"I must have medication for this!"
"At once. . . Mr. Hester. Yes. In the medical kit you will find tablets marked-"
"Dumbhead! The medical kit is gone to Cuckooland!"
"Oh, yes . .. Mr. Hester. One moment. Yes. I have programmed appropriate pharmaceuticals for you. It will take about twenty minutes for them to be prepared."
"In twenty minutes I could be dead," be snarled. But there was no help for it, and so he sat and stewed for twenty minutes, the pressures mounting. Illness, hunger, loneliness, overwork, resentment, fear. Anger! That was what, in the end, they all fused into. Anger. Many vectors. One vector sum. By the time Vera's dispensary popped out his pills, it had submerged all the others. He swallowed them greedily and retired to his private to see what would happen.
Actually they did appear to work. He lay back while the fires in his belly damped themselves, and fell imperceptibly asleep.
When he woke he felt at least physically better. He washed himself, brushed his teeth, brushed his thinning yellow hair, and only then noticed the Christmas tree of attention-demanding lights around Vera's console. On the screen in bright red letters were the words:
GENTLY REQUEST PERMISSION TO RESUME NORMAL MODES.
He chuckled to himself. He had forgotten to cancel the override. When he ordered the computer to get back to business there was an instant explosion of bells and signal lights, a cascade of hard copy out of the printer and a voice. His elder daughter's voice, out of Vera's taped storage: "Hello, Pop. Sorry we couldn't reach you to tell you we arrived safely. We're going to explore now. Talk to you later."
Because Peter Hester loved his family, the joy of their safe arrival flooded his heart and sustained him-for hours. For almost two days. But joy does not flourish in an existence of irritations and worries. He spoke to Lurvy-twice; for no more than thirty seconds each time. Vera simply could not handle more. Vera was harder pressed than Peter himself, stripped and rearranged as she was, handling two-way traffic between Heechee Heaven and the Earth, deferring top priority action commands when even higher priorities demanded attention. The one voice link with the Heechee place could not handle the volume it was given to carry, and mere chitchat between father and daughter could not be allowed.
That was not unjust, Peter conceded. Such marvels they were finding! What was unjust was that he himself was out of it. What was unjust was that among the urgent and meaningful traffic, Vera found time to pass on to him a hodgepodge of commands meant for himself. None reasonable. Some impossible to carry out. Redeploy the thrusters. Inventory CHON-food. Submit by return message complete analysis a cm by 3 cm by 12.5 cm packets in red and lavender wrappers. Do not submit unnecessary analyses! Submit metallurgical analysis "dreaming couch". Do not attempt physical study "dreaming couch". Query Dead Men re Heechee Drive. Query Dead Men re control panels. Query Dead Men. How easy that was to command! How hard to carry out, when they maundered and scolded and rambled and complained when he could hear them at all, and when most often he was forbidden to take time on the FTL voice circuit anyway. Some of the orders from Earth contradicted others, and most of them came out of order, with obsolete priority designations. And some did not come at all. Poor Vera's storage circuits were soon approaching overload, and she tried to rid herself of unnecessary data by hard-printing it for him to, somehow, attend to; but that made problems of its own,, because the recycling system that fed the printer rolls was the same one that fed him, and the organics were already depleted. So Peter had to open and dump CHON-food into the sanitary and then get busy on the still.
Even if Vera had had time for him, he had not much time for Vera. Struggle into EVA equipment. Cycle himself out on the hull of the Food Factory. Cut away tubing and bind it together. Sweat it back to the ship, always fighting the infuriating, dogged thrust of the Food Factory itself as it plunged toward somewhere or other. He could spare time only for an occasional glance at the pictures coming back from Heechee Heaven. Vera displayed them as they came in, one frame at a time; but then each one was whisked away to make storage space for the next one, and if Peter was not there to see they would go unseen. Even so, good heavens! The Dead Men, so featureless to look at. The corridors of Heechee Heaven. The Old Ones-Peter's heart almost stopped as he looked at the great broad face of an Old One on the screen. But he had time only for a look, and then the still was done and he must go on with the next task. Build himself a yoke for his shoulders. Seam together plastic sheeting (another drain on the recycler!) to make buckets. Squat impatiently by the one functioning-barely functioning-water source, holding the flexible disk around the spout and catching the foulsmelling dribble in the bags. Tote the water back, half into the still, the other half into the recycling tanks. Sleep when he could. Eat when he could force himself. Attend to his own personal priority messages when they trickled through, and when he was too exhausted for anything physical. Another message from Dortmund, three hundred municipal workers this time-stupid Vera, for letting such trash through! A coded communication from his lawyer, meaning half an hour to translate it. And then all it said was, "Am attempting secure more favorable terms. Can promise nothing. Meanwhile advise full compliance all directives." What a pig! Peter, swearing, sat before the console, slammed down the override key and dictated his reply:
"Full compliance with all stupid directives will kill me, and then what?" And he sent it in the clear; let Broadhead and the Gateway Corp make what they would of it!
And perhaps the message was no lie. In all his stress and bustle, Peter had no time for aches and pains. He ate the CHON-food and, when new regular rations began to come out of the recycler, them, too. Even when they tasted foul-sometimes turpentine, sometimes mold-he was not sick. This was not ideal. Peter knew that he was operating on stress and adrenaline, and sometime there would be a price to pay. But he could see no way to avoid paying it when due.
And when at last he had the food processor working reasonably well once more, and had managed to catch up with what appeared the most peremptory of his own orders, he sat before Vera's console half-dozing, and then saw the greatest marvel of all. He scowled uncomprehendingly. What was that idiot boy doing with a prayer fan? Why in the next frame was he poking it into those foolish things that looked like flowerholders? And then the next frame began to build on the screen, and Peter gave a great shout. Suddenly a picture had appeared, some sort of book-Japanese or Chinese, by the look of it.
He was out of the ship and halfway to the Traumeplatz before his conscious mind quite articulated what some part of him had understood at once. The prayer fans! They contained information! He did not stop to wonder why the information had been in a Terrestrial language, or at least what looked like one. He had grasped the essential fact. He was determined to see for himself. Panting, he thrust himself into the room and scrabbled feverishly among the "fans". How was it done? Why in the name of God had he not waited to see more, to be sure of what he was doing? But there were the candleholders, or flowerpots, or whatever he had thought they were; he jammed the first prayer fan to hand into the nearest one. Nothing happened.
He tried six of them, narrow end first, wide end first, every way he could think of, before it occurred to him that perhaps not all of the reading machines were still working. And the second one he tried pulled the fan out of his hand and immediately sprang into light. He was looking at six dancers in black masks and bodystockings, and he was hearing a song he had not heard for many years.
It was a taped PV show! No. Not even that. It was older than that. Years older, not much more recent than the first years of the discovery of the Gateway asteroid; his second wife was still alive, and Janine not born yet, when that song was new. It had been simple old television, before the Heechee piezoelectric circuits had been incorporated into communications systems for human beings. It had perhaps been part of the library of some Gateway prospector, no doubt One of the Dead Men, and somehow it had been transcribed to a prayer fan.
What a cheat!
> But then he realized that there were thousands of prayer fans, on Earth, in the tunnels of Venus, still on Gateway itself; wherever the Heechee had been they had left them. Whatever the source of this one, most of the others must have been left by the Heechee themselves! And that alone-dear God, that alone was worth more even than the Food Factory, for it was the key to all of the Heechee's knowledge! What a bonus there would be!
Exulting, Peter tried another fan (old movie), and another (slim volume of poetry, this time in English, by someone named Eliot), and another. How disgusting! If this was what Wan had got his notions of love from, some lascivious Gateway prospector carrying pornography with him to pass the time, no wonder his behavior was so foul! But he could not remain angry long, for he had too much to be glad about. He snatched it out of the reader, and then, in the quiet, heard the distant tiny sound of Vera's urgent-attention bell.
It had a frightening sound, even before he got back to the ship, even before he demanded the message and heard his son-in-law's voice, rasped with fear:
"Urgent override priority! For Peter Hester and immediate relay to Earth! Lurvy, Janine and Wan have been captured by the Heechee, and I think they are coming after me!"
The advantage of his new situation, and the only one, was that now that there were no more messages coming from Heechee Heaven Vera was better able to cope with her overload. Patiently Peter teased out of her all the pictures that had been transmitted before Paul's message had been taped, and saw the knot of Heechee at the end of the corridor, the blurred struggle, half a dozen quick glimpses of the ceiling of the corridor, something that might have been the back of Wan's head-then nothing. Or nothing that meant anything. Peter could not know that the camera had been jammed into the blouse of one of the Old Ones, but he could see that there was nothing to be seen: obscure shadowy shapes, perhaps a hint of texture.
Peter's mind was clear. But it was also empty. He did not allow himself to feel how empty his life had at once become. He carefully programmed Vera to go back over the voice messages and select the significant ones, and listened to what all of them had said. There was no hope in any of it. Not even when at last a new picture suddenly began to build on the screen, then another, then another. For half a dozen frames there was nothing that made sense, perhaps a fist over the lens, maybe a shot of a bare floor. Then, in one corner of the last frame, something that looked like-what? Like a Sturmkampfwagen from his earliest boyhood? But then it was gone, and the camera had once again been put where it showed nothing at all, and stayed that way through fifty frames.
What it noticeably did not show was any sign of either of his daughters, or of Wan. And as to Paul, the old man did not have a clue; after his last frantic message he was gone.
In some unwanted corner of his mind he found the realization that now he might be, probably was, the sole survivor of the mission, and so whatever bonus might come to all was now his alone.
He held the thought where he could look at it. But it meant nothing. He was now hopelessly alone, more alone than ever, as alone as Trish Bover frozen into her eternal ragged orbit that would go nowhere. Perhaps he could get back to Earth to claim his reward. Perhaps he could keep from dying. But how was he to keep from going insane?
It took Peter a long time to fall asleep. He was not afraid of sleeping. What he dreaded was waking up afterward, and when it came it was as bad as he had feared. In the first moment it was a day like any other day, and it was only after a peaceable moment of stretching and yawning that he remembered what had happened. "Peter Hester," he said to himself out loud, "you are alone in this very damned place, and you will die here, still alone." He noted that he was talking to himself. Already.
Through the habits of all those years he washed himself, cleaned his mouth, brushed his hair and then took time to snip off the loose ends around his ears and at the nape of his neck. It did not matter what he did, in any case. Having left his private, he opened two packets of CHON-food and ate them methodically before asking Vera if there were any messages from Heechee Heaven. "No," she said, ". . . Mr. Hester, but there are a number of downlink action relays."
"Later," he said. They did not matter. They would tell him to do things he had already done, perhaps. Or they would tell him to do things he had no intention of doing, perhaps to force himself outside, to rerig the thrusters, to try again. But the Food Factory would of course counter every thrust with an equal and opposite thrust of its own and continue its slow acceleration toward God, He knew what, for God, He knew why. In any event, nothing that came from Earth for the next fifty days would be relevant to the new realities.
And in less than fifty days- In less than fifty days, what? "You talk as though you had a choice of options, Peter Hester!" he scolded himself.
Well, perhaps he had, he thought, if only he could perceive what they were. Meanwhile the best thing for him to do was to do what he had always done. To keep himself fastidiously neat. To do such tasks as were reasonable for him to do. To maintain his well established habits. He had learned through all those decades of life that the best time for him to move his bowels was some forty-five minutes after eating breakfast; it was now about that time; it was appropriate to do that. While he was squatting on the sanitary he felt a tiny, almost imperceptible lurch once more and scowled. It was an annoyance to have things happen when he did not know their cause, and it was an interruption in what he was doing, with his customary efficiency. Of course, one could not claim much personal credit for the functioning of sphincters that had been bought and transplanted from some hapless (or hungry) donor, or for a stomach inserted intact from another. Nevertheless, it pleased Peter that he functioned so well.
You are morbidly interested in your bowel movements, he told himself, but silently.
Also silently-it did not seem so bad to talk to oneself, as long as it was not aloud-he defended himself. It was not unjustified, he thought. It was only because the example of the bio-assay unit in the toilet was always before him. For three and a half years it had been monitoring every waste product of their bodies. Of course, so it must! How else to keep tabs on their health? And if it was proper for a machine to weigh and evaluate one's excrement, why not for the excrement's author?
He said aloud, grinning, "Du bist verruckt, Peter Hester!"
He nodded in agreement with himself as he cleaned himself and fastened his coverall, because he had summed it all up. Yes. He was crazy.
By the standards of ordinary men.
But what ordinary man had ever been in the present position of Peter Hester?
So when one had said that he was crazy, after all, one had said nothing that was relevant. What did the standards of ordinary men signify as to Schwarze Peter? It was only against extraordinary men that he could be judged-and what a motley crew they were! Drug addicts and drunkards. Adulterers and traitors. Tycho Brahe had a gutta-percha nose, and no one thought him the less. The Reichsfuhrer ate no meat. Great Frederick himself spent many hours that could have been devoted to the management of an empire in composing music for tinkle-tanide chamber groups. He strolled across to the computer and called, "Vera, what was that little thump a few minutes ago?"
The computer paused to match the description against her telemetry. "I cannot be sure. . . Mr. Hester. But the moment of inertia is consistent with either the launching or docking of one of the cargo ships that have been observed."
He stood for a moment gripping the edge of the console seat. "Fool!" he shouted. "Why was I not told that that was possible?"
"I'm sorry . . . Mr. Hester," she apologized. "The analysis suggesting this possibility has been read out for you as hard copy. Perhaps you overlooked it."
"Fool," he said again, but this time he was not sure who he was talking to. The ships, of course! It had been implicit all along that the production of the Food Factory had to go somewhere. And it had also been implicit that the ships had to return empty to be reloaded. For what? Where?
That did not matter. What mattered w
as the perception that perhaps they would not always come empty.
And, following on that, the perception that one ship at least, known to come to the Food Factory, was now in Heechee Heaven. If it should come back, who or what might be in it?
Peter rubbed his arm, which had begun to ache. Pains or none, he could perhaps do something about that! He had some weeks before that ship could possibly return. He could-what? Yes! He could barricade that corridor. He could somehow move machines, stores-anything that had mass-to block it, so that when it did return, if it did, whoever was in it would be stopped, or at least delayed. And the time to begin that was now.
He delayed no further, but set off to find materials for a barricade.
It was not hard to move even quite massive objects, in the low thrust of the Food Factory. But it was tiring. And his arms continued to ache. And in a little while, as he was shoving a blue metal object like a short, fat canoe down toward the dock, he became aware of a strange sensation that seemed to come from the roots of his teeth, almost like the beginning of a toothache; and saliva began to flow from under his tongue.
Peter stopped and breathed deeply, forcing himself to relax. It did no good. He had known it would do no good. In a few moments the pain in the chest began, first tentative, as though someone were pressing against him with a sled runner along his breastbone, then painful, a hard, bruising thrust, as though the runner were on top of him and a hundred-kilo man standing on it.
He was too far from Vera to get medicine. He would have to wait it out. If it was false angina, he would live. If it was cardiac arrest, he would not. He sat patient and still, waiting to see which it would be, while anger built up and built up inside him. How unfair it was!
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Page 16
