A seminal figure whose career spans almost the entire development of modern SF, Frederik Pohl has been one of the genre’s major shaping forces — as writer, editor, agent, and anthologist—for more than fifty years. He was the founder of the Star series, SF’s first continuing anthology series, and was the editor of the Galaxy group of magazines from 1960 to 1969, during which time Galaxy’s sister magazine, Worlds of If, won three consecutive Best Professional Magazine Hugos. As a writer, he has won Nebula and Hugo Awards several times (making him the only person ever to have won the Hugo both as editor and as writer), as well as the American Book Award and the French Prix Apollo. His many books include several written in collaboration with the late C. M. Kornbluth—such as The Space Merchants, Wolfbane, and Gladiator-at-Law—and many solo novels, including Man Plus, The Coming of the Quantum Cats, A Plague of Pythons, Slave Ship, Jem, The World at the End of Time, and Mining the Oort. Among his many collections are The Gold at the Starbow’s End, The Years of the City, Critical Mass (in collaboration with Kornbluth), In the Problem Pit, Pohlstars, and The Best of Frederik Pohl. He also wrote a nonfiction book in collaboration with the late Isaac Asimov, Our Angry Earth, and an autobiography, The Way the Future Was. His most recent books are the novels O Pioneer!, The Siege of Eternity, and The Far Shore of Time. Coming up soon is a new nonfiction book, Chasing Science. His stories have appeared in our Second and Tenth Annual Collections.
Pohl’s most famous book is probably Gateway, a book which won both the Nebula and the Hugo, and which is widely regarded as one of the best novels of the ‘70s. It’s also the book in which he introduced the Heechee, a race of enigmatic and (seemingly) long-vanished aliens whose discarded technology enables humanity to begin the exploration of the Galaxy — a series that Pohl would return to several times throughout the rest of the ‘80s and into the ‘90s,--with sequels such as Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, Heechee Rendezvous, The Annals of the Heechee, and The Gateway Trip.
Occasionally, Pohl writes about the Heechee in shorter format as well. There were two Heechee stories published this year, for instance, including the intriguing novella that follows, in which he takes us far across the galaxy and deep into the past to show us that, no matter how alien the setting, some things don’t change—alas!
CHAPTER I
We were only about half a day out when we crossed the wavefront from the Crab supernova. I wouldn’t even have noticed it, but my shipmind, Hypatia, is programmed to notice things that might interest me. So she asked me if I wanted to take a look at it, and I did.
Of course I’d already seen the star blow up two or three times in simulations, but as a flesh-and-blood human being I like reality better than simulations — most of the time, anyway. Hypatia had already turned on the Heechee screen, but it showed nothing other than the pebbly gray blur that the Heechee use. Hypatia can read those things, but I can’t, so she changed the phase for me.
What I was seeing then was a field of stars, looking exactly like any other field of stars to me. It’s a lack in me, I’m sure, but as far as I’m concerned every star looks like all the other stars in the sky, at least until you get close enough to it to see it as a sun. So I had to ask her, “Which one is it?”
She said, “You can’t see it yet. We don’t have that much magnification. But keep your eyes open. Wait a moment. Another moment. Now, there it is.”
She didn’t have to say that. I could see it for myself. Suddenly a point of light emerged and got brighter, and brighter still, until it outshone everything else on the screen. It actually made me squint. “It happens pretty fast,” I said.
“Well, not really that fast, Klara. Our vector velocity, relative to the star, is quite a lot faster than light, so we’re speeding things up. Also, we’re catching up with the wavefront, so we’re seeing it all in reverse. It’ll be gone soon.”
And a moment later it was. Just as the star was brightest of all, it unexploded itself. It became a simple star again, so unremarkable that I couldn’t even pick it out. Its planets were unscorched again, their populations, if any, not yet whiffed into plasma. “All right,” I said, somewhat impressed but not enough to want Hypatia to know it, “turn the screen off and let’s get back to work.”
Hypatia sniffed —she has built herself a whole repertoire of human behaviors that I had never had programmed into her. She said darkly, “We’d better, if we want to be able to pay all the bills for this thing. Do you have any idea what this is costing?”
Of course, she wasn’t serious about that. I have problems, but being able to pay my bills isn’t one of them.
I wasn’t always this solvent. When I was a kid on that chunk of burned-out hell they call the planet Venus, driving an airbody around its baked, bleak surface for the tourists all day and trying not to spend any of my pay all night, what I wanted most was to have money. I wasn’t hoping for a whole lot of money. I just wanted enough money so that I could afford Full Medical and a place to live that didn’t stink of rancid seafood. I wasn’t dreaming on any vast scale.
It didn’t work out that way, though. I never did have exactly that much money.
First I had none at all and no real hopes of ever getting any. Then I had much, much more than that, and I found out something about having a lot of money. When you have the kind of money that’s spelled M*O*N*E*Y, it’s like having a kitten in the house. The money wants you to play with it. You can try to leave it alone, but if you do it’ll be crawling into your lap and nibbling at your chin for attention. You don’t have to give in to what the money wants. You can just push it away and go about your business, but then God knows what mischief it’ll get into if you do, and anyway then where’s the fun of having it?
So most of the way out to the PhoenixCorp site, Hypatia and I played with my money. That is, I played with it while Hypatia kept score. She remembers what I own better than I do — that’s her nature, being the sort of task she was designed to do — and she’s always full of suggestions about what investments I should dump or hold or what new ventures I should get into.
The key word there is “suggestions.” I don’t have to do what Hypatia says. Sometimes I don’t. As a general rule I follow Hypatia’s suggestions about four times out of five. The fifth time I do something different, just to let her know that I’m the one who makes the decisions here. I know that’s not smart, and it generally costs me money when I do. But that’s all right. I have plenty to spare.
There’s a limit to how long I’m willing to go on tickling the money’s tummy, though. When I had just about reached that point, Hypatia put down her pointer and waved the graphics displays away. She had made herself optically visible to humor me, because I like to see the person I’m talking to, wearing her fifth-century robes and coronet of rough-cut rubies and all, and she gave me an inquiring look. “Ready to take a little break, Klara?” she asked. “Do you want something to eat?”
Well, I was, and I did. She knew that perfectly well. She’s continually monitoring my body, because that’s one of the other tasks she’s designed to do, but I like to keep my free will going there, too. “Actually,” I said, “I’d rather have a drink. How are we doing for time?”