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 Herter,” 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. Herter, 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 Herter!” 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 bioassay 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 verrückt, Peter Herter!”
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 Herter?
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 Reichsführer 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-tankle 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. Herter. 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. Herter,” 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 was 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!
How unfair it all was! Five thousa
nd astronomical units away, serenely and untroubled, the people of the world went about their business, neither knowing nor caring that the person who could bring them so much—who already had!—might be dying, alone and in pain.
Could they be grateful? Could they show respect, appreciation, even common decency?
Perhaps he would give them a chance. If they responded with these things, yes, he would bring them such gifts as they had never known. But if they were wicked and disobedient—
Then Schwarze Peter would bring them such terrible gifts that all the world would shudder and quake with fear! In either case, they would never forget him…if only he survived what was happening to him now.
9
Brasilia
The main thing was Essie. I sat by her bed every time she came out of surgery—fourteen times in six weeks—and every time her voice was a little weaker and she looked a little more gaunt. Everybody was after me all the time, the suit against me in Brasilia was going badly, reports poured in from the Food Factory, the fire in the food mines still would not go out. But Essie was up front. Harriet had her orders. Wherever I was, asleep or awake, if Essie asked for me she was put through at once. “Oh, yes, Mrs. Broadhead, Robin will be with you right away. No, you won’t be disturbing him. He just woke up from a nap.” Or he’s just between appointments, or he’s just coming up the lawn from the Tappan Sea, or anything that would not deter Essie from speaking to me right away. And then I would go into the darkened room, all sun-tanned and grinning and relaxed, and tell her how well she was looking. They had taken my billiard room and moved a whole operating theater into it, and cleared the books out of the library next door to make it a bedroom for her. She was pretty comfortable there. Or said she was.
And actually, she didn’t look bad at all. They had done the splints and the bone grafts, and plugged in two or three kilos of spare parts and tissues. They had even put the skin back, or I guess transplanted new skin from somebody else. Her face looked fine, except for a light bandage on one side, and she brushed her streaky blonde hair down over that. “So, stud,” she would greet me. “How you hanging?”
“Just fine, just fine. A little horny,” I would say, nuzzling her neck with my nose. “And you?”
“Just fine.” So we reassured each other; and we weren’t lying, you know. She was getting better every day, the doctors told me that. And I was getting—I don’t know what I was getting. But I was all atremble with eagerness for every morning. Operating on five hours sleep a night. Never tired. Never felt better in my life.
But still she kept getting skinnier every time. The doctors told me what I must do, and I told Harriet and Harriet reprogrammed the cook. So we stopped having salads and bare broiled steaks. No coffee and juice breakfasts, but tvoroznyikyi, cream-cheese pancakes, and mugs of steaming cocoa. Caucasian lamb pilaff for lunch. Roast grouse in sour-cream sauce for dinner. “You’re spoiling me, dear Robin,” she accused, and I said:
“Only fattening you up. I can’t stand skinny women.”
“Yes, very well. But there is such a thing as being too ethnic. Is there nothing fattening that is not Russian?”
“Wait for dessert,” I grinned. “Strawberry shortcake.” And whipped with double Devonshire cream. As a matter of psychology, the nurse had persuaded me to start with small portions on large plates. Essie doggedly ate them all the way through, and as we gradually increased the size of the portions she gradually ate more each day. She didn’t stop losing weight. But she slowed it down a lot, and by the end of six weeks the doctors opined that her condition, cautiously, might be regarded as stable. Nearly.
When I told her the good news she was actually standing up—tethered to the plumbing under her bed, but able to walk about the room. “About time,” she said, reaching out to kiss me. “Now. You have been spending too much time at home.”
“It’s a pleasure,” I said.
“It is a kindness,” she said soberly. “Is very dear to me that you have always been here, Robin. But now that I am almost well you must have affairs to attend to.”
“Not really. I get along fine with the comm facilities in the brain room. Of course, it would be nice for the two of us to go somewhere. I don’t think you’ve ever seen Brasilia. Maybe in a few weeks—”
“No. Not in few weeks. Not with me. If you have need to go, please do it, Robin.”
I hesitated. “Well, Morton thinks it might be useful.”
She nodded briskly and called, “Harriet? Mr. Broadhead will be leaving for Brasilia tomorrow morning. Make reservations et cetera.”
“Certainly, Mrs. Broadhead,” Harriet said from the console at the head of Essie’s bed. Her image sputtered into blackness as quickly as it had appeared, and Essie put her arms around me.
“I will see that you have complete communications in Brasilia,” she promised, “and Harriet will be instructed to keep you posted on my condition at all times. Square count, Robin. If I need you, you will know at once.”
I said into her ear, “Well—”
She said into my shoulder, “Is no ‘well.’ Is settled, and, Robin? I love you very much.”
Albert tells me that every radio message I send is actually a long, skinny string of photons, like a spear thrown into space. A thirty-second burst communication is a column nine million kilometers long, each photon zipping along at the speed of light, in perfect step all the way. But even that long, fast, skinny spear takes forever to go 5,000 A.U. The fever that had wounded my wife had taken twenty-five days to get here. The orders to stop fooling with the couch had gone only a fraction of the way before they passed the second fever, the one the girl Janine had laid on us. Lightly, to be sure. Our message congratulating the Herter-Halls on arriving at the Food Factory, out somewhere past Pluto’s orbit, had passed the one to tell us that most of them had gone skylarking off to Heechee Heaven. By now they were there; and our message telling them what to do about it was long since at the Food Factory for relay—for once two events had occurred at times close enough to have some meaning for each other.
But by the time we knew what meaning they had had, the event would again be twenty-five days in the past. What an annoyance! I wanted many things on the Food Factory, but what I wanted most of all at that moment was that faster-than-light radio. Astonishing that such a thing should be! But when I charged Albert with being caught flat-footed by it, he had smiled that gentle, humble smile and poked his pipestem at his ear and said, “Sure thing, Robin, if you mean the sort of surprise that one feels when an unlikely contingency turns out to be real. But it was always a contingency. Remember. The Heechee ships were able to navigate without error to moving targets. That suggests the possibility of communication at nearly instantaneous speeds over astronomical distances—ergo, a faster-than-light radio.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me about it?” I demanded.
He scratched one sneakered foot against the other sockless ankle. “It was only a possibility, Robin, estimated no more than point oh five. A sufficient condition, but not a necessary one. We simply didn’t have enough evidence, until now.”
I could have been chatting with Albert on the way down to Brasilia. But I was traveling commercial—the company aircraft aren’t fast enough for those distances—and I like having Albert where I can see him when we talk, so I spent my time voice-only with company business and Morton. And of course with Harriet, who was under orders to check in once an hour, except when I was asleep, with a quick status report on Essie.
Even hypersonic, a ten-thousand-kilometer flight takes a while, and I had time for a lot of business. Morton wanted as much of it as he could get, mostly to try to talk me out of meeting with Bover. “You have to take him seriously, Robin,” he whined through the plug in my ear. “Bover’s represented by Anjelos, Carpenter and Gutmann, and they’re high-powered people, with really good legal programs.”
“Better than you?”
Hesitation. “Well—I hope not, Robin.”
“Tell me someth
ing, Morton. If Bover didn’t have much of a case to begin with, why are these high-powered people bothering with him?”
Although I couldn’t see him, I knew that Morton would be assuming his defensive look, partly apologetic, partly you-laymen-wouldn’t-understand. “It’s not all that weak, Robin. And it hasn’t gone well for us so far. And it’s taking on some larger dimensions than we originally estimated. And I assume that they thought their connections would patch up the weak spots—I also assume that they’re in for a son-of-a-bitching big contingency fee. You’d be better advised to patch up some of our own weak spots than take a chance with Bover, Robin. Your pal Senator Praggler is on this month’s oversight committee. Go see him first.”
“I’ll go see him, but not first,” I told Morton, and cut him off as we circled in for a landing. I could see the big Gateway Authority tower overshadowing the silly flat saucer over the House of Representatives, and off up the lake the bright reflections of tin roofs in the Free Town. I had cut it pretty close. My date with Trish Bover’s widower (or husband, depending on how you looked at it) was in less than an hour, and I didn’t really want to keep him waiting.
I didn’t have to. I was already sitting at a table in the courtyard dining room of the Brasilia Palace hotel when he came in. Skinny. Tall. Balding. He sat down nervously, as if he were in a desperate hurry, or desperately eager to be somewhere else. But when I offered him lunch he took ten minutes to study the menu and wound up ordering all of it. Fresh hearts of palm salad, little fresh-water shrimp from the lake, all the way down to that wonderful raw pineapple flown up from Rio. “This is my favorite hotel in Brasilia,” I informed him genially, hostfully, as he poured dressing on the hearts of palm. “Old. But good. I suppose you’ve seen all the sights?”
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Page 17
