“Oh, my God,” I said, remembering. “Dane Metchnikov.”
“Dane Metchnikov,” she agreed. “Is also present here on Rock as meat. Along with person who rescued him.”
“Oh, my God,” I said again. Dane Metchnikov! He had been along on that black-hole expedition that had burdened my conscience for half a century. I had left him and the others there, and among the others had been—“Gelle-Klara Moynlin, yes,” whispered Essie. “Are presently in Central Park.”
Central Park isn’t much of a park. When Klara and I were prospectors together, it was about a dozen mulberry and orange trees and not many more than that bushes.
It still wasn’t much different. The little pond we called Lake Superior was still curving up around the shape of the asteroid. Now the park was much more densely grown, but I had no trouble at all spotting a dozen or more human beings in among the shrubbery. Eight or ten of them were the elderly veterans who lived on Wrinkle Rock, all meat, posed like statues under the trees. A few were partygoers like myself, only meat, and among them I had no difficulty in recognizing that other motionless meat-person statue who was Gelle-Klara Moynlin.
She hadn’t changed a bit, at least physically.
In another way, she had changed almost terminally. She wasn’t alone. She was, in fact, between two men; worse, she was holding hands with one of them, and the other had an arm draped around her shoulder.
That was a nasty blow all by itself, because the last I had known of Klara, the only person she was likely to be holding hands with or being held by was me.
It took me a moment to realize that the hand-holding man was Dane Metchnikov-it had, after all, been a long time since I had seen him last. The other one I didn’t know at all. He was tall, slim, and goodlooking, and, if those things hadn’t been enough to damn him, he was resting his hand on Klara’s shoulder in a fond and habitual way.
Sometimes, when I was young and enamored of some person or other, I had this burning desire to know her perfectly. Utterly. In every way; and one of the ways was a fantasy. The fantasy was that I would find her (whoever she was at the moment) so sound asleep that nothing I could do would wake her; and so I would steal up on the dear loved one, all asleep, and investigate all those secret things without her knowing. To see if there was stubble in her armpit. To check on how recently she had cleaned out the glop under her toenails. To peer up her nostrils, and into her ears-and to do all of this, see, when she didn’t know I was doing it, because, although we conducted many a mutual exploration, it was a whole other thing when it was observed. As with most of my fantasies, it was the kind of thing that my former analyst program, Sigfrid von Shrink, looked on with toleration and not much approval; he read meanings into it that I didn’t enjoy. And, as with most fantasies, it wasn’t all that much fun when I had the chance to do it.
I could do it now. There was Kiara, as though carved in eternal stone.
There was also Essie, right there with me, to dampen the urge to explore, but she would have gone away if I had asked her to. She didn’t say a word, Essie didn’t. She just hovered silently behind me as I stood there, invisible in gigabit space, staring at the woman I had mourned for most of my life.
Klara looked very good. It was hard to believe that she was actually older than I was-which is to say, about six months older than God. My birthday was almost the same as the discovery of Gateway, whose hundredth anniversary we were celebrating. Klara had been born some fifteen years earlier.
She didn’t look it. She didn’t look a day older.
Part of that, of course, was simply Full Medical. Klara was quite a rich woman, and she’d been able to afford all the tissue restoration and replacement around even before it became basically free for anyone. What’s more, she had spent thirty years in the time trap of a black hole, where I had abandoned her to save myself-it had taken me all those thirty years to get over the guilt of that-and so in those long years she had aged only minutes, because of time dilation. In terms of elapsed time since her birth, she was well over a hundred. In terms of time counted by her own body clock, certainly in her sixties. In terms of the way she looked—The way she looked was the way she had always looked to me. She looked really good.
She was standing there with her fingers interlaced with those of Dane Metchnikov. Her head was turned to the man who had his arm around her. Her eyebrows were dark and bold as ever, and her face was Klara’s face, the one I had wept over for thirty years.
“Don’t startle her, damn Robin,” commanded Essie from behind me. Just in time. I had been about to display myself right in front of them, not thinking that this encounter would not be a whole lot easier for her than it was for me, and that she would need more time, an awful lot more time, to handle it.
“So then what?” I demanded, not taking my eyes off Klara.
“So then,” said Essie, scowling, “you act like normal decent human being, you know? You give woman chance! You show up at edge of woods, maybe, and you walk toward her. Give her little chance to see you coming, get ready for quite traumatic encounter, before you speak.”
“But that will take forever!”
“Have forever, dummy,” said Essie firmly. “Anyway, have other thing to do. Aren’t paying attention, right? Aren’t aware doppel-Cassata is looking for you?”
“Hell with him,” I said absently. I was so busy studying the face and form of my long-lost love that I had no patience for anything else-or brains for anything else, either; it took me a good many microseconds to remember that the longer I put off starting the conversation, the longer it would be before I could hear her voice.
“You’re right,” I said reluctantly. “Might as well see the bastard. Just let me get started here.”
I calved off a doppel of me behind a drooping lime tree, rich with golden fruit, and started the doppel walking toward the pair. And then I followed Essie meekly enough back to the Spindle, where she said Cassata was waiting.
It would take a long time for my doppel to reach Kiara, speak to her, wait for her to respond-many, many miffiseconds. I wished desperately that I could shorten the time, because how could I wait?
And I also wished desperately that I could make it longer. Because what was I going to say?
Julio Cassata took my mind off these-what’s Essie’s word?—these gloopy maunderings. He’s good at that. He’s like the mosquito bite that takes your mind off the toothache for a moment. He’s never a welcome distraction, but at least he is a distraction.
When we found him, he was in the Blue Hell. Essie squeezed my arm, grinning. Cassata was sitting at one of the little tables with a drink in front of him, reminiscently pawing a young woman I had never seen before.
I didn’t see much of her then, either, because as soon as Cassata perceived we were there he changed it all. Partygoers, girl, and Blue Hell vanished; we were in his office on the JAWS satellite. His hair had got combed, his tunic collar had buttoned itself, and he was gazing at us frostily over his steel desk. He pointed to two metal chairs. “Sit down,” he ordered.
Essie said dispassionately, “Cut crap, Julio. You want talk to us, fine, we talk. Not here. Is too ugly.”
He gave her the kind of a look a major general gives a second lieutenant. Then he decided to be a good fellow. “Whatever you like, my dear. You pick.”
Essie sniffed. She glanced at me, hesitated, then abolished the military office. Instead we were in our familiar True Love, complete with couches, bar, and gentle music playing.