by Hal Clement
He spent Robert’s sleeping hours in organizing the few words he had learned, and developing a definitely planned campaign for learning more as rapidly as possible. It may seem odd that one who was so completely unable to control his own goings and comings should dream of planning anything; but the extra effective width of his vision angle must be remembered. He was to some extent able to determine what he saw, and therefore felt that he should decide what to look for.
It would have been so much simpler if he could control his host’s movements in some way, or interpret or influence the multitudinous reactions that went on in his nervous system. He had controlled the perit, of course, but not directly; the little creature had been trained to respond to twinges given mechanically to the appropriate muscles, as a horse learns to respond to the reins. The Hunter’s kind used the perits to perform actions which their own semiliquid bodies lacked the physical strength to do; and which were too delicate for their intelligent hosts to perform—or which had to be performed in places which had brought the Hunter to earth; such as the interior of the tiny racer that had brought the Hunter to Earth.
But Robert Kinnaird was not a perit, and could not be treated as one. It was necessary to appeal to his mind, not his body. The Hunter had come to about the best possible place for that purpose, though he did not yet know it.
Classes began the next day. Their purpose was at once obvious to the unlisted pupil, though the subjects were frequently obscure. Kinnaird’s courses included, among other subjects, English, physics, Latin, and French; and of these four, physics proved most helpful to the Hunter in learning the English language. After witnessing a demonstrated experiment in elementary mechanics and comparing it with the explanatory diagrams—produced on the board by the instructor, he was able to interpret most of the diagrams in Bob’s textbook—he had learned the relatively few and simple drawing conventions. Slowly, helped by other experiments performed either by the instructor or Bob himself, many of the printed words became ‘intelligible. Unfortunately for the Hunter’s needs. Bob was a sufficiently advanced reader to have long outgrown subvocalization, so it was some time before the Hunter could determine the relationship between written and spoken words; but one day a heavily-lettered diagram was explained vocally by the teacher, and a few days the Hunter was able to picture the written form of any new word he heard—allowing, of course, for the spelling irregularities which are a curse of the English tongue.
By the beginning of November, two months after the opening of the school, the alien’s vocabulary had about the size though not the content of an intelligent ten-year-old’s. He had a rather excessive store of scientific terms, and many blanks where less specialized words should have been. Also, the meaning he attached to such words as “work” was the purely physical one—not the more inclusive meaning conveyed to the mind of the average layman. He thought it meant “force times distance” and only that.
By this time, however, he had reached a point where tenth-grade English had some meaning to him; and Robert’s literature assignments began to be of some help—new words were frequently intelligible from context, ignorant as the Hunter was of human customs.
About the beginning of December, a slight interruption occurred to the unregistered pupil’s education. Robert Kinnaird had been a member of the school’s football team during the fall. The Hunter, with his intense interest in the health of his host, somewhat disapproved of this, though he understood the need of any muscled animal for exercise. The final game of the school season was played on Thanksgiving Day, and when the Hunter realized it was the final game, no one gave more thanks than he.
But he rejoiced too soon. Bob, reconstructing one of the more exciting moments of the game to prove his point in an argument, slipped in some very greasy mud and twisted an ankle severely enough to put him in bed for several days. The Hunter was not annoyed so much at the enforced absence from classes, since the boy did a certain amount of reading even in the infirmary, but at his own failure to prevent the accident. Had he realized the danger even two or three seconds in advance, he could have supplied considerable reinforcement to the tendons throughout the body,; but once the sprain had occurred, he could do practically nothing to speed up its healing—the danger of infection was already nil without his help.
The incident at least recalled him to some of the duties of a symbiote. From then on, the web of alien cells surrounding Bob’s bones and muscle sheaths was ready at an instant’s notice to tighten to the limits of the Hunter’s physical power. This was not very great, but it helped salve the intruder’s conscience.
Back in class, host and symbiote both worked harder than usual to make up for lost time. By now, the Hunter felt quite at home in the English language, understanding both what he heard and read with very satisfactory proficiency.
Though vastly interested in this task for its own sake, he had never forgotten his primary mission. He had learned quite early that he was in a school, and deduced from this that his host was not an adult; he knew the names of the city, state, and even the country in which the school was located; and he had never ceased from striving to learn the name and location relative to his present position of the place where the boy had spent his last vacation. He wasted no time in vituperating the luck which had led him to select as host probably the only individual in a large group who was going to leave the neighborhood of the crash so soon and travel so far; it was a misfortune, he would readily have admitted, but there was no point in worrying about what was past.
He did learn, from a chance remark passed between Bob and one of his friends, that the place was an island. That would be some help, anyway; even though the fugitive was most probably no longer there, he or rather the being he took as host must have used a vehicle of some sort for his departure; the Hunter remembered his attempt to use the shark too vividly to suppose that the other could escape in a fish, and he had never heard of a warmblooded air breather that lived in the water. Seals and whales had never come up in Bob’s conversation, at least not since the Hunter had been able to understand it.
If a vehicle had been used, it could probably be traced—more easily than a free organism, at any rate. The Hunter was thankful for small blessings.
It remained to learn the location of the island. Bob received frequent letters from his parents; but for some time these did not strike the Hunter as clues, partly because he had a good deal of trouble reading script and partly because he did not know the relationship to the boy of the senders of the letters. He had no scruples about reading Bob’s mail, of course; he simply found it difficult. Robert did write to his parents, at somewhat irregular intervals; but he had other correspondents as well, and it was not until nearly the end of January that the Hunter found that by far the greater number of his letters were going to and coming from one particular address.
This discovery was eased by the boy’s receipt of a typewriter as a Christmas present; this greatly facilitated the Hunter’s reading of the outgoing mail, and he quickly learned that the letters went to Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Kinnaird. He knew from his reading of the custom of family names descending from father to son; and the deduction seemed defensible that the boy would spend his vacation with his parents. If this were true, he had the name of the island. It was now simply a question of locating it—and getting there as soon as possible. He realized that Robert would probably be going back for his next vacation, but that would give the fugitive five more months to cover his tracks; and he had had five already. To anyone but the Hunter, the search would already have seemed utterly hopeless.
There was a large globular map of the planet in the school library, and almost a plethora of fiat maps and charts on walls and in the various books in the school. Robert’s persistent failure to bestow more than a passing glance at any of them quickly grew maddening; and the Hunter began to be tempted to try forcing his eyes. It was a bad idea, and no one knew it better than he; but he possessed emotions as powerful as those of any human being, and experience
d fully as much difficulty at times in keeping them in check.
He controlled himself, however—partially. He successfully resisted the temptation to tamper with Robert’s sclerotic muscles;-but gradually there welled up within his being, a growing conviction that direct communication with his host must be attempted if any further progress were to be made on his mission. The idea had, of course, been in the back of his mind from the time he had first entered the boy’s body. At that time he had hoped the necessity would not present itself, for a number of grave problems were involved; but now he felt convinced that there was no alternative. He might ride Robert Kinnaird’s body for the rest of the human being’s life—which, with the hidden visitor would probably be long—without ever approaching a place where clues to the whereabouts of his quarry could be obtained. With the active and intelligent assistance of the host, however; with his knowledge of Earth and its people combined with the Hunter’s familiarity with the ways of his own kind; with an able and healthy body willing to assist the alien instead of bearing him willy-nilly over the face of the globe—there could be no comparison of the relative chances. Communication was essential; and now, the means was at hand.
With the beings who normally served as hosts to the Hunter’s kind, conversation eventually reached a high level of speed and comprehensiveness. It must be remembered that the union took place with the host’s full knowledge and consent; and therefore almost anything the symbiote did to affect the former’s sense organs could be and was interpreted as a means of communication. It was immeasurably more complex than vocal speech; twinges at any and all muscles, shadow-images built directly, on the retina of an eye, motions of the fur with which the Allanese were thickly covered—for the most part, the meaning of any of the “signs” was self-evident; and after a few years’ companionship, conversation was almost telepathic in lucidity and speed between host and indweller.
Even with this background lacking for the second party, however, the Hunter felt that he could make himself known to and understood by his human host. Though the latter had no inkling of his existence, and would probably have suffered a severe emotional shock had the fact been proven to him, the Hunter suddenly realized the circumstance had played into his hands.
There was the protective net he had constructed over Bob’s muscles; and there was the typewriter. The net could be contracted, like the muscles it covered—though with far less power. If a time were chosen when Bob was sitting at the typewriter without particular plans of his own, it might be possible for the Hunter to strike a few keys in his own interest. The chances were really not too good; they depended upon Bob’s reaction when he found his fingers acting without orders.
Two nights after the Hunter had made his decision to act, the opportunity occurred. It was a Saturday evening, and the school had won a hockey game that afternoon. This proved a sufficient stimulus to cause Bob to write to his parents. He went to his room—the other occupant was not in at the time—got out the typewriter, and pounded off a description of the day’s events with very fair speed and accuracy. At no time did he relax sufficiently to make an opportunity for control, in the Hunter’s opinion; but with the letter finished and sealed, Robert suddenly remembered a composition which his English teacher had decreed should be turned in the following Monday. It was as foreign to his nature as to that of most other astounding science-fiction schoolboys to work so far in advance but the typewriter was out, and the hockey game offered itself as a subject which he could treat with some enthusiasm. He inserted a fresh piece of paper in the machine, rapidly typed the standard heading of title, pupil’s name, and date; then he paused to think. He had just written about this subject, but the readers of the first composition would be somewhat less critical of form, spelling and grammar than would his English teacher. A little care must be exercised.
The Hunter neither knew nor cared what Robert was planning to write. The fact that blazed itself on the amorphous tissue that in some obscure fashion acted as his brain was that they were sitting in front of a typewriter containing a blank piece of paper, with fingers resting on the keyboard and every muscle controlling those ten digits completely relaxed. The alien wasted no time whatever. He had long since decided on the wording of the first message. Its first letter lay directly under the boy’s left middle finger; and the net of alien flesh about the appropriate muscle promptly tugged as hard as it could on the tendon controlling that finger.
The finger bent downward obediently, and contacted the desired key, which with equal complaisance descended—halfway. The tug was not powerful enough to lift the type bar from its felt rest. The Hunter had not realized that he was so weak, compared with human muscle-; Bob’s manipulation of the typewriter had seemed so completely effortless. He sent more of his flesh flowing into the net which was trying to do the work of a small muscle, and tried again—and again and again. The result was the same. The key descended far enough to take up the slack in its linkage and stopped.
All this, of course, had attracted Bob’s attention. He had, of course, experienced before the quivering of muscles abruptly released from a heavy load; but there had been no-load here. He pulled the offending hand away from the keyboard, and the suddenly frantic Hunter promptly transferred his attention to the other. As with a human being, his control, poor enough in the beginning, grew worse with haste and strain; and the fingers of Robert’s right hand twitched in a most unnerving fashion. The boy stared at them, terrified. He was more or less hardened to the prospect of physical injury, as anyone who plays football and hockey must be, but there was something about nervous disorder that undermined his morale. It is a horrible jolt for a person still young enough never to have doubted seriously his own physical and mental powers suddenly to be given cause to question his own sanity; and even if Bob did not go quite that far, the inability to stop his fingers from quivering was nearly as unpleasant. It gave him a completely unaccustomed helpless feeling.
He clenched his fists tightly. The quivering stopped, to his relief—the Hunter knew he could never overcome muscles opposed to his own attempts. When the fists were cautiously relaxed, after a few moments, the alien made another try—this time on arm and chest muscles, in an effort to bring the hands back to the typewriter. Bob, with a gasp of dismay, leaped to his feet, knocking his chair back against his roommate’s bed. The Hunter was able to deposit a much heavier net of his flesh about these larger muscles, and the unwilled tug had been quite perceptible to the boy. He stood motionless, now badly frightened, and tried to decide between two courses of action.
There was, of course, a stringent rule that all injuries and illnesses must be reported promptly to the school infirmary. Had Bob suffered damage such as a cut or bruise, or even had a headache or stomach disorder, he would have had no hesitation in complying with this order; but somehow the idea of owning to a nervous complaint seemed rather shameful, and the thought of reporting his trouble grew more repugnant every moment. As might be expected, he finally decided to put it off, in the hope that matters would be improved by morning.
He put the typewriter away, took out a book, and settled down to read. At first he felt decidedly uneasy; but as the minutes passed without further misbehavior on the part of his muscular system, he gradually calmed down and became more absorbed in the reading matter. The increasing peace of mind was not, however, shared by his unsuspected companion.
The Hunter had relaxed in disgust as soon as the writing machine had been put away; but he had no intention of giving up. The fact that he could impress himself on the boy’s awareness without doing him physical damage had been something gained; even though interference with his muscles produced such a marked disturbance, there were other methods which suggested themselves to the alien. Perhaps they would prove less disconcerting, and he knew they could be equally effective as means of communication. The Hunter was no psychologist, and had never actually faced the problem now before him—though he had read a few purely theoretical books dealing with it. The symbio
sis now so common between his race and the Allanese had started in a small way before the written history of the latter people; there had always been, as far back as the records went, someone of the prospective host’s own species to explain and persuade solitary beings to take up the relationship; and with the beginning of interworld travel, there had always been the means for similar preparation of new races.
It was not too surprising, therefore, that the Hunter did not blame the disturbance he had created so much on the mere fact that there had been interference as on the particular method he had used, and felt no misgivings as to the effect on his host’s mind of further attempts. He did just the worst thing he could possibly have done; he waited until his host appeared to be over the shock of the first attempt, and promptly tried again.
This time he worked on Bob’s vocal cords. They were similar in structure, to those of the Allanese, and the Hunter could alter their tension mechanically just as he had pulled at the muscles of the limbs. He did not, of course, expect to form words; that requires control of diaphragm, tongue, jaw, and lips as well as vocal chords, and the symbiote was perfectly aware of the fact; but if he exerted his influence when the host was exhaling, he could at least produce sound. He was trusting to a frequency method—repeating numbers and their squares by means of interrupted sounds; precisely the method which many human beings have advocated should occasion ever arise for demonstrating the existence of intelligence on this planet.