But she didn’t know how to do that, either. Sneezy did it for her and handed the nut back to her. Oniko took it in her hand and hefted it thoughtfully.
Although it weighed nothing much on the Wheel, its mass was the same as it would have been anywhere else in the universe, and it looked formidably hard to penetrate.
“How do we get the green stuff off?” she asked.
“Tell her to give it to me, Dopey,” Harold ordered from behind them, his own coconuts already on the ground. He snatched it, and with two quick strokes of his knife he had the stem end open and handed it back to her. “Drink it,” he commanded. “It’s good.”
The girl looked at it suspiciously, then at Sneezy. He nodded encouragement. Hesitatingly she lifted it to her lips. Tasted. Made a face. Rummaged around the inside of her mouth with her tongue, exploring the flavor of the coconut juice. Tried a larger sip-and reported in surprise, “Why, yes, it is good!”
“We’ll open them up and get the meat later,” Sneezy said, working on his own coconut. “Maybe we should eat our lunches now; the juice is good to drink with the sandwiches.”
But though Sneezy’s family had adopted the human habit of sandwiches, Oniko’s had not. What she pulled out of her bag was a collection of lumpy little objects in gaily colored paper. In the red, a pickled plum. In the golden, a hard, brown piece of something she said was fish, although neither Sneezy nor Harold was willing to taste it to find out. Nor was Oniko interested in Harold’s extra deviled egg, nor in the ham sandwiches Sneezy had persuaded his father to let him take. Ham was enough of an adventure for Sneezy; he had only in the last year begun to accept human food-or as close to real human food as the Wheel’s synthesizers created.
“But you should try these,” Oniko scolded.
“Thank you, no,” said Sneezy. Harold was less diplomatic; he made throwing-up noises.
“But I try your food,” Oniko pointed out. “These coconuts, for in-stance, are quite good.” She took another deep sip, found the nut empty. Silently Sneezy opened another and passed it over to her. “I think,” she said judiciously, “that when I grow up and return to Earth I will buy an island where these grow, and then I too will be able to climb the trees.”
Both boys stared at her. They were almost equally astonished, though for different reasons. Harold because he was deeply impressed at the girl’s casual assumption of such wealth-buy an island? Return to earth? One must be very rich to contemplate either! And Sneezy was simply baffled by the entire concept of owning land at all. “I have been told of such nice islands,” Oniko went on. “There is one called Tahiti, which is said to be very pretty. Or perhaps one nearer the islands of Japan, so I can visit my relatives whom I have never met.”
“You have relatives in Japan, Earth?” asked Harold, suddenly respectful. His own family were descendants of early settlers on Peggys Planet. Earth was not muchmore than a myth to him. “But I thought you were born on a Heechee artifact.”
“I was, and my parents before me,” Oniko said, taking another sip of the coconut milk and settling down to repeat once again an often-told story. “But my father’s father, Aritsune Bakin, married in the great temple at Nara. Then he took his bride to Gateway and sought their fortune. His father’s father had himself been a Gateway prospector, but was badly injured and confined to the asteroid. He had some money. When he died, that money paid for my father’s father’s trip, with his wife along. They took only one trip. The first time out they found their destination was the artifact. There were eighteen large Heechee ships there, none of which could be made to fly by them, and their own ship would no longer respond to the controls.”
“That was so that the information from the artifact would be kept secret until the proper time,” Sneezy put in in some embarrassment. He had already heard a fair amount of criticism of Heechee practices with their abandoned ships and stations.
“Yes, of course,” said Oniko forgivingly. “Six other Gateway ships arrived at the same destination and were all, of course, marooned there. There were four Threes, a One, and another Five, like my grandfather’s, so in all there were twenty-three original prospectors. Fortunately, eight of them were women of childbearing age, so the colony survived. When finally we were—” For the first time, she hesitated.
“When you were rescued?” Harold offered.
“We were not rescued. We were never lost, merely detained. So when finally we were visited again, just four years ago, the population of the artifact was eighty-five. I was just a small child then, of course. Some of us went directly to Earth or other places, but because I was little my parents remained so that I could begin to be prepared for these horrible heavy places.”
“You think this is heavy!” Harold snickered. “Wow. Wait’ll you try Peggys Planet! Or Earth!”
“I shall,” Oniko said firmly.
“Sure you will,” Harold said skeptically. “What about the money?”
“Of course, original Gateway rules applied,” Oniko explained. “There were earned bonuses and royalties for the prospectors and their descendants. According to the rules, the value of the artifact and its contents was estimated at two biffion eight hundred million and some odd dollars, divided by the number of prospectors who reached there alive, twenty-three.”
“Wow!” said Harold, goggle-eyed as he did arithmetic in his head.
“Of course,” Oniko added apologetically, “my parents are the only descendants of four out of the original twenty-three, so I will inherit all four shares-about one-sixth of the total-if they die without having any other children-I hope they will not,” she finished.
“Wow.” Harold was speechless. Even Sneezy was impressed, though not with the money this child possessed-avarice was not a Heechee vice. But he admired her for the lucid, cogent way she told her story.
“Really,” she said, “it was quite nice there when the new people came. Many new experiences! Much to talk about! Not that it wasn’t very nice before-oh, what is happening?” she finished in distress, gazing around.
It was getting dark. The overhead light dimmed swiftly, replaced by a much fainter red glow. In a moment it was as dark as it ever got in the coconut grove-dark enough so that the palms, evolved to thrive in the circadian rhythm of the Earth’s tropical climates, had their period of rest before the lights came on again and photosynthesis resumed. “It’s so the trees won’t get sick,” Sneezy explained. “But they’ll leave the red lights on so we can see; the trees don’t mind that.”
Sneezy didn’t mind that either, as Harold well knew. The older boy chortled, “Dopey’s afraid of the dark, you know.”
Sneezy looked away. It was untrue, but it was not wholly false. In the densely packed star cluster at the Heechee core there was seldom a time on the surface of any planet without one degree or another of sunlight. Darkness was not exactly frightening, but it was at least discoxnfiting. He said, “You were telling us about where you came from?”
“Oh, yes, Sternutator. It was so nice! Even the original prospectors came to love it, I think, though of course they wished they could see their families again. But there was plenty of food and water, and much to do. We had a great many Heechee books, and more than one hundred Heechee Ancient Ancestors stored there to talk to. They taught us how to use the pods,” she said proudly, patting hers.
Sneezy reached out a finger to touch hers and felt the warm stirrings of the presence within. “Your Ancestor seems very nice,” he told her.
“Thank you,” she said gravely.
“Your pod is much smaller than mine, though,” he offered.
“Oh, yes. We don’t need the microwave, you see. We only have them for the Ancestors. My father says we had much to learn from the Heechee-once we learned the language, of course.”