Essie grunted complacent agreement. She gazed affectionately around our old home and said: “Last time did this were drinking tea. Want something stronger this time, Robin?”
“Brandy and ginger,” I said, and a moment later our faithful old maid, Marchesa, appeared with a tray. I took a long sip, thinking.
I thought too long for Essie’s patience. She said, “So get on with it, dear Robin. What is frying your head? Afraid to talk to Klara?”
“No! I mean,” I said, swallowing my quick indignation, “no. That’s not it. We already did talk, back when she and Wan showed up with the Heechee ship.”
“True,” Essie agreed noncommittally.
“No, really! That part’s all right. We got straightened out on the bad things. I’m not worrying that she’ll blame me for dumping her in the hole, if that’s what you mean.”
Essie sat back and regarded me seriously. “What I mean, Robin,” she said patiently, “is not important at all. Is what you mean that we wish to uncover. If not confrontation between Klara and you, what? Are worried she and I will scratch eyes out? Wouldn’t happen, Robin!—apart from technical difficulties arising from fact that she is meat, I am only soul.”
“No, of course not. I’m not worrying about her meeting you . exactly.”
“Ah! And inexactly?”
“Well . . . what if real-Essie runs into her?”
Portable-Essie looked at me in silence for a moment, then took a thoughtful pull at her own drink. “Real-Essie, hah?”
“It was only a thought,” I apologized.
“Understand that. Wish to understand more precisely. Are asking me if meat-me is likely to show up on Wrinkle Rock?” she inquired.
I thought that over. I wasn’t sure exactly what I did mean. I hadn’t meant to say anything at all about it . . . of course, as old Sigfrid von Shrink used to tell me, it’s the things I say that I didn’t mean to say that say the most.
And it was true that there was a real touchy, delicate bit here. Portable-Essie is only a doppelganger. Real-Essie, meat-Essie, is still alive and well.
She’s also human. What with Full Medical and all, although she is getting along in years she is not just a woman, she is a really handsome, sexy, normal one.
She is also my wife. (Or was.)
She is also a wife whose husband is in no shape to provide her with, as they say, the benefits of consort.
All of that is already a nagging kind of worry that adds to all the other nagging worries Sigfrid (and Albert, and Portable-Essie, and just about everybody else I know) is always telling me I shouldn’t beat my breast about. Their advice doesn’t do much good; I guess I can’t help it. ~ But there’s more. Meat-Essie is also an exact duplicate of Portable-Essie—or, to put it more accurately, she is the original of that exact duplicate who is Portable-Essie, my faithful wife, lover, advisor, friend, confidante, and co-construct in gigabit space.
So I know her very well. Worse than that, she knows me-even better-because she’s not only all those things I just mentioned, she is also my, well, my creator.
Since Essie is better known in some circles as Dr. S. Ya. LavorovnaBroadhead, one of the world’s great authorities on data processing of any kind, she herself wrote most of our programs. When I say the copy is exact I mean exact. Essie even updates herself-I mean, meat-Essie revises Portable-Essie from time to time, to make sure the exactness is always up to the moment. So my Portable-Essie is in no way different, in any way that I can detect, from meat, or real, Essie .
But I never see meat-Essie. I couldn’t handle it.
Call the reason for that whatever you like. Tact. Jealousy. Loopiness. Whatever it is, I am willing to accept as a fact of life that it is better that I don’t see the meat original of my dear wife. I have a very clear idea of what I would learn if I did. Under the circumstances, either she takes a lover now and then or she is crazier than I believe possible.
I am willing to accept that this happens. I will even concede that it is fair. But I don’t want to know about it.
So I said to Portable-Essie, “No. I don’t think meat-Essie would be jealous enough to matter if she were here, and I don’t think Klara would, and anyway I don’t want to know where Essie is or what she’s doing-not even negatively,” I added swiftly as Portable-Essie opened her mouth, “so don’t tell me what she is doing, even if it’s something I would like to hear. It’s not that at all.”
Essie looked doubtful. She took another pull at her drink, with that look she gets when she is trying to work out the wiring architecture of the labyrinthine processes of my mind.
Then she shrugged. “Fine, accept what you say,” she said decisively. “Is not that which is making you gloopy this time. So what then is reason? Is curiosity about Klara Moynlin, where has been all these years, why is Dane Metchnikov with her?”
I looked up. “Well, I did wonder—”
“No need to wonder! Is quite simple. After encounter with you, Kiara wished to go away somewhere. Went very many places for long time. Ultimately went very far. Went back into black hole had just escaped from, rescued others in party-Metchnikov included.”
I said, “Oh.”
For some reason that didn’t seem to satisf~’ Essie. She gave me an irritated look. Then she said slowly, “Think you are telling truth, Robin. Is not Klara is on your mind. Yet is clear you have been quite moody lately. Will say, if you can, what it is?”
“If you don’t know, how can I?” I said, suddenly angry.
“Meaning,” she sighed, “that as original writer I am in better position to overhaul your program, pick out bugs, make happy again?”
“No!”
“No,” she agreed, “of course not. Have long agreed to leave old Robinette Broadhead program alone, bugginess and all. So then is only old-fashioned method of debugging. Talk. Talk it out, Robin. Say first word that comes into mind, just like for old Sigfrid von Shrink!”
And I took a deep breath and confronted the subject I had been spending a lot of time avoiding. I sighed:
“Mortality!”
Several thousand milliseconds later I was back in Central Park, watching Gelle-Klara Moynlin let go of her companions and move toward doppel-me, and wondering just why I had said that.
I hadn’t intended to. I don’t intend to describe the long, circular conversation I had with Essie after that, either, because although I do these things, I don’t take much pleasure in talking about them. It got nowhere. It had nowhere to go. I had no reason to worry about mortality because, as Essie had wisely pointed out, how can you die when you’re already dead?
Funnily, that didn’t cheer me up at all.
Watching Klara didn’t, either, so I sought other entertainment while I waited for either Klara or doppel-me to say something interesting in their glacier-slow way. It had been news to me that Audee Walthers III was on the Rock, and I sought him out.
That wasn’t much better.
He was there, all right, or almost. Being meat, he was just getting there. He was in the process of disembarking, and it was not very entertaining to observe him slowly, g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y, pulling himself up out of the docking hatch onto the floor of the bay.
To make conversation, I said to Essie, “He doesn’t look a bit different.” He didn’t. Froggy faced, with solid, trustworthy eyes, he was exactly the same man he had been thirty and more years before when I saw him last.
“Has been in core, naturally,” said Essie. She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at me-to see if I was going to do anything gloopy again, I supposed. So I wasn’t sure, for a second, which of us she meant when she added, “Poor guy.”
I gave her a noncommittal grunt. We weren’t the only persons present; there were even meat people there, curious to see the ship that had been where few ships containing humans had ever boldly gone. Watching them, and Audee, was about as exciting as watching moss grow, and I began to fidget. Audee wasn’t on my mind. Klara was on my mind. Essie was on my mind. Julio Cassata was on my mind and, most of all, my own slippery, uneasy internal worries were on my mind. What I wanted very badly was something to take my mind off all the things that were on my mind. Standing around among the statues wasn’t doing the trick. “I wish,” I said, “I could hear his story.”