13
At the Halfway Point
To love someone is a grace. To marry someone is a contract. The part of me that loved Essie, was loving her wholeheartedly, sank in pain and terror when she relapsed, surged in fearful joy when she showed signs of recovering. I had plenty of occasion for both. Essie died twice in surgery before I could get home, and again, twelve days later, when they had to go in again. That last time they made her clinically dead on purpose. Stopped heart and breath, kept only the brain alive. And every time they reanimated her I was frightened to think she would live- because if she lived it meant she might die one more time, and I could not stand it. But slowly, painfully, she began to gain weight, and Wilma told me the tide had turned, as when the spiral begins to glow in a Heechee ship at the halfway point and you know you're going to live through the trip. I spent all that time, weeks and weeks of it, hanging around the house, so that when Essie could see me I would be there.
And all that time the part of me that had contracted to be married to her was resenting the bond, and wishing I were free. How do you account for that? That was a good occasion for guilt, and guilt is a feeling that comes readily to me-as my old psychoanalytic program used to tell me all the time. And when I went in to see Essie, looking like a mummy of herself, the joy and worry filled my heart and the guilt and resentment clogged my tongue. I would have given my life to make her well. But that did not seem a practical strategy, or at least I could not see any way to make that deal, and the other guilty and hostile part of me wanted to be free to dwell on lost Kiara, and whether somehow I might find her again.
But she mended, Essie did. She mended fast. The sunken bags of flesh under her eyes filled to be only bruises. The tubes came out of her nostrils. She ate like a pig. Before my very eyes she was filling out, the bust beginning to swell, the hips regaining their power to startle. "My compliments to the doctor," I told Wilma Liederman when I caught her on her way in to see her patient.
She said sourly, "Yes, she's doing fine."
"I don't like the way you said that," I told her. "What's the matter?"
She relented. "Nothing, really, Robin. All her tests are fine. She's in such a hurry, though!"
"That's good, isn't it?'"
"Up to a point it is. And now," she added, "I have to get in to see my patient. Who will be up and about any day now and, maybe, back to normal in a week or two." What good news that was! And how reluctantly I received it.
I went through all those weeks with something hanging over me. Sometimes it seemed like doom, like old Peter Herter blackmailing the world and nothing the world could do to resist it, or like the Heechee stirring into anger as we invaded their complex and private worlds. Sometimes it seemed like golden gifts of opportunity, new technologies, new hopes, new wonders to explore and exploit. You would think that I would distinguish between hopes and worries, right? Wrong. Both scared the hell out of me. As good old Sigfrid used to tell me, I have a great talent not only for guilt but also for worry.
And when you came right down to it, I had some fairly real things to worry about. Not just Essie. When you reach a certain age you have, it seems to me, a right to expect some parts of your life to stay stable. Like what, for instance? Like money, for instance. I was used to a lot of it, and now here was my lawyer program telling me that I had to watch my pennies. "But I promised Hanson Bover a million cash," I said, "and I'm going to pay it. Sell some stock."
"I've sold stock, Robin!" He wasn't angry. He wasn't programmed to be able to be really angry, but he could be wretched and he was.
"So sell some more. What's the best to get rid of?"
"None of it is `best,' Robin. The food mines're down because of the fire. The fish farms still haven't recovered from losing the fingerlings. A month or two from now-"
"A month or two from now isn't when I want the money. Sell." And when I signed him off and called Bover up to find out where to send his million, he actually seemed surprised.
"In view of Gateway Corp's action," he said, "I thought you'd call our arrangement off."
"A deal is a deal," I said. "We can let the legalities hang. They don't mean much while Gateway has preempted me."
He was suspicious immediately. What is it that I do that makes people suspicious of me when I am going miles out of my way to be fair?' "Why do you want to hold off on the legalities?" he demanded, rubbing the top of his head agitatedly-was it sunburned again?
"I don't `want' to," I said, "it just doesn't make any difference. As soon as you lift your injunction Gateway will drop theirs on me."
Alongside Bover's scowling face, my secretary program's appeared. She looked like a cartoon of the Good Angel whispering into Bover's ear, but actually what she was saying was for me: "Sixty seconds until Mr. Herter's reminder," she said.
I had forgotten that old Peter had given us another of his two hour notices. I said to Bover, "It's time to button up for Peter Herter's next jab," and hung up-I didn't really care if he remembered, I only wanted to terminate the conversation. Not much buttoning up was involved. It was thoughtful-no, it was orderly-of old Peter to warn us each time, and then to perform so punctually. But it mattered more to airline pilots and automobus's than to stay-at-homes like me.
There was Essie, however. I looked in to make sure she was not actually being perfused or catheterized or fed. She wasn't.
She was asleep-quite normally asleep, with her dark-gold hair spilling all around her, and gently snoring. And on the way back to my comfortable console chair I felt Peter in my mind.
I had become quite a connoisseur of invasions of the mind. It wasn't any special skill. The whole human race had, over a dozen years, ever since the fool kid, Wan, began his trips to the Food Factory. His were the worst, because they lasted so long and because he shared his dreams with us. Dreams have power; dreams are a kind of released insanity. By contrast, the one light touch we'd had from Janine Herter was nothing, and Peter Herter's precise two-minute doses no worse than a traffic light- you stop a minute, and wait impatiently until it is over, and then you go on your way. All I ever felt from Peter was the way he felt-sometimes the gut-griping of age, sometimes hunger or thirst, once the fading, angry sexual lust of an old man all by himself. As I sat down I remember telling myself that this time was nothing at all. More than anything else, it was like having a little dizzy spell, too much crouching in one position, when you stand up you have to pause a moment until it goes away. But it didn't go away. I felt the blurriness of seeing things with two sets of eyes at once, and the inarticulate anger and unhappiness of the old man-no words; just a sort of tone, as though someone were whispering what I could not quite hear.
It kept on not going away. The blurriness increased. I began to feel detached and almost delirious. That second vision, that is never sharp and clear, began to show things I had never seen before. Not real things. Fantasy things. Women with beaks like birds of prey. Great glittering metal monsters rolling across the inside of my eyelids. Fantasies. Dreams.
The two-minute measured dose of reminder had gone off track. The son of a bitch had fallen asleep in the cocoon.
Thank God for the insomnia of old men! It didn't last eight hours, not much more than one.
But they were sixty-odd unpleasant minutes. When I felt the unwanted dreams slide tracelessly out of my mind, and was sure they were gone, I ran to Essie's room. She was wide awake, leaning back against the pillows. "Am all right, Robin," she said at once. "Was an interesting dream. Nice change from my own."
"I'll kill the old bastard," I said.
Essie shook her head, grinning up at me. "Not practical," she said.
Well, maybe it wasn't. But as soon as I had satisfied myself that Essie was all right, I called for Albert Einstein: "I want advice. Is there anything that can be done to stop Peter Herter?"
He scratched his nose.
"You mean by direct action, I assume. No, Robin. Not by any means available now."
"I don't want to be told th
at! There must be something!"
"Sure thing, Robin," he said slowly, "but I think you're asking the wrong program. Indirect measures might work. As I understand it, you have some legal questions unresolved. If you could resolve them, you might be able to meet Herter's demands and stop him that way."
"I've tried that! It's the other way around, damn it! If I could get Herter to stop, then maybe I could get Gateway Corp to give me back control. Meanwhile he's screwing up everybody's mind, and I want it stopped! Isn't there some kind of interference we could broadcast?"
Albert sucked his pipe. "I don't think so, Rob," he said at last. "I don't have a great deal to go on."
That startled me. "You don't remember what it feels like?"
"Robin," he said patiently, "I don't feel anything. It is important for you to remember that I am only a computer program. And not the right program, really, to discuss the exact nature of the signals from Mr. Herter-your psychoanalytic program might be more helpful. Analytically I know what happened-I have all the measurements of the radiation involved. Experientially, nothing. Machine intelligence is not affected. Every human being experienced something, I know because there are reports to say so. There is evidence that the larger-brained mammals-primates, dolphins, elephants-were also disturbed; and maybe other mammals were too, although the evidence is sketchy. But I have not experienced it directly. . . . As to broadcasting an interfering pattern, yes, perhaps that could be done. But what would be the effect, Robin? Bear in mind that the interfering signal would come from a nearby point, not one twenty-five light-days away; if Mr. Herter can cause some disorientation, what would a random signal do at close range?"
"It would be bad, I guess."
"Sure thing, Robin. Probably worse than you guess, but I could not say without experimentation. The subjects would have to be human beings, and such experiments I cannot undertake."
Over my shoulder Essie's voice said proudly, "Yes, you exactly cannot, as who would know better than I?"
She had come up behind me without a sound, barefoot in the thick rug. She wore a neck-to-ankle robe and her hair was done up in a turban. "Essie, what the hell are you doing out of bed?" I demanded.
"My bed has become excessively tedious," she said, kneading my ear in her fingers, "especially occupied alone. Do you have plans for this evening, Robin? Because, if invited, I would like to share yours."
"But-" I said, and, "Essie-" I said, and what I wanted to say was either "You shouldn't be doing this yet!" or "Not in front of the computer!" She didn't give me a chance to decide which. She leaned down to press her cheek against mine, perhaps so that I might feel how round and full it had once again become.
"Robin," she said sunnily, "I am far more well than you believe. You may ask the doctor, if you wish. She will tell you how very rapidly I have healed." She turned her head to kiss me quickly and added, "I have some affairs of my own for the next few hours. Please continue chatting with your program until then. I am sure Albert has many interesting things to tell you, isn't that so, Albert?"
"Sure thing, Mrs. Broadhead," the program agreed, puffing cheerfully on his pipe.
"So, then. It's settled." She patted my cheek and turned away, and I have to say that as she walked back to her room she did not in the least look unwell. The robe was not tight, but it was shaped to her body, and the shape of her body was really fine. I could not believe that the wadding of bandage all along her left side was gone, but there was no sign of it.
Behind me, my science program coughed. I turned back, and he was puffing on his pipe, his eyes twinkling.
"Your wife is looking very well, Robin," he said, nodding judiciously.
"Sometimes, Albert," I said, "I don't know just how anthropomorphic you are. Well. What very interesting things do you want to tell me about?"
"Whatever you want to hear, Robin. Shall I continue on the subject of Peter Herter? There are some other possibilities, such as the abort mode. That is, setting aside for the moment the legal complications, it would be possible to command the shipboard computer, known as `Vera', to explode the fuel tanks on the orbital craft."
"Hell it would! We'd destroy the greatest treasure we've ever found!"
"Sure thing, Robin, and it's even worse than that. The chance of an external explosion damaging the installation Mr. Herter is using is quite small. It might only anger him. Or strand him there, to do as he chooses, as long as he lives."
"Forget it! Don't you have anything good to tell me about?"
"As a matter of fact, Robin," he grinned, "I do. We've found our Rosetta stone." He shrank away to a dwindling spray of colored flecks and disappeared. As a luminous spindle-shaped mass of lavender color replaced him in the tank, he said, "That is the image of the beginning of a book."
"It's blank!"
"I haven't started it yet," he explained. The shape was taller than I, and about half as thick as it was tall. It began to shift before my eyes; the color thinned out until I could see through it clearly and then one, two, three dots began to appear inside it, points of bright red light that spun themselves out in a spiral. There was a sad chittering sound, like telemetry or like the amplified chirps of marmosets. Then the picture froze. The sound stopped. Albert's voice said:
"I have stopped it at this point, Robin. It is probable that sound is language, but we have not yet been able to isolate semantic units from it. However, the `text' is clear. There are one hundred thirty-seven of those points of light. Now watch while I run a few more seconds of the book."
The spiral of 137 tiny stars doubled itself. Another coil of dots lifted itself from the original and floated to the top of the spindle, where it hung silently. The chitter of language began again and the original spiral expanded itself, while each of the dots began to trace a spiral of its own. When it was finished there was one large spiral, composed of 137 smaller spirals, each composed of 137 dots. Then the whole red pattern turned orange and it froze.
"Do you want to try to interpret that, Robin?'" Albert's voice asked.
"Well, I can't count that high. But it looks like 137 times 137, right?"
"Sure thing, Robin. 137 squared, making 18,769 dots in all. Now watch."
Short green lines slashed the spiral into ten segments. One of the segments lifted itself off, dropped to the bottom of the spindle and turned red again. "That's not exactly a tenth of the number, Robin," said Albert. "By counting you find that there are now 1840 dots at the bottom. I'll proceed." Once again, the central figure changed color, this time to yellow. "Notice the top figure." I looked closely, and saw that the first dot had turned orange, the third yellow. Then the central figure rotated itself on the vertical axis and spun out a three-D column of spirals, and Albert said, "We now have a total of 137 cubed dots in the central figure. From here on," he said kindly, "it gets a little tedious to watch. I'll run it through quickly." And he did, patterns of dots flying around and isolating themselves, colors changing through yellow to avocado, avocado to green, green to aqua, aqua to blue, and on through the spectrum, nearly twice. "Now, do you see what we have? Three numbers, Robin. 137 in the center. 1840 down at the bottom. 137 to the eighteenth power, which is roughly the same as 10 to the thirty-eighth, at the top. Or, in order, three dimensionless numbers: the fine structure constant, the ratio of the proton to the electron and the number of particles in the universe. Robin, you have just had a short course in particle theory from a Heechee teacher!"
I said, "My God."
Albert reappeared on the screen, beaming. "Exactly, Robin," he said.
"But Albert! Does that mean you can read all the prayer fans?"
His face fell. "Only the simple ones," he said regretfully. "This was actually the easiest. But from now on it's quite straightforward. We play every fan and tape it. We look for correspondences. We make semantic assumptions and test them in as many contexts as we can find-we'll do it, Robin. But it may take some time."
"I don't want to take time," I snarled.
"Sure thin
g, Robin, but first every fan must be located, and read, and taped, and coded for machine comparison, and then-"
"I don't want to hear," I said. "Just do it-what's the matter?"
His expression had changed. "It's a question of funding, Robin," he said apologetically. "There's a great deal of machine time involved here."
"Do it! As far as you can go. I'll have Morton sell some more stock. What else have you got?"
"Something nice, Robin," he grinned, shrinking in size until he was just a little face in the corner of the tank. Colors flowed in the center of the display and fused into a set of Heechee controls, displaying a pattern of color on five of the ten panels. The others were blank. "Know what that is, Robin? That's a composite of all the known Gateway flights that wound up at Heechee Heaven. All the patterns you see are identical in all seven known missions. The others vary, but it's a pretty good conjecture that they are not directly involved in course-setting."
"What are you saying, Albert?" I demanded. He had caught me by surprise. I found that I was beginning to shake. "Do you mean if we set ship controls for that pattern we could get to Heechee Heaven?"
"Point nine five yes, Robin," he nodded. "And I have identified three ships, two on Gateway and one on the Moon, that will accept that setting."
I put on a sweater and walked down to the water. I didn't want to hear any more.
The trickle pipes had been busy. I kicked my shoes off to feel the damp, pilowy grass and watched some boys, wind-trolling for perch, near the Nyack shore, and I thought: This is what I bought by risking my life on Gateway. What I paid for with Kiara's.
And: Do I want to risk all this, and my life, again?
But it wasn't really a question of "want to". If one of those ships would go to Heechee Heaven and I could buy or steal a passage on it, I would go.
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Page 23