“That would be safer than risking any of our food on him,” Angie said.
So Clay worked his way back into his pressure suit and left the habitat. He was actually moving rapidly, to do something for someone else. Maybe all of the waiting had something to do with his speed. Or maybe there was a touch more humanity to Clayton Reid than I had ever given him credit for.
“Maybe it’s time to start thinking about propping him up a little,” I told Angie. “Eating might be easier for him, the way it is for us in gravity.”
“But what about…?” She didn’t point at the spare head, but her eyes moved that way. “If we put him more upright, won’t that put extra pressure on those stitches?”
“He came in walking,” I reminded her.
“And passed out. Either way, we’re still guessing,” Angie said. “Why don’t we wait until we see if Clay finds anything?”
I couldn’t argue with that. Postponing tricky decisions was probably still the best choice.
“He does seem to be a little stronger now,” Angie said.
The alien was moving, but never much at once. He seemed to be trying to make himself more comfortable, in very tiny increments. That extra head had to be putting a strain on him, even in the very light gravity field we were in.
It was about then that I noticed that the alien was almost constantly staring into that extra face. It was more than that brief monologue and touching I had noticed before. I found myself wishing that I could read his expression, his emotions. If he had any. I mentioned the staring to Angie.
“I noticed before,” she said. “As soon as he had a little energy, I think. It’s spooky.”
“It was spooky from the beginning. It’s so… un-human.”
That almost provoked a laugh from Angie, or a retch. I wasn’t certain which. “No kidding,” she said after she had a chance to recover from that initial impulse.
“Have you had the feeling that this must be a really weird dream?” I asked. “That none of it is really happening?”
“Don’t go metaphysical on me, Tim. It doesn’t suit you, and my head hurts without trying to parse questions like that.”
The alien said something. Angie turned her attention back to him. He repeated, as closely as I could make out the sounds, what he had said before. He added a couple of weak gestures not enough to help us decipher the words.
“I don’t know what you said,” Angie told him, shrugging in a minimal gesture of her own. “We re trying to find food for you. Maybe that will help. Anything more will have to wait until our computers find a way to translate for us. If they do.”
One sound from the alien. Maybe “yes,” “no,” or maybe just a conversational place holder, an “ah” or “er.”
We had to wait another twenty minutes before Clay returned with a collection of things he had found in the alien’s ship. He gave the packages to Angie, let her display them to her patient while he stripped out of his pressure suit again.
“That place was a mess,” Clay said to me, speaking as if he didn’t want the alien to overhear. “It’s remarkable that he survived.”
“That survival is still in doubt,” I pointed out.
Clay looked at the alien. He had apparently chosen one of the packages. Food. Angie helped him eat. The stuff was some sort of thick paste, not much different in color than the alien’s skin—it didn’t look very appetizing to me.
“Perhaps we should have all of the computers working together on translation,” Clay said.
“I asked Ebbie if that would help,” I told him. “She didn’t think that it would. She said that all of the translation programs were essentially identical and that since we only have one link to the alien’s computer, there would be no benefit.”
“Even if we can nurse this creature back to health, I don’t see any way that we could help him repair his ship so that he could go back to his own kind,” Clay said.
I didn’t answer right away. I was having difficulty getting used to this sudden garrulousness from Clay. It was the clearest sign that the uniqueness of our position was affecting him.
“I know,” I said finally. “What I said before still holds. I think you’ll have to give him a tow to Mars. I’ve already got Barta docked to Ebbie.”
He nodded slowly. “I suppose you’re right. The question in my mind is whether the cabin of his ship is safe enough for him to travel in, or if he will have to ride with me.” It was clear that he would prefer to have the alien in the other ship, and I can’t say that I blame Clay for that.
“He’s going to need attention for some time, I think, even if his ship were habitable—and I doubt that it is,” I said. “But there are some benefits.”
He gave me one more very slow nod. “Trade-offs,” he said, almost under his breath.
“As long as he stays healthy, you should have a year to converse with him, once the translation program is set up.” Ebbie would transfer everything to the other candles, and send it on to Mars in a burst transmission so that the experts there could continue working on it while they waited for us.
It occurred to me that having a year alone with the alien would give Clay the lion’s share of the attention when we got home. Under the circumstances, he would probably deserve it. He would be “the” expert on the aliens. But I never considered offering to let him ferry Angie and Barta while I took the alien and his ship. All of that attention: if I enjoyed that sort of thing, I wouldn’t have been an Oort miner in the first place.
The alien took a long time with his eating. I guess it was work. Clay’s talkativeness wore itself out. We watched the meal. When it was over, the alien gave what sounded like a sigh of satisfaction and closed his eyes for a protracted moment. When he opened them again, he spoke. I doubt that it was anything so prosaic as, “My compliments to the chef.”
Food did seem to improve the alien’s condition, even before he had time to digest it. He appeared to be stronger. His gestures when he talked were—if not quick—not as slow as before, and slightly more animated. He did seem more inclined to talk after he finished eating. At times he rambled on for two or three minutes before falling silent.
At one point, Angie offered him the water bottle again and he took it. She pointed to the flask and said, “Water.” He took his drink and said something that sounded like it was all G’s and Z’s with maybe a Y or U thrown in the middle. Angie tried to repeat the word, with a notable lack of success, then said, “Water,” again. The alien tried to echo that word, with as little success as she had had with his word.
“Come on, Ebbie,” I said under my breath. “Let’s get that translation program working.”
The alien was cradling the extra head in both hands. At times he talked to it while he stroked one cheek or the other. Even worse—from my point of view—some color seemed to be returning to the head sticking out of the alien’s chest. That made the hair stand on my arms. If felt as if the skin were crawling up and down my spine. If the second head talked back, I wasn’t sure what I would do. I wouldn’t have ruled out a complete panic attack. It might have been too much for any human mind to handle. It would have been more than any human should have to handle.
But it didn’t happen. Thankfully.
Angie had finally felt the need for sleep. While she dozed on one of the benches, I sat next to the alien and made certain that he had water when he wanted it. By that time we could recognize his word for water even if we couldn’t reproduce it. He also seemed to doze off and on. When he was ready for a second meal, he was able to feed himself. His condition was clearly improving. I suspected that if it hadn’t been for the second head, he might have been nearly back to normal—whatever normal might have been for him.