Through the Eye of a Needle

12. Joker

That was the situation when the Hunter woke up. It took him a little while to catch up with reality, though he knew well enough what had happened at the ship. It had obviously been found by the search expedition, identified, as being the onestolen by the Hunter's quarry, and booby-trapped against the possible return of that individual. The alien recalled Seever's question about standard police procedures, and would have blushed had he been equipped for it.

He was perfectly familiar with the immobilizing agent which had been used, and if he had been properly alert would never have been trapped by it.

He became aware of the basin which held him, and of his host's hand immersed in his substance. That was presumably what had allowed him to wake up. The agent itself would have held him for months; but he had absorbed an equilibrium amount of it while separate from his host's body; and his own four pounds of tissue would have been saturated by a very small total quantity of the substance. Since it was designed to be absorbed rapidly by tissues similar to those of the Hunter's usual host species, which were biochemically fairly similar to those of humanity, and since Bob massed thirty-five or forty times as much as his symbiont, enough had now diffused into Bob's body to clear the Hunter's nearly completely. Returning to Bob seemed safe enough, since the concentration of the substance would be so much smaller.

Without bothering to check on his surroundings by forming an eye, the Hunter began to soak his way into the hand and spread through his host's body in normal fashion. He had completed about a quarter of the job when he heard Arthur Kinnaird's voice.

"Ben, Look! The level is going down in the Hunter's dish, and he's higher around Bob's wrist than before! He must be awake!"

The alien extended a finger-sized pseudopod from the basin and waved it to let the speaker know he had been heard. The doctor's voice promptly responded.

"Hunter, get in there and get to work! Bob has picked up a very bad infection that my drugs don't seem to be touching, and he needs you. We'll ask you what happened later; first things first."

The Hunter waved again in acknowledgment. He was already aware of the trouble, and was working on it.

It was real work. Destroying the infecting organisms was a minor task, finished in minutes; but the toxins they had produced were far more difficult to neutral ize, and much of the tissue in the arm where they had entered was totally destroyed. The fracture had not been responsible; neither the Hunter nor Seever had made any professional errors there. A tiny wooden splinter had gotten into Bob's left hand just beyond the end of the cast. It had clearly entered after the Hunter's departure; Bob himself might not have noticed it, but the alien could not possibly have failed to. With his personal resistance to infection long since destroyed and his symbiont absent, Bob was a walking culture tube; a few hours had nearly destroyed his arm. The Hunter had not realized that his host's general self-reparability had become so poor, but the facts seemed beyond dispute. It was not the first time he wished he had studied biochemistry more thoroughly on his home world. He trusted contact with the check team could be made soon; they would certainly have specialists in tins field among their numbers.

But he had to get back to work. He could clean up the ruined arm and expect it to be replaced, however slowly, by normal healing. The real worry was Bob's brain. Some of the bacteria as well as their toxins must have been carried to that organ by his circulatory sys tem, and it could not be taken for granted that nothing had left the blood vessels to lodge in nerve tissue.

The Hunter had always been afraid to intrude into this material himself, though he had maintained a network of his own tissue in the capillaries. Brain cells were the objects where he was most afraid of making a mistake based on differences between human biochemistry and what he was more used to. Now it was necessary to take the chance, and he took it; but he worked very, veryslowly and very, very carefully.

The situation was one he had never been able to explain at all clearly either to his host or to Seever who had been curious about it. The Hunter did possess the ability to sense directly structures down to the large-molecule level. At the same time he could be aware simultaneously of the trillions of cells in a living organism, and work on them all at once with the same attention to each that a jeweler could give to a single watch. When he tried to describe this to a human being, however, it seemed to involve a contrast for his listener; the human seemed to think of him as a whole race of beings instead of an individual. This tended to bother the Hunter, because be could only think of himself as an individual.

Sometimes, facing problems which seemed beyond his ability, he wished there were more of him.

He did solve this one, for the time being. Relatively few bacteria had actually reached Bob's brain cells, and the alien managed to destroy these with comparatively little damage to nearby cells. He knew that these would not be repaired or replaced; it was the same with every humanoid species he knew, and was assumed by the scientists of his own kind to be an evolutionary byproduct of overspecialization of the brain cell. However, the brain itself was a highly redundant structure, and even though Bob was losing thousands of its cells every day, it would be many years before the cumulative effect became serious.

And at the moment, there was little point in worrying years ahead.

Bob was conscious and, except for the arm, normal by Monday night. He was still in the hospital section of the Seevers' home-Mrs. Seever remarked that with two patients, the, place was more like a hospital than it had been, for years-and after dinner the en-tire group assembled to bring everything up to date. Even Bob's parents were present; Daphne was spending the night with a friend.

The Hunter explained in detail what had happened to him, stressing the obvious fact that his people must be somewhere around, and mentioning as little as possible the lack of alertness which had led to such unfortunate results. The others told him of the message left at the ship, and its details, of which he approved. He agreed with the doctor that his entry into the ship had probably tripped a signal at the same time that it had released the paralyzing agent, so the check team was no doubt aware that the ship had been visited. What they would think when they found the small valve open but no prisoner on hand could only be guessed. Of course, if they found the message all would be well, but the Hunter agreed with Bob's pessimistic view that they had probably responded to the signal before the bottle had been placed. It would have been less surprising if they had arrived before the pipe containing his helpless form had been pulled up.

"They would beable to get to any place on Earth in an hour or so, and wouldn’t have to wait until night to check the ship," the Hunter assured in his human friends.

"Then we'd better get back to it as soon as we can," Maeta responded. "We'll try, or the Hunter will try, to tell whether the bottle message has been found and read; but more important, willleave a much more complete message in the Hunter's own language, with instructions on just where to meet him and how to recognize Bob. You didn't cover that in your note, did you, Bob?"

"No, I didn't think of it. I was more concerned with getting the history down. If they've read it, at least they'll know the other creature is dead, and, there's no more need for booby traps."

"They'll have heard, if they read it, that the other one is dead. Will they believe it?" asked Seever.

"That's why the Hunter will have to supplement that message," Maeta pointed out. "He should be able to identify himself clearly in some way-a serial num ber, or something like that."

"But I put my name on my note," Bob said. "They should be able to find me."

"Why?" asked the dark-haired girl. "We can't take for granted that they know all about Ell and its people."

"Why not? They must have investigated the island pretty well when they first came. They'd probably have found us then only I expect the Hunter and I weren't here."

"But why would theyhave known the people by name?" Maeta countered. "I suppose they'd have used human hosts the way the Hunter did, but they wouldn't have gotten in touch with them, would they? Talked to them, and used their help the way the Hunter used yours?"

"Definitely not," the detective said. "Unless some very special situation like minedemanded it, that would be extremely contrary to policy. I did it be-cause I didn't at the time think there was the slightest chance of help from home, and my quarry was a danger to your people."

"Right," Maeta nodded. "And whoever is here, they haven't been hanging around Ell all these years just getting to know these particular people. For one thing, if they had, wouldn't we have more people on the island in Bob's condition? Hunter addicts, if you don't mind?"

"Very unlikely," the alien replied. The group would have specialists able to forestall such events. That's why we're trying to get in touch with them, re member."

"But you should still add something of your own to Bob's message."

"He agrees," Bob relayed. "He says to get another bottle-a very small one will do-and something that will scratch glass. Do you have a carborundum scriber, or a small diamond, Doc?"

"I can get a scriber," Bob's father said.

"He doesn't want the whole tool, just the carbo tip. He's going to write on the inside of the bottle, and he probably couldn't maneuver the whole tool in there even if he could get it through the neck. He won't need a cork or sand ballast. He says he'll just tie the new bottle to the neck of the old one, to make some thing sure to attract attention."

"Then we can really count on being in touch with someone who can cure Bob, at last?" It was his mother, her voice not very steady. "It's been nice for those who could take this all as an intellectual problem, but I haven't been able to do that."

Bob answered his mother with a simple affirmative, but the Hunter's honesty forced him to go farther.

"If only police personnel like myself are on Earth, it may take longer. We might have to wait for a ship to go home and return with the specialist Bob needs."

"I don't want to mention that," Bob muttered back. "Why give her any more to worry about?" "Don't be shortsightedly selfish," his symbiont ad-monished him. "If events disappoint her, you won't be in a position to care; but she has the right to reality. You know that."

"I know you, anyway." Reluctantly, Bob relayed the Hunter's qualification. His mother took a deep breath and shook her head. Then she looked at her son and said, "Thanks, Hunter." Bob raised his eye brows. "And you, of course, Son."

That ended the discussion. Bob was falling asleep, and his parents and Maeta prepared to leave.

"When should I bring that carbide tip, Hunter?" Arthur Kinnaird asked as they reached the door. "Tonight? I can find one all right."

"No," Bob relayed. "He'll have to leave me to do that job, and says he won't do that before tomorrow night. You can all go back to normal living for a day. He'll do the message tomorrow night if I'm all right, and it can go out to the ship on Wednesday." His father nodded understanding, and Bob was asleep a minute later.

The Hunter spent the night as usual, going over and over his host's biochemistry in the endless effort to balance things better. The joint pains bad been absent that day, leaving the alien to wonder whether the infection toxins, the inactivity, Seever's antibiotics, or even the symbiont's own absence might be responsible. He ended the night in His usual mood of futility and frustration.

Bob's arm progressed normally the next day, as did his other injuries. The heart muscle was essentially healed; it had been a clean wound, splitting muscle fibers more than tearing them. The Hunter no longer had to pay much attention to face and ear, though his host complained frequently of itching at both sites. The source of these nerve signals remained obscure to the detective, but he could not bring himself to make a major project of finding it.

Arthur brought the carbide tip during the after noon, and Seever furnished a plain, thin-walled two-hundred-milliliter bottle; so during the night the Hunter was able to leave Bob for a few hours to writehis message on the inner side of the glass. It was a harder job than he had expected. The carbide cut the glass readily enough, but a good deal of force had to be applied. He covered a quarter of the bottle's inner surface with script which would have been microscopic to a human being.

He tried to include all the information which might be necessary to convince the readers of his identity- clearly they weren't at all sure that his quarry wasn't around, too-and to let them find and identify at least one of the human members of the group. He also outlined his difficulty with his host's chemical machinery, making no effort to belittle his own mistakes in the matter. He had planned the wording carefully, and, in spite of the unexpected difficulty, was back with his host in little over three hours.

Bob was able to rise without too much discomfort the next morning. The wind had been high the day before, causing everyone some uneasiness, and he insisted on accompanying Maeta to North Beach. They were alone; it was understood that if it was practical to go out, Maeta would bicycle back to get Bob's mother and Mrs. Seever.

The sun was well up when they reached North Beach, for Bob had slept fairly late. As they approached the outrigger, a small figure which had been seated beside it rose and faced them.

Once again the Hunter was impressed by Andre's plumpness, a rare condition among the Ell children. The generally accepted way of life among them involved intense activity, and Daphne, he remembered, liked to show off her very visible ribs. All three in the group were even more impressed by the thought of what might have happened to the outrigger be fore their arrival. However, Maeta greeted the child with her usual calm friendliness. She might have been about to ask, tactfully, what he was doing there, but he didn't give her the time.

"Can I go out with you?" the boy asked. "Why?" returned Bob.

"I want to see what you're doing. You have the Tavake's metal-finder. I always wanted to try it and they'd never let me, and I've been wondering what metal you could be looking for outside the reef. No one ever drops tools there, and it wouldn't be worth looking for them if they did. Are you treasure hunting?"

"No." Bob's tone was less cordial than was strictly tactful. "Why do you care what grown-ups are doing? Why don't you go with the other kids?"

"Them?" the youngster shrugged his shoulders.

"They're no fun. I'd rather see what you're doing."

"We're not tripping bikes, or playing with their brakes or handlebars, or hiding glass in the sand," was Bob's even less tactful answer. Andre's face became more unexpressive than usual. Then he realized that this was hardly natural, and he put on the appearance of surprise. Then he realized that this had come too late, and gave another shrug.

"All right, forget it. I didn't think you'd want me. The kids you think I should be playing with don't either. I'll think of something else." He turned away.

Neither the Hunter nor his host could quite decide how to respond to this bitter and pitiful remark, but Maeta did not hesitate.

"Andre, you're not making sense. If you really played the tricks Bob mentioned, wouldn't you expect people to be too afraid of you to want you around? And you did play them, didn't you?" The boy eyed her silently for fully a minute.

"Sure I did," he said at last, defiantly. "You know it. Jenny caught me out when she was talking to me the other day, and she told you."

"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 Ididn'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 thegreen 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 spaceship; 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 assurance 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 assistant. 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 ship 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 shirt 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 snatched 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 pass here. We'll see it from miles away, and the tank there is unusually high, so ifwe 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 passage 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."

She had gradually been heading more to the north as they drew away from Ell. Now, sure of her clear ance, she bore around to the northeast and put the wind directly behind them. Andre was allowed to stop paddling, and Maeta herself eased off her efforts to what was necessary to hold their heading. They passed the northwest fringe of Ell's reef with two or three hundred yards to spare, though the breakers looked un-comfortably close to Bob.

Then there was empty sea before them. Maeta had estimated their speed, from the time it took to pass familiar objects along the northern reef, at about six knots-the wind, of course, was much higher, but had much less grip on the outrigger than the water did. This meant that the best part of six hours would be needed to reach Island Eight.

There was no danger of anyone's going to sleep. The canoe pitched violently enough to make it necessary to hold on most of the time, and spray blown from the tops of the waves made it necessary to bail fairly often. It was not, except for the first few minutes of doubt, a frightening trip even for the boy. None of them was really comfortable in the wind and spray, of course; Maeta put her slacks and shirt back on, soaked as they were, and Andre, who was clad only in shorts, forgot his independence and indifference enough to snuggle close to Bob for warmth. The Hunter thought of making a direct check for the presence of his not-certainly-dead quarry in the youngster's body, but could not be sure that it would be safe. If the boy moved very much, especially if he pulled away, while the alien was partly in one body and partly in the other, the results would be extremely unfortunate. The detective could of course afford to lose a few tiny tendrils, as he had at the ship, but such appendages might not be enough to find the other being. If the fugitive were actually there, he was aware of the Hunter's presence in Bob's body from the latter's recovery from the heart wound, and would be hiding-withdrawn into a single mass, or a few small masses, in body cavities, rather than spread out through the boy's system in a network ready for protective duty.

The Hunter mentioned all this to his host, and Bob agreed that unless the boy fell asleep the direct search would be unwise. Andre did not fall asleep.

By mid-afternoon, the tank of Island Eight was visible directly ahead. It was of experimental design, more than twice the usual twelve-to-fifteen-foot height of PFI's culture tanks, and visible from a much greater distance.

Unfortunately, the experiment had not been very successful, and at the moment the unit was unused and the small atoll it occupied was uninhabited.

Half an hour after the first sighting, the breakers marking the reef became visible. At first, they stretched an equal distance to each side of the bow, with no sign of a break. Even Maeta was getting tense -it would soon be impossible to clear either side of the white water-when they finally sighted the pas sage, a little to their left. The girl altered their course slightly, and presently told Andre to start paddling again. Bob and the Hunter, neither able to do any thing constructive, could only watch with increasing tension as the breakers drew closer. An occasional glance back at Maeta's face was somewhat reassuring, but not entirely; one could interpret her expression as one either of concentration or of worry.

The passage might, as Maeta's brother had said, be wide enough for a small tanker, but it looked awkwardly narrow at the moment. It was straight, the girl knew-it would have been made so for the tankers if it had not been that way naturally-but unfortunately it was not quite in the wind's direction. Once into it, they would have to paddle hard to the right to avoid being blown into the left side of the channel. Maeta, to give them as much room as possible for leeway, cut as closely as she dared to the breakers on the right as they entered.

The reef was low, and gave no protection at all from the wind. It broke the waves, but this was worse than useless; instead of coming harmlessly under their stern and lifting the canoe for a moment, the water now was hurled skyward by the coral and shredded into spray by the wind. As the outrigger made its turn into the passage, everyone aboard was blinded, and the canoe itself began to fill rapidly.

"Both of you bail!" cried Maeta. "I'll do the paddling!"

She could not see where they were going, and her only way to maintain heading was to keep the impact of the spray on the right side of her back. No one with only human senses and muscles could have done much better.

They emerged from the worst of the spray to find themselves almost on the coral that rimmed the left side of the passage. Maeta made a frantic effort to sweep them still more to the right, but simply wasn't strong enough. They very nearly made it, but struck unyielding coral only a yard or two from the relative safety of the lagoon.

The main hull of the canoe may have survived briefly, but the three human bodies were hurled for ward. Bob struck Andre a split second before Maeta hurtled into both of them. There was another violent bump which they deduced later was the boy striking the bow of the canoe. The tangled bodies did a half somersault, found themselves either under water or in spray too dense to let them breathe, and felt one more violent shock. Then they were lying together on hard sand, spray still blowing over them.

Bob was conscious and not too badly hurt. The

Hunter had taken care, reflexively, of a number of small cuts from coral, but he had been cushioned to a large extent by the other two bodies. Neither of these was nearly as well off.