by Hal Clement
He got farther than any human being, knowing the facts, would have expected, principally because Kinnaird was just finishing a yawn as the interruption started and was not able to control his own breathing right away. The Hunter was busily engaged in producing a series of four rather sickly croaks, having completed two and paused, when the boy caught his breath and an expression of undiluted terror spread over his face. He tried to let out his breath slowly and carefully; but the Hunter, completely absorbed in his work, continued the unnerving operation regardless of the fact that he had been interrupted. It took him some seconds to realize that the emotional disturbance of his host had reappeared in full force.
His own emotional control must have relaxed to some extent at this realization. No other means of explaining the thing he did next makes any sense whatever.
Recognizing clearly that he had failed again, knowing perfectly that his host was almost frantic with an emotion that robbed him of most of his control, the alien nevertheless not only failed to desist from his attempts but started still another form of “communication.” Perhaps he felt that he had gone too far to retreat; perhaps he had recognized the damage done by the pause between the first two attempts and was determined not to repeat the error; whatever his excuse may be, he was certainly not using the common sense he normally displayed. His third attempt involved cutting off light from his host’s retina in patterns according to letters of the English alphabet—regardless of the fact that by this time Robert Kinnaird was rushing down the hallway outside his room, bound for the dispensary, and the Hunter knew perfectly well that there lay ahead a rather poorly lighted stairway.
The inevitable results of interference with his host’s eyesight under such circumstances did not impress themselves upon the Hunter’s mind until Bob actually missed a step and lunged forward, grasping futilely for the rail.
It must be said for the alien that he recovered his sense of duty rapidly enough. Before the hurtling body touched a single obstacle he had tightened around every joint and tendon with his utmost strength; and it is quite possible that Robert was saved a severe sprain thereby.
One thing certainly was done most efficiently; as the sharp, upturned corner of one of the metal cleats which held the rubber treads on the stairs opened the boy’s arm from wrist to elbow, the alien was on the job so fast that the blood which escaped was not sufficient to flow away from the immediate neighborhood of the wound. Bob felt the pain, looked at the injury which was being held closed under an almost invisible film of unhuman flesh, and actually thought it was a scratch that had barely penetrated the skin. He turned the corner of the cleat down with his heel, and proceeded to the dispensary at a more moderate pace.
He was calmer when he got there, for the Hunter had been sobered into discontinuing his attempts to make himself known.
The school did not have a resident doctor, but did keep a nurse on constant duty at the dispensary. She could make little of Robert’s description of his nervous troubles—the fact is by no means to her discredit—and advised him to return the next day at the hour one of the local doctors normally visited the school. She did examine the cut on his arm, however.
“It’s clotted over, now,” she told the boy. “You should have come here with it sooner—though I probably wouldn’t have done much to it.”
“It happened less than five minutes ago,” was the answer. “I fell on the stairs coming down to see you about the other business—I couldn’t have brought it to you any faster. If it’s already closed, though, I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Miss Rand raised her eyebrows a trifle. She had been a school nurse for fifteen years, and was pretty sure she had encountered all the more common tales of malingerers. What puzzled her now was that there seemed no reason for the boy to prevaricate; she decided, rather against her will, that he was probably telling the truth.
Of course, some people’s blood does clot with unusual speed, she remembered. She examined Robert’s forearm again, more closely. Yes, the clot was extremely fresh; the shiny, dark red of newly congealed blood. She crushed it lightly with a fingertip—and felt, not the dry, smooth surface she had expected, or even the faint stickiness of nearly-dry blood, but a definite and unpleasant sliminess.
The Hunter was not a mind reader and had not foreseen such a move. Even if he had, he could not have withdrawn his flesh from the surface of Robert’s skin; it would be hours, more probably a day or two, before the edges of that gash could be trusted to hold themselves together under normal usage of the arm. He had to stay, whether he betrayed himself or not.
He watched through his host’s eyes with some uneasiness as Miss Rand drew her hand away sharply, and leaned over to look still more closely at the injured arm. This time she saw the transparent, almost invisible film that covered the cut, and leaped to a perfectly natural but completely erroneous conclusion. She decided that the injury was not as fresh as Robert had claimed, that he had “treated” it himself with the first substance that he had found handy—possibly airplane dope or something of that order—and had not wanted the fact to come out.
She was doing the boy’s common ‘sense a serious injustice, but she had no means of knowing that. She was wise enough to make no accusations, however, and without saying anything more took a small bottle of alcohol, moistened a swab with it, and started to clean away the foreign material.
Had the Hunter been in control of a set of vocal chords, he would probably have been unable to suppress a howl of anguish. He possessed no true skin, and the body cells overlaying the cut on his host’s arm were completely unprotected from the dehydrating action of the fluid on the swab. Direct sunlight had been bad enough. Alcohol felt to him about the same as concentrated sulphuric acid feels to a human being—and for the same reason. Those outer cells were killed almost instantly, desiccated to a brownish powder that could have been blown away, and would undoubtedly have interested the nurse greatly had she had a chance to examine it.
There was no time for that, however. In the shock of the sudden pain, the Hunter relaxed all of the “muscular” control he was exerting in that region to keep the wound closed, and the nurse found herself confronted with a long, clean slash some eight inches from end to end and half an inch deep in the middle, which suddenly started to bleed very enthusiastically. She was almost as startled as Robert, but her training showed its value; she bad compresses applied and bandaged in place in very creditable time, though she was rather surprised at the ease with which she managed to stop the bleeding. Then she reached for the telephone.
Robert Kinnaird was rather late in getting to bed that night. He was tired, but had trouble getting to sleep; the local anaesthetic the doctor had used while he was sewing up the arm was starting to wear off, and he was becoming progressively more aware of the member as time went on. He had almost forgotten the original purpose of his visit to the dispensary in the subsequent excitement; and now, separated by a reasonable time from the initial fright, he was able to view the matter more clearly. He thought about it now, staring into the darkness of his room.
The Hunter had also had time to alter his viewpoint. He had left the arm completely when the anaesthetic was injected, and busied himself entirely with his problem. He now realized that the disturbance of any natural function or sense organ was likely to upset his host’s emotional control seriously, and he was beginning to have a rather accurate suspicion of the effect that realization of his own presence where he was would probably have. Nothing originating in his own body would be interpreted by a human host as an attempt at communication; the idea of a symbiosis of intelligent life forms was completely foreign to the race. The Hunter berated himself for not realizing this much earlier.
He had some excuse, of course. He had been blinded to any idea save that of communication from within by at least two factors; lifelong habit, and a reluctance to leave his host. Even now he found himself trying to produce a plan which would not involve his departure from Robert’s body. He had known from the beginning what hi
s chance of return would be if the boy saw him coming; and the thought of being barred from the home to which he had become so well adjusted, of sneaking about as an almost helpless lump of jelly in an alien and unfriendly world, seeking host after host as he worked his way back toward the island where he had landed, seeking unaided for traces of a fugitive almost certainly as well hidden as he himself was at the moment—he put the pictures firmly out of his mind.
Yet communicate he must; and he had demonstrated to his own satisfaction the futility of trying it from within. Therefore, he must—what? How could he get into intelligent contact with Robert Kinnaird, or any other human being, from outside? He could not talk; he had no vocal apparatus, and even his control over his shape would be overstrained by an attempt to construct a replica of the human speech equipment from lung to lip. He could write, if the pencil were not too heavy; but what chance would he get? What human being, seeing a four-pound lump of jelly trying to handle writing materials, would stand still and wait for legible results? The Hunter had come to appreciate rather completely the homocentric viewpoint of his host’s species, though his last assumption may have done some of them an injustice.
Yet there was a way. Every danger he had considered was a conditional one: he could not get back into Bob’s body if the boy saw him coming; no human being would take his own senses seriously if he saw the Hunter writing; no human being would believe a message written by the Hunter that that person had not actually seen written—if the Hunter could not furnish substantial evidence of his own existence. Although the last two difficulties seemed to possess mutually exclusive solutions, the puzzled alien suddenly perceived an answer.
He could leave Bob’s body while the boy slept, compose a written message, and return before he awakened. No one would see him in the darkness; and „as for the authenticity of the note—Robert Kinnaird, of all human beings on the planet, was the one who would have to take seriously such a message. To him alone, as things were at the moment, was the Hunter in a position to prove not only his existence but his whereabouts. There was another advantage to the plan; Robert’s realization that the alien was actually within his body would not have the same emotional impact, since he would not actually see the other.
The idea seemed good, though admittedly risky. The Hunter had never been overly reluctant to take chances, however, and quickly decided that the plan contained his only hope. With a course of action firmly in mind, he once more began to pay attention to his surroundings.
He could still see; the boy had his eyes open, must still Joe awake. That meant delay, and more strain on his patience. It was annoying, this night of all nights, that Bob took so long to go to sleep—annoying, even though the Hunter could guess the cause, and hold himself at least partly responsible. It was nearly midnight, and the Hunter was having trouble holding his temper in check, by the time respiration and heart beat gave definite proof that his host was sound asleep, and he dared begin his planned actions. He left as he had entered, through the pores of the skin of one of Bob’s feet—experience had taught him that this part of his host’s body was least likely to be moved abruptly during sleep, and such motion would have made it very difficult for the Hunter to avoid causing some resistance which might have awakened the boy. The maneuver was accomplished successfully, however, and without delay the alien flowed downward through sheet and mattress and reached the floor under the bed.
Although the window was open and the shade up, it was too dark to permit him to see well; there was no moon, and no bright light at all close to the building. He could, however, make out the outlines of the study table shared by the room’s two inmates, and on that table there were, he knew, always writing materials. He moved toward if, in a smooth, amoeboid flow, and a few moments later was among the books and papers that littered the table top.
Clean paper was easy to find; a scratch pad was lying by itself at the edge of the table in front of one of the chairs. There were pencils and pens as well; but after a few minutes of experimentation, the Hunter found them too unmanageable—partly because of their weight, but mostly because of their length. He quickly found a remedy, however; one of the pencils was a cheap variety of the mechanical type, and he was able to work the lead out of it after a few minutes of prying. He found himself with a thin, easily manageable stick of the usual clay-graphite writing compound, soft enough to make a visible mark even under the relatively feeble pressure the Hunter could apply.
Armed with this, he set to work on the scratch pad. He printed slowly but neatly; the fact that he could barely see what he was doing made no difference, since he had disposed his body so as to cover the paper, and could “feel” quite adequately the precise position of each letter. He had spent considerable time planning just what the note was to say, but would have been the first to admit that it might not be too convincing. However, the die was cast; he had started, and would certainly gain nothing by quitting at this point.
“Bob,” the note began—the Hunter did not yet fully realize that certain occasions call for more formal means of address—“these words apologize for the disturbance I caused you last night. I must speak to you; the twitching of muscles and catching Of your voice were my attempts. I have not space here to tell who and where I am; but I can always hear you speak. If you are willing for me to try again, just say so. I will use the method you request; I can, if you relax, work your muscles as I did last night, or if you will look steadily at some fairly evenly illuminated object I can make shadow pictures in your own eyes. I will do anything else within my power to prove my words to you; but you must make the suggestions for such proofs. This is terribly important to both of us. Please let me try again.”
The Hunter wanted to sign the note, but could think of no way to do so. He had no personal name; in the minds of both intelligent races of Allane he was simply the companion of Jenver the Second-of-Police; and he wisely judged that to use such a title in the present instance would detract from the chances of Bob’s believing a single word of the note. He left the message unsigned, therefore, and turned his attention to the problem of where to leave it. He did not want Bob’s roommate to see it, at least until after his host had done so; therefore, it seemed best to carry the paper to Bob’s bed and place it on, or even under, the covers.
This the Hunter proceeded to do, after he managed to work the sheet on which he had been writing free of the block to which it had been attached. Getting a better idea on the way across the room, he left it in one of Robert’s shoes, and returned successfully to the interior of the boy’s body, where he proceeded to relax and wait for morning. He did not have to sleep in that environment—Bob’s circulatory system was amply capable of taking care of the visitor’s metabolic wastes as fast as they were formed. For the first time the Hunter found himself regretting this fact; he had used little more than an hour in the preparation and placing of his message, and an eternity seemed to pass before the dark rectangle of the window—which he could not watch—lightened with the approach of dawn and the “reveille” buzzer sounded in the corridor outside. The mere fact that no classes met on Sunday was not considered an excuse for remaining in bed.
Robert Kinnaird had little idea how closely his motions were being followed as he slowly opened his eyes and sat up. Remembering that it was his turn, he sprang barefooted across the floor, slammed down the window, and leaped back to the bed where, more leisurely, he began to dress. His roommate, who had enjoyed his privilege of remaining under the covers until the window was closed, also emerged and began groping for articles of clothing. He was not looking at Robert, and the other had his back to him anyway; so he did not see the momentary expression of surprise that flickered across Kinnaird’s face as he saw the sheet of paper which had been loosely rolled up and thrust into one of his shoes.
He pulled out the note, scanned it quickly, thrust it into a pocket, and continued donning his shoes, His instantaneous thought, of course, was that someone—probably his roommate—was up to some sort of
trick; so he concealed all outward sign of surprise after the first moment, and said nothing. Many people would have destroyed the paper at once, publicly, to make obvious their proof against gullibility; Bob seldom did anything, so final in haste. He nearly drove the Hunter mad by acting as though he had not seen the note until mid-morning; but he had not forgotten it.
He had simply been waiting until he was alone, and could count on being so for a while. In his room, with the other occupant safely in the recreation room playing off a chess final, he took out the note and read it again carefully. His initial opinion remained unchanged for a moment; then a question occurred to him. Who could have known about his troubles the night before?
Of course, he had told the nurse; but he could not imagine either her or the doctor indulging in practical jokes of this nature—nor would they have told anyone who might. There might be other explanations—probably were; but the easiest one to check at the moment was that which took the note at face value. He looked outside the door, in the closet, and under the beds, to make sure he was unobserved—after all, there are many adults who consider it a disgrace to “fall” for a practical joke—then seated himself on one of the beds, looked at the blank wall opposite the window, and said aloud, “All right, let’s see your shadow pictures.”
The Hunter obliged.
There is a peculiar pleasure in producing cataclysmic results with negligible effort; ask the foreman of a blasting crew or the pilot of a heavy aircraft. The Hunter felt it now; his only work was in thickening by a fraction of a millimeter some of the semitransparent body material already surrounding the rods and cones in his host’s eyeball so as to cover those sensitive nerve endings and exclude some of the incident light in a definite pattern. Accustomed as he was to the maneuver, it was completely effortless; but it produced results of a very satisfying magnitude. Bob started to his feet, staring; he blinked momentarily, but persistence of vision carried the rather foggy word “thanks” which had apparently been projected on the wall until he opened them again. The word tended to “crawl” a bit as he watched it—not all of the letters were on the fovea, and when he turned his eyes to ‘see them better, of course they went with it. He was reminded of the color spots he sometimes saw in the dark, on which he never could turn his eyes properly.
