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 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 thousand 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.