The Boy Who Would Live Forever

by Frederik Pohl

  “Distance to place you are going,” Salt explained. “Me? With you? No, I do not go. How could I? Must return to proper duties.”

  With that she was gone into the crowd, while the Heechee pair mounted the vehicle, perching themselves at the posts in the rear, gesturing Stan and Estrella to the ones in front. “I’m not sitting on those things!” Estrella announced. She didn’t, either, but as soon as she climbed on board the cart started up anyway, leaving the two humans to clutch the perches for support.

  They kept on doing so for the next while. Making an odd whining sound, the vehicle dived almost at once down an incline and into a broad, well lighted tunnel. Ahead of them three or four other three-wheelers led the way, all their occupants turning to stare at Stan and Estrella, and twice that number followed behind.

  How long they traveled Stan could not say. They were out in the open for a while (bright mountains ahead, green woods around), then back underground. Side tunnels flashed by, and were ignored. One or two of the following carts peeled away, and were replaced by three or four new ones. The lighting, which had been blue and green at the beginning, changed to green and gold, then gold and red, then back to blue and green again. “I think I’m going to be carsick,” Estrella muttered in Stan’s ear, as she hung onto the perch for dear life.

  “Please don’t,” he implored her. “We’re bound to get there soon.” Then, happily, they did. Without warning the vehicle dove itself into a side tunnel like every other side tunnel they had passed. Then up a ramp, this one winding in a tight corkscrew up a couple of levels, until it stopped at a turn in the screw like every other. The female Heechee behind them rose gracefully from her perch. “You get out now,” she said. “Is where you to be living.”

  And when they obeyed, the female sat again, the tiller turned and they were gone.

  “I didn’t know she spoke English,” Estrella said, gazing after them.

  “More important,” said Stan, eyeing the knobless, latchless door, “is, how do we get in?”

  That turned out to be easy enough. Estrella pointed out a sort of pad next to the faintly gleaming door, but when Stan pressed it all that resulted was a distant hoarse braying from the other side of the door—some kind of doorbell, perhaps. But as soon as Stan touched the door itself it slid open, and the way to their new home was clear.

  They looked around wonderingly. What was on the other side of the door wasn’t a single room. It was several rooms—from the doorway they couldn’t tell quite how many—and through another door they could just see the corner of what appeared to be a balcony, drenched in sunlight. “Wow, Stan,” Estrella breathed. “It’s big. And it’s ours!”

  “Big” was something new for Stan and Estrella, neither of whom had been used to luxury. For Stan the height of comfort had been sharing a bed with Oltan Kusmeroglu in his parents’ apartment. Estrella had never been quite that pampered. So what they found on Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four was a new high in hedonism. The floor space of their apartment had to be over a hundred square meters, and Stan guessed—or hoped—they wouldn’t have to share it with anyone else.

  The furnishings, of course, did seem a bit odd, not even counting the fact that most of the rooms had no windows. They hadn’t expected anything intended for human beings, to be sure. What they found was what they had expected. They had been left a heap of more than a dozen rolls of the sleep vegetation, enough to fill the space between the prongs of every Heechee perch in the apartment. They weren’t going to have to sleep on any of those rolls, either. Instead, they had been provided with a pair of constructions built like a litter box for very large cats, filled with fresh-cut slips of foliage. That was the way every Heechee wanted his own bedroom furnished, Estrella told Stan; the rolls they had been used to in the ship were only for travel, the Heechee equivalent of sleeping bags.

  In all there were five rooms—well, Stan called them rooms, although in some cases the only division between one and the next was a quite transparent curtain. (The room that held the bodily waste disposers did have a sliding door.) Two were bedrooms, or at least vegetation-box rooms. One of the others held several of those built-in desks and screens with the flower-pot receptacles for Heechee books, and the fifth, the smallest, had walls with a dozen Heechee lookplates staring blankly out at them.

  “Any idea how to turn them on?” Stan asked, knowing what the answer would be, and getting it. “Okay, then. Any idea how we go about getting something to eat?”

  He got the predicted answer to that, too, but when he turned to look Estrella was out on the balcony. He heard her gasp. “Come on out here, will you?” she asked.

  When he stepped out onto the balcony he discovered a huge backdrop of mirror-bright hills off on the horizon, and saw at once why the Shining Mica Mountains got their name. It was only the tops of the mountains that were bright; on their lower slopes, and in the bright green valley Stan and Estrella were looking down on, there were broad meadows between clusters of trees as tall as redwoods—thus explaining why the name of the planet, too, was quite appropriate. The air smelled good, though not exactly with Earthly smells. The breeze did not smell of pine or fir, nor were the odors all floral. The smells were spicier and friendlier than any terrestrial wood in the experience of either of them, almost like some grandma’s kitchen in pie-baking time.

  But the smells did not divert Stan for long. “Hey,” he said, “look!”

  He was looking at the sky. From the platform they had stood on after leaving the spacecraft he had been vaguely aware of an unusual number of faint stars in the overhead sky. Now they weren’t faint, and there were literally scores of them, in all the colors a proper star could come in: white and blue, yellow and orange, red and a sultry maroon. Off near the horizon Warm Old Star Twenty-Four was getting ready to set, with the pale disk of one of Forested Planet’s tiny moons trailing behind it. “They said there were bunches of stars in the Core,” Stan said, marveling. “I guess I just didn’t know how many bunches.”

  For answer Estrella pressed his hand, then left him to his marveling at—or, better, to his puzzling over—the astronomical display. He didn’t take long to follow, though. The grumbling of his not-sufficiently-recently-filled stomach distracted him from the view.

  When he was back inside, Estrella was nowhere to be seen, but the closed door to the excretions room told him where she was. And reminded him that he needed to do some excreting of his own.

  Estrella was commendably quick. Then Stan’s own excreting didn’t take long, either, although it would have taken less time still if the closing of the door hadn’t immediately plunged him into total dark. He managed, though. When he was finished he felt better in one way, somewhat worse in another—relieving the pressure on his bladder had sharpened the feeling of acute hunger in his belly.

  In this he was not alone. Estrella was fretfully rubbing her own abdomen as she gazed at the walls. “I’m pretty sure there are cupboards in some of those, maybe with food in them. Only I can’t get the damn things open. How about you? Want to try?”

  He did try. Many times, in many different ways, though with only one result: nothing. Tapping the walls, punching them with his fist, yelling at them—it was all the same. If indeed there were storage spaces there he could find no way to reach them.

  Then another problem showed itself.

  The light in the room they were in, never bright because they were a couple of chambers away from the balcony that was the apartment’s only source of illumination, was visibly dimming. It wasn’t taking its time about it, either. The room that had been a little shadowed was now definitely gloomy and getting rapidly more so.

  When Warm Old Star Twenty-Four set it didn’t fool around. One minute there was bright sunshine bouncing off the mica deposits on the mountains, the next the star was dropped below the horizon.

  And abruptly their new little home was plain and simple dark. Like nighttime Earth. Like nighttime Earth on a night when clouds obscured the sky and th
ere were no streetlights, not even houselights, anywhere around. Through the connecting rooms Stan could catch a glimpse of the spectacle that was a night sky in the Core. Glorious it was, too. But as a practical matter, for the sake of trying to get around within their apartment, it was wholly useless.

  “Shit,” Stan muttered.

  Estrella answered only indirectly. “Might as well get some sleep,” she said.

  When Stan agreed she didn’t reply. He couldn’t hear her moving around, either. When he tried reaching out for her, blind-man’s-buff style, he cracked his shins on one of their disappearing tables that hadn’t disappeared. Finally the soft rustle of Heechee sleeping-grasses gave him a clue—helped out, maybe, by his eyes growing partly accustomed to the gloom. But when he got near enough to touch her the sound of her regular breathing told him that she was, or wanted to be thought to be, already asleep.

  He considered waking her, decided against it. He thought he might have brought this disappointment on himself, possibly because he hadn’t carried her over the threshold. But if so, it was too late for amends.

  With some difficulty he found the other sleeping box and climbed into it, hoping, very seriously hoping, that the next day would be better.

  II

  It was, too.

  When he awoke he discovered Estrella up long before him. On one of the tables were a dozen CHON-food packages that hadn’t been there the night before. More than that (so Stan found when he had gulped down a jellied substance that tasted like seafood and a crunchy one that tasted like maple fudge) she had figured out how to use the bathing appliance. Then she had used it to clean not only herself but their whole collection of soiled clothing, the balcony railing now festooned with his and her garments drying rapidly under Warm Old Star Twenty-Four. Stan tried the shower himself, marveling at her cunning. It wasn’t exactly a shower. It was a repeated pulse of bucketsful of tepid water, ten or twenty liters at a time, seconds apart. There wasn’t exactly any soap, either. What there was was a rack of tangled plants, like an elongated windowbox of crabgrass all around the drenching cubicle. Following Estrella’s advice, Stan tore handfuls off to use as washcloths, and discovered that they fizzed and slowly disintegrated in the water, leaving his skin tingly and clean.

  Odd, yes, but it did the job. There didn’t seem to be anything like a towel—because, Stan conjectured, the Heechee didn’t need that sort of thing as water would roll right off their slick, shiny skin. But, although he was still hungry, he was cleaner than he had been for a long time, if wetter, and it elevated his spirits. It seemed to have done something for Estrella’s, too, because when he threw his arms around her in a friendly, if naked, hug she hesitated only a moment before she hugged him back. And then, as his embrace became more intimate, she responded in kind, and the hunger that had just crossed his mind faded away again, replaced by a more urgent need.

  Then it was almost like old times. If a Heechee litterbox wasn’t the ideal arena for having sex, it would do. It did. Then they lay spooned together for a time, Stan’s face buried in Estrella’s hair, and all was well on the Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four.

  Just when he thought she had fallen asleep again, she stirred. She picked up a clump of the vegetation they were lying on and rubbed it between her fingers. She said thoughtfully, “You know, I think we’re supposed to get inside this stuff like the Heechee do, instead of on top of it.”

  He blinked at the back of her head. “What?”

  “They do it because their ancestors were some kind of burrowing animals,” she explained. “Salt told me. It’s probably why they build underground, and dig tunnels on other planets, do you see?”

  “Huh,” Stan said and then, having nothing more urgent to do, pulled her toward him for a kiss. Which might once more have gone farther, but then the doorbell made its not at all bell-like sound, somewhere between a growl and a deep-toned purr, the sort of thing you might expect from a lion waking out of deep sleep.

  When they scrambled into enough clothing to pass in an emergency and opened the door the person standing before them was the Heechee female, Salt. She was holding out a net bag full of food packets. “Here,” she said, handing it to Stan. “For you, these. Is old custom here for first guest in new house to bring gifts of food. Custom is only symbolic, since plenty food always available at dispenser. However,” she added, looking faintly embarrassed, “when I arrive here to be first guest, surprise, place is dark, you both asleep. So I leave gift of food and go. Then I come again also with food—custom unclear regarding such circumstances. You forgive?”

  Of course they forgave, especially when Salt showed them where the “dispenser” was and how to make it dispense food whenever they liked. Which, they found, was easy enough: you simply turned it on and told it, in English, what you wanted. “In English?” Stan demanded suspiciously.

  “Yes, in English of course. Have arranged this for your convenience immediately upon arrival.”

  And how did you turn it on? Why, nothing was simpler. As with the outside door you simply pressed the palm of your hand on the appropriate spot on the wall—Salt showed them where those spots were. “But press carefully,” she urged. “Whole palm in close contact, please. With our people is not so demanding, but did not operate for you at first touching because of excess flesh and lipids in digits obscuring the scan.”

  Stan nodded, grateful to have understood at least one thing. “So the door has a perfect lock, right? Nobody’s going to be able to steal the contents?”

  Salt looked at him uncertainly. “‘Steal?’ Is to say, take without permission? Why anyone would do that?” Then, when Stan didn’t respond: “Now I show you all other things.” And she did, pretty nearly: showed how the same trick would activate the room lights, to any intensity they chose; and the lookplates, producing any number of possible channels to watch; and the wall cupboards—

  In one of which were Stan’s trumpet and Estrella’s flute.

  “Hey,” Stan cried, grabbing for the instrument He inspected it all over and even played a couple of quick riffs before, grinning, he let Salt speak again.

  But by then she had little to say, only, “Let us go to lanai to rest and talk, all right?”

  They did, all three of them appreciatively breathing in the sweet scents of Forested Planet’s forests. Salt studied their faces, then demanded, “Is this not wholly beauteous? We consider it so, very much!”

  “Very beautiful,” Stan said dutifully, but Estrella didn’t chime in as he expected.

  Instead, “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is where all the people are. Didn’t you say this planet was inhabited?”

  “Certainly I said this. It is so, in large numbers.”

  “Then where are all the buildings—homes, factories, anything at all?”

  Salt choked slightly, then said forgivingly, “I forget you not our people. Structures underground, of course.”

  “But this isn’t underground,” Stan objected.

  “Is of course so,” Salt corrected him. “Is on hillside. Balconies only outside. I remember,” she said thoughtfully, “on human world everything stick up into the air. Not here, though. Heechee prefer inside, not outside. Now look more close.” And when Stan squinted he did see somethings that peeped out of the sides of the hills, regularly spaced somethings that did not look natural. “You see? On other hills are other balconies et cetera. Not factories, of course. But places of work, such as my own”—she gestured with a skeletal hand—“down there, behind large tree forest.”

  “And what do you do in your place of work?” Estrella asked.

  Well, that wasn’t answered so readily. In fact, Salt didn’t appear to understand the question; she contorted the muscles of her face, shrugged her whole body and then said, “I help others to do things for persons, others having done things of same sort once for me.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “What is needed to complete their persons.”

  Estrella
frowned. “Do you mean like a school?”

  “School? Not at all school. No.”

  “Then a religious institution?”

  But Salt did not seem to know what a “religious institution” might be, and showed signs of confusion, or as close to human confusion as a Heechee could look. “Do wait,” she ordered, and was silent for a moment—perhaps, Stan thought, communicating with her Stored Mind for advice on what to say to a human who asked difficult questions.

  Then she looked up and changed the subject. “Look above you. Do you see?” she asked. “I indicate those three bright stars there.”

  Puzzled, Stan looked up at the sky. He could see nothing unusual—well, not unusual for this place, anyway, although it was like no earthly sky ever. Warm Old Star Twenty-Four was high in the sky. It wasn’t alone, either. Stan could make out the largest of the planet’s moons tagging after its primary, spectral silver in the blue, blue sky, of course, plus the inevitable sprinkling of daylight stars, at least twelve or fifteen of them in gold and ruby and pale, a sky normal for any planet in the crowded Core. “Which ones?” he asked.

  “There,” Salt said. “Near horizon over Shining Mica Mountains, observe three bright stars in straight-line asterism? Those three. They respectively are called Planetless Huge Blue-White, Planetless Almost As Huge Blue-White and Very Bright Eleven-Planet Yellow, do you see?”

  They were easy enough to see, Stan thought, far brighter than anything of the kind in Earth’s skies. “Yes, of course I see them,” Estrella said, fairly politely. “But what has that to do with what we asked you?”

  “Oh,” Salt said, vaguely, almost humanly, “nothing at all, it is true. I thought simply they would interest you, those particular stars. Can be seen from almost all over Core. Not always as straight-line asterism, of course, depending on line of sight. Used by pilots learning skills as check on course settings sometimes. For self as child learned recognition of a very early age. Sky very familiar to us when children. We look on it with pleasure and reassurance.” And then, without altering her tone, “I offer apology for perhaps-confusing quick change of subject. This had purpose. Purpose was needed considering time. Now, to explain place you ask of, I wish you to know thing I saw, and what then befell.” And stopped there.