I said judiciously, “Not most of all, no, because it would take forever to tell you all the things that bother me, but, yes, that’s one of them. She’s married, you know.”
“Uh.” She didn’t add, So are you, so I had to do it myself.
“It’s not just that she’s married, because so am I, of course-and I wouldn’t want it to be any other way, honestly, Essie—”
She scowled at me. “Oh, Robin! Never thought it would be possible to find hearing that a bore, but how often you do say it!”
“I only say it because it’s true,” I protested, my feelings having suffered a minor flesh wound.
“Already know is true.”
“Well, I guess you do, at that,” I admitted. I didn’t know what to say next. I discovered a drink in my hand and took a pull at it.
Essie sighed. “Sure are one big party-pooper, Robin. Was feeling grand when you were not nearby.”
“I’m sorry, but, honest, Essie, I don’t feel like partying.”
“Comes more gloopy business,” she said, martyred. “Okay. Spit out what is now on poor, tortured mind. What is worst thing of all?”
I said promptly, “Everything.” And when she didn’t look as though that had explained it clearly enough for her, I added: “It’s just one damn thing after another, isn’t it?”
“Ah,” she said, and thought for a while. Then she sighed. “What gloomy creature you are, dear Robin. Should perhaps talk again with headshrinker program, Sigfnd von Shrink?”
“No!”
“Ah,” she said again, and thought some more. Then she said, “Tell you what, dear old gloom person. How about we skip this party a while and look at some home movies, okay?”
I had not expected that from her. “What kind of home movies?” I demanded, surprised. But she didn’t answer. She didn’t wait for me to agree, either. She began showing them.
The sounds of the Spindle and the sights of the partying Gateway prospectors faded away. We weren’t there anymore. We were in a different place, and we were looking at a bench with a child on it.
Now, they weren’t real movies, of course, any more than anything else in gigabit space is “real.” They were simply computer simulations. Like everything else either one of us chose to imagine, they were quite compellingly “real” in all appearances-sight, sound, even smell, even the chill of cold air and the congestion of sooty air to our (nonexistent) breathing.
It was all very familiar. We were looking at me-the child me—many, many decades ago.
I felt myself shivering, not relevant to the temperature of the air. The child Robinette Broadhead was sitting hunched up against the cold air on a park bench. It was called a park, anyway. Really, it was a pretty lousy excuse for one. If things had been different, it could have been quite spectacular, for the Wyoming hills were behind the child-me. Beautiful they were not. They were smoggy gray lumps in the dingy air. You could actually see hydrocarbon particulates floating in it, and the limbs of every scrawny tree were coated with soot and smear. I-the child who had been me-was dressed for the climate, which was vile: It took three sweaters, a scarf, gloves, and a knitted cap pulled down over my ears. My nose was running. I was reading a book. I was-what? Oh, maybe I was ten years old; and I was coughing as I read.
“Remember, dear Robin? Is good old days for you,” said Essie from her invisible place beside me.
“Good old days,” I snorted. “You’ve been snooping around in my memories again,” I accused-without any real anger, because of course both of us had invaded all of each other’s memory stores often and completely before that.
“But just look, dear Robin,” she said. “Look how things were.” I didn’t need to be ordered to look. I couldn’t have stopped. I had no trouble in recognizing the scene, either. It was the Food Mines, where all of my childhood was spent: the shale mines of Wyoming, where rock was quarried and baked into keratogens, and then the oil was fed to yeasts and bacteria to make the single-cell protein that fed most of the too-numerous and too-hungry human race. In those mining towns you never got the smell of oil off you as long as you lived, and as long as you lived was generally not very long.
“Anyway,” I added, “I never said the old days were any good.”
“Correct, Robin!” Essie cried triumphantly. “Good old days were distinctly bad. Much worse than now, no? Are now no children compelled to grow up breathing nasty hydrocarbon air, dying because cannot afford proper medical treatment.”
“Oh, sure, that’s true enough,” I said, “but still—”
“Wait to argue, Robin! Is more to see. What book do you read there? Is not Huckly-berry Finn or Little Mermaid, I think.”
I looked closer to oblige Essie, and then, with a shock, I saw the title.
She was right. It was no children’s book. It was The User’s Guide to Medical Insurance Programs, and I remembered exactly when I had sneaked that copy out of the house when my mother wasn’t looking, so that I might try to understand just what catastrophe we were facing.
“My mother was sick,” I groaned. “We didn’t have enough coverage for both of us, and she-she—”
“She put off her own surgery so that you might have therapy, Robin,” Essie said softly. “Yes, but that was later. Not this time. This time was only that you needed better food and supplements, and could not afford them.”
I was finding this pretty painful. “Look at my buck teeth,” I said. “No money fix them either, Robin. Was bad time for children, correct?”
“So you’re playing the Ghost of Christmas Past,” I snapped, trying to relieve the pressure by confusing her with a reference she wouldn’t understand.
But when you have gigabit resources, you can understand a lot. “No, nor are you Scrooge,” she said, “but consider. In these times, not so very far behind us, whole Earth was overpopulated. Hungry. Full of strife and anger. Terrorists, Robin. Remember violence and stupid murdering?”
“I remember all that.”
“Of course. Now, what happened, Robin? I will tell. You happened. You and hundreds other crazy, desperate Heechee-ship prospectors from Gateway. Found technology of Heechee and brought it back to Earth. Found fine new planets to live on-like discovery of America, only one thousand times greater-and found ways for people to move there. Are now no more overcrowded places on Earth, Robin. People have gone to newer places, built better cities. Have not even damaged Earth to do so! Air is not destroyed by gasoline engines or rocket exhausts; use loop to get into orbit, then anywhere! No one so poor cannot have medicine now, Robin. Even organ transplants-and make organs out of CHON material, so need not even wait for other person to die to snatch secondhand bits out of corpse. Correct, Robin? Heechee Food Factory makes organs now; developments you have played large part in bringing about. Have extended meat life, always in good health, many decades; then transcribe mind like us to live very much longer-in, again, development you have partly financed and I have partly helped develop, so that not even dying is fatal. You see no progress? Is not because no progress is there! Is because old gloomy Robinette Broadhead looks hard at delicious feast of everything now on plate of everyone alive and sees only what will later become, namely, shit.”
“But,” I said obstinately, “there are still the Foe.”
Essie laughed. She seemed actually to find it funny. The picture disappeared. We were back in the Spindle, and she leaned forward to kiss my cheek.
“Foe?” she said fondly. “Oh, yes, dear Robin. Foe are one more damn thing after another, as you say. But will deal with as have always dealt. Taking one damn thing at a time. And now get back to important earlier business; we dance!”