The Forever Man by Gordon R Dickson

Author:Gordon R Dickson [Dickson, Gordon R]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781627934633
Google: kzUfAwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 280735
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1986-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16.

“This is terrible!” said Mary. “How can we see anything if Squonk won’t look at anything but what it’s working on at the moment? Why didn’t we think of a simple problem like this?”

“Because you didn’t know you’d be putting the material from AndFriend into a creature that never looks at anything but what it’s working at. Though, come to think of it, during work hours, a lot of us humans do the same thing,” Jim answered.

“But what are we going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” said Jim. “But I’m thinking. If you don’t mind, I’d rather do that than talk.”

“And another thing—” Mary was beginning; but he shut his mind to her mental voice, something that was easier to do because of the strange effect that made it sound now as if it came from some distance.

He did indeed want to think. In fact his mind had been running along certain lines since he had first started trying to find his way through the body of Squonk to the physical organ that was the seat of its mind.

He had been very lucky, he thought—there was no other word for it—to find the nerve, or conduit as Mary called it, to Squonk’s vision. But the prospect of carefully examining, millimeter by millimeter, some distance of sandy-hued pavement as Squonk dusted it was no more attractive to him than it was to Mary.

The first question, therefore, was what could be done about the situation—Mary’s question just now. The second, and more important question, was what his own individual relationship was to Squonk in the first place.

Probably the first question could not be answered until the answer to the second question was found and understood. The second question had come to mind when he had suddenly begun to wonder—and this was the sort of thing he would have immediately begun to talk over with Mary under ordinary circumstances, but not now—why, looking out through Squonk’s eyes, which were physically different in a large degree from his human eyes, he should still see the interior of AndFriend and the pavement outside his ship as a human would see them.

Which raised the interesting question: was he actually seeing what he was seeing through Squonk’s eyes, at all?

Now, with AndFriend, he had seemed to be able to use the outside surface of its metal hull as eyes. And, come to think of it, not just as one eye or a hundred thousand eyes, covering the ship’s outer surface area, but as a pair of human eyes might see. Not only that, hadn’t he been able to look right through the opaque plastic of the tent enclosing the ship and La Chasse Gallerie when he first woke up as AndFriend, back at the Base?

Something was definitely not as he had originally assumed it to be.

Which brought him back to the question of whether he was actually seeing what he thought he was seeing, through Squonk’s eyes. How was he actually seeing? Was it mechanical

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.