Heechee Rendezvous

by Frederik Pohl

  The Here Afters were, as a matter of fact, one of the little spinoff enterprises that I was fondest of, not because they earned much money. When we discovered that the Heechee had been able to store dead minds in machines a light clicked. Well, says I to my good wife, if they can do it, why can’t we? Well, says my good wife to me, no reason at all, Robin, to be sure, just give me a little time to work out the encoding. I had not made any decision about whether I wanted it done to me, when and if. I was quite sure, though, that I didn’t want it done to Essie, at least not right then, and so I was glad that the bullet had done no more than puff her nose.

  Well, somewhat more. It involved us with the Rotterdam police. The uniformed sergeant introduced us to the brigadier, who took us in his big fast car with the lights going to the bureau and offered us coffee. Then Brigadier Zuitz showed us into the office of Inspector Van Der Waal, a great huge woman with old-fashioned contact lenses making her eyes bulge out with sympathy. It was How unpleasant for you, Mijnheer, and I hope your wound is not painful, Mevrouw, as she was leading us up the stairs—stairs!—to the office of Commissaris Lutzlek, who was a different kettle of fish altogether. Short. Slim. Fair, with a sweet boy’s face, though he had to be at least fifty to have become a Principal Commissaire. You could imagine him putting his thumb in the dyke and hanging in there forever, if he had to, or until he drowned. But you could not imagine him giving up. “Thank you for coming in about this business in the Stationsplein,” he said, making sure we had seats.

  “The accident,” I said.

  “No. Regretfully, not an accident. If it had been an accident, it would have been a matter for the municipal police rather than for me. So therefore this inquiry, for which we ask your cooperation.”

  I said, to put him in his place, “Our time is pretty valuable to be spent in this sort of thing.”

  He was not puttable. “Your life is even more valuable.”

  “Oh, come on! One of the soldiers in the parade was doing his twirling act, and he had a round in his gun and it went off.”

  “Mijnheer Broadhead,” he said, “first, no soldier had a round in his gun; the guns are without firing pins in any case. Second, the soldiers are not even soldiers; they are college students hired to dress up for parades, just like the guards at Buckingham Palace. Third, the shot did not come from the parade.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the gun has been found.” He looked very angry. “In a police locker! This is quite embarrassing to me, Mijnheer, as you can imagine. There were many extra policemen for the parade, and they used a portable dressing-room van. The ‘policeman’ who fired the weapon was a stranger to others in the unit, but then they were drawn from many detachments. Come to clean up after the parade, he dressed quickly and left, with his locker open. There was nothing in it but the uniform—stolen, I suppose—and the gun, and a picture of you. Not of Mevrouw. Of you.”

  He sat back and waited. The sweet boy’s face was peaceful.

  I was not. It takes a minute to sink in, the announcement that somebody has the fixed intention of killing you. It was scary. Not just being killed; that’s scary by definition, and I can testify to how scared I can get when it looks like death is near, out of unforgotten and even repeated experience. But murder is worse than ordinary death. I said, “You know how that makes me feel? Guilty! I mean, I must have done something that really made somebody hate me.”

  “Exactly so, Mijnheer Broadhead. What do you suppose it could have been?”

  “I have no idea. If you find the man, I suppose you can find the reason. That shouldn’t be too hard—there must be fingerprints or something? I saw news cameras, perhaps there’s even a picture of him on somebody’s film—”

  He sighed. “Mijnheer, please do not tell me how to conduct police routine. All those things are of course being followed up, plus depth interviews with everyone who might have seen the man, plus sweat analysis of the clothes, plus all other means of identification. I am assuming this man was a professional, and therefore those means will not succeed. So we approach it from the other direction. Who are your enemies, and what are you doing in Rotterdam?”

  “I don’t think I have any enemies. Business rivals, maybe, but they don’t assassinate people.”

  He waited patiently, so I added, “As to what I’m doing in Rotterdam, I think that’s quite well known. My business interests include some share in the exploitation of some Heechee artifacts.”

  “This is known,” he said, not quite so patient.

  I shrugged. “So I am a party in a suit at the International Palace of Justice.”

  The commissaris opened one of his desk drawers, peered inside, and slammed it again moodily. “Mijnheer Broadhead,” he said, “you have had many meetings here in Rotterdam not connected with this suit, but instead with the question of terrorism. You wish it stopped.”

  “We all want that,” I said, but the feeling in my belly was not just my degenerating pipes. I had thought I was being very secretive.

  “We all want it, but you are doing something about it, Mijnheer. Therefore I believe you now do have enemies. The enemies of us all. The terrorists.” He stood up and offered us the door. “So while you are in my jurisdiction I will see that you have police protection. After that, I can only urge caution, for I believe you are in danger from them.”

  “Everybody is,” I said.

  “Everybody is at random, yes. But you are now a particular case.”

  Our hotel had been built in the palmy days, for big-spending tourists and the jet-set rich. The best suites were decorated for their tastes. Not always for ours. Neither Essie nor I was into straw mats and wood-block pillows, but the management moved all that out and moved in the right kind of bed. Round and huge. I was looking forward to getting a lot of use out of it. Not so much use out of the lobby, which was a kind of architecture I hated: cantilevered walkways, more fountains than Versailles, so many mirrors that when you looked up you thought you were in outer space. Through the good offices of the commissaris, or anyway of the young cop he sent to escort us home, we were spared that. We were whisked through a service entrance, up a padded elevator that smelled of room-service food, to our own landing, where there had been a change in the decoration. Just across from our suite door there was a marble Winged Venus in the stairwell. Now it had a companion in a blue suit, a perfectly ordinary-looking man, studiously not meeting my eye. I looked at the cop escorting us. She grinned in embarrassment, nodded to her colleague in the stairwell, and closed the door behind us.

  We were a particular case, all right.

  I sat down and regarded Essie. Her nose was still somewhat swollen, but it did not seem to trouble her. Still, “Maybe you ought to go to bed,” I suggested.

  She looked at me with tolerant affection. “For a bloodied nose, Robin? How very foolish you are. Or do you have some more interesting project in mind?”

  It is a true tribute to my dear wife that as soon as she brought the subject up, my damaged day and my damaged colon to the contrary notwithstanding, I did indeed have something in mind. After twenty-five years you would think that even sex would begin to get boring. My data-retrieval friend Albert had told me about studies of laboratory animals that proved that that was inevitable. Male rats were left with their mates and their frequency of intercourse measured. There was a steady decline over time. Boredom. Then they took away the old mates and introduced new ones. The rats perked up and went to it with a will. So this was established scientific fact—for rats—but I guess that I am not, at least in that sense, a rat. In fact, I was enjoying myself quite a lot when, without warning, someone shoved a dagger right into my belly.

  I couldn’t help it. I yelled.

  Essie pushed me away. She sat up swiftly, calling for Albert in Russian. Obediently his hologram sprang into life. He squinted toward me and nodded. “Yes,” he said, “please, Mrs. Broadhead, place Robin’s wrist against the dispenser on the bedside table.”

  I was b
ent double, hugging myself against the pain. For a moment I thought I was going to vomit, but what was in my gut was too bad to be expelled so easily. “Do something!” cried Essie, frantically pulling me to her bare breast as she pressed my arm against the table.

  “I am already doing it, Mrs. Broadhead,” said Albert, and as a matter of fact I could appreciate the sudden sense of numbness as the injection needle force-sprayed something into my arm. The pain receded and became bearable. “You are not to be unduly alarmed, Robin,” Albert said kindly, “nor you, Mrs. Broadhead. I have been anticipating this sudden ischemic pain for some hours. It is only a symptom.”

  “Damn arrogant program,” cried Essie, who had written him, “symptom of what?”

  “Of the beginning of the final rejection process, Mrs. Broadhead. It is not yet critical, especially as I am already administering medication along with the analgesia. Still, I propose surgery tomorrow.”

  I was feeling better enough already to sit up on the edge of the bed. I traced with my toe the design of arrows pointing toward Mecca that had been worked into the rug for long-gone big-spending oil magnates and said, “What about tissue match?”

  “That has been arranged, Robin.”

  I let go of my stomach experimentally. It didn’t explode. “I have a lot of appointments tomorrow,” I pointed out.

  Essie, who had been rocking me gently, let go and sighed. “Obstinate man! Why put off? Could have had transplant weeks ago and all this nonsense not necessary.”

  “I didn’t want to,” I explained, “and anyway, Albert said there was time.”

  “Was time! Oh, of course, was time. Is that reason to use time all up with fiddling and faddling until, oh, sorry, suddenly unexpected event takes place and time is all gone and you die? Like you warm and alive, Robin, not Here After program!”

  I nuzzled her with my nose and chin. “Sick man! Get away from me!” she snarled, but did not draw away. “Huh! You feel better now.”

  “Quite a lot better.”

  “Good enough to talk sensibly and make appointment with hospital?”

  I blew in her ear. “Essie,” I said, “I positively will, but not right this minute, because, if I remember correctly, you and I have some unfinished business. Not Albert, though. So you will please turn yourself off, old friend.”

  “Certainly, Robin.” He grinned and disappeared. But Essie held me off, staring into my face for a long time before she shook her head.

  “You Robin,” she said. “You want me to write you as Here After program?”

  “Not a bit,” I said, “and actually, right now that’s not what I want to discuss.”

  “Discuss!” she scoffed. “Ha, I know how you discuss…All I wanted to say is, if I do write you, Robin, you bet in some ways I write you much different!”

  It had been quite a day. It was not surprising that I didn’t remember certain unimportant details. My secretary program remembered, of course, and so I got a hint when the service door to the butler’s pantry opened and a procession of room-service waiters came in with dinner. Not for two. For four.

  “Oh, my God,” said Essie, striking her forehead with the back of her hand. “Your poor friend with face like frog, Robin, you have invited for dinner! And look at you! Bare feet! Sitting in underwear! Nekulturny indeed, Robin. Go and dress at once!”

  I stood up, because there was no use arguing, but I argued anyway. “If I’m in my underwear, what about you?”

  She gave me a scathing look. Actually, she wasn’t in her underwear; she was wearing one of those Chinese things slit up the side. It looked as much like a dress as it did a nightgown, and she used it interchangeably for both.

  “In case of Nobel laureate,” she said reprovingly, “what one wears is defining what is proper. Also have showered and you have not, so do so, for you smell of sexual activity—and, oh, my God,” she added, cocking an ear to sounds at the door, “I think are here already!”

  I headed for the bathroom as she went for the door, and lingered long enough to hear sounds of argument. The least expert of the room-service waiters was listening, too, a frown on his face and his hand reaching unconsciously toward the bulge under his armpit. I sighed, and left it to them, and headed for the bathroom.

  Actually, it wasn’t a bathroom. All by itself it was a bath suite. The tub was big enough for two persons. Maybe for three or four, but I hadn’t been thinking in any numbers higher than two—though it did make me wonder just what those Arab tourists had liked doing in their baths. There was concealed lighting in the tub itself, statuary surrounding it that poured out hot water or cold, a deep pile rug throughout. All the vulgar little things like toilets were in decorous little cubicles of their own. It was fancy, but it was nice. “Albert,” I called, pulling a blouse over my head, and he answered:

  “Yes, Robin?”

  There was no video in the bath, just his voice. I said, “I kind of like this. See if you can get me plans for putting one like this into the place at Tappan Sea.”

  “Certainly, Robin,” he said, “but meanwhile, may I remind you that your guests are waiting?”

  “You may, because you just did.”

  “And also, Robin, you are not to overexert yourself. The medication I gave you will be of purely temporary value, unless—”

  “Turn yourself off,” I ordered, and entered the main reception salon to greet my guests. A table had been set with crystal and china, candles were burning, wine was in a cooler, and the waiters were standing politely at attention. Even the one with the bulge under his arm. “Sorry I kept you waiting, Audee,” I said, beaming at them, “but it’s been a hard day.”

  “Have told them,” said Essie, passing a plate to the young Oriental girl. “Was necessary, as stupid policeman at door considered them likely terrorists, too.”

  “I tried to explain,” grumbled Walthers, “but he didn’t speak any English. Mrs. Broadhead had to sort him out. It’s a good thing you speak Dutch.”

  She shrugged graciously. “Speak Deutsch, speak Dutch. Is same thing, provided one speaks loud. Also,” she said informatively, “is only a state of mind. Tell me, Captain Walthers. You go to speak language, other person does not understand. What do you think?”

  “Well, I think I haven’t said it right.”

  “Ha! Exactly. But I, I think he has not understood it right. This is basic rule for speaking foreign language.”

  I rubbed my belly. “Let’s eat,” I said, and led the way to the table. But I had not failed to notice the look Essie gave me, so I exerted myself to be sociable. “Well, we’re a sad-looking lot,” I said genially, making note of the cast on Walthers’s wrist, the bruise on Yee-xing’s face, Essie’s still puffy nose. “Been punching each other out, have you?”

  As it turned out, that was not tactful, since Walthers promptly informed me that indeed they had, under the influence of the terrorists’ TPT. So we talked about the terrorists for a while. And then we talked about the sad condition the human race had got itself into. It was not a cheerful conversation, especially as Essie decided to get philosophical.

  “What a rotten thing human being is,” she offered, and then reversed herself. “No. Am unjust. One human being can be quite fine, even as fine as we four sitting here. Not perfect. But on a statistical basis out of let us say one hundred chances to display kindness, altruism, decency—all these traits we humans esteem, you see—will in fact perform no fewer than twenty-five of them. But nations? Political groups? Terrorists?” She shook her head. “Out of one hundred chances, zero,” she said. “Or perhaps one, but then, you may be sure, with some trick up sleeve. You see, wickedness is additive. Is perhaps one grain in each human being. But add up quantity of say ten million human beings in even small country or group, equals evil enough to damage entire world!”

  “I’m ready for dessert,” I said, gesturing to the waiters.

  You would think that was a broad enough hint for any guest to take, especially considering that they already knew we’d
had a bad day, but Walthers was obstinate. He lingered over dessert. He insisted on telling me his life’s story, and he kept looking at the waiters, and all in all I was getting quite uncomfortable, not just in the belly.

  Essie says I am not patient with people. Perhaps so. The friends I am most comfortable interacting with are computer programs rather than flesh and blood, and they don’t have feelings to hurt—well, I’m not sure that’s true for Albert. But it is for, say, my secretarial program or my chef. It is certain that I was getting impatient with Audee Walthers. His life had been a dull soap opera. He had lost his wife and his savings. He had made unauthorized use of equipment on the S. Ya. with Yee-xing’s connivance and got her fired. He had spent his last dime to get here to Rotterdam, reason not specified, but clearly it had something to do with me.

  Well, I am not unwilling to “loan” money to a friend down on his luck but, see, I was in no mood. It was not just the fright over Essie or the screwed-up day, or the nagging worry about whether the next nut with a gun would actually get me. There was my damned gut giving me fits. At last I told the waiters to clear off, though Walthers was still lingering over his fourth cup of coffee. I stomped over to the table with the liqueurs and cigars and glowered at him as he followed. “What is it, Audee?” I said, no longer polite. “Money? How much do you need?”

  And I got such a look from him! He hesitated, watching while the last of the waiters filed out through the pantry, and then he let me have it. “It isn’t what I need,” he said, his voice trembling, “it’s what you’re willing to pay for something you want. You’re a real rich man, Broadhead. Maybe you don’t worry about people who stick their asses in a crack for you, but I made the mistake of doing it twice.”