The Best of Hal Clement

by Hal Clement

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You getting rheumatism?” Jimmy gestured toward small figures, some distance in front.

  “Fatty and Alice. Let ’em get good and far ahead. We’re going swimming, and Fatty’s a tattler if there ever was one.”

  Jack nodded understandingly, and the group dawdled on. The shortest way to the quarries would have taken them past the still active pits and—more to the point—past the houses lying farthest out on the road. The adult inhabitants of one or two of these dwellings had made themselves unpopular with the boys by interfering with the swimming parties; so before the country road was reached, the group turned north on a street which ran parallel to the desired route. This they followed until it degenerated into a rutted country lane; then they turned left again and proceeded to cross the fields and through a small wood—the straggling edge of the growth that covered the mountain—until the road was reached. It was approached with caution, the boys making an Indian stalk of the business.

  There was no sign of anyone, according to the “scouts”; the two girls had presumably passed already. The party hastily crossed the road, and ran down the drive that led to the most secluded of the quarries. Thrykar was not the first to appreciate this quality. Thirteen boys, from seven years of age to about twice that, dived into convenient bushes, shed garments with more haste than neatness, and a moment later were splashing about in the appallingly deep water.

  They were all good swimmers; the parents of town and valley had long since given up hope of keeping their offspring out of the quarries all the time, and most of them had taken pains to do the next best thing. Jackie and Jimmy Wade were among the best.

  Thrykar, whose journey down to the road had been interrupted by the boisterous arrival of the gang, didn’t think too much of their swimming abilities; but he was fair-minded enough to realize their deficiencies in that respect were probably for anatomical reasons. His first emotion at the sight of them had been a fear that they would discover the hiding place where the gas cylinders and Tes were concealed, and he had returned thereto in a manner as expeditious as was consistent with careful concealment. The fear remained as he and Tes carefully watched from the edge of the pit; but there was nothing they could do to prevent such a discovery. On dry land they could not move nearly so fast as they had seen the boys run; and there were too many eyes about to risk a drop over the edge into the water.

  Two or three of the boys did climb the sides of the quarry some distance, to dive back down; but Thrykar, after seeing the splashes they made on entry, decided they were not likely to come much higher. He wondered how long they were likely to stay; it was obvious that they had no motive but pleasure. He also wondered if they would all leave together; and as that thought struck him, he glanced at the gas cylinders behind him.

  * * *

  The boys might have remained longer, but the local geography influenced them to some extent. The quarry was on the east side of the mountain, it was midafternoon, and most of the water had been in shadow at the time of their arrival. As the sun sank lower, depriving them of the direct heat that was necessary to make their swimming costume comfortable in mid-September, their enthusiasm began to decline. The youngest one present remembered that he lived farther up the valley than any of them, and presently withdrew, to return fully clothed and exhorting one or two of his nearest neighbors to accompany him.

  Jackie Wade looked at the boy in surprise as he heard his request.

  “Why go so soon? Afraid of something?” he jeered.

  “No,” denied the seven-year-old stoutly, “but it’s getting late. Look at the sun.”

  “Go on home if you want, little boy,” laughed Jack, plunging back into the water. He lived only a short distance out on the road, and was no less self-centered than any other child of ten. Two or three of the others, however, appreciated the force of the argument the youngster had implied, rather than the one he had voiced; and several more disappeared into the bushes where the clothes had been left. One of these was James, who had foresight enough to realize that the distance home was not sufficient to permit his hair to dry. After all, they weren’t supposed to swim in the quarry, and there was no point in asking for trouble.

  This action on the part of one of the oldest of the group produced results; when Jackie clambered out of the water again, none of the others was visible. He called his brother.

  “Come on and dress, fathead!” was the answer of that youth. Jackie made a face. “Why so soon?” he called back. “It can’t even be four o’clock yet. I’m going to swim a while longer.” He suited action to the word, climbing up the heaped blocks of granite at the side of the quarry and diving from a point higher than had any of the others that day.

  “You’re yellow, Jim!” he called, as his head once more broke the surface. “Bet you won’t go off from there!” His brother reappeared at the water’s edge, dressed except for the undershirt he had used as a towel—which would be redonned, dry or otherwise, before he reached home.

  “You bet I won’t,” he replied as Jackie clambered out beside him, “and you won’t either, not today. I’m going home, and you know what Dad will do if you go swimming alone and he hears about it. Come on and get dressed. Here’s your clothes.” He tossed them onto a block of stone near the water.

  A voice from some distance up the road called, “Jim! Jackie! Come on!” and Jim answered with a wordless yell.

  “I’m going,” he said to his brother. “Hurry up and follow us.” He turned his back, and disappeared toward the road. Jackie made a face at his departing back.

  In a mood of rebellion against the authority conferred by age, he climbed back up to the rock from which he had just dived, forcing Thrykar, who was making his best speed down the hill with a load of equipment in his tentacles, to drop behind the nearest cover. Jackie thought better of his intended action, however; the dangers of swimming alone had been well drilled into him at an early age, and there was a stratum of common sense underlying his youthful impetuousness. He clambered back down the rocks, sat down on the still warm surface of the block where his clothes lay, and began to dry himself. Thrykar resumed his silent progress downhill.

  As he went, he considered the situation. The human being was sitting on the stone block and facing the water; at the moment, Thrykar was directly to his left, and still somewhat above him. Tes was more nearly in front, and still further above. If there was any wind at all, it was insufficient to ripple the water; and Thrykar had recourse to a method that was the equivalent of the moistened finger. He found that there was a very faint breeze blowing approximately from the east—from the rear of the seated figure. Thrykar felt thankful for that, though the circumstance was natural enough. With his skin still wet, Jackie felt the current of air quite sharply, and had turned his back to it without thought.

  It was necessary for Thrykar to get behind him. This entailed some rather roundabout travel through the bushes and among the blocks of stone; and by the time the alien had reached a position that satisfied him, the boy had succeeded in turning his shorts right side out and donning them, and was working on the lace of one of his shoes—he had kicked them off without bothering to untie them.

  Thrykar, watching him sedulously with one eye, set the tiny cylinders on the ground, carefully checked the single nozzle for dirt, and began to adjust the tiny valves. Satisfied at last, he held the jet well away from his body and toward Jackie, and pressed a triggerlike release on the nozzle itself. Watching carefully, he was able to see faintly the almost invisible bubble that appeared and grew at the jet orifice.

  It was composed of an oily compound with high surface tension and very low vapor pressure; it could, under the proper conditions, remain intact for a long time. It was being filled with a mixture composed partly of the anesthetic that Thrykar had compounded, and partly of hydrogen gas—the mixture had been carefully computed beforehand by Thrykar to be just enough lighter than air to maintain a bubble a yard in diameter in equilibrium.

/>   He watched its growth carefully, releasing the trigger when it seemed to have attained the proper size. Two other tiny controls extruded an extra jet of the bubble fluid, and released another chemical that coagulated it sufficiently in the region near the nozzle to permit its being detached without rupture; and the almost invisible thing was floating across the open space toward Jackie’s seat.

  Thrykar would not have been surprised had the first one missed; but luck and care combined to a happier result. The boy undoubtedly felt the touch of the bubble film, for he twisted one arm behind his back as though to brush away a cobweb; but he never completed the gesture. At the first touch on his skin, the delicate film burst, releasing its contents; and Jackie absorbed a lungful of the potent mixture with his next breath. For once, the book appeared to be right.

  Thrykar had been able, with difficulty, to keep the bubble under observation; and as it vanished, he emerged from behind the concealing stone and dashed toward his subject. Jackie, seated as he was with feet clear of the ground, collapsed backward across the block of granite; and by some miracle Thrykar managed to reach him and cushion the fall before his head struck the stone. The alien had not foreseen this danger until after the release of the bubble.

  He eased the small body down on its back, and carefully examined the exposed chest and throat. A pulse was visible on the latter, and he gave a mutter of approval. Once more the handbook had proved correct.

  Thrykar opened the small, waterproof case that had been with the equipment, and extracted a small bottle of liquid and a very Earth-appearing hypodermic syringe. Bending over the limp form on the rock, he opened the bottle and sniffed as the odor of alcohol permeated the air. With a swab that was attached to the stopper, he lightly applied some of the fluid to an area covering the visible pulse; then, with extreme care, he inserted the fine needle at the same point until he felt it penetrate the tough wall of the blood vessel, and very slowly retracted the plunger. The transparent barrel of the instrument filled slowly with a column of crimson.

  The hypodermic filled, Thrykar carefully withdrew it, applied a tiny dab of a collodionlike substance to the puncture, sealed the needle with more of the same material, and replaced the apparatus in the case. The whole procedure, from the time of the boy’s collapse, had taken less than two minutes.

  Thrykar examined the body once more, made sure that the chest was still rising and falling with even breaths and the pulse throbbing as before. The creature seemed unharmed—it seemed unlikely that the loss of less than ten cubic centimeters of blood could injure a being of that size in any case; and knowing that the effects of the anesthetic would disappear in a very few minutes, Thrykar made haste to gather up his equipment and return to the place where Tes was waiting.

  * * *

  “That puts the first waterfall behind us,” he said as he rejoined her. “I’ll have to take this stuff down to the ship to work on it—and the sooner it’s done, the better. Coming?”

  “I think I’ll watch until it recovers,” she said. “It shouldn’t take long, and—I’d like to be sure we haven’t done anything irreparable. Thrykar, why do we have to come here, and go to all this deceitful mummery to steal blood from a race that doesn’t know what it’s all about, when there are any number of intelligent creatures who would donate willingly? That creature down there looks so helpless that I rather pity it, in spite of its ugliness.”

  “I understand how you feel,” said Thrykar mildly, following the direction of her gaze and deducing that of her thoughts. “Strictly speaking, a world such as this is an emergency station. You know I tried to get a later vacation period, so that I’d come up for refreshment before we left; but I couldn’t manage it. If we’d waited at home until I was finished, we might as well have stayed there—there wouldn’t have been time enough left to see anything of Blahn after we got there. There was nothing to do but stop en route, and this was the only place for that. If we’d taken a mainliner, instead of our own machine, we could have reached Blahn in time for treatment, or even received it on board; but I didn’t want that any more than you did. I know this business isn’t too pleasant for a civilized being, but I assure you that they are not harmed by it. Look!”

  He pointed downward. Jackie was sitting up again, wearing a puzzled expression which, of course, was lost on the witnesses. He was a healthy and extremely active youngster, so it was not the first time in his life he had fallen asleep during the daytime; but he had never before done so with a block of stone under him. He didn’t puzzle over it long; he was feeling cold, and the other boys must be some distance ahead of him by now—he dressed hastily, looked for and finally found the books which Jimmy had neglected to bring with his clothes, and ran off up the road.

  Tes watched him go with a feeling of relief for which she was unable to account. As soon as he was out of sight, Thrykar picked up the gas cylinders and equipment case, made sure the latter was sealed watertight, and began once more to struggle down the hill with the load. He refused Tes’ assistance, so she, unburdened, saved herself the climb by slipping over the edge of the pit. She was in the tiny galley preparing food by the time Thrykar came aboard; she brought him some within a few minutes and remained in the laboratory to watch what he was doing.

  He had transferred the sample of blood to a small, narrow-necked flask, which was surrounded by a heating pad set for what the book claimed to be the human blood temperature. The liquid showed no sign of clotting; evidently some inhibiting chemical had been in the hypodermic when the specimen was obtained. Tes watched with interest as Thrykar bent over the flask and permitted a thin stream of his own blood, flowing from a valve in the great vein of his tongue, to mingle with that of the human being. The valve, and the tiny muscles controlling it, were a product of surgery; the biologists of Thrykar’s race had not yet succeeded in tampering with their genes sufficiently to produce such a mechanism in the course of normal development. The delicate operation was performed at the same time the individual received his first “refreshment,” and was the most unpleasant part of the entire process. Tes, not yet of age, was not looking forward to the change with pleasure.

  The flask filled, Thrykar straightened up. His wife looked at the container with interest. “Their blood doesn’t look any different from ours,” she remarked. “Why this mixing outside?”

  “There are differences sufficient to detect either chemically or by microscope. It is necessary, of course, that there be some difference; otherwise there would be no reaction on the part of my own blood. However, when the blood is from two different species, it is best to let the initial reaction take place outside the body. That would be superfluous if my donor was a member of our own race, with merely a differing blood type. If you weren’t the same as I, it would have saved us a lot of trouble.”

  “Why is it that two people who have been treated, like you, are not particularly helpful to each other if they wish to use each other’s blood?”

  “In an untreated bloodstream, there are leucocytes—little, colorless, ameboid cells which act as scavengers and defenders against invading organisms. The treatment destroys those, or rather, so modifies them that they cease to be independent entities—I speak loosely; of course they are never really independent—and form a single, giant cell whose ramifications extend throughout the body of the owner, and which is in some obscure fashion tied in with, or at least sensitive to, his nervous system. As you know, a treated individual can stop voluntarily the bleeding from a wound, overcome disease and the chemical changes incident to advancing age—in fact, have a control over the bodily functions usually called ‘involuntary’ to a degree which renders him immune to all the more common causes of organic death.” One of his tentacles reached out in a caress. “In a year or two you will be old enough for the treatment, and we need no longer fear—separation.

  “But to return to your question. The giant leucocyte, after a few months, tends to break up into the original, uncontrollable type; and about half the time, if that p
rocess is permitted to reach completion, the new cells no longer act even as inefficient defenders; they attack, instead, and the victim dies of leukemia. The addition to the blood stream of white cells from another type of blood usually halts the breakdown—it’s as though the great cell were intelligent, and realized it had to remain united to keep its place from being usurped; and in the few cases where this fails, at least the leukemia is always prevented.”

  “I knew most of that,” replied Tes, “but not the leukemia danger. I suppose that slight risk is acceptable, in view of the added longevity. How long does that blood mixture of yours have to stand, before you can use it?”

  “About four hours is best, I understand, though the precise time is not too important. I’ll take this shot before we go to bed, let it react in me overnight, and tomorrow we’ll catch another human being, get a full donation, and—then we can start enjoying our vacation.”

  * * *

  Jackie Wade ran up the road, still hoping to catch up with his brother. He knew he had fallen asleep, but was sure it had been for only a moment; Jim couldn’t be more than five minutes ahead of him. He had not the slightest suspicion of what had happened during that brief doze; he had lost as much blood before, in the minor accidents that form a normal part of an active boy’s existence. His throat did itch slightly, but he was hardened to the activities of the mosquito family and its relatives, and his only reaction to the sensation was mild annoyance.

  As he had hoped, he caught the others before they reached his home, though the margin was narrow enough. Jim looked back as he heard his brother’s running footsteps, and stopped to wait for him; the other boys waved farewell and went on. Jackie reached his brother’s side and dropped to a walk, panting.

  “What took you so long?” asked Jim. “I bet you went swimming again!” He glared down at the younger boy.

  “Honest, I didn’t,” gasped Jackie. “I was just comin’ on slowly—thinking.”