Part 13 (2/2)
”How do you know she told us?”
”I heard her. I listened outside the window after she went back to the other room with the rest of you.
Bob tried to conceal how this confession affected him. ”What did you hear?” he asked.
”Lots.”
Bob had never taken lessons from his guest detective, but even he knew better than to be specific.
”Have you listened before?”
”Sure. Lots.”
”When have you listened to us?”
”In the hospital, mostly. Down by the creek, the day you and Jenny had been out on Apu, and she and your sister went to the library for the thing you were looking for. On the dock, the night, you came back from the States.”
”Did you try to break into my footlocker?”
”No. I was trying something else, that time. Your father said a lot, when he got hurt picking it up.”
Maeta interjected. ”Andy, do you snoop like this around everyone, or is there something about Bob and Jenny and me that interests you?”
”I listen whenever I can. If it's no fun, I stop. You've been a lot of fun.”
”I can see where we might be,” Bob said wryly.
”What's been so especially fun about us for you?”
”The green things.” The child's face was still in scrutable. ”The green things that keep you from get ting hurt. One of them kept your father from being burned up when I was little.” That, the Hunter thought, was an interesting interpretation of the event; he wondered whether it had been edited. For the first time, he began to think there might be something to Seever's suspicion about his old quarry. Andre went on. ”I wanted to get one for my father, because Mother had died. Then when the other kids used to hurt me, I wanted one for me.” ”You thought, way back then, that there were green things that kept people from being hurt?” Bob was trying to be sure.
”Of course. I saw you with it at that fire. I wondered how you got one, and kept trying to find out who had them. I was new sure until the other day when I saw one come part way out of your hand while you were asleep up at the other end of the island. I walked with you for a way after that, and wanted to ask, but I thought you wouldn't want to tell me. I just couldn't really believe it, and I had to make sure. You didn't get hurt, they told me, when you fell off your bike by the library. I hadn't stayed, because I didn't think it would work anyway-it was just an experiment. I made real sure in your driveway.”
”You certainly did,” Bob admitted. He found himself at a loss for other words. Maeta, as usual, did not.
”Andy,” she asked, ”did you think what would have happened if you'd been wrong about Bob and his-green thing?”
”So I'd have been wrong. But I wasn't!” For the first time there was an expression on the round face -one of triumph. Bob and Maeta looked at each other; then the girl turned back to the child.
”How about Jenny's foot?” she asked. ”Did you think she had one of them, too?”
”She might have. She had been with Bob, and they were friends. He'd give one to a friend.”
”And now you know she doesn't. Are you sorry?”
”She'll be all right.” A thought crossed Bob's mind and he spoke up hastily.
”Before you try any more experiments, Andy, Maeta doesn't have one. Neither does anyone else.”
Maeta turned to the canoe. ”You'd better come along with us, Andre. You're only partly right about all this, and we'll have to explain some things to you before something really bad happens.”
”Will you help me find one of them?”
”We're looking for them, but we can't give one to you. They're people, and if you want one to live with you you'll have to get him to like you. Come on. Bob's arm is still bad from what you did, because his friend can't fix broken bones any faster than they usually heal. We were going to get someone else to help paddle, but you'll do.”
”I don't really want to go out with you, I know I asked, but I didn't think you'd let me. The wind's too high, and I'm afraid.”
”We're taking an important message-really, really important- to the green people. We may never find them if we don't get it there, where we think they'll be.”
”Are they in the ocean?” ”Some of the time. Come along.” The boy was still plainly reluctant, but Maeta had already displayed her force of personality, and the Hunter was not surprised when the youngster helped slide the outrigger into the water. Neither was Bob. Both of them, however, were uneasy about the girl's evident determination to go out with only two paddlers, one of them certainly not very strong and probably unskilled.
Since there was no way to ask her with the boy there-neither Bob nor the Hunter wanted to spoil any plan she might be considering-they could not know that Maeta had planned herself into a corner. She did want to get the bottle out to the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p; she regarded the message as vital to Bob's life. In addition, she, too, had suspected that Andre might have done something to her canoe, and wanted the a.s.surance of seeing him afloat in it. Nothing less would convince her, for the moment, that he had played no tricks with the outrigger; and until they were actually afloat she was expecting him to come up with some last- minute excuse for staying behind.
The Hunter had thought along the same lines briefly, but had realized that if his enemy were actually in the boy and persuading him to do any of these tricks; it was perfectly possible that all the human beings on the canoe were likely to be drowned. The other creature would have no real interest in the welfare of its host, and would probably consider the child well spent in a maneuver which deprived the Hunter of his own host and an a.s.sistant. The aliens would not suffer as the canoe splintered against the reef. They would not drown; and filings would be back where they were nearly eight years ago when the two representatives of the worst and the best of Castor's culture had reached Earth. Back where they were, except that this time the fugitive would be less likely to make any of the mistakes which had let the Hunter find him before.
The Hunter wondered what had been done to the canoe, and when it would make itself felt.
The wind, from the southwest was still rising. Bob and his symbiont were getting more and more uneasy and even Maeta was a little tense. She was beginning to wonder whether her judgment might not have suffered briefly from tunnel vision. She had stopped worrying about her canoe when they had reached deep water with Andre still aboard. Like both Bob and the Hunter in the last few weeks, she suddenly was feeling foolish; and, like the Hunter, she was worrying about what her mistakes might now do to other people.
In spite of the wind and her personal distraction, she found the marker buoy above the s.h.i.+p with surprising speed. It was still clear in spite of the wind, and the tanks in the lagoon which provided direction references were easy to see. She brought the canoe bow-on to the wind, and drew in her paddle.
”Andre, see if you can hold us here for a minute without my help. You can see that buoy; try to keep us just where we are with respect to it” The youngster, surprisingly to Bob, made no argument, but dug in with his paddle.
Bob was a little slow in reading the implications of Maeta's order, and by the time he turned to look at her she had slipped off the s.h.i.+rt and slacks which had covered her swimsuit, and was on her way overside with the bottle. Even the Hunter would have settled for dropping the message overboard at this point, and Bob was nearly frantic; but she gave no one time to expostulate. Bob got only part of a sentence out be fore she disappeared, leaving him quite literally holding his breath.
She was up again before he had to let it out, and slid aboard with her usual seal like grace. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up her paddle; and snapped an order as she began to use it.
”Bob, be ready to lean out, or climb out, on the forward boom. I can't head straight for the beach, but even so the rigger will be upwind now. We're not a real double hull, and the outrigger is light; the wind may try to pick it up. Your job is not to let that happen.
Andre, good work; keep paddling as you are.”
It was much more difficult now. The wind had been more or less behind them on the way out; now it held them back. Maeta saw quickly that she was not allowing enough for drift, and pointed more to the west. She finally found a heading which seemed to offer a vector sum leading to the beach, but even Andre could see that it would be a long time getting them there. Maeta evidently decided it would take too long; after a few minutes she turned almost straight west, out to sea away from Ell.
''What's the idea?” Bob shouted over the wind. , ”We can't make it back. Andre is wearing out, and I don't think I'll last that long myself. I want to get clear of the reef, and northwest is the quickest way. You can get off the boom, now.”
”But we'll be blown out to sea!”
”I know. But Island Eight is about thirty-five miles away, and straight downwind as nearly as I can judge. We won't have much trouble hitting it-there's a com pa.s.s here. We'll see it from miles away, and the tank there is unusually high, so if we miss the line a little we can still correct before we get there. Right now the important thing is to clear Ell's reef.”
”And stay, afloat.”
Maeta gestured that qualification away with a toss of her head. She knew there was no worry from wind or wave on the open sea as long as she could manipulate a paddle. The confidence of competence was perhaps slightly inflated, by the arrogance of youth, but she did know what she was doing. The error of putting to sea at all that day had been the result of attaching too much weight to factors unrelated to the weather; she would, she still felt, do the same thing again as long as she could feel reasonably sure of delivering the message.
”How about the reef at Eight?” yelled Bob. ”I've never been there.”
”Neither have I,” was the answer, ”but Charlie says the pa.s.sage is on this side and wide enough to be no problem-the tankers get in. Keep paddling just a little longer, Andy; you're doing fine.”
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