hey  could in fact be
controlled precisely. The superficial mechanics of the process were known.
Each  ship possessed five main-drive verfliers, and five auxiliaries. They
located  coordinates  in space (how?), and, once set, the ship went there.
Again, how? It then returned unerringly to its place of origin, or usually
did,  if  it did not run out of fuel or encounter a mischance-a triumph of
cybernetics  that  S.  Ya.  knew  no  human  agency  could  reproduce. The
difficulty  was  that until this very second no human being knew quite how
to read the controls.
   But what about the next second, or the one after that? With information
pouring  in,  from  the  Food  Factory  and  Heechee Heaven; with Dead Men
talking;  with  at  least one semicompetent human pilot, the boy, Wan-with
all  this,  and  especially  with the flood of new knowledge that might be
unlocked from the prayer fans...
   How  long  before  some  of the mysteries were solved? Perhaps not very
long at all.
   S.  Ya.  wished  she  could  be a part of it all, as her classmates had
become.  As  her husband had become. She wished even more that she did not
suspect  what  part he most wanted to play. But the suspicion remained. If
Robin could make a Heechee ship fly him to any destination he chose in all
the universe, she thought she knew what that destination would be.

   Semya  Yagrodna  Lavorovna-Broadhead called to her secretary, "How much
time do I have?"
   The  program  appeared  and  said,  "It  is  now  five  twenty-two. Dr.
Liederman is expected at six forty-five. You will then be prepared for the
procedure,  which will occur at eight o'clock. You have a little more than
an hour and a quarter. Perhaps you would like to rest?"
   S. Ya. chuckled. It always amused her when her own programs offered her
advice.  She did not, however, feel any need to respond to it. "Have menus
been prepared for today and tomorrow?" she asked.
   "Nyet, gospozha."
   That  was  both  a  relief and a disappointment. At least Robin had not
prescribed  more fattening foods for today-or perhaps his prescription had
been overruled, because of the operation? "Select something," she ordered.
The  program  was quite capable of preparing menus. It was only because of
Robin  himself  that  either  of  them ever gave a thought to such routine
chores. But Robin was Robin, and there were times when cooking was a hobby
for him, cutting onions paper-thin for a salad and standing to stir a stew
for  hours. Sometimes what he produced was awful, sometimes not; Essie was
not  critical,  because  she  was not very interested in what she ate. And
also  because  she  was  grateful that she felt no need to concern herself
with  such matters; in this respect, at least, Robin surpassed her father.
"No,  wait,"  she  added, struck with a thought. "When Robin comes home he
will  be  hungry.  Serve  him  a snack-those crullers, and the New Orleans
coffee. As at the Cafe du Monde."
   "Da, gospozha." How devious you are, thought Essie, smiling to herself.
One hour and twelve minutes left.
   It would do no harm to rest.
   On the other hand, she was not sleepy.
   She  could, she thought, interrogate her medical program again. But she
had  no  real  wish  to  hear about the procedures she faced an additional
time.  Such  large pieces to take from someone else's body for the sake of
her  own!  The  kidney,  yes.  One  might  well  sell  that and still have
something  left. As a student, Essie had known comrades who had done that,
might  even  have done it herself if she had been just a shade poorer than
she  actually was. But, although she knew very little more of anatomy than
her father had taught her at his knee, she knew enough to be sure that the
person,  or  persons,  who had given her all those other tissues would not
have enough left to go on living with. It was a queasy feeling.
   Almost  as  queasy  as  that other feeling that came with knowing that,
even  with  Full  Medical,  from this particular invasion of her person by
Wilma Liederman's knives she might not return.
   Still an hour and eleven minutes.
   Essie  sat  up  once  more.  Whether she was to live or not, she was as
dutiful  a  wife  as  she  had been a daughter, and if Robin wished her to
concern  herself with prayer fans and Heechee she would. She addressed the
computer terminal. "I wish the Albert Einstein program."


        12 Sixty Billion Gigabits

   When  Essie  Broadhead  said, "I wish the Albert Einstein program," she
set  a  large  number  of  events in motion. Very few of these events were
visible  to the unaided senses. They did not take place in the macroscopic
physical world, but in a universe composed largely of charges and pathways
operating  on  the  scale of the electron. The individual units were tiny.
The  total  was  not,  being  made  up  of  some sixty billion gigabits of
information.
   At  Akademogorsk,  young  S.  Ya. 's professors had schooled her in the
then  current  computer logics of ion optics and magnetic bubbles. She had
learned  to  trick  her  computers  into doing many marvelous things. They
could  find  million-digit  prime  numbers  or  calculate  the  tides on a
mud-flat  for  a  thousand  years.  They  could take a child's scribble of
"House"  and  "Daddy"  and  refine  it  into an engineer's rendering of an
architectural  plan,  and a tailor's dummy of a man. They could rotate the
house,  add  a  sunporch,  sheath  it in stucco or cover it with ivy. They
could  shave  off  a  beard,  add  a  wig, costume the man for yachting or
golfing,   for  boardroom  or  bar.  These  were  marvelous  programs  for
nineteen-year-old Semya. She found them thrilling. But she had grown since
then.  By  comparison  with  the  programs  she  was  now writing, for her
secretary,  for  "Albert  Einstein"  and for her many clients, those early
ones  were slow and stumbling caricatures. They did not have the advantage
of  circuits  borrowed from Heechee technology, or of a circulating memory
store of 6 X b'9 bits.
   Of  course,  even Albert did not use all sixty billion gigabits all the
time. For one thing, they were not all shared. Even the shared stores were
occupied  by  tens  of  thousands of programs as subtle and complicated as
Albert, and by tens of millions of duller ones. The program called "Albert
Einstein" slipped through and among the thousands and the millions without
interference.  Traffic  signals  warned  him  away from occupied circuits.
Guideposts  led  him  to  subroutines  and libraries needed to fulfill his
functions.  His path was never a straight line. It was a tree of branching
decision  points,  a lightning-stroke of zigzag turns and reverses. It was
not truly a "path", either; Albert never moved. He was never in a specific
place  to move from. It is at least arguable whether Albert "was" anything
at  all.  He had no continuous existence. When Robin Broadhead was through
with him and turned him off he ceased to be, and his subroutines picked up
other  tasks.  When  he  was  turned  on  again  he recreated himself from
whatever  circuits were idle, according to the program S. Ya. had written.
He was no more real than an equation, and no less so than God.
   "I wish..." S. Ya. Lavorovna-Broadhead had said.
   Before   her   voice   was   halfway   through   the  first  vowel  the
sound-activated gate in the monitor's receiver summoned up her secretarial
program.  The  secretary  did  not appear. She read the first trace of the
name that followed... "-the Albert Einstein..."
   -matched  it against her command store, made a probabilistic assessment
of the rest and issued an instruction. That was not all the secretary did.
Before  that  she had recognized the voice of S. Ya. and confirmed that it
was  that of an authorized person-the person who had written her, in fact.
She checked her store for undelivered messages, found several, and weighed
their  urgency.  She  made  a quick sweep of Essie's telemetry readings to
estimate  her  physical  condition,  retrieved the memory of her proximate
surgery,  balanced  them against the messages and the present instruction,
and  decided  the  messages  need  not  be delivered, and in fact could be
handled  by Essie's surrogate. All that took very little time and involved
only a minor fraction of the secretary's full program. She did not need to
remember,  for  instance,  what  she  was supposed to look like or how her
voice was supposed to sound. So she did not bother.
   The secretary's instruction woke "Albert Einstein".
   He  did  not  at first know that he was Albert Einstein. As he read his
program  he discovered several things about himself. First, that he was an
interactive  information-retrieval  program, whereupon he searched for and
found  addresses  for  the  principal  categories  of  information  he was
supposed  to  supply.  Second,  that he was heuristic and normative, which
obliged him to look for the rules, in the form of go and no-go gates, that
determined  his  decision-making. Third, that he was the property of Robin
a.  k.  a. Robinette, Rob, Robby, Bob or Bobby-Stetley Broadhead and would
be  required  to  interact  with  him  on  a  basis of "knowing" him. This
impelled  the  Albert  program  to  access  the Robin Broadhead files, and
rehearse their contents-by far the most time-consuming part of his task so
far.  When all this was done he discovered his name and the details of his
appearance.  He  made  a  series  of arbitrary choices of costume-pullover
sweater,  or stained gray sweatshirt; slippers or frayed tennis shoes with
a toe poking out; socks or none-and appeared in the tank of the monitor in
the  guise of the real Albert Einstein, pipe in hand, mild eyes humorously
inquiring, before the last echo of the command had died.
   "...program."
   He  had  had plenty of time. It had taken Essie nearly four-tenths of a
second to speak his name.
   As  she  had  spoken  in  English, he greeted her in the same language.
"Good..." quick check of local time, "morning," fast assessment of Essie's
mood  and  condition,  "Mrs.  Broadhead."  If she had been dressed for the
office he would have called her "Lavorovna."
   Essie studied him appraisingly for several seconds, an infinity of time
for  Albert.  He  did  not waste it. He was a shared-time program, and the
parts  of  his  capacity  that  were  not  in active use at any particular
pico-second busied themselves at other tasks.
   Whatever  task was going. While he waited, parts of him were excused to
help  other  programs  make  a weather forecast for a sport-fishing vessel
leaving  Long  Island  Sound,  teach  the conjugation of French verbs to a
little girl, animate a sexual doll for a wealthy, and quirky, old recluse,
and tally gold prices received from the Peking exchange. There were almost
always  other  tasks  on line. When there were not, there were the waiting
batch-process   files   of  less  urgent  problems-nuclear  particle  path
analysis,  the  refinement  of asteroid orbits, the balancing of a million
checkbooks-that  any of the sixty billion gigabits might turn a hand to in
an idle moment.
   Albert  was  not  the  same  as  Robin's other programs-the lawyer, the
doctor,  the  secretary,  the  psychoanalyst, or any of the surrogates who
functioned  for Robin Broadhead when Robin was busy or disinclined. Albert
shared  many  memories with them. They freely accessed each other's files.
Each  had  a  specific  universe of action, tasked for specific needs; but
they could not carry out their tasks without awareness of each other.
   Apart  from  that,  they  were  each  the  personal  property  of Robin
Broadhead,  slaved  to his will. So sophisticated was Albert that he could
read  contextual  clues  and deduce imperatives. He was not limited in his
responses  by what Robin said to him. He was able to read deeper questions
from  the  totality  of  everything  Robin  had  ever  said, to any of his
programs.  Albert  could  not  betray  a confidence of Robin's, or fail to
recognize what was confidential. Generally.
   There  were  exceptions. The person who had written Albert's program in
the first place could easily write an overriding command, and had.

   "Robin  instructed  you  to  prepare  summaries for me," Essie told her
creation.  "Give  them  to  me  now."  She  watched  critically  and  also
admiringly  as  the program she bad written nodded, scratched its ear with
its  pipestem  and  began  to  speak. Albert was quite a good program, she
thought  with pride. For a collection of electronic impulses living in rag
stores-weakly  crystalline  dichalcogenides  with  the  structure of a wet
dishrag-Albert was a rather attractive person.
   She  adjusted  her  tubes and piping and leaned back against pillows to
listen to what Albert had to say. It was all most exceedingly interesting.
Even  to her, even at this time when in-what was it? in less than one hour
ten  minutes  she  would be sponged and stripped and shaved and basted for
further  invasions  of her inner person. As all she demanded of the Albert
program at this time was edited memories of conversations that had already
occurred,  she  knew that he had dismissed large parts of himself to other
work.  But  what  was  left, she observed critically, was quite solid. The
transition  from  the  interactive  Albert waiting for her question to the
remembered  Albert  talking  to  her husband was done smoothly and without
jumps-if  one  did  not look for such minor imperfections as that the pipe
was  suddenly  alight,  and  the socks abruptly pulled up over the ankles.
Satisfied,  Essie  paid  attention to the content of what was going on. It
was  not  just one conversation, she perceived. There were at least three.
Robin must have been spending a lot of time talking to his science program
in  Brasilia, and while one part of her mind was listening to the exciting
news  from Heechee Heaven another part was smiling at herself. How amusing
that she should be pleased at this evidence that he had not used his hotel
suite  for  other purposes! (Or at least not exclusively, she amended.) He
could  not  have  been blamed if he had chosen a living companion instead.
Even  a  female  one.  Under  the  circumstances,  with a main lover in no
condition  to be very responsive, she would certainly have felt free to do
the  same. (Well, not certainly. There was enough early Soviet prudishness
left  in Essie for at least a doubt.) But she admitted to herself that she
was  pleased, and then made herself attend to the truly fascinating things
that were being said. So much happening! So much to absorb!
   First,  the Heechee. The Heechee in Heechee Heaven were not Heechee! Or
at  least  those  Old Ones were not. It was proved by the bio-assay of the
DNA,  Albert was earnestly assuring her husband, punctuating his arguments
with pipe thrusts. The bioassay had produced not an answer but a puzzle, a
basic  chemistry  that  was  neither human, nor yet inhuman enough to come
from  creatures  evolved  around  some  other  star.  "Also," said Albert,
puffing,  "there  is  the  question of the Heechee seat. It does not fit a
human  being.  But  neither  does  it fit the Old Ones. So for whom was it
designed? Alas, Robin. We do not know."
   A quick flicker, the socks now gone, the pipe out and being filled, and
Albert  was  talking  about  prayer  fans.  He had not, Albert apologized,
unriddled  the  fans.  The literature was vast but he had searched it all.
There  was no imaginable application of energy and no instrumentation that
had  not  been  applied  to  them.  Yet  they  had  stayed  mute. "One can
speculate,"  Albert  said,  striking a match to his pipe, "that all of the
fans left for us by the Heechee are garbled, perhaps to tantalize us. I do
not  believe  this. Rafliniert 1st der Herr Hietschie, aber Boshaft 1st er
nicht," In spite of everything, Essie laughed out loud. Der Herr Hietschie
indeed! Had she written this sense of comedy into her program? She thought
of  interrupting  him  to  command  that  he  display  this section of his
instructions,  but  already  that  replay  had  ended  and a slightly less
rumpled  Albert  was  talking about astrophysics. Here Essie almost closed
her  ears,  for  she  quickly  had  enough of curious cosmologies. Was the
universe  open-ended  or closed? She did not strongly care. Was some large
quantity of mass "missing", in the sense that not enough could be observed
to  account  for  known gravitational effects? Very well, then let it stay
missing.  Essie  felt  no  need to go looking for it. Someone's fantasy of
storms   of   indetectible   pious,   and   someone   else-someone   named
Kiube's-notion  that  mass  might  be created from nothing, interested her
very  little.  But when the conversation switched to black holes, she paid
close  attention.  She  was not really concerned with the subject. She was
concerned with Robin's concern for it.
   And  that,  she  told herself justly as Albert rambled on, was petty of
her.  Robin  had kept no mean secrets. He had told her at once of the love
of  his life, the woman named Gelle-Klara Moynlin whom he had abandoned in
a black hole-had told her, actually, far more than she wanted to know.
   She said, "Stop."
   Instantly  the  three-dimensional figure in the tank abandoned the word
it  had  been  speaking in midsyllable. It gazed politely at her, awaiting
orders.
   "Albert,"  she  said carefully, "why did you tell me Robin was studying
question of black holes?"
   The  figure  coughed.  "Why, Mrs. Broadhead," Albert said, "I have been
playing a recording prepared especially for you."
   "Not this time. Why did you volunteer this information other time?"
   Albert's expression cleared and he said humbly, "That directive did not
come from my program, gospozha."
   "I  thought  not!  You  have  been  interacting with the psychoanalytic
program!"
   "Yes, gospozha, as you programmed me to do."
   "And  what  was  the  purpose of this intervention from the Sigfrid von
Shrink program?"
   "I  cannot  say for sure-but," he added hastily, "perhaps I can offer a
guess.  Perhaps  it  is  that the Sigfrid estimates your husband should be
more open with you."
   "That program is not charged with care of my mental health!"
   "No,  gospozha,  not  with yours, but with your husband's. Gospozha, if
you  wish  more information, let me suggest that you consult that program,
not me."
   "I  can  do  more  than  that!" she blazed. And so she could. She could
speak  three  words-Daite  gorod  Polymat-and Albert, Harriet, Sigfrid von
Shrink,  every one of Robin's programs would be subsumed into the powerful
program  of  her  own, Polymath, the one she had used to write them in the
first  place, the overriding program that contained every instruction they
owned. And then let them try cunning evasions on her! Then let them see if
they  could  maintain  the  confidentiality of their memories! Then "God,"
Essie  said  aloud,  "am  actually  planning  to  teach  lesson  to my own
programs!"
   "Gospozha?"
   She  caught  her breath. It was almost a laugh, nearly a sob. "No," she
said,  "cancel  above.  I find no fault with your programming, Albert, nor
with  shrink's.  If  shrink  program  judges Robin should release internal
tensions,  I  cannot  overrule  and  will not pry. Further," she corrected
herself fairly.
   The  curious  thing about Essie Lavorovna-Broadhead was that "fairness"
meant  something  to  her,  even in dealing with her constructs. A program
like Albert Einstein was large, complex, subtle, and powerful. Not even S.
Ya.  Lavorovna  could  write  such  a  program  alone; for that she needed
Polymath.  A program like Albert Einstein learned, and grew, and redefined
its  tasks as it went along. Not even its author could say why it gave one
bit  of  information  and  not another. One could only observe that it was
working,  and  judge it by how it carried out its orders. It was unfair to
the program to "blame" it, and Essie could not be so unfair.
   But,  as  she  moved  restlessly  among her pillows (twenty-two minutes
left!)  it  came  to  her that the world was not entirely fair to her. Not
fair  at  all!  It was not fair that all these fairytale wonders should be
pouring  in  upon the world-not now. It was not fair that these perils and
perplexities  should manifest themselves, not now, not while she might not
live to see how they came out. Could Peter Herter be dealt with? Would the
others of his party be saved? Could the lessons of the prayer fans and the
explorers  make  it possible to do all the things Robin promised, feed the
world,  make  all  men well and happy, allow the human race to explore the
universe? All these questions, and before this day's sun had set she might
be  dead  and  never  to know the answers! It was not fair, any of it. And
least  fair  was  that if she died of this operation she would never know,
truly,  which  way Robin would have chosen, if somehow his lost love could
be found again.
   She  became  aware  that  time was passing. Albert sat patiently in the
tank,  moving  only occasionally to suck his pipe or scratch under the hem
of his floppy sweater-to remind her, that is, that he was still in standby
mode.
   Essie's  thrifty  cybernetician's  soul was indignantly ordering her to
use  the program or turn it off-what a shocking waste of machine time! But
she hesitated. There were questions still to ask.
   At  the  door the nurse was looking in. "Good morning, Mrs. Broadhead,"
she said when she saw that Essie was wide awake.
   "Is it time?" Essie asked, her voice suddenly unsteady.
   "Oh,  not for a few minutes yet. You can go on with your machine if you
want to."
   Essie  shook  her  head.  "Is  no  point,"  she  said and dismissed the
program.  It  was  a  decision lightly taken. It did not occur to her that
some of the unasked questions might be consequential.
   And  when  Albert  Einstein  was  dismissed he did not allow himself to
disintegrate at once.
   "The  whole  of  anything is never told," said Henry James. Albert knew
"Henry  James"  only  as  an  address, the information behind which he had
never  had occasion to seek. But he understood the meaning of that law. He
could  never  tell the whole of anything even to his master. He would fail
in his programming if he tried.
   But what parts of the whole to select?
   At  its  lowest  structural  level,  Albert's program was gated to pass
items of a certain measured "importance" and reject others. Simple enough.
But  the  program  was  redundant.  Some  items came to it through several
gates,  sometimes as many as hundreds of gates; and when some of the gates
said  "go"  and  others said "no go," what was a program to do? There were
algorithms  to  test  importance,  but  at  some  levels of complexity the
algorithms  taxed  even  the  resources  of sixty billion gigabits-or of a
universe  full  of  bits; Meyer and Stockmeyer had proved, long ago, that,
regardless  of  computer power, problems existed which could not be solved
in  the  life  of  the  universe.  Albert's  problems  were not quite that
immense.  But  he  could  not  find  an  algorithm  to decide for him, for
instance,  whether  he should bring up the puzzling implications of Mach's
Principle  as  applied  to  Heechee  history.  Worse. He was a proprietary
program.  It would have been interesting to pass on his conjectures on the
subject to a pure science research program. But that his basic programming
did not permit.
   So Albert held himself together for nearly a millisecond, reconsidering
his  options.  Should  he,  next  time  Robin  summoned him, volunteer his
misgivings  about the potentially terrifying truth that lay behind Heechee
Heaven?
   He  reached  no conclusion in all that long one thousandth of a second,
and his parts were needed elsewhere.
   So Albert allowed himself to come apart.
   This  part  he poured into slow memory, that part into ongoing problems
as  needed,  until all of Albert Einstein had soaked into the 6 x 10 bits,
like  water  into  sand,  until  not  even  a  stain was left. Some of his
routines joined with others in a simulated war game, in which Key West was
invaded from Grand Cayman. Some turned up to assist the traffic-controller
program  at  Dallas-Fort  Worth,  as  Robin  Broadhead's plane entered its
landing  pattern.  Much, much later, some of him helped to monitor Essie's
vital functions as Dr. Wilma Liederman began to cut. One little bit, hours
after,  helped  to solve the mystery of the prayer fans. And the simplest,
crudest,  tiniest  part  of  all  stayed  on to supervise the program that
prepared  Cajun  coffee and beignets for Robin when he arrived, and to see
that the house was clean for him. Sixty billion gigabits can do much. They
even do windows.


        13 At the Halfway Point

   To love someone is a grace. To marry someone is a contract. The part of
me  that  loved  Essie,  was  loving  her wholeheartedly, sank in pain and
terror  when  she relapsed, surged in fearful joy when she showed signs of
recovering. I had plenty of occasion for both. Essie died twice in surgery
before I could get home, and again, twelve days later, when they had to go
in again. That last time they made her clinically dead on purpose. Stopped
heart  and  breath,  kept  only  the  brain  alive.  And  every  time they
reanimated  her  I  was  frightened to think she would live because if she
lived  it meant she might die one more time, and I could not stand it. But
slowly,  painfully,  she  began to gain weight, and Wilma told me the tide
had  turned,  as  when  the spiral begins to glow in a Heechee ship at the
halfway  point and you know you're going to live through the trip. I spent
all  that  time,  weeks and weeks of it, hanging around the house, so that
when Essie could see me I would be there.
   And  all  that time the part of me that had contracted to be married to
her  was  resenting  the bond, and wishing I were free. How do you account
for  that? That was a good occasion for guilt, and guilt is a feeling that
comes  readily  to me-as my old psychoanalytic program used to tell me all
the  time.  And  when  I  went  in  to  see Essie, looking like a mummy of
herself,  the  joy  and worry filled my heart and the guilt and resentment
clogged  my  tongue. I would have given my life to make her well. But that
did  not seem a practical strategy, or at least I could not see any way to
make  that  deal, and the other guilty and hostile part of me wanted to be
free to dwell on lost Kiara, and whether somehow I might find her again.
   But  she  mended,  Essie did. She mended fast. The sunken bags of flesh
under  her  eyes  filled  to  be  only  bruises. The tubes came out of her
nostrils. She ate like a pig. Before my very eyes she was filling out, the
bust  beginning  to  swell, the hips regaining their power to startle. "My
compliments  to  the  doctor," I told Wilma Liederman when I caught her on
her way in to see her patient.
   She said sourly, "Yes, she's doing fine."
   "I don't like the way you said that," I told her. "What's the matter?"
   She relented. "Nothing, really, Robin. All her tests are fine. She's in
such a hurry, though!"
   "That's good, isn't it?'"
   "Up  to a point it is. And now," she added, "I have to get in to see my
patient.  Who  will be up and about any day now and, maybe, back to normal
in a week or two." What good news that was! And how reluctantly I received
it.
   I  went  through  all  those  weeks  with  something  hanging  over me.
Sometimes  it  seemed  like  doom,  like old Peter Herter blackmailing the
world  and  nothing  the  world could do to resist it, or like the Heechee
stirring  into  anger  as  we  invaded  their  complex and private worlds.
Sometimes  it  seemed  like golden gifts of opportunity, new technologies,
new  hopes,  new  wonders  to  explore and exploit. You would think that I
would distinguish between hopes and worries, right? Wrong. Both scared the
hell out of me. As good old Sigfrid used to tell me, I have a great talent
not only for guilt but also for worry.
   And  when  you  came right down to it, I had some fairly real things to
worry  about.  Not  just  Essie. When you reach a certain age you have, it
seems  to  me,  a  right to expect some parts of your life to stay stable.
Like  what, for instance? Like money, for instance. I was used to a lot of
it,  and  now here was my lawyer program telling me that I had to watch my
pennies.  "But  I  promised Hanson Bover a million cash," I said, "and I'm
going to pay it. Sell some stock."
   "I've  sold  stock, Robin!" He wasn't angry. He wasn't programmed to be
able to be really angry, but he could be wretched and he was.
   "So sell some more. What's the best to get rid of?"
   "None  of  it  is  'best,' Robin. The food mines're down because of the
fire.  The fish farms still haven't recovered from losing the fingerlings.
A month or two from now..."
   "A month or two from now isn't when I want the money. Sell." And when I
signed  him off and called Bover up to find out where to send his million,
he actually seemed surprised.
   "In  view of Gateway Corp's action," he said, "I thought you'd call our
arrangement off."
   "A deal is a deal," I said. "We can let the legalities hang. They don't
mean much while Gateway has preempted me."
   He  was  suspicious immediately. What is it that I do that makes people
suspicious  of me when I am going miles out of my way to be fair?' "Why do
you  want  to hold off on the legalities?" he demanded, rubbing the top of
his head agitatedly-was it sunburned again?
   "I  don't  'want' to," I said, "it just doesn't make any difference. As
soon as you lift your injunction Gateway will drop theirs on me."
   Alongside  Bover's  scowling face, my secretary program's appeared. She
looked  like  a cartoon of the Good Angel whispering into Bover's ear, but
actually what she was saying was for me: "Sixty seconds until Mr. Herter's
reminder," she said.
   I  had  forgotten  that  old Peter had given us another of his two hour
notices.  I said to Bover, "It's time to button up for Peter Herter's next
jab,"  and hung up-I didn't really care if he remembered, I only wanted to
terminate  the  conversation.  Not  much buttoning up was involved. It was
thoughtful-no,  it was orderly-of old Peter to warn us each time, and then
to  perform  so  punctually.  But  it  mattered more to airline pilots and
automobus's than to stay-at-homes like me.
   There was Essie, however. I looked in to make sure she was not actually
being perfused or catheterized or fed. She wasn't.
   She  was asleep-quite normally asleep, with her dark-gold hair spilling
all  around her, and gently snoring. And on the way back to my comfortable
console chair I felt Peter in my mind.
   I  had  become  quite a connoisseur of invasions of the mind. It wasn't
any  special  skill.  The  whole  human race had, over a dozen years, ever
since the fool kid, Wan, began his trips to the Food Factory. His were the
worst,  because  they lasted so long and because he shared his dreams with
us.  Dreams  have  power;  dreams  are  a  kind  of  released insanity. By
contrast, the one light touch we'd had from Janine Herter was nothing, and
Peter  Herter's precise two-minute doses no worse than a traffic light you
stop  a  minute, and wait impatiently until it is over, and then you go on
your  way.  All  I  ever felt from Peter was the way he felt-sometimes the
gut-griping  of  age,  sometimes  hunger or thirst, once the fading, angry
sexual lust of an old man all by himself. As I sat down I remember telling
myself  that this time was nothing at all. More than anything else, it was
like having a little dizzy spell, too much crouching in one position, when
you  stand up you have to pause a moment until it goes away. But it didn't
go  away.  I felt the blurriness of seeing things with two sets of eyes at
once,  and the inarticulate anger and unhappiness of the old man-no words;
just  a  sort  of tone, as though someone were whispering what I could not
quite hear.
   It  kept  on  not going away. The blurriness increased. I began to feel
detached and almost delirious. That second vision, that is never sharp and
clear,  began  to  show  things  I had never seen before. Not real things.
Fantasy  things.  Women  with  beaks  like birds of prey. Great glittering
metal monsters rolling across the inside of my eyelids. Fantasies. Dreams.
   The two-minute measured dose of reminder had gone off track. The son of
a bitch had fallen asleep in the cocoon.

   Thank  God for the insomnia of old men! It didn't last eight hours, not
much more than one.
   But  they  were  sixty-odd unpleasant minutes. When I felt the unwanted
dreams  slide  tracelessly  out of my mind, and was sure they were gone, I
ran to Essie's room. She was wide awake, leaning back against the pillows.
"Am  all  right, Robin," she said at once. "Was an interesting dream. Nice
change from my own."
   "I'll kill the old bastard," I said.
   Essie shook her head, grinning up at me. "Not practical," she said.
   Well, maybe it wasn't. But as soon as I had satisfied myself that Essie
was  all  right,  I  called  for Albert Einstein: "I want advice. Is there
anything that can be done to stop Peter Herter?"
   He scratched his nose.
   "You  mean  by  direct  action,  I  assume. No, Robin. Not by any means
available now."
   "I don't want to be told that! There must be something!"
   "Sure  thing,  Robin,"  he  said slowly, "but I think you're asking the
wrong  program. Indirect measures might work. As I understand it, you have
some  legal  questions unresolved. If you could resolve them, you might be
able to meet Herter's demands and stop him that way."
   "I've  tried  that!  It's the other way around, damn it! If I could get
Herter  to  stop,  then  maybe  I  could  get Gateway Corp to give me back
control.  Meanwhile  he's  screwing  up  everybody's  mind,  and I want it
stopped! Isn't there some kind of interference we could broadcast?"
   Albert  sucked  his  pipe. "I don't think so, Rob," he said at last. "I
don't have a great deal to go on."
   That startled me. "You don't remember what it feels like?"
   "Robin," he said patiently, "I don't feel anything. It is important for
you  to  remember  that  I  am  only a computer program. And not the right
program,  really,  to  discuss  the  exact  nature of the signals from Mr.
Herter-your  psychoanalytic  program might be more helpful. Analytically I
know  what happened-I have all the measurements of the radiation involved.
Experientially, nothing. Machine intelligence is not affected. Every human
being  experienced  something, I know because there are reports to say so.
There  is  evidence  that  the  larger-brained mammals-primates, dolphins,
elephants-were  also disturbed; and maybe other mammals were too, although
the  evidence is sketchy. But I have not experienced it directly.... As to
broadcasting  an interfering pattern, yes, perhaps that could be done. But
what  would be the effect, Robin? Bear in mind that the interfering signal
would  come  from  a nearby point, not one twenty-five light-days away; if
Mr. Herter can cause some disorientation, what would a random signal do at
close range?"
   "It would be bad, I guess."
   "Sure  thing, Robin. Probably worse than you guess, but I could not say
without  experimentation.  The subjects would have to be human beings, and
such experiments I cannot undertake."
   Over  my shoulder Essie's voice said proudly, "Yes, you exactly cannot,
as who would know better than I?"
   She  had  come up behind me without a sound, barefoot in the thick rug.
She  wore  a  neck-to-ankle  robe  and  her  hair was done up in a turban.
"Essie, what the hell are you doing out of bed?" I demanded.
   "My  bed  has become excessively tedious," she said, kneading my ear in
her  fingers,  "especially  occupied  alone.  Do  you  have plans for this
evening, Robin? Because, if invited, I would like to share yours."
   "But..."  I  said, and, "Essie..." I said, and what I wanted to say was
either  "You  shouldn't  be  doing  this  yet!"  or  "Not  in front of the
computer!" She didn't give me a chance to decide which. She leaned down to
press  her  cheek against mine, perhaps so that I might feel how round and
full it had once again become.
   "Robin,"  she  said  sunnily, "I am far more well than you believe. You
may ask the doctor, if you wish. She will tell you how very rapidly I have
healed."  She  turned  her head to kiss me quickly and added, "I have some
affairs  of  my  own for the next few hours. Please continue chatting with
your  program  until then. I am sure Albert has many interesting things to
tell you, isn't that so, Albert?"
   "Sure thing, Mrs. Broadhead," the program agreed, puffing cheerfully on
his pipe.
   "So,  then.  It's  settled." She patted my cheek and turned away, and I
have  to  say that as she walked back to her room she did not in the least
look  unwell.  The  robe was not tight, but it was shaped to her body, and
the  shape  of  her  body  was  really  fine. I could not believe that the
wadding of bandage all along her left side was gone, but there was no sign
of it.
   Behind  me,  my  science  program  coughed.  I  turned back, and he was
puffing on his pipe, his eyes twinkling.
   "Your wife is looking very well, Robin," he said, nodding judiciously.
   "Sometimes, Albert," I said, "I don't know just how anthropomorphic you
are. Well. What very interesting things do you want to tell me about?"
   "Whatever  you  want to hear, Robin. Shall I continue on the subject of
Peter  Herter? There are some other possibilities, such as the abort mode.
That is, setting aside for the moment the legal complications, it would be
possible  to  command  the shipboard computer, known as 'Vera', to explode
the fuel tanks on the orbital craft."
   "Hell it would! We'd destroy the greatest treasure we've ever found!"
   "Sure  thing,  Robin,  and  it's even worse than that. The chance of an
external  explosion damaging the installation Mr. Herter is using is quite
small.  It might only anger him. Or strand him there, to do as he chooses,
as long as he lives."
   "Forget it! Don't you have anything good to tell me about?"
   "As  a  matter  of  fact,  Robin,"  he  grinned, "I do. We've found our
Rosetta  stone." He shrank away to a dwindling spray of colored flecks and
disappeared.  As a luminous spindle-shaped mass of lavender color replaced
him in the tank, he said, "That is the image of the beginning of a book."
   "It's blank!"
   "I  haven't started it yet," he explained. The shape was taller than I,
and  about half as thick as it was tall. It began to shift before my eyes;
the  color  thinned out until I could see through it clearly and then one,
two, three dots began to appear inside it, points of bright red light that
spun  themselves  out  in a spiral. There was a sad chittering sound, like
telemetry  or  like  the  amplified  chirps of marmosets. Then the picture
froze. The sound stopped. Albert's voice said:
   "I  have  stopped it at this point, Robin. It is probable that sound is
language, but we have not yet been able to isolate semantic units from it.
However,  the 'text' is clear. There are one hundred thirty-seven of those
points of light. Now watch while I run a few more seconds of the book."
   The  spiral  of  137  tiny  stars  doubled itself. Another coil of dots
lifted  itself  from  the  original and floated to the top of the spindle,
where  it  hung  silently.  The  chitter  of  language began again and the
original  spiral  expanded itself, while each of the dots began to trace a
spiral  of  its  own.  When  it  was  finished there was one large spiral,
composed of 137 smaller spirals, each composed of 137 dots. Then the whole
red pattern turned orange and it froze.
   "Do you want to try to interpret that, Robin?'" Albert's voice asked.
   "Well, I can't count that high. But it looks like 137 times 137, right?"
   "Sure thing, Robin. 137 squared, making 18,769 dots in all. Now watch."
   Short  green  lines  slashed  the  spiral into ten segments. One of the
segments  lifted  itself  off,  dropped  to  the bottom of the spindle and
turned  red again. "That's not exactly a tenth of the number, Robin," said
Albert.  "By counting you find that there are now 1840 dots at the bottom.
I'll  proceed." Once again, the central figure changed color, this time to
yellow.  "Notice the top figure." I looked closely, and saw that the first
dot  had  turned orange, the third yellow. Then the central figure rotated
itself  on the vertical axis and spun out a three-D column of spirals, and
Albert said, "We now have a total of 137 cubed dots in the central figure.
From  here  on,"  he said kindly, "it gets a little tedious to watch. I'll
run  it  through  quickly." And he did, patterns of dots flying around and
isolating  themselves,  colors changing through yellow to avocado, avocado
to green, green to aqua, aqua to blue, and on through the spectrum, nearly
twice.  "Now,  do  you  see what we have? Three numbers, Robin. 137 in the
center.  1840  down  at  the bottom. 137 to the eighteenth power, which is
roughly  the  same  as  10 to the thirty-eighth, at the top. Or, in order,
three dimensionless numbers: the fine structure constant, the ratio of the
proton to the electron and the number of particles in the universe. Robin,
you  have  just  had  a  short  course  in  particle theory from a Heechee
teacher!"
   I said, "My God."
   Albert reappeared on the screen, beaming. "Exactly, Robin," he said.
   "But Albert! Does that mean you can read all the prayer fans?"
   His  face  fell. "Only the simple ones," he said regretfully. "This was
actually  the easiest. But from now on it's quite straightforward. We play
every  fan  and  tape  it.  We  look for correspondences. We make semantic
assumptions  and test them in as many contexts as we can find-we'll do it,
Robin. But it may take some time."
   "I don't want to take time," I snarled.
   "Sure  thing, Robin, but first every fan must be located, and read, and
taped, and coded for machine comparison, and then..."
   "I don't want to hear," I said. "Just do it-what's the matter?"
   His  expression  had  changed.  "It's a question of funding, Robin," he
said apologetically. "There's a great deal of machine time involved here."
   "Do  it!  As  far as you can go. I'll have Morton sell some more stock.
What else have you got?"
   "Something  nice,  Robin,"  he  grinned, shrinking in size until he was
just  a little face in the corner of the tank. Colors flowed in the center
of  the  display  and  fused  into a set of Heechee controls, displaying a
pattern  of  color on five of the ten panels. The others were blank. "Know
what  that  is, Robin? That's a composite of all the known Gateway flights
that wound up at Heechee Heaven. All the patterns you see are identical in
all  seven  known  missions.  The  others  vary,  but  it's  a pretty good
conjecture that they are not directly involved in course-setting."
   "What  are  you  saying,  Albert?"  I  demanded.  He  had  caught me by
surprise.  I  found  that I was beginning to shake. "Do you mean if we set
ship controls for that pattern we could get to Heechee Heaven?"
   "Point  nine  five yes, Robin," he nodded. "And I have identified three
ships, two on Gateway and one on the Moon, that will accept that setting."

   I  put on a sweater and walked down to the water. I didn't want to hear
any more.
   The  trickle  pipes  had  been  busy. I kicked my shoes off to feel the
damp,  pilowy  grass  and watched some boys, wind-trolling for perch, near
the  Nyack  shore, and I thought: This is what I bought by risking my life
on Gateway. What I paid for with Kiara's.
   And: Do I want to risk all this, and my life, again?
   But  it  wasn't  really  a question of "want to". If one of those ships
would  go  to  Heechee  Heaven and I could buy or steal a passage on it, I
would go.
   Then  sanity  saved me, and I realized I couldn't, after all. Not at my
age.  And not the way Gateway Corp was feeling about me. And, most of all,
not  in time. The Gateway asteroid orbits at right-angles to the ecliptic,
just  about.  Getting  there  from Earth is a tedious long job; by Hohmann
curves twenty months or more, under forced acceleration more than six. Six
months from now those ships would have been there and back.
   If they were coming back, of course.
   The realization was almost as much of a relief as it was a sick, hungry
sense of loss.
   Sigfrid  von  Shrink  never  told  me how to get rid of ambivalence (or
guilt).  He did tell me how to deal with them. The recipe is, mostly, just
to  let  them happen. Sooner or later they burn themselves out. (He says.)
At  least,  they  don't have to be paralyzing. So while I was letting this
ambivalence  smolder itself into ash I was also strolling along the water,
enjoying the pleasant under-the-bubble air and gazing proudly at the house
I  lived  in  and  the  wing  where my very dear, and for some time wholly
platonic, wife was, I hoped, getting herself good and rested. Whatever she
was doing, she wasn't doing it alone. Twice a taxicart had brought someone
over  from  the  tube  stop.  Both of them had been women; and now another
taxicart  pulled  up  and  let  out a man, who gazed around quite unsurely
while the taxi rolled itself around the circle and hurried off to its next
call.  I  somehow  doubted  that he was for Essie; but I could think of no
reason  why he would be for me, or at least why he could not be dealt with
by  Harriet.  So  it was a surprise when the rifle-speaker under the eaves
swiveled  around to point at me and Harriet's voice said, "Robin?' There's
a Mr. Haagenbusch here. I think you ought to see him."
   That  was very unlike Harriet. But she was usually right, so I strolled
up the lawn, rinsed my bare feet at the French windows and invited the man
into my study. He was a pretty old specimen, pink-skin bald, with a dapper
white  pair  of  sideburns  and  a  carefully American accent-not the kind
people  born  in  the United States usually have. "Thank you very much for
seeing me, Mr. Broadhead," he said, and handed me a card that read:
   Herr Doktor Advokat Wm. I. Haagenbusch

   "I'm  Pete  Herter's  lawyer,"  he  said.  "I  flew  this  morning from
Frankfort because I want to make a deal."
   How  very quaint of you, I thought; imagine coming in person to conduct
business!  But if Harriet wanted me to see this old flake she had probably
talked  it over with my legal program, so what I said was, "What kind of a
deal?"
   He  was  waiting  for me to tell him to sit down. I did. I suspected he
was  also waiting for me to order coffee or cognac for two, as well, but I
didn't  particularly want to do that. He took off black kid gloves, looked
at  his  pearly nails and said: "My client has asked for $250,000,000 paid
into  a  special  account  plus  immunity  from prosecution of any kind. I
received this message by code yesterday."
   I  laughed  out  loud.  "Christ, Haagenbusch, why are you telling me? I
haven't got that kind of money!"
   "No,  you  don't,"  he  agreed.  "Outside  of  your  investment  in the
Herter-Hall  syndicate  and  some fish-farm stock, you don't have anything
but  a  couple  of  places  to live and some personal effects. I think you
could raise six or seven million, not counting the Herter-Hall investment.
God knows what that might be worth right now, everything considered."
   I  sat back and looked at him. "You know I got rid of my tourist stuff.
So you checked me out. Only you forgot the food mines."
   "No,  I  don't  think  so, Mr. Broadhead. My understanding is that that
stock was sold this afternoon."
   It  was  not altogether pleasant to find out that he knew more about my
financial  position than I did. So Morton had had to sell that out, too! I
didn't  have  time  to  think  about  what that implied just then, because
Haagenbusch stroked his sideburns and went on: "The situation is this, Mr.
Broadhead.  I have advised my client that a contract obtained under duress
is  not  enforceable. He therefore no longer has any hope of attaining his
purposes  through  an agreement with the Gateway Corporation, or even with
your  syndicate.  So I have received new instructions: to secure immediate
payment  of  the  sum  I have mentioned; to deposit it in untraceable bank
accounts  in  his  name;  and  to  turn  it  over  to him when, and if, he
returns."
   "Gateway  won't  like  being blackmailed," I said. "Still, they may not
have any choice."
   "Indeed  they do not," he agreed. "What is wrong with Mr. Herter's plan
is  that  it won't work. I am sure they will pay over the money. I am also
sure that my communications will be tapped and my offices bugged, and that
the  justice  departments  of  every nation involved in the Gateway treaty
will  be  preparing  indictments  for Mr. Herter when he returns. I do not
want  to  be named in those indictments as an accomplice, Mr. Broadhead. I
know  what  will  happen. They'll find the money and take it back. They'll
void  Mr.  Herter's previous contract on grounds of his own noncompliance.
And they'll put him-him at least-in jail."
   "You're in a tough situation, Mr. Haagenbusch," I said.
   He  chuckled  dryly. His eyes were not amused. He stroked his sideburns
for  a  moment  and  burst out: "You don't know! Every day, long orders in
code!  Demand  this, guarantee that, I hold you personally responsible for
this other! And then I send off a reply that takes twenty-five days to get
there,  by  which  time  he  has  sent me fifty days of new orders and his
thoughts  are somewhere far beyond and he upbraids me and threatens me! He
is  not  a  well  man, and he certainly is not a young one. I do not truly
think that he will live to collect any of this blackmail. But he might."
   "Why don't you quit?"
   "I  would  if  I could! But if I quit, then what? Then he has no one on
his  side  at  all.  Then  what  would  he  do, Mr. Broadhead? Also..." he
shrugged,  "he  is a very old friend, Mr. Broadhead. He was at school with
my father. No. I can't quit. Also I can't do what he asks. But perhaps you
can.  Not  by handing over a quarter of a billion dollars, no, because you
have  never  had that kind of money. But you can make him an equal partner
with that. I think he would-no. I think he might accept that."
   "But  I've  already..."  I  stopped.  If Haagenbusch did not know I had
already  given half my holdings to Bover, I wasn't going to tell him. "Why
wouldn't I void the contract too?" I asked.
   He shrugged. "You might. But I think you would not. You are a symbol to
him,  Mr.  Broadhead, and I believe he would trust you. You see, I think I
know  what it is he wants from all this. It is to live the way you do, for
all that remains of his life."
   He  stood  up. "I do not expect you to agree to this at once," he said.
"I  have  perhaps  twenty-four  hours  before  I must reply to Mr. Herter.
Please think about this, and I will speak to you in one day."
   I  shook his hand, and had Harriet order him a taxicart, and stood with
him  in the driveway until it rolled up and bore him briskly away into the
early night.
   When  I  came  back  into my own room Essie was standing by the window,
looking  out  at the lights on the Tappan Sea. It was suddenly clear to me
who her visitors had been this day. At least one had been her hairdresser;
that  tawny Niagara of hair hung true and even to her waist once more, and
when  she  turned  to  smile  at me it was the same Essie who had left for
Arizona, all those long weeks before.
   "You  were  so very long with that little man," she remarked. "You must
be  hungry."  She  watched  me standing there for a moment, and laughed. I
suppose that the questions in my mind were written on my face, because she
answered  them.  "One,  dinner is ready now. Something light, which we can
eat at any time. Two, it is laid out in our room whenever you care to join
me  there.  And,  three,  yes, Robin, I have Wilma's assurance that all of
this is quite all right. Am much more well than you think, Robin dear."
   "You  surely  look about as well as a person can get," I said, and must
have been smiling because her pale, perfect eyebrows came down in a frown.
   "Are you amused at spectacle of horny wife?" she demanded. "Oh, no! No,
it  is  not  that at all," I said, putting my arms around her. "I was just
wondering  a moment ago why it was that anybody would want to live the way
I do. Now I know."

   Well.  We  made  love tentatively and slowly, and then when I found out
she  wasn't  going  to break we did it again, rougher and rowdier. Then we
ate most of the food that was waiting for us on the sideboard, and lounged
around  and hugged each other until we made love again. After that we just
sort  of  drowsed  for a while, spooned together, until Essie commented to
the  back  of my neck, "Pretty impressive performance for old goat, Robin.
Not too bad for seventeen-year-old, even."
   I  stretched  and yawned where I lay, rubbing my back against her belly
and breasts. "You sure got well in a hurry," I commented.
   She  didn't answer, just nuzzled my neck with her nose. There is a sort
of  radar that cannot be seen or heard that tells me true. I lay there for
a  moment,  then  disengaged  myself  and sat up. "Dearest Essie," I said,
"what aren't you telling me?"
   She  lay  within  my arm, face against my ribs. "About what?" she asked
innocently.
   "Come  on,  Essie."  When  she didn't answer, I said, "Do I have to get
Wilma out of bed to tell me?"
   She  yawned  and sat up. It was a false yawn; when she looked at me her
eyes  were  wide awake. "Wilma is most conservative," she said, shrugging.
"There  are  some  medicines to promote healing, corticosteroids and such,
which  she did not wish to give me. With them there is some slight risk of
consequences  many years from now-but by then, no doubt, Full Medical will
be able to cope, I am sure. So I insisted. It made her angry."
   "Consequence! You mean leukemia!"
   "Yes, perhaps. But most likely not. Certainly not soon."
   I  got out of the bed and sat naked on the edge so that I could see her
better. "Essie, why?"
   She slipped her thumbs under her long hair and pushed it back away horn
her  face  to  return  my  stare.  "Because  I  was in a hurry," she said.
"Because  you  are,  after  all,  entitled  to  a well wife. Because it is
uncomfortable  to  pee  through a catheter, not to say unesthetic. Because
was  my  decision to make and I made it." She threw the covers off her and
lay  back.  "Study  me,  Robin," she invited. "Not even scars! And inside,
under  skin,  am  fully  functional.  Can eat, digest, excrete, make love,
conceive your child if we should wish. Not next spring or maybe next year.
Now."
   And  it was all true. I could see it for myself. Her long pale body was
unmarked-no, not entirely; down her left side was an irregular paler patch
of  new skin. But you had to look to see it, and there was nothing else at
all  to  show that a few weeks earlier she had been gouged, and mutilated,
and in fact dead.
   I  was getting cold. I stood up to find Essie's robe for her and put my
own  on.  There was still some coffee on the sideboard, and still hot "For
me too," Essie said as I poured.
   "Shouldn't you be resting?"
   "When I am tired," she said practically, "you will know, because I will
roll  over  and  go to sleep. Has been very long time since you and I were
like this, Robin. Am enjoying it."
   She  accepted a cup from me and looked at me over the rim as she sipped
it. "But you are not," she observed.
   "Yes  I  am!"  And  I  was;  but  honesty made me add, "I puzzle myself
sometimes,  Essie. Why is it that when you show me love it comes out in my
head feeling like guilt?"
   She  put  down  her cup and lay back. "Do you wish to tell me about it,
dear Robin?"
   "I  just  have." Then I added, "I suppose, if anybody, I should call up
old Sigfrid von Shrink and tell him."
   "He is always available," she said.
   "Hum.  If I start with him God knows when I'd ever finish. Anyway, he's
not  the  program  I want to talk to. There's so much going on, Essie! And
it's all happening without me. I feel left out."
   "Yes,"  she said, "am aware this is how you feel. Is something you wish
to do, so will not feel left out any more?"
   "Well-maybe,"  I  said.  "About  Peter  Herter, for instance. I've been
fooling  around  with  a  kind  of an idea that I'd like to talk over with
Albert Einstein."
   She  nodded.  "Very well, why not?" She sat up on the edge of the bed..
"Hand me my slippers, please. Let us do this now."
   "Now? But it's late. You shouldn't be..."
   "Robin,"  she  said kindly, "I too have talked with Sigfrid von Shrink.
Is  good program, even if not written by me. Says you are good man, Robin,
well adjusted, generous, and to all of this I also can testify, not to add
excellent  lover  and  much  fun to be with. Come into study." She took my
hand  as  we  walked into the big room looking over the Tappan Sea and sat
before  my  console  in  the comfortable loveseat. "However," she went on,
"Sigfrid  says  you  have  great  talent  for  inventing reasons not to do
things. So I will help you get off dime. Daite gorod Polymat." She was not
talking  to  me,  but  to  the  console,  which  sprang at once into light
"Display  both  Albert  and  Sigfrid  programs," she ordered. "Access both
files  in  interactive  mode. Now, Robin! Let us pursue questions you have
raised. After all, I am quite interested too."

   This  wife  of  so  many  years,  this  S. Ya. Lavorovna I married, she
surprises me most when I least expect it. She sat quite comfortably beside
me,  holding  my  hand, while I talked quite openly about doing the things
that  I  had most wanted not to want. It was not just a matter of going to
Heechee  Heaven  and  the  Food Factory and stopping old Peter Herter from
messing up the world. It was where I might go after that
   But at first It did not look as though I were going anywhere. "Albert,"
I  said, "you told me that you had worked out a course setting for Heechee
Heaven from Gateway records. Can you do that for the Food Factory too?"
   The  two  of  them  were  sitting  side  by side in the PV tank, Albert
puffing  on  his  pipe,  Sigfrid,  hands  clasped  and silent, attentively
listening.  He  would  not speak until I spoke to him, and I was not doing
that.  "'Fraid  not,"  Albert said apologetically. "We have only one known
setting  for  the Food Factory, Trish Bover's, and that's not enough to be
sure.  Maybe  point-six  probable that it would get a ship there. But then
what,  Robin? It couldn't come back. Or at least Trish Bover's didn't." He
settled  himself  comfortably, and went on, "There are, of course, certain
alternatives."  He glanced at Sigfrid von Shrink beside him. "One might so
manipulate Herter's mind by suggestion that he would change his plans."
   "Would that work?" I was still talking to Albert Einstein. He shrugged,
and Sigfrid stirred but did not speak.
   "Oh, do not be such a baby," Essie scolded. "Answer, Sigfrid."
   "Gospozha  Lavorovna," he said, glancing at me, "I think not. I believe
my  colleague has raised this possibility only so that I might dismiss it.
I  have studied the records of Peter Herter's transmissions. The symbolism
is  quite  obvious.  The  angelic  women  with  the raptor beaks-what is a
'hooked nose', gospozha? Think of Payter's childhood, and what he heard of
the 'cleansing' of the world of the evil Jews. There is also the violence,
the  punitive  emotions. He is quite ill, has in fact already suffered one
coronary  attack, and is no longer rational; he has, in fact, regressed to
quite  a  childish  state.  Neither  suggestion nor appeals to reason will
work,  gospozha. The only possibility would be perhaps long-term analysis.
He would not likely agree, the shipboard computer could not well handle it
and, in any case, there is not time. I cannot help you, gospozha, not with
any real chance of success."
   Long  and  long  ago I spent a couple of hundred mostly very unpleasant
hours  listening  to  Sigfrid's reasonable, maddening voice, and I had not
wanted ever to hear it again. But, you know, it wasn't all that bad.
   Beside  me,  Essie  stirred, "Polymath," she called, "have fresh coffee
prepared." To me she said, "I think will be here for some time."
   "I don't know for what," I objected. "I seem to be stymied."
   "And  if  you are," she said comfortably, "we need not drink the coffee
but can go back to bed. Meanwhile am quite enjoying this, Robin."
   Well,  why  not?  I was strangely no more sleepy than Essie appeared to
be.  In  fact,  I  was  both alert and relaxed, and my mind had never been
clearer.  "Albert,"  I said, "is there any progress on reading the Heechee
books?"
   "Not much, Robin," he apologized. "There are other mathematical volumes
such as the one you saw, but as yet no language. Yes, Robin?"
   I  snapped my fingers. The vagrant thought that had been in the back of
my  mind  had come to the fore. "Gosh numbers," I said. "Those numbers the
book  showed  us.  They're  the  same  as the ones the Dead Men call 'gosh
numbers.'"
   "Sure thing, Robin," he nodded. "They are basic dimensionless constants
of  the  universe,  or  at  least  of this universe. However, there is the
question of Mach's Principle, which suggests..."
   "Not now, Albert! Where do you suppose the Dead Men got them?"
   He paused, frowning. Tapping out his pipe, he glanced at Sigfrid before
he said, "I would conjecture that the Dead Men interfaced with the Heechee
machine intelligence. no doubt there was some transmission both ways."
   "My very thought! What else do you conjecture the Dead Men might know?"
   "That  is very difficult to say. They are very incompletely stored, you
know.  Communication  was  extremely  difficult  at  best and has now been
interrupted entirely."
   I  sat  up straight. "And what if we got back in communication? What if
somebody went to Heechee Heaven to talk to them?"
   He  coughed.  Trying  not  to  be patronizing, he said, "Robin, several
members  of  the  Herter-Hall party, plus the boy, Wan, have failed to get
clear  answers from them on these questions. Even our machine intelligence
has  succeeded  only  poorly  though,"  he  said politely enough, "that is
primarily  because  of  the  necessity  to  interface  with  the shipboard
computer,  Vera.  They  are  poorly  stored,  Robin.  They  are obsessive,
irrational and often incoherent."
   Behind  me  Essie  was  standing with the tray of coffee and cups-I had
hardly  heard  the  bell  from  the kitchen to say it was ready. "Ask him,
Robin," she commanded.
   I  did  not  pretend  to  misunderstand.  "Hell,"  I  said, "all right,
Sigfrid.  That's  your  line of work. How do we trick them into talking to
us?"
   Sigfrid  smiled  and  unlaced  his  hands.  "It is good to speak to you
again,  Robin,"  he  said.  "I  would  like to compliment you on your very
considerable progress since we spoke last..."
   "Get on with it!"
   "Of  course, Robin. There is one possibility. The storage of the female
prospector,   Henrietta,   seems  rather  complete,  except  for  her  one
obsession,  that  is, with the unfaithfulness of her husband. I think that
if  a  machine  program  were  written  from what we know of her husband's
personality and interfaced with her..."
   "Make a fake husband for her?"
   "Essentially,  yes,  Robin,"  he nodded. "It wouldn't have to be exact.
Because  the  Dead Men in general are so poorly stored, any responses that
were  inappropriate  might  be overlooked. Of course, the program would be
quite..."
   "Stow it, Sigfrid. Can you write a program like that?"
   "Yes. With help from your wife, yes."
   "And then how do we get it in contact with Henrietta?"
   He looked sidewise at Albert. "I believe my colleague can help there."
   "Sure  thing,  Sigfrid," Albert said cheerily, scratching one foot with
the toe of the other. "One. Write the program, with ancillaries. Two. Read
it  into  a  PMAL-2  flip processor, with a gigabit fast-access memory and
necessary  slave units. Three. Put it in a Five and fire it off to Heechee
Heaven.  Then interface it with Henrietta and start the interrogation. I'd
give that, oh, maybe a point-nine probability of working."
   I frowned. "Why ship all that machinery around?"
   Patiently  he  said, "It's c, Robin. The speed of light. Lacking an FTL
radio, we have to ship the machine to where the job is."
   "The Herter-Hall computer has an FTL radio."
   "Too  dumb, Robin. Too slow. And I haven't told you the worst part. All
that  hardware  is  pretty big, you know. It would just about fill a Five.
Which  means  it  arrives  naked  and undefended at Heechee Heaven. And we
don't know who is going to meet it at the dock."
   Essie  was  sitting  beside  me again, looking beautiful and concerned,
holding  a  cup  of  coffee. I took it automatically and swallowed a gulp.
"You  said  'just  about'," I pointed out "Does that mean a pilot could go
along?"
   "'Fraid  not,  Robin.  There's  only room for about another hundred and
fifty kilos."
   "I only weigh half that!" I felt Essie tense beside me. We were getting
right down to it, now. I felt more clear-headed and sure of myself than in
weeks.  The  paralysis of inaction was loosening every minute. I was aware
of  what  I  was  saying, and very conscious of what it meant to Essie-and
unwilling to stop.
   "That's  true,  Robin,"  Albert conceded, "but do you want to get there
dead?  There's  food, water, air. Your round-trip standard allowance, with
all  provision  for  regeneration, comes to more than three hundred kilos,
and there simply is not..."
   "Cut  it out, Albert," I said. "You know as well as I do that we're not
talking  about  a round trip. We're talking about, what was it? Twenty-two
days.  That  was  flight time for Henrietta. That's all I need. Enough for
twenty-two days. Then I'll be on Heechee Heaven and it won't matter."
   Sigfrid  was  looking  very  interested, but silent. Albert was looking
concerned.  He admitted, "Well, that's true, Robin. But it's quite a risk.
There's no margin for error at all."
   I  shook  my  head.  I  was way ahead of him-way ahead, at any rate, of
where  he  was  willing  to go by himself. "You said there's a Five on the
Moon  that  will  accept  that destination. Is there a what-do-you-call-it
PMAL there too?"
   "No,  Robin,"  he  said,  but  added  sadly,  "However, there is one at
Kourou, ready for shipment to Venus."
   "Thank  you,  Albert," I said, half a snarl because it was like pulling
teeth  to get it out of him. And then I sat back and contemplated what had
just been said.
   I was not the only one who had been listening intently. Beside me Essie
set  down  her  coffee cup. "Polymath," she commanded, "access and display
Morton  program,  in  interactive  mode. Go ahead, Robin. Do what you must
do."
   There  was the sound of a door opening from the tank, and Morton walked
in,  shaking hands with Sigfrid and Albert as he glanced over his shoulder
at me. He was accessing information as he stepped, and I could tell by his
expression  that  he didn't like what he was finding out. I didn't care. I
said,  "Morton!  There's a PMAL-2 information processor at the launch base
in Guiana. Buy it for me."
   He  turned  and  confronted  me.  "Robin," he said stubbornly, "I don't
think  you realize how rapidly you're eating into capital! This program is
costing  you  over  a  thousand  dollars a minute alone. I'll have to sell
stock..."
   "Sell it!"
   "Not  only  that. If you're planning to ship yourself and that computer
to  Heechee  Heaven.  Don't!  Don't even think of it! First place, Bover's
injunction  still  prevents  it. Second place, if you should manage to get
around that, you'd be liable to a contempt citation and damages that..."
   "I  didn't  ask you about that, Morton. Suppose I got Bover to lift his
injunction. Could they stop me then?"
   "Yes!  But,"  he  added, softening, "although they could, there is some
chance  they  would not. At least not in time. Nevertheless, as your legal
advisor, I have to say..."
   "You  don't have to say anything. Buy the computer. Albert and Sigfrid,
program  it  the  way  we discussed. You three get out of the tank; I want
Harriet.  Harriet?  Get  me a flight, Kourou to the Moon, same ship as the
computer  Morton's  buying for me, soon as you can. And while you're doing
that  see  if  you can locate Hanson Bover for me. I want to talk to him."
When  she  nodded and winked away I turned to look at Essie. Her eyes were
damp, but she was smiling.
   "You know something?" I said. "Sigfrid never called me 'Rob' or 'Bobby'
once."
   She  put  her  arms around me and hugged me close. "Maybe he thinks you
are  not  to  be treated like an infant now," she said. "And neither am I,
Robin.  Do  you  think  I  wanted  to  get well only so we could make love
quickly?  No. It was also so you would not be held prisoner here by a wife
you  thought  it wicked to leave. And so that I would be well able to deal
with it," she added, "when you left anyway."

   We  landed at Cayenne in pitch dark and pouring rain. Bover was waiting
for me as I cleared Customs, half asleep in a foam armchair by the baggage
terminal.  I  thanked him several times for meeting me, but he shrugged it
off. "We have only two hours," he said. "Let us get on with it."
   Harriet had chartered a chopper for us. We took off over the palms just
as  the sun was coming up from the Atlantic. By the time we reached Kourou
it  was  full  daylight, and the lunar module was erect beside its support
tower.  It  was  tiny compared to the giants that climb up from Kennedy or
California,   but  the  Centre  Spatial  Guyanais  gets  one-sixth  better
performance out of its rockets, being almost on the equator, so they don't
have  to  be as big. The computer was already loaded and stowed, and Bover
and  I  got aboard at once. Slam. Shove. Retching taste of the breakfast I
shouldn't have eaten on the airplane rising in my throat, and then we were
under way.
   It  takes  three  days for the lunar flight. I spent as much of it as I
could  sleeping,  the rest talking to Bover. It was the longest time I had
spent  out of reach of my comm facilities in at least a dozen years, and I
thought it would hang heavy on my hands. It went like lightning. I woke up
when  the acceleration warnings went off, and watched the brassy Moon rise
up toward us, and then there we were.
   Considering how far I had been, it was surprising that I had never been
on  the  Moon  before.  I  didn't  know  what to expect. It all took me by
surprise:  the  dancy, prancy feeling of weighing no more than an inflated
rubber doll, the sound of the reedy tenor that came out of my mouth in the
twenty-percent  helium  atmosphere. They weren't breathing Heechee mixture
any  more,  not  on the Moon. Heechee digging machines went like a bomb in
the lunar rock, and with all the sunlight anybody could want to drive them
it cost nothing to keep them going. The only problem was filling them with
air, which was why they supplemented with helium-cheaper and easier to get
than N2.
   The  Heechee  lunar  spindle is near the shuttle base-or, to put it the
right  way  around,  the  shuttle  base  was located where it is, near Fra
Mauro,  because  that  was  where the Heechee had dug most a million years
before. It was all underground, even the docking ports concealed under the
lee of a ridge. A couple of American astronauts named Shepard and Mitchell
had  spent  a  weekend  roaming around within two hundred kilometers of it
once,  and  never  noticed  it  was  there. Now a community of more than a
thousand  people  lived  in  the spindle, and the digs and the new tunnels
were  branching off in all directions, and the lunar surface was a rash of
microwave  dishes  and solar collectors and plumbing. "Hi, you," I said to
the  first  able-bodied man who seemed to have nothing to do. "What's your
name?"
   He loped leisurely toward me, chewing on an unlighted cigar. "What's it
to you?" he asked.
   "There's  cargo  coming off the shuttle. I want it loaded onto the Five
that's  in  the  dock  now.  You'll need half a dozen helpers and probably
cargo-handling equipment, and it's a rush job."
   "Urn," he said. "You got authority for this?"
   "I'll  show  it  to  you  when I pay you off," I said. "And the pay's a
thousand dollars a man, with a ten thousand dollar bonus to you personally
if you do it within three hours."
   "Urn.  Let's  see  the  cargo."  It  was just coming off the rocket. He
looked  it  over carefully, scratched for a while, thought for a while. He
wasn't  entirely  without  conversation.  A  couple  of words at a time it
developed that his name was A. T. Walthers, Jr., and that he had been born
in  the tunnels on Venus. By his bangle I could tell that he had tried his
luck  on Gateway, and by the fact that he was doing odd jobs on the Moon I
could  tell that his luck hadn't been good. Well, mine hadn't been either,
the first couple of times; and then it changed. In which direction is hard
to  say. "Can do it, Broadhead," he said at last, "but we don't have three
hours.  That joker Herter is due to perform again in about ninety minutes.
We'll have to wrap this up before that."
   "All the better," I said. "Now, which way is the Gateway Corp office?"
   "North end of the spindle," he said. "They close in about half an hour."
   All  the  better,  I  thought  again, but didn't say it. Dragging Bover
after  me  I prancy-danced back along the tunnel to the big spindle-shaped
cavern  that  was  headquarters  for  the area and argued our way into the
Launch  Director's  room. "You'll want an open circuit to Earth for ID," I
told  her.  "I'm Robin Broadhead, and here's my thumbprint. This is Hanson
Bover-if  you'll  oblige, Bover..." He pressed his thumb on the plate next
to mine. "Now say your bit," I invited him.
   "I,  Allen  Bover,"  he  said  by  rote, "hereby withdraw my injunction
against Robin Broadhead, the Gateway Corp et al."
   "Thank  you,"  I  said.  "Now,  Director,  while you're verifying that,
here's  a signed copy of what Bover has just said for your records, plus a
mission plan. Under my contract with Gateway Corp. which your machines can
retrieve  for  you,  I have the right to make use of Gateway facilities in
connection with the Herter-Hall expedition. I am going to do so, for which
purpose  I need the Five at present parked in your landing docks. You will
see  by  the  mission plan that I intend to go to Heechee Heaven, and from
there  to  the  Food  Factory,  where  I  will  prevent  Peter Herter from
inflicting  any  more  damage  to the Earth, also rescuing the Herter-Hall
party  and  returning valuable Gateway information for processing and use.
And I'd like to leave within the next hour," I finished strongly.
   Well,  for  a  minute  there  it  looked like it was going to work. The
Launch Director looked at the thumbprints on the register plate, picked up
the  spool  of mission plan and weighed it in her hand, and then stared at
me  in  silence  for  a  moment, her mouth open. I could hear the whine of
whatever  volatile gas they were using in the heat engines, Carnot-cycling
from  under  the  Fresnel lenses to the shaded artichoke-shaped reflectors
just  above  us.  I  didn't hear anything else at all. Then she sighed and
said, "Senator Praggler, have you been getting all that?"
   And  from  the air behind her desk came Praggler's growl. "You bet your
ass I have, Sally. Tell Broadhead it won't work. He can't have the ship."

   It was the three days in transit that had done me in. Automatically the
passport  identities  of  all  passengers  were  radioed  ahead,  and  the
officials had known I was coming before the shuttle left French Guiana. It
was  just chance that it was Praggler who was there to meet me; even if he
hadn't  been,  they had plenty of time to get orders from the headquarters
in  Brasilia.  I  thought for a while that because it was Praggler I could
talk  him  out  of  it. I couldn't. I yelled at him for thirty minutes and
begged  for thirty more. no good. "There's nothing wrong with your mission
plan,"  he  admitted.  "What's  wrong  is  you. You're not entitled to use
Gateway  facilities,  because  Gateway Corp preempted you yesterday, while
you were in orbit. Even if it hadn't, Robin, I wouldn't let you go. You're
too personally involved. Not to mention too old for this kind of thing."
   "I'm an experienced Gateway pilot! "
   "You're  an  experienced pain in the ass, Robin. And maybe a little bit
crazy,  too.  What  do  you  think one man could do on Heechee Heaven? No.
We'll  use  your plan. We'll even pay you royalties on it-if it works. But
we'll  do it the right way, from Gateway itself, with at least three ships
going, two of them full of young, healthy, well armed daredevils."
   "Senator,"  I pleaded, "let me go! If you ship this computer to Gateway
it'll take months-years!"
   "Not  if  we  send  it right up there in the Five," he said. "Six days.
Then  it  can take right off again, in convoy. But not with you. However,"
he  said reasonably, "we'll certainly pay you for the computer and for the
program.  Leave  it  at that, Robin. Let somebody else take the risks. I'm
speaking as your friend."
   Well,  he was my friend and we both knew it, but maybe not as much of a
friend  as  he  had  been,  after  I  told  him  what he could do with his
friendship. Finally Bover pulled me away. The last I saw of the Senator he
was  sitting  on  the edge of the desk staring after me, face still purple
with rage, eyes looking as though they were getting ready to weep.
   "That's tough luck, Mr. Broadhead," said Bover sympathetically.
   I  took a breath to straighten him out, too, and stopped myself just in
time.  There was no point in it. "I'll get you a ticket back to Kourou," I
said.
   He  smiled,  showing  perfectly  chiseled Chiclets-he had been spending
some  of  that  money  on  himself.  "You  have  made  me  a rich man, Mr.
Broadhead.  I can pay for my own ticket. Also, I've never been here before
and will not likely come again, so I think I'll stay a while."
   "Suit yourself."
   "And you, Mr. Broadhead? What are your plans?"
   "I  don't  have  any."  Nor  could  I  think  of  any. I had run out of
programming.  I  cannot tell you how empty that feels. I had nerved myself
up  for  another  Heechee mystery-ship ride-well, not as much a mystery as
when  I was prospecting out of Gateway. But still a pretty scary prospect.
I  had  taken  a step with Essie that I had feared taking for a long time.
And all for nothing.
   I  stared  wistfully  down  the long, empty tunnel toward the docks. "I
might shoot my way through," I said.
   "Mr. Broadhead! That's-that's..."
   "Oh,  don't worry. I'm not going to, mostly because all the guns I know
anything  about are already loaded onto that Five. And I doubt they'll let
me in to get one."
   He  peered into my face. "Well," he said doubtfully, "perhaps you, too,
might enjoy just spending a few days..."
   And then his expression changed.
   I  hardly  saw  it;  I was feeling what he felt, and that was enough to
demand  all  my  attention.  Old  Peter was in the couch again. Worse than
ever.   It   was   not   just   his   dreams  and  fantasies  that  I  was
experiencing-that  everyone  alive  was  feeling.  It  was  pain. Despair.
Madness.  There  was  a  terrible  sense of pressure around the temples, a
flaming  ache  from  arms and chest. My throat was dry, then raw with sour
clots as I vomited.
   Nothing like that had ever come from the Food Factory before.
   But then no one had ever died in the couch before. It did not stop in a
minute,  or  in  ten.  My  lungs  heaved  in  great starving gasps. So did
Bover's.  So  did  everyone  else's,  wherever  they  were in range of his
transmission.  The  pain  kept  on,  and  every  time it seemed to reach a
plateau there was an explosion of new pain; and all the time there was the
terror,  the  rage,  the  awful misery of a man who knew he was dying, and
hated it.
   But I knew what it was.
   I  knew  what  it was, and I knew what I could do-what at least my body
could  do,  if  I  could  only  hold my mind together enough to make it. I
forced  myself  to  take a step, and then another. I made myself trot down
that wide, weary corridor, when Bover was writhing on the ground behind me
and  the  guards  were staggering, completely helpless, ahead. I blundered
past them and doubt they even saw me, into the narrow hatch of the lander,
tumbling  all  bruised and shaken, forcing myself to dog it closed over my
head.
   And   there  I  was,  in  the  disastrously  familiar  tiny  cubbyhole,
surrounded  by shapes of molded tan plastic. Walthers had done his part of
the  job,  at  least. I had no way of paying him for it, but if he had put
his hand in the port as I was closing it I would have given him a million.
   At  some point old Peter Herter died. His death did not end the misery.
It  only  began to slow it down. I could not have guessed what it would be
like  to  be  in  the mind of a man who has died, while he feels his heart
stop and his bowels loosen and the certainty of death stab into his brain.
It  goes  on much longer than I would have believed possible. It was going
on  all  the  time  I  cut  the  lander loose and sent it up on its little
hydrogen  jets  to where the Heechee drive could work. I jammed and heaved
the  course-guidance  wheels  about  until  they  showed that well-learned
pattern Albert had taught me.
   And  then  I  squeezed  the  launch teat, and I was on my way. The ship
began  its  lurchy,  queasy  acceleration.  The star patterns I could see,
barely  see,  by  craning  past  a  memory-storage  unit,  began  to drift
together. no one could stop me now. I could not even stop myself.

   By  all  the  data  Albert  had  been able to collect the trip would be
twenty-two  days exactly. Not very long-not unless you are squeezed into a
ship  that  is  already  filled to capacity. There was room for me-more or
less. I could stretch out. I could stand up. I could even lie down, if the
vagrant  motion of the ship let me know where "down" was, and if I did not
mind  being  folded over between pieces of metal. What I could not do, for
those   twenty-two   days,  was  move  more  than  half  a  meter  in  any
direction-not  to  eat,  not  to  sleep,  not to bathe or excrete; not for
anything.
   There was plenty of time on my hands for the purpose of remembering how
terrifying Heechee flight was, and to feel all of it.
   There  was  plenty  of  time, too, to learn. Albert had been careful to
record for me all the data I had not had the wit to ask him for, and those
tapes  were  available  for  me to play. They were not very interesting or
sophisticated in delivery. The PMAL-2 was all memory: plenty of brain, not
much   display.  There  was  no  three-dimensional  tank,  only  a  stereo
flat-plate  goggle system when my eyes would bear watching it, or a screen
the size of the palm of my hand when they would not.
   At  first  I  did  not  use it. I just lay there, sleeping as much as I
could.  Partly  I  was  recovering  from  the  trauma of Peter's death, so
terrifyingly like my own. Partly I was experimenting with the inside of my
head-allowing  myself  to  feel  fear  (when  I had every reason for it!),
encouraging  myself  to feel guilt. There are kinds of guilt that I know I
cherish,  the contemplation of obligations unmet and commitments undone. I
had plenty of those to think about, beginning with Peter (who would almost
surely  have  been  still  alive,  if  I  had  not  accepted  him for that
expedition)  and  ending,  or  rather not ending, with Kiara in her frozen
black  hole-not  ending  because  I  could  always  think  of others. That
amusement  staled  before  long. To my surprise I found that the guilt was
not  very overpowering after all, once I let myself feel it; and that took
care of the first day.
   Then  I  turned  to  the  tapes.  I  let  the  semi-Albert,  the rigid,
half-animated  caricature  of  the program I knew and loved, lecture me on
Mach's  Principle and gosh numbers and more curious forms of astrophysical
speculation  than I had ever dreamed of. I didn't really listen, but I let
the voice roll over me, and that was the second day.
   Then,  from  the  same source, I poured into myself all that was stored
about  the  Dead  Men. I had heard almost all of it before. I heard it all
again. I had nothing better to do, and that was the third day.
   Then  there  were  miscellaneous  lectures  on  Heechee  Heaven and the
provenance  of  the  Old  Ones  and  possible  strategies for dealing with
Henrietta  and possible risks to be guarded against from the Old Ones, and
that was the third day, and the fourth, and the fifth.
   I  began  to wonder how I would fill twenty-two of them, so I went back
and  did  those  tapes all over again, and that was the sixth day, and the
eighth,  and the tenth; and on the eleventh. On the eleventh I cut off the
computer entirely, grinning to myself with anticipated pleasure.
   It  was halfway day. I hung there in my restraining straps, waiting for
the  satisfaction  of  the  one  event  this cramped and cussed trip could
produce  for  me:  the twinkling eruption of golden sparks of light in the
crystal  spiral  that  would  signify turnover time. I didn't know exactly
when  it  would  happen. Probably not in the first hour of the day (and it
didn't).  Probably  not,  either, in the second or third... and it didn't.
Not  in  those hours, nor in the fourth, or fifth, or the ones after that.
It did not happen at all on the eleventh day.
   Or on the twelfth.
   Or on the thirteenth.
   Or  on  the fourteenth; and when at last I punched in the data to check
out  the  arithmetic I did not care to do in my head, the computer told me
what I did not want to know.
   It was too late.
   Even  if  the  halfway  point  occurred  any  time now-even in the next
minute-there  would  not be water, food and air enough to carry me through
to the end.
   There  are  economies  one  can  make. I made them. I moistened my lips
instead  of  drinking,  slept all I could, breathed as shallowly as I knew
how. And turnover at last did occur-on day nineteen. Eight days late.
   When  I  played  the  figures into the computer they came back cold and
clear.
   The  halfway  point  had come too late. Nineteen days from now the ship
might  well  arrive at Heechee Heaven, but not with a living pilot aboard.
By then I would have been dead for at least six.


        14 The Long Night of the Dreams

   As  she  began  to  be able to speak to the Old Ones they began to seem
more  like  individuals  to  her.  They were not really old, either. Or at
least the three that most often guarded her and fed her and led her to her
sessions  in  the  long night of the dreams were not. They learned to call
her  Janine,  or  at  least  something  close enough. Their own names were
complicated, but each name had a short form-Tar, or Tor, or Hooay-and they
responded  to  them,  at  need  or  just for play. They were as playful as
puppies,  and  as solicitous. When she came out of the bright blue cocoon,
racked  and  sweating  from  another  life  and another death-from another
lesson,  in  this course that the Oldest One had prescribed for her-one of
them was always there to coo and murmur and stroke.
   But  it  was not enough! There was no consolation enough to make up for
what happened in the dreams, over and over.
   Every  day  was  the same. A few hours of uneasy and unrestful sleep. A
chance  to  eat.  Maybe  a  game of tag or touch-tickle with Hooay or Tor.
Perhaps  a  chance to wander about the Heaven, always guarded. Then Tar or
Hooay or one of the others would tug her gently back to the cocoon and put
her  inside and then, for hours, sometimes for what seemed like the entire
span  of  a life, Janine would be someone else. And such strange someones!
Male.  Female.  Young. Old. Mad. Crippled-they were all different. None of
them  were  quite  human.  Most  were  not  human  at  all, especially the
earliest, oldest someones.
   The  lives she "dreamed" that were the closest in time were the nearest
to  her  own. At least, they were the lives of creatures not unlike Tor or
Tar  or Hooay. They were not usually frightening, though all of them ended
in  death.  In  them she lived random and chaotic snatches of their stored
memories  of  the  short  and  chancy,  or dull and driven, lives they had
known. As she came to understand the language of her captors she found out
that  the lives she lived were those which had been specially selected (by
what  criteria?) to be stored. So each had some special lesson. All of the
dreams  were  learning  experiences  for her, of course, and of course she
learned.  She learned how to speak to the living ones; to understand their
overshadowed  existences;  to comprehend their obsessed need to obey. They
were  slaves!  Or  pets?  When they did what the Oldest One told them they
were  obedient,  and therefore good. When, rarely, they did not, they were
punished.
   Between  times  she  saw  Wan sometimes, and sometimes her sister. They
were  kept  apart  from  her  as  a matter of policy. At first she did not
understand  why;  then she did, and laughed inside herself at the joke too
secret  to share with even jokey Tor. Lurvy and Wan were learning too, and
taking it no better than she.
   By  the  end of the first six "dreams" she could speak to the Old Ones.
Her lips and throat would not quite form their chirping, murmuring vowels,
but  she  could  make  herself understood. More urgently, she could follow
their  orders.  That  saved  trouble.  When she was meant to return to her
private  cell  they did not need to push her, and when she was supposed to
bathe  they  did not have to strip her of her clothes. By the tenth lesson
they  were  almost  friendly.  By  the fifteenth she (and Lurvy and Wan as
well)  knew  all  they ever would about Heechee Heaven, including the fact
that the Old Ones were not, and never had been, Heechee.
   Not even the Oldest One.
   And  who  was  the Oldest One? Her lessons had not taught her that. Tar
and Hooay explained, as best they could, that the Oldest One was God. That
was  not a satisfying answer. He was a god too much like his worshipers to
have  built  Heechee Heaven or any part of it, including his own body. No.
The  Heaven was Heechee-built, for what purpose only the Heechee knew, and
the Oldest One was not a Heechee.
   Through  all  this  the  great  machine was immobile again, motionless,
almost dead, conserving its dwindling remnant of life. When Janine crossed
the  central  spindle  she  saw  it there, still as a statue. Occasionally
there was a sluggish flicker of pale color around its external sensors, as
though  it  were on the verge of awakening, perhaps following them through
half-closed  eyes.  When  that happened, Hooay and Tar would quicken their
step.  There  was no touch-tickle or joking then. Mostly it was absolutely
still. She passed Wan in its very shadow one day, she going to the cocoon,
he  coming  away, and Hooay dared to let them talk for a moment. "It looks
scary," Janine said.
   "I  could  destroy  it  for  you,  if  you like," Wan boasted, glancing
nervously over his shoulder at the machine. But he had said it in English,
and had the wisdom not to translate it for their guards. But even the tone
of his voice made Hooay uneasy, and he hustled Janine away.
   Janine  was  becoming  almost fond of her captors, as one might be of a
great,  gentle  Malemute that could talk. It took her a long time to think
of  a  young  female  like Tar as either young or female. They all had the
same  scraggly facial hair and the heavy supraorbital lobes characteristic
of  the  mature male primate. But they began to become individuals, rather
than  specimens  of  the class "jailer". The heavier and darker of the two
males  was  called "Tor," but that was only one syllable out of a long and
subtle  name  from  which Janine could only understand the word "dark". It
did  not  refer  to  his  coloring.  If  anything,  he was fairer than his
fellows.  It  had something to do with an adventure of his childhood, in a
part  of the Heaven so strange and so seldom visited that there was little
light  from even the eternal Heechee-metal walls. Tor trimmed his beard so
that  it jutted down from his jaw in two inverted horns. Tor made the most
jokes,  and  tried  to  share  them with his prisoner. Tor was the one who
jested  with  Janine, saying that if her male, Wan, was as infertile as he
seemed  to  be  while  penned  with Lurvy, he would ask the Oldest One for
permission  to  impregnate her himself. Janine, cherishing her secret joke
about their infertility, was not frightened. She was not repelled, either,
because  Tor  was  a  kindly  sort  of  satyr,  and she believed she could
recognize  the  jest.  All  the  same, she began to think of herself as no
longer a snotty kid. Each long dream aged her. In them she experienced the
sexual  intercourse  she  had  never  known  in life-sometimes as a woman,
sometimes  not-and  often pain, and always, at the end, death. The records
could  not  be  made from a living person, Hooay explained in a nonplayful
moment;  and  his manner was not playful at all as he described the way in
which the brain was opened and fed into the machine that made the records.
She grew a little older while he was telling her.
   As  the  dreams went on, they became stranger and more remote. "You are
going  to  very old times," Tor told her. "This one now..." he was leading
her  toward  the  cocoon  "-is  the  very  oldest, and therefore the last.
Perhaps."
   She  paused beside the gleaming couch. "Is this another joke, Tor, or a
riddle?"
   "No." He tugged soberly at the forks of his beard with both hands. "You
will not like this one, Danine."
   "Thanks."
   He  grinned,  to  crinkle the corners of his sad, soft eyes. "But it is
the last I can give you. Perhaps-perhaps the Oldest One will then give you
a  dream out of his own. It is said that he has sometimes done that, but I
do not know when. Not in any person's memory."
   Janine swallowed. "It sounds scary," she said.
   He  said kindly, "It frightened me very much when I had it, Danine, but
remember  that it is only a dream, for you." And he closed the cocoon over
her,  and  Janine  fought  for  a  moment against the sleep, and failed as
always... and was someone else.

   Once  there  was  a creature. It was female; but it was not an "it", if
Descartes  is  to  be believed, because it was aware of its own existence,
and therefore it was a "she".
   She  had  no name. But she was marked among her fellows by a great scar
from  ear  to nose, where the hoof of a dying prey-beast had nearly killed
her. Her eye on that side had healed with the lid pulled out of shape, and
so she might be called "Squint".
   Squint  had  a  home.  It  was  not  elaborate.  It  was no more than a
trampled-out  nest  in a clump of something like papyrus, partly sheltered
by  a  hummock  of  earth.  But Squint and her relatives returned to those
nests  every  day  and  in  this  they were unlike any of the other living
things  that  resembled  them. In one other respect they were quite unlike
anything  else they grew up with, and that was that they used objects that
were  not  parts  of  their  bodies  to  do  work for them. Squint was not
beautiful.  She  stood not much over a meter tall. She had no eyebrows-the
hair  on her scalp merged with them, and only her nose and cheekbones were
bare-and she had no chin to speak of. Her hands had fingers, but they were
usually  clenched so that the backs of them were scarred and callused, and
the  fingers did not separate well-not much better than the fingers of her
feet,  which were almost as good at grasping things, and better at gouging
out the vulnerable parts of a creature unfortunate enough to find her arms
wrapped  around  its  neck  as  it tried to run away. Squint was pregnant,
although  she  did  not  know  that this was so. Squint was full grown and
fully  fertile  by  her  fifth rainy season. In the thirteen years she had
been alive she had been pregnant nine or ten times, and had never known it
until  she  was forced to note that she could no longer run quite as fast,
that the bulge in her belly made it more difficult to rake the guts out of
a  prey-animal  and  that  her dugs began to swell again with milk. Of the
fifty  members of her community at least four were her children. More than
a  dozen  of  the  males were, or might have been, the children's fathers.
Squint  was  aware  of  the former relationship, but not of the latter. At
least  one  of  the  young males she knew to be a child of hers might well
have  been  the  father of another-a notion which would not have disturbed
Squint, even if she had been capable of entertaining it. The thing she did
with  the  males  when  the  flesh beneath her skinny buttocks swelled and
reddened  was not in her mind related to childbirth. It was not related to
pleasure,  either.  It  was  an  itch  that  she  suffered to be scratched
whenever  it  happened.  Squint  had no way of defining "pleasure," except
perhaps as the absence of pain. Even in those terms, she knew little of it
throughout her life.
   When  the  Heechee  lander bellowed and flamed above the clouds, Squint
and all her community ran to hide. None of them saw it come to earth.
   If a trawl scoops a starfish from the bottom of a sea, a spade lifts it
from  the  bucket of ooze and dumps it in a tank, a biologist pins it down
and  dissects  out  its  nervous  system-does  the  starfish  know what is
happening to it?
   Squint had more self-awareness than a starfish. But she had little more
background  of experience to inform her. Nothing that happened to her from
the  moment she saw a bright light shining in her eyes made sense. She did
not  feel the point of the anesthetic lance that put her to sleep. She did
not  know  she was carried into the lander and dumped into a pen of twelve
of  her  fellows. She did not feel the crushing acceleration when she took
off,  or the weightlessness for the long time they floated in transit. She
did not know anything at all until she was allowed to waken again, and did
not understand what she then experienced.
   Nothing was familiar!
   Water.  The  water  Squint drank did not any longer come from the muddy
brink  of the river. It came in a shiny, hard trough. When she bent to lap
it up nothing lurked beneath its surface to lunge at her.
   Sun  and  sky. There was no sun! There were no clouds, and there was no
rain.  There  were  hard,  blue-gleaming  walls,  and a blue-gleaming roof
overhead.
   Food.  There was no live thing to catch and dismember. There were flat,
tough,  tasteless clods of chewy matter. They filled her stomach, and they
were  always  available. no matter how much she and her fellows ate, there
was always more.
   Sights  and  sounds and smells-these were terrifying! There was a stink
she  had  never  smelled  before,  sharp in her nose and scary. It was the
smell  of  something  alive, but she never saw the creature that owned it.
There  was an absence of normal smells almost as bad. no smell of deer. no
smell of antelope. no smell of cat (that one a blessing). no smell even of
their own dung, or not very much, because they had no rushes to tramp into
a  home,  and the places where they huddled together to sleep were sluiced
clean  every  time they left them. Her baby was born there, while the rest
of  the  tribe complained at her grunts because they wanted to sleep. When
she  woke  to lift it to her, to relieve the hot pressure in her teats, it
was gone. She never saw it again.
   Squint's newborn was the first to disappear immediately after birth. It
was  not  the  last. For fifteen years the little australopithecine family
continued to eat and copulate and bear and grow old, its numbers dwindling
because  the  infants  were taken away as soon as born. One of the females
would  squat and strain and whimper and give birth. Then they would all go
to  sleep, and awaken with the little one gone. From time to time an adult
would  die,  or  come close enough to it to lie curled and moaning so that
they  knew  it  would not rise again. Then too they would all go to sleep;
and  that adult, or that adult's body, would be gone when they woke. There
were  thirty  of them, then twenty, then ten-then only one. Squint was the
last,  a  very,  very old female at twenty-nine. She knew she was old. She
did  not  know she was dying, only that there was a terrible crushing pain
in  her  belly  that  made her gasp and sob. She did not know when she was
dead.  She  only  knew that that particular pain stopped, and then she was
conscious of another sort of pain. Not really pain. Strangeness. Numbness.
She  saw,  but  she saw queerly flatly, queerly flickeringly, in a queerly
distorted range of colors. She was not used to her new vision, and did not
recognize  what she saw. She tried to move her eyes and they did not move.
She  tried  to  move head, or arms, or legs, and could not because she did
not have any. She remained in that condition for some considerable time.
   Squint  was  not  a preparation, in the sense that the live but exposed
nervous  system of a biologist's brittle star is a preparation. She was an
experiment.
   She  was not a very great success. The attempt to preserve her identity
in  machine  storage  did not fail for the reasons that ha