Chapter
21
. . . ALTHOUGH NOTHING MUCH MORE THAN GUESSES ARE possible on the basis of the small amount of observation we have been able to make of the Laagi in this short time," dictated Mary, "some possibilities might be considered as reasons for elements of Laagi behavior that have been unexplainable until now.
"Such Laagi actions as those by some of their fighter spaceships on the spatial Frontier they share with us. For example, the occasional but not too infrequent situation of a large number of their space fighter craft turning and retreating from a much smaller number of human ones; or‑conversely ‑a mere handful of their ships attacking a much larger number of human ones they have just encountered, even when such attack seems suicidal and therefore reasonless."
She stopped dictating, and there was a long moment in which Jim began to wonder if she would begin again.
"Therefore . . . therefore," she went on again abruptly, "we may consider as a possibility that the apparently unreasonable actions of the Laagi in the fighter ships just referred to were examples of reactions governed by a system of racial imperatives we humans do not have, and so do not realize exists. In
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other words, what seems unreasonable to us humans is reasonable to the Laagi, under certain special conditions.
"From what I've seen, and from what Jim Wander, who is with me on this observational incursion into Laagi territory, has seen, the Laagi may be more strongly influenced than we are by the inherited reactions that promoted survival in their prehistoric forebears.
"The Laagi, as I've pointed out a number of times before this, seem to be at base a communal race, in the sense that a hive of bees or a hill of ants is a communal race. But for a communal race to develop a technology comparable to our own requires that at some point it must have allowed the development of a certain amount of individuality in its members. Technology requires invention. Invention demands originality. Originality is a faculty of the unique individual who is different from all his fellow individuals. The Laagi, as I have mentioned before, have no ‑recreational areas or recreational activities. This is because their work is their recreation. Even our host member, whom we have named Squonk and who belongs to a local alien species of lesser intelligence than the Laagi, is actively unhappy unless he is constantly working during the hours he is awake. So with the Laagi themselves. They are born to work; and they do work until they die at their job‑just as the worker bee literally works itself to death. I..."
Her words trailed off once more. After a few seconds, she went on .
...I have made a number of attempts to determine whether at this time the Laagi's occupation is still determined genetically, as that of the worker bee is. But so far, I've been unable to gain any solid evidence, one way or another. However, the impression both Jim Wander and I get is that the present‑day, civilized Laagi does not have his occupation genetically selected for him at birth."
Squonk stumbled suddenly, backed up several steps and then began again searching the same area of floor he had just gone over, in the room where Mary and Jim were currently observing. The small alien was still singlemindedly in search of the missing object that the invisible Laagi within him would recognize when he, Squonk, found it. This was not the first time Squonk had so stumbled and backed up to search again
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over an area he had already examined. He had done it for the first time three days before. Jim was concerned. Mary had not seemed to notice.
` . . . if we use as a model for a typical human being one who has a base of instincts and reflexes based on those instincts, this overlaid by a pattern of cultural reactions and behaviors acquired from the community of humans surrounding the youngster as he grows up, and this in turn overlaid by a set of habitual actions and decisions, plus current decisions engendered by the conscious processing of previous experience plus the influence of the two lower layers of reaction, we have a three‑layered structure for human action and response to a given situation.
"By contrast, the Laagi appears to respond according to a twolayer structure of which the older, instinctive one is dominant under some conditions, but under others the newer, conscious layer can control. To create a hypothetical example, suppose that if a Laagi encountered another Laagi that showed a particular form of sickness, his older instinct would force him to destroy the sick one, even if consciously he did not wish to do so. But if the other Laagi showed some slight difference in that form of sickness, then his newer, individual consciousness would be allowed to use its discretion about killing the other Laagi or taking him to one of their hospitals."
Mary stopped abruptly. It was marvelous, thought Jim admiringly, what she had been able to deduce from observations alone of a totally alien race. Sherlock Holmes would have been proud of her. When she went on, though, her voice was ragged with fatigue.
"Note again that what I have just suggested is a purely imaginary model, by way of example. We have not witnessed one Laagi killing another for any reason at all. We have not seen a fight or even what we could be absolutely sure was a serious disagreement between two or more Laagi. . ."
She ran down and this time did not resume talking, although her usual pattern with reports was to wind them up with a clear statement that the report was ended.
"Mary," said Jim, after she had been still for a long moment, "you're worn out."
"I'm fine," she said.
"No, you aren't. I've been watching you get more and
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more exhausted. No matter how much you think you can work steadily at something and just get by with an occasional snatch of sleep, you're running downhill, and you ought to recognize that yourself."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Mary. "We've got no bodies to run downhill. That's a purely physical phenomenon. I can work as long as I like. The mind doesn't get tired."
"Sorry. Yes, it does‑evidently," said Jim.
"What would you know about it, anyway? You haven't had to do anything but ride along and redictate my reports."
"And watch everything that goes on," said Jim, "with the result I see some things you seem to be missing, lately. About Squonk, for one:"
"What about Squonk?"
"You've been overworking yourself, so consequently you've been overworking him; because he isn't built to know when to stop for his own health and safety."
"You're insane!" But there was a note of concern for the first time in Mary's voice. Concern‑but disbelief as well. "He can take a nap anytime he wants to, and we always let him."
"He doesn't want to nap," said Jim. "He wants to find that nonexistent key we've had him hunting for for months. He's begrudging himself sleep more and more because you're begrudging yourself sleep. He'll stop and find a place to roll over and snooze, but only when we don't seem to be in the middle of something‑such as when we've just given him a new order to search somewhere he hasn't searched before. Or when we're talking like this."
"You think he can hear us?"
"He can hear me," said Jim. "At least the part of me that gives orders to him; and for all I know he can feel my emotions as much as I can feel his. If he can do that, too, he's been picking up the backwash of the urgency I echo whenever you order a change in place or direction, or anything like that."
"I don't believe he's being overworked. That's what you're saying, isn't it, that I'm overworking him?"
"That's right. I know you aren't doing it deliberately; but all the same you've been setting up a situation in which, to
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take a leaf out of your own deductions, his racial imperative to work himself to death is controlling him."
"I don't believe it. This is some plan of yours to wind up my work here, so I'll turn you loose to get back to Earth."
"Sorry," said Jim. "If you won't believe me, you won't believe me; but I think you've forgotten who controls Squonk. Me. He needs rest and he's going to get it. Have you thought what kind of situation we'd be in if he died? I don't know how we'd go about switching to another squonk or getting back to AndFriend."
He broke off and spoke directly to Squonk through his usual Laagi image.
"Squonk, good Squonk, you can stop searching now. Tune to sleep, Squonk, then we'll go right back to finding that key. But for now, Squonk, time to rest."
(?) said Squonk's emotions.
It was the first time the creature had done anything like trying to communicate directly with the invisible Laagi he now obeyed, and Jim read the unusual action as a sign of considerable confusion and upset in Squonk.
"Sleep!" said Jim. "Squonk, go sleep!"
Squonk, who had stopped searching at Jim's first communication, hesitated. He put his head down, backed up and began searching again over the floor ahead of him, then stopped and stood uncertainly. He looked over at the nearest wall of the room and back at the floor.
"Sleep!" ordered Jim.
Squonk turned toward the wall. He wavered a little on his feet as he went, and as soon as he bumped into the wall itself, he pulled in his head, legs and tentacles ail at once and literally fell over backwards. He rocked for a moment and then lay still.
"‑What are you doing?" Mary was storming at Jim. There was fury, pain and outrage all at once radiating from her. "You're doing this deliberately to slow me down. I don't believe a word of what you say=
"Mary," said Jim. "Squonk's asleep. There's nothing more you can do until he wakes up, except observe from against the wall, here; which you already did, when we first came into this place. So why don't you sleep, too?"
"Sleep? Why should I sleep? Who're you to tell me when I
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need or want to go to sleep?" An explosion of mixed emotions was riding on her mental voice.
"I'm sorry," said Jim, "but I'm not going to let you kill Squonk and I'm not going to let you kill yourself. You've already done a mountain of work here. Face it, it actually is time we headed back to Base and Earth."
"That's what all this is about!" Mary's voice was raw with anger. "It's all a ploy of yours to get me to turn you loose, so you can phase‑shift AndFriend out from under those metal arches they've got her pinned down with. Well, it's not going to work. We're staying here until I decide my work's done enough to leave. We'll stay years if we have to. We'll stay a lifetime, if necessary."
"Don't say that," said Jim as gently as he could. "You'll force me to find a way to get AndFriend loose and take her home without paying any attention to what you still need or want to do."
"Don't try it!" Mary's mental voice was savage and a welter of emotions. "Don't try to fight me, Jim, or you'll find you've bitten off more than you can chew. I mean that! I was only six years old when I knew what I wanted to do‑and that was something that had some meaning to it. Can you understand something like that?"
Jim decided not to answer but simply let her talk herself out. And in a moment, sure enough, she went on without needing an answer from him.
"When I was six years old‑the age for fiat grade ‑I was already beginning to understand what my parents were. Do you know what they were‑my mother and father? My mother spent her time killing time with other women as empty‑headed as she was. My father was just as emptyheaded. He was a real estate salesman, and made money at it‑lots of money. And they put in their lives trying to pretend that what they did was of some use, that it made one damn bit of difference to the world. Actually, if they'd died at birth the world would never have gained or lost a thing‑except for the fact they had a child."
She stopped.
"Why don't you say something?" she demanded. "All right, don't answer. I know you're listening. You have to listen to me whether you want to or not, so you might as well
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learn something. When I was six years old I'd already made up my mind that whatever I did with my life, it'd add up to something. It'd matter to the future of the world whether I lived or died. I wasn't going to be a cipher like my parents. I was going to be someone who did something."
She paused again. Jim still said nothing.
"And I've stuck to that decision ever since. And I've done what I said I'd do. That's why I couldn't wait to get away from my family and begin to build something on my own. I picked a work and I worked at it. And I built it until it brought me here. And here is where I'm going to stay until I've answered all the important questions about the Laagi. Do you understand that? And you're going to stay with me, and so is Squonk, because I need you both. So don't try to go against me, Jim. I've spent my life taking care of whatever got in my way; and if you get in my way, I'll take care of you. Think of that. And keep thinking about it!"
She stopped. This time it seemed for good. Because she said nothing more; and, after a time, the sensitivity that Jim had been developing to her sleep periods seemed to indicate to him that now, finally, she slept.
As for himself, he had had to take what she said at its face value. She was determined to stay until she killed herself; and end by killing herself, she certainly would, because the job of understanding the Laagi was not something that could be done by a single human, or even by a generation of humans, studying that race. It would take millennia, perhaps, before humanity would finally be able to say that it understood these people with whom it had been locked in battle for over a hundred years. If Mary would only stop to recognize the fact, she would realize that she had already left her mark on the history of the human race by what she had done here so far on the Laagi world. It was not necessary for her to try to do the impossible.
But, clearly, she was not about to recognize that; and she was not willingly going to free him to take AndFriend home. That meant he must decide himself what to do to get the ship loose and with both of them aboard it, in spite of her and against her will. No more than she doubted herself, did he doubt he could find a way to do that. But there was a lot yet to be thought over and worked out.
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Two days later, Laagi time, Squonk stumbled and fell in the process of searching along the wall of one of those enclosures Mary and Jim had come to call "discussion rooms" from the fact that they seemed to have no other purpose than to provide a place for the Laagi to gather and communicate. Such rooms had become favorite observation places for Mary.
Squonk immediately got back on his feet and resumed searching. But he seemed confused; and, after a moment, he straightened, backed up several tithes his own length and began to search again over the base of the wall he had just covered. But before he could complete a second search of the same area, he drifted away from the wall and began searching apparently at random out into the open floor where the discussions were going on.
"Squonk!" ordered Jim sharply, "rest. Time to sleep. Stop!"
Squonk obediently rose, headed back toward the wall, pulled his limbs in as he usually did when preparing to sleep, but checked himself before he had rolled over on his back. He extended his limbs again and started blindly searching the base of the wall beside him.
By this time, other squonks in the room were converging upon him. Jim again ordered Squonk to sleep, but now Squonk did not seem to hear him. A moment later, other squonks had surrounded Squonk and were feeling him over with their tentacles.
Fumblingly, Squonk began to search them back, as if they were part of the wall he had just been exploring. The surrounding squonks wrapped their tentacles around his legs and head and tried to push them back into the skin folds on his body from which they emerged. But Squonk struggled to keep these body parts out where they were, his tentacles meanwhile searching, searching, up and down the very tentacles that were trying to compress his body together.
The cluster of squonks had finally attracted the attention of some of the nearby Laagi. One of these left his discussion group and came over, pushing his way among the squonks, who made room for him as soon as they realized the superior life form was there. The Laagi stood over Squonk, and from the waves of emotion Jim picked up from Squonk, he guessed that the Laagi was giving Squonk orders.
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"What's the Laagi doing? What's happening?" Mary was asking in the recesses of Jim's mind.
"Hold the questions for now, will you please?" said Jim irritably. "Squonk is being ordered to sleep by the Laagi, but he's not responding, any more than he was responding to me."
The Laagi turned and reached toward one of the nearby squonks, who immediately stretched out his neck and held it there, while the Laagi vibrated his arm above it, undoubtedly sending some kind of order in the same sort of feather touches Jim had first believed were only a form of praise, when on their first leaving the ship, Squonk had sought out a particular Laagi for what Jim had then thought was only attention. Now Jim suspected that the faint touches of the vibrating Laagi arm were used far more to order than to praise. In fact, their most common use, he now strongly suspected, was to make a major alteration in the current work orders under which a squonk had been operating, and to put it on an entirely new job.
The Laagi waded out of the crowd of squonks and returned to his group. The squonk he had touched dashed off. The other squonks continued to surround Squonk, although they had now ceased to try to push his legs and head back into his body and simply contented themselves with stroking all of his body that was not protected by the shell on his back.
This stroking seemed to have at least a partial calming effect on Squonk, although he still tried, erratically and feebly, to search any surface that came within reach of his tentacles. The squonk that had left returned, riding a sort of flat‑bed truck or raft which floated just above the floor, held there by some force, perhaps antigravity, perhaps something that merely repelled the floor's surface.
The other squonks coaxed and pushed Squonk up onto this raft and the squonk which had brought it drove it off, with Squonk now trying to search the bed of the raft.
They left the building, moved down one of the green pathways and through a tangle of other, connecting paths into a hospital building. Here, the raft was driven to a large, dormitory‑like room Jim and Mary had not found in other such hospitals they had visitedalthough they had never really searched any of them in detail. Their destination now was a ward, plainly, for squonks only. Long rows of rafts with unmoving squonks on them, like the one on which Squonk was
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being carried, floated just above the floor of the room; and the driver of their raft maneuvered it into position on the end of one row. The driver then departed, leaving the raft there, with Squonk still mindlessly searching the surface of the vehicle's platform.
Almost immediately another squonk appeared, carrying what looked like a large piece of mosquito netting, and threw it over both Squonk and the raft. Looking out through the meshes, which were so large and flimsy they barely obscured the view, Jim noticed what he had been too concerned with Squonk to notice before; and that was that a good share of. the other vehicle‑beds had their occupants enclosed by similar settings.
Almost immediately, the netting began to radiate a mild heat, and this seemed to have a calming effect on Squonk. He pulled in his extendible body parts, stood for a little while unmoving, then rolled over on his back and abandoned wakefulness.
"He's asleep?" asked Mary. It was the first word she had said since Jim had peremptorily shut her up in the discussion room.
"Yes," said Jim. "Which means we're all right for the present."
"Why only for the present?" Mary echoed.
"Because Squonk'll either die or get well," said Jim. "If he dies, we're stuck in a dead body‑and we've seen what they do with dead bodies here. We'll probably end up in some trash pit or incineratorI'll bet on the incinerator rather than the pit."
"And if he lives?" Mary's voice was controlled and even.
"If he lives, I can imagine some Laagi checking up on what made him sick enough to end up here. I've no idea how detailed the information might be that a Laagi can get out of a squonk. Have you? But if the Laagi learns that all this time, Squonk's been searching for something that's missing from AndFriend, and that he's been getting his orders from a Laagi that's not there in the flesh, what do you think's going to happen?"
I've no idea," said Mary, still levelly. "But I imagine nothing good‑for us. You were right and I was wrong about overworking Squonk. Aside from that, everything I said ear
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lier still goes. And now, since there's nothing much for me to observe here, and because I really could use some sleep right now, I'm going to fold up. Wake me if you need me."
She stopped talking, and a moment later Jim felt sure that he was once more picking up the mental signals from her that indicated she was truly slumbering.
He himself was wide awake with no desire to sleep at all. It was strange to be so alert, while his two companions were out of it, so to speak. They were asleep, around him all the other invalid squonks were asleep and no squonk attendants were in the room. He was literally alone with his thoughts.
He let them run free, accordingly. They flitted from speculation over how long Squonk would take to get rested, and how long Mary would take to rest up; and ended up speculating about things he and she had observed in their exploration of this Laagi city. Eventually, they ended up in speculation about the Laagi themselves.
There was something driving the Laagi, as a race, Jim thought. They were concerned with something more than just survival and increasing their population by settling more worlds. Perhaps, he thought, they had some sort of racial vision, some sort of dream that was strong enough to drive them all‑perhaps strong enough to drive them forever.
They were too advanced, too civilized, not to be headed somewhere. The war with the human race, the endless work, all that was a product of the older part of their brains. But there was more to them than those obvious things. Both he and Mary had come to feel that the rooms in which many Laagi sat and observed one of their number apparently in conversation with the picture of another Laagi on a screen, as well as the "clubs" where they gathered and communicated in anything from pairs up to small groups, had to do with learning and decision‑making; and almost surely, if those first two were present activities, with speculation as well.
Like humans they must wonder where it all led to, and what was the right way to go. And if they attacked that ques...
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