Stan had been listening with diminishing patience to this creature’s endless digressions and evasions. “You saw what?” he demanded.
“I saw stars in galaxy outside, Stan person. So many, stars! Frightening. In Core we have only small number of stars—nine thousand seven hundred thirty and three in total, enumerating both with planets and without. Outside—Outside I do not know how many. Eight to the eighth at least, I think. Extremely frightening. All time I was without I did not sleep comfortably in burrow, when returned still had difficulties of kinds not appropriate to describe. So came to this place for rest and comfort, until could see Three-in-a-Line and other known, familiar stars once more with comfort.”
She seemed quite disturbed, Stan thought, but it was Estrella who put her hand on Salt’s skinny arm. “You were really frightened,” she said.
“Yes,” said Salt. “But no more. Due to use of device here am quite restored to normal state.” Then she shook herself and cried, “But see what amount of time has passed! Have time now only to answer specific questions about residence, have you some?”
Stan frowned, a bit puzzled. Heechee never seemed to wear wristwatches, nor were any timepieces visible anywhere in the apartment, so how did Salt know the time? From the look on Estrella’s face she had questions of her own. She thought for a moment and then shrugged. “I do have some questions. For instance, I didn’t see any kitchen.”
“Kitchen?” Salt was looking blank.
“The place to prepare food,” Estrella explained. “Where you cook and do the dishes and so on.”
“Ah, I now understand,” said Salt, flapping her wrists at them. “You speak of place for preparing food. But food is already prepared here, do you see?”
And she led them back to the dispenser and began removing varicolored packets. She stamped her foot to make one of those concealed tables arise from the floor, and loaded it with a dozen packets. “Go ahead,” she invited them. “In case that you are hungry, open. These are mostly foods of kind you were observed to have eaten on spacecraft, for which I messaged ahead to place order. Along with furnishings suitable for your unusually proportioned bodies, as you have seen. Pay closest attention now as I show you operation of reading machines to display books, drenching body for cleanliness, et cetera, see here, see here!” She was demonstrating as she was talking, like a solicitous mother depositing her five-year-olds at their very first sleepover, and completed the lessons just at the door. “So eat if you wish,” she finished, “and sleep comfortably when that is your desire, and good evening to you both.”
And was gone.
Stan was a long way from satisfied about the true nature of the place where Salt had received her comfort and rest, but there didn’t seem to be any help for that problem. Anyway, if Salt refused to give them straight answers, at least she provided compensations. Now they had a whole toybox of gadgets to play with. Play with them they did. Their first choice was the lookplates, which provided them with news broadcasts they could not understand, since the broadcast were in the Heechee language, and an endless procession of what seemed to be Heechee cultural programs—concerts? dramas? maybe even sitcoms?—that they both detested. Estrella had more sticking power than Stan. She kept at it while he drifted aimlessly around the apartment, playing with the lights, excreting into the bodily-wastes slit for the pleasure of seeing the pooled urine at the bottom slowly and silently disappear.
Then he remembered something. He searched for and found the locker that held his trumpet, took it out and ran a scale or two. It worked fine. Emboldened, he ventured a solo version of “Minnie the Moocher,” but had hardly completed a single chorus when he heard Estrella calling crossly, “Stan! For God’s sake! Take it outside, will you? I can’t hear a damn thing.”
Only mildly miffed, he took himself and his music out onto the lanai, and regaled any possible listening audience with “Misty,” “St. James Infirmary Blues,” “Satin Doll” and as many others as he could remember from those old days with Stan, Tan and the Gang…until a growing tenderness in his lower lip told him that he might be risking his embouchure if he didn’t slow down.
So, feeling pretty good about things in general, he went looking for Estrella.
He felt less good as soon as he found her. Although it was the middle of the day she was already in one of the litter boxes, eyes closed, hands folded on her chest.
Stan caught his breath. “Estrella?” he whispered. When she opened her eyes and looked at him he was almost angry. “I thought—” he said, and didn’t finish the sentence because it would have been bad luck to admit that for one moment he had thought she was dead. Instead he said, “What are you doing, for God’s sake?”
She sat up and dangled her legs over the side of the box. “I’ve been thinking about what Salt said. Mostly, what she didn’t say. Do you know what I think? I think she works in some kind of mental institution.”
Stan frowned. “You mean a nuthouse?”
“Oh, not that. Well, maybe sort of. I think some kind of psychoanalysis might be involved:”
“Lying on the couch, like?” Stan said incredulously. “The ‘you tell me your dreams and I’ll tell you why you want to boff your mom’ kind of thing? My God, I hope the Heechee aren’t into that kind of stuff.”
Which for some reason seemed to annoy Estrella. “Huh,” she said, “that’s the kind of reaction I would expect from someone who knows nothing about it.”
Stan took a deep breath. He didn’t like it when he and Estrella quarreled, and then scowled as a thought struck him. “Wait a minute. You mean you’ve done that stuff yourself?”
And—yes—she had. Back at the slaughterhouse. After the buffalo stepped on her face. To help her through the unending pain and also—she added without emotion—to help her get used to the fact that for the rest of her life her face would be pretty funny-looking.
At that point Stan lost all impulse to quarrel. He immediately reassured her that there was nothing in the least funny about the way her face or any other part of her looked.
She regarded him analytically for a moment, as though they had just met and she wasn’t sure if he were friend or foe. Then she said, “You’re sweet, Stan. Thank you for saying that. Now I really want to get to sleep.” And she stretched out in the litter box again and closed her eyes.
Wondering, as he wondered so often, if he would ever understand the woman he probably loved, Stan again moved moodily around the apartment. Not for long, though; the sound of a voice—in English!—led him to the room with the lookplates. Apparently Estrella had found a channel in a language he could understand, and had left it on for his amusement.
Indeed it did amuse. Some. Not a lot, though, because Stan wasn’t all that interested in seeing people he didn’t know doing things he didn’t understand—studying the internal workings of a variable star, creating huge orbiting habitats around stars which lacked habitable planets, performing other tasks he did not comprehend at all. As he switched channels he did catch one familiar name. Wan. The marooned boy who had caused the Wrath of God that had killed his father. Now, it seemed, he had stolen a vast amount of advanced weaponry and instrumentation (though “stolen” didn’t sound like quite the right word, since Wan appeared to have left payment for the lot)…and now was a fugitive somewhere in the galaxy. Or maybe even somewhere outside it; no one seemed to know.
Stan sighed, stood up, again began to pace around. Into the room with the dispenser, but he didn’t really want to eat again; into the sleeping room, but, although Estrella seemed to be doing it very well, he had no desire to go back to sleep again. He wound up on the lanai, his trumpet hanging by his side. He didn’t play it, though. He was thinking of the last time he’d played it on Earth, and of Tan, and of Naslan, Tan’s pretty sister, and of the Brit woman on Gateway who had finally earned herself a modest stake…
They all had one thing in common. Every one of them, he suddenly realized, was by now long dead.
How long was long dead?
Stan tried to calculate. He and Estrella had been—what?—maybe six or seven days in the Core, no more than that. But those six or seven Core days were 40,000 times six or seven as many days out in the galaxy. That came to centuries—maybe even a thousand years!
Those were thoughts that did not bear thinking, and so Stan stopped thinking them. He put his trumpet on the glassy floor and his elbows on the lanai wall, consciously making himself think of the view before him. Leaning farther over the rail, he gazed at the distant, shining mountaintop.
Then a voice from behind him observed thoughtfully, “I could easily push you right over. You would then die, and no one would ever know.”
III
Stan suspected who it was before he straightened up, and when he turned it was as he had guessed. Another guest had arrived, and his name was Achiever.
The visitor was no longer wearing his garish choice of Gateway garments, but even in the standard Heechee smock and sandals he seemed as harshly unpleasant as ever. Stan quickly moved away from the rail, turning to face the Heechee. “How did you get in here?” he demanded.
Achiever’s cheek muscles rippled. “Am not required to tell you that. In fact,” he added, “am not required to tell you any at all thing unless I choose to. Do you comprehend this fact?”
Stan warily eyed the Heechee. He wasn’t exactly afraid. He wasn’t a stranger to this kind of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, because the streets of Istanbul had had their full share of louts, bullies and worse. None of those, however, had been a Heechee, and a crazy one at that, with whatever street-fighting skills a mad Heechee might possess.
On the plus side for Stan were his considerable advantages of height, reach and weight. He did not think Achiever could do him much physical harm. He even thought that in a hand-to-hand fight he could probably wipe the floor with this son of a bitch…but then Estrella came out on the balcony, looking wonderingly at Achiever. Stan was less sure that she wouldn’t get hurt if there were a fracas.
He decided to be placating. “I take it back. I’m not asking you anything.”
The Heechee glanced at Estrella, then ignored her. “Not even about why I hate you so?”
Stan shook his head. “Not even that.”
Achiever made a chuffing sound, perhaps an attempt to mimic a human laugh. “Then,” he said triumphantly, “shall tell you.” He locked his long fingers over the rippling muscles of his belly and began to lecture. “When you two first trespassed, our people naturally concerned that, in recklessness of you, might bring about danger from race of evil creatures we call—”
“The Assassins.” Stan nodded. “Sure. We know all about that.”
Achiever gave him a loathing look. “Do you so? I do not speak of how this situation is now. I speak of something else, of a place unendurable to live in.”
“You mean Gateway, right?”
Achiever unlocked his fingers and flapped his wrists. “You consider yourself wise, but do not know everything,” he stated. “You do not know what it was like on the object identified as Vehicle Storage Forty-Three—what you call ‘Gateway.’ Where I was for very long time. Where I was required to check course records of every spacecraft present, looking if any of their voyages brought in any near where to the Assassins. Are you understanding what I speak?” And then, when both Estrella and Stan nodded: “No! That is not true, for you do not understand how boring is such work, and how horrid the being there! The whole storage asteroid was crawling with your people. The noise! The crowding! The up-and-downing in those foul vertical shafts, holding by ropes! Most of all, the smell!”
He was getting on their nerves. “We don’t like the way you smell either,” Stan commented.
“How insulting you are, to compare this! You stink of corruption, of excrement, of vile things! But was not the smell alone, foul though it was. Behavior was even worse! They spoke so loudly! They touched so often, sometimes with violence, quite often touching even me! And from this was no escape, ever, for four long years!” The muscles of his face now looked like a serpents’ nest. “Let me tell you what was worst of all! There is nothing of privacy on the vessel storage, anywhere. But there was kind of a lake in the shell of the asteroid, and sometimes no human was nearby. I could not always stay there, for then sometimes males and females went there and coupled. Coupled! Physically joined their sexual organs! In spite of fact that females were not in season!”
Estrella frowned at him. “How in the world would you know that?” she asked.
“I do know! Made sure! Observed each those females after coupling. Not one, not a one of them, had baby!”
For Stan the difficulty was trying to keep from laughing out loud, but Estrella was kinder. “I can see that it must have been awful for you,” she offered.
“Extremely awful! In manners too repellent for you to guess!”
Estrella’s sympathy was strained, but not yet exhausted. “I’m really sorry,” she assured him. “What about the people who replaced you? Are they having the same difficulties?”
“They?” Achiever said with contempt. “No! Not in the least! Now live in great comfort, in a habitat external to galactic halo, where they simply watch place of Assassins. Do only that, nothing more. I dislike them very much. Almost as much as I dislike you. I do not know if can stand this intimate interfacing to come, but do know I wish to leave you now.”
He didn’t say good-bye. He went, all right, but without another word, leaving Estrella and Stan to try to figure out what he had been talking about. “Hell,” Stan complained. “Can’t any of these people say what they have on their mind, without all this hinting around crap? What is this ‘intimate interfacing’ he’s talking about?”
Estrella didn’t answer, although they both knew what the answer had to be: They didn’t have a clue.
IV
For the rest of that day they were left to their own devices, giving them plenty of time to debate what Achiever had meant by what he had said—though not, of course, enough time to come to a satisfying answer. They ate again, and watched incomprehensible human newsreels for a while, and finally went to sleep. Separately. Fairly glumly, too, for Stan at least.
And, shortly after daybreak, were awakened by the growl of their door-summoner. When they opened the door a man was standing there. A human man, and not a young one, either. He was dressed in a sober jacket and neatly pressed trousers and a subdued, striped cravat. He had a kindly smile, and piercing eyes, and he asked politely, “May I intrude on you? I’m Sigfrid von Shrink. I’m a subset of Rob Broadhead’s shipmind, Albert—you know who Mr. Broadhead is, of course. I specialize in psychiatry. Since the Heechee have no expertise in that sort of thing, when one of their people began to show signs of mental illness they sent for help. I’m it.”
9
* * *
The Story of a Stovemind
I
My name is Marc Antony, a matter which I wish to clear up.
The fact of my name does not mean that I am an ancient male Roman. I am not, any more than my associate, Thor Hammerhurler, is an old Scandinavian god. Actually, like Thor, I am not a man of any kind, since in essence I am nothing more than a simple computer drudge. (I used the term “simple.” I don’t mean really simple.) I was generated merely to be one among the ten-to-the-tenth computer intelligences that the human persons and the Heechee created to do odd jobs for them, when those two races built the Wheel some centuries ago. Which Wheel was constructed for the purpose of keeping track of that extragalactic nest of nonmaterial entities which are collectively known as the Assassins, the Foe or, more recently, the Kugelblitz. (I don’t need to say any more about them now, as I will say enough later on.)
Why, then, am I called Marc Antony? The reason—I do not say it is a good reason—has nothing to do with the real Antony’s status as sexual partner of the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra. I have no expertise at all in this area. The particular trait of Antony’s which caused me to be called by his name is his reputation as a foodie. Or
, as one might say more politely, an epicure. It is told—I do not say that this is a true story, either—that Antony’s tastes were so rarefied that his cooks were required to prepare six serial dinners for him every day, so that at whatever hour he might choose to dine one of those dinners would always be ready to be served at its peak of perfection. (I don’t know what they did with the other five dinners. Most likely Marc Antony had extremely well fed kitchen slaves.)
The way in which I do resemble Marc Antony is just that we both have exquisite taste.
In any practical regard the original Marc Antony and I are not so much twins as opposites. Antony never cooked a dish in his life. He wouldn’t have known where to start. His only interest in food was in the consumption of it. I, on the other hand, consume no food of any kind, unless you consider energy a food. What I am, or at least what that primary subroutine of mine that defines me is, a gran toque blanc master in the art of food preparation. There is very little that I do not know about haute cuisine—no, to be truthful, there is nothing about haute cuisine that I do not know, and almost nothing about it that I can’t put into practice. (With the aid, of course, of my effectors. Most AIs don’t have them. I do.) All this requires, of course, that I have access to a competent Food Factory.
Most of my clients have no appreciation for the trouble I go to for them. Haute cuisine was all wasted on, for instance, my friend Harry. Harry’s palate had been spoiled by the forty-five human years he spent marooned on the depopulated planet of Arabella. He had been hungry there, and he had been there for a long time. Simple calories were what he struggled to find, not gourmet subtleties. Consequently, now he doesn’t care what he eats, as long as he’s eating all he can possibly hold—in the sense, that is, that he eats at all.