Part 7 (1/2)

I was so glad to see Oscar that I could have kissed him. I shouted, ”Hi, Pal! Mirabile visu!” and ran to get Peewee. My feet went out from under me again but I didn't care.

Peewee looked up as I rushed in. ”I was just going to look for you.”

”Got it! Got it!”

”You found the Mother Thing?” she said eagerly.

”Huh? No, no! The s.p.a.ce suits-yours and mine! Let's go!”

”Oh.” She looked disappointed and I felt hurt. ”That's good ... but we have to find the Mother Thing first.”

I felt tried beyond endurance. Here we had a chance, slim but real, to escape a fate-worse-than-death (I'm not using a figure of speech) and she wanted to hang around to search for a bug-eyed monster. For any human being, even a stranger with halitosis, I would have done it. For a dog or cat I would, although reluctantly.

But what was a bug-eyed monster to me? All this one had done was to get me into the worst jam I had ever been in.

I considered socking Peewee and stuffing her into her suit. But I said, ”Are you crazy? We're leaving-right now!”

”We can't go till we find her.”

”Now I know you're crazy. We don't even know she's here . . . and if we do find her, we can't take her with us.”

”Oh, but we will!”

”How? This is the Moon, remember? No air. Got a s.p.a.ce suit for her?”

”But-” That stonkered her. But not for long. She had been sitting on the floor, holding the ration can between her knees. She stood up suddenly, bouncing a little, and said, ”Do as you like; I'm going to find her. Here.” She shoved the can at me.

I should have used force. But I am handicapped by training from early childhood never to strike a female, no matter how richly she deserves it. So the opportunity and Peewee both slid past while I was torn between common sense and upbringing. I simply groaned helplessly.

Then I became aware of an unbearably attractive odor. I was holding that can. It contained boiled shoe leather and gray gravy and smelled ambrosial.

Peewee had eaten half; I ate the rest while looking at what she had found. There was a coil of nylon rope which I happily put with the air bottles; Oscar had fifty feet of clothesline clipped to his belt but that had been a penny-saving expedient. There was a prospector's hammer which I salvaged, and two batteries which would do for headlamps and things.

The only other items of interest were a Government Printing Office publication t.i.tled Preliminary Report on Selenology, a pamphlet on uranium prospecting, and an expired Utah driver's license for ”Timothy Johnson”-I recognized the older man's mean face. The pamphlets interested me but this was no time for excess baggage.

The main furniture was two beds, curved like contour chairs and deeply padded; they told me that Skinny and Fatty had ridden this s.h.i.+p at high acceleration.

When I had mopped the last of the gravy with a finger, I took a big drink, washed my hands-using water lavishly because I didn't care if that pair died of thirst-grabbed my plunder and headed for the room where the s.p.a.ce suits were.

As I got there I ran into Peewee. She was carrying the crowbar and looking overjoyed. ”I found her!”

”Where?”

”Come on! I can't get it open, I'm not strong enough.”

I put the stuff with our suits and followed her. She stopped at a door panel farther along the corridor than my vandalism had taken me. ”In there!”

I looked and I listened. ”What makes you think so?”

”I know! Open it!”

I shrugged and got to work with the nutpick. The panel went sprung! and that was that.

Curled up in the middle of the floor was a creature.

So far as I could tell, it might or might not have been the one I had seen in the pasture the night before. The light had been poor, the conditions very different, and my examination had ended abruptly. But Peewee was in no doubt. She launched herself through the air with a squeal of joy and the two rolled over and over like kittens play-fighting.

Peewee was making sounds of joy, more or less in English. So was the Mother Thing, but not in English. I would not have been surprised if she had spoken English, since Wormface did and since Peewee had mentioned things the Mother Thing had told her. But she didn't.

Did you ever listen to a mockingbird? Sometimes singing melodies, sometimes just sending up a joyous noise unto the Lord? The endlessly varied songs of a mockingbird are nearest to the speech of the Mother Thing.

At last they held still, more or less, and Peewee said, ”Oh, Mother Thing, I'm so happy!”

The creature sang to her. Peewee answered, ”Oh. I'm forgetting my manners. Mother Thing, this is my dear friend Kip.”

The Mother Thing sang to me-and I understood.

What she said was: ”I am very happy to know you, Kip.” It didn't come out in words. But it might as well have been English. Nor was this half-kidding self-deception, such as my conversations with Oscar or Peewee's with Madame Pompadour-when I talk with Oscar I am both sides of the conversation; it's just my conscious talking to my subconscious, or some such. This was not that.

The Mother Thing sang to me and I understood.

I was startled but not unbelieving. When you see a rainbow you don't stop to argue the laws of optics. There it is, in the sky.

I would have been an idiot not to know that the Mother Thing was speaking to me because I did understand and understood her every time. If she directed a remark at Peewee alone, it was usually just birdsongs to me-but if it was meant for me, I got it.

Call it telepathy if you like, although it doesn't seem to be what they do at Duke University. I never read her mind and I don't think she read mine. We just talked.

But while I was startled, I minded my manners. I felt the way I do when Mother introduces me to one of her older grande-dame friends. So I bowed and said, ”We're very happy that we've found you, Mother Thing.”

It was simple, humble truth. I knew, without explanation, what it was that had made Peewee stubbornly determined to risk recapture rather than give up looking for her-the quality that made her ”the Mother Thing.”

Peewee has this habit of slapping names on things and her choices aren't always apt, for my taste. But I'll never question this one. The Mother Thing was the Mother Thing because she was. Around her you felt happy and safe and warm. You knew that if you skinned your knee and came bawling into the house, she would kiss it well and paint it with merthiolate and everything would be all right. Some nurses have it and some teachers . . . and, sadly, some mothers don't.

But the Mother Thing had it so strongly that I wasn't even worried by Wormface. We had her with us so everything was going to be all right. I logically I knew that she was as vulnerable as we were-I had seen them strike her down. She didn't have my size and strength, she couldn't pilot the s.h.i.+p as Peewee had been able to. It didn't matter.

I wanted to crawl into her lap. Since she was too small and didn't have a lap, I would gratefully hold her in mine, anytime.

I have talked more about my father but that doesn't mean that Mother is less important-just different. Dad is active, Mother is pa.s.sive; Dad talks, Mother doesn't. But if she died, Dad would wither like an uprooted tree. She makes our world.

The Mother Thing had the effect on me that Mother has, only I'm used to it from Mother. Now I was getting it unexpectedly, far from home, when I needed it.

Peewee said excitedly, ”Now we can go. Kip. Let's hurry!”

The Mother Thing sang (”Where are we going, children?”) ”To Tombaugh Station, Mother Thing. They'll help us.”

The Mother Thing blinked her eyes and looked serenely sad. She had great, soft, compa.s.sionate eyes-she looked more like a lemur than anything else but she was not a primate-she wasn't even in our sequence, unearthly. But she had these wonderful eyes and a soft, defenseless mouth out of which music poured. She wasn't as big as Peewee and her hands were tinier still-six fingers, any one of which could oppose the others the way our thumbs can. Her body-well, it never stayed the same shape so it's hard to describe, but it was right for her.

She didn't wear clothes but she wasn't naked; she had soft, creamy fur, sleek and fine as chinchilla. I thought at first she didn't wear anything, but presently I noticed a piece of jewelry, a s.h.i.+ny triangle with a double spiral in each corner. I don't know what made it stick on.

I didn't take all this in at once. At that instant the expression in the Mother Thing's eyes brought a crash of sorrow into the happiness I had been feeling.