The inversions and abstractions required careful translation but Smith managed it. 'Yes,' he answered, while hoping that it would not stir up a new crisis.
'That's what I thought you said. Brother, you aren't ill.'
The word 'brother' he considered first - the woman was reminding him that they had been joined in the water ritual. He asked the help of his nestlings that he might measure up to whatever this new brother wanted. 'I am not ill,' he agreed.
'Though I'm darned if I know how to cope with whatever is wrong with you. But I won't peel down. And I've got to get out of here.' It straightened up and turned again toward the side door - then stopped and looked back with a quizzical smile. 'You might ask me again, real prettily, under other circumstances. I'm curious to see what I might do.'
The woman was gone. Smith relaxed into the water bed and let the room fade away from him. He felt sober triumph that he had somehow comforted himself so that it was not necessary for them to die? but there was much new to grok. The woman's last speech had contained many symbols new to him and those which were not new had been arranged in fashions not easily understood. Out he was happy that the emotional flavor of them had been suitable for communication between water brothers - although touched with something else both disturbing and terrifyingly pleasant. He thought about his new brother, the woman creature, and felt odd tingles run through him. The feeling reminded him of the first time he had been allowed to be present at a discorporation and he felt happy without knowing why.
He wished that his brother Doctor Mahmoud were here. There was so much to grok, so little to grok from.
Jill Boardman spent the rest of her watch in a mild daze. She managed to avoid any mistakes in medication and she answered from reflex the usual verbal overtures made to her. But the face of the Man from Mars stayed in her mind and she mulled over the crazy things he had said. No, not 'crazy,' she corrected - she had done her stint in psychiatric wards and she felt certain that his remarks had not been psychotic.
She decided that 'innocent' was the proper term - then she decided that the word was not adequate. His expression was innocent, but his eyes were not. What sort of creature had a face like that?
She had once worked in a Catholic hospital; she suddenly saw the face of the Man from Mars surrounded by the head dress of a nursing Sister, a nun. The idea disturbed her, for there was nothing female about Smith's face.
She was changing into Street clothes when another nurse stuck her head into the locker room. 'Phone, Jill. For you.' Jill accepted the call, sound without vision, while she continued to dress.
'Is this Florence Nightingale?' a baritone voice asked.
'Speaking. That you, Ben?'
'The stalwart upholder of the freedom of the press in person. Little one, are you busy?'
'What do you have in mind?'
'I have in mind taking you out, buying you a bloody steak, plying you with liquor, and asking you a question.'
'The answer is still 'No.'
'Not that question. Another one.'
'Oh, do you know another one? If so, tell me.'
'Later. I want you softened up by food and liquor first.'
'Real steak? Not syntho?'
'Guaranteed. When you stick a fork into it, it will turn imploring eyes on you.'
'You must be on an expense account, Ben.'
'That's irrelevant and ignoble. How about it?'
'You've talked me into it.'
'The roof of the medical center. Ten minutes.'
She put the street suit she had changed into back into her locker and put on a dinner dress kept there for emergencies. It was a demure little number, barely translucent and with bustle and bust pads so subdued that they merely re-created the effect she would have produced had she been wearing nothing. The dress had cost her a month's pay and did not look it, its subtle power being concealed like knock-out drops in a drink. Jill looked at herself with satisfaction and took the bounce tube up to the roof.
There she pulled her cape around her against the wind and was looking for Ben Caxton when the roof orderly touched her arm. 'There is a car over there paging you, Miss Boardman - that Talbot saloon.'
'Thanks, Jack.' She saw the taxi spotted for take-off, with its door open. She went to it, climbed in, and was about to hand Ben a backhanded compliment on gallantry when she saw that he was not inside. The taxi was on automatic; its door closed and it took to the air, swung out of the circle, and sliced across the Potomac. Jill sat back and waited.
The taxi stopped on a public landing flat over Alexandria and Ben Caxton got in; it took off again. Jill looked him over grimly. 'My, aren't we getting important! Since when has your time become so valuable that you send a robot to pick up your women?'
He reached over, patted her knee, and said gently, 'Reasons, little one, reasons - I can't afford to be seen picking you up-'
'Well!'
'-and you can't afford to be seen being picked up by me. So simmer down. I apologize. I bow in the dust. I kiss your little foot. But it was necessary.'
'Hmm? which one of us has leprosy?'
'Both of us, in different ways. Jill, I'm a newspaperman.'
'I was beginning to think you were something else.'
'And you are a nurse at the hospital where they are holding the Man from Mars.' He spread his hands and shrugged.
'Keep talking. Does that make me unfit to meet your mother?'
'Do you need a map, Jill? There are more than a thousand reporters in this area, not counting press agents, ax grinders, winchells, lippmanns, and the stampede that headed this way when the Champion landed. Every one of them has been trying to interview the Man from Mars, including me. So far as I know, none has succeeded. Do you think it would be Smart for us to be seen leaving the hospital together?'
'Umm, maybe not. But I don't really see that it matters. I'm not the Man from Mars.'
He looked her over. 'You certainly aren't. But maybe you are going to help me see him - which is why I didn't want to be seen picking you
'Huh? Ben, you've been out in the sun without your hat. They've got a marine guard around him.' She thought about the fact that she herself had not found the guard too hard to circumvent, decided not to mention it.
'So they have. So we talk it over.'
'I don't see what there is to talk about.'
'Later. I didn't intend to let the subject come up until I had softened you with animal proteins and ethanol. Let's eat first.'
'Now you sound rational. Where? Would your expense account run to the New Mayflower? You are on an expense account, aren't you?'
Caxton frowned. 'Jill, if we eat in a restaurant, I wouldn't want to risk one closer than Louisville. It would take this hack more than two hours to get us that far. How about dinner in my apartment?'
''-Said the Spider to the Fly.' Ben, I remember the last time. I'm too tired to wrestle.'
'Nobody asked you to. Strictly business. King's X, cross my heart and hope to die.'
'I don't know as I like that much better. If I'm safe alone with you, I must be slipping. Well, all right, King's X.'
Caxton leaned forward and punched buttons; the taxi, which had been circling under a 'hold' instruction, woke up, looked around, and headed for the apartment hotel where Ben lived. He then dialed a phone number and said to Jill, 'How much time do you want to get liquored up, sugar foot? I'll tell the kitchen when to have the steaks ready.'
Jill considered it. 'Ben, your mousetrap has a private kitchen.'
'Of sorts. I can grill a steak, if that is what you mean.'
'I'll grill the steak. Hand me the phone.' She gave orders, stopping to make sure that Ben liked endive.
The taxi dropped them on the roof and they went down to his flat. It was unstylish and old-fashioned; its one
