“And they are much bigger than the Voodoo Pigs,” said Albert. “Assuming the dolls they made are of creatures about their own size, they could not be the same creatures.”
Alicia Lo stirred. “But I thought—” She hesitated. “I thought the Foe were the only other space-traveling race there was.”
“Yes,” said Albert, nodding.
I looked at him, waiting. He stopped there. I said, “Come on, Albert! Yes, they were, or yes, everybody thought so because everybody else was dumber than you are?”
He said, “I don’t really know, Robin. I’ll tell you what I think, though. I think neither the creatures that nearly destroyed the Sluggards nor the creatures that the Voodoo Pigs keep depicting were actually space travelers. I think they were brought there.”
Said Double-Bond, “I also think that, Albert. I believe that the Assassins were not actually Assassins. That is, they themselves did not physically attack other races, though perhaps they transported the beings who did. For this reason I like better the name you call them by: the Foe. It is more accurate, I think,” he said, looking at Albert. But Albert did not respond.
Guests are no trouble at all when they don’t have to be fed and their bed linen doesn’t have to be changed. I discovered, to my surprise, that I actually liked having Alicia Lo around, besotted though she seemed to be with a man I had little use for. What was even more surprising was that Cassata himself seemed to be coming almost close to being nearly tolerable. For one thing, he hardly ever wore the uniform anymore. That is, I didn’t think he did. Most of the time I had no idea what he wore, doubted actually that he was wearing much at all, because he and Alicia were off in some private surround of their own. But when we were all together he was generally wearing something casual, shorts and a tank top, a safari suit, once elegant in white tie and tails. (Alicia was wearing a shimmery, sequiny evening dress at the time, so I assumed it was some private joke between them-but, you know, that was a little surprising, too, because I’d never thought of Cassata as being the kind of man who bothered with tender, private jokes.)
But, as Albert might have said, thermal equilibrium was maintained. Because as Julio Cassata became more bearable, I became more restless, itchy, ill at ease . . . yes, gboopy.
I tried to hide it. Waste of time; who can hide anything from my dear Portable-Essie? Finally she confronted me. “You want to talk about it?” she demanded. I tried to give her a bright smile. It turned itself into a morose shrug. “Not to me, dammit. To Albert.”
“Ah, honey,” I objected, “what about?”
“I don’t know what about. Maybe Albert will know what about. Have nothing to lose, you know.”
“Nothing at all,” I said, meaning to agree-meaning also to give a sort of sardonic agreement, maybe with a twitch of the eyebrows; but the look I got back discouraged me. I said hastily, “I’ll do it. Albert!”
And when Albert appeared, I just sat and looked at him.
He patiently looked back, puffing on his pipe, waiting for me to speak. Essie had taken herself away out of courtesy-I wanted to think it was courtesy, and not contempt or boredom. So we just sat for a while, and then it occurred to me that, indeed, there was something I wanted to talk to him about. “Albert,” I said, pleased to have a topic of conversation, “what’s it like?”
“What’s what like, Robin?”
“To be where you were before you were here, I mean,” I said. “What’s it like to, you know, dissolve? When I tell you to go away for a while. When you’re not doing anything. When you go back to being part of the gigabit store. When you stop being, well, you, and just be a bunch of distributed bits and pieces floating around in the great electronic bin of building-block parts.”
Albert didn’t groan. He only looked as though he wanted to. He said with patience sticking out all over him, “I have told you, I think, that when I am not actively programmed to be your data-retrieval source, the various bits of memory that the ‘Albert Einstein’ program employs exist in the common store. Of course, the common store in the True Love is much smaller than that in the world’s gigabit net, though still quite large and performing many functions. Is that what you’re talking about?”
“That’s it, Albert. What does it feel like?”
He pulled out his pipe, which was the sign that he was thinking it over. “I don’t know if I can tell you that, Robin.”
“Why not?”
“Because the question is wrongly put. You presuppose that there is a ‘me’ who can ‘feel’ what it is like. There isn’t a ‘me’ when my parts are distributed to other tasks. For that matter, there isn’t a ‘me’ now.”
“But I see you,” I said.
“Oh, Robin,” he sighed, “we’ve had these discussions so many times before, haven’t we? You’re simply dodging around some real issue that concerns you. If I were your psychoanalytic program, 1 would ask you to—”
“You’re not,” I said, smiling but feeling the smile grow tight, “so don’t. Let’s do it over again. This time I’ll try to stay with you. You know. Go back to where I say, ‘But I see you,’ and then you tell me about Niagara Falls again.”
He gave me a look that was part exasperation and part concern. I understood both very clearly. I know Albert is often exasperated with me, but I know even better that he cares a lot about me. He said, “Very well, we’ll play your game again. You see ‘me’ in the sense that you see a waterfall. If you look at Niagara Falls today, and come back a week later and look at it again, you will think you’re seeing the same waterfall. In fact, not one atom of the waterfall is the same. The waterfall exists only because it is constrained to do so by the laws of hydraulics, surface tension, and Newton’s laws, as they bear on the fact that one body of water is at a higher elevation than another. I appear to you only because I am constrained to do so by the rules of the ‘Albert Einstein’ program written for you by your wife, S. Ya. Lavorovna-Broadhead. The water molecules are not Niagara Falls. They are only what Niagara Falls is made of. The bytes and bits that allow me to function when my program is activated are not me. Have you understood that? Because, if so, you will then see that it is pointless to ask how I feel when I am not ‘me,’ because then there is no ‘me’ to feel anything. Now,” he said, leaning forward earnestly, “suppose you tell me what you yourself are feeling that brings this on, Robin.”
I thought it over. Listening to him talk in that soft, sweet accent of his had been soothing, and so it took me a moment to remember what the answer was.
Then I remembered, and I was lulled no more. I said:
“Scared.”
He pursed his lips as he regarded me. “Scared. I see. Robin, can you tell me what frightens you?”
“Well, which of the four or five hundred—”
“No, no, Robin. The top thing.”
I said, “I’m just a program, too.”
“Ah,” he said, “I see.” He dumped his pipe, regarding me. “I think I understand,” he qualified. “Because you too are machine-stored, you think whatever happens to me might happen to you.”
“Or worse.”
“Oh, Robin,” he said, shaking his head, “you worry about so many things. You are afraid, I think, that somehow you will forget and turn yourself off. Is that it? And then you can never get yourself together again? But, Robin, that can’t happen.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
That stopped him, at least for a moment.
Methodically and slowly, Albert refilled his pipe, struck a match on the sole of his foot, lit it, and puffed thoughtfully, never taking his eyes off me. He didn’t answer.
Then he shrugged.
Albert almost never leaves me until I let him know I want him to, but it looked to me as though he had that in mind. “Don’t go away,” I said.