Through the Eye of a Needle

15. Official, from Headquarters

The Hunter's principal trouble, though not his only one, during the next several months stemmed from the personality of the specialist who took over Bob. This being was an intolerant and tactless individual who attached much weight to professional competence, had a high-fortunately justified-opinion of his own abilities, and failed completely to see how the detective could have been so stupid as to remain with a single host of a new species for such a long time. Since the Hunter had no excuse and had al ready been blaming himself for the slip, his own self-esteem was not healing at all rapidly. The fact that Bob disliked his new symbiont, made no bones about saying so, and openly looked forward to the time when he could have the Hunter back was some com fort to the latter, but not very much. Fortunately this attitude made no difference to the specialist, who regarded the young man as an interesting specimen, not a personal friend. The closest he came to approving of anything the Hunter had done made this more than clear.

The two were in direct contact, a situation which permitted their multi-purpose "cells" to act as nerves and transmit information between them at speeds far greater than oral speech could manage. The Hunter, was in the library chair; Bob' was seated there to permit the communication, carefully keeping his hands motionless on the stuffed arms.

"I must admit," the xenobiologist said, "that there has been one good result of your stupidity. I have been able to find out more about this species in a few months, from the various things you did to this being, than I could have ascertained from several years of legal experimentation. It is quite possible that in two or three more years I will be able to resolve the techniques which will allow us to live full time with these beings."

"Then Bob is going to be all right? You expect to be able to study him for years?"

"Of course. Isn't that what I implied? You are allowing yourself to be distracted from straightforward joint thinking."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"It was not important," said Xeno, as Bob had named him.

"It was to me," returned the Hunter. "You sound like one of those unreal scientists in the stories Bob reads. Do you know what a friend is?"

"Certainly. I have a number of friends myself but your forming a close attachment to a member of this species was rather premature. In any case, it will be several years before I can allow you to resume symbiosis with this one. If you plan to remain on Earth, you should start living with other human beings I can permit you to practice, but you are not to re main with any individual for more than half of one of their years. I suppose you will want to confine yourself to those who, as a result of your incompetence, already know about us."

"It would be a lot better than living in this library, even if the food does come regularly now-you'll have to admit that's an improvement on silverfish and the crumbs from librarians' lunches."

"It is more convenient, I grant. I trust you are not developing this highly subjective attitude human beings call taste, however. Food is fuel; as long as the quantity is sufficient, there is no reason to complain."

The Hunter broke contact, Xeno informed Bob that the conversation was over-the alien had learned English in connection with his evaluation work in the library-and the detective had no contact with the specialist for several days.

He spent some of the time with Maeta, whose in juries were completely healed, and reported Xenon’s words to her.

"Then Bob is really going to be all right?" she asked. "He's looked so much happier, and doesn't have the fatigue or the joint pains any more, but I couldn't be sure that Xeno had really gotten to the cause of things."

"He knew that from the beginning," the Hunter ad mitted. "The problem was that I'd done so much dam age that there was no certainty for a long time that it could be repaired. I thought I'd admitted that to you."

"You did," conceded the girl, "but I was hoping you'd forgotten. You were feeling pretty awful about the whole thing, and it wasn't really your fault. You couldn't have done anything else."

"Not at first," the alien admitted, "but later on I should have swapped around to other hosts. There were Bob's parents, and the doctor, who knew about me."

"Would you need that many? Wouldn't just back and forth between two people be all right?"

"I'd think so, but I'm not sure. I could ask Xeno. But isn't it rather academic now, anyway?"

"Not entirely," Maeta said. "You find out-and make sure when that cold-blooded molecule manipulator is going to be through with Bob, while you're at it. I think I can hold hands with him long enough for you two to get that much of a message across. Now think over those lessons in biochem that Xeno ordered you to memorize; I have book work to do."