So all in all, you see, I wasn’t too badly off. I conducted my business. I planned, and carried out plans, to ease the ferment that fed the terrorists not enough to cure the problem, but to sit on the lid for a while longer. I had time to listen to Albert’s worries about the curious objects he called kugelblitz, and if we didn’t then know what they meant it was probably just as well. All I lacked was a body, and when I complained about that Essie said forcefully: “Dear God, Robin, is not end of world for you! How many others have had same problem!”
“To be reduced to a datastore? Not many, I should think.”
“But same problem anyhow,” she insisted. “Consider! Healthy young male goes ski-jumping, falls and cracks spine. Paraplegic, eh? No body that amounts to anything except liability, needs to be fed, needs to be diapered, needs to be bathed-you are spared that, Robin. But the important part of you, that is still here!”
“Sure,” I said. I did not add, what Essie of all people did not need to have me add, that my own definition of “important” parts included some accessories to which I had always attached particular value. Even there there were pluses to set against the losses. If I no longer had, e.g., sexual organs, there was surely no further problem about my suddenly complicated sexual relationships.
None of that had to be said. What Essie said instead was: “Buck up, old Robin. Keep in mind you are so far only first approximation of final product.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded.
“Were great problem, Robin! Here After storage was, I admit, quite imperfect. Learned much in development of new Albert for you. Had never before attempted complete storage of entire, and very valued, person unfortunately dead. The technical problems-“
“I understand there were technical problems,” I interrupted; I didn’t really want to hear, just yet, the details of the risky, untried, exquisitely complex job of pouring “me” out of the decaying bucket of my head into the waiting basin of a storage matrix.
“To be sure. Well. Now have more leisure. Now can make fine tuning. Trust me, old Robin, improvements can yet be made.”
“In me?”
“In you, certainly! Also,” she said, twinkling, “in very inadequate stored copy of self. Have good reason to believe same can be made much more interesting to you.”
“Oh,” I said. “Wow.” And wished more than ever for at least the temporary loan of some parts of a body, for what I wanted more than anything else just then was to put my arms around my very dear wife. And meanwhile and meanwhile the worlds went on. Even the very small worlds of my friend Audee Walthers and his own complicated loving.
When you look at them from inside, all worlds are the same size. Audee’s didn’t seem small to him. I took care of one of their problems very quickly; I gave each of them ten thousand shares of stock in the Peggy’s Planet ferry, the S. Ya. and its pendant enterprises. Janie Yee-xing didn’t have to worry about being fired anymore; she could rehire herself as a pilot if she chose, or ride the S. Ya. as passenger if she liked. So could Audee; or he could go back to Peggy’s and boss his former bosses on the oilfield; or none of the above, but lounge around in luxury for all his life; and so could Dolly. And, of course, that didn’t solve their problems at all. The three of them mooned around the guest suites for a while until finally Essie suggested we lend them the True Love for a cruise to nowhere until they got their heads straightened out, and we did.
None of them were foolish at all-like the rest of us, they acted that way now and then, maybe. They recognized a bribe when they saw one. They knew that what I really wanted was for them to keep their mouths shut about my present unpleasantly noncorporeal state. But they also knew what a friendly gift was, and there was that component in the stock transfer, too.
And what did they do, the three of them on the True Love?
I think I don’t want to say. Most of it is no one’s business but theirs. Consider. There are times in everyone’s life-certainly including yours, most definitely including my own-when what you are doing and saying is not either important or pretty. You strain at a bowel movement, you have a fugitive and shocking thought, you break wind, you tell a lie. None of it matters very much, but you do not want advertised those parts of everyone’s life in which he looks ludicrous or contemptible or mean. Usually they don’t get advertised, because there is no one to see-but now that I am vastened there is always one to see, and that is me. Maybe not right away. But sooner or later, as everyone’s memories are added to the database, there are no personal mysteries left at all.
I will say this much of Audee Walthers’ private concerns. What motivated his actions and fueled his worries was that admirable and desirable thing, love. What frustrated his loving was also love. He loved his wife, Dolly, because he had schooled himself to love her all the while they were married-that was his view of how married people should be. On the other hand, Dolly had left him for another man (I use the term loosely in Wan’s case), and Janie Yee-xing had turned up to console him. They were both very attractive persons. But there were too many of them. Audee was as monogamous as I was. If he thought to make up with Dolly, there was Janie in the way-she had been kind, he owed her some sort of consideration-call it love. But between him and Janie there was Dolly: They had planned a life together and he had had no intention ever of changing it, so you could call that love, too. Complicated by some feeling that he owed Dolly some kind of punishment for abandoning him, and Janie some sort of resentment for being in the way-remember, I told you there were contemptible and ludicrous parts. Complicated much more by the equally complex feelings of Dolly and Janie
It must almost have been a relief to them when-orbiting idly in a great cometary ellipse that was pushing them out toward the asteroids and at angle to the ecliptic-whatever discussion they were having at the moment was interrupted by a gasp from Dolly and a stifled scream from Janie, and Audee Walthers turned to see on the screen a great cluster of vessels huger and more numerous and far, far bigger than any human being had seen in Earth’s solar system before.
They were scared out of their minds, no doubt.
But no more than the rest of us. All over the Earth, and everywhere in space where there were human beings and communications facilities to carry the word, there was shock and terror. It was the worst nightmare of every human being for the past century or so.
The Heechee were coming back
They didn’t hide. They were there-and so many of them! Optical sensors in the orbital stations spotted more than fifty ships-and what ships! Twelve or fourteen as big as the S. Ya. Another dozen bigger still, great globular structures like the one that had swallowed the sailship. There were Threes and Fives and some intermediate ones that the High Pentagon thought looked suspiciously like cruisers, and all of them coming straight down at us from the general direction of Vega. I could say Earth’s defenses were caught unprepared, but that would be a flattering lie. The truth was that Earth had no defenses worth mentioning. There were patrol ships, to be sure; but they had been built by Earthmen to fight other Earthmen. No one had dreamed of pitting them against the semi-mythical Heechee.
And then they spoke to us.
The message was in English, and it was short. It said: “The Heechee can’t allow interstellar travel or communication anymore except under certain conditions that they will decide and supervise. Everything else has to stop right away. They’ve come to stop it.” That was all before the speaker, with a helpless shake of the head, faded away.
It sounded a lot like a declaration of war.
It was interpreted that way, too. In the High Pentagon, in the orbiting forts of other nations, in the councils of power all over the world, there were abrupt meetings and conferences and planning sessions; ships were called in for rearming, and others were redirected toward the Heechee fleet; the orbital weapons that had been quiet for decades were checked and aligned-useless as arbalests, they might be, but if they were all we had to fight with, we would fight them. The confusion and shock and reaction swept the world.