A Stranger in a Strange Land

VIII

JILL TRIED TO TELL HERSELF that Ben had gone charging off on another Scent and simply had forgotten (or had not taken time) to let her know. But she did not believe it. Ben, incredibly busy as he was, owed much of his success, both professional and social, to meticulous attention to human details. He remembered birthdays and would rather have welched on a poker debt than have forgotten to write a bread-and-butter note. No matter where he had gone, nor how urgent the errand, he could have - and would have! - at least taken two minutes while in the air to record a reassuring message to her at her home or at the Center. It was an unvarying characteristic of Ben, she reminded herself, the thing that made him a lovable beast in spite of his many faults.

He must have left word for her! She called his office again at her lunch break and spoke with Ben's researcher and office chief, Osbert Kilgallen. He assured her solemnly that Ben had left no message for her, nor had any come in since she had called earlier.

She could see past his head in the screen that there were other people in the office; she decided it was a poor time to mention the Man from Mars. "Did he say where he was going? Or when he would be back?"

"No. But that is not unusual. We always have a few spare columns on the hook to fill in when one of these things comes up."

"Well� where did he call you from? Or am I being too snoopy?"

"Not at all, Miss Boardman. He did not call; it was a statprint message, filed from Paoli Flat in Philadelphia as I recall."

Jill had to be satisfied with that. She lunched in the nurses' dining room and tried to interest herself in food. It wasn't, she told herself, as if anything were really wrong� or as if she were in love with the lunk or anything silly like that.

"Hey! Boardman! Snap out of the fog - I asked you a question."

Jill looked up to find Molly Wheelwright, the wing's dietician, looking at her. "Sorry. I was thinking about something else."

"I said, 'Since when does your floor put charity patients in luxury suites?'

"Isn't K-12 on your floor? Or have they moved you?"

"K-12? Certainly. But that's not a charity case; it's a rich old woman, wealthy that she can pay to have a doctor watch every breath she draws."

"Humph! If she's wealthy, she must have come into money awfully suddenly. She's been in the N.P. ward of the geriatrics sanctuary for the past seventeen months."

"Must be some mistake."

"Not mine - I don't let mistakes happen in my diet kitchen. That tray is a tricky one and I check it myself - fat-free diet (she's had her gall bladder out) and a long list of sensitivities, plus concealed medication. Believe me, dear, a diet order can be as individual as a fingerprint." Miss Wheelwright stood up. "Gotta run, chicks. I wish they would let me run this kitchen for a while. Hogwallow Cafeteria!"

"What was Molly sounding off about?" one of the nurses asked.

"Nothing. She's just mixed up." But Jill continued to think about it. It occurred to her that she might locate the Man from Mars by making inquiries around the diet kitchens. She put the idea out of her mind; it would take a full day to visit all the diet kitchens in the acres of ground covered by the sprawling buildings. Bethesda Center had been founded as a naval hospital back in the days when wars were fought on oceans; it had been enormous even then. It had been transferred later to Health, Education, amp; Welfare and had expanded; now it belonged to the Federation and was still larger, a small city.

But there was something odd about Mrs. Bankerson's case. The hospital accepted all classes of patients, private, charity, and government; the floor Jill was working on usually had only government patients and its luxury suites were occupied by Federation Senators or other official guests able to command flossy service. It was unusual for a paying private patient to have a suite on her floor, or to be on her floor in any status.

Of course Mrs. Bankerson could be overflow, if the part of the Center open to the fee-paying public had no such suite available. Yes, probably that was it.

She was too rushed for a while after lunch to think about it, being busy with incoming patients. Shortly a situation came up in which she needed a powered bed. The routine action would be to phone for one to be sent up - but the storage room was in the basement a quarter of a mile away and Jill wanted the bed at once. She recalled that she had seen the powered bed which was normally in the bedroom of suite K-l2 parked in the sitting room of that suite; she remembered telling one of those marine guards not to sit on it. Apparently it had Simply been shoved in there to get it out of the way when the flotation bed had been installed for Smith.

Possibly it was still sitting there, gathering dust and still charged out to the floor. Powered beds were always in short supply and cost six times as much as an ordinary bed. While, strictly speaking, it was the wing superintendent's worry, Jill saw no reason to let overhead charges for her floor run up unnecessarily - and besides, if it was still there, she could get it at once. She decided to find out.

The sitting room door was still locked. She was startled to find that her pass key would not open it. Making a mental note to tell maintenance to repair the lock, she went on down the corridor to the watch room of the suite, intending to find out about the bed from the doctor watching over Mrs. Bankerson.

The physician on watch was the same one she had met before, Dr. Brush. He was not an intern, nor a resident, but had been brought in for this patient, Jill had learned from him, by Dr. Garner. Brush looked up as she put her head in. "Miss Boardman! Just the person I want to see!"

"Why didn't you ring? How's your patient?"

"She's all right," he answered, glancing up at the Peeping Tom, "But I definitely am not."

"Trouble?"

"Some trouble. About five minutes' worth. And my relief is not in the building. Nurse, could you spare me about that many minutes of your valuable time? And then keep your mouth shut afterwards?"

"I suppose so. I told my assistant floor supervisor I would be away for a few minutes. Let me use your phone and I'll tell her where to find me."

"No!" he said urgently. "Just lock that door after I leave and don't let anybody in until you hear me rap 'Shave and a Haircut' on it, that's a good girl."

"All right, sir," Jill said dubiously. "Am I to do anything for your patient?"

"No, no, just sit there at the desk and watch her in the screen. You won't have to do anything. Don't disturb her."

"Well, if anything does happen, where will you be? In the doctors' lounge?"

"I'm not going that far - just to the men's washroom down the corridor. Now shut up, please, and let me go - this is urgent."

He left and Jill obeyed his order to lock the door after him. Then she looked at the patient through the viewer and ran her eye over the dials. The elderly woman was again asleep and the displays showed her pulse strong and her breathing even and normal; Jill wondered why Dr. Garner considered a "death watch" necessary?

Then she remembered why she had come in there in the first place and decided that she might as well find out if the bed was in the far room without bothering Dr. Brush about it. While it was not quite according to Dr. Brush's instructions, she would not be disturbing his patient - certainly she knew how to walk through a room without waking a sleeping patient! - and she had decided years ago that what doctors did not know rarely hurt them. She opened the door quietly and went in.

A quick glance assured her that Mrs. Bankerson was in the typical sleep of the senile. Walking noiselessly she went past her to the door to the sitting room. It was locked but her pass key let her in.

She was pleased to see that the powered bed was there. Then she saw that the room was occupied - sitting in an arm chair with a picture book in his lap was the Man from Mars.

Smith looked up and gave her the beaming smile of a delighted baby.

Jill felt dizzy, as if she had been jerked out of sleep. Jumbled ideas raced through her mind. Valentine Smith here? But he couldn't be; he had been transferred somewhere else; the log showed it. But he was here.

Then all the ugly implications and possibilities seemed to line themselves up - the fake "Man from Mars" on stereo� the old woman out there, ready to die, but in the meantime covering the fact that there was another patient in here� the door that would not open to her pass-key - and, lastly, a horrid vision of the "meat wagon" wheeling out of here some night, with a sheet concealing the fact that it carried not one cadaver, but two.

When this last nightmare rushed through her mind, it carried in its train a cold wind of fear, the realization that she herself was in peril through having stumbled onto this top-secret fact.

Smith got clumsily up from his chair, held out both hands while still smiling and said, "Water brother!"

"Hello. Uh� how are you?"

"I am well. I am happy." He added something in a strange, choking speech, then corrected himself and said carefully, "You are here, my brother. You were away. Now you are here. I drink deep of you."

Jill felt herself helplessly split between two emotions, one that crushed and melted her heart - and an icy fear of being caught here. Smith did not seem to notice. Instead he said, "See? I walk! I grow strong." He demonstrated by taking a few steps back and forth, then stopped, triumphant, breathless, and smiling in front of her.

She forced herself to smile. "We are making progress, aren't we? You keep growing stronger, that's the spirit! But I must go now - I just stopped in to say hello."

His expression changed instantly to distress. "Do not go!"

"Oh, but I must!"

He continued to look woebegone, then added with tragic certainty, "I have hurted you. I did not know."

"Hurt me? Oh, no, not at all! But I must go - and quickly!"

His face was without expression. He stated rather than asked, "Take me with you, my brother."

"What? Oh, I can't. And I must go, at once. Look, don't tell anyone that I was in here, please!"

"Not tell that my water brother was here?"

"Yes. Don't tell anyone. Uh, I'll try to come back, I really will. You be a good boy and wait and don't tell anyone."

Smith digested this, looked serene. "I will wait. I will not tell."

"Good!" Jill wondered how the devil she possibly could get back in to see him - she certainly couldn't depend on Dr. Brush having another convenient case of trots. She realized now that the "broken" lock had not been broken and her eye swept around to the corridor door - and she saw why she had not been able to get in. A hand bolt had been screwed to the surface of the door, making a pass key useless. As was always the case with hospitals, bathroom doors and other doors that could be bolted were so arranged as to open also by pass key, so that patients irresponsible or unruly could not lock themselves away from the nurses. But here the locked door kept Smith in, and the addition of a simple hand bolt of the sort not permitted in hospitals served to keep out even those with pass keys.

Jill walked over and opened the bolt. "You wait. I'll come back."

"I shall waiting."

When she got back to the watch room she heard already knocking the Tock! Tock!Tock tock!� Tock, tock! signal that Brush had said he would use; she hurried to let him in.

He burst in, saying savagely, "Where the hell were you, nurse? I knocked three times." He glanced suspiciously at the inner door.

"I saw your patient turn over in her sleep," she lied quickly. "I was in arranging her collar pillow."

"Damn it, I told you simply to sit at my desk!"

Jill knew suddenly that the man was even more frightened than she was - and with more reason. She counter-attacked. "Doctor, I did you a favor," she said coldly. "Your patient is not properly the responsibility of the floor supervisor in the first place. But since you entrusted her to me, I had to do what seemed necessary in your absence. Since you have questioned what I have done, let's get the wing superintendent and settle the matter."

"Huh? No, no - forget it."

"No, sir. I don't like to have my professional actions questioned without cause. As you know very well, a patient that old can smother in a water bed; I did what was necessary. Some nurses will take any blame from a doctor, but I am not one of them. So let's call the superintendent."

"What? Look, Miss Boardman, I'm sorry I said anything. I was upset and I popped off without thinking. I apologize."

"Very well, Doctor," Jill answered stiffly. "Is there anything more I can do for you?"

"Uh? No, thank you. Thanks for standing by for me. Just� well, be sure not to mention it, will you?"

"I won't mention it." You can bet your sweet life I won't mention it, Jill added silently. But what do I do now? Oh, I wish Ben were in town! She got back to her duty desk, nodded to her assistant, and pretended to look over some papers. Finally she remembered to phone for the powered bed she had been after in the first place. Then she sent her assistant to look at the patient who needed the bed (now temporarily resting in the ordinary type) and tried to think.

Where was Ben? If he were only in touch, she would take ten minutes relief, call him, and shift the worry onto his broad shoulders. But Ben, damn him, was off skyoodling somewhere and letting her carry the ball.

Or was he? A fretful suspicion that had been burrowing around in her subconscious all day finally surfaced and looked her in the eye, and this time she returned the stare: Ben Caxton would not have left town without letting her know the outcome of his attempt to see the Man from Mars. As a fellow conspirator it was her right to receive a report and Ben always played fair� always.

She could hear sounding in her head something he had said on the ride back from Hagerstown: "-if anything goes wrong, you are my ace in the hole� honey, if you don't hear from me, you are on your own,"

She had not thought seriously about it at the time, as she had not really believed that anything could happen to Ben. Now she thought about it for a long time, while trying to continue her duties. There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk "his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor" on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else. Jill Boardman encountered her personal challenge - and accepted it - at 3:47 that afternoon while convincing a ward visitor that he simply could not bring a dog onto the floor even though he had managed to slip it past the receptionist and even if the sight of this dog was just what the patient needed.

The Man from Mars sat down again when Jill left. He did not pick up the picture book they had given him but simply waited in a fashion which may be described as "patient" only because human language does not embrace Martian emotions nor attitudes. He merely held still with quiet happiness because his brother had said that he would return. He was prepared to wait, without doing anything, without moving, for several years if necessary.

He had no clear idea how long it had been since he had first shared water with this brother; not only was this place curiously distorted in time and shape, with sequences of sights and sounds and experiences new to him and not yet grokked, but also the culture of his nest took a different grasp of time from that which is human. The difference lay not in their much longer lifetimes as counted in Earth years, but in a basically different attitude. The sentence, "It is later than you think," could not have been expressed in Martian - nor could "Haste makes waste," though for a different reason: the first notion was inconceivable while the latter was an unexpressed Martian basic, as unnecessary as telling a fish to bathe. But the quotation, "As it was in the Beginning, is now and ever shall be," was so Martian in mood that it could be translated more easily than "two plus two makes four" - which was not a truism on Mars.

Smith waited.

Brush came in and looked at him; Smith did not move and Brush went away.

When Smith heard a key in the outer door, he recalled that this sound had been one that he had heard somewhat before the last visit of his water brother, so he shifted his metabolism in preparation, in case the sequence occurred again. He was astonished when the door opened and Jill slipped in, as he had not been aware that the outer door was a door. But he grokked it at once and gave himself over to the joyful fullness which comes only in the presence of one's own nestlings, one's chosen water brothers, and (under certain circumstances) in the presence of the Old Ones.

His joy was somewhat sullied by immediate awareness that his brother did not fully share it� - in truth, he seemed more distressed than was possible save in one about to discorporate because of some shameful lack or failure.

But Smith had already learned that these creatures, so much like himself in some ways, could endure emotions dreadful to contemplate and still not die. His Brother Mahmoud underwent a spiritual agony five times daily and not only did not die but had urged the agony on him as a needful thing. His Brother Captain van Tromp suffered terrifying spasms unpredictably, any one of which should have, by Smith's standards, produced immediate discorporation to end the conflict - yet that brother was still corporate so far as he knew.

So he ignored Jill's agitation.

Jill handed him a bundle. "Here, put these on. Hurry!"

Smith accepted the bundle and stood waiting. Jill looked at him and said, "Oh, dear! All right, get your clothes off. I'll help you."

She was forced to do more than help; she had to undress and dress him. He had been wearing a hospital gown, a bathrobe, and slippers, not because he wanted them but because he had been told to wear them. He could handle them himself by now, but not fast enough to suit Jill; she skinned him quickly. She being a nurse and he never having heard of the modesty taboo - nor would he have grasped an explanation - they were not slowed up by irrelevancies; the difficulties were purely mechanical. He was delighted and surprised by the long false skins Jill drew over his legs, but she gave him no time to cherish them, but taped the women's stockings to his thighs in lieu of a garter belt. The nurse's uniform she dressed him in was not her own, but one that she had borrowed from a larger woman on the excuse that a cousin of hers needed one for a masquerade party. Jill hooked a nurse's cape around his neck and reflected that its all-enclosing straight drape covered most of the primary and secondary sex characteristics - at least she hoped that it would. The shoes were more difficult, as they did not fit well and Smith still found standing and walking in this gravity field an effort even barefooted.

But at last she got him covered and pinned a nurse's cap on his head. "Your hair isn't very long," she said anxiously, "but it is practically as long as a lot of the girls wear it and it will have to do." Smith did not answer as he had not understood much of the remark. He tried to think his hair longer but realized that it would take time.

"Now," said Jill. "Listen carefully. No matter what happens, don't say a word. I'll do all the talking. Do you understand me?"

"Don't talk. I will not talk."

"Just come with me - I'll hold your hand. And don't say a word. But if you know any prayers, pray!"

"Pray?"

"Never mind. You just come along and don't talk." She opened the quick glance outside, then took his hand and led him out into the corridor.

No one seemed especially interested. Smith found the many strange configurations upsetting in the extreme; he was assaulted by images he could not bring into focus. He stumbled blindly along beside Jill, with his eyes and senses almost disconnected to protect himself against chaos.

She led him to the end of the corridor and stepped on a slide-away leading crosswise. He almost fell down and would have done so if Jill had not caught him. A chambermaid looked curiously at them and Jill cursed under her breath - then was very careful in helping him off. They took an elevator to the roof, Jill being quite sure that she could never pilot him up a bounce tube.

On the roof they encountered a major crisis, though Smith was not aware of it. He was undergoing the keen delight of seeing sky; he had not seen sky since the sky of Mars. This sky was bright and colorful and joyful - it being a typical overcast Washington grey day. In the meantime Jill was looking around helplessly for a taxi. The roof was almost deserted, something she had counted on, since most of the nurses who came off duty when she did were already headed home fifteen minutes ago and the afternoon visitors were gone. But the taxis were, of course, gone too. She did not dare risk an air bus, even though one which went her way would be along in a few minutes.

She was about to call a taxi when one headed in for a landing. She called to the roof attendant. "Jack! Is that cab taken? I need one."

"It's probably the one I called for Dr. Phipps."

"Oh, dear! Jack, see how quick you can get me another one, will you? This is my cousin Madge - she works over in South Wing - and she has a terrible laryngitis and I want to get her out of this wind."

The attendant looked dubiously toward the phone in his booth and scratched his head. "Well� seeing it's you, Miss Boardman, I'll let you take this one and call another one for Dr. Phipps. How's that?"

"Oh, Jack, you're a lamb! No, Madge, don't try to talk; I'll thank him. Her voice is gone completely; I'm going to take her home and bake it out with hot rum."

"That ought to do it. Old-fashioned remedies are always best, my mother used to say." He reached into the cab and punched the combination for Jill's home from memory, then helped them in. Jill managed to get in the way and thereby cover up Smith's unfamiliarity with this common ceremonial. "Thanks, Jack. Thanks loads."

The cab took off and Jill took her first deep breath. "You can talk

"What should I say?"

"Huh? Nothing. Anything. Whatever you like."

Smith thought this over. The scope of the invitation obviously called for a worthy answer, suitable to brothers. He thought of several, discarded them because he did not know how to translate them, then settled on one which he thought he could translate fairly well but which nevertheless conveyed even in this strange, flat speech some of the warm growing-closer brothers should enjoy. "Let our eggs share the same nest."

Jill looked startled. "Huh? What did you say?"

Smith felt distressed at the failure to respond in kind and interpreted it as failure on his own part. He realized miserably that, time after time, he had managed to bring agitation to these other creatures when his purpose had been to create oneness. He tried again, rearranging his sparse vocabulary to enfold the thought somewhat differently. "My nest is yours and your nest is mine."

This time Jill managed to smile. "Why, how sweet! My dear, I am not sure that I understand you, but if I do, that is the nicest offer I have had in a long time." She added, "But right now we are up to our ears in trouble - so let's wait a while, shall we?"

Smith had understood Jill hardly more than Jill had understood him, but he caught his water brother's pleased mood and understood the suggestion to wait. Waiting was something he did without effort, so he sat back, satisfied that all was well between himself and his brother, and enjoyed the scenery. It was the first time he had seen this place from the air and on every side there was a richness of new things to try to grok. It occurred to him that the apportation used at home did not permit this delightful viewing of what lay between. This thought almost led him to a comparison of Martian and human methods not favorable to the Old Ones, but his mind automatically shied away from heresy.

Jill kept quiet, too, and tried to get her thoughts straight. Suddenly she realized that the cab was heading down the final traffic leg toward the apartment house where she lived - and she realized just as quickly that home was the last place for her to go, it being the first place they would look once they figured out how Smith had escaped and who had helped him. She did not kid herself that she had covered her tracks. While she knew nothing of police methods, she supposed that she must have left fingerprints in Smith's room, not to mention the people who had seen them walk out. It was even possible (so she had heard) for a technician to read the tape in this cab's pilot and tell exactly what trips it had made that day and where and when.

She reached forward, slapped the order keys, and cleared the instruction to go to her apartment house. She did not know whether that would wipe the tape or not - but she was not going to head for a place where the police might already be waiting.

The cab checked its forward motion, rose out of the traffic lane and hovered. Where could she go? Where in all this swarming city could she hide a grown man who was half idiot and could not even dress himself? A man who was the most sought-after person on the globe? Oh, if Ben were only here! Ben - where are you?

She reached forward again, picked up the phone and rather hopelessly punched Ben's number, expecting to hear the detached voice of an automation inviting her to record a message. Her spirits jumped when a man's voice answered - then slumped again when she realized that it was not Ben but his majordomo, Osbert Kilgallen. "Oh. Sorry, Mr. Kilgallen. This is Jill Boardman. I thought I had called Mr. Caxton's home."

"You did. But I always have his home calls relayed to the office when he is away more than twenty-four hours."

"Then he is still away?"

"I'm afraid so. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Uh, no. Look, Mr. Kilgallen, isn't it strange that Ben should just drop out of sight? Aren't you worried about him?"

"Eh? Why should I be? His message said that he did not know how long he would be away."

"Isn't that rather odd in itself?"

"Not in Mr. Caxton's work, Miss Boardman."

"Well� I think there is something very odd about his being away this time! I think you ought to report it. You ought to spread it over every news service in the country - in the world!"

Even though the cab's phone had no vision circuit Jill felt Osbert Kilgallen draw himself up. "I'm afraid, Miss Boardman, that I will have to interpret my employer's instructions myself. Uh - if you don't mind my saying so, there is always some� 'good friend' phoning Mr. Caxton frantically every time he leaves town."

Some babe trying to get a hammer lock on him, Jill interpreted angrily - and this Osbert character thinks I'm the current one. It put out of her mind the half-formed thought of asking Kilgallen for help; she switched off as quickly as possible.

But where could she go? The obvious solution popped into her mind. If Ben was missing - and the authorities had a hand in it - the last place they would be likely to look for Valentine Smith would be Ben's apartment. Unless, she corrected, they connected her with Ben, which she did not think that they did.

They could dig a bite to eat out of Ben's buttery - she wouldn't risk ordering anything from the basement; they might know he was away. And she could borrow some of Ben's clothes for her idiot child. The last point settled it; she set the combination for Ben's apartment house. The cab picked out the new lane and dropped into it.

Once outside the door to Ben's flat Jill put her face to the hush box by the door and said emphatically, "Karthago delenda est!"

Nothing happened. Oh damn him! she said frantically to herself; he's changed the combo. She stood there for a moment, knees weak, and kept her face away from Smith. Then she again spoke into the hush box. It was a Raytheon lock, the same voice circuit actuated the door or announced callers. She announced herself on the forlorn chance that Ben might have returned. "Ben, this is Jill."

The door slid open.

They went inside and the door closed. Jill thought for an instant that Ben had let them in, then she realized that she had accidentally hit on his new door combination� intended, she guessed, as a gracious compliment combined with a wolf tactic. She felt that she could have dispensed with the compliment to have avoided the awful panic she had felt when the door had refused to open.

Smith stood quietly at the edge of the thick green lawn and looked at the room. It again was a place so new to him as not to be grokked at once, but he felt immediately pleased with it. It was less exciting than the moving place they had just been in, but in many ways more suited for enfolding together the self. He looked with interest at the view window at one end but did not recognize it as a window, mistaking it for a living picture like those he had been used to at home - the suite he had been in at Bethesda contained no windows, it being in one of the newer wings, and thus far he had never acquired the idea of "window."

He noticed with approval that the simulation of depth and movement in the "picture" was perfect - some very great artist among these people must have created it. Up until this time he had seen nothing to cause him to think that these people possessed art; his grokldng of them was increased by this new experience and he felt warmed.

A movement caught his eye; he turned to find his brother removing the false skins as well as the slippers from its legs.

Jill sighed and wiggled her toes in the grass. "Gosh, how my feet do hurt!" She glanced up and saw Smith watching her with that curiously disturbing baby-faced stare. "Do it yourself if you want to. You'll love it."

He blinked. "How do?"

"I keep forgetting. Come here, I'll help you." She got his shoes off, untaped the stockings and peeled them off. "There, doesn't that feel good?"

Smith wiggled his toes in the cool grass, then said timidly, "But these live?"

"Sure, they're alive. It's real live grass. Ben paid a lot to have it that way. Why, the special lighting circuits alone cost more than I make in a month. So walk around and let your feet enjoy it."

Smith missed much of the speech but he did understand that the grass was made up of living beings and that he was being invited to walk on them. "Walk on living things?" he asked with incredulous horror.

"Huh? Why not? It doesn't hurt this grass; it was specially developed for house rugs."

Smith was forced to remind himself that a water brother could not lead him into wrongful action. Apprehensively he let himself be encouraged to walk around - and found that he did enjoy it and that the living creatures did not protest. He set his sensitivity for such things as high as possible; his brother was right, this was their proper being - to be walked on. He resolved to enfold it and praise it; the effort was much like that of a human trying to appreciate the merits of cannibalism - a custom which Smith found perfectly proper.

Jill let out a sigh. "Well, I had better stop playing. I don't know how long we will be safe here."

"Safe?"

"We can't stay here, not very long. They may be checking on every conveyance that left the Center this very minute." She frowned and thought. Her place would not do, this place would not do - and Ben had intended to take him to Jubal Harshaw. But she did not know Harshaw; she was not even sure where he lived - somewhere in the Poconos, Ben had said. Well, she would just have to try to find out where he lived and call him. It was Hobson's choice; she had nowhere else to turn.

"Why are you not happy, my brother?"

Jill snapped out of her mood and looked at Smith. Why, the poor infant didn't even know anything was wrong! She made a real effort to look at it from his point of view. She failed, but she did grasp that he had no notion that they were running away from - from what? The cops? The hospital authorities? She was not sure quite what she had done, or what laws she had broken; she simply knew that she had pitted her own puny self against the combined will of the Big People, the Bosses, the ones who made decisions.

But how could she tell the Man from Mars what they were up against when she did not understand it herself? Did they have policemen on Mars? Half the time she found talking to him like shouting down a rain barrel.

Heavens, did they even have rain barrels on Mars? Or rain?

"Never you mind," she said soberly. "You just do what I tell you to do."

"Yes."

It was an unmodified, unlimited acceptance, an eternal yea. Jill suddenly had the feeling that Smith would unhesitatingly jump out the window if she told him to - in which belief she was correct; he would have jumped, enjoyed every scant second of the twenty storey drop, and accepted without surprise or resentment the discorporation on impact. Nor would he have been unaware that such a fall would kill him; fear of death was an idea utterly beyond him. If a water brother selected for him such a strange discorporation, he would cherish it and try to grok.

"Well, we can't stand here pampering our feet. I've got to feed us, I've got to get you into different clothes, and we've got to leave. Take those off." She left to check Ben's wardrobe.

She selected for him an inconspicuous travel suit, a beret, shirt, underclothes, and shoes, then returned. Smith was as snarled as a kitten in knitting; he had tried to obey but now had one arm prisoned by the nurse's uniform and his face wrapped in the skirt. He had not even removed the cape before trying to take off the dress.

Jill said, "Oh, dear!" and ran to help him.

She got him loose from the clothes, looked at them, then decided to stuff them down the oubliette� she could pay Etta Schere for the loss of them later and she did not want cops finding them here - just in case. "But you are going to have to have a bath, my good man, before I dress you in Ben's clean clothes. They've been neglecting you. Come along." Being a nurse, she was inured to bad odors, but (being a nurse) she was fanatic about soap and water� and it seemed to her that no one had bothered to bathe this patient recently. While Smith did not exactly stink, he did remind her of a horse on a hot day. Soap suds were indicated.

He watched her fill the tub with delight. There had been a tub in the bathroom of the suite he had been in but Smith had not known it was used to hold water; bed baths were all that he had had and not many of those; his trancelike withdrawals had interfered.

Jill tested the water's temperature. "All right, climb in."

Smith did not move. Instead he looked puzzled.

"Hurry!" Jill said sharply. "Get in the water."

The words she used were firmly parts of his human vocabulary and Smith did as she ordered, emotion shaking him. This brother wanted him to place his whole body in the water of life. No such honor had ever come to him; to the best of his knowledge and belief no one had ever before been offered such a holy privilege. Yet he had begun to understand that these others did have greater acquaintance with the stuff of life� a fact not yet grokked but which he had to accept.

He placed one trembling foot in the water, then the other� and slipped slowly down into the tub until the water covered him completely.

"Hey!" yelled Jill, and reached in and dragged his head and shoulders above water - then was shocked to find that she seemed to be handling a corpse. Good Lord! he couldn't drown, not in that time. But it frightened her and she shook him. "Smith! Wake up! Snap out of it."

Smith heard his brother call from far away and returned. His eyes ceased to be glazed, his heart speeded up and he resumed breathing. "Are you all right?" Jill demanded.

"I am all right. I am very happy� my brother."

"You sure scared me. Look, don't get under the water again. Just sit up, the way you are now."

"Yes, my brother." Smith added several words in a curious croaking meaningless to Jill, cupped a handful of water as if it were precious jewels and raised it to his lips. His mouth touched it, then he offered the handful to Jill.

"Hey, don't drink your bath water! No, I don't want it, either."

"Not drink?"

His look of defenseless hurt was such that Jill again did not know what to do. She hesitated, then bent her head and barely touched her lips to the offering. "Thank you."

"May you never thirst!"

"I hope you are never thirsty, too. But that's enough. If you want a drink of water, I'll get you one. But don't drink any more of this water."

Smith seemed satisfied and sat quietly. By now Jill was convinced that he had never taken a tub bath before and did not know what was expected of him. She considered the problem. No doubt she could coach him but they were already losing precious time. Maybe she should have let him go dirty.

Oh, well! It was not as bad as tending a disturbed patient in an N.P. ward. She had already got her blouse wet almost to the shoulders in dragging Smith off the bottom; she took it off and hung it up. She had been dressed for the street when she had crushed Smith out of the Center and was wearing a little, pleated pediskirt that floated around her knees. Her jacket she had dropped in the living room. She glanced down at the skirt. Although the pleats were guaranteed permanized, it was silly to get it wet. She shrugged and zipped it off; it left her in brassiere and panties.

Jill looked at Smith. He was staring at her with the innocent, interested eyes of a baby. She found herself blushing, which surprised her, as she had not known that she could. She believed herself to be free of morbid modesty and had no objection to nudity at proper times and places - she recalled suddenly that she had gone on her first bareskin swimming party at fifteen. But this childlike stare from a grown man bothered her; she decided to put up with clammily wet underwear rather than do the obvious, logical thing.

She covered her discomposure with heartiness. "Let's get busy now and scrub the hide." She dropped to her knees beside the tub, sprayed soap on him, and started working it into a lather.

Presently Smith reached out and touched her right mammary gland. Jill drew back hastily, almost dropping the sprayer. "Hey! None of that stuff!"

He looked as if she had slapped him. "Not?" he said tragically.

"'Not,'" she agreed firmly. She looked at his face and added softly. "It's all right. Just don't distract me with things like that when I'm busy."

He took no more inadvertent liberties and Jill cut the bath short, letting the water drain and having him stand up while she showered the soap off him. Then she dressed with a feeling of relief while the blast dried him. The warm air startled him at first and he began to tremble, but she told him not to be afraid and had him hold onto the grab rail back of the tub while he dried and she dressed.

She helped him out of the tub. "There, you smell a lot better and I'll bet you feel better."

"Feel fine."

"Good. Let's get some clothes on you." She led him into Ben's bedroom where she had left the clothes she had selected. But before she could even explain, demonstrate, or assist in getting shorts on him, she was shocked almost out of the shoes she had not yet put back on.