The Forever Man

  “Sorry.”

  “One can hardly blame you. You’re only holes after all; and your understanding of the importance of dancing is limited—”

  “We’re ready to go,” said Jim.

  “Then by all means do so.”

  Jim shifted. This time ?1 stayed with him, but the Laagi ship disappeared.

  “We’ve lost them—” he was beginning, when they suddenly appeared alongside.

  “It slipped my mind to tell them where you were going, so they would go, too,” said ?1. “A minor oversight, which might have been complicated by the fact that it was only I, speaking to them, alone. The error has now been rectified.”

  Jim looked out from the hull. Sure enough, there—and larger to be seen on his screens inside the ship—was a beautiful yellow sun.

  “Home! And we hit it right on the nose!” he said happily. “I don’t know how to thank you, ?1.”

  “You can thank me and all of us by getting into communication with these Laagi right away and explaining to them what they should do,” said ?1. “You’ve been… let us say, interesting—for two people who are essentially no more than living holes. We may meet in the future. Meanwhile, farewell!”

  He disappeared.

  “Jim!” It was Mary speaking urgently to him. “Look at the instruments!”

  Jim looked. He stared.

  “Laagi ships!” he said. “Two coming up at a hundred and forty by thirty-two degrees from down-galaxy—and one coming from sixty-one by ninety-seven degrees, from up-galaxy? How can that be, here in our own territory? What’s happened? Wait—”

  He hastily checked the instruments.

  “The spectrum’s not right!” he burst out. “That’s the wrong sun! And ?1’s already left us. ?1! ?1! Answer me, will you? Come back, ?1! You took us to the wrong sun! ?1!!!”

  An invisible firefly appeared in the center of AndFriend’s cabin space.

  “What do you mean, calling me back after all this?” demanded ?1. “And what do you mean, I took you to the wrong star? I told you where the star was on the line you gave me to look along, and that’s the one you went to.”

  “Well, it’s not our sun. We had an error, just the way I warned you we might!” said Jim. “It just happened we landed near a sun that’s almost a duplicate of our own.”

  “Nonsense!” said ?1. “We went right out the line you indicated. I can assure you of that, since, unlike you holes, I know where I am by reference to the galactic pattern.”

  “Well, it’s the wrong star, all the same,” said Jim. “Not only that, but there’s three—no, there’s four now, according to the instruments—Laagi ships closing in on us fast. If you don’t want to see all our plans aborted, you’d better get your people here to command the Laagi aboard those incoming ships to turn around and go away, before you do anything else.”

  “Oh, my!” said ?1. “I can’t—I absolutely can’t intrude on the dance time of so many of our people to help you again, after all the attention they’ve already given you. Even if I did, most of them would probably refuse to let themselves be interrupted like that once more.”

  “Then get us out of here, fast!”

  “Why don’t you just get out on your own?” demanded ?1.

  “Because I don’t know which way to go!” shouted Jim—or at least he would have shouted, if he had had a voice to shout with. “All right, if you won’t help us, we’ll simply make a blind jump away from here of at least five lightyears and try to figure how to get home after this. Obviously your pattern-sensing can’t be right, since this definitely is not Sol—our star!”

  “I tell you,” said ?1 exasperatedly, “it’s impossible for anyone not to know where that person is by reference to the pattern. If you only had a decent capability for sensing it, yourself, you’d see how ridiculous it is to think you could get lost, anywhere in the galaxy—”

  “No time to talk anymore,” said Jim. “I’m programming the shift!”

  “Very well. Act in a completely foolish manner—just a moment,” said ?1, “you did say your sun was a yellow G0-type star, on this line?”

  “Yes! But so what, now? Those Laagi ships’ll be in firing range in seconds; and, judging by the way they’re acting, whatever your people told whoever’s aboard our captive ship, it didn’t stop them from letting these others know they were being held prisoner, as soon as the others got into instrument communication range. Those ships coming at us are out for blood—”

  “Ah, as it turns out,” said ?1, “another sixty-one of your light-years farther out this line of yours there just happens to be another G0 star very much like this one…”

  “What? Where? How far?”

  “Sixty—”

  “Nevermind. I heard you the first time. I’m setting up a shift for another sixty light-year jump straight ahead, right now. In fact, we’ll jump it on rough calculations. Better to be in larger error at the far end than take any more timeow—”

  They shifted.

  This time the Laagi ship that was their prisoner came with them. So did ?1. But this time Jim paid neither of them any attention. His view was on the instruments panel, examining the spectra of the new yellow star that now lay before them at a distance of less than a light year. ?1 had evidently been rather cursory in his estimate of the distance; but once again they had shifted to what, for practical purposes, was their exact aiming point—which was something to think about when there should be time to think about it. Two miracles of phase-shifting in a row became suspiciously something more than miracles.

  “It’s all right,” Jim announced. “Thank God. The spectrum checks. We’re home.”

  Chapter 27

  He spoke to an empty cabin. ?1 had not even stayed to say farewell, this time, before departing.

  Jim checked his instruments.

  “There’s Earth,” he said. “Alarms’ll be sounding all over the world right now, seeing we’ve got a Laagi ship beside us. I’ll give them a call.”

  Mary said nothing. Tine, what he had just said, himself, did not particularly ask for comment, but he would have welcomed a word or two, from which perhaps he might have judged how she was feeling. Evidently, she was still angry with him for some reason—if angry was the word for it. Oh, well…

  “Base,” he said through the ship’s equipment in broadcast to that location, “this is ship XN413, your lost baby from a far country. I’ll leave our location sounder on, so you can send out an escort to bring us in. We’ve got a prisoner—he’s harmless, so don’t come loaded for bear—and he’ll need an escort. Also I need to talk to Louis One. Repeat… “

  He ran through the broadcast several times. He had barely finished before the first half-dozen fighter ships began to appear around him and began to englobe AndFriend and her Laagi prisoner.

  “Welcome home, XN413.” A voice on the ship-to-ship circuit filled the interior space of AndFriend. “Since we’re being formal, this is XY1668, Wing Cee for the pack you see around you. You want to slave to me and we’ll carry you in? How about your prisoner, is he slave to you—and is he alive?”

  “Very much alive. Handle with care,” answered Jim. “Not, repeat not, slaved to me, but will follow. I slave to you—now. Give prisoner in particular lots of room and drive regular. He’ll follow. Land him, but do not disturb further. Also do not disturb me after landing. You’ll probably get added orders on both of us from Base—but everything clear for now?”

  “Clear. Here we go.”

  The escort moved off, with AndFriend and the Laagi ship traveling as if held in invisible bonds in the center of their formation.

  “Mary?” said Jim softly, speaking mind to mind.

  She did not answer.

  “Mary?” he asked again, still softly.

  “What is it?” Her voice was no longer cold, but neither was it warm. It spoke to him with the remoteness of disinterest.

  “We’re home,” said Jim. “This is your territory, again. How do we go about getting back into our own bod
ies?”

  “We’d better wait and see if they’re ready to have us reenter, first. Louis will be calling us, shortly, won’t he?”

  “I’d expect so,” said Jim, knowing that short of death, nothing was going to keep General Louis Mollen from being on the phone to them as soon as he heard they were back.

  “We’ll have to ask him to check with wherever they’ve been maintaining the bodies, and make sure the technicians there are ready for us to reanimate them. When he gives us word they are, we can go ahead.”

  “How do we do it? I mean, how do we go about moving back into our bodies?” Jim asked.

  “When I was in Raoul’s mind in La Chasse Gallerie”—her voice still sounded remote, disinterested—“after I found I couldn’t move the ship by myself and also I couldn’t communicate with him any better, I finally felt I was wasting my time there. Then I wanted to be back in my own body—and as soon as I wanted to, I was. Evidence is that where you most want to be, your identity is—remember how you got into AndFriend in the first place? How you wanted to be with her, and so, you were.”

  “If you and I could just stay here in the ship, together, I’d want that,” said Jim.

  “Suit yourself,” she said lightly. “As soon as we get word the bodies are ready, I’ll be leaving.”

  He did not try to say any more and she did not say anything. The formation of ships proceeded Earthward at one gravity of acceleration, reached midpoint, flipped end for end and decelerated, still at one gravity. Time passed; and Earth became visible as a blue globe, though still small, on AndFriend’s close screen.

  “—XN413, this is Louis One. XN413, This is Louis One. Are you hearing me all right—”

  “Hearing,” said Jim. “Both of us.”

  “It’s wonderful to hear you. Mary?”

  “She’s here, too,” Jim said, since Mary could not talk aloud except through him.

  “Terrific! We’ll save the talking until you’re down. Anything you need right away?”

  “We’ve got some live Laagi in the other ship we brought in and the body of a dead alien subspecies on board here. Be sure to note that the atmosphere in both ships at landing will be that of the Laagi world.”

  “Right,” said the general. “Anything else?”

  “Tell Louis to have our bodies checked,” said Mary. “Have the technicians standing by for reentry.”

  Jim repeated her words aloud.

  “Reentry when?”

  “Tell him as soon as he can tell us they’re ready for us, down there,” said Mary clearly. “We don’t have to wait until our transportation gets there.”

  Jim repeated.

  “Oh! I understand,” Mollen said. “Hang on, then. I’ll check on that and be back to you as soon as I can. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Hang on.”

  The voice of General Louis Mollen ceased.

  “Mary?” said Jim.

  She did not answer.

  He dwelt in silence until Mollen’s voice came back into AndFriend.

  “Ready at any time over in the body shop,” said Mollen’s voice.

  “Thanks,” said Mary.

  “Thanks,” said Jim.

  “Mary,” said Jim, on their private mind-to-mind level, “let me just tell you something before you go. I just want to say I’ll always remember this crazy business of being just a couple of minds together all these months. I learned a lot—”

  He broke off. His words were sounding emptily to his own mind in the hollowness of AndFriend’s interior. Mary was already gone. Gone, he realized now, from the moment she had answered Mollen’s message that their bodies were ready for reoccupancy. He had been talking to someone who was no longer there.

  Mentally, he shook his head. There was no reason for him to stay any longer, either. He stepped out of AndFriend as he had stepped out of her with ?1 and started toward the surface of Earth, and Base.

  That face of Earth holding the North American continent was toward him and the sensible thing was to go there in a direct line. But for some reason, for old time’s sake with the ?1 and his kind, Jim found himself choosing to come in on his destination in a soft, looping curve. There was no hurry in any case.

  I must look like an invisible firefly myself, he thought, or would, if there was another loose mind around to see me. It was a definite pleasure to swoop along the curve he had chosen rather than go directly. He was enjoying a last time of being out without a ship, without a body, without anything but himself, alone with the stars.

  He felt the pleasure of it… and, it came to him suddenly, after a fashion he could actually feel the pattern of forces ?1 had talked so much about. Certainly, he could feel the strong bar that was the pull from the Sun; and, now that he was this close, the even stronger one from Earth, like two threads of the celestial tapestry. It was strange, although he could feel the one from the Earth to be stronger because he was close to it, something in him recognized it as one of the most minor of minor threads in the galactic warp; and he thought he could faintly see some of the skeins from the other planets and even some from the nearer stars.

  And it was true what ?1 had said. It would be impossible to lose one’s way because even a piece of the warp implied the pattern of the whole. Down-galaxy, the direction toward the mass of the galaxy’s center was as plain as if a street sign stood in the void, pointing to the midpoint of all the great whirl of stars and dust and cosmic debris.

  But, he was entering Earth’s atmosphere now; and he said farewell—as ?1 had said it at least once—to the stars. Below was the continent he aimed for, below were the mountains surrounding Base. Below was Base itself.

  And then he was there. And the building, the room, the bed that held his body, drew him to it, for—in another way—it, too, was part of a pattern.

  It looked rather uncomfortable, his body, with all those tubes stuck into it. But he would do something about that, just as soon as he was back inside.

  He slipped into it, and then he had moved the muscles that opened his eyes and was looking up into the faces of people in white medical clothes who stood staring down at him, as if he was some kind of Egyptian mummy returned to life…

  What followed turned out to be a long period of getting him and his body back into operation together.

  To begin with, although they had kept the body very carefully, and cleaned it and fed it and turned it and even exercised it, it was out of the habit of operating under its own power and it had lost not only muscle strength, but the habit of use.

  Added to that was the fact that, after having been a free mind with no physical weight to clog his senses and weigh him down under gravity, he had to learn to love his body all over again. That was not easy. His first feeling, on finding himself in it, had been almost like that of a child shut up in a closet.

  He had felt trapped.

  Grimly, he had fought that feeling down. A body was a great thing, he told himself. Not only that, but it was a necessary thing. Stop. Think. There were things possible to a body, smells and sights and touchings and a whole host of others, of which the mind alone could not even conceive.

  Also, although there might not be much importance to it now, somewhere Mary was also back in her body; and only as another body could he ever have anything to do with her again, however transiently.

  So he told himself that his return to flesh was just what he wanted. He did what the technicians told him, let himself be weaned from intravenous feeding back through liquids to solid food, let himself be exercised until he was able to take over the business of making his body exercise by his own will. He worked his way up the long slope of effort against the drag of gravity to being an ordinary human being again.

  Just another hole—in top hole shape.

  Mollen had been in to see him a number of times as he recovered; and of course Jim had been debriefed by a large number of interviewers. These had come, one at a time, of course, to stand at his bedside, or beside his exercise bike, or walk and finally run besi
de him. They had emptied him of every memory and thought he had had while he was gone, except those he had kept private to himself; and he gathered, from Mollen as well as from what reached him through the gossip channel of his attendant technicians, that work was going busily forward with both the Laagi ship and the two Laagi he and Mary had brought in. Squonk’s body was never mentioned, but he was sure that it, too, had been thoroughly investigated with scalpel and microscope, by the time he was ready to walk out of the building where they had kept his body.

  By that time he was ready to accept Mollen’s invitation to a full scale wrap-up of the trip, in the general’s office. It was to be a private session with just Mollen—and, he hoped, Mary. He had not seen her since he had reentered his own body, though when he asked about her he had been told she had readjusted well. In fact, she had been up and around, evidently, before he had been able to stand on his own feet. She was someplace other than the rooms that they had him in. Naturally, they did not tell him where.

  The day finally came on which he left for good the building in which he had regained his body, and headed for Mollen’s office. It was one of those sparkling clear mountain days in summer that he had used to love, and now for the first time again he found himself appreciating the body with which he responded to it. The major acting as receptionist in Mollen’s outer office was a trim, fortyish woman with light gray hair whom he did not know.

  “Colonel Jim Wander,” he said. “The general’s expecting me.”

  “Yes, Colonel. If you’ll sit down for a moment…”

  It turned out to be indeed only a moment. Which was just as well. The receptionist’s office, in a building that had not existed when Jim and Mary had left the Base, was high-ceilinged but entirely within the building and therefore without windows. Jim had become sensitive to being enclosed since his return to his body. He got to his feet and put down the magazine he had been holding open without really reading the print before his eyes. He went into Mollen’s private office.

  Mollen’s room had the same high ceiling but was easily four times as large as the reception room. There was a floor-to-ceiling vision screen on the wall to Jim’s right. The other wall had a large painting which made no sense to Jim but was probably something expensive for important visitors to notice. Happily, however, the wall at the far end of the room, opposite the door by which Jim had entered, was all one large window with heavy floor-to-ceiling curtains drawn and tied back as far as they would go on either side, taking away all of Jim’s mild new claustrophobia. In between him and the window was a lot of thick carpeting, overstuffed chairs, bookcases, a bar, and a large desk a couple of meters before the window and facing the room’s entrance, a desk behind which Mollen sat in another overstuffed chair.