The Thing translated.
"She says that is good. A growing boy should always seek out new experiences."
"What? Are you translating me properly?" said Masklin suspiciously.
"Yes."
"Well, have you told her it's dangerous?"
"Yes. She says that danger is what being alive is all about."
"But he could be killed!" Masklin shrieked.
"Then he will go up into the sky and become a star."
"Is that what they believe?"
"Yes. They believe that the operating system of a nome starts off as a goose. If it is a good goose, it becomes a nome. When a good nome dies, NASA takes it up into the sky and it becomes a star."
"What's an operating system?" said Masklin. This was religion. He always felt out of his depth with religion.
"The thing inside you that tells you what you are," said the Thing.
"It means a soul," said Gurder wearily.
"Never heard such a lot of nonsense," said Angalo cheerfully. "At least, not since we were in the Store and believed we came back as garden ornaments, eh?" He nudged Gurder in the ribs.
Instead of getting angry about this, Gurder just looked even more despondent.
"Let the lad come if he likes," Angalo went on. "He shows the right spirit. He reminds me of me when I was like him."
"His mother says that if he gets homesick be can always find a goose to bring him back, " said the Thing.
Masklin opened his mouth to speak.
But there were times when you couldn't say anything because there was nothing to say. If you had to explain anything to someone else, then there had to be something you were both sure of, someplace to start, and Masklin wasn't sure that there was anyplace like that around Shrub. He wondered how big the world was to her. Probably bigger than he could imagine. But it stopped at the sky.
"Oh, all right," he said. "But we have to go right away. No time for long tearful-"
Pion nodded to his mother and came and stood by Masklin, who couldn't think of anything to say. Even later on, when he understood the geese nomes better, he never quite got used to the way they cheerfully parted from one another. Distances didn't seem to mean much to them.
"Come on, then," he managed.
Gurder glowered at Topknot, who had insisted on coming this far. "I really wish I could talk to that nome," he said.
"Shrub told me he's quite a decent nome, really," said Masklin. "He's just a bit set in his ways."
"Just like you," said Angalo.
"Me? I'm not-" Gurder began.
"Of course you're not," said Masklin, soothingly. "Now, let's go."
They jogged through scrub two or three times as high as they were.
"We'll never have time," Gurder panted.
"Save your breath for running," said Angalo.
"Do they have smoked salmon on shuttles?" said Gurder.
"Dunno," said Masklin, pushing his way through a particularly tough clump of grass.
"No, they don't," said Angalo authoritatively. "I remember reading about it in a book. They eat out of tubes."
The nomes ran in silence while they thought about this.
"What, toothpaste?" said Gurder, after a while.
"No, not toothpaste. Of course not toothpaste. I'm sure not toothpaste."
"Well, what else do you know that comes in tubes?"
Angalo thought about this.
"Glue?" he said, uncertainly.
"Doesn't sound like a good meal to me. Toothpaste and glue?"
"The people who drive the space jets must like it. They were all smiling in the picture I saw," said Angalo.
"That wasn't smiling, that was probably just them trying to get their teeth apart," said Gurder.
"No, you've got it all wrong," Angalo decided, thinking fast. "They have to have their food in tubes because of gravity."
"What about gravity?"
"There isn't any."
"Any what?"
"Gravity. So everything floats around."
"What, in water?" said Gurder.
"No, in air. Because there's nothing to hold it on the plate, you see."
"Oh." Gurder nodded. "Is that where the glue comes in?"
Masklin knew that they could go on like this for hours. What these sounds mean, he thought, is: I am alive and so are you. And we're all very worried that we might not be alive for much longer, so we'll just keeptalking, because that's better than thinking.
It all looked better when it was days or weeks away, but now when it was"
How long. Thing?"
"Forty minutes."
"We've got to have another rest! Gurder isn't running, he's just fallingupright."
They collapsed in the shade of a bush. The shuttle didn't look much closer, but they could see plenty of other activity. There were morehelicopters. According to Pion, who climbed up the bush, there werehumans, much farther off.
"I need to sleep," said Angalo.
"Didn't you sleep on the goose?" said Masklin.
"Did you?"
Angalo stretched out in the shade.
"How are we going to get on the shuttle thing?" he said.
Masklin shrugged. "Well, the Thing says we don't have to get on it, we just have to put the Thing on it."
Angalo pushed himself up on his elbows. "You mean we don't get to ride on it? I was looking forward to that!"
"I don't think it's like the Truck, Angalo. I don't think they leave a window open for anyone to sneak in," said Masklin. "I think it'd take more than a lot of nomes and some string to fly it, anyway."
"You know, that was the best time of my life, when I drove the Truck," said Angalo dreamily. "When I think of all those months I lived in theStore, not even knowing about the Outside ..."
Masklin waited politely. His head felt heavy.
"Well?" he said.
"Well, what?"
"What happens when you think of all those months in the Store not knowing about the Outside?"
"It just seems like a waste."
Pion curled up and started to snore. Angalo yawned.
They hadn't slept for hours. Nomes slept mainly at night, but needed catnaps to get through the long day. Even Masklin was nodding.
"Thing?" he remembered to say, "wake me up in ten minutes, will you?"
Chapter 7
Satellites: They are in space and stay there bygoing so fast that they never stay in one placelong enough to fall down. Televisions are bouncedoff them. - From A Scientific Encyclopedia or theEnquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri.
It wasn't the Thing that woke Masklin up. It was Gurder.
Masklin lay with his eyes half closed, listening. Gurder was talking tothe Thing in a low voice.
"I believed in the Store," he said, "and then I found out it was just a-asort of thing built by humans. And I thought Grandson Richard, 39, wassome special person and he turned out to be a human who sings when hewets himself-"
"Takes a shower!"
"And now there's thousands of nomes in the world! Thousands! Believingall sorts of things!
That stupid Topknot person believes that the going-up shuttles make thesky. Do you know what I thought when I heard that? I thought, if he'dbeen the one arriving in my world instead of the other way around, he'dhave thought I was just as stupid! I am just as stupid! ... Thing?"
"I was maintaining a tactful silence."
"Angalo believes in silly machinery and Masklin believes in, oh, Idon't know. Space. Or not believing in things. And it all works for them.
I try to believe in important things, and they don't last for fiveminutes. Where's the fairness in that?"
"Only another tactful and understanding silence suffices at thispoint."
"I just wanted to make some sense out of life."
"This is a commendable aim."
"I mean, what is the truth of everything?"
There was a pause. Then the Thing said: "I recall your conversationwith Masklin about the origin of names. You wanted to ask me. I cananswer now. I was made, I know this is true. I know that I am a thingmade of metal and plastic, but also that I am something which livesinside that metal and plastic. It is impossible for me not to beabsolutely certain of it. This is a great comfort. As to names, I havedata that says nomes originated on another world and came here thousandsof years ago. This may be true. It may not be true. I am not in aposition to judge."