The Annals of the Heechee

by Frederik Pohl

  The three of them continued to spend more time with each other than with any of the three hundred-odd other students, though Harold hated it when Sneezy and Oniko insisted on spending hours on end with the databases. “My God,” he complained, “do you think you have to learn everything there is to know?”

  “We like it,” Oniko said simply. Harold spread his hands in resignation. But then he trailed after them to the study rooms and, having nothing better to do, studied on his own. To everyone’s astonishment his grades began to climb.

  Apart from lonesomeness and the troublesome dreams, Sneezy rather liked school. The beach was neat, once you got used to being in water; the sportsthing contrived a sort of harness of floats that Sneezy could wear, and before long he was swimming with the best of them. The classes were interesting. The other students were at least tolerable, if not warmly friendly. And the island was beautiful, if filled with curious and sometimes worrisome things. For example, there was the meadow just above the school. Large horned ruminants grazed there. When Sneezy looked them up in the databases, he discovered they were called “cattle,” and when he found out what cattle were generally raised for, he was appalled. Sneezy had spent all four of his years on the Watch Wheel resolutely not thinking about where his human schoolmates preferred to get their protein. Now he was confronted with the mooing, defecating source of roasts and hamburgers themselves. Disgusting! Ninety-five percent of Sneezy’s diet, like that of any proper Heechee, came from frozen cometary gases—or from any other handy source of the four basic elements of human nutrition, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Add a few trace elements, and CHON-food could be made into anything you liked. It was cheap. It was maximally nutritious, being manufactured for all dietary requirements. And it did not require murdering anything that could feel pain.

  Half the school’s meals were CHON, anyway. There was a Food Factory afloat in the shallow seas off the neighbor island of Tahiti, sucking its basic raw materials out of the sea and the air. But human children, like human adults, seemed actually to relish the thought that the bloody “steaks” they ate actually came from living animals—though not, to be sure, the ones on the pasture just above the school, because they were a prize herd devoted to special ends.

  He didn’t discuss those ends with his schoolmates. That was fortunate for Sneezy, for raising animals to eat (he would have discovered) was not after all the most repellent use that could be made of them.

  In Sneezy’s second month on the island of Moorea two good things happened.

  The first was that his cocoon arrived and was installed in his dormitory cubicle, so that from then on he could snuggle down into soft, burrowable clumps of foam and pull a lid over his head to sleep, like any proper Heechee. It caused a fair amount of joking from his dormitory mates, but Sneezy tolerated that all right. It didn’t seem to stop the dreams, either; but it was a vast improvement over the sterile and unwelcoming sheets and blankets the poor human kids had to put up with.

  The second thing was that the principal of the school discovered how ill adjusted the regular medical program was for a Heechee child, and went to the trouble of acquiring a more suitable one. The new program took the form of a handsome young Heechee male, copper-skinned and deep-eyed. It had a centimeter of down atop its smooth skull, and its shoulder and neck tendons twitched amiably as it greeted Sneezy. He liked the new docthing very much on first encounter, and when it came time for the second he actually looked forward to it. Oniko was scheduled for her checkup at the same time. Sneezy helped her carefully through the narrow hall, though with her cane she was reasonably able to get along by herself by now, and greeted the nursething cheerfully.

  To the surprise of both of them, the nurse conducted them into a single room. Sneezy’s young Heechee and Oniko’s middle-aged human female were seated together at a desk, and there were two chairs for the children.

  “We thought we would talk to you together,” said Oniko’s docthing—in Heechee!—“because you have a lot in common.”

  “You both have the same sort of dreams,” the Heechee figure chimed in. “Tiny luminous creatures buzzing around you, even stinging you. But never really causing you pain.”

  “And they go on and on,” said the female thing.

  “That’s true,” said Sneezy, looking at Oniko. She nodded.

  “And neither of you seems to take much interest in sports,” the female added. “I can understand that about you, Oniko, since you are still not quite physically strong enough for much exertion. But you, Sternutator, are in excellent physical condition. And neither of you even watch them on the PV, do you? Not football, baseball, jai alai, anything at all.”

  “I think they are quite boring, yes,” Sneezy admitted.

  “Listen to yourself, Sternutator,” said the Heechee docthing. “Do you sound like a ten-year old?”

  “He sounds normal enough to me,” sniffed Oniko. The female nodded.

  “By your standards, yes,” it said. “You both seem to have extremely adult interests. We’ve checked your data-retrieval logs. We can understand that each of you has spent many hours learning all you can about the Foe. To be sure, anyone might do that—they are certainly important to us all! Still, very few of your schoolmates seem so motivated in this area. But why do you have such an interest in a faster-than-light transportation, Oniko?”

  She looked puzzled. “It’s just interesting, I guess. Isn’t everybody interested in that?”

  “Not to the same extent, nor in such alien races as the Sluggards, the Quancies, and the Voodoo Pigs.”

  “But they’re kind of funny,” Oniko said defensively.

  “Yes,” said the Heechee docthing, taking over. “And the subjects that most interest you, Sternutator, are also both amusing and quite important, I would say. The locations of Heechee outposts and depots; the history of Heechee exploration; the principles involved in penetrating black holes. But you see, Sternutator, even a perfectly normal curiosity, when carried to extremes, can be—Excuse me,” it said suddenly, glancing at the female beside it. And the female said, with an abrupt change of tone:

  “Children, there is a very important news broadcast coming in. The principal wishes every student to see it, so we will terminate this interview to display it.” And the two of them turned around in their chairs to gaze at the wall behind them. It lighted up with a shimmering silvery haze that cleared to display a male human face, expression serious, far larger than life. It was speaking as it appeared:

  “—and here is another part of the decoded message.”

  The face paused, listening, as another voice, disembodied, spoke rapidly in a hurried, mechanical way. It said: “The total number of species presently existing in the Galaxy which are either already technologically capable or give indications of possible future development to that stage is eleven. Only three of these have mastered interstellar flight, and one of the three uses only Einstein-limited propulsion systems. Two of the remainder may achieve spaceflight within the next few centuries. The others are tool users in varying stages of development.”

  The voice died, and the face, eyes narrowed in concern, said: “The entire message, when slowed to normal speaking speed, is estimated to run more than nine hours. Only a few portions of it have as yet been rerecorded for real-time study. However, for the benefit of those who may just have joined us, the message was in the form of a burst transmission which lasted only one point oh oh eight three seconds. The origin of the transmission has not yet been established, except that it was fed into the Earth satellite transmission net and beamed in the direction of the kugelblitz, apparently from Tokyo Tower. All landlines feeding into the Tower are now being investigated.” The face paused, gazing steely-eyed out at its audience. “Of course, no transmissions at FTL velocities in the direction of the Watch Wheel or the kugelblitz are permitted, under the emergency rules laid down by the Joint Assassin Watch more than ten weeks ago.”

  A movement beside Sneezy shook him out of the stari
ng trance the broadcast had caused. He looked around. Oniko had got out of her chair and was hobbling out the door.

  “Excuse me,” Sneezy muttered, and followed. Outside, Oniko was leaning against the wall, sobbing.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded in alarm. “It’s—well, certainly it’s scary, but it could be just some technical error, or a practical joker, or—”

  “Oh, Sneezy,” the girl wailed. “Don’t you see?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, but she rushed on: “That message, do you know what it was? It was part of my diary!”

  10

  In Deep Time

  Cassata was doing his dreamy, draggy two-step with his eyes closed and the little Oriental woman’s head on his shoulder. Incredible! She looked exactly like a normal human being with any human’s common sense, and yet she was actually cuddling up to the man! I snarled, “Cassata, what the hell is going on?”

  He gave me a peculiar look. I don’t know how else to describe it. It wasn’t apologetic, it wasn’t arrogant. What it seemed to be was—I don’t know—maybe the word is “doomed.” To be sure, he was. What was waiting for him when he got back to his meat-time original was termination, but he’d known that for a long time and he hadn’t looked that way. He seemed to be waiting for an ax to fall.

  He courteously released his partner, kissed her forehead, and turned to me. “You want to talk to me,” he said.

  “Damn-eye right I—”

  He headed me off. “I suppose we might as well,” he sighed, “but not here. Not your ship, either. Something nice. Something I can enjoy.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him how little I cared what he enjoyed, but Albert was ahead of me. “The Rue de la Paix, perhaps, General Cassata? A little open-air café along the Left Bank?”

  “Something like that would be fine,” Cassata agreed…and there we were, seated around a metal table on a sunny boulevard, under a striped umbrella that advertised an aperitif, while a white-aproned waiter was taking our orders.

  “Nice choice, Albert,” Cassata said appreciatively, but I was having none of that.

  “Cut the crap,” I barked. “Why’ve you blacked out all Earthside radio?”

  Cassata picked a Campari-soda off the waiter’s tray and sniffed at it thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” he said, and added, “yet.”

  “But you know why you embargoed my ship!”

  “Oh, yes, Robin. It was an order.”

  “And embargoing ship from core?” Essie put in, not waiting her turn—I was nowhere near through with Cassata. He shrugged. That was all Essie needed. She gave him a killing look, then turned one on me. “You believe this? Even Heechee Ancient Ancestors must report first to JAWS! Then will see if rest of us are grown-up enough to hear before releasing data!”

  Cassata repeated, “Orders.” Then he took a better look at Essie and said placatingly, “It’s only a technicality, Mrs. Broadhead.”

  “Stupid technicality! Robin? Send order off to Institute; these uncultured clowns don’t deserve cooperation.”

  “Well, now, wait a minute,” he said hastily, doing his best to be agreeable. “This is just an emergency measure. Later on, I’m sure that if you and Robinette want to access any of the information there’s not going to be any difficulty—I mean, real difficulty; but they have to be debriefed by the Joint Assassin Watch Service before any public disclosure, of course.”

  “Not ‘of course’! No ‘of course’ involved!” She turned to me, eyes blazing. “Robin, tell this soldier man is not a question of personal favor for you and me, is information which belongs to all.”

  I said, “It’s information which belongs to everybody, Cassata.”

  Essie wasn’t letting it go at that. “Tell him, Robin!” she snapped, so fiercely that the passersby on the Rue de la Paix glanced at us curiously. They weren’t real, of course, just part of the surround, but when Essie programs surrounds, she goes all the way. One pretty little dark woman seemed fascinated by us—more so than you would have expected from mere stage dressing. I took a second look, and it was the woman Cassata had been dancing with; evidently Cassata had left a trail of bread crumbs so she could sneak into our new surround.

  I stepped up the voltage. I told him, “You don’t have a choice. Look, Cassata, this isn’t a question of classifying material so an enemy won’t get it. There aren’t any enemies on this matter except the Foe themselves. Do you think we’re spying for them?”

  “No, of course not,” he said unhappily, trying to please. “But these are high-level orders.”

  “We’re high-level people!”

  He gave me one of those I-just-work-here shrugs. “Of course you are, only—” He paused, having caught a glimpse of the young woman in the fringe of the crowd. He shook his head at her; she grinned, blew him a kiss, and ducked away.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Friend of mine; I told her this was a private meeting. What were you saying?”

  I snarled, “You know damn well what I was saying!” And I would have gone on, but Cassata’s expression suddenly changed.

  He wasn’t listening to me anymore. His face froze. His eyes were vacant, as though hearing something none of the rest of us could hear.

  And indeed he was, for I recognized the look. It was the way someone in machine storage looks when he is being told something on a private band. I even had a pretty good idea of what he was going to say. He frowned, shook himself, looked around vacantly for a moment, and then said it.

  “Oh, shit,” said General Julio Cassata.

  I felt Essie’s hand slip into mine. She knew something bad was coming, too. “Tell us!” I demanded.

  He sighed a deep sigh. “I’ve got to get back to JAWS,” he said. “Give me a lift, will you?”

  That time he surprised me. The first thing I said was only a reflexive, “What?” And then I got better organized. “You change your mind pretty fast, Cassata! First you tell me to stay away entirely, then you freeze my ship—”

  “Forget that,” he said impatiently. “It’s a new ball game. I have to get there right away, and you’ve got the fastest ship. Will you take me?”

  “Well—Maybe, but—But what—”

  He said, “I just got word. The blackout isn’t an exercise. It’s real. I think the Foe have a base on Earth.”

  To give a machine-stored intelligence like General Cassata (or, for that matter, me) a lift somewhere doesn’t take much space. All you have to do is take the storage chip, fan, tape, or cube and put it in the ship, and away you go. Cassata was in a hurry. He had a workthing moving it even as he asked me for permission, and as it reached the hatch we buttoned down and went.

  Total elapsed time for the transfer, less than three minutes.

  Long enough.

  I didn’t waste the three minutes. While we were waiting the long, long time for the workthing to get from one bay to another, I was paying my last respects to a lost love.

  It didn’t take long. The word of the blackout had reached even the meat people by now, and those stone-statue folks were drifting toward the PV plate, where a news program was telling the asteroid that all radio communication had been cut off.

  My doppel was standing well back from the others, looking unhappy. I saw why at once. There was Klara, and there was her—her husband—and they were holding each other tighter than ever.

  I wished…

  I wished mostly (or at least, most reasonably) that I had had a chance to know Harbin Eskladar better. Strange that Klara should have married a former terrorist! Strange that she should ever have married anyone but me, I thought—

  And then I thought, Robin, old sod, you’d better get out of this. And I zapped myself back to the True Love and zipped myself in, and we were gone.

  “Robin! Come look!” cried Essie, and I swooped into the control room to do as I was ordered. Julio Cassata was looking hangdog and depressed under the viewscreen, and Essie was pointing at it with fury. “Warships!” she cried. “Look, Robin! Trigger-h
appy JAWS is getting ready to wipe out world!”

  Cassata glowered at me. “Your wife’s driving me crazy,” he said. I didn’t look at him. I was looking at the screen. In that first moment before we went into FTL drive the screens had picked up the JAWS satellite, a hundred thousand kilometers away; even in our far-out orbit it was almost hidden by the bulge of the Earth, but I could see that JAWS was not alone. Midges swarmed around it.

  Ships. Essie was right. Warships.

  Then we were moving into FTL. The screen clouded, and Cassata protested: “They’re not going to attack anything. They’re just a precaution.”

  “Precaution to send out whole fleet with weapons ready,” Essie scolded. “Of such precautions are wars made!”

  “Would you rather have us do nothing?” he demanded. “Anyway, you’ll be there soon. You can complain right to him if you want to—I mean—”

  He stopped, looking glum again; because of course the “him” was himself, in his meat version.

  But he was right. “We right well will complain,” I told him. “Starting with why this ‘message’ was kept secret from us.”

  Albert coughed politely. “It wasn’t, Robin,” he said.

  Cassata chimed in belligerently, “You see! You’re always going off half-cocked. The whole message was broadcast in burst transmission, just as it was received first time out. I’ll bet Albert recorded it.”

  Albert said apologetically, “It was only a sort of synoptic report on everything about the Heechee and the human race, Robin. There’s nothing in it that you couldn’t find in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and so on.”

  “Hah,” said Essie, still disgruntled, but she stopped there. She thought for a moment. Then she shrugged. “You fellows, you help yourself to drinks et cetera,” she said, remembering her duties as a hostess. “Me, I go listen to this burst for self.”

  I started to follow, because Essie’s company on the worst day of her life was still better than Julio Cassata’s, but he stopped me. “Robin,” he said, “I didn’t want to say anything while she was here—”