Those Who Watch

Thirteen

Mirtin knew that he was violating regulations by striking up this intimacy with the Indian boy. A Dirnan forced to land on Earth was in general supposed to avoid all contact with Earthmen; for survival, certain exceptions to the letter of the regulations were permitted, but he had gone far beyond their limits. Among the things he was forbidden to do was to explain the purpose of the Dirnan mission, to discuss the location and civilization of Dirna, or to permit any Earthman to handle the equipment that the watcher had brought with him when he landed. Mirtin had done all of these things.

Yet he felt little guilt about it. He had served the mother world well and faithfully through a long lifetime. For what amounted to hundreds of years, by the reckoning of Charley Estancia’s species, Mirtin had obeyed all the regulations. He was entitled to a small lapse in his old age.

Besides, there was Charley to consider. Mirtin could see the boy flowering, growing from one night to the next The raw material had been good: an alert, inquisitive mind, a nature hungry for knowledge and experience. Environment had thwarted Charley by dropping him into an enclave where deliberately primitivistic cultural traits were maintained. Mirtin felt that the universe owed Charley Estancia a glimpse of something greater than his mud pueblo. If, as it happened, the universe had chosen Mirtin of Dirna to be the agent of the boy’s awakening, Mirtin would simply have to accept that fact, without worrying too much about the security regulations. Sometimes mere patriotism had to give way to higher obligations.

Charley squatted beside him, fondling the shining tools that Mirtin had allowed him to take from his suit.

“What does this one do?” the boy asked.

That’s a — well, we think of it as a portable generator. It makes electricity.”

“But I can hold it in my hand. You got a little magnet in there somewhere? How does it work?”

“It taps the magnetic field of the planet,” said Mirtin. “You know that every planet is like a large magnet?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

“This instrument sets up lines of force that run counter to the planetary magnetic field. You squeeze that lever and it cuts across the magnetic lines to induce a current. We call it a cheater, Charley, because it seems to be stealing power out of thin air. Of course, it’s really just borrowing, not stealing.”

“Can I try it?”

“Go ahead. But how will you use it?”

The boy pointed to the canteen. “You left a little water over. If this really makes a current, I ought to be able to split the water up, right? Into hydrogen, oxygen? What’s the word? Electro — electrolly—”

“Electrolysis,” Mirtin said. “Yes, that’ll work. Be careful, though.”

“You bet.”

Mirtin showed the boy how to extrude the electrodes. With great precision Charley readied the tool for use and slipped the electrodes into the water. Then he activated the generator. They both watched in delight as the current shattered the molecules of water in the proper fashion.

“Hey, it works!” Charley cried. “Listen, can I open it up? I want to see what’s in there that makes the current!”

“No,” Mirtin said harshly.

“You won’t let me, huh? I’ll put it back together again afterward. Just like good. I won’t hurt it.”

“Please, Charley. Don’t try to open it. You — you’ll break it. It’s designed to burn out the moment anybody opens the seal.”

It was a lie, and Mirtin was not good at lying to Charley. He tried not to meet the shining dark eyes.

Charley said, “That’s so if anybody from Earth accidentally gets hold of it, he won’t be able to open it up and learn how to make one?”

“Y-yes.”

“Maybe you got a second one? I could open the other one up and at least get a look at it before it burns out.”

“There is no other one in my kit,” Mirtin said. He sighed. “If I had one, I wouldn’t let you open it anyway.”

“You’re afraid I’d learn too much? That I’d learn some-thing Earth people aren’t supposed to know?”

“That’s it” Mirtin confessed. I shouldn’t even be showing you these things. I’m breaking one rule to do that. But I mustn’t let you look inside them. Don’t you see, Charley, it isn’t any good if we just come down here and hand you our tools and let you study and imitate them. There are some things a planet has to discover for itself. If the discovery doesn’t come from within, it’s no good. I’ve seen civilizations rot because they didn’t develop their own technology. Not here. Other planets. They borrowed, they stole — and they rotted.”

“So I can’t look inside?”

“No. Try to imagine what’s in there, yes. But don’t peek.” Charley said, “You can’t move your arms or your legs, Mirtin. You couldn’t stop me if I opened it up.”

“Correct,” Mirtin replied calmly. “I couldn’t stop you at all. The only one who could stop you is you, Charley.”

It was very quiet in the cave suddenly. Charley ran his hand along the sleekness of the generator’s butt, and took two or three quick glances in Mirtin’s direction. Reluctantly, he set the tool down beside Mirtin’s other equipment.

“You want a tortilla?”

“ I’d like one.”

Charley unwrapped the package and drew another tortilla out. As usual, he held it above Mirtin’s mouth while the Dirnan, lying flat on his back, bit off chunks of it. This time, Mirtin bit off a chunk but failed to catch it, and it slipped down the side of his chin toward the cave floor. Automatically he tried to bring his right hand up to catch the falling piece of tortilla. The tortilla fell away; but he had moved his arm.

“Hey!” Charley yelled. “You lifted your hand!”

“Just a few inches.”

“But you lifted it! You can move again! When did that start?”

“It’s been happening little by little. I noticed it yesterday. I’m regaining the use of my limbs.”

“But your back is broken!”

“The central column is nearly healed. The nerves are beginning to regenerate. It’s happening swiftly.”

“It sure is. But I forget, you aren’t human. What they got in you, it’s artificial. It’s better than human bone, isn’t it? Would my back grow back if I broke it?”

“Not this way.”

“I didn’t think so. How long before you can walk again, Mirtin?”

“A while, yet. Yesterday a couple of fingers, today a whole hand … but I have some distance to go before I can lift my body.”

“It’s great, though. You’re getting better.” Instantly, Charley’s mood shifted. “When you can walk again, you’ll go back to Dirna, huh?”

“If I can get rescued. I can’t just flap my wings and take off, you know. I’ve got to attract the attention of a rescue team,”

“How you do that? You send up a flare, or something?”

“I have a communicating device in my suit. It broadcasts a signal that they ought to be able to detect.”

There was no eluding Charley’s agile mind. “If you got a thing you can signal for help with, how come you didn’t already call for someone to come get you?”

“The communicator is worked with the hand. My hand is paralyzed, right? I am not able to reach the device.”

“Well, then—” Charley gulped. “I could do it for you, couldn’t I?”

“You already have,” Mirtin said.

“What?”

“While you’ve examined the equipment of my suit, you’ve touched the communicator a number of times. The signal’s been going out for days. Apparently there’s something wrong with the communicator, or they’d have found me by now. If they’re looking for me, that is.”

“You didn’t tell me any of this.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“Will you be able to fix the communicator, Mirtin?”

“Possibly. I won’t know until I can use my body again.”

“Could I fix it for you?”

“If you did, and they came, you’d never see me again. Do you want me to go away from you that fast?”

“Hey, no,” Charley said. “I’d like you to stay here forever, talking to me, teaching me things. But — but — you ought to be back with your own people. You ought to have a doctor. I’d fix the communicator for you, Mirtin. Even if it meant that you’d go away.”

“Thank you, Charley. But not just yet. I’m not whole enough yet to withstand acceleration, anyway. I have to knit a while longer before they can take me away. So we have some more time to talk. And then, perhaps, you can help me fix the communicator. All right?”

“Whatever you say, Mirtin.”

Charley was looking at the tools again. He picked up another one, the disruptor.

“What’s this?”

It’s a cutting and excavating toot. It gives off an extremely strong beam of light that burns through anything within range.”

“Like a laser, you mean?”

“It is a laser,” said Mirtin. “But a far more powerful one than any used on Earth. At the right opening it can melt rock or cut through metal.”

“You mean it?”

Mirtin laughed. “You want to try it, don’t you? All right, then. Hold it by the rounded end. That’s the control stud. Let me see what range it’s set for. Yes, ten feet. Good enough. Mow, point it at the cave floor, and make sure your feet aren’t in the way, and press the—”

The beam flared out. It consumed a patch of the floor of the cave five inches across and nearly a foot deep in the first moment. Charley yelled and switched the disruptor off. Holding it at arm’s length, he stared in wonder.

“You could do anything with this!” he cried.

“It’s very useful, yes.”

“Even — even kill somebody!”

“If you wanted to kill somebody,” said Mirtin. “We don’t do much killing in our world.”

“But if you had to,” Charley said. “I mean, it’s clean and quick, and — listen, I don’t think about killing much. Will you tell me how this works? I suppose I can’t open this one up either, but—”

He was full of questions. The disruptor excited him even more than the power tool had, perhaps because he could comprehend the basic principles of the generator, more or less, but the concept of destroying matter through optical pumping baffled him. Mirtin did his best to explain. He used analogies and images, and even a few evasions where the technology of the device was beyond his own grasp. Charley already knew about lasers, but he knew of them as bulky machines requiring an input of light. What .puzzled him about this one was, for one, its small size, and for another, its self-contained nature. Where did the light beam come from?

Where was the source? Was it a chemical laser, or a gas laser, or what?

“Neither,” Mirtin said. “It doesn’t work on the same principles as the portable lasers Earth now has.”

“Then-what-?”

Mirtin was silent.

“It’s something we aren’t supposed to know about? Something we have to discover for ourselves?”

“To some extent, yes.”

Charley brimmed with curiosity. They talked for a while; and then Mirtin visibly tired. The boy got ready to take his leave.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised, and flitted off into the night.

Some time later, Mirtin discovered that the disruptor was gone. He had seen Charley put it back with the other tools, or at least he thought he had; but there was no sign of it now. Mirtin felt a stab of alarm, only briefly. In a way, he had expected something like this. It was the risk he had run by showing Charley his tools.

Would Charley use the disruptor as a weapon? Hardly.

Would he show it to anyone else? Certainly not.

Would he try to get it open and study its mechanism? Quite probably, Mirtin admitted.

However, he could not bring himself to see that as any menace to anyone. Let the boy have it, he thought. He may benefit from it. And in any case there’s nothing I can do about it now.