“What a rotten thing human being is,” she offered, and then reversed herself. “No. Am unjust. One human being can be quite fine, even as fine as we four sitting here. Not perfect. But on a statistical basis out of let us say one hundred chances to display kindness, altruism, decency-all these traits we humans esteem, you see-will in fact perform no fewer than twenty-five of them. But nations? Political groups? Terrorists?” She shook her head. “Out of one hundred chances, zero,” she said. “Or perhaps one, but then, you may be sure, with some trick up sleeve. You see, wickedness is additive. Is perhaps one grain in each human being. But add up quantity of say ten million human beings in even small country or group, equals evil enough to damage entire world!”
“I’m ready for dessert,” I said, gesturing to the waiters.
You would think that was a broad enough hint for any guest to take, especially considering that they already knew we’d had a bad day, but Walthers was obstinate. He lingered over dessert. He insisted on telling me his life’s story, and he kept looking at the waiters, and all in all I was getting quite uncomfortable, not just in the belly.
Essie says I am not patient with people. Perhaps so. The friends I am most comfortable interacting with are computer programs rather than flesh and blood, and they don’t have feelings to hurt-well, I’m not sure that’s true for Albert. But it is for, say, my secretarial program or my chef. It is certain that I was getting impatient with Audee Walthers. His life had been a dull soap opera. He had lost his wife and his savings. He had made unauthorized use of equipment on the S. Ya. with Yee-xing’s connivance and got her fired. He had spent his last dime to get here to Rotterdam, reason not specified, but clearly it had something to do with me.
Well, I am not unwilling to “loan” money to a friend down on his luck but, see, I was in no mood. It was not just the fright over Essie or the screwed-up day, or the nagging worry about whether the next nut with a gun would actually get me. there was my damned gut giving me fits. At last I told the waiters to clear off, though Walthers was still lingering over his fourth cup of coffee. I stomped over to the table with the liqueurs and cigars and glowered at him as he followed. “What is it, Audee?” I said, no longer polite. “Money? How much do you need?”
And I got such a look from him! He hesitated, watching while the last of the waiters filed out through the pantry, and then he let me have it. “It isn’t what I need,” he said, his voice trembling, “it’s what you’re willing to pay for something you want. You’re a real rich man, Broadhead. Maybe you don’t worry about people who stick their asses in a crack for you, but I made the mistake of doing it twice.”
I don’t like being reminded I owe a favor, either, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything. Janie Yee-xing put her hand on his bad wrist- gently. “Just tell him what you’ve got,” she ordered.
“Tell me what?” I demanded, and the son of a gun shrugged and said, the way you might tell me you’d found my car keys on the floor:
“Why, tell you that I’ve found what I think is a real, live Heechee.”
12 God and the Heechee
I found a Heechee … I’ve got a fragment of the True Cross … I talked with God, literally I did-those statements are all in the same league. You don’t believe them, but they scare you. And then, if you find they’re true, or if you can’t be sure they’re not-then it’s miracle time, and scared-to-death time. God and the Heechee. When I was a kid I didn’t distinguish greatly between them, and even as a grownup the confusion was still there.
It was past midnight when I was finally willing to let them go. By then I’d sucked them dry. I had the datafan they’d swiped from the £ Ya. I had brought Albert in on the discussion to ask all the questions his fertile digital mind could invent. I was feeling pretty rotten and frayed, and the analgesia had long worn off, but I couldn’t go to sleep. Essie announced firmly that if I was determined to kill self with overexertion she was at least going to stay up to enjoy spectacle, and as soon as she was gently snoring on the couch I called Albert again. “One financial detail,” I said. “Walthers said he’d passed up a million-dollar bonus to give this to me, so transfer, ah, two million to his account right away.”
“Certainly, Robin.” Albert Einstein never gets sleepy, but when he wants to indicate that it’s past my bedtime he is perfectly capable of yawning and stretching. “I should remind you, though, that the state of your health-“
I told him what he could do with the state of my health. Then I told him what he could do with his idea of putting me in the hospital the next day. He spread his hands gracefully. “You’re the boss, Robin,” he said humbly. “Still, I’ve been thinking.”
It is not true that Albert Einstein does not spend any time thinking. Since he moves at nuclear-particle speeds, however, the time involved is not usually perceptible to flesh-and-blood human beings like myself. Unless he wants it to be, usually for dramatic effect. “Spit it out, Albert.”
He shrugged. “It is only that in your precarious health, I do not like to see you excited without reason.”
“Reason! Jesus, Albert, sometimes you really act like a dumb machine. What more reason could anybody have than finding a living Heechee?”
“Yes,” he said, puffing his pipe judiciously, and changed the subject. “From the sensor readings I am receiving, Robin, I would think you must be in considerable pain.”
“How bright you are, Albert.” The fact of the matter was that the churning in my gut had shifted gears. Now there was a mixer blade pureeing my belly, and every spin was a separate hurt.
“Should I wake Mrs. Broadhead and inform her?”
That message was in code. If we woke Essie to tell her something like that, it would at once result in her throwing me into bed, summoning the surgical programs, and delivering me over to all the cossetting and curing Full Medical Plus could offer. The truth was it was beginning to look attractive. Pain scared me as dying did not. Dying was something you could get over and done with, at least, while pain looked unending.
But not right then! “No way, Albert,” I said, “at least not until you come out with whatever you’re being so coy about. Are you telling me that I made a wrong assumption somewhere along the line? If so, tell me where.”
“Only in terming Audee Walthers’ perception a Heechee, Robin,” he said, scratching his chin with the stem of his pipe.
I sat up straight, and grabbed at my stomach because the sudden motion had not been a good idea. “What the hell else could it be, Albert?”
He said solemnly, “Let us review the evidence. Walthers said that the intelligence he perceived seemed to be slowed down, even stopped. This is consistent with the hypothesis it is Heechee, since they are thought to be in a black hole, where time is slowed.”
“Right. Then why-“
“Second,” he went on, “the detection was in interstellar space. This is also consistent, since the Heechee are known to have that capability.”
“Albert!”
“Finally,” he said calmly, disregarding the tone of my voice, “the detection was of an intelligent form of life, and other than ourselves”-he twinkled at me-“or, should I say, other than the human race, the Heechee are the only known such form. However,” he said benignly, “the duplicate ship’s log that Captain Walthers brought us raises serious questions.”
“Get on with it, damn you!”
“Certainly, Robin. Let me display the data.” He moved aside in his holographic frame, and a ship’s chart leaped into existence. It showed a distant pale blob, and along the right-hand margin symbols and numerals danced. “Note the velocity, Robin. Eighteen hundred kilometers a second. That is not an impossible velocity for a natural object-say, a condensation from the wave-front of a supernova. But for a Heechee vessel? Why would it be going so slowly? And does that in fact look like a Heechee vessel?”
“It looks like nothing at all, for God’s sake! It’s just a blur. At extreme range. You can’t tell a thing.”
The small figure of Albert to one side of the chart nodded. “Not as it is, no,” he admitted, “but I have been able to enhance the image. There is, of course, other negative evidence. If indeed the source is a black hole-“