“What other friend?” I demanded.
“We have an application,” she said, “from Gunner Third Susanna Hereira, off the Brazilian cruiser. She has their permission to take leave for this purpose.”
“Susie! I didn’t know she’d volunteered!”
Emma studied her punch card reflectively. “She’s very qualified,” she commented. “Also, she has all her parts. I am referring,” she said sweetly, “to her legs, of course, although as I understand it you have some interest in her other parts as well. Or would you care to go gay for this mission?”
I felt an unreasoning rush of anger. I am not one of your sexually uptight people; the thought of physical contact with a male was not frightening in itself. But—with Dane Metchnikov? Or one of his lovers?
“Gunner Hereira can be here tomorrow,” Emma comme “The Brazilian cruiser is going to dock right after the orbiter.”
“Why the hell are you asking me?” I snarled. “Metchnikov is crew chief.”
“He prefers to leave it to you, Broadhead. Which one?”
“I don’t give a damn!” I yelled, and left. But there is no such thing as avoiding a decision. Not making a decision was in effect decision enough to keep Shicky off the crew. If I had fought for him, they would have taken him; without that, Susie was the obvious choice.
I spent the next day staying out of Shicky’s way. I picked new a fish at the Blue Hell, fresh out of the classroom, and spent the night in her room. I didn’t even go back to my own room for clothes; I dumped everything and bought a new outfit. I pretty well knew the places where Shicky might look for me—the Hell, Central Park, the museum—and so I stayed away from those places; I went for a long, rambling wander through the deserted tunnels, seeing no one at all, until late that night.
Then I took a chance and went to our farewell party. Shicky would probably be there, but there would be other people around.
He was. And so was Louise Forehand. In fact, she seemed to be the center of attention; I hadn’t even known she was back.
She saw me and waved to me. “I struck it rich, Rob! Drink up, I’m buying!”
I let someone put a glass in one hand and a joint in the other and before I took my hit I managed to ask her what she’d found.
“Weapons, Rob! Marvelous Heechee weapons, hundred them. Sess says it’s going to be at least a five-million-dollar assessment. Plus royalties. . . if anyone finds a way to duplicate the weapons anyway.”
I let the smoke blow out and washed out the taste with a swallow of white lightning. “What kind of weapons?”
“They’re like the tunnel diggers, only portable. They’ll cut a hole through anything. We lost Sara BellaFanta in the landing; one of them put a hole in her suit. But Tim and I are whacking up her share, so it’s two and a half mil apiece.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “I would have thought the last thing the human race needed was some new ways to kill each other—congratulations.” I was reaching for an air of moral superiority and I needed it; because as I turned away, there was Shicky, hanging in air, watching me.
“Want a hit?” I asked, offering him the joint.
He shook his head.
I said, “Shicky, it wasn’t up to me. I told them—I didn’t tell them not to take you.”
“Did you tell them they should?”
“It wasn’t up to me,” I said. “Hey, listen!” I went on, suddenly seeing an out. “Now that Louise has hit, Sess probably won’t want to go. Why don’t you take his place?”
He backed away, watching me; only his expression changed. “You don’t know?” he asked. “It is true that Sess canceled out, but he has already been replaced.”
“By whom?”
“By the person right behind you,” said Shicky, and I turned around, and there she was, looking at me, a glass in her hand and an expression I could not read on her face.
“Hello. Rob.” said Klara.
I had prepared myself for the party by a number of quick ones in the commissary; I was ninety-percent drunk and ten-percent stoned, but it all whooshed out of me as I looked at her. I put down the drink, handed the joint to someone at random, took her arm, and pulled her out into the tunnel.
“Klara,” I said. “Did you get my letters?”
She looked puzzled. “Letters?” She shook her head. “I guess you sent them to Venus? I never got there. I got as far as the rendezvous with the plane-of-the-ecliptic flight, and then I changed my mind. I came right back on the orbiter.”
“Oh, Klara.”
“Oh, Rob,” she mimicked, grinning; that wasn’t much fun, because when she smiled I could see where the tooth was missing that I had knocked out. “So what else have we got to say to each other?”
I put my arms around her. “I can say that I love you, and I’m sorry, and I want to make it up to you, and I want to get married and live together and have kids and—”
“Jesus, Rob,” she said, pushing me away, gently enough, “when you say something you say a lot, don’t you? So hold it for a while. It’ll keep.”
“But it’s been months!”
She laughed. “No fooling, Rob. This is a bad day for Sagittarians to make decisions, especially about love. We’ll talk about it another time.”
“That crap! Listen, I don’t believe in any of that!”
“I do, Rob.”
I had an inspiration. “Hey! I bet I can trade with somebody in the first ship! Or, wait a minute, maybe Susie would trade with you—”
She shook her head, still smiling. “I really don’t think Susie would like that,” she said. “Anyway, they bitched enough about letting me switch with Sess. They’ll never stand still for another last minute change.”
“I don’t care, Klara!”
“Rob,” she said, “don’t rush me. I did a lot of thinking about you and me. I think we’ve got something that’s worth working for. But I can’t say it’s all straight in my head yet, and I don’t want to push it.”
“But, Klara—”
“Leave it at that Rob. I’ll be in the first Five, you’ll be in the second.
When we get where we’re going we’ll be able to talk. Maybe even switch around to come back together. But meanwhile we’ll both have a chance to think about what we really want.”
The only words I seemed to know I seemed to be saying over and over again: “But, Klara—”
She kissed me, and pushed me away. “Rob,” she said, “don’t be in such a hurry. We’ve got all the time there is.”
27
“Tell me something, Sigfrid,” I say, “how nervous am I?”
He is wearing his Sigmund Freud hologram this time, true Viennese stare, not a bit gemillich. But his voice is the gently sad baritone: “if you are asking what my sensors say, Rob, you are quite agitated, yes.”
“I thought so,” I say, bouncing around the mat.
“Can you tell me why?”
“No!” The whole week has been like that, marvelous sex with Doreen and S. Ya., and floods of tears in the shower; fantastic gambling and play at the bridge tournament, and total despair on the way home. I feel like a yo-yo. “I feel like a yo-yo,” I yell. “You opened up something I can’t handle.”
“I think you underestimate your capacity for handling pain,” he says reassuringly.
“Fuck you, Sigfrid! What do you know about human capacities?”
He almost sighs. “Are we back to that again, Rob?”
“We bloody well are!” And funnily, I feel less nervous; I goad him into an argument again, and the peril is reduced.
“It is true, Rob, that I am a machine. But I am a machine designed to understand what humans are like and, believe me, well designed for my function.”
“Designed! Sigfrid,” I say reasonably, “you aren’t human. You may know, but you don’t feel. You have no idea what it feels like to have to make human decisions and carry the load of human emotion. You don’t know what it feels like to have to tie a friend up to keep him from committing murder. To have someone you love die. To know it’s your fault. To be scared out of your mind.”
“I do know those things, Rob,” he says gently. “I really do. I want to explore why you are feeling so turbulent, so won’t you please help me?”
“No!”
“But your agitation, Rob, means that we are approaching the central pain—”
“Get your bloody drill out of my nerve!” But the analogy doesn’t throw him for a second; his circuits are finely tuned today.
“I’m not your dentist, Rob, I’m your analyst, and I tell you—”
“Stop!” I know what I have to do to get him away from where it hurts. I haven’t used S. Ya.’s secret little formula since that first day, but now I want to use it again. I say the words, and convert him from a tiger to a pussycat; he rolls over and lets me stroke his tummy, as I command him to display the gaudier bits from some of his interviews with attractive and highly quirky female patients; and the rest of the hour is spent as a peepshow; and I have got out of his room one more time intact.