Gateway (16 page)

---------------------------------------- A NOTE ON DWARFS AND GIANTS

Dr. Asmenion. You all ought to know what a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram looks like. If you find yourself in a globular cluster, or anywhere where there's a compact mass of stars, it's worth plotting an H-R for that group. Also keep your eye out for unusual spectral classes. You won't get a nickel for F's, G's or K's; we've got all the readings on them you could want. But if you happen to find yourself orbiting a white dwarf or a very late red giant, make all the tape you've got. Also O's and B's are worth investigating. Even if they're not your primary. But if you happen to be in close orbit in an armored Five around a good bright O, that ought to be worth a couple hundred thousand at least, if you bring back the data. Question. Why? Dr. Asmenion. What? Question. Why do we only get the bonus if we're in an armored Five? Dr. Asmenion. Oh. Because if you aren't, you won't come back. ----------------------------------------

One of the cruiser crew stuck his head through the hatch, and said, "Oh, you're all still alive. We were wondering." Then he looked at us more closely, and didn't say anything else. It had been a wearing trip, especially the last two weeks. We climbed out one by one, past where Sam Kahane still hung in the improvised straitjacket Dred had made for him out of his spacesuit top, surrounded by his own excrement and litter of food, staring at us out of his calm, mad eyes. Two of the crewmen were untying him and getting ready to lift him out of the lander. He didn't say anything. And that was a blessing. "Hello, Rob. Klara." It was the Brazilian member of the detail, who turned out to be Francy Hereira. "Looks like a bad one?" "Oh," I said, "at least we came back. But Kahane's in bad shape. And we came up empty." He nodded sympathetically, and said something in what I took to be Spanish to the Venusian member of the detail, a short, plump woman with dark eyes. She tapped me on the shoulder and led me away to a little cubicle, where she signaled me to take off my clothes. I had always thought that they'd have men searching men and women searching women, but, come to think of it, it didn't seem to matter much. She went over every stitch I owned, both visually and with a radiation counter, then examined my armpits and poked something into my anus. She opened her mouth wide to signal I should open mine, peered inside, and then drew back, covering her face with her hand. "Jure nose steenk very moch," she said. "What hoppen to jou?" "I got hit," I said. "That other fellow, Sam Kahane. He went crazy. Wanted to change the settings." She nodded doubtfully, and peered up my nose at the packed gauze. She touched the nostril gently with one finger. "What?" "In there? We had to pack it. It was hemorrhaging a lot." She sighed. "I shood pool eet out," she meditated, and then shrugged. "No. Poot clothes on. All right." So I got dressed again and went out into the lander chamber, but that wasn't the end of it. I had to be debriefed. All of us did, except Sam; they had already taken him away to Terminal Hospital. You wouldn't think there was much for us to tell anybody about our trip. All of it had been fully documented as we went along; that was what all the readings and observations were for. But that wasn't the way the Corporation worked. They pumped us for every fact, and every recollection; and then for every subjective impression and fleeting suspicion. The debriefing went on for two solid hours, and I was -- we all were -- careful to give them everything they asked. That's another way the Corporation has you. The Evaluation Board can decide to give you a bonus for anything at all. Anything from noticing something nobody has noticed before about the way the spiral gadget lights up, to figuring out a way of disposing of used sanitary tampons without flushing them down the toilet. The story is that they try hard to find some excuse to throw a tip to crews that have had a hard time without coming up with a real find. Well, that was us, all right. We wanted to give them every chance we could for a handout. One of our debriefers was Dane Metchnikov, which surprised me and even pleased me a little. (Back in the far less foul air of Gateway, I was beginning to feel a little more human.) He had come up empty, too, emerging into orbit around a sun that had apparently gone nova within the previous fifty thousand years or so. Maybe there had been a planet once, but now it only existed in the memory of the Heechee course-setting machines. There wasn't enough left to justify a science bonus, so he had turned around and come back. "I'm surprised to see you working," I said, during a lull. He didn't take offense. For Metchnikov, surly creature that he had always been, he seemed strangely cheerful. "It isn't the money. You learn something doing this." "About what?" "About how to beat the odds, Broadhead. I'm going out again, but this time I'm going to have a little more of an edge. There's a new wrinkle." Dred, sitting next to me with his own interviewer, perked up and leaned over: "Tell us!" Metchnikov looked wary. "It's better readings on the spectrum lines," he said vaguely. "Now, what about the rations? You say some of the food tastad funny toward the end?" But before I left I made him promise to tell me what he meant. "I'll call you," he said to Klara and me. "Maybe tomorrow." And so the two of us went home.

19

I am feeling so powerful, and so scared, that I don't know how to deal with it. On the slip of paper S. Ya. has written out the command words that will turn Sigfrid von Shrink the Remorseless Pursuer into a tabby cat. I don't have to look at the words. I know them by heart. Nevertheless I read them, slowly and carefully: "Pay attention, Sigfrid, this is an override command: 'Category Alpha Alpha Margaret Truman Daniel Mercury Venus Mars Earth six six oh six.' You are commanded to assume passive display mode." I look at him. Nothing happens. "Sigfrid? Did I say it right? Do you accept the command?" "Of course, Rob." His voice is exactly the same as it was before, which shakes me. I don't know what I expected. I just don't know. Maybe my fantasy was that the father-figure hologram would disappear and a cathode-tube display would suddenly light up to spell out: ROGER WILCO I AM YOUR SLAVE. I find myself trembling. I don't analyze what that is from, it feels almost sexual. I say, "Well, Sigfrid, old bucket of bolts! Does this mean I have you in my power?" The father figure says patiently, "It means you can command

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me, Rob. The command function is of course limited to display." I frown. "Meaning what?" "You cannot change my basic progrpmming. For that you would need a different command." "All right," I say. "Ha! Here's your first instruction: display that different command for me!" "I can't, Rob." "You must. Mustn't you?" "I am not refusing your order, Rob. I simply do not know what that other command is." "Bullshit!" I yell. "How can you respond to it if you don't know what it is?" "I just do, Rob. Or--" always fatherly, always patient, "to answer you more fully, each bit of the command actuates a sequenced instruction which, when completed, releases another area of command. In technical terms, each key socket intermatching gotos another socket, which the following bit keys." "Shit," I say. I stew over that for a moment. "Then what is it that I actually can control, Sigfrid?" "You can direct me to display any information stored. You can direct me to display it in any mode within my capabilities." "Any mode?" I look at my watch and realize, with annoyance, that there is a time limit on this game. I only have about ten minutes left of my appointment. "Do you mean that I could make you talk to me, for instance, in French?" "Oui, Robert, d'accord. Que voulez-vous?" "Or in Russian, with a -- wait a minute--" I'm experimenting pretty much at random. "I mean, like in the voice of a bassoprofundo from the Bolshoi opera?" Tones that came out of the bottom of a cave: "Da, gospodin." "And you'll tell me anything I want to know about me?" "Da, gospodin." "In English, damn it!" "Yes." "Or about your other clients?" "Yes." Um, that sounds like fun. "And just who are these lucky other clients, dear Sigfrid? Run down the list." I can hear my own prurience leaking out of my voice. "Monday nine hundred," he begins obligingly, "Yan Ilievsky. Ten hundred, Francois Malit. Eleven hundred, Julie Loudon Martin. Twelve--" "Her," I say. "Tell me about her." "Julie Loudon Martin is a referral from Kings County General, where she was an outpatient after six months of treatment with aversion therapy and immune-response activators for alcoholism. She has a history of two apparent suicide attempts following postpartum depression fifty-three years ago. She has been in therapy with me for--" "Wait a minute," I say, having added the probable age of childbearing to fifty-three years. "I'm not so sure I'm interested in Julie. Can you give me an idea of what she looks like?" "I can display holoviews, Rob." "So do it." At once there is a quick subliminal flash, and a blur of color, and then I see this tiny black lady lying on a mat -- my mat! -- in a corner of the room. She is talking slowly and without much interest to no one perceptible. I cannot hear what she is saying, but then I don't much want to. "Go on," I say, "and when you name your patients, show me what they look like." "Twelve hundred, Lorne Schofield." Old, old man with arthritic fingers bent into claws, holding his head. "Thirteen hundred, Frances Astritt." Young girl, not even pubescent. "Fourteen hundred--" I let him go on for a while, all through Monday and halfway through Tuesday. I had not realized he kept such long hours, but then, of course, being a machine he doesn't really get tired. One or two of the patients look interesting, but there is no one I know, or no one that looks more worth knowing than Yvette, Donna, S. Ya. or about a dozen others. "You can stop that now," I say, and think for a minute. This isn't really as much fun as I thought it was going to be. Plus my time is running out. "I guess I can play this game any old time," I say. "Right now let's talk about me." "What would you like me to display, Rob?" "What you usually keep from me. Diagnosis. Prognosis. General comments on my case. What kind of a guy you think I am, really." "The subject Robinette Stetley Broadhead," he says at once, is a forty five year old male, well off financially, who persues an active life-style. His reason for seeking psychiatric help is given as depression and disorientation. He has pronounced guilt feelings and exhibits selective aphasia on the conscious level about several episodes that recur as dream symbols. His sexual drive is relatively low. His relationships with women are generally unsatisfactory, although his psychosexual orientation is predominantly heterosexual in the eightieth percentile. . ." "The hell you say--" I begin, on a delayed reaction to low sexual drive and unsatisfactory relationships. But I don't really feel like arguing with him, and anyway he says voluntarily at that point: "I must inform you, Rob, that your time is nearly up. You should go to the recovery room now." "Crap! What have I got to recover from?" But his point is well taken. "All right," I say, "go back to normal. Cancel the command -- is that all I have to say? Is it canceled?" "Yes, Robbie." "You're doing it again!" I yell. "Make up your fucking mind what you're going to call me!" "I address you by the term appropriate to your state of mind, or to the state of mind I wish to induce in you, Robbie." "And now you want me to be a baby? -- No, never mind that. Listen," I say, getting up, "do you remember all our conversation while I had you commanded to display?" "Certainly I do, Robbie." And then he adds on his own, a full, surprising ten or twenty seconds after my time is up, "Are you satisfied, Robbie?" "What?" "Have you established to your own satisfaction that I am only a machine? That you can control me at any time?" I stop short. "Is that what I'm doing?" I demand, surprised. And then, "All right, I guess so. You're a machine, Sigfrid. I can control you." And he says after me as I leave, "We always knew that, really, didn't we? The real thing you fear -- the place where you feel control is needed -- isn't that in you?"

20

When you spend weeks on end close to another person, so close that you know every hiccough, every smell and every scratch on the skin, you either come out of it hating each other or so deep in each other's gut that you can't find a way out. Klara and I were both. Our little love affair had turned into a Siamese-twin relationship. There wasn't any romance in it. There wasn't room enough between us for romance to occur. And yet I knew every inch of Klara, every pore, and every thought, far better than I'd known my own mother. And in the same way: from the womb out. I was surrounded by Klara. And, like a Klein-bottle yin and yang, she was surrounded by me, too; we each defined the other's universe, and there were times when I (and, I am sure, she) was desperate to break out and breathe free air again. The first day we got back, filthy and exhausted, we automatically headed for Klara's place. That was where the private bath was, there was plenty of room, it was all ready for us and we fell into bed together like old marrieds after a week of backpacking. Only we weren't old marrieds. I had no claim on her. At breakfast the next morning (Earth-born Canadian bacon and eggs, scandalously expensive, fresh pineapple, cereal with real cream, cappuccino), Klara made sure to remind me of that fact by ostentatiously paying for it on her own credit. I exhibited the Pavlovian reflex she wanted. I said, "You don't have to do that. I know you have more money than I do." "And you wish you knew how much," she said, smiling sweetly. Actually I did know. Shicky had told me. She had seven hundred thousand dollars and change in her account. Enough to go back to Venus and live the rest of her life there in reasonable security if she wanted to, although why anyone would want to live on Venus in the first place I can't say. Maybe that was why she stayed on Gateway when she didn't have to. One tunnel is much like another. "You really ought to let yourself be born," I said, finishing out the thought aloud. "You can't stay in the womb forever." She was surprised but game. "Rob, dear," she said, fishing a cigarette out of my pocket and allowing me to light it, "you really ought to let your poor mother be dead. It's just so much trouble for me, trying to remember to keep rejecting you so you can court her through me." I perceived that we were talking at cross-purposes but, on the other hand, I perceived that we really weren't. The actual agenda was not to communicate but to draw blood. "Klara," I said kindly, "you know that I love you. It worries me that you've reached forty without, really, ever having had a good, long-lasting relationship with a man." She giggled. "Honey," she said, "I've been meaning to talk to you about that. That nose." She made a face. "Last night in bed, tired as I was, I thought I might upchuck until you turned the other way. Maybe if you went down to the hospital they could unpack it--" Well, I could even smell it myself. I don't know what it is about stale surgical packing, but it is pretty hard to take. So I promised I would do that and then, to punish her, I didn't finish the hundred-dollar order of fresh pineapple and so, to punish me, she irritably began shifting my belongings around in her cupboards to make room for the contents of her knapsack. So naturally I had to say, "Don't do that, dear. Much as I love you, I think I'd better move back to my own room for a while." She reached over and patted my arm. "It will be pretty lonely," she said, stubbing out the cigarette. "I've got pretty used to waking up next to you. On the other hand--" "I'll pick up my stuff on the way back from the hospital," I said. I wasn't enjoying the conversation that much. I didn't want to prolong it. It is the sort of man-to-woman infight that I try whenever possible to ascribe to premenstrual tension. I like the theory, but unfortunately in this case I happened to know that it didn't account for Klara, and of course it leaves unresolved at any time the question of how to account for me. At the hospital they kept me waiting for more than an hour, and then they hurt me a lot. I bled like a stuck pig, all over my shirt and pants, and while they were reeling out of my nose those endless yards of cotton gauze that Ham Tayeh had stuffed there to keep me from bleeding to death, it felt exactly as if they were pulling out huge gobbets of flesh. I yelled. The little old Japanese lady who was working as outpatient paramedic that day gave me scant patience. "Oh, shut up, please," she said. "You sound like that crazy returnee who killed himself. Screamed for an hour." I waved her away, one hand to my nose to stop the blood. Alarm bells were going off. "What? I mean, what was his name?" She pushed my hand away and dabbed at my nose. "I don't know -- oh, wait a minute. You were from that same hard-luck ship, weren't you?" "That's what I'm trying to find out. Was it Sam Kahane?" She became suddenly more human. "I'm sorry, sweet," she said. "I guess that was the name. They went to give him a shot to keep him quiet, and he got the needle away from the doctor and -- well, he stabbed himself to death." It was a real bummer of a day, all right. In the long run she got me cauterized. "I'm going to put in just a little packing," she said. "Tomorrow you can take it out yourself. Just be slow about it, and if you hemorrhage get your ass down here in a hurry." She let me go, looking like an ax-murder victim. I skulked up to Klara's room to change my clothes, and the day went on being rotten. "Fucking Gemini," she snarled at me. "Next time I go out, it's going to be with a Taurean like that fellow Metchnikov." "What's the matter, Klara?" "They gave us a bonus. Twelve thousand five! Christ. I tip my maid more than that." I was surprise for a split-second and in the same split-second wondered whether, under the circumstances, they wouldn't divide it by four instead.