"Chapter 22" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Dickson - Forever Man)

C H A P T E R

22






"WHAT'S GOING ON?" SAID MARY, WAKING UP. "M. YOU'VE
moved us back into AndFriend. You should have checked with me before you did that."
"Why?" said Jim. "Since I was going to shift us over anyway? That's one of the things you don't control-what body or thing we're in."
"You're right," said Mary. "I'm sorry. It's just habit speaking in me."
Jim was stunned by the mildness of her reaction. Suspicion woke in him. Why, he asked himself, was she suddenly being so reasonable? Was the reasonableness only a cover for some plan she had cooked up to catch him unawares?
He was tempted to tell her that they had left the Laagi world. Her reaction to that news should reveal how she was really feeling about what he had done. They were, in fact, already almost into interstellar space. He had been accelerating at a steadily increasing rate until that rate was well beyond what a human body would have been comfortably able to support. Then he had remembered Squonk and realized that while to him and Mary in their present conditions such acceleration might not make any difference, it was literally lifethreatening to their small alien companion. He looked for Squonk now,
256

THE FOREVER MAN / 257

and saw him painfully trying to continue work in spite of the effect of essentially having his weight almost doubled. A little ashamed of himself, Jim backed off to an acceleration only slightly greater than the gravity Squonk was used to normally. Even at the lesser rate, they were putting distance between themselves and the Laagi world in gratifying fashion.
It was not the distance-eating travel of phase-shifting. But they were rapidly losing themselves in an increasing volume of space that was already large enough to sorely trouble even the large number of ships the Laagi could put into space in pursuit.
"Why exactly did you move us back into the ship from Squonk?" Mary asked. The tone of her question was entirely reasonable. "I'd think we could always have shifted over if the need arose-if some Laagi came out here to AndFriend, or something like that."
Facing the fact of telling her, now, Jim found himself uncomfortable with the need to do so, even though he was still sure inside himself that he had done the right thing.
"I had to be in the ship so I could operate her," he said. "I got Squonk to round up some of his friends and cut loose the arches that were holding us down. Then I used my own, personal, nonship powers-the same ones Raoul used to drive La Chasse Gallerie all the way through Laagi territory to get home-to take us off. We've left the Laagi world."
She said nothing. He waited.
"I know," he said, "you're feeling I betrayed you. Well, maybe I did. But you were working yourself to death and you'd already done anything anyone could have expected you to do back there-and more."
"So we're in space now?"
.Aside from an emptiness and a strange impression of distance, as if she had physically withdrawn from him, her voice was calm and he could feel no explosion kindling in her in reaction to what he had just said.
"That's right. On the equivalent of ordinary drive, which is all I can manage on my own, but moving away steadily."
"I suppose we could go back if we tried?"
"Yes," said Jim. "But I won't. If you'll just cancel that hypnotic lock you've got on me, so I can work the ship and

258 / Gordon R. Dickson
phase-shift, we'll head out around Laagi territory and go home."
"No," she said. "I'll never do that. Not as long as there's a chance of our going back to the Laagi."
The continuing utter calmness of her voice and emotions held an inflexibility that gave no hope of its being changed.
"Then we'll have to take our chances, this way," said Jim.
"The Laagi'll catch us long before we can reach the Frontier and any human protection," said Mary.
"Maybe they could," said Jim, "maybe not. But I'm not headed up-galaxy toward home. I'm headed down-galaxy toward the flyswatting territory. I think it'll take the Laagi a little while to figure out AndFriend might go in that direction; and any time gained is a plus for us, in this case."
"I see," said Mary. "All right. Understand me. I've had a chance to get some rest now. My head's clear. You were right. I'd worked myself to the point where I wasn't thinking straight. But I'm thinking straight now; and there's work back there I've left unfinished. If you'll turn back and let the Laagi catch us again, I'll promise you we'll leave within a quarter of a year, their local time."
"No," said Jim.
"Is a quarter of a year going to make that much difference to you after the time we've spent there already?"
"It's not that," said Jim. "I'm afraid I don't trust you. If you could go back there, a quarter of a year would become half a year, then a year. By the end of a year you'd be back again in a condition where there'd be no point in trying to talk sense to you about leaving, ever."
There was another extended silence from Mary. In the picture of her he carried always in his mind now, put together from bits and pieces of memory, he imagined her with the right corner of her lower lip caught thoughtfully for a moment between her teeth as she searched for the words most likely to move him from his position. It was a fetching, even in a strange way an endearing, picture; but he could not afford to give in.
"So you're going to try taking us home in spite of the odds against it?" she said at last.
"The odds wouldn't be so much against it if you gave me back the ability to phase-shift AndFriend."

' THE FOREVER MAN / 259

She ignored what he had just said.