“We like it,” Oniko said simply. Harold spread his hands in resignation. But then he trailed after them to the study rooms and, having nothing better to do, studied on his own. To everyone’s astonishment his grades began to climb.
Apart from lonesomeness and the troublesome dreams, Sneezy rather liked school. The beach was neat, once you got used to being in water; the sportsthing contrived a sort of harness of floats that Sneezy could wear, and before long he was swimming with the best of them. The classes were interesting. The other students were at least tolerable, if not warmly friendly. And the island was beautiful, if filled with curious and sometimes worrisome things. For example, there was the meadow just above the school. Large horned ruminants grazed there. When Sneezy looked them up in the databases, he discovered they were called “cattle,” and when he found out what cattle were generally raised for, he was appalled. Sneezy had spent all four of his years on the Watch Wheel resolutely not thinking about where his human schoolmates preferred to get their protein. Now he was confronted with the mooing, defecating source of roasts and hamburgers themselves. Disgusting! Ninety-five percent of Sneezy’s diet, like that of any proper Heechee, came from frozen cometary gases-or from any other handy source of the four basic elements of human nutrition, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Add a few trace elements, and CHON-food could be made into anything you liked. It was cheap. It was maximally nutritious, being manufactured for all dietary requirements. And it did not require murdering anything that could feel pain.
Half the school’s meals were CHON, anyway. There was a Food Factory afloat in the shallow seas off the neighbor island of Tahiti, sucking its basic raw materials out of the sea and the air. But human children, like human adults, seemed actually to relish the thought that the bloody “steaks” they ate actually came from living animals—though not, to be sure, the ones on the pasture just above the school, because they were a prize herd devoted to special ends.
He didn’t discuss those ends with his schoolmates. That was fortunate for Sneezy, for raising animals to eat (he would have discovered) was not after all the most repellent use that could be made of them.
In Sneezy’s second month on the island of Moorea two good things happened.
The first was that his cocoon arrived and was installed in his dormitory cubicle, so that from then on he could snuggle down into soft, burrowable clumps of foam and pull a lid over his head to sleep, like any proper Heechee. It caused a fair amount of joking from his dormitory mates, but Sneezy tolerated that all right. It didn’t seem to stop the dreams, either; but it was a vast improvement over the sterile and unwelcoming sheets and blankets the poor human kids had to put up with.
The second thing was that the principal of the school discovered how ifi adjusted the regular medical program was for a Heechee child, and went to the trouble of acquiring a more suitable one. The new program took the form of a handsome young Heechee male, copper-skinned and deep-eyed. It had a centimeter of down atop its smooth skull, and its shoulder and neck tendons twitched amiably as it greeted Sneezy. He liked the new docthing very much on first encounter, and when it came time for the second he actually looked forward to it. Oniko was scheduled for her checkup at the same time. Sneezy helped her carefully through the narrow hall, though with her cane she was reasonably able to get along by herself by now, and greeted the nursething cheerfully.
To the surprise of both of them, the nurse conducted them into a single room. Sneezy’s young Heechee and Oniko’s middle-aged human female were seated together at a desk, and there were two chairs for the children.
“We thought we would talk to you together,” said Oniko’s docthing—in Heechee!—“because you have a lot in common.”
“You both have the same sort of dreams,” the Heechee figure chimed in. “Tiny luminous creatures buzzing around you, even stinging you. But never really causing you pain.”
“And they go on and on,” said the female thing.
“That’s true,” said Sneezy, looking at Oniko. She nodded.
“And neither of you seems to take much interest in sports,” the female added. “I can understand that about you, Oniko, since you are still not quite physically strong enough for much exertion. But you, Sternutator, are in excellent physical condition. And neither of you even watch them on the PV, do you? Not football, baseball, jai alai, anything at all.”
“I think they are quite boring, yes,” Sneezy admitted.
“Listen to yourself, Sternutator,” said the Heechee docthing. “Do you sound like a ten-year old?”
“He sounds normal enough to me,” sniffed Oniko. The female nodded.
“By your standards, yes,” it said. “You both seem to have extremely adult interests. We’ve checked your data-retrieval logs. We can understand that each of you has spent many hours learning all you can about the Foe. To be sure, anyone might do that-they are certainly important to us all! Still, very few of your schoolmates seem so motivated in this area. But why do you have such an interest in a faster-than-light transportation, Oniko?”
She looked puzzled. “It’s just interesting, I guess. Isn’t everybody interested in that?”
“Not to the same extent, nor in such alien races as the Sluggards, the Quanices, and the Voodoo Pigs.”
“But they’re kind of funny,” Oniko said defensively.
“Yes,” said the Heechee docthing, taking over. “And the subjects that most interest you, Sternutator, are also both amusing and quite important, I would say. The locations of Heechee outposts and depots; the history of Heechee exploration; the principles involved in penetrating black holes. But you see, Sternutator, even a perfectly normal curiosity, when carried to extremes, can be—Excuse me,” it said suddenly, glancing at the female beside it. And the female said, with an abrupt change of tone:
“Children, there is a very important news broadcast coming in. The principal wishes every student to see it, so we will terminate this interview to display it.” And the two of them turned around in their chairs to gaze at the wall behind them. It lighted up with a shimmering silvery haze that cleared to display a male human face, expression serious, far larger than life. It was speaking as it appeared:
“—and here is another part of the decoded message.”
The face paused, listening, as another voice, disembodied, spoke rapidly in a hurried, mechanical way. It said: “The total number of species presently existing in the Galaxy which are either already technologically capable or give indications of possible future development to that stage is eleven. Only three of these have mastered interstellar flight, and one of the three uses only Einstein-limited propulsion systems. Two of the remainder may achieve spaceflight within the next few centuries. The others are tool users in varying stages of development.”
The voice died, and the face, eyes narrowed in concern, said: “The entire message, when slowed to normal speaking speed, is estimated to run more than nine hours. Only a few portions of it have as yet been rerecorded for real-time study. However, for the benefit of those who may just have joined us, the message was in the form of a burst transmission which lasted only one point oh oh eight three seconds. The origin of the transmission has not yet been established, except that it was fed into the Earth satellite transmission net and beamed in the direction of the kugelblitz, apparently from Tokyo Tower. All landlines feeding into the Tower are now being investigated.” The face paused, gazing steely-eyed out at its audience. “Of course, no transmissions at FTL velocities in the direction of the Watch Wheel or the kugelblitz are permitted, under the emergency rules laid down by the Joint Assassin Watch more than ten weeks ago.”