they had to travel almost as far as the present Frontier before encountering any of them.

But beyond the Frontier all the military strength of Earth had not been able to push, in well over a hundred years. The larger a fleet of fighter ships with which they tried to penetrate, the greater the number of Laagi ships that came to oppose them. Were the Laagi from one world or many? Were they paranoid or reasonable? What were they, physically and mentally?

No Laagi ship ever surrendered. They fought or ran, but once engaged in combat they kept fighting until they were destroyed, or destroyed themselves. Continual efforts to find a way of capturing a Laagi ship had been without success. There seemed to be the equivalent of a dead-man's switch in each of their ships that triggered its destruction if it became too badly crippled either to run or fight any more.

Now Mollen was suggesting that if Jim was lucky in finding what Mollen and Mary seemed to hope was out there, the years of fighting the Laagi might be over. The mountain was far off still on his horizon, but now a road had appeared that might lead him to it.

“Jim?”

It was Mary's voice, speaking to him.

“Yes?” he answered.

“You haven't said a word for nearly an hour,” said Mary.

“We thought we'd give you time to think over what Louis just said. But it's been nearly an hour, as I say.”

“Has it? I'm sorry,” said Jim. “Time feels a little different to me now. Did you say something to me that I didn't answer? What was it?”

“We didn't,” said Mollen. “But we were just about to. Do you think you'd have any trouble phase-shifting wide of the Frontier, whether you use your fusion engines or not; and then coming in again, say, fifty light-years farther on, to see if you're beyond Laagi territory?”

“I don't think so,” said Jim. “It may take some time, but if time's not important—by the way, where's my body? What's happening to it?”

“It's being cared for,” said Mollen. “As long as you come back within an ordinary lifetime, it'll be waiting for you. Actually a straight out, down, in and out again and back shouldn't take you more than a matter of weeks at the outside.”

“Then I'm ready to go anytime,” said Jim. “It's not as if I need to pack a suitcase, is it? You're talking to a ship, General, not a pilot.”

“Louis means, are you mentally ready to go?” Mary asked. “We've been putting you under considerable strain for the last year. No one expects you to just bounce back from that and take off.”

“You know,” said Jim, “it's strange, but there's nothing to bounce back from. Even if it'd turned out you didn't have a good reason for putting me here, there'd be nothing to bounce back from. I'm different now, that's all, in some way I can't explain. You know, come to think of it, it's almost as if I was thinking like a ship, instead of a man.”

“Maybe we should have the doc give him some tests,” said Mollen, very nearly under his breath.

“To see if my mind's all here?” Jim said. “It's all here, I promise you. It's just that—it's different, now.”

“I don't know…” grumbled Mollen.

“Maybe I ought to say it's something like being perfectly free to think without all the body-feelings that used to interfere with thoughts, like static,” said Jim. “Anyway, if you want me to leave this minute, I can.”

And he once more lifted
AndFriend
a hand's breadth from the floor.

“No. Wait. Come down!” said Mollen.

Jim rested the weight of his ship-body back on the floor.

“There's more to it than you know just yet,” Mollen said. “We've got tapes of parts of what Raoul said that we've never let you hear before—tapes about whatever it was he ran into that gave him that idea of a paradise, and that the Laagi didn't know it was there. Are you ready to hear those now?”

“Certainly,” said Jim. “Now or anytime. You know, it's funny. Time doesn't seem to mean the same thing to me now. Maybe I don't sleep anymore, like this. No, wait a minute; I did sleep for a while, didn't I? How long was I asleep?”

“Asleep?” said Mollen. “Maybe forty minutes. We thought you'd be out for hours.”

“Forty minutes!”

For the first time Jim paid close attention to the faces of Mary and Mollen. They both looked strained and tired. Mollen, perhaps because of his age, looked very tired indeed.

“Just a second,” said Jim. “What time is it now?”

“Now? Early morning—” Mollen looked at his wrist-com. “Four hundred thirty-seven.”

“Four A.M.! You're the ones who're not up to tapes,” said Jim. “Why don't you both go and rest? You can show me the tapes after you've had some sleep.”

“And what'll you be doing meantime?” Mary asked.

“Me?” Jim was surprised by the question. He thought for a moment. “I'll think, I guess. Anyway, minutes, hours, days… it doesn't make all that much difference to me.”

“Why not?” asked Mary. “Can you tell me why not?”

Jim thought about it.

“No,” he said. “It just doesn't. It's like the business of my lifting myself off the floor to show you I could do it, earlier. I don't know how I do these things. I seem to be something like a stone-age savage. I know what I can do with my body, but I can't tell you why or how.”

“I'd still like to have you try to answer—”

“Mary,” said Jim. “If you like, you can stay and we'll talk as long as you want. It won't make any difference to me. You can go until you fall over. But the general's going to fall before you do. And the truth is, you probably need sleep as much as he does. Why don't you go get some, and come back when you're rested. I'll still be here and just the same.”

“You're not just trying to get rid of us so you can be alone?” growled Mollen.

“Not particularly,” said Jim. “In fact, I don't really know whether I'll think at all while you're gone. I think I'll think, but I won't know until I'm left alone. Did you ever find out whether Penard slept, or just sat there and thought?”

Mollen grunted, wordlessly.

“No,” said Mary, “there was no way to check.”

“Well, there you are,” said Jim. “It's up to you. But why don't you both get some sleep?”

“All right. I'm going, anyway,” said Mollen abruptly. “Mary?”

“I suppose”—she looked from Jim to the general and back to Jim—“I really am tired.”

“Pleasant dreams,” said Jim politely. “Just remember to speak to me when you get back, in case I do sleep myself, or get lost in my own thoughts.”

“Good night, then,” said Mollen gruffly.

“Good night,” said Mary; and it occurred to Jim for the first time in his life how much sweeter the words sounded in a woman's voice than in a man's.

“Good night,” he said, and watched as they turned and left.

It turned out that he was never to be sure whether he thought all during the period of hours that passed before he saw Mary and Mollen again, or whether he slept part of it. He was conscious of remembering many things from his own life, the way such things are remembered just before falling asleep, with a particular clarity that almost amounted to reliving them. If he speculated, if he engaged in logical mental attack on any question, he was not conscious of it afterward. He had vaguely intended to try something like that, just to see how his mind would work under these conditions; but there seemed to be all the time in the universe and the question and the experiment were not pressing.

But he understood now how Raoul could lose himself in his memories. He had been so used to the ever-present feelings of his body, its efforts, its weight under gravity or artificial gravity—perhaps even its circadian rhythms—that he had considered his mind totally free for thoughts or dreams when actually it was receiving and noting reports from all over its physical vehicle. It was a pleasant situation to be mind alone. It occurred to him that the condition of being contentedly alone like this might turn out to be useful therapy for some kinds of mental disturbances.

He had rarely felt more contented.

But the question of sleep remained a question. He was conscious neither of falling asleep nor of waking—but without body signals to announce them, these things could have happened without his noticing. He could, for example, have slipped from remembering a past experience to dreaming about it without noticing it. He did not, however, remember any of the illogical happenings and transitions that seem to take place, to the dreamer in the dream state. Also, he had been awake as he had watched Mary and Mollen leave him; and he was awake when later they lifted the flap of the tent and came back inside.

“How are you?” Mary asked as they came up to his hull.

“Same as ever,” he answered. “There's been no reason for me to change. How about you two? Are you rested?”

“Yes,” said Mary.

“You, too, General?”

“Yes. Thanks. I did need some sleep,” said Mollen gruffly.

Mary was carrying a small case in her hand. She uncoiled a lead from one end of this and placed the free end against his hull, where it clung.

“These are parts of Raoul's recordings about the paradise and the Laagi,” she said.

The sound of Raoul's voice began to resonate in his hull, audible to him but to no one else unless someone had earlier attached a listening device to his hull—and, feeling around himself now, he was sure there was no such thing touching him.

But the recordings were not very informative beyond what he had been told already by Mary and Mollen. Invariably they were fragments of sentences in which mention of the Laagi, or the “paradise” was merely used as a reference.

"…the Laurentides. Paradise was wonderful, but there's no place like home…

"...ugly like those Laagi things. All right, maybe not ugly; but nothing beautiful, just like the Laagi couldn't imagine beautiful…

"... they didn't even come to watch me. I kept waiting. Just having me there was it, evidently. When I figured that out, I lifted and headed for home…. There's no place like home…

"...but they were all stuck. Crazy Laagi, all stuck in space. Flies on flypaper. Not me…"

Jim listened patiently through more than four hours of such excerpts, and ended up not much more informed by these cryptic allusions than he had been before. The sum total of it was what Mary and Mollen had already told him. That some where beyond Laagi territory—somewhere reachable in a fusion ship, which could only mean farther in toward the center of the galaxy—there was something Raoul had considered a paradise—or paradises—he seemed to be using the word sometimes to refer to singular places, sometimes to multiple ones.