The Annals of the Heechee

by Frederik Pohl

  “God, Robin,” she said in disgust, “of course smoked oysters! Not to mention caviar for me and Albert, and ribs for old Julio and dim sum for his girl, and whole big bucket of crummy stuff you like so much, what is it, tuna-fish salad.” She clapped her hands. The leader of the little band on the dais at the far end of the room nodded, and they began to play that gentle nostalgic stuff our grandparents went crazy over. “Eat first or dance?” asked Essie.

  I made the effort. I played up to her. “What do you think?” I asked in my sexiest and most vibrant movie-star voice, looking deeply into her eyes, with my hand cupped firm and strong on her bare shoulder, because of course by then she was wearing a low-cut evening dress.

  “Think eat, dear Robin,” she sighed, “but don’t forget, dance soon, and often!”

  And, you know, it turned out not to be all that much of an effort. There was all the tuna-fish salad I could ever hope to eat, and the waiter piled it high on slices of rye bread and squashed it flat to make a sandwich, just the way I liked. The champagne was perfectly chilled, and the bubbles (nonexistent though they were) pleasingly tickled my (nonexistent) nose. While we were eating, Albert cavalierly waved the orchestra off the stand and pulled out a violin and entertained us with a little unaccompanied Bach, a little solo Kreisler, and then, as members of the band started to come back to join him, wound up with a couple of Beethoven string quartets.

  Now, you know, none of the other players that made up his chamber-music group were “real”—I mean, not even as real as we were. They were only quite limited programs taken out of Albert’s stock of surround furnishings, but for what they were, they did very well. The good food and the great champagne weren’t real either. But they tasted just as good going down. The onions in the tuna fish satisfactorily reminded me of themselves every now and then afterward, and the unreal alcohol in the simulated champagne activated my motion and sensory centers just as much and in just the same way as the real things would have done to the real things—what I’m trying to tell you is, the drinking and dancing and eating were doing their work and I was getting horny. And when Essie and I were dreamily circling the floor (the unreal sun had “set” and the “stars” were bright above the dark “mountain”) and her head was on my shoulder and my fingers were gently kneading her soft, sweet back, I could feel that she was in a real receptive mood.

  As I led her off the floor in the general direction of where, I was sure, she would have provided a bedroom, Albert looked up to wave a fond good-bye. He and General Cassata were chatting by the fire, and I heard Albert say, “That little impromptu minstrel show of mine, General. I was only trying to cheer Robin up, you know. I hope I didn’t offend you.”

  General Cassata looked puzzled. He scratched his chocolate-colored cheekbone, just next to his close-cropped woolly sideburn, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Albert. Why would I be offended?”

  I don’t have to have a real body or real food to eat, I don’t have to have a real chair to sit. I don’t have to have any of the things you generally require to make love, either, and we did what we did with finesse, devotion, and a whole lot of fun. Simulated? Well, sure it was simulated. But it felt just as good as it ever had, which was fine, and when it was over my simulated heart was pounding a little faster and my breath was coming in simulated pants and I wrapped my arm around my love and pulled her close to soak in the simulated smell and feel and warmth of her.

  “Am so glad,” said my simulated darling drowsily, “that I made our programs interactive.”

  She tickled my ear with her breath. I turned my head enough to tickle hers. “My dearest Essie,” I whispered, “you write one hell of a program.”

  “Could not have done it without you,” she said, and yawned sleepily into the satin pillow. (We do sleep sometimes, you know. We don’t have to. We don’t have to eat or make love, either, but there are a lot of pleasures that we don’t have to have but have anyway, and one that I have always cherished is that last few minutes when your head is on the pillow and you’re just about to drift off, warm, secure, and worrying about nothing in the universe at all.)

  I was kind of sleepy, because that was part of the whole subroutine. But I knew I could shake it off if I chose, because that’s part of the subroutine, too.

  And I did choose. Just for a moment, anyway, I thought, because there were, after all, a few things on my mind. I said, “I recognize the bed, honey.”

  She giggled. “Nice bed,” she commented. She didn’t deny what I knew, that it was an exact, or maybe even somewhat improved, copy of the anisokinetic bed we’d had in Rotterdam years and years ago.

  But that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to talk about, so I tried again. “Honey? Do you think there were just two Foe in there with me? In the room in Tahiti, I mean?”

  Essie lay silent a moment. Then she gently pulled free of my arm and got up on one elbow, looking down at me.

  She studied me silently for a moment before she said, “Is no real way for us to tell, is that not so? Albert says may be collective intelligence; if so, what you saw in Tahiti was only perhaps quite small detached packets of Foe stuff, numbers in that case meaningless.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Essie sighed and rolled over. Through the closed door we could hear the music from the other room; they were playing old-fashioned rock now, probably for General Cassata’s benefit. She sat up, naked as the day we first made love, and clapped her fingertips together for light. Light came, gentle, amber lights from concealed fixtures in the ceiling, for Essie had spared nothing in furnishing our little haven.

  “Are still upset, dear Robin,” she commented neutrally.

  I thought it over. “I guess so,” I said, as a first approximation to what would be a much more emphatic description if I had chosen to give it.

  “You want talk?”

  “I want,” I said, suddenly wide awake, “to be happy. Why the hell does it have to be so God-damned hard?”

  Essie reached over and brushed my forehead with her lips. “I see,” she said. She didn’t say anything else.

  “Well, what I mean,” I went on after a moment, “is I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Have never known that, have we?”

  “And maybe that,” I said, a lot louder than I had intended, and maybe a lot nastier, “is why I’ve never been happy.”

  To that I got a silence. When you’re talking in the megabaud range, even a twentieth of a millisecond is a significant pause, and this was a lot longer than that. Then Essie got up, picked up a robe from beside the bed, and pulled it on.

  “Dear Robin,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking at me. “Think maybe this long trip is quite bad for you. Gives you too much time to be gloopy in.”

  “But we didn’t have any choice, did we? And that’s part of it: I never have any choice!”

  “Ah,” she said, nodding. “We get to heart of question. Fine. Open up. Tell me what is matter.”

  I didn’t answer her. I gave her the electronic equivalent of a sniff of exasperation. She didn’t deserve it, of course. She had been going far out of her way to be loving and kind, and there was no reason for me to be getting unpleasant.

  But unpleasant was how I felt.

  “Tell me, dammit!” she barked.

  I barked back: “Oh, hell! You ask some dumb questions, you know that? I mean, you are the truest of true loves and I adore you and all, but—but—but, Jesus, Essie, how can you ask a question like that? What’s the matter? You mean, outside of the fact that the whole universe is at risk, and I died a while ago—again!—and I might very likely die again pretty soon, only this time forever, because I have to go up against some people I don’t even want to think about, and I’ve got two wives, and I don’t really exist, and all that—You mean, outside of that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”

  “Oh, Robin,” she sighed dismally. “Cannot even add right!”

  She took me by surpris
e. “What?”

  “Point one,” she said, all brisk and businesslike. “Have not got two wives—unless, of course, count meat original of me separate from me here who has just been most enjoyably making love with you.”

  “I mean—”

  “Know very well what you mean, Robin,” she said firmly. “Mean love me and also love Gelle-Klara Moynlin, who keeps showing up every once in while to remind you. Have discussed this before. Is no problem. Have exactly one wife that matters, Robinette Broadhead, namely me, Portable-Essie, S. Ya. Lavorovna-Broadhead, who is not in least jealous of feelings toward Moynlin lady.”

  “That’s not the real—” I began, but she waved me to silence.

  “Second,” she said firmly, “taking in reverse order—no, taking actually first point as second in present discussion—”

  “Essie! You’re losing me.”

  “No,” she said, “never lose you, or you me; that is subset of first point, which we will deal with third. Pay attention! As to threat to entire sidereal universe, yes, granted, is so. Is great problem. Is, however, problem with which we are dealing as best we can. Now. Leaves only remaining point, maybe fifth or sixth in original presentation, I forget—”

  I had begun to catch the rhythm. “The fact that we don’t really exist, you mean,” I said helpfully.

  “Exactly. Glad are on your toes, Robin. Are not dead, you know; keep making this point. Are merely in fact discorporated, quite something else. Are no longer meat, but are still very much alive. Have just demonstrated that, dammit!”

  I said tactfully, “It was wonderful, and I know that what you say is true—”

  “No! Don’t know it!”

  “Well, I know it logically, anyway. Cogito ergo sum, right?”

  “Exactly right!”

  “The difficulty,” I said wretchedly, “is that I just don’t seem able to internalize it.”

  “Ah!” she cried. “Oh! I see! ‘Internalize,’ is that it? To be sure, internalize. First we get Descartes, now get head-shrinker talk. Is blowing smoke, Robin, smokescreen behind which to hide real concerns.”

  “But don’t you see—”

  I didn’t finish, because she placed her hand on my lips to cut me off. Then she got up and went to the door. “Robin, dearest person, give you word, I do see.” She picked another robe from a chair by the door and rolled it in her hands. “See that it is not me you should be talking to now, but him.”

  “Him? What him?”

  “That psychoanalytic him, Robin. Here. Put this on.”

  She tossed me the robe, and while I was dazedly doing as I was told, she went out the door, leaving it open, and a moment later in through it came a gentle, sad-looking elderly man.

  “Hello, Robin. It’s been a long time,” said my old head-doctor program, Sigfrid von Shrink.

  “Sigfrid,” I said, “I didn’t ask for you.”

  He nodded, smiling, as he went around the room. He was drawing blinds, extinguishing lights, making the bedroom less a passion pit and more a reasonably close approximation to his old consulting room.

  “I didn’t even want you!” I yelled. “And besides, I liked this room just the way it was.”

  He sat down in a chair by the bed, looking at me. It was almost as though nothing had changed. The bed was no longer a playpen; it was the agony couch I had lain on for so many tormented hours. Sigfrid said comfortably, “Since you are obviously in need of some sort of easing of tensions, Robbie, I thought I might as well reduce the extraneous distractions. It’s not important. I can put it back the way it was if you like—but, truly, Rob, it would be more productive if you would tell me about your feelings of unease or worry instead of discussing the way the room is decorated.”

  So I laughed.

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed out loud, big belly-busting laughter that went on for a long time—many microseconds at least—and when I stopped laughing, I wiped my streaming eyes (the laugh was soundless, the tears were nonmaterial, but that didn’t matter), and I said:

  “You kill me, Sigfrid. You know? You haven’t changed a bit.”

  He smiled and said, “You, on the other hand, have. You have changed very much from that insecure, guilt-ridden, self-doubting young man who did his best to manipulate our sessions like parlor games. You’ve come a long way, Robin. I’m very pleased with you.”

  “Aw, shecks,” I said, grinning—warily.

  “On the other hand,” he went on, “in a lot of ways you haven’t changed at all. Do you want to spend our time in idle conversation and parlor games? Or would you like to tell me about what’s worrying you?”

  “Talk about games! You’re playing one right now. You know everything I’ve said already. You probably know everything I’ve even thought!”

  He said seriously, “What I know or don’t know doesn’t matter. You know that. It’s what you know, particularly the things you know but don’t want to admit to yourself, that are important. You have to get them out in the open. Start by telling me why you’re worried.”

  I said, “Because I’m a wimp.”

  He looked at me, and he was smiling. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Well, I’m certainly no hero!”

  “How do you know that, Robin?” he asked.

  “Don’t jerk me around! Heroes don’t sit and brood! Heroes don’t worry about whether they’re going to die! Heroes don’t get all snarled up in guilt and worries and head-crap, isn’t that true?”

  “It is true that heroes don’t do any of those things,” Sigfrid agreed, “but you left one trait out. There’s one other thing heroes don’t do. Heroes don’t exist. Do you really think all those people you call ‘heroes’ are any better than you are?”

  “I don’t know if I believe it. I sure as hell hope it.”

  “But Robin,” he said reasonably, “you really haven’t done that badly, have you? You’ve done what no one else has ever done, not even a Heechee. You’ve talked with two of the Foe.”

  “I fucked it up,” I said bitterly.

  “Do you think that?” Sigfrid sighed. “Robbie, you often simultaneously hold quite contradictory views of yourself. But, given a choice, in the long run you adopt the least flattering one. Why is that? Do you remember that for many sessions, when we first met, you kept telling me what a coward you were?”

  “But I was! God, Sigfrid, I stalled around on Gateway forever before I got up the guts to ship out.”

  “That could be described as cowardice, yes,” said Sigfrid. “It is true that that was your behavior. Yet there were other times when you behaved in ways that can only be called extraordinarily brave. When you jumped into a spaceship and headed for the Heechee Heaven, you faced terrible odds. You endangered your life—in fact, you very nearly lost it.”

  “There was big money involved that time. It made me rich.”

  “You already were rich, Rob.” He shook his head. Then he said thoughtfully, “It is interesting that when you do something praiseworthy, you ascribe venal motives to yourself, but when you do something that appears bad, you jump to agree that the appearances are correct. When do you win, Robin?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer. Maybe I didn’t want to look for one. Sigfrid sighed and changed position. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get back to basics. Tell me why you’re worried.”

  “Why I’m worried?” I cried. “Don’t you think I’ve got plenty to worry about? If you don’t think the entire basic universe-wide situation is something to worry any sane person, then maybe you just haven’t caught on to what’s happening!”

  He said, with visible patience, “The Foe certainly are a sufficient cause for worry, yes, but—”

  “But if that isn’t enough, consider my personal situation! I’m in love with two women—three, actually, I mean,” I corrected myself, remembering Essie’s arithmetic.

  He pursed his lips. “Is that a worry, Robbie? In any practical sense, I mean? For example, do you have to do
anything about it—choose among them, for instance? I think not. No reason for conflict exists, really.”

  And I burst out, “No, you’re God-damned right, and do you know why no reason for conflict exists? Because I don’t exist! I’m just a damned datastore in gigabit space. I’m no more real than you are!”

  He said mildly, “Do you really think I don’t exist?”

  “Damn straight you don’t! Some computer programmer made you up!”

  Sigfrid studied his thumbnail. There was another of those long, multimicrosecond pauses, and then he said, “Tell me, Robinette, what do you mean by ‘exist’?”

  “You know effing well what it means to exist! It means to be real!”

  “I see. Are the Foe real?”

  “Of course they’re real,” I said in disgust. “They weren’t ever anything else. They’re not copies of something that was real once.”

  “Ah. All right. Is the law of inverse squares real, Robbie?”

  “Call me Robinette, damn it!” I flared. He raised his eyebrows, but nodded. And just sat there, waiting for an answer. I collected my thoughts. “The law of inverse squares, yes, is real. Not in a material sense, but in its ability to describe material events. You can predict its functioning. You can see its effects.”

  “But I can see your effects, Robin—Robinette,” he corrected himself hastily.

  “One illusion recognizes another illusion!” I sneered.

  “Yes,” he conceded, “one might say that. But others see your effects, too. Was General Beaupre Heimat an illusion? But the two of you certainly interacted, as he would not deny. Are your banks an illusion? They hold your money. The people who work in your employ, the corporations that pay you dividends—they’re all quite real, are they not?”