“Albert! What are you saying?” I wasn’t speaking out loud, but Essie gave me a puzzled look. I smiled reassuringly, or tried to, though there was nothing reassuring about the thought.
“No, Robin,” said Albert soothingly, “I have no reason to believe the alarm was other than false. But perhaps JAWS is more concerned than I; this would account for the sudden maneuvers, which appear to have included testing some new weapons—”
“Weapons!”
Another look from Essie. Out loud I said cheerily, “Na zhdrovya,” and raised my glass.
“Exactly, Robin,” said Albert gloomily. “That leaves only the presence of General Cassata to account for. I believe that is quite simply explained. He is keeping an eye on you.”
“He isn’t doing a very good job of it.”
“That’s not exactly true, Robin. It is a fact that the general seems to be quite involved in his own affairs just now, yes. He is in fact closeted with a young lady, and has been for some time. But before retiring with the young person he ordered that no spacecraft may leave for the next thirty minutes, organic time. I think it quite probable that he will check up on you before that time has expired, and meanwhile you cannot leave the asteroid.”
“Wonderful,” I said.
“I think not,” Albert corrected me deferentially.
“He can’t do that!”
Albert pursed his lips. “In the long run, that is so,” he agreed. “Cartainly you will sooner or later be able to get higher authority to overrule General Cassata, since there is still some degree of civilian control of the Joint Assassin Watch Service. However, for the moment I am afraid he has the asteroid sealed.”
“Bastard!”
“Probably he is.” Albert smiled. “I’ve taken the liberty of notifying the Institute of this development, and undoubtedly they will respond—unfortunately, that will be at organic speeds, I’m afraid.” He paused. “Is there anything else? Or should I go on with my investigations?”
“Go, damn it!”
I stewed around in gigabit space for a while, trying to cool off. When I thought I was at least marginally fit to talk to again, I rejoined Essie and Sergei Borbosnoy in their simulation of the Blue Hell drinking parlor. Essie glanced up amiably in the middle of a long anecdote, then fixed her eyes on me. “Ho,” she said. “Something is upsetting you once more, Robin.”
I told her what Albert had told me. “Bastard,” she said, concurring with my own diagnosis, and Sergei chimed in, “Nekulturny, that one.” Then Essie took my hand fondly. “After all, dear Robin,” she said, “is not important at this time, you agree? Had no intention of leaving party for quite some considerable time, even meat time.”
“Yes, but, damn his soul—”
“That soul is well damned already, dear Robin. Drink a little. Wifi cheer you up.”
So I gave it a try.
It didn’t work very well. Nor was I having a lot of fun listening to Essie and Sergei talk.
Understand that I liked Sergei. Not because he was handsome. He wasn’t. Sergei Borbosnoy was tall, cadaverous, balding. He had soulful Russian eyes and a sincere, systematic Russian way of swallowing vast quantities of ice-cold vodka, a tumblerful at a time. Since he, too, was dead, he could keep that up indefinitely without getting any drunker than he wanted to be. However, according to Essie, he had had the same capacity when they were students together in Leningrad and both were still meat. That kind of thing is a lot of fun, sure, if you’re a student-especially if you’re Russian. It wasn’t that much fun for me.
“So how’s it going?” I said genially, when I noticed that they had stopped talking and were gazing at me.
Essie reached over, smoothed my hair affectionately, and said, “Hey, old Robin. Is not so interesting for you, all this old-times stuff, right? Why not go look around?”
“I’m fine,” I said untruthfully, and she just sighed and said, “Go.” So I went. I had some private thinking to do, anyway.
It isn’t easy for me to say just what I needed to think about because, no offense, meat people can’t quite take in the large number of assorted topics a shared-time, machine-stored personality like me can keep in my head-that is, my “head”—all at once.
Which leads me to realize that I’ve already made a mistake.
Meat people can’t juggle that many thoughts. Meat people are hardly any good at all at parallel processing. Meat people are linear. What I have to keep in mind is that when communicating with meat people I must make allowances for these lacks.
So, having tried three times to figure out how to start, I now perceive that I should have started in a fourth and wholly different way.
I should have started by telling about the kids who lived on the Watch Wheel.
2
ON THE WHEEL
So now we have to go back a little bit in time. Not very far, actually. At least, it isn’t far in meat terms; not nearly as far as we’ll have to go for some other things, I’m afraid. Just a few months.
I have to tell about Sneezy.
Sneezy was eight years old-in his personal counting of time, which was not the same as any other time we’ve been talking about. His real name was Sternutator. That was a Heechee name, which is not surprising, because he was a Heechee child. He was unfortunate (or fortunate) enough to be the son of two Heechee specialists in useful disciplines who happened to be on standby when the Heechee found out that they couldn’t go on hiding from the universe anymore. There were a whole lot of Heechee personnel waiting for just that emergency. The massed minds of the Heechee Ancient Ancestors recognized the need, and so the standby crews were dispatched at once to the outside galaxy. Little Sternutator went with them.
“Sternutator” was not a fortunate name for a kid in school, at least not when most of his classmates were human beings. In the Heechee language the word meant a kind of particle accelerator, vaguely akin to a laser, in which particles were “tickled” (or, more accurately, stimulated) until they were emitted in one huge, high-powered burst. The boy made the mistake of translating his name literally for his classmates, and naturally they called him Sneezy after that.
Or most of them did. Harold, the smart-ass human nine-year-old who sat behind him in Concepts, said he was one of the Seven Dwarfs, all right, but his parents had picked the wrong dwarf to name him after:
“You’re too dumb to be Sneezy,” said Harold during recess in the play pit after young Sternutator had beaten him out in a pattern-recognition bee. “What you really are is Dopey.” And he bounced across the trampoline and gave Sneezy a push that sent him flying into the tai-chi instructor robot. Which was fortunate for both of them. The games-thing reacted instantly, catching the Heechee boy in its padded arms safely. Sneezy didn’t get hurt, and Harold didn’t lose his recess time.
The schoolthing at the far end of the pit didn’t even see what had happened. So the tai-chi robot dusted Sneezy off and politely adjusted the pod that hung between his legs, and then whispered in his ear-in Heechee-“He’s only a child, Sternutator. When he’s older he’ll be sorry.”
“But I don’t want them to call me Dopey!” he sobbed.
“They won’t. Nobody will. Except Harold, and he’ll apologize for it some day.” And, as a matter of fact, that part of what the gamesthing said was true. Or almost true. Few of the other eleven children in the class liked Harold. None followed his example except five-year-old Soft-Stick, and that only briefly. Soft-Stick was also a Heechee, and a very young one. Usually she tried her very best to be accepted by the human children. When she found Out that they didn’t follow Harold’s lead she reversed herself.