And actually, she didn’t look bad at all. They had done the splints and the bone grafts, and plugged in two or three kilos of spare parts and tissues. They had even put the skin back, or I guess transplanted new skin from somebody else. Her face looked fine, except for a light bandage on one side, and she brushed her streaky blonde hair down over that. “So, stud,” she would greet me. “How you hanging?”
“Just fine, just fine. A little horny,” I would say, nuzzling her neck with my nose. “And you?”
“Just fine.” So we reassured each other; and we weren’t lying, you know. She was getting better every day, the doctors told me that. And I was getting-I don’t know what I was getting. But I was all atremble with eagerness for every morning. Operating on five hours sleep a night. Never tired. Never felt better in my life.
But still she kept getting skinnier every time. The doctors told me what I must do, and I told Harriet and Harriet reprogrammed the cook So we stopped having salads and bare broiled steaks. No coffee and juice breakfasts, but tvoroznyikyi, cream-cheese pancakes, and mugs of steaming cocoa. Caucasian lamb pilaff for lunch. Roast grouse in sour-cream sauce for dinner. “You’re spoiling me, dear Robin,” she accused, and I said:
“Only fattening you up. I can’t stand skinny women.”
“Yes, very well. But there is such a thing as being too ethnic. Is there nothing fattening that is not Russian?”
“Wait for dessert,” I grinned. “Strawberry shortcake.” And whipped with double Devonshire cream. As a matter of psychology, the nurse had persuaded me to start with small portions on large plates. Essie doggedly ate them all the way through, and as we gradually increased the size of the portions she gradually ate more each day. She didn’t stop losing weight. But she slowed it down a lot, and by the end of six weeks the doctors opined that her condition, cautiously, might be regarded as stable. Nearly.
When I told her the good news she was actually standing up-tethered to the plumbing under her bed, but able to walk about the room. “About time,” she said, reaching out to kiss me. “Now. You have been spending too much time at home.”
“It’s a pleasure,” I said.
“It is a kindness,” she said soberly. “Is very dear to me that you have always been here, Robin. But now that I am almost well you must have affairs to attend to.”
“Not really. I get along fine with the comm facilities in the brain room. Of course, it would be nice for the two of us to go somewhere. I don’t think you’ve ever seen Brasilia. Maybe in a few weeks-“
“No. Not in few weeks. Not with me. If you have need to go, please do it, Robin.”
I hesitated. “Well, Morton thinks it might be useful.”
She nodded briskly and called, “Harriet? Mr. Broadhead will be leaving for Brasilia tomorrow morning. Make reservations et cetera.”
“Certainly, Mrs. Broadhead,” Harriet said from the console at the head of Essie’s bed. Her image sputtered into blackness as quickly as it had appeared, and Essie put her arms around me.
“I will see that you have complete communications in Brasilia,” she promised, “and Harriet will be instructed to keep you posted on my condition at all times. Square count, Robin. If I need you, you will know at once.”
I said into her ear, “Well-“
She said into my shoulder, “Is no ‘well’. Is settled, and, Robin? I love you very much.”
Albert tells me that every radio message I send is actually a long, skinny string of photons, like a spear thrown into space. A thirty-second burst communication is a column nine million kilometers long, each photon zipping along at the speed of light, in perfect step all the way. But even that long, fast, skinny spear takes forever to go 5,000 A.U. The fever that had wounded my wife had taken twenty-five days to get here. The orders to stop fooling with the couch had gone only a fraction of the way before they passed the second fever, the one the girl Janine had laid on us. Lightly, to be sure. Our message congratulating the Herter-Halls on arriving at the Food Factory, out somewhere past Pluto’s orbit, had passed the one to tell us that most of them had gone skylarking off to Heechee Heaven. By now they were there; and our message telling them what to do about it was long since at the Food Factory for relay-for once two events had occurred at times close enough to have some meaning for each other.
But by the time we knew what meaning they had had, the event would again be twenty-five days in the past. What an annoyance! I wanted many things on the Food Factory, but what I wanted most of all at that moment was that faster-than-light radio. Astonishing that such a thing should be! But when I charged Albert with being caught flat-footed by it, he had smiled that gentle, humble smile and poked his pipestem at his ear and said, “Sure thing, Robin, if you mean the sort of surprise that one feels when an unlikely contingency turns out to be real. But it was always a contingency. Remember. The Heechee ships were able to navigate without error to moving targets. That suggests the possibility of communication at nearly instantaneous speeds over astronomical distances-ergo, a faster-than-light radio.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me about it?” I demanded.
He scratched one sneakered foot against the other sockless ankle. “It was only a possibility, Robin, estimated no more than point oh five. A sufficient condition, but not a necessary one. We simply didn’t have enough evidence, until now.”
I could have been chatting with Albert on the way down to Brasilia. But I was traveling commercial-the company aircraft aren’t fast enough for those distances-and I like having Albert where I can see him when we talk, so I spent my time voice-only with company business and Morton. And of course with Harriet, who was under orders to check in once an hour, except when I was asleep, with a quick status report on Essie.
Even hypersonic, a ten-thousand-kilometer flight takes a while, and I had time for a lot of business. Morton wanted as much of it as he could get, mostly to try to talk me out of meeting with Bover. “You have to take him seriously, Robin,” be whined through the plug in my ear. “Bover’s represented by Anjelos, Carpenter and Gutmann, and they’re high-powered people, with really good legal programs.”
“Better than you?”
Hesitation. “Well-I hope not, Robin.”
“Tell me something, Morton. If Bover didn’t have much of a case to begin with, why are these high-powered people bothering with him?”
Although I couldn’t see him, I knew that Morton would be assuming his defensive look, partly apologetic, partly you-laymen-wouldn’t-understand. “It’s not all that weak, Robin. And it hasn’t gone well for us so far. And it’s takking on some larger dimension than we originally estimated. And I assume that they thought their connections would patch up the weak spots-I also assume that they’re in for a son-of-a-bitching big contingency fee. You’d be better advised to patch up some of our own weak spots than take a chance with Bover, Robin. Your pal Senator Praggler is on this month’s oversight committee. Go see him first.”
“I’ll go see him, but not first,” I told Morton, and cut him off as we circled in for a landing. I could see the big Gateway Authority tower overshadowing the silly flat saucer over the House of Representatives, and off up the lake the bright reflections of tin roofs in the Free Town. I had cut it pretty close. My date with Trish Bover’s widower (or husband, depending on how you looked at it) was in less than an hour, and I didn’t really want to keep him waiting.