Not this time, either. “Hey, Orbis,” she said, reaching out to put her hand on his shoulder. Before he could shake it off she was going on: “Listen, I had Barb check you out. I’m sorry if I said anything wrong. I didn’t know you had a wife in Here After storage.”
VI
The next morning’s sun was no hotter, McClune’s unsteady perch on the bench beneath the great, frowning statue no more wearying than before, but Orbis McClune felt them more. His voice was just as commanding, his threats and warnings as plangent as ever. However, the old fire in his heart was quenched by the unwanted, long-suppressed memories of an ancient hurt…the one named Rowena.
Rowena. The beautiful. The decorous. The, well, the loved…or at least the very nearly loved as nearly as it was in Orbis McClune’s power to love anything mortal. Until the decorous became unruly, and paid for it with her life, and then had not the grace to be once and for all truly dead but went on to be a constant hurt in McClune’s.
The source of that unmitigatable hurt was there before him, right across the street. It was the technicians of Here After that had made it to Rowena’s crashed car almost as soon as the ambulance, in time to get her dying consent and transform her personality—her soul!—into nothing more tangible than a cloud of electrons captured within a machine. As she still was at this moment. And always would be, as far into the future as human life continued to exist on Earth.
McClune’s voice cracked, right in the middle of one of his favorite descriptions of the eternities of torture that awaited the damned. A couple of the idlers who made up his audience looked amused, but he caught himself and went right on. That is, his mouth continued to shape words and the words became well-reasoned arguments, but the arguments were merely the ones he had voiced so many times before.
Rowena should not have done it.
Her whole life proved that. Her clergyman-father was almost as strict in his beliefs as McClune himself—strict enough to have named his daughter after one of the purest maidens in Sir Walter Scott’s long oeuvre, and to have insisted she model herself after that person. Rowena had been brought up to be a perfect wife for, say, the early eighteenth century. And for the first three years of their marriage those were the qualities she displayed, to her husband and to the world.
It was the fourth year that had been the killer.
All the time he was telling his audience the instructive story of Matthew the tax collector, the one who became the servant of the Lord and changed from taking the worthless coin of Mammon to giving, giving the saving Word of God…all that time, his gaze was far above the heads of his dwindling company of listeners, and fixed firmly on the despised Here After marquee just across the street. That was the Enemy incarnate. Its presence taunted him. The line of men and women waiting to get into it was an affront. Did they not know that they were damning their souls?
Rowena had known that. He had told her so himself, the moment he learned that—for hours on end, while he was in his study preparing his next installment of God’s Truth for his parishioners—she had been furtively talking with heretics and blasphemers on the p-net. The things they had talked about were nearly unforgivable. Women’s rights! Abortion! Freedom of thought! Worst of all, the vile physical love between woman and woman, their bodies joined in the filthiest of lusts.
Oh, Rowena had sworn, it was all theoretical, she had never done any of those things, not even registered to vote. She was just interested. As a matter of curiosity. And when he told her to what those interests and curiosities would lead her—when he threatened to expose her wickedness to the congregation that very next Sunday—that was when she had stormed out of the house, and driven her car into the space that was just about to be occupied by the lead tractor of a high-speed freight caravan. Had that been by accident or by design? It didn’t matter. She had sinned. It was people like the ones across the street that had let her avoid the life payment for her sin, by committing a sin greater still.
And there before him, a score of men and women were lined up before the Here After office to repeat that same irremediable sin.
He made a decision. As soon as he finished his present thought—at the latest, as soon as the shadow of the statue behind him reached the little clump of flowers on the other side of the walk—he would dismiss his audience, leave the little park and cross the street to deal with the greater emergency there. Preaching against them to begin with. Maybe a little righteous trashing of the premises, if enough of his audience could be motivated to the deed. It was the right thing to do, he told himself. He was at fault for not doing it sooner…
However, it did not happen.
It didn’t happen because, without warning, McClune was suddenly unsteady on his feet, then more than unsteady.
It was one of those little earthquakes, his interior voice was telling him wisely, just as he discovered that he could not stand at all. This particular earthquake wasn’t all that little. McClune dropped to his knees and grabbed the back of the bench to keep from falling…but was falling anyway, falling in a tumbling sprawl that dropped him on his back in the yellowed grass, his skull smacking against the brittle sod, blurring his vision…but not blurring it so much that he didn’t see the grave, granite face of Fra Junipero Serra bending down toward his own, toppled as surely as himself by this latest earthquake…the face coming closer and closer, as though to give him his kiss of death.
Because death it was going to be. McClune had no doubt of that. The thought terrified him, and it made him exultant, too, because this would be the time when he met his Maker, and got His unfailing reward for a lifetime of faithful service.
Or so, he believed, he deserved. But there was terror as well, because how could any mortal know the nature of God’s awful justice? He voiced an impassioned plea for mercy to his Lord, not so much a prayer as a single begging shout, because that was all the time he had before those adamantine lips touched his own, and then went farther, and brought with them an instant explosion of pain…
And then nothing. Only blackness.
VII
But when Orbis McClune managed to get his eyes open again—it had been curiously hard to make his muscles obey his will—it wasn’t the late Fra Junipero Serra who was kissing him. It was an elderly man with a bald head and a ginger-colored beard, and the breath that he was forcing into Orbis McClune’s mouth tasted nastily of beer and other, worse things. “Hey!” McClune cried—or intended to cry, but it took three or four attempts to get the words out—“Hey!” And “What.” And “You.” And “Think.” And “You.” And “Do?”—a syllable at a time, each produced with its own single great effort.
The man didn’t seem to notice anything out of the way. He sat back, looking aggrieved. “You’re another one didn’t go the briefing, right? Christ’s a’mighty, what was the matter with you people? I was just trying to get you started, like they said we should do, you know?”
McClune overlooked the profanity in the worse shame of the physical act. “They…said…you…should…kiss…me?”
The man seemed embarrassed. “Well, sure, if you want to call it that. It’s the kiss of life, you understand? Making believe like I was trying to get you breathing again. So like at first you’d think that you’d drowned or something, see?” And then, reassuringly, “Don’t worry if you’re kind of having trouble getting your body to work right. Everybody does, at first. You’ll get it after a while.”
McClune frowned and licked his lips—then, remembering that nasty kiss, scoured at them with the back of his hand. That, too, took a trial or two before he could get the hand properly turned and positioned. He said hoarsely, “Explain. Please.”
Irritated, the man gave him a scowl. “Well, now, what do you think there is to explain, God’s sake? They were right across the street when that monument thing fell on you, weren’t they? So they got to you right away, before you got too, uh, spoiled.”
“Who across the street? Who got to me?”
“Jeez,” the man groan
ed, “you’re a real pain. The Here After people, who else? You’ve been machine-stored. Don’t you see their collection agents coming this way?”
McClune saw them all right, pretty young women in perky blue uniforms. He wasn’t thinking about them, though. He had something bigger on his mind, something that looked like the biggest, scariest, most important thing in his life.
Orbis McClune had lived his entire life in the glorious certainty that death meant judgment. If you had lived the life God desired for you, then you were rewarded. If not, then you were punished. One way or another, as soon as you died the matter was settled.
But not in this eternal undeath that also wasn’t real life.
The thought was crushing. All his life McClune had proclaimed his willingness to accept whatever God handed him. But this? This was unfair!
That was when one of the Here After cashiers, her voice as perky as her pretty blue minidress, spoke to him. “Good morning, Mr.—ah—McClune. As I am sure you have realized by now, your organic body has passed on. In your case, I understand it was by some kind of organic-world accident, and Here After wants to extend its deepest sympathy for your loss. Though, of course, now that you’ve been vastened, it’s not really a loss, is it?” Then, briskly, but with a dimpled smile, she changed the subject. “How would you like to settle your account, Mr. McClune? We accept all major debit or credit cards.”
Taken aback, Orbis said, “I don’t have any.”
“No problem, Mr. McClune! We are glad to arrange direct transfer from your checking, savings or special-purpose bank account”—he was shaking his head—“or you could execute a lien on your home or business property—” Still shaking. She frowned. “An insurance policy, then? No? Well, we’re glad to have you pledge jewelry, art objects, anything at all of value, subject of course to valuation by our experts—”
Orbis said, “Sorry. I don’t have any of those things. I don’t have anything at all. I’m penniless.”
The young woman looked crestfallen. “Oh, Mr. McClune,” she cried. “What a pity! I’m afraid that, to protect its interests, that means Here After will be forced to entertain offers from third-party bidders.”
She wasn’t perky anymore. Indeed, the look on her face had become pretty grim, and Orbis didn’t like the sound of what she was saying. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “You think you can sell me to somebody?”
“Oh, no,” the young woman conceded. “That would be illegal in nearly all jurisdictions. But that isn’t the question, is it? It’s the hardware in which your program is stored that is definitely Here After property, and thus, like any other asset, can be sold on the open market.” She gave a winsome little shrug. “The fact that your stored mind would follow the hardware is perhaps a little unfortunate for you. But not, of course, the company’s problem.” She paused, looking him over with an expression of sympathy. “Actually,” she confided, “this is the part of the job that I hate, but what can I do?”
“You could turn me off,” he said.
She looked shocked. “Oh, no, Mr. McClune! If I did that, then the company’s equity would be diminished, and they wouldn’t like that.” She shook her head. “No, Mr. McClune,” she said firmly, “you’ll just have to make the best of it. Good heavens! Don’t you think you owe Here After a little gratitude? If it wasn’t for them you’d be dead.”
As time passed—minutes, perhaps, or days or weeks; Orbis McClune had no way of measuring it and nothing to measure it against—McClune began to learn the rules of his new existence. First he learned how to make all his (nonexistent) parts move pretty much as he wanted them to in this nonexistent gigabit space those cursed people at Here After had consigned him to. That meant that when he finished the exercises he could walk and he could talk. He even had people to talk to, or at least people who wanted to talk to him, because it turned out he and the ancient drunk were not the only ones in machine storage. There were scores of others, maybe many more than that. They all had one thing in common, too, he discovered. None of them had the kind of marketable skill that would induce someone to buy up their contracts.
Oh, there were a few inquiries. An elderly man, still organic, had sent a doppel into the eigenspace of Here After’s available merchandise to look for a valet. By “valet,” it turned out, he meant a body servant whose effectors could bathe, feed and change him, among other duties, because he could no longer do any of those things for himself—and concluded quite soon that Orbis McClune wasn’t temperamentally suited for the position. Then there was the woman who never said exactly what she was looking for, but gave Orbis one quick glance, snapped, “Not him,” and left.
The one who said he represented a Mr. Santos-Smith didn’t seem any more promising. He didn’t care to tell anything about who Mr. Santos-Smith was, either. He looked disdainfully around the bare room that was all Orbis had been able to generate for himself—those who lived on the bounty of Here After’s stockholders weren’t allowed much profligacy—and rattled off his questions. Did Orbis know how to operate a spacecraft? Could he run a black-hole penetrator? Did he have any technical skills at all? And when all the answers were “no,” he snapped his little black briefcast shut and left without another word.
Which made it all the more surprising when, soon after, Mr. Santos-Smith himself showed up. He was slight, sallow and of no particular age at all in appearance, and he said, “Call me Wan. I have one question for you. What do you think of the Heechee?”
That one came out of left field for Orbis. It had been a long time since anyone had encouraged him to say how he felt on that subject. He took a deep breath. “The Heechee,” he said, “are the worst thing that ever happened to the human race. They should burn in hell forever. I hate them! I wish every last one of them were dead, and—”
Wan raised his hand. “Enough,” he said. “You’ve got the job.”
Orbis frowned. “Doing what?”
“Helping me get back some things that they stole from me. Only for now,” he added, his fingers stealing toward a touchpad at his belt, “we don’t want to waste energy, do we? So I’m going to turn you off for a while if you don’t mind. Or even if you do.”
12
* * *
Fatherhood
I
The news from Earth was terrible, all right: tens of millions dead, great cities forever erased. It was more than Stan and Estrella could take in right away. Estrella wept. Stan sat stunned and wordless before the lookplate for long minutes before either of them could even talk about it. Then they talked for hours. Over and over. Finding new ways to express the same thoughts of shock and undirected anger and woe.
Then, when Estrella fell asleep, Stan began to remember the other wholly unexpected news, the thing Estrella had told him.
Even overshadowed by what had happened on Earth, that news still shook Stan up. It changed things. He had become pleasantly accustomed to making love as a regular reward for the day’s activities, but parenthood had never crossed his mind. (“My God, Strell, didn’t you ever take your shots?” “Exactly what shots are you talking about, Stan? In case you didn’t know it, virgins don’t need contraceptive shots. And that’s what I was, a virgin, remember? Anyway, until just before we shipped out I was.”)
It was worse, not better, that Estrella’s pregnancy was only a possibility. How strong a possibility Stan could not tell, and that was the worst part. Approaching fatherhood he could deal with, if he had to. Childlessness he could deal with too—rather easily, in fact. Uncertainty was tougher.
Estrella was small help. “Certainly there are pregnancy tests, Stan. You don’t even need to take a test. If you’re sexually active, your toilet checks your pee every time you go to the bathroom. Have you got one of those toilets with you, Stan? No? What a pity.”
Stan found a straw to catch at. “But, hey, the Heechee must know how to tell if a person’s pregnant, mustn’t they?”
She gave him the look of total patience that encodes a state of utter e
xasperation. “You seem to have missed it, but, Stan, the Heechee are a different species.”
He persisted. “How about Dr. von Shrink, then? He ought to know that stuff.”
“He isn’t even organic, Stan!” But then she thought for a moment, and added reluctantly, “I guess we could ask, anyway. I’ll call the, uh, the institute.”
And then, when she came back from the lookplates and said, “They say to come over. Dr. von Shrink will meet us there,” Stan didn’t gloat. He didn’t even say, “I told you so,” because while she was gone he had gone back to thinking about the other thing he had learned from that damnable dream-machine experience, namely that Estrella thought he was a clumsy lover.
Well, who was she to judge? The only other man she ever did it with was that Gateway bastard—what was his name?—Montefiore. Fat, loud and sloppy—was it possible that Estrella thought he was better at making love than himself?
So deep was Stan in those punishing thoughts that he hardly heard Estrella calling him from the doorway. When he joined her she looked at him with curiosity. “Are you all right?” she asked.
He shrugged morosely. “Why wouldn’t I be? Let’s go!”
On their way to the place they had decided to call an institute, let the Heechee call it whatever they liked, Stan hadn’t forgotten any of those depressing thoughts, but he at least pushed them to the back of his mind.
Getting there was no real problem. Achiever had chosen to walk over when he paid his calls, but then Achiever was pretty loopy anyway. Salt had told them a quicker way. One of those whirring three-wheeled carts carried them a kilometer or two underground, and a ramp brought them to a large suite of rooms furnished pretty much like the lounge on the spacecraft that had brought them here. The rooms were fitted with plenty of perches and screens and desks, but with nothing that looked at all like any part of a hospital—at least, not any hospital as either Stan or Estrella understood a hospital to be. It was low-ceilinged and windowless, but comfortably lit by glowing walls. Fifteen or twenty Heechee were there, coming and going, talking, eating, nibbling on little mushroomy things in polished silvery bowls, working at the lookplates or simply dozing.