It was, he agreed with himself, about the nicest place he had ever been in. Would have been nicer still, of course, if Estrella were strolling it with him. He would have liked pointing out to each other the leathery little bugs that peered out from clumps of the grass. Or the perky little flowers, that when he bent to see if they had a fragrance—
“Jesus,” he said, rapidly straightening, because several of those pretty blooms had begun nibbling his hand.
It wasn’t just that Estrella would have made this good thing even better by her presence. The long and short of it was she was just good to be around on any occasion. It occurred to Stan to wonder if he was in love with her. He had no reliable data on what being “in love” was like, and could only suppose that it was possible.
Which led him to ask the reciprocal question: Was Estrella in love with him?
The more Stan thought about it, the less sure he was of the answer. Why should she be? He wasn’t protecting her from dangers, or solving life’s recurring problems for her—if anything, Estrella was better at dealing with the world than he. He wasn’t particularly good-looking. (Well, if that mattered, with those eyes, neither was she.) And he had to admit that he was certainly terribly young for her to take seriously—a mere teenager to her quite grown-up twenty-three. Or four. Or even more, because Estrella had never mentioned her exact age. That was quite a difference, even without considering the fact that, generally speaking, the man was supposed to be older than the girl.
Displeased by his thoughts, Stan kicked at one of the scurrying bugs and missed. He dropped to his knees, then rolled over onto his side. He stretched out on the warm turf, making sure that none of the carnivorous blossoms was nearby; he pillowed his head on his arm and closed his eyes.
He didn’t know that he dozed, only that he was awakened by hard Heechee fingers shaking his shoulder.
Eyes open, he saw an unfamiliar face—Heechee, male, young, looking either angry or amused. The stranger was holding a sort of crystalline daisy in his free hand. He put it to Stan’s ear, and it spoke to him: “Stan person! We search for you! Please immediately come. Achiever here already. Doctor Shrink soon to arrive. Request you here quickly, please.” And then, as an afterthought, “This person speaking is Salt. Thank you. I thank you very much.”
Achiever was there, all right, prowling critically around their rooms. So were two female Heechee, Salt and one Stan didn’t recognize, and Estrella. Who took Stan’s hand fondly enough to blur the memory of his recent worries and introduced him to the new female. “This is Delete,” she said, and Salt chimed in:
“Old friend, Stan person. Also person of major skill in device’s operation. Fortunately has excellent use of languages of your species as well.”
Stan realized the new female was extending a bony hand to be shaken. “Glad to meet you,” he said automatically, then winced as he felt Delete’s grip. She didn’t let go of his hand as, looking him straight in the eye, she addressed him:
“You were not present for briefing,” she said. “Therefore I must repeat essence of it. First, operation of—I do not have the words—of communicating machine of wishes and fears will cause no long-lasting harm. This is known to be so from much experience, even of your species, with previous models. Second, interspecies use of same has not been attempted previously in this form, so possibility exists the first point does not apply. Third, in any case we proceed with procedure now.”
That brought Estrella up short. “Hey! What’s the hurry? Isn’t Dr. von Shrink supposed to be here?”
“That is true,” Salt agreed. “Is not known why he is not. In most cases he had been exhibiting promptness.”
“Will surely present self quite soon,” Delete informed them. “After which can make use of device in order to benefit”—she gave Achiever a cold glance—“this person here who possesses quite bad potential.”
Achiever, who had been picking things up and setting them down again without paying any detectable attention to the others in the room, stopped long enough to give Delete a noticeably unpleasant look. Without taking his eyes off her he addressed Stan and Estrella: “Meaning of this wicked witch’s statement is that I will no longer do undesirable things, do you understand her?”
“Maybe not,” Stan said. “What kind of undesirable things?”
Achiever turned that baleful look on Stan. “I give you example. You wear garment. I like same garment. You go away and leave me with garment, I take garment and wear it, you not having given permission for same.”
Delete made an attempt at a sardonic human laugh very like Achiever’s own. “It was not the mere wearing of garments in your personally individual case, is that not so?” she asked.
Achiever returned his glare to her. “Why ask this question? Have firm opinion of your rightness already, is not this so?”
“Require you to confirm,” Delete went on remorselessly. “Impropriety was not garment-linked. Linkage of impropriety was to living female of human species. Confirm or deny!”
Achiever was silent for a long moment before responding. “I do not do either,” he declared, and turned back to Stan. “What is your thinking, Stan?” he demanded. “Do we then to share our deeply held secrets without further chattering?”
In truth, Stan hadn’t quite made his mind up about that. He didn’t answer. The Heechee gave a belly-shrug. “Then why should we not proceed with the project? These two are trained assistants, quite capable of substituting for nonexistent human, are they not? Therefore join me, then.” And he got into the machine.
Stan stared at the other half of the device, then turned to Estrella, a wry smile on his face.
“Wish me luck,” he said.
But then, as he lifted one foot to climb in, someone spoke in his ear. No one was in sight, but he recognized the voice of Sigfrid von Shrink.
“Not you, Stan. Estrella.”
When Stan turned around, the psychiatrist was there—in animated simulation at least. “I do apologize for keeping you waiting,” he said. “It was because of some troubling events that have to do with finances and construction of living space, and other matters. A number of persons in the Core are concerned over these matters and I was in conference with several of them—organics, you see. So of course that took a ridiculous quantity of time—no offense,” he added hastily. Then he turned toward the dream machine, where Achiever was sullenly looking up at them. “Things appear in order, but we should get on with this. Estrella? If you will take your place again, please? And now I will just close the cover…”
III
Actually the two of them weren’t in the shell that long, though Stan might not have agreed. For him, fretfully waiting, it was a whole lot longer than he wanted it to be.
Stan thought of eating, but not alone; he thought of sleeping, but it was impossible to go to sleep while Estrella was experiencing what he could only, but didn’t want to, imagine. He settled for another session before the lookplate.
He was getting better at it. Quickly the screen began displaying scenes of Earthly events, with menus running down the side of the picture to suggest trails to follow. There were many trails. Too many trails, often keyed with the names of individuals Stan had never heard of—Elwon van Jasse, Marjorie Abbot, Rebecca Shapiro, a hundred others—or subject matters about which Stan knew little and cared less. What did stock price on the all-Europe exchange matter to him? Or the plan to dig an irrigation canal from the Mediterranean Sea to the Qattara Depression, thus turning part of the Sahara into beachfront property? He caught at a reference to his former hometown, but when he followed it up it had to do only with forthcoming elections to Istanbul’s city council. Among the thousand names that offered themselves for his attention he spotted one he had heard of—Wan, a.k.a. a long string of names that Stan definitely had not previously heard of, but definitely the kid who had loosed the Wrath of God on the human race; but when he checked it out it was only a police report saying that the man, no longer a kid, was wanted for a v
ariety of offenses.
He was desultorily checking the state of buffalo herds on the grazing areas of the American West, in case Estrella might be interested, when there was a sort of metallic scratching sound behind him. “Estrella?” he said, turning hopefully around.
It wasn’t Estrella. It was the unpleasant Heechee male, Achiever. Evidently he had let himself out of the wicker-work coffin and broken off the—what would you call it? The electronic communion between Estrella and himself?
Achiever didn’t look happy. The ropy muscles of his face were working like a nest of serpents. He gave one quick nod to Stan, spoke two words—“extremely horrible!”—and left the apartment, closing the door behind him.
Apparently the ordeal was over. A moment later Stan heard the twittering of the two Heechee females, and got to the doorway of the room in time to see them helping Estrella out of her side of the gadget.
She looked not only tired but worrisomely sad, Stan thought. Next to the dream machine Sigfrid von Shrink stood, gazing down at her with an expression of concern. No more concern than Stan felt, of course; he hurried toward them.
Von Shrink quickly interposed himself, intangible but forbidding. “Estrella is quite well, Stan,” he said, “but you can’t talk to her until I have interviewed her. Wait outside, please. And don’t worry.”
IV
Easy to say, impossible to do. Stan did go outside, all right, but to refrain from worrying was impossible.
What, he asked himself plaintively, if von Shrink were wrong? Or lying to him, and something really was the matter with Estrella? What if she died? He felt a chill in his heart as he contemplated the possibility of an ongoing life without Estrella…without the companionship of another human in this world of alien freaks…without the sex. He looked at the doorway he had just passed through, and couldn’t resist approaching it, trying to listen to what was going on inside.
It didn’t work. He could hear a faint, breathy sound that he thought might be whispering, but he couldn’t make out the words.
Then the two Heechee females came out, looked at him curiously, bade him polite good-byes and left. That was it. Unsurprisingly—Stan had lost the capacity to be surprised at any new development, as long as it was unpleasant—he was kept waiting outside the dream-machine room longer than the whole time Estrella had been in the capsule. That was not a good thing. After trying the lookplate again, finding no more of interest than before, he had nothing to do.
That gave him plenty of time to build up anger against—well, against everybody concerned, but against von Shrink most of all: von Shrink, the one who was keeping Estrella from him.
Then, when anger had worn itself out, it was time for worry about countless unpleasing what-ifs. What if this mind-machine thing had changed Estrella’s feelings for him to something colder and worse? What if these sessions in the coffin had to happen again, and maybe more than just once again—wouldn’t that inevitably change Estrella’s feelings about the person who wasn’t allowed to share them with her? What if—
Stan felt physically unwell then. That was the worst what-if of all, the sickening possibility that this foul Heechee invention, the one that, back in Stan’s Istanbul days, had driven the whole human race crazy every few weeks, might have done some real damage to Estrella. Made her insane. Killed her, even. And then there he was again, repeating all those horrid thoughts about how he would be left alone, as alone as any person could ever be, the only real human being on this planet of alien creatures, inside this vast black hole, shut off by space and by what were rapidly becoming decades and centuries of time from every other person he had ever in his life known.
That was when Estrella showed up in the doorway.
She wasn’t dead at all or even insane; maybe (he thought) a little more tired-looking than the last time he had seen her but apparently well enough.
“Stan?” she said. “I need something to eat. But first, could you hold me for a minute, please?”
She felt fine, she said, swallowing the last of a crunchy, pink-striped, lemon-yellow square of Heechee food. Well, yes, she was a little tired. That was all. No, the things the machine did to you didn’t hurt. Exactly.
Then what was being in it like, exactly?
When Stan asked that she sighed a great, deep sigh. They were sitting side-by-side on one of the Heechee bedding rolls; she screwed up her face unhappily.
“Sigfrid kept asking me that,” she said, sounding apologetic. “I tried to tell him, but I don’t think I ever got it exactly right. Part of it was this feeling that I was this really awful smelly, bloated cow of a person. That was because that was what some Heechee thought human beings were like, Sigfrid said. Maybe all of them, only maybe most of them were too polite to show it. Another part of it was that there were all these bad, really awful feelings that were coming out of Achiever. I don’t mean just anger and unhappiness, although there were plenty of those. The worst of them was what Achiever felt about himself. I couldn’t make much sense of that, Stan. I mean, I don’t know why he felt that way. But there sure were some powerful bad feelings inside his head… And then, you know, there was this other thing. The thing about me suddenly being part of somebody else, and I just don’t know how to tell you what that was like.”
She was silent for a moment, and Stan took the opportunity. “Strell? What did you mean about being a cow?”
She seemed reluctant. “It’s kind of embarrassing. Sometimes I was this fat parade-balloon kind of woman, with breasts as big as basketballs. I was naked. My skin was all purple, and—”
“Wait a minute. You said purple. Were you dreaming in color?”
“It wasn’t a dream. But, yes, it was all in color—and touch and smell, too. That’s not the worst, though. Sometimes I was fat, but not all that fat, and that was because I wasn’t human anymore. I was a Heechee, Stan.”
He gaped at her. She nodded. “I know. But that’s the way it was. I was a female Heechee, complete with that square head and bald skull and all. That part was really bad, Stan. I was scared half to death.”
He hugged her, thinking. Then he had to ask the question. “Strell? How could you tell?”
She turned her head to look up at him. “Tell what?”
“That these women were actually all supposed to be you?”
“Oh. Well, I knew,” she said, reaching up to touch the cheekbone that the buffalo had stepped on. “You know, my eyes were always this way in the dream. Stan? Now let’s talk about something else, please?”
That was all she would say. Every question after that she answered with, “I don’t know,” or shook her head and didn’t answer at all. She kept on not knowing, no matter how he phrased the questions, until finally she begged him to give it up. “I’m getting tired, Stan,” she said plaintively. “Maybe we could go to sleep now.”
“I guess,” he said absently, and then he nosed into the side of her throat. In a different tone he said, “Do you know what I’d like to do?”
Estrella didn’t exactly draw away, but she did stiffen a little. “Honey, I’m sorry. I just don’t feel like it.”
“Not that,” he said. “The other thing.”
Then she saw that he was looking at the dream machine. She let go of him completely then, sitting up straight. “I don’t think we ought to.”
“Why not?”
To answer that question Estrella had a hundred good reasons to offer. It might be dangerous. They might break something. Von Shrink might be angry. It might not even work without von Shrink or one of the Heechee females in attendance. But none of the reasons could prevail against Stan’s jealous desire to experience what Estrella had experienced, and in the long run none of them mattered.
“Oh, hell,” she said at last, “all right, then. Why not? But don’t blame me if we get in a lot of trouble.”
V
What was being in the dream machine like?
Stan couldn’t answer that question for himself even while it was going on—which wa
sn’t for very long; Estrella put a stop to it after no more than a minute, flinging the lid off her half of the device and climbing out, sobbing.
Then what had it been like, as close as Stan could fit words to it. Like the most vivid and disturbing kind of dream. Like opening someone else’s private mail, filled with the most disturbing kind of secrets. Like finding that the one person in the universe you knew best was really someone you hardly knew at all.
What it was not at all like was that terrible Wrath of God that he remembered from long ago in Istanbul. In some ways it was worse. At least that horrible sick yearning that had invaded everyone’s mind in those old days had had nothing to do with Stan personally. This one, though, was a whole other matter entirely. It wounded him with blows he had never seen coming. “Estrella?” he said, having just made up his mind to say nothing about it. “Tell me the truth, now. When we make love—I mean, honestly, Strell, am I really all that, you know, like, I mean, clumsy and, well, selfish?”
She wailed, “I told you we shouldn’t do it!”
“Yes, but—”
“Yes, but what about me? I can’t help the way I look, can I? I’m sorry I’m so ugly!”
“I never said—” he began indignantly, and then shut up. Whether he had ever said it or not was irrelevant. You could deny things you had actually said, or apologize for them. But the idle thoughts that might—sometimes—cross your mind were something else. Either they were there or they weren’t there. How could you deny feelings that you hadn’t even known you had?