Wan responded as he had learned to respond. He fell gently to his knees, opened his garment and touched his sex. It had been several days since he had masturbated, and with no such stimulus as this; he was erect at once and shuddering with excitement.
He hardly noticed the noises behind him as three other persons came racing up. It was not until he was finished that he stood up, adjusted his clothing and smiled politely to them where they were ranged around the young female, talking excitedly and almost hysterically among themselves. "Hello," he said. "I am Wan." When they did not respond, he repeated the greeting in Spanish and Cantonese, and would have gone on to his other languages except that the second female person stepped forward and said:
"Hello, Wan. I'm Dorema Herter-Hall--they call me `Lurvy'. We're very glad to see you."
In all of Wan's fifteen years there had never been twelve hours as exciting, as frightening and as heart-stoppingly thrilling, as these. So many questions! So much to say and to hear. So shuddery-pleasant to touch these other persons, and to smell their smells and feel their presence. They knew so incredibly little, and so astonishingly much-did not know how to get food from the lockers, had not used the dreaming couch, had never seen an Old One or talked with a Dead Man. And yet they knew of spaceships and cities, of walking under an open sky ("sky"? it took a long time for Wan to grasp what they were talking about) and of Making Love. He could see that the younger female was willing to show him more of that, but the older one did not wish her to; how strange. The older male did not seem to make love with anyone; even stranger. But it was all strange, and he was expiring of the delights and terrors of so much strangeness. After they had talked for a long time, and he had shown them some of the tricks of the outpost, and they had shown him some of the wonders of their ship (a thing like a Dead Man, but which had never been alive; pictures of people on Earth; a flush toilet) after all these wonders, the Lurvy person had commanded that they all rest. He had at once started toward the dreaming couch, but she had invited him to stay near them and he could not say no, though all through the sleep he woke from time to time, trembling and sniffing and staring around in the dim blue light.
So much excitement was bad for him. When they were all awake again he found himself still shaking, his body aching as though he had not slept at all. No matter. The questions and the chatter began again at once:
"And who are the Dead Men?"
"I don't know. Let us ask them? Perhaps-sometimes they call themselves `prospectors'. From a place called `Gateway'."
"And this place they are in, is it a Heechee artifact?"
"Heechee?" He thought; he had heard the word, long ago, but he did not know what it meant. "Do you mean the Old Ones?"
"What do the Old Ones look like?" And he could not say in words, so they gave him a sketch pad again and he tried to draw the big waggling jaws, the frowsty beards, and as each sketch was finished they snatched it up and held it before the machine they called "Vera".
"This machine is like a Dead Man," he offered, and they flew in with questions again:
"Do you mean the Dead Men are computers?"
"What is a `computer'?"
And then the questions would go the other way for a while, as they explained to him the meaning of "computer", and presidential elections, and the 130-day fever. And all the while they were roaming the ship, as he explained to them what he knew of it. Wan was becoming very tired. He had had little experience of fatigue, because in his timeless life when he was sleepy he slept and did not get up until he was rested. He did not enjoy the feeling, or the scratchiness in his throat, or the headache. But he was too excited to stop, especially when they told him about the female person named Trish Bover. "She was here? Here in the outpost? And she did not stay?"
"No, Wan. She didn't know you would come. She thought if she stayed she would die." What a terrible pity! Although, Wan calculated, he had only been ten years old when she came, he could have been a companion for her. And she for him. He would have fed her and cared for her and taken her with him to see the Old Ones and the Dead Men, and been very happy.
"Then where did she go?" he asked.
For some reason, that question troubled them. They looked at each other. Lurvy said after a moment, "She got in her ship, Wan."
"She went back to Earth?"
"No. Not yet. It is a very long trip for the kind of ship she had. Longer than she would live."
The younger man, Paul, the one who coupled with Lurvy, took over. "She is still traveling, Wan. We don't know where exactly. We are not even sure she is alive. She froze herself."
"Then she is dead?"
"Well-she is probably not alive. But if she is found, maybe she can be revived. She's in the freezing compartment of her ship, at minus-forty degrees. Her body will not decay for some time, I think. She thought. At any rate, she thought it was the best chance she had."
"I could have given her a better one," Wan said dejectedly. Then he brightened. There was the other female, Janine, who was not frozen. Wishing to impress her, he said, "That is a gosh number."
"What is? What kind of a number?"
"A gosh number, Janine. Tiny Jim talks about them. When you say `minus-forty' you don't have to say whether it is in Celsius or Fahrenheit, because they are the same." He tittered at the joke.
They were looking at each other again. Wan could see that something was wrong, but he was feeling stranger, dizzier, more fatigued at every second. He thought perhaps they had not understood the joke, so he said, "Let us ask Tiny Jim. He can be reached just down this passage, where the dreaming couch is."
"Reached? How?" demanded the old man, Payter.
Wan did not answer; he was not feeling well enough to trust what he said, and, besides, it was easier to show them. He turned abruptly away and hauled himself toward the dreaming chamber. By the time they followed he had already keyed the book in and called for number one hundred twelve. "Tiny Jim?" he tried; then, over his shoulder, "Sometimes he doesn't want to talk. Please be patient." But he was lucky this time, and the Dead Man's voice responded quite quickly.
"Wan? Is that you?"
"Of course it is me, Tiny Jim. I want to hear about gosh numbers."
"Very well, Wan. Gosh numbers are numbers which represent more than one quantity, so that when you perceive the coincidence you say, `Gosh.' Some gosh numbers are trivial. Some are perhaps of transcendental importance. Some religious persons count gosh numbers as a proof of the existence of God. As to whether or not God exists, I can give you only a broad outline of-"
"No, Tiny Jim. Please stick to gosh numbers now."
"Yes, Wan. I will now give you a list of a few of the simplest gosh numbers. Point-five degrees. Minus-forty degrees. One thirty-seven. Two thousand and twenty-five. Ten to the 39th. Please write one paragraph on each of these, identifying the characteristics which make them gosh numbers and-"
"Cancel, cancel," Wan squeaked, his voice rising higher because it smarted so. "This is not a class."
"Oh, well," said the Dead Man gloomily, "all right. Point-five degrees is the angular diameter of both the sun and the Moon as seen from Earth. Gosh! How strange that they should be the same, but also how useful, because it is partly because of this coincidence that Earth has eclipses. Minus-forty degrees is the temperature which is the same in both Fahrenheit and Celsius scales. Gosh. Two thousand twenty-five is the sum of the cubes of the integers, one cubed plus two cubed plus three cubed and so on up to nine cubed, all added together. It is also the square of their sum. Gosh. Ten to the thirty-ninth is a measure of the weakness of the gravitational force as compared with the electromagnetic. It is also the age of the universe expressed as a dimensionless number. It is also the square root of the number of particles in the observable universe, that is, that part of the universe relative to Earth in which Hubble's constant is less than point-five. Also-well, never mind, but gosh! Gosh, gosh, gosh. On these goshes P.A.M. Dirac constructed his Large Numbers Hypothesis, from which he ded
uced that the force of gravity must be weakening as the age of the universe increased. Now, there is a gosh for you!"
"You left out one thirty-seven," the boy accused.
The Dead Man cackled. "Good for you, Wan! I wanted to see if you were listening. One thirty-seven is Eddington's fine structure constant, of course, and turns up over and over in nuclear physics. But it is more than that. Suppose you take the inverse, that is one over one thirty-seven, and express it as a decimal. The first three digits are Double Ought Seven, James Bond's identification as a killer. There is the lethality of the universe for you! The first eight digits are Clarke's Palindrome, point oh seven two nine nine two seven oh. There is its symmetry. Deadly, and two-faced, that is the fine structure constant! Or," he mused, "perhaps I should say, there is its inverse. Which would imply that the universe itself is the inverse of that? Namely kind and uneven? Help me, Wan. I am not sure how to interpret this symbol."
"Oh, cancel, cancel," said Wan angrily. "Cancel and out." He was feeling irritable and shaky, as well as more ill than he had ever been, even when the Dead Men had given him shots. "He goes on like that," he apologized to the others. "That's why I don't usually speak to him from here."
"He doesn't look well," said Lurvy worriedly to her husband, and then to Wan, "Do you feel all right?" He shook his head, because he did not know how to answer.
Paul said, "You ought to rest. But-what did you mean, `from here.' Where is, uh, Tiny Jim?"
"Oh, he is in the main station," said Wan weakly, sneezing.
"You mean-" Paul swallowed hard. "But you said it was forty-five days away by ship. That must be a very long way."
The old man, Payter, cried: "Radio? Are you talking to him by radio? Faster-than-light radio?"
Wan shrugged. Paul had been right; he needed to rest, and there was the couch, which had always been the exact proper place to make him feel good and rested.
"Tell me, boy!" shouted the old man. "If you have a working FU radio- The bonus-"
"I am very tired," said Wan hoarsely. "I must sleep." He felt himself falling. He evaded their clutching arms, dove between them and plunged into the couch, its comforting webbing closing around him.
4
Robin Broadhead, Inc.
Essie and I were water-skiing on the Tappan Sea when my neck radio buzzed to tell me that a stranger had turned up on the Food Factory. I ordered the boat to turn immediately and take us back to the long stretch of waterfront property owned by Robin Broadhead, Inc. before I told Essie what it was. "A boy, Robin?" she shouted over the noise of the hydrogen motor and the wind. "Where in hell a boy comes to Food Factory?"
"That's what we have to find out," I yelled back. The boat skillfully snaked us in to shallow water and waited while we jumped out and ran up the grass. When it recognized that we were gone, it purred down the shoreline to put itself away.
Wet as we were, we ran directly to the brain room. We had begun to get opticals already, and the holo tank showed a skinny, scraggly youth wearing a sort of divided kilt and a dirty tunic. He did not seem threatening in any way, but he sure as hell had no right to be there. `Voice," I ordered, and the moving lips began to speak-queer, shrill, high-pitched, but good enough English to understand:
"-from the main station, yes. It is about seven seven-days- weeks, I mean. I come here often."
"For God's sake, how?" I could not see the speaker, but it was male and had no accent: Paul Hall.
"In a ship, to be sure. Do you not have a ship? The Dead Men speak only of traveling in ships, I do not know any other way."
"Incredible," said Essie over my shoulder. She backed away, not taking her eyes off the tank, and came back with a terrycloth robe to throw over my shoulders and one for herself. "What do you suppose is `main station'?"
"I wish to God I knew. Harriet?"
The voices from the tank grew fainter, and my secretary's voice said, "Yes, Mr. Broadhead?"
"When did he get there?"
"About seventeen point four minutes ago, Mr. Broadhead. Plus transit time from the Food Factory, of course. He was discovered by Janine Herter. She did not appear to have had a camera with her, so we received only voice until one of the other members of the party arrived." As soon as she stopped speaking the voice from the figure in the tank came up again; Harriet is a very good program, one of Essie's best.
"-sorry if I behaved improperly," the boy was saying. Pause. Then, old Peter Herter:
"Never mind that, by God. Are there other people on this main station?"
The boy pursed his lips. "That," he said philosophically, "would depend, would it not, on how one defines `person'? In the sense of a living organism of our species, no. The closest is the Dead Men."
A woman's voice-Dorema Herter-Hall. "Are you hungry? Do you need anything?"
"No, why should I?"
"Harriet? What's that about behaving improperly?" I asked. Harriet's voice came hesitantly. "He, uh, he brought himself to orgasm, Mr. Broadhead. Right in front of Janine Herter."
I couldn't help it, I broke out laughing. "Essie," I said to my wife, "I think you made her a little too ladylike." But that wasn't what I was laughing at. It was the plain incongruity of the thing. I had guessed-anything. Anything but this: a Heechee, a space pirate, Martians-God knows what, but not a horny teen-aged boy.
There was a scrabble of steel claws from behind and something jumped on my shoulder. "Down, Squiffy," I snapped.
Essie said, "Just let him nuzzle neck for a minute. He'll go away."
"He isn't dainty in his personal habits," I snarled. "Can't we get rid of him?"
"Na, na, galubka," she said soothingly, patting the top of my head as she got up. `Want Full Medical, don't you? Squiffy comes along." She kissed me and wandered out of the room, leaving me to think about the thing that, to my somewhat surprise, was making all sorts of tiny but discomforting stirrings inside me. To see a Heechee! Well, we hadn't-but what if we did?
When the first Venus explorers discovered the traces the Heechee had left, glowing blue-lined empty tunnels, spindle-shaped caves, it was a shock. A few artifacts, another shock-what were they? There were the scrolls of metal somebody named "prayer fans" (but did the Heechee pray, and if so to whom?) There were the glowing little beads called "fire pearls", but they weren't pearls, and they weren't burning. Then someone found the Gateway asteroid, and the biggest shock of all, because on it were a couple of hundred working spaceships. Only you couldn't direct them. You could get in and go, and that was it. . . and what you found when you got there was shock, shock, shock, shock.
I knew. I had had the shocks, on my three silly missions-No. Two silly missions. And then one terribly unsilly one. It had made me rich and deprived me of somebody I loved, and what is silly about either of those things?
And ever since then the Heechee, dead half a million years, not even a written word left to tell what they were up to, had permeated every part of our world. It was all questions, and not very many answers. We didn't even know what they called themselves, certainly not "Heechee", because that was just a name the explorers made up for them. We had no idea what these remote and godlike creatures called themselves. But we didn't know what God called Himself, either. Jehovah, Jupiter, Baal, Allah-those were names people made up. Who knew by what name He was known to His buddies?
I was trying to let myself feel what I might have felt if the stranger in the Food Factory had actually been Heechee when the toilet flushed, Essie came out and Squiffy made a dash for the bowl. There are indignities to having Full Medical coverage, and a mobile bio-assay unit is one of them.
"You are wasting my program time!" Essie scolded, and I realized that Harriet had been sitting patiently in the tank, waiting to be told to get on with her information about the other claims on my attention. The report from the Food Factory was all being taped and stored in any case, so Essie went to her own office to deal with her own priorities, I told Harriet to start the cook on lunch, and then I let her do her secretaria
l duties.
"You have an appointment to testify before the Senate Ways and Means Committee tomorrow morning, Mr. Broadhead."
"I know. I'll be there."
"You're due for your next checkup this weekend. Shall I confirm the appointment?"
That's one of the penalties of Full Medical, and besides Essie insists-she's twenty years younger than I, and reminds me of it. "All right, let's get it over with."
"You are being sued by one Hanson Bover, and Morton wants to talk to you about it. Your consolidated statement for the quarter came in and is on your desk file-except for the food mine holdings, which will not be complete until tomorrow. And there are a number of minor messages-most of which I have already dealt with-for your review at your convenience."
"Thank you. That's all for now." The tank went transparent and I leaned back in my chair to think.
I didn't need to see the consolidated statement-I already pretty well knew what it would say. The real estate investments were performing nicely; the little bit I had left in sea farming was moving toward a record profit year. Everything was solid, except for the food mines. The last 130-day fever had cost us. I couldn't blame the guys in Cody, they weren't any more responsible than I was when the fever bit. But they had somehow let the thermal drilling get out of control, and five thousand acres of our shale were burning away underground. It had taken three months to get the mine back in operation at all, and we still didn't know what it was going to cost. No wonder their quarterly statement was late.
But that was only an annoyance, not a disaster. I was too well diversified to be killed by any one sector going bad. I wouldn't have been in the food mines except for Morton's advice; the extraction allowance made it a really good thing, tax-wise. (But I'd sold most of my sea-farming holdings to buy in.) Then Morton figured out that I still needed a tax shelter, so we started The Broadhead Institute for Extra-Solar Research. The Institute owns all my stock, but I vote it, and I vote it for what I want to do. I got us into the coownership with the Gateway Corporation that financed probes to four detected but unvisited Heechee-metal sources in or near the solar system, and one of them had been the Food Factory. As soon as they made contact we spun off a separate exploitation company to deal with it-and now it was looking really interesting.
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Page 5
