Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (15 page)

So I went in to see Essie in somewhat chastened mood to get on with the cherishing.

The nurse was standing by her bed, and both of them were watching Essie’s tapes of the computer conference on her flatplate viewer. Since Essie’s plate was slaved to the big fullholographic interactive one I had had moved into my room, there was a little yellow attention light in the come; meant for me. Harriet had something she wanted to tell me about. It could wait; when the light began to pulse and brighten and turn to red was when it got important, and at the moment Essie was at the top of my priorities. “You can leave us for a while, Alma,” Essie said. The nurse looked at me and shrugged why-not, so I took the chair next to the bed and reached for Essie’s hand.

“It’s nice to be able to touch you again,” I said.

Essie has a coarse, deep chuckle. I was glad to hear it. “Touch more in a couple weeks,” she said. “Meanwhile, no rule against kissing.”

So, of course, I kissed her-hard enough so that something must have registered on her telltales, because the day nurse popped her head in the door to see what was going on. She didn’t stop us, though. We stopped ourselves. Essie reached up with her right hand-the left was still in its cast, covering God knew what-and pushed her streaky dark-blonde hair away from her eyes. “Very nice,” she judged. “Do you want to see what Harriet has to say?”

“Not particularly.”

“Untrue,” she said. “You have been talking to Dr. Ben, I see, and he has told you to be sweet to me. But you always are, Robin, only not everybody would notice.” She grinned at me and turned her head to the plate. “Harriet!” she called. “Robin is here.”

I had not until that moment known that my secretary program would respond to my wife’s commands as well as my own. But I hadn’t known she could borrow my science program, either. Especially without my knowing about it. When Harriet’s cheerful and concerned face filled the screen I told her, “If it’s business I’ll take it later-unless it can’t wait?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Harriet said. “But Albert’s desperate to talk to you. He’s got some good stuff from the Food Factory.”

“I’ll take it in the other room,” I started, but Essie put her free hand on mine.

“No. Here, Robin. I’m interested, too.”

So I told Harriet to go ahead, and Albert’s voice came on. But not Albert’s face. “Take a look at this,” Albert said, and the screen filled with a sort of American Gothic family portrait A man and a woman-not really-a male and a female, standing side by side. They had faces and arms and legs, and the female had breasts. Both had skungy beards and long hair pulled into braids, and they were wearing wrap-around garments like saris, with dots of color brightening the drab cloth.

I caught my breath. The pictures had taken me by surprise.

Albert appeared in the lower corner of the plate. “These are not ‘real,’ Robin,” he said. “They are simply compositions generated by the shipboard computer from Wan’s, description. The boy says they are pretty accurate, though.”

I swallowed and glanced at Essie. I had to control my breathing before I could ask, “Are these-are these what the Heechee look like?”

He frowned and chewed on his pipe stem. The figures on the screen rotated solemnly, as though they were doing a slow folkdance, so that we could see all sides. “There are some anomalies, Robin. For example, there is the famous question of the Heechee ass. We have some Heechee furniture, e.g., the seats before the control panels in their ships. From these it was deduced that the Heechee bottom was not as the human bottom, because there seems to be room for a large pendulant structure, perhaps a divided body like a wasp’s, hanging below the pelvis and between the legs. There is nothing of this sort in the computer-generated image. But-Occam’s Razor, Robin.”

“If I just give you time, you’ll explain that,” I commented.

“Sure thing, Robin, but it’s a law of logic that I think you know. In the absence of evidence, it is best to take the simplest theory. We know of only two intelligent races in the history of the universe. These people do not seem to belong to ours-the shape of the skull, and particularly the jaw, is different; there is a triangular arcade, more like an ape’s than a human being’s, and the teeth are quite anomalous. Therefore it is probable that they belong to the other.”

“Is somewhat scary,” Essie offered softly. And it was. Especially to me, since you might say that it was my responsibility. I was the one who had ordered the Herter-Hall bunch to go out and look around, and if they found the Heechee in the process. .

I was not ready to think of what that might mean.

“What about the Dead Men? Do you have anything on them?”

“Sure thing, Robin,” he said, nodding his dustmop head. “Look at this.”

The pictures winked away, and text rolled up the screen:

MISSION REPORT

Vessel 5-2, Voyage 081D31. Crew A. Meacham, D. Filgren, H. Meacham.

Mission was science experiment, crew limited to allow instrumentation and computational equipment. Maximum lifesupport time estimated 800 days. Vessel still unreported day 1200, presumed lost.

“It was only a fifty thousand dollar bonus-not much, but it was one of the earliest from Gateway,” Albert said over the text. “The one called ‘H. Meacham’ appears to be the ‘Dead Man’ Wan calls Henrietta. She was a sort of A.B.D. astrophysicist-you know, Robin, ‘All But Dissertation’. She blew that. When she tried to defend it they said it was more psychology than physics, so she went to Gateway. The pilot’s first name was Doris, which checks, and the other person was Henrietta’s husband, Arnold.”

“So you’ve identified one of them? They were really real?”

“Sure thing, Robin-point nine nine sure, anyway. These Dead Men are sometimes nonrational,” he complained, reappearing on the plate. “And of course we have had no opportunity for direct interrogation. The shipboard computer is not really up to this kind of task. But, apart from the confirmation of names, the mission seems appropriate. It was an astrophysical investigation, and Henrietta’s conversation includes repeated references to astrophysical subjects. Once you subtract the sexual ones, I mean,” he twinkled, scratching his cheek with his pipestem. “For example. ‘Sagittarius A West’-a radio source at the center of the Galaxy. ‘NGC nag’. A giant elliptical galaxy, part of a large cluster. ‘Average radial velocity of globular clusters’-in our own galaxy, that comes to about 50 kilometers per second. ‘High-redshift OSOs’-“

“You don’t have to list them all,” I said hastily. “Do you know what they all mean? I mean, if you were talking about all those things, what would you be talking about?”

Pause-but a short one; he was not accessing all the literature on the subject, he had already done that “Cosmology,” he said. “Specifically, I think I would be talking about the classic HoyleOpik-Gamow controversy; that is, whether the universe is closed, or open ended, or cyclical. Whether it is in a steady state, or began with a big bang.”

He paused again, but this time it was to let me think. I did, but not to much effect “There doesn’t seem to be much nourishment in that,” I said.

“Perhaps not, Rabin. It does sort of tie in with your questions about black holes, though.”

Well, damn your calculating heart, I thought, but did not say. He looked innocent as a lamb, puffing away on his old pipe, calm and serious. “That’ll be all for now,” I ordered, and kept my eyes on the blank screen long after he had disappeared, in case Essie was going to ask me about why I had been inquiring about black holes.

Well, she didn’t. She just lay back, looking at the mirrors on the ceiling. After a while she said, “Dear Robin, know what I wish?”

I was ready for it. “What, Essie?”

“Wish I could scratch.”

All I could manage to say was, “Oh.” I felt deflated-no; plugged up. I was all ready to defend myself-with all gentle care, of course, because of Essie’s condition. And I didn’t have to. I picked up her hand. “I was worried about you,” I offered.

“Yes, so was I,” she said practically. “Tell me, Robin. Is true that the fevers are from some sort of Heechee mind-ray?”

“Something like that, I suppose. Albert says it’s electromagnetic, but that’s all I know.” I stroked the veins on the back of her hand, and she moved restlessly. But only from the neck up.

“I am apprehensive about Heechee, Robin,” she said.

“That’s very sensible. Even temperate. Me, I’m scared shitless.” And, as a matter of fact I was; in fact, I was trembling. The little yellow light winked on at the corner of the screen.

“Somebody wants to talk to you, Robin.”

“They can wait. I’m talking to the woman I love right now.”

“Thank you. Robin? If you are scared of Heechee as I am, how is it that you go right ahead?”

“Well, honey, what choice do I have? There’s fifty days of dead time. What we just heard is ancient history, twenty-five days old. If I told them to break off and go home right now, it would be twenty-five days before they heard it.”

“Surely, yes. But if you could stop, would you?” I didn’t answer. I was feeling very strange-a little frightened, a lot unlike myself. “What if Heechee don’t like us, Robin?” she asked.

And what a good question that was! I had been asking it of myself ever since the first day I considered getting into a Gateway prospecting ship and setting out to explore for myself. What if we meet the Heechee and they don’t like us? What if they squash us like flies, torture us, enslave us, experiment on us- what if they simply ignore us? With my eyes on the yellow dot, which was beginning to pulse slowly, I said, mothering her, “Well, there’s not much chance that they will actually do us any harm-“

“I do not need soothing, Robin!” She was distinctly edgy, and so was I. Something must have been showing up on her monitors, because the day nurse looked in again, hovered indecisively in the doorway, and went away.

I said, “Essie, the stakes are too big. Remember last year in Calcutta?” We had gone to one of her seminars, and had cut it short because we couldn’t bear the sight of the abject city of two hundred million paupers.

Her eyes were on me, and she was frowning. “Yes, I know, starvation. There has always been starvation, Robin.”

“Not like this! Not like what it will be before very long, if something doesn’t happen to prevent it! The world is bursting at the seams. Albert says-“ I hesitated. I didn’t actually want to tell her what Albert said. Siberia was already out of food production, its fragile land looking like the Gobi because of overpressure. The topsoil in the American Midwest was down to scant inches, and even the food mines were straining to keep up with demand. What Albert said was that we had maybe ten years.

The signal light had gone to red and was winking rapidly, but I didn’t want to interrupt myself. “Essie,” I said, “if we can make the Food Factory work, we can bring CHON-food to all the starving people, and that means no more starvation ever. That’s only the beginning. If we can figure out how to build Heechee ships for ourselves, and make them go where we like- then we can colonize new planets. Lots of them. More than that. With Heechee technology we can take all the asteroids in the solar system and turn them into Gateways. Build space habitats. Terraform planets. We can make a paradise for a million times the population of the Earth, for the next million years!”

I stopped, because I realized I was babbling. I felt sad and delirious, worried and-lustful; and from the expression on Essie’s face she was feeling something strange too. “Those are very good reasons, Robin,” she began, and that was as far as she got The signal light was bright ruby red and vibrating like a pulsar; and then it winked away and Albert Einstein’s worried face appeared on the screen. I had never known him to appear without being invited before.

“Robin,” he cried, “there is another emanation of the fever!”

I stood up shaking. “But it isn’t time,” I objected stupidly.

“It has happened, Robin, and it is rather strange. It peaked, let me see, just under one hundred seconds ago. I believe- Yes,” he nodded, seeming to listen to an inaudible voice, “it is dying away.”

And, as a matter of fact, I was already feeling less strange. No attack had ever been so short, and no other had quite felt like that Apparently somebody else was experimenting with the couch.

“Albert,” I said, “send a priority message to the Food Factory. Desist immediately, repeat immediately, from any further use of the couch for any purpose. Dismantle it if possible without irreversible damage. You will forfeit all pay and bonuses if there is any further breach of this directive. Got it?”

“It’s already on its way, Robin,” he said, and disappeared.

Essie and I looked at each other for a moment. “But you did not tell them to abandon the expedition and come back,” she said at last.

I shrugged. “It doesn’t change anything,” I said.

“No,” she agreed. “And you have given me some really very good reasons, Robin. But are they your reasons?”

I didn’t answer.

I knew what Essie thought were my reasons for pushing on into the exploration of Heechee space, regardless of fevers or costs or risks. She thought my reasons had a name, and the name was Gelle-Kiara Moynlin. And I sometimes was not sure she was wrong.