Heechee rendezvous (24 page)

Klara wiped the crumbs off her face as he reached for another brownie. “No,” he said seriously, “it is more important than that. I want to know all about black holes.”

She said, trying to be placating, “It all happened very fast. There’s not much I can tell you.”

“Tell what you can tell, then! And listen, do not try to lie!”

Oh, my God, thought Klara, how much of this must I put up with? And “this” meant more than the bullying Wan; it meant all of her resumed and wholly disoriented life.

The answer to “how much” turned out to be eleven days. It was time enough for the worst of the bruises to fade on her arms and body, time enough for her to get to know Dolly Walthers, and pity her, to know Wan, and despise him. It was not time enough for her to figure out what to do with her life.

But her life did not wait until she was ready for it. Ready or not, Wan’s ship docked on Gateway. And there she was.

The very smells of Gateway were different. The noise level was different-much louder. The people were radically different. There did not seem to be a single living one among them for Klara to recognize from her last time there-thirty years, or not much more than thirty days, in the past, depending on whose clock you timed by. Also so many of them were in uniform.

That was quite new to Klara, and not at all pleasing. In the “old days”
however subjectively recent those old days were-you saw maybe one or two uniforms a day, crewpersons on leave from the four-power guard cruisers mostly. Certainly you never saw one of them carrying a weapon. That was not true any longer. They were everywhere, and they were armed.

Debriefing had changed along with everything else. It had always been a nuisance. You’d come back to Gateway filthy and exhausted and still scared, because up until the last minute you hadn’t been sure you’d make it, and then the Gateway Corp would sit you down with the evaluators and the data compilers and the accountants. Just what did you find? What was new about it? What was it worth? The debriefing teams were the ones charged with answering questions like that, and how they scored a flight made the difference between abject failure and-once in a great while-wealth beyond dreaming. A Gateway prospector needed skills simply to survive, once he had closed himself into one of those unpredictable ships and launched himself on his Mad Magic Mystery Bus Ride. But to prosper he needed more than skills. He needed a favorable report from the debriefing team.

Debriefing had always been bad news, but now it was worse. There wasn’t a debriefing team from the Gateway Corp anymore. There were four debriefing teams, one from each of the four guardian powers. The debriefing had been moved to what had once been the asteroid’s principal night club and gambling casino, the Blue Hell, and there were four separate little rooms, each with a flag on the door. The Brazilians got Dolly. The People’s Republic of China snatched Wan off the floor. The American MP took Klara by the arm, and when the lieutenant of MPs in front of the Soviet cubicle frowned and patted the butt of his Kalashnikov, the American scowled right back, his hand resting on his Colt.

It didn’t really make any difference, because as soon as Klara was through with the Americans, the Brazilians took their turn with her, and when you are invited somewhere by a young soldier with a sidearm it makes little difference whether it is a Colt or a Paz.

Between the Brazilians and the Chinese Klara crossed paths with Wan, sweating and indignant, on his way from the Chinese to the Russians, and realized she had something to be thankful for. The interrogators were rude, overbearing, and nasty with her, but they seemed to be worse with Wan. For reasons she didn’t know, each of his sessions was lasting twice as long as her own. Which was already very long. Each team in turn pointed out that she was supposed to be dead; that her bank account had long since reverted to the Gateway Corp; that there was no mission payment due her for traveling with Juan Henriquette Santos-Schmitz, since it was not an officially authorized Gateway mission; and, as for any payment that might have been due for her trip to the black hole, well, she hadn’t come back in that vessel, had she? With the Americans she claimed at least a science bonus-whoever else had been inside a black hole? They told her the matter would be taken under advisement. The Brazilians told her it was a matter for four-power negotiation. The Chinese said it all hinged on an interpretation of the award made to Robinette Broadhead, and the Russians had no interest in that subject at all, because what they wanted to know was whether Wan had given any indication of terrorist leanings.

The debriefing took forever, and then there was a medical check that took almost as long. The diagnostic programs had never encountered a living human being who had been exposed to the wrenching forces behind a Schwarzschild barrier before, and they would not let her go until they had pinpointed every bone and ligament and helped themselves freely to samples of all the fluids she had. And then they released her to the accountancy section for her statement of account. It was a hardcopy chit, and all it said was:

MOYNLIN, Gelle-Klara

Current balance: 0.

Awards due: not yet evaluated.

Waiting outside the accountancy offices was Dolly Walthers, looking fretful and bored. “How’d you do, hon?” she asked. Klara made a face. “Oh, that’s too bad. Wan’s still in there,” she explained, “because they kept him for bloody ever in the debriefing. I’ve been just sitting here for hours. What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t exactly know,” Klara said slowly, thinking about the very limited options one had on Gateway when one had no money.

“Yeah. Same here.” Dolly sighed. “With Wan, you know, you never know. He can’t stay anywhere very long, because they start asking questions about some of the stuff on his ship and I don’t think he got it all exactly legally.” She swallowed and said quickly, “Watch it, here he comes.”

To Klara’s surprise, when Wan looked up from the chits he was studying he beamed at her. “Ah,” he said, “my dear Gelle-Klara, I have been studying your legal position. Very promising indeed, I think.”

Promising! She glared at him with considerable dislike. “If you mean that they’ll probably toss me out into space within the next forty-eight hours for nonpayment of bills, that’s not what I call promising.”

He peered at her, decided she was joking. “Ha-ha, that is very humorous. Since you are not used to dealing with large sums of money, permit me to recommend a banking chap I find very useful-“

“Cut it out, Wan. That’s not funny.”

“Of course it’s not funny!” He scowled just as in the old days, and then his expression softened into incredulity. “Can it be-Is it possible-Have they not told you of your claim?”

“What claim?”

“Against Robinette Broadhead. My legal johnny says you might get quite fifty percent of his assets.”

“Oh, bullshit, Wan,” she said impatiently.

“Not bullshit! I have an excellent legal program! It is the doctrine of the calf follows the cow, if you understand. You should have had a full share of the survivors’ benefits from his last mission now you should have an equal share of that, and also of all that he has added to it, since it came from that original capital.”

“But-But—Oh, that’s stupid,” she snapped. “I’m not going to sue him.”

“Of course sue him! What else? How else can you get what is yours? Why, I sue as many as two hundred persons a year, Gelle-Klara. And there is a very large sum involved indeed. Do you know what Broad-head’s net worth is? Much, much more even than my own!” And then, with the jolly fraternal good-fellowship of one person of wealth to another: “Of course, there may be some inconvenience for you while the matter is being adjudicated. Allow me to transfer a small loan from my account to yours-one moment-“ He made the necessary entries on his statement chit. “Yes, there you are. Good luck!”

So there was my lost love, Gelle-Klara Moynlin, more lost than ever after she had been found. She knew Gateway well. But the Gateway she knew was gone. Her life had skipped a beat, and everything she knew or cared for or was interested in had suffered the changes of a third of a century, while she, like some enchanted princess in a forest, had slept away the time. “Good luck,” Wan had said, but what constituted good luck for the sleeping beauty whose prince had married someone else? “A small loan,” Wan had said, and it turned out that was what he had meant. Ten thousand dollars. Enough to pay her bills for a few days- and then what?

There was, thought Klara, the excitement of finding out some of the facts people like her had been dying for. So once she had found herself a room and gotten something to eat she headed for the library. It no longer contained spools of magnetic tape. Everything was now stored on some kind of second-generation Heechee prayer fans (prayer fans! so that was what they were!), and she had to hire an attendant to teach her how to use them. (“Librarian services @ $125/hr., $62.50,” said the item on her data chit.) Was it worth it?

To Klara’s disgruntled surprise, not really. So many questions answered! And, strangely, so little joy in getting the answers.

When Klara was a Gateway prospector like any other, the questions were literally a matter of life and death. What were the meanings of the symbols on the control panels of Heechee ships? What settings meant death? What meant reward? Now here were the answers, not all of them, perhaps-there was still not much clue to that great shuddery question of who the Heechee were in the first place. But thousands upon thousands of answers, even answers to questions no one had known enough to ask thirty years before.

But the answers gave her little pleasure. The questions lost their urgency when you knew the answers were in the back of the book.

The one class of questions whose answers held her interest was, I know, me.

Robinette Broadhead? Oh, surely. There was much data on him in store. Yes, he was married. Yes, he was still alive, and even well. Unforgivably, he gave every indication of being happy. Almost as bad, he was ok! He was not wizened or decrepit, of course, and his scalp still had all its hair and his face was wrinkle-free, but that was just Full Medical Plus, unfailing purveyor of health and youth to those who could afford it. Robinette Broadhead could obviously afford anything. But he was older all the same. There was a solid thickness to the neck, an assurance to the smile that looked out at her from the PV image, that had not been part of the frightened, confused man who had broken her tooth and sworn to love her always. So now Klara had a quantitative estimate for one more term: “Always.” It meant a period substantially less than thirty years.

When she bad depressed herself sufficiently in the library -she roamed about Gateway to see what changes had occurred. The asteroid had become more impersonal and more civilized. There were many commercial enterprises on Gateway now. A supermarket, a fast-food franchise, a stereotheater, a health club, handsome new tourist pensions, glittering souvenir shops. There was plenty to do on Gateway now. But not for Klara. The only thing that attracted her interest, really, was the gambling casino in the spindle, replacement for the old Blue Hell; but such luxuries she could not afford.

She could not afford much of anything, really, and she was depressed. The lady magazines of her adolescence had been full of giggly little tricks to combat depression-what they called the blahs. Clean your sink. Call somebody on the PV. Wash your hair. But she had no sink, and who was there to call on Gateway? After she bad washed her hair for the third time she began to think of the Blue Hell again. A few small bets, she decided, would do no harm to her budget even if she lost-it would only mean, really, giving up a few luxuries for a bit.

In eleven spins of the roulette wheel she was penniless.

A party of Gabonian tourists was just leaving, laughing and stumbling, and behind them, at the short, narrow bar, Klara saw Dolly. She walked over to her steadily and said, ‘Would you like to buy me a drink?”

“You bet,” said Dolly unenthusiastically, waving to the barman.

I never knew Gelle-Klara Moynhin when Robin was romantically involved with her. For that matter, I didn’t know Robinette Broadhead then, either, for he was too poor to afford so sophisticated a data-retrieval system as me. Although I cannot experience physical courage directly (since I don’t even experience physical fear), I estimate theirs very highly. Their ignorance, almost as high. They didn’t know what drove the FTL ships they flew. They didn’t know how the navigation worked, or what the controls did. They didn’t know how to read Heechee charts, and didn’t have any to read anyway, because they weren’t found for another decade after Klara was sucked into the black hole. It is astonishing to me how much meat intelligences can accomplish with so little information.

“Then could you lend me some money?”

Dolly laughed with surprise. “Lost your stake, did you? Boy, have you got a wrong number! I wouldn’t be buying drinks if some of the tourists hadn’t thrown me a couple of chips for luck.” When the highball arrived Dolly divided the small change in front of her in half and pushed a part to Klara. “You could hit Wan up again,” she said, “but he’s not in a very good mood.”

“That’s not news,” said Klara, hoping the whiskey would elevate her spirits. It did not.

“Oh, worse than usual. I think he’s going to be in the deep shit again.” She hiccoughed and looked surprised.

“What’s the matter?” Klara asked reluctantly. She knew perfectly well that once she asked, the girl would tell her, but it was, she supposed, a way of paying for the loose change.