And there was nowhere that suffered more astonishment and bewilderment than the people who made up my own happy household; for the person who gave the Heechee ultimatum Albert had recognized at once, and Essie only a moment later, and I before I even saw her face. It was Gelle-Klara Moynlin.
25 Return to Earth
Gelle-Klara Moynlin, my love. My lost love. There she was, staring at me out of the frame of the PV and looking no older than the last time I’d seen her, years and decades before-and looking no better, either, because both times she was about as badly shaken up as it was possible for a person to be. Not to mention beaten up, once by me.
But if she’d been through a lot and showed it, my Klara, she had plenty in reserve. She turned from the screen when she had delivered her message to the human race and nodded to Captain. “You zaid it?” he demanded anxiously. “You gave the mezzage prezisely as I inzdructed?”
“Precisely,” said Klara, and added, “Your English is getting much better now. You could talk directly if you wanted to.”
“Is too important to take chanzes,” said Captain fretfully, and turned away. Half the tendons on his body were rippling and twitching now, and he was not alone. His loyal crew were as harried as himself, and in the communications screens that linked his ship to the others in the grand fleet he could see the faces of the other captains. It was a grand fleet, Captain reflected, studying the displays that showed them in proud array, but why was it his fleet? He didn’t need to ask. He knew the answer. The reinforcements from inside the core amounted to more than a hundred Heechee, and at least a dozen of them were entitled to call themselves senior to him if they chose. They could easily have asserted command of the fleet. They didn’t. They let it be his fleet because that made it also be his responsibility … and his own sweet essence that would go to join the massed minds if it went wrong. “How foolish they are,” he muttered, and his communicator twitched agreement.
“I will instruct them to maintain better order,” he said. “Is that what you mean?”
“Of course, Shoe.” Captain sighed and watched gloomily as the communicator rattled instructions to the other captains and controllers. The shape of the armada reformed itself slowly as the great cargo vessels, capable of biting a thousand-meter spherical chunk out of anything and carrying it anywhere, dropped back behind the transports and the smaller ships. “Human woman Klara,” he called. “Why do they not answer?”
She shrugged rebelliously. “They’re probably talking it over,” she said.
“Talking it over!”
“I’ve tried to tell you,” she said resentfully. “There are a dozen different major powers that have to get together, not counting a hundred little countries.”
“A hundred countries.” Captain groaned, trying to imagine such a thing. He failed…
Well. That was long and long ago, especially if you measure time in femtoseconds. So very much has happened since! So much that, vastened as I am, it is hard for me to take it all in. It is even harder to remember (whether with my own memory or some borrowed other) every detail of every event of that time, although, as you have seen, I can recall quite a lot when I want to. But that picture stays with me. There was Klara, her black brows scowling as she watched the Heechee jitter and mope; there was Wan, all but comatose and forgotten in a corner of the cabin. There were the Heechee crew, twitching and hissing to one another, and there was Captain, gazing with pride and fear at the resurrected armada on the mission he had ordered. He was gambling for the highest of stakes. He did not know what would happen next-expected anything-feared almost everything-could not be surprised, he thought, by whatever occurred … until something did occur that surprised him very much.
“Captain!” cried Mongrel, the integrator. “There are other ships!”
And Captain brightened. “Ah!” he applauded. “At last they respond!” It was curious of the humans to do so physically rather than by means of radio, but then they were strange to begin with. “Are the ships speaking to us, Shoe?” he asked, and the communicator twitched his cheek muscles no. Captain sighed. “We must be patient, then,” he said, studying the display. The human vessels were certainly not approaching in any sensible order. It seemed, in fact, as though they had been detached from whatever errands they were on and thrown in to meet the Heechee fleet hurriedly, carelessly-almost frantically. One was in easy range of ship communication; two others farther away, and one of those battling an existing velocity that went the wrong way.
Then Captain hissed in surprise. “Human female!” he commanded. “Come here and inzdruct them to be careful! Zee what is happening!” From the nearest ship a smaller object had launched, a primitive thing that was chemically propelled, much too tiny to contain even a single person. It was accelerating directly toward the heart of the Heechee fleet, and Captain nodded to White-Noise, who instantly ordered a nudge into FI’L velocity that removed the nearest cargo vessels from danger. “They muzt not be zo zlipzhodi” he cried sternly. “A collizion could occur!”
“Not by accident,” said Klara grimly.
‘What? I do not underzdand!”
“Those are missiles,” she said, “and they’ve got nuclear warheads. That’s your answer. They’re not waiting for you to attack. They’re shooting first!”
Do you have the picture now? Can you see Captain standing there with his tendons shocked still and his jaw dropping, staring at Klara? He chews at his tough, thin lower lip and glances at the screen. There’s his fleet, the huge caravan of cargo transports resurrected from half a million years of hiding so that he can-with grave doubt; at great risk to himself offer the human race, a couple of million at a time, free transportation and safe refuge from the Assassins, in the core where the Heechee themselves hid. “Shooting?” he repeated numbly. “To hurt us? Pozzibly to kill?”
“Exactly,” flared Klara. “What did you expect? If it’s war you want, you’ll get it.”
And Captain closed his eyes, hardly hearing the horrified hiss and buzz that went around his crew as White-Noise translated. “War,” he muttered, unbelieving, and for the first time ever he thought of joining the massed minds not with fear but almost with longing; however bad it might be, how could it be worse than this?
And meanwhile…
Meanwhile, it almost went too far-but, fortunately for everyone, not quite. The Brazilian scoutship’s missile was far too slow to catch the Heechee as they dodged. By the time they were in position to fire again- long before any other human ship could come close-Captain had managed to explain to Klara, and Klara was on the communication circuits again, and the word was out. Not an invasion fleet. Not even a commando raid. A rescue mission-and a warning of what made the Heechee run and hide, and was now for us to worry about.
26 The Thing the Heechee Feared
Vastened as I am I can smile at those pitiful old fears and apprehensions.
Not at the time, maybe. But now, ah, yes. The scales are all bigger, and a lot more exciting. There are ten thousand stored Heechee dead ones outside the core alone, and I can read them all. Have read them, nearly all. Go on reading them as I choose, whenever there is something I want to study more closely. Books on a library shelf?
They are more than that. I don’t exactly “read” them, either. It is much more like remembering them. When I “open” one of them, I open it all the way; I read it from the inside out, as though it were part of me.
It was not easy to do that, and for that matter hardly anything I have learned to do since I was vastened has come easily. But with Albert to help me and simple texts to practice on, I learned. The first datastores I accessed were only that-just data, no worse than consulting a table of logarithms. Then I had old Heechee-stored Dead Men and some of Essie’s first cases for her Here After franchises, and they were really not very well done. I was never in doubt about which part of what I was thinking was me.
But after we had straightened out the misunderstanding with Captain and I got to consult their own records, then it got hairy. There was Captain’s late love, the female Heechee named Twice. To “access” her was like waking up in the dark and putting on a whole suit of clothes that you couldn’t see-and that didn’t fit you anyway. It was not just that she was female, although that was an immense incongruity. It was not even that she was Heechee and I was human. It was what she knew, and always had known, that neither I nor any other human had guessed. Perhaps Albert had-perhaps that was what had driven him mad. But even Albert’s conjectures had not shown him a race of starfaring Assassins who stored themselves in a kugelblitz to wait for the birth of a new- and for them better-universe.