If Harold had been a Heechee boy instead of a very human one, he wouldn’t have laughed about the kugelblitz.
The kugelblitz was not a laughing matter. The kugelblitz was where the Foe lived-the beings the Heechee called “the Assassins.” The Heechee had not given them that name as a jest. To the Heechee there was nothing jestable about the Foe. Heechee didn’t laugh at dangerous things. They ran away from them.
That was another significant difference between Sneezy and Harold. And then there was Oniko, who was different still.
Oniko Bakin was one of the new arrivals. Her contingent of replacements included twenty-two humans and no Heechee at all. Four of them were children, and the one who turned up in Sneezy’s school was Oniko. When she appeared for classes on her first day, the other children clustered around her. “But you’re human,” one said. “So why do you wear a Heechee pod?”
“We always have,” she explained. Then she courteously shushed them to pay attention to the teacherthing.
Oniko was indeed human. She was also female, and just about Sneezy’s age. Her skin was pale olive. Her eyes were black and hooded with an epicanthic fold. Her hair was straight and black, and Sneezy was proud to be able to identify her by these signs as one of that sub-genre of human beings called “Oriental.” She spoke colloquial English, though. To Sneezy’s surprise, she spoke colloquial Heechee, too. Lots of humans spoke a little Heechee, more or less, but Oniko was the first in Sneezy’s experience who was equally at home in both the language of Do and the language of Feel.
That did not lessen his astonishment at seeing a human child wearing a pod.
In eurhythmics, that first day she was in school with him, Oniko became his partner for stretch-and-bend movements. Sneezy got a closeup look at her. Although he still thought that her flesh was distressingly flabby and her mass worrisomely large, he liked the sweet smell of her breath and the gentle way she spoke his name-not “Dopey,” not even “Sneezy,” but “Sternutator,” in the Heechee tongue. He was disappointed when their housething called early to take her out of school for some formality with her parents, because he wanted to know her better.
At home that night he tried asking his father why a human being should wear a pod. “Very simple, Sterny,” Bremsstrahlung said wearily. “They were a lost catch.”
The reason Bremsstrahlung was tired was that he had been doing double duty. All the watchers had. The times when a ship was docked at the Wheel were thought to be specially vulnerable, since a certain amount of confusion was inevitable. At such times every Dream Seat was manned and all the watchers kept on duty until the ship had departed and the Wheel was secure once more. It had been a very long shift for Bremsstrahlung. “A lost catch,” he explained, “is a group of human beings who flew one of our ships to a one-way destination. As to this one, ask your mother; she talked to the ship’s crew.”
“Only for a moment,” Femtowave protested. “I was hoping for news from Home.”
Bremsstrahlung patted her fondly. “What news could there be when they left only-what was it, three or four hours after we did?”
Femtowave acknowledged the correctness of his observation with a flexion of her throat. She said in amusement, “The poor crew still was in shock. They were all Heecjiee. They left the core with specialists and materials to go to Earth, stopped there, were loaded with supplies for us, stopped on the way to pick up the new people from the lost catch—oh, how confusing it all must be for them!”
“Exactly,” said Bremsstrahlung. “Anyway, once the original humans reached the artifact, they couldn’t leave. So then they were stuck there forever.”
“If it were forever—” Femtowave smiled “—they would not be here now, Bremmy.” She did not smile in the human way, since Heechee musculature is not the same. What happened was that a knot of muscle gathered below her cheekbones. The taut flesh itself did not move.
“You know what I mean,” her husband said. “Anyway, Sternutator, this little group of less than one hundred humans turned out to be very rich in sensitives.” He said it demurely. To be a sensitive meant that one was particularly good at using the Dream Seat to “listen” for signs of external intelligence, and of course Bremsstrahlung himself was among the most sensitive beings ever found. That was why he was on the Wheel.
“Will Oniko work in the Dream Seat?” Sneezy asked.
“Of course not! At least, not until she grows up. You know that it is not only important to be able to receive any impressions that may come. A particularly gifted child might be able to do that, but it is just as important to be able to refrain from broadcasting one’s own feelings.”
“More important,” Femtowave corrected. There was no smiley knot of muscle on her cheek now. That was nothing to smile about.
“More important, I agree,” said her husband. “As to whether this child is a sensitive or not, well, there’s no way for me to know that. She will be tested. Probably she already has been, as you were, since surely one of her own parents must be a sensitive, and there is quite a strong genetic component involved.”
“Does that mean that I wifi work in the Dream Seat when I grow up?” Sneezy asked eagerly.
“We don’t know that yet,” his father said. He thought for a moment, and then added somberly, “For that matter, we don’t know if the Wheel will still be here—”
“Bremsstrahlung!” his wife cried. “That is nothing to joke about!”
Bremsstrahlung nodded but didn’t say anything. He was really quite tired. Perhaps, he told himself, that was why he hadn’t been joking.
Actually, Sneezy’s best witness about the human girl was Oniko herself. She was assigned to his schoolhall, and of course the schoolthing introduced her at once to the other students. “Oniko,” it said, “was born on a Food Factory, and hasn’t had much chance to know much about the world. So please help her when you can.”
Sneezy was willing. The chances didn’t come very often, though. He was not the only child curious about the newcomer, and most of the others, being human, were far more forward than he.
Sneezy’s school was almost like the storied one-room red schoolhouse of American antiquity. There really was only one room. It was different from the antique, though, in that it didn’t have just one teacher, or not exactly. Each student got quite individual instruction, with his or her own custom-tailored battery of learning programs. The schoolthing was a mobile unit. It cruised around the room as needed, mostly to keep discipline and to see that none of the students was still eating his lunch when he should have been parsing sentences. It did not teach. For that purpose each student had his own carrel.
When the schoolthing had finished counting heads and checking on the reasons for any absences, it bustled around, making sure of clean hands and freedom from symptoms of illness-and, in the case of the youngest pupils, fastening the seat belts that kept them in their carrels. Not to mention escorting them to the toilet as needed, not to mention all the other functions required for children who, a few of them, were still quite tiny.
For all of this the schoolthing was quite adequate. It even looked reassuring. It had a face. When it was wearing its normal schoolthing equipage, it appeared to be a little old woman in a shapeless gown. The gown was cosmetic, of course. So was the smiling face. So were all of its physical attributes, for when school was not in session the schoolthing did quite other jobs and wore quite other appearances. And, of course, when more help was needed-when the children needed more supervision at exercise time or if any special problem should arise-the school-thing coopted as many other artificial inteffigences as needed from the Wheel pool.