Heechee Rendezvous Part 10

And then she answered herself. "Of course terrorist," she said bitterly. "Who else could be so vile?"

I had opened our windows to get a good look at the lake and the loop; good thing, because that meant they weren't blown in. Others in the hotel were not so lucky. The airport itself wasn't touched, not counting the occasional aircraft sent flying because it wasn't tied down. But the airport officials were scared. They didn't know whether the destruction of the launch loop was an isolated incident of terrorist sabotage, or maybe the beginnings of a revolution-no one seemed to think, ever, that it might have been just a simple accident. It was scary, all right. There's a h.e.l.l of a lot of kinetic energy stored in a Lofstrom loop, over twenty kilometers of iron ribbon, weighing about five thousand tons, moving at twelve kilometers a second. Out of curiosity I asked Albert later and he reported that it took 3.6 x lO8 Joules to pump it up. And when one collapses, all those Joules come out at once, one way or another. Joules to pump it up. And when one collapses, all those Joules come out at once, one way or another.

I asked Albert later because I couldn't ask him then. Naturally, the first thing I did was to try to' key him up, or any other data-retrieval or information program that could tell me what was going on. The comm circuits were jammed; we were cut off. The broadcast PV was still working, though, so we stood and watched that mushroom cloud grow and listened to damage reports. One shuttle had been actually accelerating on the ribbon when it blew-that was the first explosion, perhaps because it had carried a bomb. Three others had been in the loading bypa.s.s. More than two hundred human beings were now hamburger, not counting the ones they hadn't counted yet who had been working on the launcher itself, or had been in the duty-free shops and bars underneath it, or maybe just out for a stroll nearby. "I wish I could get Albert," I grumbled to Essie.

"As to that, dear Robin," she began hesitantly, but didn't finish, because there was a knock on the door; would the senor and the senora come at once to the Bolivar Room, por favor, as there was a matter of the gravest emergency.

The matter of the gravest emergency was a police checkup, and you never saw such a checking of pa.s.sports. The Bolivar Room was one of those function things that they divide up for meetings and open for grand banquets, and one part.i.tioned-off part of it was filled with turistas like us, many of them squatting on their baggage, all looking both resentful and scared. They were being kept waiting. We were not. The bellhop who fetched us, wearing an armband with the initials "S.ER." over his uniform, escorted us to the dais, where a lieutenant of police studied our pa.s.sports briefly and then handed them back. "Senor Broadhead," he said in English, accent excellent, touches of American Midwest, "does it occur to you that this act of terrorist violence may in fact have been aimed personally at you?"

I gawked. "Not until now," I managed. He nodded.

"Nevertheless," he went on, touching a PV hard-copy printout with his small, graceful hand, "we have received from Interpol a report of a terrorist attempt on your life only two months ago. Quite a well-organized one. The commissaris in Rotterdain specifically suggests that it did not appear random, and that further attempts might well be made."

I didn't know what to say to that. Essie leaned forward. "Tell me, Teniente," she said, regarding him, "is this your theory?"

"Ah, my theory. I wish I had a theory," he said furiously. "Terrorists? No doubt. Aimed against you? Possibly. Aimed against the stability of our government? Even more possibly, I think, as there has been widespread dissatisfaction in rural areas; there are even reports, I tell you in confidence, that certain military units may be planning a coup. How can one know? So I ask you the necessary questions, such as, have you seen anyone whose presence here struck you as suspicious or coincidental? No? Have you any opinion as to who attempted to a.s.sa.s.sinate you in Rotterdam? Can you shed any light at all on this terrible deed?"

The questions came so fast that it hardly seemed he expected answers, or even wanted them. That bothered me nearly as much as the destruction of the loop itself; it was a reflection, here, of what I had been seeing and sensing all over the world. A sort of despairing resignation, as though things were bound to get worse and no way could be found to get them better. It made me very uncomfortable. "We'd like to leave and get out of your way," I said, "so if you're through with your questions-"

He paused before he answered, and began to look like someone with a job he knew how to do again. "I had intended to ask you a favor, Senor Broadhead. Is it possible that you would allow us to borrow your aircraft for a day or two? It is for the wounded," he explained, "since our own general hospital was unfortunately in the direct path of the loop cables."

I am ashamed to say I hesitated, but Essie did not. "Most certainly yes, Teniente," she said. "Especially as we will need to make a reservation for another loop in any event before we know where we want to go to."

He beamed. "That, my dear senora, we can arrange for you through the military communications. And my deepest thanks for your generosity!"

Services in the city were falling apart, but when we got back to our suite there were fresh flowers on the tables, and a basket of fruits and wine that had not been there before. The windows had been closed. When I opened them I found out why. Lake Tehigualpa wasn't a lake anymore. It was just the heat sink where the ribbon was supposed to dump in case of the catastrophic failure of the loop that no one believed would ever happen. Now that it had happened the lake had boiled down to a mud wallow. Fog obscured the loop itself, and there was a stink of cooked mud that made me close the window again quickly enough.

We tried room service. It worked. They served us a really nice dinner, apologizing only because they couldn't send the wine steward up to decant our claret-he was in "Los Servicias emergencias de la Republica" and had had to report for duty. So had the suite's regular ladies' maid and, although they promised that a regular floor maid would be up in an hour to unpack the bags for us, meanwhile, they stood against the walls in the foyer.

I'm rich, all right, but I'm not spoiled. At least I don't think I am. But I do like service, especially the service of the fine computer programs Essie has written for me over the years. "I miss Albert," I said, looking out at the foggy nighttime scene.

"Can find nothing to do without your toys, eh?" scoffed Essie, but she seemed to have something on her mind. Well. I'm not spoiled about tha4 either, but when Essie seems to have something on her mind I often conclude that she wants to make love, and from there it is not usually much of a jump for me to want to, too. I remind myself, now and then, that for most of human history, persons of our ages would have been a lot less azuative and exuberant about it-but that's just bad luck for them. Such thoughts do not slow me down. Especially because Essie is what she is. Besides her n.o.bel laureate, Essie had been receiving other awards, including appearing on lists of Ten Best-Dressed Women every now and then. The n.o.bel was deserved, the Best-Dressed was, in my opinion, a fraud. The way S. Ya. Broadhead looked had nothing to do with what she put on, but a lot to do with what was under what she put on. What she was wearing right now was a skintight leisure suit, pale blue, unornamented; you could buy them in any discount house, and she would have won in that, too. "Come here a minute, why don't you?" I said from the great, long couch.

"s.e.x fiend! Huh!"

But it was a fairly tolerant "huh." "I just thought," I said, "that as I can't get Albert and we have nothing else to do-"

"Oh, you Robin," she said, shaking her head. But she was smiling. She pursed her lips, thinking. Then she said: "I tell you what. You go fetch small traveling bag from foyer. I have little present to give you, then we see."

Out of the bag came a box, silver-paper wrapped, and inside it a big Heechee prayer fan. It wasn't really Heechee, of course; it was the wrong size. It was one of the kind Essie had developed for her own use. "You remember Dead Men and Here After," she said. "Very good Heechee software, which I decided to steal. So have converted old data-retrieval program for you. Have in hand now guaranteed real Albert Einstein."

I turned the fan over in my hands, "The real Albert Einstein?"

"Oh, Robin, so literal! Not real-real. Cannot revive dead, especially so long dead. But real in personality, memories, thoughts-pretty near, anyway. Programmed search of every sc.r.a.p of Einstein data. Books. Papers. Correspondence. Biographies. Interviews. Pictures. Everything. Even cracked old film clips from, what you called them, 'newsreels' on s.h.i.+p coming to New York City in A.D. 1932 by Pathe News. All inputted to here, and now when you talk to Albert Einstein it is Albert Einstein who talks back!" She leaned over and kissed the top of my head. "Then, to be sure," she bragged, "added some features real Albert Einstein never had. Complete pilotage of Heechee vessels. All update in science and technology since A.D. 1955, time of actual Einstein pa.s.sing on. Even some simpler functions from cook, secretary, lawyer, medical programs. Was no room for Sigfrid von Shrink," she apologized, "but then you no longer need shrinkage, eh, Robin? Except for unaccountable lapse of memory."

She was looking at me with an expression that over the past couple of decades I had come to recognize. I reached out and pulled her toward me. "All right, Essie, let's have it."

She settled down in my lap and asked innocently, "Have what, Robin? You talking about s.e.x again?"

"Come on!"

"Oh ... It is nothing, to be sure. I have already given you your silver gift."

"What, the program?" It was true that she had wrapped it in silver paper-Enlightenment exploded. "Oh, my G.o.d! I missed our silver wedding anniversary, didn't I? When-" But, thinking fast, I bit the question off.

"When was it?" she finished for me. "Why, now. Is still. Is today, Robin. Many congratulations and happy returns, Robin, dear."

I kissed her, I admit as much stalling for time as anything else, and she kissed me back, seriously. I said, feeling abject, "Essie, dear, I'm really sorry. When we get back I'll get you a gift that will make your hair stand on end, I promise."

But she pressed her nose against my lips to stop my talking. "Is no need to promise, dear Robin," she said, from about the level of my Adam's apple, "for you have given me ample gifts every day for twenty-five years now. Not counting couple years when we just fooled around, even. Of course," she added, lifting her head to look at me, "we are alone at this moment, just you and me and bed in next room, and will be for some hours yet. So if you truly wish to make hair stand on end with gift, would be pleased to accept. Happen to know you have something for me. Even in my size."

The fact that I didn't want any breakfast brought all of Essie's standby systems up to full alert, but I explained it by saying that I wanted to play with my new toy. That was true. It was also true that I didn't always eat breakfast anyway, and those two truths sent Essie off to the dining hail without me, but the final truth, that my gut did not really feel all that good, was the one that counted.

So I plugged the new Albert in to the processor, and there was a quick pinkish flare and there he was, beaming out at me. "h.e.l.lo, Robin," he said, "and happy anniversary."

"That was yesterday," I said, a little disappointed. I had not expected to catch the new Albert in silly mistakes.

He rubbed the stem of his pipe across his nose, twinkling up at me under those bushy white eyebrows. "In Hawaiian Mean Time," he said, "it is, let me see"-he faked looking at a digital wrist.w.a.tch that was anachronistically peeking out under his frayed pajama-top sleeve- "forty-two minutes after eleven at night, Robin, and your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary has still nearly twenty minutes to go." He leaned forward to scratch his ankle. "I have a good number of new features," he said proudly, "including full running time and location circuits, which operate whether I am in display mode or not. Your wife is really very good at this, you know."

Now, I know that Albert Einstein is only a computer program, but all the same it was like welcoming an old friend. "You're looking particularly well," I complimented. "I don't know if you should be wearing a digital watch, though. I don't believe you ever had such a thing before you died, because they didn't exist."

He looked a little sulky, but he complimented me in return: "You have an excellent grasp of the history of technology, Robin. However, although I am Albert Einstein, as near as may be to the real thing, I am not limited to the real Albert Einstein's capabilities. Mrs. Broadhead has included in my program all known Heechee records, for example, and that flesh-and-blood self didn't even know the Heechee existed. Also I have subsumed into me the programs of most of our colleagues, as well as data-seeking circuits that are presently engaged in trying to establish connection with the gigabit net. In that, Robin," he said apologetically, "I have not been successful, but I have patched into the local military circuits. Your launch from Lagos, Nigeria, is confirmed for noon tomorrow, and your aircraft will be returned to you in time to make the connection." He frowned. "Is something wrong?"

I hadn't been listening to Albert as much as studying him. Essie had done a remarkable job. There were none of those little lapses where he would start a sentence with a pipe in his hand and finish by gesturing with a piece of chalk. "You do seem more real, Albert."

"Thank you," he said, showing off by pulling open a drawer of his desk to get a match to light his pipe. In the old days he would have just materialized a book of matches. "Perhaps you'd like to know more about your s.h.i.+p?"

I perked up. "Any progress since we landed?"

"If there were," he apologized, "I wouldn't know it, because as I mentioned I have been unable to make contact with the net. However, I do have a copy of the certificate of commissioning from the Gateway Corp. It is rated as a Twelve-that is to say, it could carry twelve pa.s.sengers if equipped for simple exploration-"

"I know what a Twelve would be, Albert."

"To be sure. In any event, it has been fitted for four pa.s.sengers, although up to two others can be accommodated. It was test-flown to Gateway Two and back, performing optimally all the way. Good morning, Mrs. Broadhead."

I looked over my shoulder; Essie had finished breakfast and joined us. She was leaning over me to study her creation more carefully. "Good program," she complimented herself, and then, "Albert! From where you get this picking nose bit?"

Albert removed a finger from a nostril forgivingly. "From unpublished letters, Enrico Fermi to a relative in Italy; it is authentic, I a.s.sure you. Are there any other questions? No? Then, Robin and Mrs. Broadhead," he finished, "I suggest you pack, for I have just received word over the police link that your aircraft has landed and is being serviced. You can take off in two hours."

And so it was, and so we did, happily enough-or almost happily. The last little bit, less happily. We were just getting into our plane when there was a noise from behind the pa.s.senger terminal and we turned to look.

"Why," Essie said wonderingly, "that sounds like guns firing. And those big things in the parking lot, see them pus.h.i.+ng aside cars? One has just now demolished a fire standpipe and water is shooting out. Can they be what I think?"

I tugged her into the plane. "They can," I said, "if what you think they are is army tanks. Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here."

We did. No problem. Not for us, anyway, even though Albert, listening in on the reopened gigabit net, reported that the teniente's worst fears had been realized and a revolution was indeed l.u.s.tily tuning up. Not for us then, at least, though elsewhere in the wide universe other things were going on that would pose for us some very large problems, and some very painful ones, and some that were both.

15 Back from the Schwarzschild Discontinuity

When Gelle-Klara Moynlin awoke she was not dead, as she had confidently expected to be. She was in a Heechee exploration s.h.i.+p. It was an armored Five by the look of it, but not the one she had been in at the last she remembered.

What she remembered was chaotic, frightful, and filled with pain and terror. She remembered it very well. It had not included this lean, dark, scowling man who wore a G-string and a scarf and nothing else. Nor had it included some strange young blond girl who was crying her eyes out. In the last memory Klara had there had been people crying, all right, oh, yes! And shrieking and cursing and wetting their underwear, because they were trapped within the Schwarzschild barrier of a black hole.

But none of those people were these people.

The young girl was bending over her solicitously. "Are you all right, hon? You've been through a real bad time." There was no news for Klara in that statement. She knew how bad the time had been. "She's awake," the girl called over her shoulder.

The man came bounding over, pus.h.i.+ng the girl aside. He did not waste time inquiring about Klara's health. "Your name! Also orbit and mission number-quickly!" When she told him he didn't acknowledge the answer. He simply disappeared and the blond girl came back.

"I'm Dolly," she said. "I'm sorry I'm such a wreck, but honestly, I was scared to death. Are you all right? You were all messed up, and we don't have much of a medical program here."

Klara sat up and discovered that, yes, she was messed up, all right. Every part of her ached, starting with her head, which appeared to have been bashed against something. She looked around. She had never been in a s.h.i.+p so full of tools and toys before, nor one that smelled so pleasantly of cooking. "Look, where am I?" she asked.

"You're in his s.h.i.+p"-pointing. "His name's Wan. He's been wandering around, poking into black holes." Dolly looked as though she were getting ready to cry again, but rubbed her nose and went on: "And listen, hon, I'm sorry, but all those other people you were with are dead. You were the only one alive."

Klara caught her breath. "All of them? Even Robin?"

"I don't know their names," the girl apologized. And was not surprised when her unexpected guest turned her bruised face away and began to sob. Across the room Wan snarled impatiently at the two women. He was deep into concerns of his own. He did not know what a treasure he had retrieved, or how much that retrieved treasure complicated my life.

For it is pretty nearly true that I married my dear wife, Essie, on the elastic rebound from the loss of Klara Moynlin. At least, on the upsurge of feeling that came when I shed the guilt, or anyway most of the guilt, I felt for Klara's loss.

When ultimately I found out that Klara was alive again it was a shock. But, my G.o.d, nothing-nothing-compared to the shock to Klara! Even now and in these circ.u.mstances I can't help feeling what I can only call, incongruously enough, a physical pain when I think about my whilom most dear Klara as she found herself back from the dead. It isn't just because of who she was, or who she was in relation to me. She deserved the compa.s.sion of anybody. Trapped, terrified, hurt, sure of dying-and then a moment later miraculously rescued. G.o.d pity the poor

I had not met Gelle-Klara Moynhin before her accident with the black hole. Robin couldn't afford as sophisticated a data-retrieval system as me in those days. But I surely heard a lot about her from Robin over the years. What I mostly heard about was how guilty he felt over her death. The two of them, with others, had gone on a science mission for the Gateway Corp to investigate a black hole; most of their s.h.i.+ps had been trapped; Robin had managed to get free.

There was no logical reason to feel guilty, of course. Moreover, Gelle-Klara Moynlin, though a normally competent female human, was in no sense irreplaceable-in fact, Robin replaced her rather swiftly with a succession of other females, finally bonding in a long-term mode with S. Ya. Lavorovna, not only a competent human female, but the one who designed me. Although I am well modeled on human drives and motivations, there are parts of human behavior I never will understand.

woman! G.o.d knows I do, and things did not quickly get better for her. She was unconscious half the time, because her body had taken a terrible battering. When she was awake, she was not always sure she was awake. From the tingling she felt and the warm flush and the buzzing in her ears she knew that they had been shooting her full of painkillers. Even so she ached terribly. Not just in the body. And when she was awake she could easily have been hallucinating, as far as she was able to know, because the sociopath Wan and the demoralized Dolly were not very stable figures to cling to. When she asked questions she got strange answers. When she saw Wan talking to a machine and asked Dolly what he was doing, she could make little sense of Dolly's reply: "Oh, those are his Dead Men. He programmed them with all the mission records, and now he's asking them about you."

But what could that mean to someone who had never heard of Dead Men? And what could she feel when a wispy, uncertain voice from the speakers began to talk about her?

"-no, Wan, there's n.o.body named Schmitz on that mission. Either s.h.i.+p. You see, there were two s.h.i.+ps that went out together, and-"

"I do not care how many s.h.i.+ps went out together!"

The voice paused. Then, uncertainly: "Wan?"

"Of course I am Wan! Who would I be but Wan?"

"Oh ... Well, no, there's n.o.body there that fits your father's description, either. Who did you say you rescued?"

"She claims to be named Gelle-Klara Moynlin. Female. Not very good-looking. About forty, maybe," Wan said, not even looking at her to see how wrong he was; Klara stiffened and then reflected that the ordeal had no doubt made her look older than her age.

"Moynlin," the voice whispered. "Moynlin... Gelle-Klara, yes, she was on that mission. The age is wrong, though, I think." Klara gave a half nod, causing the throb in her head to start again, and then the voice went on. "Let me see, yes, the name is right. But she was born sixty-three years ago."

The throbbing increased its tempo and its violence. Klara must have moaned, because the girl Dolly cried out to Wan and then leaned over her again. "You're going to be all right," she said, "but I'm going to get Henrietta to give you another little sleepy shot, all right? When you wake up again you'll feel better."

Klara gazed up at her without comprehension, then closed her eyes. Sixty-three years ago!

How many shocks can a human being stand without breaking? Klara was not very breakable; she was a Gateway prospector, four missions, all of them tough, any of them enough to give nightmares to anyone. But her head throbbed furiously as she tried to think. Time dilation? Was that the term for what happened inside a black hole? Was it possible that twenty or thirty years had sped past in the real world while she was spinning around the deepest gravity well there was?

"How about," Dolly offered hopefully, "if I get you something to eat?" Klara shook her head. Wan, nibbling his 1ip in a surly way, lifted his head and called, "How foolish, offering her food! Give her a drink instead."

He was not the kind of person you would want to please even by agreeing with him when he was right, but it sounded like too good an idea to pa.s.s up. She let Dolly bring her what seemed to be straight whiskey; it made her cough and splutter, but it warmed her. "Hon," said Dolly hesitantly, "was one of those, you know, those guys that got killed, was he a special boyfriend?"

There was no reason for Klara to deny it. "Pretty much a boyfriend. I mean, we were in love, I guess. But we'd had a fight and split up, and then started to get together again, and then-And then Robin was in one s.h.i.+p, and I was in another-"

"Robbie?"

"No. Robin. Robin Broadhead. It was really Robinette, but he was kind of sensitive about the name-What's the matter?"

"Rabin Broadhead. Oh, my G.o.d, yes," said Dolly, looking astonished and impressed. "The millionaire!"

And Wan looked over, then came to stand beside her. "Robin Broadhead, to be sure, I know him well," he boasted.

Klara's mouth was suddenly dry. "You do?"

"Of course. Certainly! I have known him for many years. Yes, of course," he said, remembering, "I have heard of his escape from the black hole years ago. How curious that you were there, too. We are business partners, you see. I receive from him and his enterprises nearly two-sevenths of my present income, including the royalties paid me by his wife's companies."

"His wife?" whispered Klara.

"Do you not listen? I said that, yes, his wife!"

And Dolly, suddenly gentle again, said: "I've seen her on the PV now and then. Like when they pick her for the Ten Best-Dressed Women, or when she won the n.o.bel Prize. She's quite beautiful. Hon? Would you like another drink?"

Klara nodded, starting her head to throbbing again, but collected herself enough to say, "Yes, please. Another drink, at least."

For nearly two days Wan elected to be benevolent to the former friend of his business partner. Dolly was kind, and tried to be helpful. There was no picture of S. Ya. in their limited PV file, but Dolly pulled out the hand puppets to show her what a caricature of Essie, at least, looked like, and when Wan, growing bored, demanded she do her night-club routine with them, managed to fob him off'. Klara found plenty of time to think. Dazed and battered as she was, she could still do simple arithmetic in her head.

She had lost more than thirty years of her life.

No, not out of her life; out of everybody else's. She was no more than a day or two older than when she went into the naked singularity. The backs of her hands were scratched and bruised, but there were no age spots on them. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e from pain and fatigue, but it was not an old woman's voice. She was not an old woman. She was Gelle-Klara Moynlin, not that much over thirty, to whom something terrible had happened.

When she woke up on the second day the sharpened pains and the localized aches told her that she was no longer receiving a.n.a.lgesia. The sullen-faced captain was bending over her. "Open your eyes," he snapped. "Now you are well enough to work for your pa.s.sage; I think."

What an annoying creature he was! Still, she was alive, and apparently getting well, and there was grat.i.tude due. "That sounds reasonable enough," Klara offered, sitting up.

"Reasonable? Ha! You do not decide what is reasonable here; I decide what is reasonable," Wan explained. "You have only one right on my s.h.i.+p. You had the right to be rescued and I rescued you; now all the other rights are mine. Especially as because of you we must now return to Gateway."

"Hon," said Dolly tentatively, "that's not entirely true. There's plenty of food-"