As to Robinette Broadhead’s feelings of guilt- Q.-I wondered when you would get back to that. Let me make a suggestion. Why not let Robin Broadhead tell about that himself?
A.-Excellent ideal-since, heaven knows, he is expert on the subject.
And so the scene is started, the procession is swelled … and I give you Robinette Broadhead!
1 Just like Old Times
Before they vastened me I felt a need I hadn’t felt for thirty years and more, and so I did what I hadn’t thought I would ever do again. I practiced a solitary vice. I sent my wife, Essie, off to the city to make a sneak raid on a couple of her franchises. I put a “Do Not Disturb” override on all the communications systems in the house. I called up my data-retrieval system (and friend) Albert Einstein and gave him orders that made him scowl and suck his pipe. And presently-when the house was still and Albert bad reluctantly but obediently turned himself off, and I was lying comfortably on the couch in my study with a little Mozart coming faintly from the next room and the scent of mimosa in the air system and the lights not too bright—presently, I say, I spoke the name I hadn’t spoken in decades. “Sigfrid von Shrink, please, I would like to talk to you.”
For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to come. Then, in the corner of the room by the wet bar, there was a sudden fog of light and a flash, and there he sat.
He had not changed in thirty years. He wore a dark and heavy suit, of the cut you see on portraits of Sigmund Freud. His elderly, nondescript face had not gained a wrinkle and his bright eyes sparkled no less. He held a prop pad in one hand and a prop pencil in the other-as if he had any need to take notes! And he said politely, “Good morning, Rob. I see that you are looking very well.”
“You always did start out by trying to reassure me,” I told him, and he flashed a small smile.
Sigfrid von Shrink does not really exist. He is nothing more than a psychoanalytic computer program. He has no physical existence; what I saw was only a hologram and what I heard was only synthesized speech. He doesn’t even have a name, really, since “Sigfrid von Shrink” is only what I called him because I could not talk about the things that paralyzed me, decades ago, to a machine that didn’t even have a name. “I suppose,” he said meditatively, “that the reason you called for me is that something is troubling you.”
“That’s true.”
He gazed at me with patient curiosity, and that also had not changed. I had a lot better programs to serve me these days-well, one particular program, Albert Einstein, who is so good that I hardly bother with any of the others-but Sigfrid was still pretty good. He waits me out. He knows that what is curdling in my mind takes time to form itself into words, and so he doesn’t rush me.
On the other hand, he doesn’t let me just daydream away the time, either. “Can you say what you are disturbed about right at this moment?”
“A lot of things. Different things,” I said.
“Pick one,” he said patiently, and I shrugged.
“It’s a troublesome world, Sigfrid. With all the good things that have happened, why are people-Oh, shit. I’m doing it again, right?”
He twinkled at me. “Doing what?” he encouraged.
“Saying a thing that’s worrying me, not the thing. Dodging away from the real issue.”
“That sounds like a good insight, Robin. Do you want to try now to tell me what the real issue is?”
I said, “I want to. I want to so much that actually, I almost think I’m going to cry. I haven’t done that for a hell of a long time.”
“You haven’t felt the need to see me for quite a long time,” he pointed out, and I nodded.
“Yes. Exactly.”
He waited for a while, slowly turning his pencil between his fingers now and then, keeping that expression of polite and friendly interest, that non-judging expression that was really about all I could remember of his face between sessions, and then he said, “The things that really trouble you, Robin, deep down, are by definition hard to say. You know that. We saw that together, years ago. It’s not surprising that you haven’t needed to see me all these years, because obviously your life has been going well for you.”
“Really very well,” I agreed. “Probably a hell of a lot better than I deserve-wait a minute, am I expressing hidden guilt by saying that? Feelings of inadequacy?”
He sighed but was still smiling. “You know I prefer that you don’t try to talk like an analyst, Robin.” I grinned back. He waited for a moment, then went on: “Let’s look at the present situation objectively. You have made sure that no one is here to interrupt us-or to eavesdrop? To hear something you don’t want your nearest and dearest friend to hear? You’ve even instructed Albert Einstein, your data-retrieval system, to withdraw and to seal off this interview from all datastores. What you have to say must be very private. Perhaps it is something that you feel but are ashamed to be heard feeling. Does that suggest anything to you, Robin?”
I cleared my throat. “You’ve put your finger right on it, Sigfrid.”
“And? The thing you want to say? Can you say it?”
I plunged in. “You’re God-damned right I can! It’s simple! It’s obvious! I’m getting very God-damned flicking old!”
That’s the best way. When it’s hard to say, just say it. That was one of the things I had learned from those long-ago days when I was pouring out my pain to Sigfrid three times a week, and it always works. As soon as I had said it I felt purged-not well, not happy, not as though a problem had been solved, but that glob of badness had been excreted. Sigfrid nodded slightly. He looked down at the pencil he was rolling between his fingers, waiting for me to go on. And I knew that now I could. I’d got past the worst part. I knew the feeling. I remembered it well, from those old and stormy sessions.
Now, I’m not the same person I was then. That Robin Broadhead had been raw with guilt because he’d left a woman he loved to die. Now those guilt feelings were long eased-because Sigfnd had helped me ease them. That Robin Broadhead thought so little of himself that he couldn’t believe anyone else would think well of him, so he had few friends. Now I have-I don’t know. Dozens. Hundreds! (Some of them I am going to tell you about.) That Robin Broadhead could not accept love, and since then I had had a quarter of a century of the best marriage there ever was. So I was a quite different Robin Broadhead.
But some of the things had not changed at all. “Sigfrid,” I said, “I’m old, I’m going to die one of these days, and do you know what pulls my cork?”
He looked up from his pencil. “What’s that, Robin?”
“I’m not grown-up enough to be so old!”
He pursed his lips. “Would you care to explain that, Robin?”
“Yes,” I said, “I would.” And as a matter of fact the next part came easily, because, you can be sure, I had done a lot of thinking on the subject before I went so far as to call Sigfrid up. “I think it has to do with the Heechee,” I said. “Let me finish before you tell me I’m crazy, all right? As you may remember, I was part of the Heechee generation; we kids grew up hearing about the Heechee, which had everything human beings didn’t have and knew everything human beings didn’t know-“
“The Heechee weren’t quite that superior, Robin.”
“I’m talking about how it seemed to us kid& They were scary, because we used to threaten each other that they’d come back and get us. And most of all they were so far ahead of us in everything that we couldn’t compete. A little like Santa Claus. A little like those mad pervert rapists our mothers used to warn us against. A little like God. Do you understand what I’m saying, Sigfrid?”
He said cautiously, “I can recognize those feelings, yes. Actually such perceptions have turned up in analysis with many persons of your generation and later.”
“Right! And I remember something you said to me once about Freud. You said he said that no man could truly grow up while his father was still alive.”
“Well, actually-“
I overrode him. “And I used to tell you that was bullshit because my own father was nice enough to die while I was still a little kid.”