The Forever Man (45 page)

And they were back at the point where they had first started to dance.

“There you are,” said ?1.

“?1, that was truly lovely,” said Mary softly. “Thank you.”

“It was indeed,” said Jim. “Thanks.”

“It was nothing. Or, actually, it was a dance so simple and small that if I had not known how limited you were, I'd have been ashamed to show it to you. But you did respond to it, didn't you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mary.

“Now you can understand, perhaps,” said ?1, “why one of us would spend all his available existence dreaming and working to create one really great dance, if what you saw was only a small one; and why this space we need in which to create is so precious to us and has to be protected at all costs.”

“Yes,” said Jim. “I understand that a lot better, now.”

“Meanwhile,” said ?1, “we've thought it all over. We will help you if you and your people will help us. We will both have to trust each other a little, since we can never really know holes and you can never really know us. But after thinking it over, we believe if we both try hard we can work together. So we will let you bring your people in to live on the planets of our stars, and we will also let the Laagi in, once you can find some means to show us clearly that they understand enough about us that they won't destroy this precious place or the labor we live to do. Is this agreeable to both of you?”

“To me,” said Jim.

“And to me,” said Mary.

“Then we are agreed,” said ?1.

“And in that case,” said Jim, “we ought to be getting back into our hole that we brought with us—the one we call our ship. If you'll show us where that is.”

“You are there,” said ?1. And, instantaneously, they were. At it, but just outside its hull.

“Hmm,” said Jim, disgusted. “I could have found it, come to think of it. All you had to do was think of it, to find it. Isn't that right?”

“Quite right,” said ?1. “But, since you asked, it was no trouble to do it for you.”

“We're obliged,” said Mary.

“I don't quite understand that concept, but I suppose you're expressing some sort of appreciation for being brought back here. As Jim has pointed out, you could have done it for yourselves, so appreciation is hardly necessary. Farewell—”

“Wait a minute!” said Jim.

“Yes?” answered ?1.

“We've got to get back inside the ship so I can move it toward our home planet. But I'd appreciate your help on the way. We need to find a Laagi ship with at least one Laagi inside and take it back with us, with the Laagi in it unharmed. You can help us with that, can't you?”

“You mean,” said ?1, “by ordering those within it to make their ship accompany your ship?”

“You understand exactly,” said Jim.

“I suppose this is an undertaking that will help us all toward the situation both our races most deeply desire?” said ?1.

“That's right,” said Jim. “We've never been able to bring back a live Laagi prisoner before, so that we could work out any method of communicating with that race. If we can bring one home now, we can get to work right away at solving the communication problem. Will you help?”

“Certainly. We've already established the fact our two races will help each other. This merely executes that decision. Shall we go find what you wish right now?”

“Give us a few minutes alone with each other and the ship here, first. I'll call you when we're ready to go.”

“Agreed,” said ?1; and suddenly not only was he gone, but there were none of the firefly colors of the mind-people anywhere around. They were alone with
AndFriend
and the galaxy.

“I wish we had our bodies,” said Mary dreamily.

“I know what you mean,” answered Jim. “I do, too.”

They were both silent for a long moment.

“But I can see you perfectly well, you know that?” said Jim. “Isn't it funny? When I had you around in the body I never really looked at you; and then, all this time, with no one to look at, got me started digging out the old memories of you and putting you back together, piece by piece, until I had you all complete in my mind's eye. So that now I can see you as clearly as if you were standing in space, right here in front of me, beside
AndFriend
.”

“You can't. Not as if I was really here.”

“Yes, I can. I tell you, I literally couldn't see you any clearer if you were actually here in the body. I've got every part right, all built back together, a bit of nose here, a touch of smile at the corners of your mouth, there and there, all complete.”

“Oh, Jim!” She laughed.

“It's sober fact,” he said. “I don't know why I didn't have the sense to take a good look at you when we were on the ground, back at Base. Because you're beautiful. You've probably heard that so often it doesn't mean anything to you. But you really are; and I just wanted you to know I've finally realized it. I don't know why I didn't have the sense before. Anyway, you understand, don't you, Mary?”

She did not answer.

“Mary?” he said. “You understand, don't you?”

Still, there was no answer.

“Mary?” he said. “Hey, Mary! Ahoy! Jim, here! Mary, do you read me? Answer me, for anybody's sake!”

“Hadn't we better be getting back into the ship?” she said. Her voice was utterly cold.

“Certainly. Right. But I was asking you if you could understand why it took me so long to realize—”

“Why don't you shut up for once—just for once?” she said. “Everything has to be a joke to you, doesn't it? A lovely moment like that dance and you have to turn it into a clown act. Let's drop the subject, shall we, and get back inside? The sooner we get back to Base the better I'm going to like it!”

Jim felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. His mind whirled, baffled.

“If you want to,” he said at last.

“I do.”

He thought of the inside of
AndFriend
—and they were within the ship.

“If we're going back into Laagi territory to look for one of their ships, you'd better start charting a flight plan—” Mary broke off suddenly. “Oh, no!”

Jim had already seen what she had seen; and the blow this time was in the same category as the one of a moment before—which was still baffling him.

Squonk half-lay, half-leaned against the com-seat of the pilot's position. On the deck just before the seat and under the controls panel, where the pilot's boots would normally rest, were lined up all of the small objects Jim had caused the ship's robot to secret about
AndFriend
's interior. All except one. That one, Squonk still held.

His legs were extended by slightly different amounts, but approximately enough to raise him to the height necessary to let him rest his body's weight on the edge of the seat; his neck was extended, his head rested on its left jaw upon the seat and all of his tentacles but one lay loosely about. He was unmoving and limp, except for that one tentacle. This also rested on the seat by his head; and the end of it was tightly curled, holding a large, shiny metal hex-nut, probably had been the last of the objects he had found; and hopefully, Jim thought, the one that had finally represented to him the long-sought “key,” which he had located at last.

Mary said nothing; but Jim could feel, as if it was something tangible, the outpouring of emotion from her. The image of her in his mind was crying; and all his upset over her reaction to him just now outside the ship was swept away by the pain in him at her pain.

“Mary, don't,” he said. “He didn't even know you or I existed. It didn't matter from his point of view whether the ‘key' was real or not. He probably died happy, thinking he'd found it. In any case, he died the way he wanted to, working.”

“Leave me alone!” said Mary… and he could get no more from her than that.

Yielding at last to things as they were, he turned back to the demands of duty. Taking mental control of the ship, he ran an automatic check of
AndFriend
's equipment, internal and motive, and laid out a series of phase-shift jumps back into Laagi territory, close to the Laagi galactic centerline, and did the calculations on the first shift.

Having done that, he put out a call.

“?1,” he said. “Where are you? We're ready to travel now. Could you come here, please?”

A single invisible firefly light showed up before his nose.

“You didn't specify where ‘here' was to be,” said ?1. “If you'll do so in the future, I'll be, as Mary says, obliged—and I hope I was right in guessing that it implied gratitude of one kind or another.”

“It does; and you're welcome, which is one of our standard answers to that polite phrase,” said Jim. “Now, about what we're going to do: if you can help me in finding a Laagi ship, it would help a lot. Also, how will you be going about issuing your command to those aboard it to follow this ship? Can you act as a speaker for a large number of your people, or do they have to come with us, or can they just show up once we've found a Laagi ship, or what?”

“Yes,” said ?1, “I believe we can help you find one of those holes you call Laagi ships. I will travel with you; and when needed, I can utter an order with the full voice of my people. It's not necessary for them all to be there, in person. To ask you a question in turn, how are you planning to take this ship with you when you go?”

“It takes us,” said Jim.

There followed a rather confused discussion between the two of them in which Jim tried to explain both phase-shifting and ordinary drive to a mind that was completely unused to thinking in physical terms at all.

“… Suppose we leave the matter at this,” said ?1 at last. “You tell this hole of yours to move to a certain place and it goes there. Can we agree on that?”

“Yes, although—”

“Please!” said ?1 firmly, “no more explanations. Holes, particularly holes without a spark of life or intelligence, are profoundly uninteresting to me. Is my statement essentially correct?”

“It is,” said Jim. “All right. We're going to make our first phase-shift to approximately the area of your frontier with the Laagi, the area where you first told them not to come any closer. From there, we can look farther into Laagi territory and see if they've set up some kind of watch to catch us, if we cross back more or less where we originally came in.”

“Very well,” said ?1.

“Right, then,” said Jim, “here we go. Shift number one—”

He shifted.

?1 disappeared.

It was a full minute before he reappeared.

“I apologize!” he almost spluttered. “I most sincerely apologize. We all apologize and confess. When you spoke about moving stars, we had some doubts that you might have been talking of something you could never really achieve. I will be absolutely truthful with you; we only half-believed you'd ever be able to do any such thing, no matter how long you tried. Not that the mere possibility alone wasn't reason enough for us to take action. But when we see now that you've already achieved the instantaneous repositioning of smaller holes… Well, we apologize for our doubts, which you must have guessed we had. Believe that you can count on our full cooperation from now on—in every possible way.”

Jim was suddenly very grateful that he was not in his body at the moment and that in any case ?1 would not have been able to read the expression on his face. Mentally, he pounded his fist against his forehead. Of course! Why couldn't the same mechanics founded on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which had birthed the phase-shift technique, be used to shift other, larger things—even stars? It would be a huge job to find the proper means and be a tremendous undertaking to actually shift something that large. But when he got back to Base, it would be well worth suggesting just that as a line of research.

“Well, thank you,” he said to ?1 now. “And think nothing of the fact you were doubtful. We'd expect anyone to be.”

“The Laagi also use this method to move their smaller holes—ships, I mean?”

“I'm afraid they do,” said Jim gravely.

“Let us hurry and find one of their ships to take back to your world so that you can get started immediately discovering how to communicate with them.”

“Right away. Let's first see,” said Jim, “if they've got any ships out there, watching for us to come back from your side of the frontier.”

“There are no ships there. None!” said ?1. “1! will let you know if any concentration of their ships seems to be moving in your direction. Just a little way off, there is a single ship of theirs. You can take that one.”

“Farther off? Where?” asked Jim, for to the limit of the viewing of
AndFriend
's instruments, no other vessel was being reported.

“Why, right there—nevermind!” said ?1.

Suddenly the space around
AndFriend
was filled with fireflies once more and her screens, as well as Jim's view of the firmament from all sides of the hull, showed the galaxy pinwheeling around them once again. Suddenly, everything was stable once more.

“There!” said ?1.

And there, indeed, a two-person Laagi fighting ship was, fifty meters away, completely within collision range, but floating as easily alongside as if invisible bonds already bound it to
AndFriend
.

Jim's mind leaped at the controls and he put an instant, safe five kilometers between his ship and the other one.

“What's wrong?” demanded ?1, puzzled.

“We might have collided!” said Jim. “It could have destroyed both ships.”

“Naturally,” said ?1 stiffly, “we would have seen that no such touching occurred.”

“No doubt,” said Jim. “Let's just say that for the comfort of my own personal sensibilities, I, prefer us at least this distance from them. Now will you please tell them to follow us wherever we go?”