Heechee rendezvous (22 page)

I had opened our windows to get a good look at the lake and the loop; good thing, because that meant they weren’t blown in. Others in the hotel were not so lucky. The airport itself wasn’t touched, not counting the occasional aircraft sent flying because it wasn’t tied down. But the airport officials were scared. They didn’t know whether the destruction of the launch loop was an isolated incident of terrorist sabotage, or maybe the beginnings of a revolution-no one seemed to think, ever, that it might have been just a simple accident. It was scary, all right. There’s a hell of a lot of kinetic energy stored in a Lofstrom loop, over twenty kilometers of iron ribbon, weighing about five thousand tons, moving at twelve kilometers a second. Out of curiosity I asked Albert later and he reported that it took 3.6 x lO
⁸
Joules to pump it up. And when one collapses, all those Joules come out at once, one way or another.

I asked Albert later because I couldn’t ask him then. Naturally, the first thing I did was to try to’ key him up, or any other data-retrieval or information program that could tell me what was going on. The comm circuits were jammed; we were cut off. The broadcast PV was still working, though, so we stood and watched that mushroom cloud grow and listened to damage reports. One shuttle had been actually accelerating on the ribbon when it blew-that was the first explosion, perhaps because it had carried a bomb. Three others had been in the loading bypass. More than two hundred human beings were now hamburger, not counting the ones they hadn’t counted yet who had been working on the launcher itself, or had been in the duty-free shops and bars underneath it, or maybe just out for a stroll nearby. “I wish I could get Albert,” I grumbled to Essie.

“As to that, dear Robin,” she began hesitantly, but didn’t finish, because there was a knock on the door; would the señor and the señora come at once to the Bolivar Room, por favor, as there was a matter of the gravest emergency.

The matter of the gravest emergency was a police checkup, and you never saw such a checking of passports. The Bolivar Room was one of those function things that they divide up for meetings and open for grand banquets, and one partitioned-off part of it was filled with turistas like us, many of them squatting on their baggage, all looking both resentful and scared. They were being kept waiting. We were not. The bellhop who fetched us, wearing an armband with the initials “S.ER.” over his uniform, escorted us to the dais, where a lieutenant of police studied our passports briefly and then handed them back. “Señor Broadhead,” he said in English, accent excellent, touches of American Midwest, “does it occur to you that this act of terrorist violence may in fact have been aimed personally at you?”

I gawked. “Not until now,” I managed. He nodded.

“Nevertheless,” he went on, touching a PV hard-copy printout with his small, graceful hand, “we have received from Interpol a report of a terrorist attempt on your life only two months ago. Quite a well-organized one. The commissaris in Rotterdain specifically suggests that it did not appear random, and that further attempts might well be made.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Essie leaned forward. “Tell me, Teniente,” she said, regarding him, “is this your theory?”

“Ah, my theory. I wish I had a theory,” he said furiously. “Terrorists? No doubt. Aimed against you? Possibly. Aimed against the stability of our government? Even more possibly, I think, as there has been widespread dissatisfaction in rural areas; there are even reports, I tell you in confidence, that certain military units may be planning a coup. How can one know? So I ask you the necessary questions, such as, have you seen anyone whose presence here struck you as suspicious or coincidental? No? Have you any opinion as to who attempted to assassinate you in Rotterdam? Can you shed any light at all on this terrible deed?”

The questions came so fast that it hardly seemed he expected answers, or even wanted them. That bothered me nearly as much as the destruction of the loop itself; it was a reflection, here, of what I had been seeing and sensing all over the world. A sort of despairing resignation, as though things were bound to get worse and no way could be found to get them better. It made me very uncomfortable. “We’d like to leave and get out of your way,” I said, “so if you’re through with your questions-“

He paused before he answered, and began to look like someone with a job he knew how to do again. “I had intended to ask you a favor, Señor Broadhead. Is it possible that you would allow us to borrow your aircraft for a day or two? It is for the wounded,” he explained, “since our own general hospital was unfortunately in the direct path of the loop cables.”

I am ashamed to say I hesitated, but Essie did not. “Most certainly yes, Teniente,” she said. “Especially as we will need to make a reservation for another loop in any event before we know where we want to go to.”

He beamed. “That, my dear señora, we can arrange for you through the military communications. And my deepest thanks for your generosity!”

Services in the city were falling apart, but when we got back to our suite there were fresh flowers on the tables, and a basket of fruits and wine that had not been there before. The windows had been closed. When I opened them I found out why. Lake Tehigualpa wasn’t a lake anymore. It was just the heat sink where the ribbon was supposed to dump in case of the catastrophic failure of the loop that no one believed would ever happen. Now that it had happened the lake had boiled down to a mud wallow. Fog obscured the loop itself, and there was a stink of cooked mud that made me close the window again quickly enough.

We tried room service. It worked. They served us a really nice dinner, apologizing only because they couldn’t send the wine steward up to decant our claret-he was in “Los Servicias emergencias de la Republica” and had had to report for duty. So had the suite’s regular ladies’ maid and, although they promised that a regular floor maid would be up in an hour to unpack the bags for us, meanwhile, they stood against the walls in the foyer.

I’m rich, all right, but I’m not spoiled. At least I don’t think I am. But I do like service, especially the service of the fine computer programs Essie has written for me over the years. “I miss Albert,” I said, looking out at the foggy nighttime scene.

“Can find nothing to do without your toys, eh?” scoffed Essie, but she seemed to have something on her mind. Well. I’m not spoiled about tha4 either, but when Essie seems to have something on her mind I often conclude that she wants to make love, and from there it is not usually much of a jump for me to want to, too. I remind myself, now and then, that for most of human history, persons of our ages would have been a lot less azuative and exuberant about it-but that’s just bad luck for them. Such thoughts do not slow me down. Especially because Essie is what she is. Besides her Nobel laureate, Essie had been receiving other awards, including appearing on lists of Ten Best-Dressed Women every now and then. The Nobel was deserved, the Best-Dressed was, in my opinion, a fraud. The way S. Ya. Broadhead looked had nothing to do with what she put on, but a lot to do with what was under what she put on. What she was wearing right now was a skintight leisure suit, pale blue, unornamented; you could buy them in any discount house, and she would have won in that, too. “Come here a minute, why don’t you?” I said from the great, long couch.

“Sex fiend! Huh!”

But it was a fairly tolerant “huh.” “I just thought,” I said, “that as I can’t get Albert and we have nothing else to do-“

“Oh, you Robin,” she said, shaking her head. But she was smiling. She pursed her lips, thinking. Then she said: “I tell you what. You go fetch small traveling bag from foyer. I have little present to give you, then we see.”

Out of the bag came a box, silver-paper wrapped, and inside it a big Heechee prayer fan. It wasn’t really Heechee, of course; it was the wrong size. It was one of the kind Essie had developed for her own use. “You remember Dead Men and Here After,” she said. “Very good Heechee software, which I decided to steal. So have converted old data-retrieval program for you. Have in hand now guaranteed real Albert Einstein.”

I turned the fan over in my hands, “The real Albert Einstein?”

“Oh, Robin, so literal! Not real-real. Cannot revive dead, especially so long dead. But real in personality, memories, thoughts-pretty near, anyway. Programmed search of every scrap of Einstein data. Books. Papers. Correspondence. Biographies. Interviews. Pictures. Everything. Even cracked old film clips from, what you called them, ‘newsreels’ on ship coming to New York City in A.D. 1932 by Pathé News. All inputted to here, and now when you talk to Albert Einstein it is Albert Einstein who talks back!” She leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “Then, to be sure,” she bragged, “added some features real Albert Einstein never had. Complete pilotage of Heechee vessels. All update in science and technology since A.D. 1955, time of actual Einstein passing on. Even some simpler functions from cook, secretary, lawyer, medical programs. Was no room for Sigfrid von Shrink,” she apologized, “but then you no longer need shrinkage, eh, Robin? Except for unaccountable lapse of memory.”

She was looking at me with an expression that over the past couple of decades I had come to recognize. I reached out and pulled her toward me. “All right, Essie, let’s have it.”

She settled down in my lap and asked innocently, “Have what, Robin? You talking about sex again?”

“Come on!”

“Oh ... It is nothing, to be sure. I have already given you your silver gift.”

“What, the program?” It was true that she had wrapped it in silver paper-Enlightenment exploded. “Oh, my God! I missed our silver wedding anniversary, didn’t I? When-“ But, thinking fast, I bit the question off.

“When was it?” she finished for me. “Why, now. Is still. Is today, Robin. Many congratulations and happy returns, Robin, dear.”

I kissed her, I admit as much stalling for time as anything else, and she kissed me back, seriously. I said, feeling abject, “Essie, dear, I’m really sorry. When we get back I’ll get you a gift that will make your hair stand on end, I promise.”

But she pressed her nose against my lips to stop my talking. “Is no need to promise, dear Robin,” she said, from about the level of my Adam’s apple, “for you have given me ample gifts every day for twenty-five years now. Not counting couple years when we just fooled around, even. Of course,” she added, lifting her head to look at me, “we are alone at this moment, just you and me and bed in next room, and will be for some hours yet. So if you truly wish to make hair stand on end with gift, would be pleased to accept. Happen to know you have something for me. Even in my size.”

The fact that I didn’t want any breakfast brought all of Essie’s standby systems up to full alert, but I explained it by saying that I wanted to play with my new toy. That was true. It was also true that I didn’t always eat breakfast anyway, and those two truths sent Essie off to the dining hail without me, but the final truth, that my gut did not really feel all that good, was the one that counted.

So I plugged the new Albert in to the processor, and there was a quick pinkish flare and there he was, beaming out at me. “Hello, Robin,” he said, “and happy anniversary.”

“That was yesterday,” I said, a little disappointed. I had not expected to catch the new Albert in silly mistakes.

He rubbed the stem of his pipe across his nose, twinkling up at me under those bushy white eyebrows. “In Hawaiian Mean Time,” he said, “it is, let me see”-he faked looking at a digital wristwatch that was anachronistically peeking out under his frayed pajama-top sleeve- “forty-two minutes after eleven at night, Robin, and your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary has still nearly twenty minutes to go.” He leaned forward to scratch his ankle. “I have a good number of new features,” he said proudly, “including full running time and location circuits, which operate whether I am in display mode or not. Your wife is really very good at this, you know.”

Now, I know that Albert Einstein is only a computer program, but all the same it was like welcoming an old friend. “You’re looking particularly well,” I complimented. “I don’t know if you should be wearing a digital watch, though. I don’t believe you ever had such a thing before you died, because they didn’t exist.”

He looked a little sulky, but he complimented me in return: “You have an excellent grasp of the history of technology, Robin. However, although I am Albert Einstein, as near as may be to the real thing, I am not limited to the real Albert Einstein’s capabilities. Mrs. Broadhead has included in my program all known Heechee records, for example, and that flesh-and-blood self didn’t even know the Heechee existed. Also I have subsumed into me the programs of most of our colleagues, as well as data-seeking circuits that are presently engaged in trying to establish connection with the gigabit net. In that, Robin,” he said apologetically, “I have not been successful, but I have patched into the local military circuits. Your launch from Lagos, Nigeria, is confirmed for noon tomorrow, and your aircraft will be returned to you in time to make the connection.” He frowned. “Is something wrong?”

I hadn’t been listening to Albert as much as studying him. Essie had done a remarkable job. There were none of those little lapses where he would start a sentence with a pipe in his hand and finish by gesturing with a piece of chalk. “You do seem more real, Albert.”

“Thank you,” he said, showing off by pulling open a drawer of his desk to get a match to light his pipe. In the old days he would have just materialized a book of matches. “Perhaps you’d like to know more about your ship?”

I perked up. “Any progress since we landed?”