“She appeared to have something on her mind,” he agreed.
“But what? I swear,” I repeated, “I don’t always understand her.”
“I confess that I do not either, Robin. In my case,” he said, turning from the mirror to twinkled at me, “I have assumed that it is because I am mechanical and she is human. I wonder what it is in your case?”
I stared at him, a little annoyed, and then grinned. “You’re pretty funny in your new programming, Albert,” I told him. “What do you get out of pretending to look in a mirror when I know you don’t really see anything that way?”
“What do you get out of looking at the True Love, Robin?”
“Why do you always answer a question with a question?” I responded, and he laughed out loud. It was really a very convincing performance. As long as I’ve had the Albert program, he was able to laugh, and even make jokes of his own, but you always knew it was a picture laughing. You could think it was a picture of a real person if you wanted to-let’s face it, I usually did-like the picture of a person on the P-phone. But there was no, what shall I call it? No presence. Now there was. I couldn’t smell him. But I could perceive his physical presence in the room with more senses than simple sight and hearing. Temperature? Mass sensation? I don’t know. Whatever it is that tells you somebody is there with you.
“The answer really,” he said, sobering, “is that this appearance is my equivalent of a new ship, or a new Sunday-go-to-meeting suit, or whatever analogy you like to give it. I’m just sort of looking it over to see how much I like it. How do you like it, which is after all more important?”
“Don’t be humble, Albert,” I told him. “I like it very well, only I wish you were hooked up to the data nets. I’d like to know if any of the people I’ve been working on have done anything about the terrorist data, for instance.”
“I will of course do what you order me to, Robin,” he said, “but Mrs. Broadhead was very explicit.”
“No, I don’t want you blowing yourself up or damaging your subroutines. I know what I’ll do,” I said, getting up as the light bulb flashed over my head. “I’ll just go out into the passageway and plug into a comm circuit-provided,” I joked, “I haven’t forgotten how to make a call all by myself.”
“Why, of course you could do that,” he said. His tone was troubled, for some reason or other. “It isn’t necessary, though, Robin.”
“Well, no,” I said, pausing halfway to the door. “But I am curious, you know.”
“As to your curiosity,” he said, smiling at me as he poked tobacco into the bowl of his pipe-but it was a forced smile, I thought. “As to that, you must know that until we docked I was in constant touch with the net. There was no real news. It is possible, though, that the lack of news was itself interesting. Even encouraging.”
I was not entirely used to the new Albert. I sat down again, regarding him. “You’re a cryptic son of a bitch, Dr. Einstein,” I told him.
“Only when reporting information that is itself quite unclear.” He smiled. “General Manzbergen is not receiving calls from you just now. The senator says he has done all he can. Maitre Ijsinger says that Kwiatkowski and our friend from Malaysia have not responded to efforts to contact them on your behalf and all he got from the Albanians was a message that said ‘Don’t worry.”
“So something’s happening!” I cried, jumping up again.
“Something may be happening,” he corrected, “and if so, really, all we can do is let it happen. In any case, Robin,” he said, his tone wheedling now, “I would personally prefer that you not leave the ship at this time. For one good reason: How do you know there is not some other person here with a gun and your name on a list?”
“A terrorist? Here?”
“Here or in Rotterdam, why is one more unlikely than the other? I beg to remind you, Robin, that I am not without experience in these matters. At one time the Nazis put on my head a price of twenty thousand marks; be sure I was careful not to let anyone earn it!”
That came out of left field. I stopped in the doorway. “The whatzees?”
“The Nazis, Robin. A group of terrorists who seized control of the nation of Germany many years ago, when I was alive.”
“When you were what?”
“I mean, of course”-he shrugged-“when the real human being whose name you have given me was alive, but from my point of view that is not a distinction worth making.” He stuffed the filled pipe in his pocket absently and sat down in such a natural, friendly way that automatically I sat down again, too.
“I guess I haven’t quite got used to the new you, Albert,” I said.
“There’s no better time than the present, Robin.” He smiled, preening himself. He did have more solidity to him. The old holograms showed him in a dozen or so characteristic poses, with baggy sweater or tee shirt,
Although it is interesting to see myself from Robin’s point of view, it is not very enjoyable. Mrs. Broadhead’s programming constrained me to speak, act, and even think as the original Albert Einstein would have done, had he survived to assume my role. Robin seems to think that grotesque. In a sense, he is right.
Human beings are grotesque!
socks on or off, sneakers or slippers, pipe or pencil. Today he wore a tee shirt, to be sure, but over it was one of those baggy European sweaters that button up the front and have pockets and might as well be a jacket, really, except that they’re loosely knitted wool. There was a button on the sweater that read Two Percen6 and a faint pale stubble around the chin that suggested he hadn’t shaved that morning. Well, of course he hadn’t shaved! He never would, either, being nothing more than a holographic projection of a computer construct-but so convincing and jazzy that I almost offered to lend him my razor!
I laughed and shook my head. “What does ‘Two Percent’ mean?”
“Ah,” he said bashfully, “it was a slogan of my youth. If two percent of the human race would refuse to fight, there would be no war.”
“Do you believe that now?”
“I hope that, Robin,” he corrected. “The news is not all that conducive to hope, I must admit. Would you like to know the rest of the news?”
“I suppose I should,” I said, and watched him stroll over to Essie’s vanity. He sat on the bench before it, idly playing with her flasks of perfume and bits of feminine decoration as he talked; so normal, so human, that it distracted me from what he was saying. That was as well, for the news was all bad. The terrorists were busier than ever. The destruction of the Lofstrom loop had indeed been the first move in an insurrection, and a small, bloody war was going on all over that part of South America. Terrorists had dumped botulinus toxin into the Staines reservoir and London was going thirsty. News like that I did not want, and I told him so.
He sighed and agreed. “It was a gentler day when I was alive,” he said wistfully. “Though not perfect, to be sure. I could perhaps have been president of the state of Israel, did you know that, Robin? Yes. But I felt I could not accept. I was for peace always, and a state must sometimes make war. Loeb once told me that all politicians must be pathological, and I fear he was right.” He sat up straighter and brightened. “But there is some good news after all, Robin! The Broadhead Awards for Scientific Discovery-“
“The what?”
“You recall, Robin,” he said impatiently, “the system of awards you authorized me to inaugurate just before your operation. They have already begun to bear fruit.”
“You’ve solved the mystery of the Heechee?”
“Ah, Robin, I perceive you are joking with me,” he said in gentle reproof. “Of course, nothing so vast just yet. But there is a physicist in
Laguna Beach-Beckfurt? You know his work? The one who proposed a system for achieving flat space?”
“No. I don’t even know what flat space is.”
“Well,” he said, resigning himself to my ignorance, “that doesn’t matter just now, I think, but he is now working on a mathematical analysis of the missing mass. It appears, Robin, that the phenomenon is quite recent! Somehow mass has been added to the universe, within the last few million years!”
“Oh, wow,” I said, attempting to look comprehending. I did not deceive him.