After I’d signed, grunted, bullied, and sweeted him into obedience it was hell getting Hic into the extra thermal I’d packed out, but he couldn’t come in out of the methane naked. Questions would be asked. I got him sacked at last and back we schlepped to Mine City, Colossus of Compost, Mother of Methane, Daughter of Destruction, with the two-ringed Saturn behind us. Damn Sequoya, he was right about Mankind-F. How can you fight a bod you agree with?
After a careful inspection Natoma said, “He must be shaved from top to bottom. We’ll take him back as your feebleminded brother.” She looked at me perplexedly. “Guig, how the devil did he ever get out here?”
“Stowaway, probably. A Moleman can endure months of that cold, and he ate anything that was handy.”
Between signs and sweets we managed to bathe and shave Hic-Haec-Hoc. Natoma decorated him with graffiti which made him look like an average. Hic liked Nat and was comfortable with her. I think maybe he never had a mother. On the other hand he also liked his bath. I’m sure he never had one before.
He slept on the floor of our cabin during the freighter in-jet. Only one trouble; he didn’t like any of our hamper food and the compost stench made him hungry. I couldn’t get any for him — all sealed in the freight hull — and he started eating the most lunatic things; our linen, fire extinguishers, luggage, books, playing cards. We had to keep a constant watch (he ate my watch, by the way) or he might have chewed a hole in the freighter hull.
He’d become accustomed to Titan’s methane atmosphere and didn’t like the air in the jet. Natoma took care of that by spraying insecticide up his nose. Altogether, a problem child, and he was so brute-strong that you had to be cautious with him. But Natoma handled him beautifully. I think her experiences with the Erie warriors probably gave her the expertise.
As we started our approach to Earth, Natoma gave a thank-you luncheon party for the deck officers. She used the last of our provisions and even heated some of them up, a tremendous luxury. How did she do it on a jet where there were no ignition tools? She made a bow-drill and sawed away until she got an ember going. Shredded plastic for tinder. Chunks of plastic for fuel. And then a fire in an aluminum basin. No fool she. The officers were enchanted, and so appreciative that two of them proposed and all of them made plans to smuggle us out of the spaceport with no passport problems for my idiot “brother” who’d lost his on Titan. (And no warning to the Extro network which, of course, they knew nothing about.) We would be home free.
And when we put down we discovered that we’d acquired a hitchhiker.
14
At my age you learn to accept the unknowable with grace. You may ask, then, why the difficulty in accepting the Rajah, and the ease of accepting the spacehiker? Patent. The Rajah was the answer to a fact, an explanation which I could not yet accept because an integral part was missing. The hitchhiker made its appearance from an unknowable spacewhere. Neither explanations nor motivations were involved. It was a fact which could neither be denied nor fitted into the cosmic construct. That fact had to be accepted as Ding an sich, a thing in itself.
Impossible to name its original habitat. Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto, which had not yet been visited, much less explored for indigenous fauna and flora? The asteroid belt? Perhaps a refugee from the halo of millions of comets shuttling in from space, around the sun and out again? It might even be a reject from some contrauniverse, spat into our system through a minuscule White Hole.
Metabolism? N known. My hunch later — fed on the electromagnetic spectrum, which meant that out in space it was floating in a sea of food. Locomotion? N known. Possibly rides the stellar winds in space, which would account for its hitching a ride on the freighter; it couldn’t buck the solar wind without help. Reproduction? N known, period. Reason for being? No living thing can answer that. Description?
Well, when we disembarked from the freighter there it was, clinging to the hull, to the incredulity of the officers and the jetport mechs. It reminded me of a myxomycete, a “slime mold” I’d studied at Trinity College; if it was anything analogous to that order the reproduction question was answered; by spore formation. It was a giant flat slab of cytoplasm, about the size of a 3 × 5 scatter rug, translucent, and you could see thousands of nuclei inside, all connected with a demented lacework of I don’t know what. And the nuclei twinkled at you as though the thing were sharing a joke.
Naturally I insisted on taking it along with us, to Natoma’s horror — it filled her with revulsion — but Hic-Haec-Hoc fell in love with Twinkles and slung it over his shoulders like a cape. Twinkles extruded its edges to get comfortable and blinked at Hic, and damned if Hic didn’t blink back. I was glad that Hic had at last found a friend. Twink wasn’t immobile. It would take off from Hic, flapping its edges like a buzzard, and go exploring. Then it would return and they had long conversations.
We’d put down just outside Mexas City, which had ordered the compost, and we took a transit into the city to catch a linear north. The transit crashed and Nat leaped to shield me. My pride was hurt. She snapped, “Big L,” and that settled that. We flagged a free hire-pogo ambling back from the port and instead of landing in Mexas City it pancaked with a smash. My wife again. At the linear port a fuel reserve blew up and we had to scatter. I’d twigged by this time.
“He’s up,” I said to Natoma.
She nodded silently. She knew who and what I meant, and it hurt her.
“The Extro network is in action again,” I said.
“But how does it know where we are?”
“The freighter probably snitched. Now the network is gunning for us.”
“We’re being attacked?”
“Y. All out.”
“What do we do?”
“Stay away from machines and electronics. Go north on foot.”
“A thousand miles?”
“Maybe we can dig up some silent transport on the way.”
“But won’t Mexas City report where we’re going?”
“N. Only that we’re leaving. They won’t know where we’re going and we’re not going to let them know. This is going to be a tough ordeal for us. From here on we don’t talk, not a word. Hic will lead us; the Extro can’t pick up anything from him, and I’ll instruct him with signs.” I got out a slip of paper (a banknote, actually) and wrote: And any time we pass a piece of electronics we smash it.
She nodded again and we moved it out of Mexas City, me silently and patiently instructing Hic-Haec-Hoc. He finally got the idea, took the lead, and we became a lost army of three. I didn’t count Twink.
It was v. interesting. I could tell when we were approaching a town of any size when its broadcasts appeared, flickering before us like a mirage. We hoofed it to Queretaro where our Fearful Leader was sent in and picked up three horses. I’d given him cash along with my instructions but he probably didn’t know what it was for, and most assuredly stole the nags. We rode bareback until San Luis Potosi where Hic stole a small wagon. Nat plaited makeshift cords for a makeshift harness. In Durango the Fearful Leader didn’t do so well. I’d granted and signed “knives” to him. Apparently he didn’t get the message. He brought us two hammers and a shingling hatchet, but at least that made the destruction easier.
The army was spreading a trail of electronic demolition like Sherman’s March to the Sea, but the network couldn’t know it was us; machines are always breaking down for the sake of deserving Repair Syndicates. We camped nights with a sagebrush fire and roasted everything Hic and I could forage. It was tough. We had no cooking or eating utensils. We got water by crashing cactuses, century plants, and prickly pears between flat stones, but we had nothing to store it in.