“Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“When I am tired,” she said practically, “you will know, because I will roll over and go to sleep. Has been very long time since you and I were like this, Robin. Am enjoying it.”
She accepted a cup from me and looked at me over the rim as she sipped it. “But you are not,” she observed.
“Yes I am!” And I was; but honesty made me add, “I puzzle myself sometimes, Essie. Why is it that when you show me love it comes out in my head feeling like guilt?”
She put down her cup and lay back. “Do you wish to tell me about it, dear Robin?”
“I just have.” Then I added, “I suppose, if anybody, I should call up old Sigfrid von Shrink and tell him.”
“He is always available,” she said.
“Hum. If I start with him God knows when I’d ever finish. Anyway, he’s not the program I want to talk to. There’s so much going on, Essie! And it’s all happening without me. I feel left out.”
“Yes,” she said, “am aware this is how you feel. Is something you wish to do, so will not feel left out any more?”
“Well-maybe,” I said. “About Peter Herter, for instance. I’ve been fooling around with a kind of an idea that I’d like to talk over with Albert Einstein.”
She nodded. “Very well, why not?” She sat up on the edge of the bed.. “Hand me my slippers, please. Let us do this now.”
“Now? But it’s late. You shouldn’t be-“
“Robin,” she said kindly, “I too have talked with Sigfrid von Shrink. Is good program, even if not written by me. Says you are good man, Robin, well adjusted, generous, and to all of this I also can testify, not to add excellent lover and much fun to be with. Come into study.” She took my hand as we walked into the big room looking over the Tappan Sea and sat before my console in the comfortable loveseat. “However,” she went on, “Sigfrid says you have great talent for inventing reasons not to do things. So I will help you get off dime. Daite gorod Polymat.” She was not talking to me, but to the console, which sprang at once into light “Display both Albert and Sigfrid programs,” she ordered. “Access both files in interactive mode. Now, Robin! Let us pursue questions you have raised. After all, I am quite interested too.”
This wife of so many years, this S. Ya. Lavorovna I married, she surprises me most when I least expect it. She sat quite comfortably beside me, holding my hand, while I talked quite openly about doing the things that I had most wanted not to want. It was not just a matter of going to Heechee Heaven and the Food Factory and stopping old Peter Herter from messing up the world. It was where I might go after that
But at first It did not look as though I were going anywhere. “Albert,” I said, “you told me that you had worked out a course setting for Heechee Heaven from Gateway records. Can you do that for the Food Factory too?”
The two of them were sitting side by side in the PV tank, Albert puffing on his pipe, Sigfrid, hands clasped and silent, attentively listening. He would not speak until I spoke to him, and I was not doing that. “‘Fraid not,” Albert said apologetically. “We have only one known setting for the Food Factory, Trish Bover’s, and that’s not enough to be sure. Maybe point-six probable that it would get a ship there. But then what, Robin? It couldn’t come back. Or at least Trish Bover’s didn’t.” He settled himself comfortably, and went on, “There are, of course, certain alternatives.” He glanced at Sigfrid von Shrink beside him. “One might so manipulate Herter’s mind by suggestion that he would change his plans.”
“Would that work?” I was still talking to Albert Einstein. He shrugged, and Sigfrid stirred but did not speak.
“Oh, do not be such a baby,” Essie scolded. “Answer, Sigfrid.”
“Gospozha Lavorovna,” he said, glancing at me, “I think not. I believe my colleague has raised this possibility only so that I might dismiss it. I have studied the records of Peter Herter’s transmissions. The symbolism is quite obvious. The angelic women with the raptor beaks-what is a ‘hooked nose’, gospozha? Think of Payter’s childhood, and what he heard of the ‘cleansing’ of the world of the evil Jews. There is also the violence, the punitive emotions. He is quite ill, has in fact already suffered one coronary attack, and is no longer rational; he has, in fact, regressed to quite a childish state. Neither suggestion nor appeals to reason will work, gospozha. The only possibility would be perhaps long-term analysis. He would not likely agree, the shipboard computer could not well handle it and, in any case, there is not time. I cannot help you, gospozha, not with any real chance of success.”
Long and long ago I spent a couple of hundred mostly very unpleasant hours listening to Sigfrid’s reasonable, maddening voice, and I had not wanted ever to hear it again. But, you know, it wasn’t all that bad.
Beside me, Essie stirred, “Polymath,” she called, “have fresh coffee prepared.” To me she said, “I think will be here for some time.”
“I don’t know for what,” I objected. “I seem to be stymied.”
“And if you are,” she said comfortably, “we need not drink the coffee but can go back to bed. Meanwhile am quite enjoying this, Robin.”
Well, why not? I was strangely no more sleepy than Essie appeared to be. In fact, I was both alert and relaxed, and my mind had never been clearer. “Albert,” I said, “is there any progress on reading the Heechee books?”
“Not much, Robin,” he apologized. “There are other mathematical volumes such as the one you saw, but as yet no language- Yes, Robin?”
I snapped my fingers. The vagrant thought that had been in the back of my mind had come to the fore. “Gosh numbers,” I said. “Those numbers the book showed us. They’re the same as the ones the Dead Men call ‘gosh numbers.’”
“Sure thing, Robin,” he nodded. “They are basic dimensionless constants of the universe, or at least of this universe. However, there is the question of Mach’s Principle, which suggests-“
“Not now, Albert! Where do you suppose the Dead Men got them?”
He paused, frowning. Tapping out his pipe, he glanced at Sigfrid before he said, “I would conjecture that the Dead Men interfaced with the Heechee machine intelligence. No doubt there was some transmission both ways.”
“My very thought! What else do you conjecture the Dead Men might know?”
“That is very difficult to say. They are very incompletely stored, you know. Communication was extremely difficult at best and has now been interrupted entirely.”
I sat up straight. “And what if we got back in communication? What if somebody went to Heechee Heaven to talk to them?”
He coughed. Trying not to be patronizing, he said, “Robin, several members of the Herter-Hall party, plus the boy, Wan, have failed to get clear answers from them on these questions. Even our machine intelligence has succeeded only poorly- though,” he said politely enough, “that is primarily because of the necessity to interface with the shipboard computer, Vera. They are poorly stored, Robin. They are obsessive, irrational and often incoherent.”
Behind me Essie was standing with the tray of coffee and cups-I had hardly heard the bell from the kitchen to say it was ready. “Ask him, Robin,” she commanded.
I did not pretend to misunderstand. “Hell,” I said, “all right, Sigfrid. That’s your line of work. How do we trick them into talking to us?”
Sigfrid smiled and unlaced his hands. “It is good to speak to you again, Robin,” he said. “I would like to compliment you on your very considerable progress since we spoke last-“
“Get on with it!”
“Of course, Robin. There is one possibility. The storage of the female prospector, Henrietta, seems rather complete, except for her one obsession, that is, with the unfaithfulness of her husband. I think that if a machine program were written from what we know of her husband’s personality and interfaced with her-“
“Make a fake husband for her?”
“Essentially, yes, Robin,” he nodded. “It wouldn’t have to be exact. Because the Dead Men in general are so poorly stored, any responses that were inappropriate might be overlooked. Of course, the program would be quite-“
“Stow it, Sigfrid. Can you write a program like that?”
“Yes. With help from your wife, yes.”
“And then how do we get it in contact with Henrietta?”
He looked sidewise at Albert. “I believe my colleague can help there.”
“Sure thing, Sigfrid,” Albert said cheerily, scratching one foot with the toe of the other. “One. Write the program, with ancillaries. Two. Read it into a PMAL-2 flip processor, with a gigabit fast-access memory and necessary slave units. Three. Put it in a Five and fire it off to Heechee Heaven. Then interface it with Henrietta and start the interrogation. I’d give that, oh, maybe a point-nine probability of working.”