Smith wiggled his toes in the cool grass, then said timidly, 'But these live?'
'Sure, they're alive. It's real live grass. Ben paid a lot to have it that way. Why, the special lighting circuits alone cost more than I make in a month. So walk around and let your feet enjoy it.'
Smith missed much of the speech but he did understand that the grass was made up of living beings and that he was being invited to walk on them. 'Walk on living things?' he asked with incredulous horror.
'Huh? Why not? It doesn't hurt this grass; it was specially developed for house rugs.'
Smith was forced to remind himself that a water brother could not lead him into wrongful action. Apprehensively he let himself be encouraged to walk around - and found that he did enjoy it and that the living creatures did not protest. He set his sensitivity for such things as high as possible; his brother was right, this was their proper being - to be walked on. He resolved to enfold it and praise it; the effort was much like that of a human trying to appreciate the merits of cannibalism - a custom which Smith found perfectly proper.
Jill let out a sigh. 'Well, I had better stop playing. I don't know how long we will be safe here.'
'Safe?'
'We can't stay here, not very long. They may be checking on every conveyance that left the Center this very minute.' She frowned and thought. Her place would not do, this place would not do - and Ben had intended to take him to Jubal Harshaw. But she did not know Harshaw; she was not even sure where he lived - somewhere in the Poconos, Ben had said. Well, she would just have to try to find out where he lived and call him. It was Hobson's choice; she had nowhere else to turn.
'Why are you not happy, my brother?'
Jill snapped out of her mood and looked at Smith. Why, the poor infant didn't even know anything was wrong! She made a real effort to look at it from his point of view. She failed, but she did grasp that he had no notion that they were running away from - from what? The cops? The hospital authorities? She was not sure quite what she had done, or what laws she had broken; she simply knew that she had pitted her own puny self against the combined will of the Big People, the Bosses, the ones who made decisions.
But how could she tell the Man from Mars what they were up against when she did not understand it herself? Did they have policemen on Mars? Half the time she found talking to him like shouting down a rain barrel.
Heavens, did they even have rain barrels on Mars? Or rain?
'Never you mind,' she said soberly. 'You just do what I tell you to do.'
'Yes.'
It was an unmodified, unlimited acceptance, an eternal yea. Jill suddenly had the feeling that Smith would unhesitatingly jump out the window if she told him to - in which belief she was correct; he would have jumped, enjoyed every scant second of the twenty storey drop, and accepted without surprise or resentment the discorporation on impact. Nor would he have been unaware that such a fall would kill him; fear of death was an idea utterly beyond him. If a water brother selected for him such a strange discorporation, he would cherish it and try to grok.
'Well, we can't stand here pampering our feet. I've got to feed us, I've got to get you into different clothes, and we've got to leave. Take those off.' She left to check Ben's wardrobe.
She selected for him an inconspicuous travel suit, a beret, shirt, underclothes, and shoes, then returned. Smith was as snarled as a kitten in knitting; he had tried to obey but now had one arm prisoned by the nurse's uniform and his face wrapped in the skirt. He had not even removed the cape before trying to take off the dress.
Jill said, 'Oh, dear!' and ran to help him.
She got him loose from the clothes, looked at them, then decided to stuff them down the oubliette? she could pay Etta Schere for the loss of them later and she did not want cops finding them here - just in case. 'But you are going to have to have a bath, my good man, before I dress you in Ben's clean clothes. They've been neglecting you. Come along.' Being a nurse, she was inured to bad odors, but (being a nurse) she was fanatic about soap and water? and it seemed to her that no one had bothered to bathe this patient recently. While Smith did not exactly stink, he did remind her of a horse on a hot day. Soap suds were indicated.
He watched her fill the tub with delight. There had been a tub in the bathroom of the suite he had been in but Smith had not known it was used to hold water; bed baths were all that he had had and not many of those; his trancelike withdrawals had interfered.
Jill tested the water's temperature. 'All right, climb in.'
Smith did not move. Instead he looked puzzled.
'Hurry!' Jill said sharply. 'Get in the water.'
The words she used were firmly parts of his human vocabulary and Smith did as she ordered, emotion shaking him. This brother wanted him to place his whole body in the water of life. No such honor had ever come to him; to the best of his knowledge and belief no one had ever before been offered such a holy privilege. Yet he had begun to understand that these others did have greater acquaintance with the stuff of life? a fact not yet grokked but which he had to accept.
He placed one trembling foot in the water, then the other? and slipped slowly down into the tub until the water covered him completely.
'Hey!' yelled Jill, and reached in and dragged his head and shoulders above water - then was shocked to find that she seemed to be handling a corpse. Good Lord! he couldn't drown, not in that time. But it frightened her and she shook him. 'Smith! Wake up! Snap out of it.'
Smith heard his brother call from far away and returned. His eyes ceased to be glazed, his heart speeded up and he resumed breathing. 'Are you all right?' Jill demanded.
'I am all right. I am very happy? my brother.'
'You sure scared me. Look, don't get under the water again. Just sit up, the way you are now.'
'Yes, my brother.' Smith added several words in a curious croaking meaningless to Jill, cupped a handful of water as if it were precious jewels and raised it to his lips. His mouth touched it, then he offered the handful to Jill.
'Hey, don't drink your bath water! No, I don't want it, either.'
'Not drink?'
His look of defenseless hurt was such that Jill again did not know what to do. She hesitated, then bent her head and barely touched her lips to the offering. 'Thank you.'
'May you never thirst!'
'I hope you are never thirsty, too. But that's enough. If you want a drink of water, I'll get you one. But don't drink any more of this water.'
Smith seemed satisfied and sat quietly. By now Jill was convinced that he had never taken a tub bath before and did not know what was expected of him. She considered the problem. No doubt she could coach him but they were already losing precious time. Maybe she should have let him go dirty.
Oh, well! It was not as bad as tending a disturbed patient in an N.P. ward. She had already got her blouse wet almost to the shoulders in dragging Smith off the bottom; she took it off and hung it up. She had been dressed for the street when she had crushed Smith out of the Center and was wearing a little, pleated pediskirt that floated around her knees. Her jacket she had dropped in the living room. She glanced down at the skirt. Although the pleats were guaranteed permanized, it was silly to get it wet. She shrugged and zipped it off; it left her in brassiere and panties.
Jill looked at Smith. He was staring at her with the innocent, interested eyes of a baby. She found herself blushing, which surprised her, as she had not known that she could. She believed herself to be free of morbid modesty and had no objection to nudity at proper times and places - she recalled suddenly that she had gone on her first bareskin swimming party at fifteen. But this childlike stare from a grown man bothered her; she decided to put up with clammily wet underwear rather than do the obvious, logical thing.
She covered her discomposure with heartiness. 'Let's get busy now and scrub the hide.' She dropped to her knees beside the tub, sprayed soap on him, and started working it into a lather.
Presently Smith reached out and touched her right mammary gland. Jill drew back hastily, almost dropping the sprayer. 'Hey! None of that stuff!'
He looked as if she had slapped him. 'Not?' he said tragically.
''Not,'' she agreed firmly. She looked at his face and added softly. 'It's all right. Just don't distract me with things like that when I'm busy.'
He took no more inadvertent liberties and Jill cut the bath short, letting the water drain and having him stand
