“You mean their plan to make the universe go back to where it started?”
“The plan to make a better one,” Albert corrected.
“Ha,” said Essie, shaking her head. “Better for them, you mean.”
“I mean better for all of us.” Albert smiled. “Because by the time the expansion stops and the failback begins, we will all be like they are. We almost are already, you know-those of us who are machine-stored, at least. That’s why they were able to communicate with me.”
“Holy smoke,” whispered my dear wife, Essie.
And I can tell you about his conversation with Julio Cassata:
“You know, of course,” Albert said to him conversationally, “that weapons can never harm the others.”
“The Foe! And that’s what we’re going to find out, Einstein!”
Albert puffed gravely on his pipe. He shook his head. “Don’t you know why you must fail yet? Your very best hope is to find some way of destroying the kugelblitz that the Watch Wheel was set up to guard, just outside our own Galaxy. Tell me, General Cassata, do you have any reason at all to believe that our Galaxy is in any way special?”
“It’s got us in it!” Cassata barked.
“Yes,” Albert agreed, “it uniquely has us. But what makes you think it uniquely has the Foe? Do you suppose that our Galaxy is special?”
“Oh, Jesus, Albert,” Cassata began, “if you’re trying to tell me what I think you’re trying to tell me—”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you, General Cassata. The others were not concerned about a single galaxy. It is the whole universe that they are planning to rebuild! A universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies, about almost all of which we know nothing at all.”
“Yes, of course,” he said desperately, “but we know they’re here because we know they’ve intervened in this galaxy.”
“That,” said Albert somberly, “is how we can be certain that they are not just here. You can’t possibly believe that only our Galaxy is capable of evolving intelligent life. Any galaxy could! Perhaps even gas clouds in intergalactic space could! If the others were intent on keeping organic intelligence from interfering with their project, they would surely be wise enough to cover all the bases.”
“So even if we could wipe the kugelblitz out—”
“You can’t. But if you could,” said Albert, “it would be like swatting one tsetse fly and thinking that encephalitis was wiped out forever.”
He puffed smoke in silence for a while, looking at Julio Cassata. Then he smiled. “That’s the bad news,” he said. “The good news is that you’re out of a job.”
“Out of a-?”
“Unemployed, yes.” Albert nodded. “There is of course no further need for the Joint Assassin Watch Service. Which implies that it can no longer give orders. Which implies that you need not return to be terminated. Which implies that you are quite at liberty to remain in your present state indefinitely, like the rest of us.”
Cassata’s eyes went wide. “Oh, wow,” he said, looking at Alicia Lo.
And I can tell you about Albert’s conversation with Alicia Lo:
“I’m sorry if I was cryptic, Ms. Lo,” he began, “but when the others studied you on our flight to the Watch Wheel—”
“Dr. Einstein! I didn’t know there were F—were others with us on that flight!”
He smiled. “Neither did I at the time, though of course I realize I should have presumed it. They were there. They’re here now, in my program; they’re anywhere they want to be, Ms. Lo, and I suppose they will be for the indefinite future, since we are very interesting to them. You more than the rest of us.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because you were a volunteer,” Albert explained. “I had no choice; I was created as a computer program, and that’s all I ever was. Robinette died. Machine storage was his only remaining option. Both General Cassata and Mrs. Broadhead were doppels of living persons-but you-why, you chose machine storage! You abandoned your material body deliberately.”
“Just because my material body was sick, and fairly ugly, and—”
“Because you perceived that machine storage was better,” Albert said, nodding. “And the others found that quite reassuring, since it is better, and they have little doubt that long before the question becomes critical, all the rest of the human and Heechee races will follow your example.”
Alicia Lo looked at Julio Cassata. She said the same thing he had said: “Wow!”
And I can tell you about Albert’s conversation with me-or at least about one last part of it. It was an ending that was also a beginning, because he had something for me. “I do regret that I couldn’t attend to your questions when you wanted me to, Robin,” he said, “but it wasn’t possible while I was learning.”
I said forgivingly, “I suppose it took a long time to learn everything they know.”
“Everything! Oh, Robin, I learned next to nothing. Do you have any idea how old they are? And how much they’ve learned? No,” he said, shaking his head, “I didn’t learn the whole history of their race or how to go about causing a universe to fall back on itself. In fact, I didn’t learn any of those practical things at all.”
“Hell,” I said, “why not?”
“I didn’t ask,” he said simply.
I thought that over. I said, “Well, I suppose when the time is ripe, they’ll have all sorts of things to tell us—”
“I doubt that very much,” Albert said. “Why should they? Would you try to teach space navigation to a cat? Maybe some day, when everyone has progressed to the next stage of evolution—”
“You mean like you?”
“I mean like us, Robin,” he said gently. “When all the humans and Heechee who are alive decide to be more alive, and permanently alive—as we are-then maybe there’ll be a chance to carry on a real dialogue . . . But for the next few million years, I think they’ll just leave us alone-if we leave them alone.”
I shuddered. “That,” I said, “I will certainly be happy to do.”
“I’m glad,” said Albert.
There was something about his voice that made me turn and look at him. It wasn’t Albert’s voice anymore. It was another voice, one that I had heard before. And it wasn’t Albert speaking to me anymore.
It was Someone quite different. “After all,” He added, smiling, “the others are My children, too.”
So maybe I never will reach that wonderful time of wisdom and maturity when I know the answers to all the questions that continue to worry at me.
But maybe just to go on asking them is enough.