“It is when you say things like that, Robin”-he sighed-“that I wonder if my diagnostic programs are as good as they ought to be. Are you sure you’re not in pain from your operation?” He was, or appeared to be, sitting on the edge of the seat, guiding our vessel into landing as he talked, but I knew that his question was rhetorical. He was monitoring me all along, of course.
As soon as the ship was secured I unplugged the Albert datafan, tucked it under my arm, and headed for my new ship. “No sightseeing?” Essie asked, studying me with almost the exact expression Albert had displayed. “Then you want me to come with?”
“I’m really excited about the ship,” I said, “and I just want to go look at it. You can meet me there later.” I knew she was eager to see how her beloved franchise was getting along in this location. Of course, I did not then know who she might run into.
So I was thinking about nothing in particular as I clambered through the hatch into my own, personal, human-built interstellar space yacht, and be damned if it didn’t turn out that I was just about as excited as I had told Essie I was. I mean, talk about childhood fantasies come true! It was real. And it was all mine, and it had everything.
At least, it had almost everything. It had a master stateroom with a marvelously wide anisokinetic bed and a genuine toilet next door. It had a fully stocked larder and something very like a real kitchen. It also had two working cabins, one for Essie and one for me, that could provide concealed berths for more guests in case we ever wanted company. It had the first human-built drive system ever to be successfully proved out for a civilian faster-than-light vessel-well, some of the parts were Heechee, salvaged out of damaged exploration ships, but most of it was human-made. And it was powerful with a bigger, faster drive. It had a home for Albert, a fan socket with his name engraved over it; I slipped him into place but did not activate him, because I was enjoying my solitary prowl. It had datafans full of music and PV plays and reference works and specialist programs to do almost everything I might ever want to do, or that Essie might, either. It had a viewscreen copied from the one on the big S. Ya. transport, ten times the size of the little blurry plates in the exploration ships. It had everything I had ever thought of wanting in a ship, in fact, and the only thing it didn’t have was a name.
I sat on the edge of the big anisokinetic bed, the thrust feeling funny on my bottom, because it was all exerted upward instead of that constricting sideways squeeze you get from regular mattresses, and I thought about
One of the lesser artifacts the Heechee left around was the anisokinetic punch-a simple tool that could convert an impact to an equal force at some angle to the driving force. The theory of it turned out to be both profound and elegant. The use people made of it, less so-the most popular product made with anisokinetic materials was a bedding mattress with “springs” whose force was vector rather than scalar, producing what is said to be a titillating support for sexual activity. Sexual activity! How much time meat intelligences waste on that sort of thing!
that problem. It was a good place to do it, since the person who would occupy that bed with me was the one I wanted to name the ship after. However, I had already named the transport after her.
Of course, I thought, there were ways of dealing with that. I could call it the Sem.Ya. Or the Essie. Or the Mrs. Robinette Broadheo4 for that matter, although that was pretty stupid.
The matter was fairly urgent. We were all set to go. There was nothing to keep us on Gateway, except that I couldn’t face taking off in a ship that didn’t have a name. I found myself in the control cabin, and dropped into the pilot seat. This one was built for a human bottom, and in that way alone an immense improvement over the old style.
When I was a kid in the food mines I used to sit on a kitchen chair, in front of the radar oven, and make believe I was piloting a Gateway ship to the far corners of the universe. What I did now was just about the same thing. I reached out and touched the course wheels and made believe to squeeze the initiator teat and-and-well, I fantasized. I imagined myself dashing through space in just the same careless, adventurous, penalty-free style I had imagined as a child. Circling quasars. Speeding out to the nearby alien galaxies. Entering the silicon dust shroud around the core. Meeting a Heechee! Entering a black hole- The fantasy collapsed then, because that was too personally real, but I suddenly realized I had a name for the ship. It fit Essie perfectly, but did not duplicate the one on the S. Ya.:
True Love.
It was the perfect name!
That being so, why did it leave me feeling vaguely sentimental, lovelorn, melancholy?
It was not a thought that I wanted to pursue. Anyway, now that a name had been decided, there were things to do: The registry had to be amended, the ship’s insurance papers had to be corrected-the world had to be notified of my decision. The way to do that was to tell Albert to get it done. So I rocked the datafan that held him to make sure it was firmly seated and turned him on.
I had not got used to the new Albert, so it surprised me when he turned up not in a holograph box, not even near his datafan, but in the doorway to the main cabin. He stood there with an elbow cupped in a palm, the pipe in the free hand, gazing peacefully around for all the world as though he had just come in. “A beautiful ship, Robin,” he said. “My congratulations.”
“I didn’t know you could jump around like that!”
“I am in fact not jumping around, my dear Robin,” he pointed out amiably. “It is part of my program to give to the maximum extent possible the simulation of reality. To appear like a genie out of a bottle would not seem realistic, would it?”
“You’re a neat program, Albert,” I acknowledged, and, smiling, he said:
“And an alert one, too, if I may say so, Robin. For example, I believe your good wife is coming this way now.” He stepped aside-quite unnecessarily!-as Essie came in, panting and looking as though she were trying not to look upset.
“What’s the matter?” I demanded, suddenly alarmed.
She didn’t answer right away. “Haven’t heard, then?” she said at last.
“Heard what?”
She looked both surprised and relieved. “Albert? You have not acquired linkage with data net?”
“I was just about to do so, Mrs. Broadhead,” he said politely. “No! Do not! There is-ah-there are some adjustments in bias must make for Gateway conditions first.” Albert pursed his lips thoughtfully but did not speak; I was not so reticent.
“Essie, spit it out! What is it?”
She sat down on the communicator’s bench, fanning herself. “That rogue Wan,” she said. “Is here! Is talk of entire asteroid complex. I am astonished you have not heard. Woosh! I ran so! I was afraid you would be upset.”
I smiled forgivingly. “The operation was weeks ago, Essie,” I reminded her. “I’m not that delicate-or that likely to get all in an uproar over Wan, for that matter. Have a little more confidence in me!”
She looked at me narrowly, then nodded. “Is true,” she admitted. “Was foolish. Well, I get back to work,” she went on, standing up and moving to the door. “But remember, Albert-no interfacing with net until I come back!”
“Wait!” I cried. “You haven’t heard my news.” She paused long enough to let me say proudly, “I’ve found a name for the ship. The True Love. What do you think?”
She took a long time to think that over, and her expression was a lot more tentative, and a lot less delighted, than I might have expected. Then she said, “Yes, is very good name, Robin. God bless her and all who sail in her, eh? Now must go.”
After twenty-five years I still did not entirely understand Essie. I told Albert so. He was sitting at his ease on Essie’s dressing-table bench, observing himself in the mirror, and he shrugged. “Do you suppose she didn’t like the name?” I asked him. “It’s a good name!”
“I should have thought so, Robin,” he agreed, experimenting with different expressions in the mirror.
“And she didn’t seem to want to look at the ship!”