VII
It had been a long time since Stan had seen a human baby, not since one of the girls in Mr. Ozden’s brothel had got herself pregnant. That sort of thing was an economic hardship for Mr. Ozden when it happened. To deal with the problem he kept a neighborhood abortionist on permanent retainer. Not this time, though. The baby’s father, or at least the customer considered to have been the likeliest to be the baby’s father, was a man high up in Istanbul’s city government When the father indicated he would prefer it, the girl had been allowed to keep the child, and even to show it off to such neighbors as young Stan.
As far as Stan could remember, this baby looked pretty much the same as that long-ago one: eyes screwed tightly shut, mouth closed except for the occasional little whimpering cry, scalp bald, fingers made into tiny fists.
He sat down on the edge of the narrow cot, and looked down at Estrella. She looked tired (naturally enough, because she had just been trying to push a bowling ball through her private parts), and happy (well, of course she would be happy: it was over) and-yes-proud.
“Strell?” he said, pondering on how best to bring up the subject of the proposition that had been made to him. “There’s something we need to talk about.”
“Sure,” she said. “Just a minute. Here.”
And when she handed him the baby he felt the warm, solid weight of it. He looked down at the guileless face. The lips puckered for a moment. The eyelids flickered. The fingers wriggled. The eyes opened—
And something grabbed at Stan’s heart.
When he looked up he saw Estrella’s questioning eyes on him. “Was there something you wanted to say?”
He took a deep breath. “Yes, there is, Strell. I was talking to Sigfrid. He thinks I’ve been screwing around long enough. I should try to make something of myself.”
Estrella, closely supervising the way he was holding the baby, said, “Is that what he said?”
“It’s what he meant, and he’s right. Someday there’s going to be a human congress in the Core. When it comes along I’m going to try to get elected to it. And I want to be ready for the job if I get it, so I’m going to get an education first.”
Estrella reclaimed the baby. “That,” she said, lowering one flap of her gown to see if the baby would take it yet, “sounds like the best idea yet. I’ll help all I can.”
That’s what they did, with the help of the greatest of grandmas to make sure everything was under control when they were studying. They got the best education that the resources of Socrates, Marc Antony and Sigfrid von Shrink could provide for them, and when the first planet-wide election was held, Stan Avery was indeed a candidate. He didn’t win, though. He lost narrowly to the only other candidate in the race.
All the same, Stan was not gravely disappointed. He shook the hand of his victorious opponent with a glad heart. His consolation was that by then he was deeply immersed in his continuing studies. Anyway it meant he had more time to spend on caring for, playing with and generally adoring his daughter when congressional duties took away from home the person who had won the election, Estrella Pancorbo-Avery.
Author’s Note
* * *
On the Mutability of Science
Technically speaking, science fiction need not have any real science in it at all, and quite a bit of it does not. I do feel, however, that some of the best kinds of science fiction rest on exploring the wonders of actual scientific theories or observations, especially when they are first advanced and not yet dogmatic. I use things of that sort often. When I do I try to get them right.
Unfortunately, what is “right” at one point in time isn’t necessarily still right a couple of decades, or even a couple of years later.
For example, black holes.
When I wrote Gateway, the first of the Heechee books, in 1978, black holes were quite a novelty. Most scientists were willing to believe that such objects did exist. However, not one of the things had ever been unambiguously detected, and speculations about their precise nature were both plentiful and diverse. For the novel, I placed my bets on a couple of the most interesting of the scientists’ speculations. One, that there was a great black hole at the center of our galaxy. And, two, that whenever a sufficiently densely packed amount of matter or energy existed anywhere a black hole would automatically form around it. Therefore within such a black hole a number of stars and planets might exist.
For the record, I got it half right. No reputable scientist known to me still thinks organized matter of any kind can exist inside a black hole, so that is a definite miss. On the other hand, it turns out that there really is at our galaxy’s core an object known as Sgr A*, pronounced “Sagittarius (or, for short, simply Sajj) A Star.” And it is pretty definitely an authentic black hole.
However, when we look at the fine print we find that Sgr A* isn’t much like the black hole I was describing. I never specifically identified the mass of the Heechee’s Core, but it would have had to have been some thousands of solar masses. It seemed to me that this would be massive enough for any normal purpose. I was wrong, though. Actually Sgr A* weighs in at some 3.7 million solar masses, which, as you can see, is a very great deal bigger.
What’s more, a couple of other variorum kinds of black holes, including the kugelblitz that the Foe lived in, are also pretty much out of favor these days. Still, I did not feel that I could omit them where indicated, and so they are still part of the background referred to in the present novel.
I should add, however, that I am unregenerate enough so that I won’t let any of this keep me from continuing to try to pick up some of the hairiest of scientists’ speculations and do my best to work them into science-fiction stories. So you are warned.
Frederik Pohl
Palatine, Illinois
2004
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author, Frederik Pohl has done just about everything one can do in the science fiction field. His novel Gateway won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial awards for Best SF novel. Man Plus won the Nebula Award. In addition to his solo fiction, Pohl has collaborated with other writers, including C.M. Kornbluth and Jack Williamson. The Pohl/Kornbluth collaboration, The Space Merchants, is a classic of satiric science fiction. The Starchild Trilogy with Williamson is one of the more notable collaborations in the field. Pohl became a magazine editor when still a teenager. In the 1960s he piloted Worlds of If to three successive Hugos for Best Magazine. He also has edited original-story anthologies, including the notable Star series of the early 1950s. He has been a literary agent, has edited lines of science fiction books, and has been president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He and his wife, Dr. Elizabeth Anne Hull, a prominent academic active in the Science Fiction Research Association, live outside Chicago, Illinois.
Frederik Pohl, The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway
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