“Now the prize question. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well-” Peewee was going to twist that button off. “I wasn’t sure how much math you knew and-you might have gone all masculine and common-sensical and father-knows-best. Would you have believed me?”
(“I told Orville and I told Wilbur and now I’m telling you-that contraption will never work!”) “Maybe not, Peewee. But next time you’re tempted not to tell me something ‘for my own good,’ will you take a chance that I’m not wedded to my own ignorance? I know I’m not a genius but I’ll try to keep my mind open-and I might be able to help, if I knew what you were up to. Quit twisting that button.”
She let go hastily. “Yes, Kip. I’ll remember.”
“Thanks. Another thing is fretting me. I was pretty sick?”
“Huh? You certainly were!”
“All right. They’ve got these, uh, ‘fold ships’ that go anywhere in no time. Why didn’t you ask them to bounce me home and pop me into a hospital?”
She hesitated. “How do you feel?”
“Huh? I feel fine. Except that I seem to be under spinal anesthesia, or something.”
“Or something,” she agreed. “But you feel as if you are getting well?”
“Shucks, I feel well.”
“You aren’t. But you’re going to be.” She looked at me closely. “Shall I put it bluntly, Kip?”
“Go ahead.”
“If they had taken you to Earth to the best hospital we have, you’d be a ‘basket case.’ Understand me? No arms, no legs. As it is, you are getting completely well. No amputations, not even a toe.”
I think the Mother Thing had prepared me. I simply said, “You’re sure?”
“Sure. Sure both. You’re going to be all right.” Suddenly her face screwed up. “Oh, you were a mess! I saw.”
“Pretty bad?”
“Awful. I have nightmares.”
“They shouldn’t have let you look.”
“They couldn’t stop me. I was next of kin.”
“Huh? You told them you were my sister or something?”
“What? I am your next of kin.”
I was about to say she was cockeyed when I tripped over my tongue. We were the only humans for a hundred and sixty trillion miles. As usual, Peewee was right.
“So I had to grant permission,” she went on.
“For what? What did they do to me?”
“Uh, first they popped you into liquid helium. They left you there and the past month they have been using me as a guinea pig. Then, three days ago-three of ours-they thawed you out and got to work. You’ve been getting well ever since.”
“What shape am I in now?”
“Uh . . . well, you’re growing back. Kip, this isn’t a bed. It just looks like it.”
“What is it, then?”
“We don’t have a name for it and the tune is pitched too high for me. But everything from here on down-” She patted the spread. “-on into the room below, does things for you. You’re wired like a hi-fi nut’s basement.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“I’m afraid you can’t. You don’t know, Kip. They had to cut your space suit off.”
I felt more emotion at that than I had at hearing what a mess I had been. “Huh? Where is Oscar? Did they ruin him? My space suit, I mean.”
“I know what you mean. Every time you’re delirious you talk to ‘Oscar’ -and you answer back, too. Sometimes I think you’re schizoid, Kip.”
“You’ve mixed your terms, runt-that’ud make me a split personality. All right, but you’re a paranoid yourself.”
“Oh, I’ve known that for a long time. But I’m a very well adjusted one. You want to see Oscar? The Mother Thing said that you would want him near when you woke up.” She opened the closet.
“Hey! You said he was all cut up!”
“Oh, they repaired him. Good as new. A little better than new.”
(“Time, dear! Remember what I said.”)
“Coming, Mother Thing! ‘Bye, Kip. I’ll be back soon, and real often.”
“Okay. Leave the closet open so I can see Oscar.”
Peewee did come back, but not “real often.” I wasn’t offended, not much. She had a thousand interesting and “educational” things to poke her ubiquitous nose into, all new and fascinating-she was as busy as a pup chewing slippers. She ran our hosts ragged. But I wasn’t bored. I was getting well, a full-time job and not boring if you are happy-which I was.