Robert Heinlein - A Stranger in a Strange Land

When this last nightmare rushed through her mind, it carried in its train a cold wind of fear, the realization that she herself was in peril through having stumbled onto this top-secret fact.

Smith got clumsily up from his chair, held out both hands while still smiling and said, "Water brother!"

"Hello. Uh� how are you?"

"I am well. I am happy." He added something in a strange, choking speech, then corrected himself and said carefully, "You are here, my brother. You were away. Now you are here. I drink deep of you."

Jill felt herself helplessly split between two emotions, one that crushed and melted her heart - and an icy fear of being caught here. Smith did not seem to notice. Instead he said, "See? I walk! I grow strong." He demonstrated by taking a few steps back and forth, then stopped, triumphant, breathless, and smiling in front of her.

She forced herself to smile. "We are making progress, aren't we? You keep growing stronger, that's the spirit! But I must go now - I just stopped in to say hello."

His expression changed instantly to distress. "Do not go!"

"Oh, but I must!"

He continued to look woebegone, then added with tragic certainty, "I have hurted you. I did not know."

"Hurt me? Oh, no, not at all! But I must go - and quickly!"

His face was without expression. He stated rather than asked, "Take me with you, my brother."

"What? Oh, I can't. And I must go, at once. Look, don't tell anyone that I was in here, please!"

"Not tell that my water brother was here?"

"Yes. Don't tell anyone. Uh, I'll try to come back, I really will. You be a good boy and wait and don't tell anyone."

Smith digested this, looked serene. "I will wait. I will not tell."

"Good!" Jill wondered how the devil she possibly could get back in to see him - she certainly couldn't depend on Dr. Brush having another convenient case of trots. She realized now that the "broken" lock had not been broken and her eye swept around to the corridor door - and she saw why she had not been able to get in. A hand bolt had been screwed to the surface of the door, making a pass key useless. As was always the case with hospitals, bathroom doors and other doors that could be bolted were so arranged as to open also by pass key, so that patients irresponsible or unruly could not lock themselves away from the nurses. But here the locked door kept Smith in, and the addition of a simple hand bolt of the sort not permitted in hospitals served to keep out even those with pass keys.

Jill walked over and opened the bolt. "You wait. I'll come back."

"I shall waiting."

When she got back to the watch room she heard already knocking the Tock! Tock!Tock tock!� Tock, tock! signal that Brush had said he would use; she hurried to let him in.

He burst in, saying savagely, "Where the hell were you, nurse? I knocked three times." He glanced suspiciously at the inner door.

"I saw your patient turn over in her sleep," she lied quickly. "I was in arranging her collar pillow."

"Damn it, I told you simply to sit at my desk!"

Jill knew suddenly that the man was even more frightened than she was - and with more reason. She counter-attacked. "Doctor, I did you a favor," she said coldly. "Your patient is not properly the responsibility of the floor supervisor in the first place. But since you entrusted her to me, I had to do what seemed necessary in your absence. Since you have questioned what I have done, let's get the wing superintendent and settle the matter."

"Huh? No, no - forget it."

"No, sir. I don't like to have my professional actions questioned without cause. As you know very well, a patient that old can smother in a water bed; I did what was necessary. Some nurses will take any blame from a doctor, but I am not one of them. So let's call the superintendent."

"What? Look, Miss Boardman, I'm sorry I said anything. I was upset and I popped off without thinking. I apologize."

"Very well, Doctor," Jill answered stiffly. "Is there anything more I can do for you?"

"Uh? No, thank you. Thanks for standing by for me. Just� well, be sure not to mention it, will you?"

"I won't mention it." You can bet your sweet life I won't mention it, Jill added silently. But what do I do now? Oh, I wish Ben were in town! She got back to her duty desk, nodded to her assistant, and pretended to look over some papers. Finally she remembered to phone for the powered bed she had been after in the first place. Then she sent her assistant to look at the patient who needed the bed (now temporarily resting in the ordinary type) and tried to think.

Where was Ben? If he were only in touch, she would take ten minutes relief, call him, and shift the worry onto his broad shoulders. But Ben, damn him, was off skyoodling somewhere and letting her carry the ball.

Or was he? A fretful suspicion that had been burrowing around in her subconscious all day finally surfaced and looked her in the eye, and this time she returned the stare: Ben Caxton would not have left town without letting her know the outcome of his attempt to see the Man from Mars. As a fellow conspirator it was her right to receive a report and Ben always played fair� always.

She could hear sounding in her head something he had said on the ride back from Hagerstown: "-if anything goes wrong, you are my ace in the hole� honey, if you don't hear from me, you are on your own,"

She had not thought seriously about it at the time, as she had not really believed that anything could happen to Ben. Now she thought about it for a long time, while trying to continue her duties. There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk "his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor" on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else. Jill Boardman encountered her personal challenge - and accepted it - at 3:47 that afternoon while convincing a ward visitor that he simply could not bring a dog onto the floor even though he had managed to slip it past the receptionist and even if the sight of this dog was just what the patient needed.

The Man from Mars sat down again when Jill left. He did not pick up the picture book they had given him but simply waited in a fashion which may be described as "patient" only because human language does not embrace Martian emotions nor attitudes. He merely held still with quiet happiness because his brother had said that he would return. He was prepared to wait, without doing anything, without moving, for several years if necessary.

He had no clear idea how long it had been since he had first shared water with this brother; not only was this place curiously distorted in time and shape, with sequences of sights and sounds and experiences new to him and not yet grokked, but also the culture of his nest took a different grasp of time from that which is human. The difference lay not in their much longer lifetimes as counted in Earth years, but in a basically different attitude. The sentence, "It is later than you think," could not have been expressed in Martian - nor could "Haste makes waste," though for a different reason: the first notion was inconceivable while the latter was an unexpressed Martian basic, as unnecessary as telling a fish to bathe. But the quotation, "As it was in the Beginning, is now and ever shall be," was so Martian in mood that it could be translated more easily than "two plus two makes four" - which was not a truism on Mars.

Smith waited.

Brush came in and looked at him; Smith did not move and Brush went away.

When Smith heard a key in the outer door, he recalled that this sound had been one that he had heard somewhat before the last visit of his water brother, so he shifted his metabolism in preparation, in case the sequence occurred again. He was astonished when the door opened and Jill slipped in, as he had not been aware that the outer door was a door. But he grokked it at once and gave himself over to the joyful fullness which comes only in the presence of one's own nestlings, one's chosen water brothers, and (under certain circumstances) in the presence of the Old Ones.