"Chapter 27" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Dickson - Forever Man)

"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 Less One. Ate, 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.


326 I Gordon R. Dickson
"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. 1 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.


THE FOREVER MAN / 327

And it was true what ?I 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 wayit, 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


328 I Gordon R. Dickson