The Annals of the Heechee

by Frederik Pohl

  All the same, he was very nearly afraid.

  Sneezy had never felt fear of the island before. Of course it was human and remote and therefore wholly strange to a Heechee boy, but it had not occurred to him that there was anything to be afraid of. Certainly not of the few Polynesian natives who remained. They were almost all old people who kept to their homes and ways while most of the young ones had gone off to more exciting places than Moorea. He had not even been afraid of the prison buildings, because it had been explained to the children that there were almost no living convicts still there. In any case, although the couple who remained had done terrible things, they were not only securely confined but very old. There was, Sneezy assured himself, absolutely nothing to be afraid of beyond the chance that they might be late for the luau.

  As a rational Heechee, he allowed the logic to convince him.

  And thus he was only startled, but not really afraid, when he heard a sudden squawk from Harold and saw two old men step out of the uphill path to confront the children.

  “You’re a Heechee,” said the smaller of the two men, with a pleased smile of recognition.

  “Of course he’s a Heechee,” Harold blustered. “Who the dickens are you?” The old man beamed at him and reached out a hand to his arm. It looked like a pat of reassurance, but the man didn’t let go.

  He said, “I am General Beaupre Heimat, and this is my colleague, Cyril Basingstoke. What a pleasant surprise to meet you here. I suppose you are students at the school?”

  “Yes,” said Sneezy. “My name is Sternutator, but I’m generally called Sneezy.” As he introduced his companions according to diligently mastered Earth protocol, he tried to make out the expressions on the men’s faces. The general was a tall man, though not as tall as his companion, and he had a broad face that wore a not very reassuring grin. Sneezy was not particularly attuned to the subtle ethnic differences that distinguished one sort of human from another, but it was apparent that the second old man was noticeably dark-skinned. They did not seem especially threatening, although the expression on the black man’s face was concerned. As the general moved toward Oniko, Basingstoke said worriedly, “Man, we are so lucky to be out, please don’t do anything to start trouble.”

  Heimat shrugged. “What sort of trouble? I just wanted to tell this pretty young lady how glad I am to see her.”

  “Sooner or later they’ll get the power on again!”

  “Cyril,” said Heimat mildly, “fuck off.” There was no palpable threat in the look he gave his companion, but the black man’s eyes narrowed.

  Then he turned toward Sneezy and took him by the arm. Basingstoke’s grip was strong; under those layers of human blubber and the dried, tough skin of age there was a good deal of strength. “You are also the first Heechee I have seen in person,” he announced, the subject changed. “Are your parents here?”

  Harold chose that moment to cut in. “His parents are important Watchers on the Wheel,” he boasted. “So are mine and Oniko’s, and besides hers are very wealthy. You better not try anything with any of us.”

  “Certainly not,” said Heimat virtuously, but he didn’t let go of Harold’s arm. He looked thoughtful for a moment. “You do not need wealthy parents to make you attractive, my dear,” he said to Oniko, “but I won’t deny that that is a big plus. I am delighted to know you. We are going down to the beach. Why don’t we all walk down together?”

  “No chance!” snapped Harold. “We don’t need—ouch!” Without releasing his grip, the old man had backhanded him across the side of the face.

  “It’s what we need that matters,” he said conversationally, and that seemed to settle that. Heimat looked about, getting his bearings. “Over toward the point, don’t you think, Cyril?” he asked. “I remember there was a road there, toward the breadfruit plantation. Let’s go—and while we’re walking, my dear Oniko, why don’t you tell us all about how rich your parents are?”

  It seemed to Sneezy that, strong as the old man was, it might not be impossible to jerk free and run away.

  Sneezy weighed the prospect carefully while Oniko answered leadenly to the probing, jovial questions of the old general. He decided against it. Although Basingstoke was old, he seemed quite quick, and Sneezy thought it likely he would react unpleasantly to an attempt at escape.

  And anyway, even assuming that he himself might break away, how could he get Oniko free?

  Although the party was walking slowly on the dark roads, the girl was having trouble keeping up. For her to run away was simply impossible. Nor was it likely that Harold could make it, either, because the human boy seemed crushed by the weight of the slap across his face. He moped forward, never turning his face, but from the way his shoulders moved, Sneezy suspected he was crying.

  As they turned off the perimeter road to the downward trail, Sneezy could see the luau on the beach. The students had improvised torches stuck in the sand and, although they were now nearly a kilometer away, Sneezy could hear the sounds of singing. He envied them considerably. He wished they would stop singing, so that if he or one of the others had to scream for help they might be heard, but realistically he did not think any of them should dare that anyway.

  Behind them the island’s great central mountain blocked out the stars, though overhead the constellations were bright. Even so, walking was difficult. Without warning Oniko stumbled on the path, tripped over her walker, and almost fell headlong. What saved her was Cyril Basingstoke’s hand, thrust out as quickly as a striking snake. He set her on her feet again, and General Heimat turned around to look.

  “Ah, the young lady is having trouble,” he said sympathetically. “Do you know, Cyril, I think that if you would take charge of Harold, I could carry Oniko down.”

  Basingstoke didn’t answer directly. With a quick motion he hefted Oniko to set her on his shoulder, never releasing Sneezy in the process. “You take her crutches, boy,” he ordered.

  The general turned and regarded him without speaking. Sneezy hissed softly to himself in foreboding. There was something humanly nasty hovering around them in the warm tropic air. Evidently Oniko perceived it too, because she said, in a shaky attempt to make neutral conversation, “Oh, look across the water! Papeete’s lights are on!”

  It was true: On the other side of the strait the sprawling lights of Tahiti’s principal city were bright gold. Moreover, whatever had been about to happen between the two men was at least postponed.

  “Their power is on,” said Basingstoke thoughtfully, and Heimat chimed in, “We could go there!”

  “Yes, we could, if we had a plane or a boat. But what would we do then?”

  “There’s an airport, Cyril. Planes go to Auckland, Honolulu, Los Angeles—”

  “Indeed they do, man,” said Basingstoke, “for people who have money to pay for the tickets. Are you carrying a credit card?”

  “Why, Cyril,” Heimat said reprovingly, “you haven’t been listening. These children have credits. Especially”—he smiled—“young Oniko here is very rich. I am sure she will do something nice for an old man, one way or another.”

  Basingstoke stood silent for a moment. Sneezy could feel the tension in the man’s grip and wondered just what peculiar Earth-human nuances he was missing. Then the man said, “Beaupre, what you do for your own pleasure is no business of mine. But if it interferes with getting off these islands for me, then it becomes a personal matter. Then, man, I will kill you.” He paused, letting the words hang there. Then he said, “Now, let us see if there is a boat.”

  There were boats, all right. There were at least a dozen drawn up along the beach, where the school kept its small fleet, but four of them were kayaks and six were windsurfing boards, and the only big one nearby was the sailing yawl, which none of them were skilled enough to operate. “You can’t do it,” Harold said, boldness returning. “So just let us go! We won’t say anything—”

  Heimat looked at him without speaking. Then he turned to Cyril Basingstoke. “They must have so
mething we can use,” he said. Each of the children looked as blank and ignorant as possible, because of course the school did.

  “There is a pier,” said Basingstoke softly, pointing down toward the point of land, and all three children sighed at once in resignation. As they crunched over the shelly sand toward the school’s dock, Sneezy hoped against hope that the entire little flotilla had been taken in for repairs, or drifted out to sea, or sunk. And then when they reached the dock and Heimat uttered a roar of rage, his hopes rose. “No power!” he snarled. “They’re all dead!”

  But Basingstoke raised his chin as though sniffing the wind. “Listen, man,” he commanded. Over the sound of the breeze that came down from the mountain, there was a mild, insistent hum. He leaped to the end of the dock, where the school’s glass-bottomed boat lay moored to the power takeoff. “Flywheel drive,” he crowed. “They must’ve been revving it up overnight. Get in!”

  There wasn’t any help for it. The old terrorists shepherded the boys in first, then Basingstoke handed Oniko in to Heimat, who stroked her head promissorily before setting her down. With Basingstoke at the tiller, Heimat cast off the lines, and the little boat purred out into the mirror-calm lagoon.

  Sneezy and Oniko, holding hands on the bench over the dark glass, gazed sadly back at the looming mountain and the dark buildings of the school. No, not entirely dark, Sneezy saw with a quick flicker of hope; but it died as quickly, as he saw that only a few windows had faint glows behind them. Someone had rediscovered candles. Most of the students were still on the beach; Sneezy could see the shapes moving around in the torchlight. But as the glass-bottomed boat angled out toward the passage through the reef, they maintained their distance from the beach.

  Then, just at a time when he needed all the alertness and strength he could find, Sneezy felt his eyes growing heavy. How odd, he thought, shaking himself awake. It was no time to be falling asleep—and no reason for it, either! He made a great effort to wake up and put his thoughts in order.

  The first question was, What were his options?

  To begin with, he calculated, the boat was still only a few hundred meters from the beach. To swim that distance, in the warm, shallow lagoon, would have been child’s play for almost any child—almost any other child, he thought regretfully, than either Oniko or himself. She lacked the strength, he the buoyancy. A pity. Probably if they had been able to swim for it, the old men wouldn’t even follow, Sneezy thought wistfully, since all they really wanted was escape…

  He hissed softly to himself as he confronted the fact that one of them seemed to want something more, at least from Oniko.

  It was not a thought Sneezy could easily come to terms with. The concept of rape was strange to any Heechee, especially rape of an immature female. Ancestors, it was all but impossible! Not to mention thoroughly repugnant. He had heard theoretical discussions of such things—as related to human conduct, to be sure. He hadn’t believed any of them. Even among humans, such queer perversities were surely unreal.

  But then, he had never before been in a situation like this.

  No, he told himself, the risk was too great. Such things might after all be true! They would have to escape. Was it possible that Harold could get away and somehow summon help? He, at least, would have no difficulty swimming to shore—

  But Harold was wedged firmly beside the huge old black man at the tiller. Sneezy did not think it likely that Basingstoke would ever let himself be taken off guard. Weariness and depression settled in again, and once more Sneezy’s eyes began to droop.

  The old black man was humming to himself as he skillfully guided the boat toward the exit channel. “Do you know, Beaupre,” he called to the other man, “I think we almost can succeed in this venture! Unfortunately I have no way of telling how much energy is stored in the flywheel of this contraption. It is possible we will run out of power before we reach Tahiti.”

  “In that case,” said Heimat, “we’ll just hang these kids over the stern to be outboard motors and kick us in—two of them, anyway,” he added, patting Oniko’s bowed head.

  Basingstoke chuckled. The possibility of running out of power didn’t seem to worry him, nor, Sneezy perceived, did he seem as concerned about Heimat’s plans for Oniko as he had been before. Sneezy felt his abdominal muscles writhe in apprehension. If only he weren’t so inexplicably fatigued! It was almost as though he were breathing oxygen-depleted air or had swallowed some enervating drug. In fact, it was almost like that deprivation that no Heechee ever voluntarily permitted, as though he had stupidly left his pod somewhere and was lacking the life-giving radiation it provided—

  Sneezy hissed loudly in alarm.

  Heimat turned from gazing fondly at Oniko and snapped, “What’s the matter with you?”

  But Sneezy could not answer. It was too frightening to talk about.

  His pod was emitting nothing.

  Heechee could survive for days, even for weeks, without the constant flow of microwave radiation from their pods. It was never a problem on their home worlds, for of course there was always a steady microwave flux in the environment they had evolved in: That was how they had come to evolve to need it, as humans needed sunlight and fish needed water. But survival was not all there was to life. After an hour or two without the microwave the lack began to be felt. It had now been more than that since the power went off and the pod stopped radiating. Sneezy was feeling the effects. It was a sensation like—what could you compare it to in human terms? Thirst? Exhaustion? A sensation of need, at least, as a human being on a desert might feel unmet needs after the same length of time. He could go on for quite a while without a drink of water…

  But he could not go on forever.

  As the shallow-draft boat passed through the gap in the reef, they struck the waves of the strait.

  They were not huge waves, but the boat was now in the Pacific Ocean. Although it was not stormy, the swells that lifted the boat and set it down again had started as ripples five thousand kilometers away, and they had been growing as they traveled.

  Oniko gasped and struggled to the gunwale, where she began to retch violently into the sea. After a short, hard struggle inside himself, Sneezy joined her. He was not subject to seasickness in the same way as a human boy would have been—the architecture of the Heechee inner ear was vastly different in design—but the motion, the stress, above all the draining of all energy with the loss of his pod’s radiation combined to make him physically ill.

  From forward in the rocking boat Heimat laughed tolerantly. “You poor kids! I promise when we get to shore I’ll give you something to take your minds off it.”

  “She is only frightened, Beau,” rumbled Basingstoke. “Throw it all up, Oniko; it will do you no harm.” The old black man seemed positively jubilant as he steered the boat into the waves. “When I was a boy,” he said, settling himself for a traveler’s tale to make the time pass, “we had storms around the island that you would not believe, children. Yet we must go out in them for the fish, because we were very poor. My father was an old man—not in years, but from breathing the hydrocarbons in the air. Petrochemicals. They made us all sick, and then when we went out in the fishing boats…”

  Sneezy, having exhausted everything in his digestive system that could exit by mouth, lowered himself to the bottom of the boat, hardly listening. He pressed his face against the glass bottom, cooled by the water just on the other side, and felt Oniko slump beside him. He took her hand apathetically. He knew he must think and plan, but it was so hard!

  “—and in the water,” Basingstoke rolled on, “there were great sharks—almost as huge and ferocious, yes, as the ones in the Pacific here—”

  Even in his fatigue, Sneezy’s hand tightened convulsively on Oniko’s. Sharks? They were another nasty phenomenon of the human planet that he had heard of only in theory. He strained his huge eyes to peer into the black water, but of course there was nothing to see. Many times he had looked through that glass at glittering schools of tiny
fish, wheeling in unison, and at creepy-crawly crustaceans on the shallow sand. Those things had been scary, too, but pleasingly scary, like one child jumping out of concealment to startle another.

  But sharks!

  Sneezy firmly stopped thinking about sharks. Instead he listened to the old black man going on with his interminable reminiscences: “—for fifty years they pumped the oil wells dry, stinking up the fresh, sweet air of our island. They said they needed it to grow protein so that no one would starve. But we did starve, you know. And it was that that made me turn to the struggle, for there was no other way to justice—”

  Justice, Sneezy thought fuzzily. How strange for this terrorist, murderer, kidnaper, to speak of justice. How human.

  As they neared the Tahiti side of the strait, Sneezy forced himself to sit up and look around.

  There was a great black shape in the water ahead of them, moored and lighted, the size of a football field. Although Sneezy had known it was there, it took him a moment to recognize it as the floating CHON-food factory. Day and night it sucked oxygen and nitrogen from the air, hydrogen from the seawater of the strait, and carbon from the strait’s luckless inhabitants to feed the people of Tahiti and the neighbor islands. He wondered that old Basingstoke had dared pass so near it, and then realized that of course it was fully automated; no human being would be on it, and the workthings would be unlikely to pay attention to a small boat passing nearby.

  And then Sneezy realized two other things.

  The first was that the lighted Food Factory was lighted. There was power there! And the second was that spreading up from his loins was a warm, gentle wash of good feeling.

  They were out of the power blackout zone, and his pod was operating once more.

  As they skirted the shore the waves were choppier. There was no lagoon here, no reef to shelter them from the Pacific, and the glass-bottomed boat rolled worrisomely.