Then we could face our traveling companions and reality-for a while. And when that began to get stale, Albert came up with a grape arbor in an oasis in the Big Sandy of Peggys Planet. It was on the side of a fault escarpment. Ice-cold springs trickled down the rock face. White grapes, black grapes and red, plums and berries, melons and peaches grew all around. We lay talking and touching under the leafy shade of the vines overhead, Essie and I, and so passed another fine “day.”
We hardly thought of where we were going at all . . . for moments at a time.
Albert’s infinite variety kept turning up wonderful surrounds. A tree house in an African forest, with lions and elephants sliding silently among the trees below at night. A houseboat on an Indian lake, with turbaned servants bringing us flowery-fresh sherbets and spicy tidbits of lamb and pastry, among the water lilies. A penthouse a hundred stories over Chicago, looking out at thunderclouds strobing the wide lake with lightning. A night in Rio at Carnival time, and another in New Orleans for the Mardi Gras. A hoverplatform vibrating restlessly on the crater rim of the planet Persephone’s Mount Hell, with boiling lava fountains reaching up almost to where we sat. Albert had a million of them, and they were all good.
What wasn’t quite so good was me.
Said Essie, panting and regarding me critically as she hoisted herself up the last half-meter to sit on a ledge over the Grand Canyon, “Is all right everything, my Robin?”
“Everything is fine,” I said, voice as firm as it was false.
“Ah,” she said, nodding. “Ha,” she added, studying me closely. “Is enough sightseeing for now, I think. All play, no work has made Robin dull boy. Albert! Where are you?”
“I’m right here, Mrs. Broadhead,” said Albert, leaning over the lip of the canyon to look down on us.
Essie squinted up at his friendly face, outlined against the bright, simulated Arizona sky. “Do you think,” she said, “can find us setting less, ah, epicene and, uh, sybaritic for dear husband who is capable of doing anything but nothing at all?”
“I certainly can,” said Albert. “In fact, I was about to suggest that we give up the simulated surrounds for a while. I think it might be interesting to spend a little more time with our guests on the True Love. After all, I’m afraid they’re getting a little bored by now, too.”
Over all the millions of milliseconds I have experienced, I’ve spent time with a lot of people and some of them were Heechee. This time with Double-Bond was special.
What was special about this time was that there was so much of it.
Soothed by all those long days of beachcombing (and mountain-climbing and scuba-diving and even dirt-car racing) with Essie, I was ready to get serious.
So was Double-Bond. “I hope,” he said courteously, the muscles on the backs of his skinny hands rippling in apology, “that you will forgive me for stowing away on your ship, Robinette Broadhead. It was Thermocline’s suggestion. He is very wise.”
“I’m sure he is,” I said, repaying courtesy with courtesy, “but who’s Thermocline, exactly?”
“He is one of the other Heechee representatives on the Joint Assassin Watch System council,” said Double-Bond, and Julio Cassata put in:
“And a royal pain in the ass he is, too.” He was smiling as he said it, and I looked at him curiously. That had been a very Cassata thing to say, but he hadn’t said it in a Cassata way. Not only that, but he wasn’t even behaving in a Cassata fashion. He was sitting next to Alicia Lo, and they were holding hands.
Double-Bond took the remark in a friendly spirit. “We have had differences, yes. Very often with you, General Cassata, or at least with your organic original.”
“Old Blood-and-Slaughter Cassata,” said his copy, grinning. “You Heechee don’t like it when we talk about blowing up the kugelblitz.”
Indeed they didn’t. Double-Bond’s neck tendons tensed; it was the equivalent of a human shudder. Albert cleared his throat and said peaceably, “Double-Bond, there is something I have had on my mind for some time. Perhaps you can help clear it up.”
“With great pleasure,” said the Heechee.
“While you were still organic, you were one of the great authorities on the Sluggard planet. I wonder. Do you remember well enough to be able to show us some of the Sluggard material visually?”
“No, I do not remember,” said Double-Bond, smiling (it was a Heechee smile, the cheek muscles squeezing up against the huge, pink eyeballs). “However, we have incorporated some of your own storage systems into our fans and, yes, I do have a selection of such material available.”
“I thought you did,” said Albert, meaning, of course, that he had known that was so all along. “Let me show you something first. When we were on the JAWS satellite, we visited the Voodoo Pigs. Mrs. Broadhead and I had a similar notion. Do you remember?” he asked, looking at me.
“Sure,” I said, because Albert had displayed the Voodoo Pig muck before us, all but the smell. One of the pigs was nibbling away industriously at one of their voodoo dolls, or whatever they were, and in the foreground was one of the little figures itself, washed clean of ifith and slop. “Essie said something funny. Alicia Lo said she thought they were dolls, just to play with, and then you said-what was it you said, Essie?”
She said, “Visitors.”
She said it in a voice that was half argumentative, as though she thought she would be challenged, and half-well-scared. Albert nodded. “Exactly, Mrs. Broadhead. Visitors. Aliens to the planet. This was a logical deduction, since all the figures were the same, and quite detailed, and there was nothing like that ever on that planet to use as a model.”
“They’re probably extinct,” I said offhandedly. “Maybe the Voodoo Pigs ate them all.”
Albert gave me one of those tolerant fatherly looks. “It would be more likely, to judge from their appearance, that they would have eaten the Voodoo Pigs. Indeed, I suspect perhaps they may have, but that’s not what I am driving at. Trust me, Robin, those creatures were never indigenous to the planet of the Voodoo Pigs. I believe Double-Bond will agree.”
“That is true,” said Double-Bond politely. “We made extensive paleontological investigations. They were not native.”
“Therefore,” Albert began.
Essie finished for him. “Therefore was right! Visitors! Creatures from another planet, left such an impression on pigs, have been carving voodoo dolls to keep them away ever since.”
“Yes,” said Albert, nodding, “something like that, I think. Now, Double-Bond—”
But the Heechee was ahead of him, too. “I believe you now wish to see the creatures that attacked the Sluggards.” He waited politely for Albert to dismiss his own construct, then substituted a new one. It was a Sluggard arcology, and it was being destroyed. Creatures the size of great blue whales, but with squidlike tentacles that held weapons, were systematically blowing it apart.
“The simulation,” said Double-Bond regretfully, “is only very approximate, but it is probably correct in its gross features. The weapons are quite well documented. The lack of limbs, other than the tentacles, is highly probable; the Sluggards would not have failed to note arms or legs, since their own anatomy has neither.”
“And the size?” said Albert.
“Oh, yes,” said Double-Bond, shaking his wrists affirmatively, “that is quite definite. The relative sizes of the Assassins and the Sluggards are well established.”