"You see, these fundamental constants like the `gosh numbers' determine whether or not life can exist in the universe. Among very many other things, to be sure. But if some of them were a little higher or a little lower, life could not exist. Do you see the logical consequence of that statement? Yes, I think you do. It is a simple syllogism. Major premise, the `gosh numbers' are not fixed by natural law but could have been different if certain different events had taken place at `Point X'. Minor premise, if they were different in certain directions, the universe would be less hospitable to life. Conclusion? Ah, that's the heart of it. Conclusion: If they were different in certain other directions, the universe might be more hospitable to life."
And he stopped talking, and sat regarding me, reaching down into a carpet slipper with one hand to scratch the sole of his foot.
I don't know which of us would have out-waited the other then. I was trying to digest a lot of very indigestible ideas, and old Albert, he was determined to give me time to digest them. Before either of those could happen Paul Hall came trotting into the cubicle I had made my own yelling, "Company! Hey, Robin! We've got visitors!"
Well, my first thought was Essie, of course; we'd talked; I knew she was on her way to the Kennedy launchport at least, even if not actually waiting there for our orbit to settle down and get off. I stared at Paul and then at my watch. "There hasn't been time," I said, because there hadn't.
He was grinning. "Come and see the poor bastards," he chortled.
And that's what they were, all right. Six of them, crammed into a Five. Launched from Gateway less than twenty-four hours after I had taken off from the Moon, carrying enough armament to wipe out a whole division of Oldest Ones, ready to save and profit. They had flown all the way out after Heechee Heaven, reversed course and flown all the way back. Somewhere en route we must have passed them without knowing it. Poor bastards! But they were pretty decent guys, volunteers, taking off on a mission that must have seemed insecure even by Gateway standards. I promised them that they would get a share of the profits- there was plenty to go around. It wasn't their fault that we didn't need them, especially considering how much we might have needed them if we had.
So we made them welcome. Janine proudly showed them around. Wan, grinning and waving his sleep-gun around, introduced them to the gentle Old Ones, placid in the face of this new invasion. And by the time all that settled down I realized that what I needed most was food and sleep, and I took both.
When I woke up the first news I got was that Essie was on her way, but not due for a while yet. I fidgeted around for a while, trying to remember everything Albert had said, trying to make a mental picture of the Big Bang and that critical third-second instant when everything got frozen. . . and not really succeeding. So I called Albert again and said, "More hospitable how?"
"Ah, Robin," he said-nothing ever takes him by surprise- "that's a question I can't answer. We don't even know what all the Machian features of the universe are, but maybe- Maybe," he said, showing by the crinide at the corners of his eyes that he was only guessing to humor me, "maybe immortality? Maybe a faster synaptic speed of an organic brain, i.e., higher intelligence? Maybe only more planets that are suitable for life to evolve? Any of the above. Or all of them. The important thing is that we can theorize that such `more hospitable' features could exist, and that it should be possible to deduce them from a proper theoretical basis. Henrietta went that far. Then she went a little further. Suppose the Heechee (she suggested) learned a little more astrophysics than we, decided what the right features would be-and set out to produce them! How would they go about it? Well, one way would be to shrink the universe back to the primordial state, and start over again with a new Big Bang! How could that happen? If you can create and destroy mass- easy! Juggle it around. Stop the expansion. Start it contracting again. Then somehow stay outside of the point concentration, wait for it to explode again-and then, from outside the monobloc, do whatever had to be done to change the fundamental dimensionless numbers of the universe, so that a new one was born that would be-well, call it heaven."
My eyes were popping. "Is that possible?"
"To you or me? Now? No. Absolutely impossible. Wouldn't have a clue where to begin."
"Not to you or me, dummy! To the Heechee!"
"Ah, Robin," he said mournfully, "who can say? I don't see how, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't. I can't even guess how to manipulate the universe to make it come out right. But that might not be necessary. You have to assume they would have some way of existing, essentially, forever. That's necessary even to do it once. And if forever, why, then you could simply make random changes and see what happened, until you got the universe you wanted."
He took time to look at his cold pipe thoughtfully for a moment, and then put it in his sweatshirt pocket unlit. "That's as far as Henrietta got with her dissertation before they really fell in on her. Because then she said that the `missing mass' might in fact prove that the Heechee had really begun to interfere with the orderly development of the universe-she said they were removing mass from the outer galaxies to make them fall back more rapidly. Perhaps, she thought, they were also adding mass at the center-if there is one. And she said that that might explain why the Heechee had run away. They started the process, she guessed, and then went off to hide somewhere, in some sort of timeless stasis, maybe like a big black hole, until it ran its course and they were ready to come out and start things over again. That's when it really bit the fan! No wonder. Can you imagine a bunch of physics professors trying to cope with something like that? They said she should try for a degree in Heechee psychology instead of astrophysics. They said she had nothing to offer but conjecture and assumption-no way to test the theory, just a guess. And they thought it was a bad one. So they refused her dissertation, and she didn't get her doctorate, and so she went off to Gateway to be a prospector and wound up where she is. Dead. And," he said thoughtfully, pulling the pipe out again, "I do actually, Robin, think she was wrong, or at least sloppy. We have very little evidence that the Heechee had any possible way of affecting matters in any galaxy but our own, and she was talking about the entire universe."
"But you're not sure?"
"Not a bit sure, Robin."
I yelled, "Don't you at least have a fucking guess?"
"Sure thing, Robin," he said gloomily, "but no more than that. Please calm yourself. See, the scale is wrong. The universe is too big, from anything we know. And the time is too short. The Heechee were here less than a million years ago, and the expansion time of the universe to date is something like twenty thousand times that long-recoil time could hardly be less. It's mathematically bad odds that they would have picked that particular time to show up."
"Show up?"
He coughed. "I left out a step, Robin. There's another guess in there, and I'm afraid it's my own. Suppose this is the universe the Heechee built. Suppose they somehow evolved in a less hospitable one, but didn't like it, and caused it to contract to make a new one, which is the one we're in. That doesn't fit badly, you know. They could have come Out to look around, maybe found it just the way they wanted it. And now maybe the ones who did the exploring have gone back to get the rest of them."
"Albert! For Christ's sake!"
He said gently, "Robin, I wouldn't be saying these things if I could help it. It's only a conjecture. I don't think you have any idea how difficult it is for me to conjecture in this way, and I wouldn't be able to do it except for-well, here's the thing. There is one possible way for something to survive a contraction and a new Big Bang, and that is to be in a place where time effectively stops. What kind of place is that? Why, a black hole. A big one. One big enough so that it is not losing mass by quantum tunneling, and therefore can survive indefinitely. I know where there's a black hole like that, Robin. Mass, about fifteen thousand times the sun. Location, the center of our Galaxy." He glanced at his watch and changed expression. "If my calculations are close, Robin," he said, "your wife should be arriv
ing about now."
"Einstein! The first damn thing she's going to do is rewrite you!"
He twinkled. "She already has, Robin," he pointed out, "and one of the things she has taught me to do is to relieve tension, when appropriate, by some comical or personally rewarding comment."
"You're telling me I ought to be all tensed up?"
"Well, not really, Robin," he said. "All this is quite theoretical-if that much. And in terms of human life, perhaps a long way off. But perhaps not. That black hole in the center of our Galaxy is at least one possibility for the place where the Heechee went, and, in terms of flight time in a Heechee ship, not all that distant. And-I said that we had determined the objective of the Oldest One's course? That was it, Robin. It was heading straight for that black hole when you turned it around."
I was tired of being on Heechee Heaven weeks before Essie was. She was having the time of her life with the machine intelligences. But I wasn't tired of Essie, so I stayed around until she at last admitted she had everything she could use on rag-flop tape, and forty-eight hours later we were back at the Tappan Sea. And ninety minutes after that Wilma Liederman was there with all the tools of her trade, checking Essie out to the last crumb under her toenail. I wasn't worried. I could see that Essie was all right, and when Wilma agreed to stay on for a drink she admitted it. Then she wanted to talk about the medical machine the Dead Men had used to keep Wan in shape, all the time he was growing up, and before she left we had set up a million-dollar research and development company-with Wilma as president-to see what could be done with it, and that's how easy it was. That's how easy it all is, when everything's going your way.
Or almost everything. There was still that sort of uneasy feeling when I thought about the Heechee (if it was the Heechee) at that place at the middle of the Galaxy (if that's where they were). That is very unsettling, you know. If Albert had suggested that the Heechee were going to come out breathing fire and destruction (or just come out at all) within the next year, why, sure, I could have worried the hell out of that. If he'd said ten years or even a hundred I could have worked up pensiveness as a minimum, and probably full-scale fright. But when you come to astronomical times-well, hell! How easy is it to worry about something that might not happen for another billion years?
And yet the notion just would not go away.
It made me fidgety through dinner, after Wilma left, and when I brought in the coffee Essie was curled in front of the fireplace, very trim in her stretch pants, brushing her long hair, and she looked up at me and said, "Will probably not happen, you know, Robin."
"How can you be so sure? There are fifteen thousand Heechee targets programmed into those ships. We've checked out, what? Fewer than a hundred and fifty of them, and one of those was Heechee Heaven. Law of averages says there are a hundred others like that somewhere, and who's to say one of them isn't racing in to tell the Heechee what we're doing right now?"
"Dear Robin," she said, turning to rub her nose against my knee in a friendly way, "drink your coffee. You know nothing about statistical mathematics and, anyway, who's to say they would mean to do us harm?"
"They wouldn't have to mean to! I know what would happen, for God's sake. It's obvious. It's what happened to the Tahitians, the Tasmanians, the Eskimos, the American Indians-it's what has always happened, all through history. A people that comes up against a superior culture is destroyed. Nobody means it. They just can't survive!"
"Always, Robin?"
"Oh, come on!"
"No, mean it," she insisted. "Counterexample: What happened when Romans discovered Gauls?"
"They conquered the shit out of them, that's what!"
"True. No, nearly true. But then, a couple of hundred years later, who conquered who, Robin? The barbarians conquered Rome, Robin."
"I'm not talking about conquest! I'm talking about a racial inferiority complex. What happens to any race that lives in contact with a race smarter than they are?"
"Why, different things under different circumstances, Robin. Greeks were smarter than Romans, Robin. Romans never had a new idea in their lives, except to build with or kill people with. Romans didn't mind. They even took Greeks right into their homes, to teach them all about poetry and history and science. As slaves. Dear Robin," she said, putting down her coffee cup and coming up to sit next to me, "wisdom is a kind of resource. Tell me. When you want information, who do you ask?"
I thought it over for a minute. "Well, Albert, mostly," I admitted. "I see what you're saying, but that's different. It's a computer's job to know more and think faster than I do, in certain ways. That's what they're for."
"Exactly, dear Robin. As far as can tell, you have not been destroyed." She rubbed her cheek against mine and then sat up straight. "You are restless," she decided. "What would you like to do?"
"What are my options?" I asked, reaching for her, but she shook her head.
"Don't mean that, anyway not this minute. Want to watch PV? I have a taped section from tonight's news, when you and Wilma were scheming, which shows your good friends visiting their ancestral home."
"The Old Ones in Africa? Saw it this afternoon." Some local promoter had thought it would be good publicity to show Olduvai Gorge to the Old Ones. He was right. The Old Ones didn't like it a lot-hated the heat, chirped grumpily at each other about the shots they had had to take, didn't care much for the air flight. But they were news. So were Paul and Lurvy, at the moment in Dortmund to arrange for a mausoleum for Lurvy's father as soon as his remains got back from the Food Factory. So was Wan, getting rich on PV appearances as The Boy from Heechee Heaven; so was Janine, having a marvelous time meeting her singing-star pen-pals at last in the flesh. So was I. We were all rich in money and fame. What they would make of it, after all, I could not guess. But what I wanted at last became clear. "Get a sweater, Essie," I said. "Let's go for a walk."
We strolled down to the edge of the icy water, holding hands. "Why, is snowing," Essie announced, peering up at the bubble seven hundred meters over our heads. Usually you can't see it very clearly, but tonight, edge-lighted from the heaters that keep snow or ice from crumbling it, it was a milky dome, broken with reflections from lights on the ground, stretching from horizon to horizon.
"Is it too cold for you?"
"Perhaps just here, near the water," she acknowledged. We climbed back up the slope to the little palm grove by the fountain and sat on a bench to watch the lights on Tappan Sea. It was comfortable there. The air never gets really cold under the bubble, but the water is the Hudson, running naked through seven or eight hundred kilometers before it hits the Palisades Dam, and every once in a while in winter chunks of sheet ice bob under the barriers and wind up rubbing against our boat dock.
"Essie," I said, "I've been thinking."
"Know that, dear Robin," she said.
"About the Oldest One. The machine."
"Oh, really?" She pulled her feet up to get them off the grass, damp from vagrant drifts from the fountain. "Very fine machine," she said. "Quite tame, since you pulled its teeth. Provided is not given external effectors, or mobility, or access to control circuits of any kind-yes, quite tame."
"What I want to know," I said, "is whether you could build one like it for a human being."
"Ah!" she said. "Hum. Yes, I think so. Would take some time and, of course, large sums of money, but yes."
"And you could store a human personality in it-after the person died, I mean? As well as the Dead Men were stored?"
"Quite a good bit better, would say. Some difficulties. Mostly biochemical, not my department." She leaned back, looking upward at the iridescent bubble overhead and said consideringly: "When I write computer program, Robin, I speak to computer, in some language or other. I tell it what it is and what it is to do. Heechee programming is not the same. Rests on direct chemical readout of brain. Old Ones brain is not chemically quite identical with yours and mine, therefore Dead Man storage is very far from perfect. But Old Ones must be much farther
from actual Heechee, for whom process was first developed. Heechee man-aged to convert process without any apparent difficulty, therefore it can be done. Yes. When you die, dear Robin, is possible to read your brain into a machine, then put machine in Heechee ship and fly it off to Sagittarius YY black hole, where it can say hello to Gelle-Klara Moynlin and explain episode was not your fault. For this you have my guarantee, only you must not die for, say, five to eight years yet, to allow for necessary research. Will you promise that for me, please."
There are times when something catches me so by surprise that I don't know whether to cry, or get angry, or laugh. In this case I stood up quickly and stared down at my dear wife. And then I decided which to do, and laughed. "Sometimes you startle me, Essie," I said.
"But why, Robin?" She reached out and took my hand. "Suppose it was the other way around, hey? Suppose it was I who, many years ago, had been through a very great personal tragedy. Exactly like yours, Robin. In which someone I loved very much was harmed very severely, in such a way that I could never see that person or explain to her what happened. Do you not think I would want very much to at least speak to her again, in some way, to tell her how I felt?"
I started to answer, but she stood up and put her finger on my lips. "Was rhetorical question, Robin. We both know answer. If your Kiara is still alive, she will want very much to hear from you. This is beyond doubt. So," she said, "here is plan. You will die-not soon, I hope. Brain will go into machine. Maybe will make extra copy for me, you permit? But one copy flies off to black hole to look for Kiara, and finds her, and says to her, `Kiara, dear, what happened could not be helped, but wish you to know I would have given life itself to save you.' And then, Robin, do you know what Kiara will answer to this strange machine that appears out of nowhere, perhaps only a few hours, her time, after incident itself?"
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Page 30