The total was not, being made up of some sixty billion gigabits of
information.
At Akademogorsk, young S. Ya. 's professors had schooled her in the
then current computer logics of ion optics and magnetic bubbles. She had
learned to trick her computers into doing many marvelous things. They
could find million-digit prime numbers or calculate the tides on a
mud-flat for a thousand years. They could take a child's scribble of
"House" and "Daddy" and refine it into an engineer's rendering of an
architectural plan, and a tailor's dummy of a man. They could rotate the
house, add a sunporch, sheath it in stucco or cover it with ivy. They
could shave off a beard, add a wig, costume the man for yachting or
golfing, for boardroom or bar. These were marvelous programs for
nineteen-year-old Semya. She found them thrilling. But she had grown since
then. By comparison with the programs she was now writing, for her
secretary, for "Albert Einstein" and for her many clients, those early
ones were slow and stumbling caricatures. They did not have the advantage
of circuits borrowed from Heechee technology, or of a circulating memory
store of 6 X b'9 bits.
Of course, even Albert did not use all sixty billion gigabits all the
time. For one thing, they were not all shared. Even the shared stores were
occupied by tens of thousands of programs as subtle and complicated as
Albert, and by tens of millions of duller ones. The program called "Albert
Einstein" slipped through and among the thousands and the millions without
interference. Traffic signals warned him away from occupied circuits.
Guideposts led him to subroutines and libraries needed to fulfill his
functions. His path was never a straight line. It was a tree of branching
decision points, a lightning-stroke of zigzag turns and reverses. It was
not truly a "path", either; Albert never moved. He was never in a specific
place to move from. It is at least arguable whether Albert "was" anything
at all. He had no continuous existence. When Robin Broadhead was through
with him and turned him off he ceased to be, and his subroutines picked up
other tasks. When he was turned on again he recreated himself from
whatever circuits were idle, according to the program S. Ya. had written.
He was no more real than an equation, and no less so than God.
"I wish..." S. Ya. Lavorovna-Broadhead had said.
Before her voice was halfway through the first vowel the
sound-activated gate in the monitor's receiver summoned up her secretarial
program. The secretary did not appear. She read the first trace of the
name that followed... "-the Albert Einstein..."
-matched it against her command store, made a probabilistic assessment
of the rest and issued an instruction. That was not all the secretary did.
Before that she had recognized the voice of S. Ya. and confirmed that it
was that of an authorized person-the person who had written her, in fact.
She checked her store for undelivered messages, found several, and weighed
their urgency. She made a quick sweep of Essie's telemetry readings to
estimate her physical condition, retrieved the memory of her proximate
surgery, balanced them against the messages and the present instruction,
and decided the messages need not be delivered, and in fact could be
handled by Essie's surrogate. All that took very little time and involved
only a minor fraction of the secretary's full program. She did not need to
remember, for instance, what she was supposed to look like or how her
voice was supposed to sound. So she did not bother.
The secretary's instruction woke "Albert Einstein".
He did not at first know that he was Albert Einstein. As he read his
program he discovered several things about himself. First, that he was an
interactive information-retrieval program, whereupon he searched for and
found addresses for the principal categories of information he was
supposed to supply. Second, that he was heuristic and normative, which
obliged him to look for the rules, in the form of go and no-go gates, that
determined his decision-making. Third, that he was the property of Robin
a. k. a. Robinette, Rob, Robby, Bob or Bobby-Stetley Broadhead and would
be required to interact with him on a basis of "knowing" him. This
impelled the Albert program to access the Robin Broadhead files, and
rehearse their contents-by far the most time-consuming part of his task so
far. When all this was done he discovered his name and the details of his
appearance. He made a series of arbitrary choices of costume-pullover
sweater, or stained gray sweatshirt; slippers or frayed tennis shoes with
a toe poking out; socks or none-and appeared in the tank of the monitor in
the guise of the real Albert Einstein, pipe in hand, mild eyes humorously
inquiring, before the last echo of the command had died.
"...program."
He had had plenty of time. It had taken Essie nearly four-tenths of a
second to speak his name.
As she had spoken in English, he greeted her in the same language.
"Good..." quick check of local time, "morning," fast assessment of Essie's
mood and condition, "Mrs. Broadhead." If she had been dressed for the
office he would have called her "Lavorovna."
Essie studied him appraisingly for several seconds, an infinity of time
for Albert. He did not waste it. He was a shared-time program, and the
parts of his capacity that were not in active use at any particular
pico-second busied themselves at other tasks.
Whatever task was going. While he waited, parts of him were excused to
help other programs make a weather forecast for a sport-fishing vessel
leaving Long Island Sound, teach the conjugation of French verbs to a
little girl, animate a sexual doll for a wealthy, and quirky, old recluse,
and tally gold prices received from the Peking exchange. There were almost
always other tasks on line. When there were not, there were the waiting
batch-process files of less urgent problems-nuclear particle path
analysis, the refinement of asteroid orbits, the balancing of a million
checkbooks-that any of the sixty billion gigabits might turn a hand to in
an idle moment.
Albert was not the same as Robin's other programs-the lawyer, the
doctor, the secretary, the psychoanalyst, or any of the surrogates who
functioned for Robin Broadhead when Robin was busy or disinclined. Albert
shared many memories with them. They freely accessed each other's files.
Each had a specific universe of action, tasked for specific needs; but
they could not carry out their tasks without awareness of each other.
Apart from that, they were each the personal property of Robin
Broadhead, slaved to his will. So sophisticated was Albert that he could
read contextual clues and deduce imperatives. He was not limited in his
responses by what Robin said to him. He was able to read deeper questions
from the totality of everything Robin had ever said, to any of his
programs. Albert could not betray a confidence of Robin's, or fail to
recognize what was confidential. Generally.
There were exceptions. The person who had written Albert's program in
the first place could easily write an overriding command, and had.
"Robin instructed you to prepare summaries for me," Essie told her
creation. "Give them to me now." She watched critically and also
admiringly as the program she bad written nodded, scratched its ear with
its pipestem and began to speak. Albert was quite a good program, she
thought with pride. For a collection of electronic impulses living in rag
stores-weakly crystalline dichalcogenides with the structure of a wet
dishrag-Albert was a rather attractive person.
She adjusted her tubes and piping and leaned back against pillows to
listen to what Albert had to say. It was all most exceedingly interesting.
Even to her, even at this time when in-what was it? in less than one hour
ten minutes she would be sponged and stripped and shaved and basted for
further invasions of her inner person. As all she demanded of the Albert
program at this time was edited memories of conversations that had already
occurred, she knew that he had dismissed large parts of himself to other
work. But what was left, she observed critically, was quite solid. The
transition from the interactive Albert waiting for her question to the
remembered Albert talking to her husband was done smoothly and without
jumps-if one did not look for such minor imperfections as that the pipe
was suddenly alight, and the socks abruptly pulled up over the ankles.
Satisfied, Essie paid attention to the content of what was going on. It
was not just one conversation, she perceived. There were at least three.
Robin must have been spending a lot of time talking to his science program
in Brasilia, and while one part of her mind was listening to the exciting
news from Heechee Heaven another part was smiling at herself. How amusing
that she should be pleased at this evidence that he had not used his hotel
suite for other purposes! (Or at least not exclusively, she amended.) He
could not have been blamed if he had chosen a living companion instead.
Even a female one. Under the circumstances, with a main lover in no
condition to be very responsive, she would certainly have felt free to do
the same. (Well, not certainly. There was enough early Soviet prudishness
left in Essie for at least a doubt.) But she admitted to herself that she
was pleased, and then made herself attend to the truly fascinating things
that were being said. So much happening! So much to absorb!
First, the Heechee. The Heechee in Heechee Heaven were not Heechee! Or
at least those Old Ones were not. It was proved by the bio-assay of the
DNA, Albert was earnestly assuring her husband, punctuating his arguments
with pipe thrusts. The bioassay had produced not an answer but a puzzle, a
basic chemistry that was neither human, nor yet inhuman enough to come
from creatures evolved around some other star. "Also," said Albert,
puffing, "there is the question of the Heechee seat. It does not fit a
human being. But neither does it fit the Old Ones. So for whom was it
designed? Alas, Robin. We do not know."
A quick flicker, the socks now gone, the pipe out and being filled, and
Albert was talking about prayer fans. He had not, Albert apologized,
unriddled the fans. The literature was vast but he had searched it all.
There was no imaginable application of energy and no instrumentation that
had not been applied to them. Yet they had stayed mute. "One can
speculate," Albert said, striking a match to his pipe, "that all of the
fans left for us by the Heechee are garbled, perhaps to tantalize us. I do
not believe this. Rafliniert 1st der Herr Hietschie, aber Boshaft 1st er
nicht," In spite of everything, Essie laughed out loud. Der Herr Hietschie
indeed! Had she written this sense of comedy into her program? She thought
of interrupting him to command that he display this section of his
instructions, but already that replay had ended and a slightly less
rumpled Albert was talking about astrophysics. Here Essie almost closed
her ears, for she quickly had enough of curious cosmologies. Was the
universe open-ended or closed? She did not strongly care. Was some large
quantity of mass "missing", in the sense that not enough could be observed
to account for known gravitational effects? Very well, then let it stay
missing. Essie felt no need to go looking for it. Someone's fantasy of
storms of indetectible pious, and someone else-someone named
Kiube's-notion that mass might be created from nothing, interested her
very little. But when the conversation switched to black holes, she paid
close attention. She was not really concerned with the subject. She was
concerned with Robin's concern for it.
And that, she told herself justly as Albert rambled on, was petty of
her. Robin had kept no mean secrets. He had told her at once of the love
of his life, the woman named Gelle-Klara Moynlin whom he had abandoned in
a black hole-had told her, actually, far more than she wanted to know.
She said, "Stop."
Instantly the three-dimensional figure in the tank abandoned the word
it had been speaking in midsyllable. It gazed politely at her, awaiting
orders.
"Albert," she said carefully, "why did you tell me Robin was studying
question of black holes?"
The figure coughed. "Why, Mrs. Broadhead," Albert said, "I have been
playing a recording prepared especially for you."
"Not this time. Why did you volunteer this information other time?"
Albert's expression cleared and he said humbly, "That directive did not
come from my program, gospozha."
"I thought not! You have been interacting with the psychoanalytic
program!"
"Yes, gospozha, as you programmed me to do."
"And what was the purpose of this intervention from the Sigfrid von
Shrink program?"
"I cannot say for sure-but," he added hastily, "perhaps I can offer a
guess. Perhaps it is that the Sigfrid estimates your husband should be
more open with you."
"That program is not charged with care of my mental health!"
"No, gospozha, not with yours, but with your husband's. Gospozha, if
you wish more information, let me suggest that you consult that program,
not me."
"I can do more than that!" she blazed. And so she could. She could
speak three words-Daite gorod Polymat-and Albert, Harriet, Sigfrid von
Shrink, every one of Robin's programs would be subsumed into the powerful
program of her own, Polymath, the one she had used to write them in the
first place, the overriding program that contained every instruction they
owned. And then let them try cunning evasions on her! Then let them see if
they could maintain the confidentiality of their memories! Then "God,"
Essie said aloud, "am actually planning to teach lesson to my own
programs!"
"Gospozha?"
She caught her breath. It was almost a laugh, nearly a sob. "No," she
said, "cancel above. I find no fault with your programming, Albert, nor
with shrink's. If shrink program judges Robin should release internal
tensions, I cannot overrule and will not pry. Further," she corrected
herself fairly.
The curious thing about Essie Lavorovna-Broadhead was that "fairness"
meant something to her, even in dealing with her constructs. A program
like Albert Einstein was large, complex, subtle, and powerful. Not even S.
Ya. Lavorovna could write such a program alone; for that she needed
Polymath. A program like Albert Einstein learned, and grew, and redefined
its tasks as it went along. Not even its author could say why it gave one
bit of information and not another. One could only observe that it was
working, and judge it by how it carried out its orders. It was unfair to
the program to "blame" it, and Essie could not be so unfair.
But, as she moved restlessly among her pillows (twenty-two minutes
left!) it came to her that the world was not entirely fair to her. Not
fair at all! It was not fair that all these fairytale wonders should be
pouring in upon the world-not now. It was not fair that these perils and
perplexities should manifest themselves, not now, not while she might not
live to see how they came out. Could Peter Herter be dealt with? Would the
others of his party be saved? Could the lessons of the prayer fans and the
explorers make it possible to do all the things Robin promised, feed the
world, make all men well and happy, allow the human race to explore the
universe? All these questions, and before this day's sun had set she might
be dead and never to know the answers! It was not fair, any of it. And
least fair was that if she died of this operation she would never know,
truly, which way Robin would have chosen, if somehow his lost love could
be found again.
She became aware that time was passing. Albert sat patiently in the
tank, moving only occasionally to suck his pipe or scratch under the hem
of his floppy sweater-to remind her, that is, that he was still in standby
mode.
Essie's thrifty cybernetician's soul was indignantly ordering her to
use the program or turn it off-what a shocking waste of machine time! But
she hesitated. There were questions still to ask.
At the door the nurse was looking in. "Good morning, Mrs. Broadhead,"
she said when she saw that Essie was wide awake.
"Is it time?" Essie asked, her voice suddenly unsteady.
"Oh, not for a few minutes yet. You can go on with your machine if you
want to."
Essie shook her head. "Is no point," she said and dismissed the
program. It was a decision lightly taken. It did not occur to her that
some of the unasked questions might be consequential.
And when Albert Einstein was dismissed he did not allow himself to
disintegrate at once.
"The whole of anything is never told," said Henry James. Albert knew
"Henry James" only as an address, the information behind which he had
never had occasion to seek. But he understood the meaning of that law. He
could never tell the whole of anything even to his master. He would fail
in his programming if he tried.
But what parts of the whole to select?
At its lowest structural level, Albert's program was gated to pass
items of a certain measured "importance" and reject others. Simple enough.
But the program was redundant. Some items came to it through several
gates, sometimes as many as hundreds of gates; and when some of the gates
said "go" and others said "no go," what was a program to do? There were
algorithms to test importance, but at some levels of complexity the
algorithms taxed even the resources of sixty billion gigabits-or of a
universe full of bits; Meyer and Stockmeyer had proved, long ago, that,
regardless of computer power, problems existed which could not be solved
in the life of the universe. Albert's problems were not quite that
immense. But he could not find an algorithm to decide for him, for
instance, whether he should bring up the puzzling implications of Mach's
Principle as applied to Heechee history. Worse. He was a proprietary
program. It would have been interesting to pass on his conjectures on the
subject to a pure science research program. But that his basic programming
did not permit.
So Albert held himself together for nearly a millisecond, reconsidering
his options. Should he, next time Robin summoned him, volunteer his
misgivings about the potentially terrifying truth that lay behind Heechee
Heaven?
He reached no conclusion in all that long one thousandth of a second,
and his parts were needed elsewhere.
So Albert allowed himself to come apart.
This part he poured into slow memory, that part into ongoing problems
as needed, until all of Albert Einstein had soaked into the 6 x 10 bits,
like water into sand, until not even a stain was left. Some of his
routines joined with others in a simulated war game, in which Key West was
invaded from Grand Cayman. Some turned up to assist the traffic-controller
program at Dallas-Fort Worth, as Robin Broadhead's plane entered its
landing pattern. Much, much later, some of him helped to monitor Essie's
vital functions as Dr. Wilma Liederman began to cut. One little bit, hours
after, helped to solve the mystery of the prayer fans. And the simplest,
crudest, tiniest part of all stayed on to supervise the program that
prepared Cajun coffee and beignets for Robin when he arrived, and to see
that the house was clean for him. Sixty billion gigabits can do much. They
even do windows.
To love someone is a grace. To marry someone is a contract. The part of
me that loved Essie, was loving her wholeheartedly, sank in pain and
terror when she relapsed, surged in fearful joy when she showed signs of
recovering. I had plenty of occasion for both. Essie died twice in surgery
before I could get home, and again, twelve days later, when they had to go
in again. That last time they made her clinically dead on purpose. Stopped
heart and breath, kept only the brain alive. And every time they
reanimated her I was frightened to think she would live because if she
lived it meant she might die one more time, and I could not stand it. But
slowly, painfully, she began to gain weight, and Wilma told me the tide
had turned, as when the spiral begins to glow in a Heechee ship at the
halfway point and you know you're going to live through the trip. I spent
all that time, weeks and weeks of it, hanging around the house, so that
when Essie could see me I would be there.
And all that time the part of me that had contracted to be married to
her was resenting the bond, and wishing I were free. How do you account
for that? That was a good occasion for guilt, and guilt is a feeling that
comes readily to me-as my old psychoanalytic program used to tell me all
the time. And when I went in to see Essie, looking like a mummy of
herself, the joy and worry filled my heart and the guilt and resentment
clogged my tongue. I would have given my life to make her well. But that
did not seem a practical strategy, or at least I could not see any way to
make that deal, and the other guilty and hostile part of me wanted to be
free to dwell on lost Kiara, and whether somehow I might find her again.
But she mended, Essie did. She mended fast. The sunken bags of flesh
under her eyes filled to be only bruises. The tubes came out of her
nostrils. She ate like a pig. Before my very eyes she was filling out, the
bust beginning to swell, the hips regaining their power to startle. "My
compliments to the doctor," I told Wilma Liederman when I caught her on
her way in to see her patient.
She said sourly, "Yes, she's doing fine."
"I don't like the way you said that," I told her. "What's the matter?"
She relented. "Nothing, really, Robin. All her tests are fine. She's in
such a hurry, though!"
"That's good, isn't it?'"
"Up to a point it is. And now," she added, "I have to get in to see my
patient. Who will be up and about any day now and, maybe, back to normal
in a week or two." What good news that was! And how reluctantly I received
it.
I went through all those weeks with something hanging over me.
Sometimes it seemed like doom, like old Peter Herter blackmailing the
world and nothing the world could do to resist it, or like the Heechee
stirring into anger as we invaded their complex and private worlds.
Sometimes it seemed like golden gifts of opportunity, new technologies,
new hopes, new wonders to explore and exploit. You would think that I
would distinguish between hopes and worries, right? Wrong. Both scared the
hell out of me. As good old Sigfrid used to tell me, I have a great talent
not only for guilt but also for worry.
And when you came right down to it, I had some fairly real things to
worry about. Not just Essie. When you reach a certain age you have, it
seems to me, a right to expect some parts of your life to stay stable.
Like what, for instance? Like money, for instance. I was used to a lot of
it, and now here was my lawyer program telling me that I had to watch my
pennies. "But I promised Hanson Bover a million cash," I said, "and I'm
going to pay it. Sell some stock."
"I've sold stock, Robin!" He wasn't angry. He wasn't programmed to be
able to be really angry, but he could be wretched and he was.
"So sell some more. What's the best to get rid of?"
"None of it is 'best,' Robin. The food mines're down because of the
fire. The fish farms still haven't recovered from losing the fingerlings.
A month or two from now..."
"A month or two from now isn't when I want the money. Sell." And when I
signed him off and called Bover up to find out where to send his million,
he actually seemed surprised.
"In view of Gateway Corp's action," he said, "I thought you'd call our
arrangement off."
"A deal is a deal," I said. "We can let the legalities hang. They don't
mean much while Gateway has preempted me."
He was suspicious immediately. What is it that I do that makes people
suspicious of me when I am going miles out of my way to be fair?' "Why do
you want to hold off on the legalities?" he demanded, rubbing the top of
his head agitatedly-was it sunburned again?
"I don't 'want' to," I said, "it just doesn't make any difference. As
soon as you lift your injunction Gateway will drop theirs on me."
Alongside Bover's scowling face, my secretary program's appeared. She
looked like a cartoon of the Good Angel whispering into Bover's ear, but
actually what she was saying was for me: "Sixty seconds until Mr. Herter's
reminder," she said.
I had forgotten that old Peter had given us another of his two hour
notices. I said to Bover, "It's time to button up for Peter Herter's next
jab," and hung up-I didn't really care if he remembered, I only wanted to
terminate the conversation. Not much buttoning up was involved. It was
thoughtful-no, it was orderly-of old Peter to warn us each time, and then
to perform so punctually. But it mattered more to airline pilots and
automobus's than to stay-at-homes like me.
There was Essie, however. I looked in to make sure she was not actually
being perfused or catheterized or fed. She wasn't.
She was asleep-quite normally asleep, with her dark-gold hair spilling
all around her, and gently snoring. And on the way back to my comfortable
console chair I felt Peter in my mind.
I had become quite a connoisseur of invasions of the mind. It wasn't
any special skill. The whole human race had, over a dozen years, ever
since the fool kid, Wan, began his trips to the Food Factory. His were the
worst, because they lasted so long and because he shared his dreams with
us. Dreams have power; dreams are a kind of released insanity. By
contrast, the one light touch we'd had from Janine Herter was nothing, and
Peter Herter's precise two-minute doses no worse than a traffic light you
stop a minute, and wait impatiently until it is over, and then you go on
your way. All I ever felt from Peter was the way he felt-sometimes the
gut-griping of age, sometimes hunger or thirst, once the fading, angry
sexual lust of an old man all by himself. As I sat down I remember telling
myself that this time was nothing at all. More than anything else, it was
like having a little dizzy spell, too much crouching in one position, when
you stand up you have to pause a moment until it goes away. But it didn't
go away. I felt the blurriness of seeing things with two sets of eyes at
once, and the inarticulate anger and unhappiness of the old man-no words;
just a sort of tone, as though someone were whispering what I could not
quite hear.
It kept on not going away. The blurriness increased. I began to feel
detached and almost delirious. That second vision, that is never sharp and
clear, began to show things I had never seen before. Not real things.
Fantasy things. Women with beaks like birds of prey. Great glittering
metal monsters rolling across the inside of my eyelids. Fantasies. Dreams.
The two-minute measured dose of reminder had gone off track. The son of
a bitch had fallen asleep in the cocoon.
Thank God for the insomnia of old men! It didn't last eight hours, not
much more than one.
But they were sixty-odd unpleasant minutes. When I felt the unwanted
dreams slide tracelessly out of my mind, and was sure they were gone, I
ran to Essie's room. She was wide awake, leaning back against the pillows.
"Am all right, Robin," she said at once. "Was an interesting dream. Nice
change from my own."
"I'll kill the old bastard," I said.
Essie shook her head, grinning up at me. "Not practical," she said.
Well, maybe it wasn't. But as soon as I had satisfied myself that Essie
was all right, I called for Albert Einstein: "I want advice. Is there
anything that can be done to stop Peter Herter?"
He scratched his nose.
"You mean by direct action, I assume. No, Robin. Not by any means
available now."
"I don't want to be told that! There must be something!"
"Sure thing, Robin," he said slowly, "but I think you're asking the
wrong program. Indirect measures might work. As I understand it, you have
some legal questions unresolved. If you could resolve them, you might be
able to meet Herter's demands and stop him that way."
"I've tried that! It's the other way around, damn it! If I could get
Herter to stop, then maybe I could get Gateway Corp to give me back
control. Meanwhile he's screwing up everybody's mind, and I want it
stopped! Isn't there some kind of interference we could broadcast?"
Albert sucked his pipe. "I don't think so, Rob," he said at last. "I
don't have a great deal to go on."
That startled me. "You don't remember what it feels like?"
"Robin," he said patiently, "I don't feel anything. It is important for
you to remember that I am only a computer program. And not the right
program, really, to discuss the exact nature of the signals from Mr.
Herter-your psychoanalytic program might be more helpful. Analytically I
know what happened-I have all the measurements of the radiation involved.
Experientially, nothing. Machine intelligence is not affected. Every human
being experienced something, I know because there are reports to say so.
There is evidence that the larger-brained mammals-primates, dolphins,
elephants-were also disturbed; and maybe other mammals were too, although
the evidence is sketchy. But I have not experienced it directly.... As to
broadcasting an interfering pattern, yes, perhaps that could be done. But
what would be the effect, Robin? Bear in mind that the interfering signal
would come from a nearby point, not one twenty-five light-days away; if
Mr. Herter can cause some disorientation, what would a random signal do at
close range?"
"It would be bad, I guess."
"Sure thing, Robin. Probably worse than you guess, but I could not say
without experimentation. The subjects would have to be human beings, and
such experiments I cannot undertake."
Over my shoulder Essie's voice said proudly, "Yes, you exactly cannot,
as who would know better than I?"
She had come up behind me without a sound, barefoot in the thick rug.
She wore a neck-to-ankle robe and her hair was done up in a turban.
"Essie, what the hell are you doing out of bed?" I demanded.
"My bed has become excessively tedious," she said, kneading my ear in
her fingers, "especially occupied alone. Do you have plans for this
evening, Robin? Because, if invited, I would like to share yours."
"But..." I said, and, "Essie..." I said, and what I wanted to say was
either "You shouldn't be doing this yet!" or "Not in front of the
computer!" She didn't give me a chance to decide which. She leaned down to
press her cheek against mine, perhaps so that I might feel how round and
full it had once again become.
"Robin," she said sunnily, "I am far more well than you believe. You
may ask the doctor, if you wish. She will tell you how very rapidly I have
healed." She turned her head to kiss me quickly and added, "I have some
affairs of my own for the next few hours. Please continue chatting with
your program until then. I am sure Albert has many interesting things to
tell you, isn't that so, Albert?"
"Sure thing, Mrs. Broadhead," the program agreed, puffing cheerfully on
his pipe.
"So, then. It's settled." She patted my cheek and turned away, and I
have to say that as she walked back to her room she did not in the least
look unwell. The robe was not tight, but it was shaped to her body, and
the shape of her body was really fine. I could not believe that the
wadding of bandage all along her left side was gone, but there was no sign
of it.
Behind me, my science program coughed. I turned back, and he was
puffing on his pipe, his eyes twinkling.
"Your wife is looking very well, Robin," he said, nodding judiciously.
"Sometimes, Albert," I said, "I don't know just how anthropomorphic you
are. Well. What very interesting things do you want to tell me about?"
"Whatever you want to hear, Robin. Shall I continue on the subject of
Peter Herter? There are some other possibilities, such as the abort mode.
That is, setting aside for the moment the legal complications, it would be
possible to command the shipboard computer, known as 'Vera', to explode
the fuel tanks on the orbital craft."
"Hell it would! We'd destroy the greatest treasure we've ever found!"
"Sure thing, Robin, and it's even worse than that. The chance of an
external explosion damaging the installation Mr. Herter is using is quite
small. It might only anger him. Or strand him there, to do as he chooses,
as long as he lives."
"Forget it! Don't you have anything good to tell me about?"
"As a matter of fact, Robin," he grinned, "I do. We've found our
Rosetta stone." He shrank away to a dwindling spray of colored flecks and
disappeared. As a luminous spindle-shaped mass of lavender color replaced
him in the tank, he said, "That is the image of the beginning of a book."
"It's blank!"
"I haven't started it yet," he explained. The shape was taller than I,
and about half as thick as it was tall. It began to shift before my eyes;
the color thinned out until I could see through it clearly and then one,
two, three dots began to appear inside it, points of bright red light that
spun themselves out in a spiral. There was a sad chittering sound, like
telemetry or like the amplified chirps of marmosets. Then the picture
froze. The sound stopped. Albert's voice said:
"I have stopped it at this point, Robin. It is probable that sound is
language, but we have not yet been able to isolate semantic units from it.
However, the 'text' is clear. There are one hundred thirty-seven of those
points of light. Now watch while I run a few more seconds of the book."
The spiral of 137 tiny stars doubled itself. Another coil of dots
lifted itself from the original and floated to the top of the spindle,
where it hung silently. The chitter of language began again and the
original spiral expanded itself, while each of the dots began to trace a
spiral of its own. When it was finished there was one large spiral,
composed of 137 smaller spirals, each composed of 137 dots. Then the whole
red pattern turned orange and it froze.
"Do you want to try to interpret that, Robin?'" Albert's voice asked.
"Well, I can't count that high. But it looks like 137 times 137, right?"
"Sure thing, Robin. 137 squared, making 18,769 dots in all. Now watch."
Short green lines slashed the spiral into ten segments. One of the
segments lifted itself off, dropped to the bottom of the spindle and
turned red again. "That's not exactly a tenth of the number, Robin," said
Albert. "By counting you find that there are now 1840 dots at the bottom.
I'll proceed." Once again, the central figure changed color, this time to
yellow. "Notice the top figure." I looked closely, and saw that the first
dot had turned orange, the third yellow. Then the central figure rotated
itself on the vertical axis and spun out a three-D column of spirals, and
Albert said, "We now have a total of 137 cubed dots in the central figure.
From here on," he said kindly, "it gets a little tedious to watch. I'll
run it through quickly." And he did, patterns of dots flying around and
isolating themselves, colors changing through yellow to avocado, avocado
to green, green to aqua, aqua to blue, and on through the spectrum, nearly
twice. "Now, do you see what we have? Three numbers, Robin. 137 in the
center. 1840 down at the bottom. 137 to the eighteenth power, which is
roughly the same as 10 to the thirty-eighth, at the top. Or, in order,
three dimensionless numbers: the fine structure constant, the ratio of the
proton to the electron and the number of particles in the universe. Robin,
you have just had a short course in particle theory from a Heechee
teacher!"
I said, "My God."
Albert reappeared on the screen, beaming. "Exactly, Robin," he said.
"But Albert! Does that mean you can read all the prayer fans?"
His face fell. "Only the simple ones," he said regretfully. "This was
actually the easiest. But from now on it's quite straightforward. We play
every fan and tape it. We look for correspondences. We make semantic
assumptions and test them in as many contexts as we can find-we'll do it,
Robin. But it may take some time."
"I don't want to take time," I snarled.
"Sure thing, Robin, but first every fan must be located, and read, and
taped, and coded for machine comparison, and then..."
"I don't want to hear," I said. "Just do it-what's the matter?"
His expression had changed. "It's a question of funding, Robin," he
said apologetically. "There's a great deal of machine time involved here."
"Do it! As far as you can go. I'll have Morton sell some more stock.
What else have you got?"
"Something nice, Robin," he grinned, shrinking in size until he was
just a little face in the corner of the tank. Colors flowed in the center
of the display and fused into a set of Heechee controls, displaying a
pattern of color on five of the ten panels. The others were blank. "Know
what that is, Robin? That's a composite of all the known Gateway flights
that wound up at Heechee Heaven. All the patterns you see are identical in
all seven known missions. The others vary, but it's a pretty good
conjecture that they are not directly involved in course-setting."
"What are you saying, Albert?" I demanded. He had caught me by
surprise. I found that I was beginning to shake. "Do you mean if we set
ship controls for that pattern we could get to Heechee Heaven?"
"Point nine five yes, Robin," he nodded. "And I have identified three
ships, two on Gateway and one on the Moon, that will accept that setting."
I put on a sweater and walked down to the water. I didn't want to hear
any more.
The trickle pipes had been busy. I kicked my shoes off to feel the
damp, pilowy grass and watched some boys, wind-trolling for perch, near
the Nyack shore, and I thought: This is what I bought by risking my life
on Gateway. What I paid for with Kiara's.
And: Do I want to risk all this, and my life, again?
But it wasn't really a question of "want to". If one of those ships
would go to Heechee Heaven and I could buy or steal a passage on it, I
would go.
Then sanity saved me, and I realized I couldn't, after all. Not at my
age. And not the way Gateway Corp was feeling about me. And, most of all,
not in time. The Gateway asteroid orbits at right-angles to the ecliptic,
just about. Getting there from Earth is a tedious long job; by Hohmann
curves twenty months or more, under forced acceleration more than six. Six
months from now those ships would have been there and back.
If they were coming back, of course.
The realization was almost as much of a relief as it was a sick, hungry
sense of loss.
Sigfrid von Shrink never told me how to get rid of ambivalence (or
guilt). He did tell me how to deal with them. The recipe is, mostly, just
to let them happen. Sooner or later they burn themselves out. (He says.)
At least, they don't have to be paralyzing. So while I was letting this
ambivalence smolder itself into ash I was also strolling along the water,
enjoying the pleasant under-the-bubble air and gazing proudly at the house
I lived in and the wing where my very dear, and for some time wholly
platonic, wife was, I hoped, getting herself good and rested. Whatever she
was doing, she wasn't doing it alone. Twice a taxicart had brought someone
over from the tube stop. Both of them had been women; and now another
taxicart pulled up and let out a man, who gazed around quite unsurely
while the taxi rolled itself around the circle and hurried off to its next
call. I somehow doubted that he was for Essie; but I could think of no
reason why he would be for me, or at least why he could not be dealt with
by Harriet. So it was a surprise when the rifle-speaker under the eaves
swiveled around to point at me and Harriet's voice said, "Robin?' There's
a Mr. Haagenbusch here. I think you ought to see him."
That was very unlike Harriet. But she was usually right, so I strolled
up the lawn, rinsed my bare feet at the French windows and invited the man
into my study. He was a pretty old specimen, pink-skin bald, with a dapper
white pair of sideburns and a carefully American accent-not the kind
people born in the United States usually have. "Thank you very much for
seeing me, Mr. Broadhead," he said, and handed me a card that read:
Herr Doktor Advokat Wm. I. Haagenbusch
"I'm Pete Herter's lawyer," he said. "I flew this morning from
Frankfort because I want to make a deal."
How very quaint of you, I thought; imagine coming in person to conduct
business! But if Harriet wanted me to see this old flake she had probably
talked it over with my legal program, so what I said was, "What kind of a
deal?"
He was waiting for me to tell him to sit down. I did. I suspected he
was also waiting for me to order coffee or cognac for two, as well, but I
didn't particularly want to do that. He took off black kid gloves, looked
at his pearly nails and said: "My client has asked for $250,000,000 paid
into a special account plus immunity from prosecution of any kind. I
received this message by code yesterday."
I laughed out loud. "Christ, Haagenbusch, why are you telling me? I
haven't got that kind of money!"
"No, you don't," he agreed. "Outside of your investment in the
Herter-Hall syndicate and some fish-farm stock, you don't have anything
but a couple of places to live and some personal effects. I think you
could raise six or seven million, not counting the Herter-Hall investment.
God knows what that might be worth right now, everything considered."
I sat back and looked at him. "You know I got rid of my tourist stuff.
So you checked me out. Only you forgot the food mines."
"No, I don't think so, Mr. Broadhead. My understanding is that that
stock was sold this afternoon."
It was not altogether pleasant to find out that he knew more about my
financial position than I did. So Morton had had to sell that out, too! I
didn't have time to think about what that implied just then, because
Haagenbusch stroked his sideburns and went on: "The situation is this, Mr.
Broadhead. I have advised my client that a contract obtained under duress
is not enforceable. He therefore no longer has any hope of attaining his
purposes through an agreement with the Gateway Corporation, or even with
your syndicate. So I have received new instructions: to secure immediate
payment of the sum I have mentioned; to deposit it in untraceable bank
accounts in his name; and to turn it over to him when, and if, he
returns."
"Gateway won't like being blackmailed," I said. "Still, they may not
have any choice."
"Indeed they do not," he agreed. "What is wrong with Mr. Herter's plan
is that it won't work. I am sure they will pay over the money. I am also
sure that my communications will be tapped and my offices bugged, and that
the justice departments of every nation involved in the Gateway treaty
will be preparing indictments for Mr. Herter when he returns. I do not
want to be named in those indictments as an accomplice, Mr. Broadhead. I
know what will happen. They'll find the money and take it back. They'll
void Mr. Herter's previous contract on grounds of his own noncompliance.
And they'll put him-him at least-in jail."
"You're in a tough situation, Mr. Haagenbusch," I said.
He chuckled dryly. His eyes were not amused. He stroked his sideburns
for a moment and burst out: "You don't know! Every day, long orders in
code! Demand this, guarantee that, I hold you personally responsible for
this other! And then I send off a reply that takes twenty-five days to get
there, by which time he has sent me fifty days of new orders and his
thoughts are somewhere far beyond and he upbraids me and threatens me! He
is not a well man, and he certainly is not a young one. I do not truly
think that he will live to collect any of this blackmail. But he might."
"Why don't you quit?"
"I would if I could! But if I quit, then what? Then he has no one on
his side at all. Then what would he do, Mr. Broadhead? Also..." he
shrugged, "he is a very old friend, Mr. Broadhead. He was at school with
my father. No. I can't quit. Also I can't do what he asks. But perhaps you
can. Not by handing over a quarter of a billion dollars, no, because you
have never had that kind of money. But you can make him an equal partner
with that. I think he would-no. I think he might accept that."
"But I've already..." I stopped. If Haagenbusch did not know I had
already given half my holdings to Bover, I wasn't going to tell him. "Why
information.
At Akademogorsk, young S. Ya. 's professors had schooled her in the
then current computer logics of ion optics and magnetic bubbles. She had
learned to trick her computers into doing many marvelous things. They
could find million-digit prime numbers or calculate the tides on a
mud-flat for a thousand years. They could take a child's scribble of
"House" and "Daddy" and refine it into an engineer's rendering of an
architectural plan, and a tailor's dummy of a man. They could rotate the
house, add a sunporch, sheath it in stucco or cover it with ivy. They
could shave off a beard, add a wig, costume the man for yachting or
golfing, for boardroom or bar. These were marvelous programs for
nineteen-year-old Semya. She found them thrilling. But she had grown since
then. By comparison with the programs she was now writing, for her
secretary, for "Albert Einstein" and for her many clients, those early
ones were slow and stumbling caricatures. They did not have the advantage
of circuits borrowed from Heechee technology, or of a circulating memory
store of 6 X b'9 bits.
Of course, even Albert did not use all sixty billion gigabits all the
time. For one thing, they were not all shared. Even the shared stores were
occupied by tens of thousands of programs as subtle and complicated as
Albert, and by tens of millions of duller ones. The program called "Albert
Einstein" slipped through and among the thousands and the millions without
interference. Traffic signals warned him away from occupied circuits.
Guideposts led him to subroutines and libraries needed to fulfill his
functions. His path was never a straight line. It was a tree of branching
decision points, a lightning-stroke of zigzag turns and reverses. It was
not truly a "path", either; Albert never moved. He was never in a specific
place to move from. It is at least arguable whether Albert "was" anything
at all. He had no continuous existence. When Robin Broadhead was through
with him and turned him off he ceased to be, and his subroutines picked up
other tasks. When he was turned on again he recreated himself from
whatever circuits were idle, according to the program S. Ya. had written.
He was no more real than an equation, and no less so than God.
"I wish..." S. Ya. Lavorovna-Broadhead had said.
Before her voice was halfway through the first vowel the
sound-activated gate in the monitor's receiver summoned up her secretarial
program. The secretary did not appear. She read the first trace of the
name that followed... "-the Albert Einstein..."
-matched it against her command store, made a probabilistic assessment
of the rest and issued an instruction. That was not all the secretary did.
Before that she had recognized the voice of S. Ya. and confirmed that it
was that of an authorized person-the person who had written her, in fact.
She checked her store for undelivered messages, found several, and weighed
their urgency. She made a quick sweep of Essie's telemetry readings to
estimate her physical condition, retrieved the memory of her proximate
surgery, balanced them against the messages and the present instruction,
and decided the messages need not be delivered, and in fact could be
handled by Essie's surrogate. All that took very little time and involved
only a minor fraction of the secretary's full program. She did not need to
remember, for instance, what she was supposed to look like or how her
voice was supposed to sound. So she did not bother.
The secretary's instruction woke "Albert Einstein".
He did not at first know that he was Albert Einstein. As he read his
program he discovered several things about himself. First, that he was an
interactive information-retrieval program, whereupon he searched for and
found addresses for the principal categories of information he was
supposed to supply. Second, that he was heuristic and normative, which
obliged him to look for the rules, in the form of go and no-go gates, that
determined his decision-making. Third, that he was the property of Robin
a. k. a. Robinette, Rob, Robby, Bob or Bobby-Stetley Broadhead and would
be required to interact with him on a basis of "knowing" him. This
impelled the Albert program to access the Robin Broadhead files, and
rehearse their contents-by far the most time-consuming part of his task so
far. When all this was done he discovered his name and the details of his
appearance. He made a series of arbitrary choices of costume-pullover
sweater, or stained gray sweatshirt; slippers or frayed tennis shoes with
a toe poking out; socks or none-and appeared in the tank of the monitor in
the guise of the real Albert Einstein, pipe in hand, mild eyes humorously
inquiring, before the last echo of the command had died.
"...program."
He had had plenty of time. It had taken Essie nearly four-tenths of a
second to speak his name.
As she had spoken in English, he greeted her in the same language.
"Good..." quick check of local time, "morning," fast assessment of Essie's
mood and condition, "Mrs. Broadhead." If she had been dressed for the
office he would have called her "Lavorovna."
Essie studied him appraisingly for several seconds, an infinity of time
for Albert. He did not waste it. He was a shared-time program, and the
parts of his capacity that were not in active use at any particular
pico-second busied themselves at other tasks.
Whatever task was going. While he waited, parts of him were excused to
help other programs make a weather forecast for a sport-fishing vessel
leaving Long Island Sound, teach the conjugation of French verbs to a
little girl, animate a sexual doll for a wealthy, and quirky, old recluse,
and tally gold prices received from the Peking exchange. There were almost
always other tasks on line. When there were not, there were the waiting
batch-process files of less urgent problems-nuclear particle path
analysis, the refinement of asteroid orbits, the balancing of a million
checkbooks-that any of the sixty billion gigabits might turn a hand to in
an idle moment.
Albert was not the same as Robin's other programs-the lawyer, the
doctor, the secretary, the psychoanalyst, or any of the surrogates who
functioned for Robin Broadhead when Robin was busy or disinclined. Albert
shared many memories with them. They freely accessed each other's files.
Each had a specific universe of action, tasked for specific needs; but
they could not carry out their tasks without awareness of each other.
Apart from that, they were each the personal property of Robin
Broadhead, slaved to his will. So sophisticated was Albert that he could
read contextual clues and deduce imperatives. He was not limited in his
responses by what Robin said to him. He was able to read deeper questions
from the totality of everything Robin had ever said, to any of his
programs. Albert could not betray a confidence of Robin's, or fail to
recognize what was confidential. Generally.
There were exceptions. The person who had written Albert's program in
the first place could easily write an overriding command, and had.
"Robin instructed you to prepare summaries for me," Essie told her
creation. "Give them to me now." She watched critically and also
admiringly as the program she bad written nodded, scratched its ear with
its pipestem and began to speak. Albert was quite a good program, she
thought with pride. For a collection of electronic impulses living in rag
stores-weakly crystalline dichalcogenides with the structure of a wet
dishrag-Albert was a rather attractive person.
She adjusted her tubes and piping and leaned back against pillows to
listen to what Albert had to say. It was all most exceedingly interesting.
Even to her, even at this time when in-what was it? in less than one hour
ten minutes she would be sponged and stripped and shaved and basted for
further invasions of her inner person. As all she demanded of the Albert
program at this time was edited memories of conversations that had already
occurred, she knew that he had dismissed large parts of himself to other
work. But what was left, she observed critically, was quite solid. The
transition from the interactive Albert waiting for her question to the
remembered Albert talking to her husband was done smoothly and without
jumps-if one did not look for such minor imperfections as that the pipe
was suddenly alight, and the socks abruptly pulled up over the ankles.
Satisfied, Essie paid attention to the content of what was going on. It
was not just one conversation, she perceived. There were at least three.
Robin must have been spending a lot of time talking to his science program
in Brasilia, and while one part of her mind was listening to the exciting
news from Heechee Heaven another part was smiling at herself. How amusing
that she should be pleased at this evidence that he had not used his hotel
suite for other purposes! (Or at least not exclusively, she amended.) He
could not have been blamed if he had chosen a living companion instead.
Even a female one. Under the circumstances, with a main lover in no
condition to be very responsive, she would certainly have felt free to do
the same. (Well, not certainly. There was enough early Soviet prudishness
left in Essie for at least a doubt.) But she admitted to herself that she
was pleased, and then made herself attend to the truly fascinating things
that were being said. So much happening! So much to absorb!
First, the Heechee. The Heechee in Heechee Heaven were not Heechee! Or
at least those Old Ones were not. It was proved by the bio-assay of the
DNA, Albert was earnestly assuring her husband, punctuating his arguments
with pipe thrusts. The bioassay had produced not an answer but a puzzle, a
basic chemistry that was neither human, nor yet inhuman enough to come
from creatures evolved around some other star. "Also," said Albert,
puffing, "there is the question of the Heechee seat. It does not fit a
human being. But neither does it fit the Old Ones. So for whom was it
designed? Alas, Robin. We do not know."
A quick flicker, the socks now gone, the pipe out and being filled, and
Albert was talking about prayer fans. He had not, Albert apologized,
unriddled the fans. The literature was vast but he had searched it all.
There was no imaginable application of energy and no instrumentation that
had not been applied to them. Yet they had stayed mute. "One can
speculate," Albert said, striking a match to his pipe, "that all of the
fans left for us by the Heechee are garbled, perhaps to tantalize us. I do
not believe this. Rafliniert 1st der Herr Hietschie, aber Boshaft 1st er
nicht," In spite of everything, Essie laughed out loud. Der Herr Hietschie
indeed! Had she written this sense of comedy into her program? She thought
of interrupting him to command that he display this section of his
instructions, but already that replay had ended and a slightly less
rumpled Albert was talking about astrophysics. Here Essie almost closed
her ears, for she quickly had enough of curious cosmologies. Was the
universe open-ended or closed? She did not strongly care. Was some large
quantity of mass "missing", in the sense that not enough could be observed
to account for known gravitational effects? Very well, then let it stay
missing. Essie felt no need to go looking for it. Someone's fantasy of
storms of indetectible pious, and someone else-someone named
Kiube's-notion that mass might be created from nothing, interested her
very little. But when the conversation switched to black holes, she paid
close attention. She was not really concerned with the subject. She was
concerned with Robin's concern for it.
And that, she told herself justly as Albert rambled on, was petty of
her. Robin had kept no mean secrets. He had told her at once of the love
of his life, the woman named Gelle-Klara Moynlin whom he had abandoned in
a black hole-had told her, actually, far more than she wanted to know.
She said, "Stop."
Instantly the three-dimensional figure in the tank abandoned the word
it had been speaking in midsyllable. It gazed politely at her, awaiting
orders.
"Albert," she said carefully, "why did you tell me Robin was studying
question of black holes?"
The figure coughed. "Why, Mrs. Broadhead," Albert said, "I have been
playing a recording prepared especially for you."
"Not this time. Why did you volunteer this information other time?"
Albert's expression cleared and he said humbly, "That directive did not
come from my program, gospozha."
"I thought not! You have been interacting with the psychoanalytic
program!"
"Yes, gospozha, as you programmed me to do."
"And what was the purpose of this intervention from the Sigfrid von
Shrink program?"
"I cannot say for sure-but," he added hastily, "perhaps I can offer a
guess. Perhaps it is that the Sigfrid estimates your husband should be
more open with you."
"That program is not charged with care of my mental health!"
"No, gospozha, not with yours, but with your husband's. Gospozha, if
you wish more information, let me suggest that you consult that program,
not me."
"I can do more than that!" she blazed. And so she could. She could
speak three words-Daite gorod Polymat-and Albert, Harriet, Sigfrid von
Shrink, every one of Robin's programs would be subsumed into the powerful
program of her own, Polymath, the one she had used to write them in the
first place, the overriding program that contained every instruction they
owned. And then let them try cunning evasions on her! Then let them see if
they could maintain the confidentiality of their memories! Then "God,"
Essie said aloud, "am actually planning to teach lesson to my own
programs!"
"Gospozha?"
She caught her breath. It was almost a laugh, nearly a sob. "No," she
said, "cancel above. I find no fault with your programming, Albert, nor
with shrink's. If shrink program judges Robin should release internal
tensions, I cannot overrule and will not pry. Further," she corrected
herself fairly.
The curious thing about Essie Lavorovna-Broadhead was that "fairness"
meant something to her, even in dealing with her constructs. A program
like Albert Einstein was large, complex, subtle, and powerful. Not even S.
Ya. Lavorovna could write such a program alone; for that she needed
Polymath. A program like Albert Einstein learned, and grew, and redefined
its tasks as it went along. Not even its author could say why it gave one
bit of information and not another. One could only observe that it was
working, and judge it by how it carried out its orders. It was unfair to
the program to "blame" it, and Essie could not be so unfair.
But, as she moved restlessly among her pillows (twenty-two minutes
left!) it came to her that the world was not entirely fair to her. Not
fair at all! It was not fair that all these fairytale wonders should be
pouring in upon the world-not now. It was not fair that these perils and
perplexities should manifest themselves, not now, not while she might not
live to see how they came out. Could Peter Herter be dealt with? Would the
others of his party be saved? Could the lessons of the prayer fans and the
explorers make it possible to do all the things Robin promised, feed the
world, make all men well and happy, allow the human race to explore the
universe? All these questions, and before this day's sun had set she might
be dead and never to know the answers! It was not fair, any of it. And
least fair was that if she died of this operation she would never know,
truly, which way Robin would have chosen, if somehow his lost love could
be found again.
She became aware that time was passing. Albert sat patiently in the
tank, moving only occasionally to suck his pipe or scratch under the hem
of his floppy sweater-to remind her, that is, that he was still in standby
mode.
Essie's thrifty cybernetician's soul was indignantly ordering her to
use the program or turn it off-what a shocking waste of machine time! But
she hesitated. There were questions still to ask.
At the door the nurse was looking in. "Good morning, Mrs. Broadhead,"
she said when she saw that Essie was wide awake.
"Is it time?" Essie asked, her voice suddenly unsteady.
"Oh, not for a few minutes yet. You can go on with your machine if you
want to."
Essie shook her head. "Is no point," she said and dismissed the
program. It was a decision lightly taken. It did not occur to her that
some of the unasked questions might be consequential.
And when Albert Einstein was dismissed he did not allow himself to
disintegrate at once.
"The whole of anything is never told," said Henry James. Albert knew
"Henry James" only as an address, the information behind which he had
never had occasion to seek. But he understood the meaning of that law. He
could never tell the whole of anything even to his master. He would fail
in his programming if he tried.
But what parts of the whole to select?
At its lowest structural level, Albert's program was gated to pass
items of a certain measured "importance" and reject others. Simple enough.
But the program was redundant. Some items came to it through several
gates, sometimes as many as hundreds of gates; and when some of the gates
said "go" and others said "no go," what was a program to do? There were
algorithms to test importance, but at some levels of complexity the
algorithms taxed even the resources of sixty billion gigabits-or of a
universe full of bits; Meyer and Stockmeyer had proved, long ago, that,
regardless of computer power, problems existed which could not be solved
in the life of the universe. Albert's problems were not quite that
immense. But he could not find an algorithm to decide for him, for
instance, whether he should bring up the puzzling implications of Mach's
Principle as applied to Heechee history. Worse. He was a proprietary
program. It would have been interesting to pass on his conjectures on the
subject to a pure science research program. But that his basic programming
did not permit.
So Albert held himself together for nearly a millisecond, reconsidering
his options. Should he, next time Robin summoned him, volunteer his
misgivings about the potentially terrifying truth that lay behind Heechee
Heaven?
He reached no conclusion in all that long one thousandth of a second,
and his parts were needed elsewhere.
So Albert allowed himself to come apart.
This part he poured into slow memory, that part into ongoing problems
as needed, until all of Albert Einstein had soaked into the 6 x 10 bits,
like water into sand, until not even a stain was left. Some of his
routines joined with others in a simulated war game, in which Key West was
invaded from Grand Cayman. Some turned up to assist the traffic-controller
program at Dallas-Fort Worth, as Robin Broadhead's plane entered its
landing pattern. Much, much later, some of him helped to monitor Essie's
vital functions as Dr. Wilma Liederman began to cut. One little bit, hours
after, helped to solve the mystery of the prayer fans. And the simplest,
crudest, tiniest part of all stayed on to supervise the program that
prepared Cajun coffee and beignets for Robin when he arrived, and to see
that the house was clean for him. Sixty billion gigabits can do much. They
even do windows.
To love someone is a grace. To marry someone is a contract. The part of
me that loved Essie, was loving her wholeheartedly, sank in pain and
terror when she relapsed, surged in fearful joy when she showed signs of
recovering. I had plenty of occasion for both. Essie died twice in surgery
before I could get home, and again, twelve days later, when they had to go
in again. That last time they made her clinically dead on purpose. Stopped
heart and breath, kept only the brain alive. And every time they
reanimated her I was frightened to think she would live because if she
lived it meant she might die one more time, and I could not stand it. But
slowly, painfully, she began to gain weight, and Wilma told me the tide
had turned, as when the spiral begins to glow in a Heechee ship at the
halfway point and you know you're going to live through the trip. I spent
all that time, weeks and weeks of it, hanging around the house, so that
when Essie could see me I would be there.
And all that time the part of me that had contracted to be married to
her was resenting the bond, and wishing I were free. How do you account
for that? That was a good occasion for guilt, and guilt is a feeling that
comes readily to me-as my old psychoanalytic program used to tell me all
the time. And when I went in to see Essie, looking like a mummy of
herself, the joy and worry filled my heart and the guilt and resentment
clogged my tongue. I would have given my life to make her well. But that
did not seem a practical strategy, or at least I could not see any way to
make that deal, and the other guilty and hostile part of me wanted to be
free to dwell on lost Kiara, and whether somehow I might find her again.
But she mended, Essie did. She mended fast. The sunken bags of flesh
under her eyes filled to be only bruises. The tubes came out of her
nostrils. She ate like a pig. Before my very eyes she was filling out, the
bust beginning to swell, the hips regaining their power to startle. "My
compliments to the doctor," I told Wilma Liederman when I caught her on
her way in to see her patient.
She said sourly, "Yes, she's doing fine."
"I don't like the way you said that," I told her. "What's the matter?"
She relented. "Nothing, really, Robin. All her tests are fine. She's in
such a hurry, though!"
"That's good, isn't it?'"
"Up to a point it is. And now," she added, "I have to get in to see my
patient. Who will be up and about any day now and, maybe, back to normal
in a week or two." What good news that was! And how reluctantly I received
it.
I went through all those weeks with something hanging over me.
Sometimes it seemed like doom, like old Peter Herter blackmailing the
world and nothing the world could do to resist it, or like the Heechee
stirring into anger as we invaded their complex and private worlds.
Sometimes it seemed like golden gifts of opportunity, new technologies,
new hopes, new wonders to explore and exploit. You would think that I
would distinguish between hopes and worries, right? Wrong. Both scared the
hell out of me. As good old Sigfrid used to tell me, I have a great talent
not only for guilt but also for worry.
And when you came right down to it, I had some fairly real things to
worry about. Not just Essie. When you reach a certain age you have, it
seems to me, a right to expect some parts of your life to stay stable.
Like what, for instance? Like money, for instance. I was used to a lot of
it, and now here was my lawyer program telling me that I had to watch my
pennies. "But I promised Hanson Bover a million cash," I said, "and I'm
going to pay it. Sell some stock."
"I've sold stock, Robin!" He wasn't angry. He wasn't programmed to be
able to be really angry, but he could be wretched and he was.
"So sell some more. What's the best to get rid of?"
"None of it is 'best,' Robin. The food mines're down because of the
fire. The fish farms still haven't recovered from losing the fingerlings.
A month or two from now..."
"A month or two from now isn't when I want the money. Sell." And when I
signed him off and called Bover up to find out where to send his million,
he actually seemed surprised.
"In view of Gateway Corp's action," he said, "I thought you'd call our
arrangement off."
"A deal is a deal," I said. "We can let the legalities hang. They don't
mean much while Gateway has preempted me."
He was suspicious immediately. What is it that I do that makes people
suspicious of me when I am going miles out of my way to be fair?' "Why do
you want to hold off on the legalities?" he demanded, rubbing the top of
his head agitatedly-was it sunburned again?
"I don't 'want' to," I said, "it just doesn't make any difference. As
soon as you lift your injunction Gateway will drop theirs on me."
Alongside Bover's scowling face, my secretary program's appeared. She
looked like a cartoon of the Good Angel whispering into Bover's ear, but
actually what she was saying was for me: "Sixty seconds until Mr. Herter's
reminder," she said.
I had forgotten that old Peter had given us another of his two hour
notices. I said to Bover, "It's time to button up for Peter Herter's next
jab," and hung up-I didn't really care if he remembered, I only wanted to
terminate the conversation. Not much buttoning up was involved. It was
thoughtful-no, it was orderly-of old Peter to warn us each time, and then
to perform so punctually. But it mattered more to airline pilots and
automobus's than to stay-at-homes like me.
There was Essie, however. I looked in to make sure she was not actually
being perfused or catheterized or fed. She wasn't.
She was asleep-quite normally asleep, with her dark-gold hair spilling
all around her, and gently snoring. And on the way back to my comfortable
console chair I felt Peter in my mind.
I had become quite a connoisseur of invasions of the mind. It wasn't
any special skill. The whole human race had, over a dozen years, ever
since the fool kid, Wan, began his trips to the Food Factory. His were the
worst, because they lasted so long and because he shared his dreams with
us. Dreams have power; dreams are a kind of released insanity. By
contrast, the one light touch we'd had from Janine Herter was nothing, and
Peter Herter's precise two-minute doses no worse than a traffic light you
stop a minute, and wait impatiently until it is over, and then you go on
your way. All I ever felt from Peter was the way he felt-sometimes the
gut-griping of age, sometimes hunger or thirst, once the fading, angry
sexual lust of an old man all by himself. As I sat down I remember telling
myself that this time was nothing at all. More than anything else, it was
like having a little dizzy spell, too much crouching in one position, when
you stand up you have to pause a moment until it goes away. But it didn't
go away. I felt the blurriness of seeing things with two sets of eyes at
once, and the inarticulate anger and unhappiness of the old man-no words;
just a sort of tone, as though someone were whispering what I could not
quite hear.
It kept on not going away. The blurriness increased. I began to feel
detached and almost delirious. That second vision, that is never sharp and
clear, began to show things I had never seen before. Not real things.
Fantasy things. Women with beaks like birds of prey. Great glittering
metal monsters rolling across the inside of my eyelids. Fantasies. Dreams.
The two-minute measured dose of reminder had gone off track. The son of
a bitch had fallen asleep in the cocoon.
Thank God for the insomnia of old men! It didn't last eight hours, not
much more than one.
But they were sixty-odd unpleasant minutes. When I felt the unwanted
dreams slide tracelessly out of my mind, and was sure they were gone, I
ran to Essie's room. She was wide awake, leaning back against the pillows.
"Am all right, Robin," she said at once. "Was an interesting dream. Nice
change from my own."
"I'll kill the old bastard," I said.
Essie shook her head, grinning up at me. "Not practical," she said.
Well, maybe it wasn't. But as soon as I had satisfied myself that Essie
was all right, I called for Albert Einstein: "I want advice. Is there
anything that can be done to stop Peter Herter?"
He scratched his nose.
"You mean by direct action, I assume. No, Robin. Not by any means
available now."
"I don't want to be told that! There must be something!"
"Sure thing, Robin," he said slowly, "but I think you're asking the
wrong program. Indirect measures might work. As I understand it, you have
some legal questions unresolved. If you could resolve them, you might be
able to meet Herter's demands and stop him that way."
"I've tried that! It's the other way around, damn it! If I could get
Herter to stop, then maybe I could get Gateway Corp to give me back
control. Meanwhile he's screwing up everybody's mind, and I want it
stopped! Isn't there some kind of interference we could broadcast?"
Albert sucked his pipe. "I don't think so, Rob," he said at last. "I
don't have a great deal to go on."
That startled me. "You don't remember what it feels like?"
"Robin," he said patiently, "I don't feel anything. It is important for
you to remember that I am only a computer program. And not the right
program, really, to discuss the exact nature of the signals from Mr.
Herter-your psychoanalytic program might be more helpful. Analytically I
know what happened-I have all the measurements of the radiation involved.
Experientially, nothing. Machine intelligence is not affected. Every human
being experienced something, I know because there are reports to say so.
There is evidence that the larger-brained mammals-primates, dolphins,
elephants-were also disturbed; and maybe other mammals were too, although
the evidence is sketchy. But I have not experienced it directly.... As to
broadcasting an interfering pattern, yes, perhaps that could be done. But
what would be the effect, Robin? Bear in mind that the interfering signal
would come from a nearby point, not one twenty-five light-days away; if
Mr. Herter can cause some disorientation, what would a random signal do at
close range?"
"It would be bad, I guess."
"Sure thing, Robin. Probably worse than you guess, but I could not say
without experimentation. The subjects would have to be human beings, and
such experiments I cannot undertake."
Over my shoulder Essie's voice said proudly, "Yes, you exactly cannot,
as who would know better than I?"
She had come up behind me without a sound, barefoot in the thick rug.
She wore a neck-to-ankle robe and her hair was done up in a turban.
"Essie, what the hell are you doing out of bed?" I demanded.
"My bed has become excessively tedious," she said, kneading my ear in
her fingers, "especially occupied alone. Do you have plans for this
evening, Robin? Because, if invited, I would like to share yours."
"But..." I said, and, "Essie..." I said, and what I wanted to say was
either "You shouldn't be doing this yet!" or "Not in front of the
computer!" She didn't give me a chance to decide which. She leaned down to
press her cheek against mine, perhaps so that I might feel how round and
full it had once again become.
"Robin," she said sunnily, "I am far more well than you believe. You
may ask the doctor, if you wish. She will tell you how very rapidly I have
healed." She turned her head to kiss me quickly and added, "I have some
affairs of my own for the next few hours. Please continue chatting with
your program until then. I am sure Albert has many interesting things to
tell you, isn't that so, Albert?"
"Sure thing, Mrs. Broadhead," the program agreed, puffing cheerfully on
his pipe.
"So, then. It's settled." She patted my cheek and turned away, and I
have to say that as she walked back to her room she did not in the least
look unwell. The robe was not tight, but it was shaped to her body, and
the shape of her body was really fine. I could not believe that the
wadding of bandage all along her left side was gone, but there was no sign
of it.
Behind me, my science program coughed. I turned back, and he was
puffing on his pipe, his eyes twinkling.
"Your wife is looking very well, Robin," he said, nodding judiciously.
"Sometimes, Albert," I said, "I don't know just how anthropomorphic you
are. Well. What very interesting things do you want to tell me about?"
"Whatever you want to hear, Robin. Shall I continue on the subject of
Peter Herter? There are some other possibilities, such as the abort mode.
That is, setting aside for the moment the legal complications, it would be
possible to command the shipboard computer, known as 'Vera', to explode
the fuel tanks on the orbital craft."
"Hell it would! We'd destroy the greatest treasure we've ever found!"
"Sure thing, Robin, and it's even worse than that. The chance of an
external explosion damaging the installation Mr. Herter is using is quite
small. It might only anger him. Or strand him there, to do as he chooses,
as long as he lives."
"Forget it! Don't you have anything good to tell me about?"
"As a matter of fact, Robin," he grinned, "I do. We've found our
Rosetta stone." He shrank away to a dwindling spray of colored flecks and
disappeared. As a luminous spindle-shaped mass of lavender color replaced
him in the tank, he said, "That is the image of the beginning of a book."
"It's blank!"
"I haven't started it yet," he explained. The shape was taller than I,
and about half as thick as it was tall. It began to shift before my eyes;
the color thinned out until I could see through it clearly and then one,
two, three dots began to appear inside it, points of bright red light that
spun themselves out in a spiral. There was a sad chittering sound, like
telemetry or like the amplified chirps of marmosets. Then the picture
froze. The sound stopped. Albert's voice said:
"I have stopped it at this point, Robin. It is probable that sound is
language, but we have not yet been able to isolate semantic units from it.
However, the 'text' is clear. There are one hundred thirty-seven of those
points of light. Now watch while I run a few more seconds of the book."
The spiral of 137 tiny stars doubled itself. Another coil of dots
lifted itself from the original and floated to the top of the spindle,
where it hung silently. The chitter of language began again and the
original spiral expanded itself, while each of the dots began to trace a
spiral of its own. When it was finished there was one large spiral,
composed of 137 smaller spirals, each composed of 137 dots. Then the whole
red pattern turned orange and it froze.
"Do you want to try to interpret that, Robin?'" Albert's voice asked.
"Well, I can't count that high. But it looks like 137 times 137, right?"
"Sure thing, Robin. 137 squared, making 18,769 dots in all. Now watch."
Short green lines slashed the spiral into ten segments. One of the
segments lifted itself off, dropped to the bottom of the spindle and
turned red again. "That's not exactly a tenth of the number, Robin," said
Albert. "By counting you find that there are now 1840 dots at the bottom.
I'll proceed." Once again, the central figure changed color, this time to
yellow. "Notice the top figure." I looked closely, and saw that the first
dot had turned orange, the third yellow. Then the central figure rotated
itself on the vertical axis and spun out a three-D column of spirals, and
Albert said, "We now have a total of 137 cubed dots in the central figure.
From here on," he said kindly, "it gets a little tedious to watch. I'll
run it through quickly." And he did, patterns of dots flying around and
isolating themselves, colors changing through yellow to avocado, avocado
to green, green to aqua, aqua to blue, and on through the spectrum, nearly
twice. "Now, do you see what we have? Three numbers, Robin. 137 in the
center. 1840 down at the bottom. 137 to the eighteenth power, which is
roughly the same as 10 to the thirty-eighth, at the top. Or, in order,
three dimensionless numbers: the fine structure constant, the ratio of the
proton to the electron and the number of particles in the universe. Robin,
you have just had a short course in particle theory from a Heechee
teacher!"
I said, "My God."
Albert reappeared on the screen, beaming. "Exactly, Robin," he said.
"But Albert! Does that mean you can read all the prayer fans?"
His face fell. "Only the simple ones," he said regretfully. "This was
actually the easiest. But from now on it's quite straightforward. We play
every fan and tape it. We look for correspondences. We make semantic
assumptions and test them in as many contexts as we can find-we'll do it,
Robin. But it may take some time."
"I don't want to take time," I snarled.
"Sure thing, Robin, but first every fan must be located, and read, and
taped, and coded for machine comparison, and then..."
"I don't want to hear," I said. "Just do it-what's the matter?"
His expression had changed. "It's a question of funding, Robin," he
said apologetically. "There's a great deal of machine time involved here."
"Do it! As far as you can go. I'll have Morton sell some more stock.
What else have you got?"
"Something nice, Robin," he grinned, shrinking in size until he was
just a little face in the corner of the tank. Colors flowed in the center
of the display and fused into a set of Heechee controls, displaying a
pattern of color on five of the ten panels. The others were blank. "Know
what that is, Robin? That's a composite of all the known Gateway flights
that wound up at Heechee Heaven. All the patterns you see are identical in
all seven known missions. The others vary, but it's a pretty good
conjecture that they are not directly involved in course-setting."
"What are you saying, Albert?" I demanded. He had caught me by
surprise. I found that I was beginning to shake. "Do you mean if we set
ship controls for that pattern we could get to Heechee Heaven?"
"Point nine five yes, Robin," he nodded. "And I have identified three
ships, two on Gateway and one on the Moon, that will accept that setting."
I put on a sweater and walked down to the water. I didn't want to hear
any more.
The trickle pipes had been busy. I kicked my shoes off to feel the
damp, pilowy grass and watched some boys, wind-trolling for perch, near
the Nyack shore, and I thought: This is what I bought by risking my life
on Gateway. What I paid for with Kiara's.
And: Do I want to risk all this, and my life, again?
But it wasn't really a question of "want to". If one of those ships
would go to Heechee Heaven and I could buy or steal a passage on it, I
would go.
Then sanity saved me, and I realized I couldn't, after all. Not at my
age. And not the way Gateway Corp was feeling about me. And, most of all,
not in time. The Gateway asteroid orbits at right-angles to the ecliptic,
just about. Getting there from Earth is a tedious long job; by Hohmann
curves twenty months or more, under forced acceleration more than six. Six
months from now those ships would have been there and back.
If they were coming back, of course.
The realization was almost as much of a relief as it was a sick, hungry
sense of loss.
Sigfrid von Shrink never told me how to get rid of ambivalence (or
guilt). He did tell me how to deal with them. The recipe is, mostly, just
to let them happen. Sooner or later they burn themselves out. (He says.)
At least, they don't have to be paralyzing. So while I was letting this
ambivalence smolder itself into ash I was also strolling along the water,
enjoying the pleasant under-the-bubble air and gazing proudly at the house
I lived in and the wing where my very dear, and for some time wholly
platonic, wife was, I hoped, getting herself good and rested. Whatever she
was doing, she wasn't doing it alone. Twice a taxicart had brought someone
over from the tube stop. Both of them had been women; and now another
taxicart pulled up and let out a man, who gazed around quite unsurely
while the taxi rolled itself around the circle and hurried off to its next
call. I somehow doubted that he was for Essie; but I could think of no
reason why he would be for me, or at least why he could not be dealt with
by Harriet. So it was a surprise when the rifle-speaker under the eaves
swiveled around to point at me and Harriet's voice said, "Robin?' There's
a Mr. Haagenbusch here. I think you ought to see him."
That was very unlike Harriet. But she was usually right, so I strolled
up the lawn, rinsed my bare feet at the French windows and invited the man
into my study. He was a pretty old specimen, pink-skin bald, with a dapper
white pair of sideburns and a carefully American accent-not the kind
people born in the United States usually have. "Thank you very much for
seeing me, Mr. Broadhead," he said, and handed me a card that read:
Herr Doktor Advokat Wm. I. Haagenbusch
"I'm Pete Herter's lawyer," he said. "I flew this morning from
Frankfort because I want to make a deal."
How very quaint of you, I thought; imagine coming in person to conduct
business! But if Harriet wanted me to see this old flake she had probably
talked it over with my legal program, so what I said was, "What kind of a
deal?"
He was waiting for me to tell him to sit down. I did. I suspected he
was also waiting for me to order coffee or cognac for two, as well, but I
didn't particularly want to do that. He took off black kid gloves, looked
at his pearly nails and said: "My client has asked for $250,000,000 paid
into a special account plus immunity from prosecution of any kind. I
received this message by code yesterday."
I laughed out loud. "Christ, Haagenbusch, why are you telling me? I
haven't got that kind of money!"
"No, you don't," he agreed. "Outside of your investment in the
Herter-Hall syndicate and some fish-farm stock, you don't have anything
but a couple of places to live and some personal effects. I think you
could raise six or seven million, not counting the Herter-Hall investment.
God knows what that might be worth right now, everything considered."
I sat back and looked at him. "You know I got rid of my tourist stuff.
So you checked me out. Only you forgot the food mines."
"No, I don't think so, Mr. Broadhead. My understanding is that that
stock was sold this afternoon."
It was not altogether pleasant to find out that he knew more about my
financial position than I did. So Morton had had to sell that out, too! I
didn't have time to think about what that implied just then, because
Haagenbusch stroked his sideburns and went on: "The situation is this, Mr.
Broadhead. I have advised my client that a contract obtained under duress
is not enforceable. He therefore no longer has any hope of attaining his
purposes through an agreement with the Gateway Corporation, or even with
your syndicate. So I have received new instructions: to secure immediate
payment of the sum I have mentioned; to deposit it in untraceable bank
accounts in his name; and to turn it over to him when, and if, he
returns."
"Gateway won't like being blackmailed," I said. "Still, they may not
have any choice."
"Indeed they do not," he agreed. "What is wrong with Mr. Herter's plan
is that it won't work. I am sure they will pay over the money. I am also
sure that my communications will be tapped and my offices bugged, and that
the justice departments of every nation involved in the Gateway treaty
will be preparing indictments for Mr. Herter when he returns. I do not
want to be named in those indictments as an accomplice, Mr. Broadhead. I
know what will happen. They'll find the money and take it back. They'll
void Mr. Herter's previous contract on grounds of his own noncompliance.
And they'll put him-him at least-in jail."
"You're in a tough situation, Mr. Haagenbusch," I said.
He chuckled dryly. His eyes were not amused. He stroked his sideburns
for a moment and burst out: "You don't know! Every day, long orders in
code! Demand this, guarantee that, I hold you personally responsible for
this other! And then I send off a reply that takes twenty-five days to get
there, by which time he has sent me fifty days of new orders and his
thoughts are somewhere far beyond and he upbraids me and threatens me! He
is not a well man, and he certainly is not a young one. I do not truly
think that he will live to collect any of this blackmail. But he might."
"Why don't you quit?"
"I would if I could! But if I quit, then what? Then he has no one on
his side at all. Then what would he do, Mr. Broadhead? Also..." he
shrugged, "he is a very old friend, Mr. Broadhead. He was at school with
my father. No. I can't quit. Also I can't do what he asks. But perhaps you
can. Not by handing over a quarter of a billion dollars, no, because you
have never had that kind of money. But you can make him an equal partner
with that. I think he would-no. I think he might accept that."
"But I've already..." I stopped. If Haagenbusch did not know I had
already given half my holdings to Bover, I wasn't going to tell him. "Why