'Oh, dear! Jack, see how quick you can get me another one, will you? This is my cousin Madge - she works over in South Wing - and she has a terrible laryngitis and I want to get her out of this wind.'
The attendant looked dubiously toward the phone in his booth and scratched his head. 'Well? seeing it's you, Miss Boardman, I'll let you take this one and call another one for Dr. Phipps. How's that?'
'Oh, Jack, you're a lamb! No, Madge, don't try to talk; I'll thank him. Her voice is gone completely; I'm going to take her home and bake it out with hot rum.'
'That ought to do it. Old-fashioned remedies are always best, my mother used to say.' He reached into the cab and punched the combination for Jill's home from memory, then helped them in. Jill managed to get in the way and thereby cover up Smith's unfamiliarity with this common ceremonial. 'Thanks, Jack. Thanks loads.'
The cab took off and Jill took her first deep breath. 'You can talk
'What should I say?'
'Huh? Nothing. Anything. Whatever you like.'
Smith thought this over. The scope of the invitation obviously called for a worthy answer, suitable to brothers. He thought of several, discarded them because he did not know how to translate them, then settled on one which he thought he could translate fairly well but which nevertheless conveyed even in this strange, flat speech some of the warm growing-closer brothers should enjoy. 'Let our eggs share the same nest.'
Jill looked startled. 'Huh? What did you say?'
Smith felt distressed at the failure to respond in kind and interpreted it as failure on his own part. He realized miserably that, time after time, he had managed to bring agitation to these other creatures when his purpose had been to create oneness. He tried again, rearranging his sparse vocabulary to enfold the thought somewhat differently. 'My nest is yours and your nest is mine.'
This time Jill managed to smile. 'Why, how sweet! My dear, I am not sure that I understand you, but if I do, that is the nicest offer I have had in a long time.' She added, 'But right now we are up to our ears in trouble - so let's wait a while, shall we?'
Smith had understood Jill hardly more than Jill had understood him, but he caught his water brother's pleased mood and understood the suggestion to wait. Waiting was something he did without effort, so he sat back, satisfied that all was well between himself and his brother, and enjoyed the scenery. It was the first time he had seen this place from the air and on every side there was a richness of new things to try to grok. It occurred to him that the apportation used at home did not permit this delightful viewing of what lay between. This thought almost led him to a comparison of Martian and human methods not favorable to the Old Ones, but his mind automatically shied away from heresy.
Jill kept quiet, too, and tried to get her thoughts straight. Suddenly she realized that the cab was heading down the final traffic leg toward the apartment house where she lived - and she realized just as quickly that home was the last place for her to go, it being the first place they would look once they figured out how Smith had escaped and who had helped him. She did not kid herself that she had covered her tracks. While she knew nothing of police methods, she supposed that she must have left fingerprints in Smith's room, not to mention the people who had seen them walk out. It was even possible (so she had heard) for a technician to read the tape in this cab's pilot and tell exactly what trips it had made that day and where and when.
She reached forward, slapped the order keys, and cleared the instruction to go to her apartment house. She did not know whether that would wipe the tape or not - but she was not going to head for a place where the police might already be waiting.
The cab checked its forward motion, rose out of the traffic lane and hovered. Where could she go? Where in all this swarming city could she hide a grown man who was half idiot and could not even dress himself? A man who was the most sought-after person on the globe? Oh, if Ben were only here! Ben - where are you?
She reached forward again, picked up the phone and rather hopelessly punched Ben's number, expecting to hear the detached voice of an automation inviting her to record a message. Her spirits jumped when a man's voice answered - then slumped again when she realized that it was not Ben but his majordomo, Osbert Kilgallen. 'Oh. Sorry, Mr. Kilgallen. This is Jill Boardman. I thought I had called Mr. Caxton's home.'
'You did. But I always have his home calls relayed to the office when he is away more than twenty-four hours.'
'Then he is still away?'
'I'm afraid so. Is there anything I can do for you?'
'Uh, no. Look, Mr. Kilgallen, isn't it strange that Ben should just drop out of sight? Aren't you worried about him?'
'Eh? Why should I be? His message said that he did not know how long he would be away.'
'Isn't that rather odd in itself?'
'Not in Mr. Caxton's work, Miss Boardman.'
'Well? I think there is something very odd about his being away this time! I think you ought to report it. You ought to spread it over every news service in the country - in the world!'
Even though the cab's phone had no vision circuit Jill felt Osbert Kilgallen draw himself up. 'I'm afraid, Miss Boardman, that I will have to interpret my employer's instructions myself. Uh - if you don't mind my saying so, there is always some? 'good friend' phoning Mr. Caxton frantically every time he leaves town.'
Some babe trying to get a hammer lock on him, Jill interpreted angrily - and this Osbert character thinks I'm the current one. It put out of her mind the half-formed thought of asking Kilgallen for help; she switched off as quickly as possible.
But where could she go? The obvious solution popped into her mind. If Ben was missing - and the authorities had a hand in it - the last place they would be likely to look for Valentine Smith would be Ben's apartment. Unless, she corrected, they connected her with Ben, which she did not think that they did.
They could dig a bite to eat out of Ben's buttery - she wouldn't risk ordering anything from the basement; they might know he was away. And she could borrow some of Ben's clothes for her idiot child. The last point settled it; she set the combination for Ben's apartment house. The cab picked out the new lane and dropped into it.
Once outside the door to Ben's flat Jill put her face to the hush box by the door and said emphatically, 'Karthago delenda est!'
Nothing happened. Oh damn him! she said frantically to herself; he's changed the combo. She stood there for a moment, knees weak, and kept her face away from Smith. Then she again spoke into the hush box. It was a Raytheon lock, the same voice circuit actuated the door or announced callers. She announced herself on the forlorn chance that Ben might have returned. 'Ben, this is Jill.'
The door slid open.
They went inside and the door closed. Jill thought for an instant that Ben had let them in, then she realized that she had accidentally hit on his new door combination? intended, she guessed, as a gracious compliment combined with a wolf tactic. She felt that she could have dispensed with the compliment to have avoided the awful panic she had felt when the door had refused to open.
Smith stood quietly at the edge of the thick green lawn and looked at the room. It again was a place so new to him as not to be grokked at once, but he felt immediately pleased with it. It was less exciting than the moving place they had just been in, but in many ways more suited for enfolding together the self. He looked with interest at the view window at one end but did not recognize it as a window, mistaking it for a living picture like those he had been used to at home - the suite he had been in at Bethesda contained no windows, it being in one of the newer wings, and thus far he had never acquired the idea of 'window.'
He noticed with approval that the simulation of depth and movement in the 'picture' was perfect - some very great artist among these people must have created it. Up until this time he had seen nothing to cause him to think that these people possessed art; his grokldng of them was increased by this new experience and he felt warmed.
A movement caught his eye; he turned to find his brother removing the false skins as well as the slippers from its legs.
Jill sighed and wiggled her toes in the grass. 'Gosh, how my feet do hurt!' She glanced up and saw Smith watching her with that curiously disturbing baby-faced stare. 'Do it yourself if you want to. You'll love it.'
He blinked. 'How do?'
'I keep forgetting. Come here, I'll help you.' She got his shoes off, untaped the stockings and peeled them off. 'There, doesn't that feel good?'
