"Now wait a minute," Stan said. "Surely some other Heechee came there now and then."
"Not much now. Not that much even then. A few visited only. Even such few not for long."
Estrella cut in. "But he still wasn't alone, was he? There were three of them."
"Oh, did I not say? Not the case. This person, Achiever, he check records of spacecraft all time. Other two are gone for other purpose, while he stay on asteroid continuing checking records. And for that reason—" She hesitated, as though reluctant to say the next thing. Then she plunged ahead. "Only him, you see? And many, many of you. Toward end he could not stand sight of one more human person. Had no choice. Had to go on standing it. Must now receive relaxing and repairing on Shining Mica Mountains on Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four—this, you understand, is identical place to which I invited you."
Stan and Estrella thought that over for a moment. It was Estrella who asked, "What kind of relaxing and repairing?"
"Is hard to explain. Is resting. Is associating—" She flapped her wrists in chagrin. "Have no proper words of your speaking. Perhaps proper words for same not existing." She looked glum. "Actually, most sad thing is, we do not exactly know what is to be done. What is wished is to rid him of total hatred of your kind. Among you this is called—?"
She stopped there. Stan filled in for her. "You mean craziness?"
"I think perhaps so, yes," Salt said reluctantly. "That is, deficiency of intellect leading to unusual and harmful actions. Except among us is no such thing, ever. Therefore we do not know how to treat."
"No such thing ever?" Estrella said skeptically.
"Not ever never," Salt said with emphasis. "Not a trait of our persons, this deficiency."
Estrella was still doubtful, but she asked, "So what will you do with him?"
The muscles under the skin of Salt's face writhed worriedly. "Will house him in certain place on Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four. Place is for purpose of remediating deficiencies. For example, in this place are old ones nearing death. You know, no longer controlling appropriate functions of body and so forth." But the more she tried to explain the purpose of this sanitarium, or whatever it was, the harder it got. "Is for—" she would begin, and then pause for a while, sometimes quite a while, before venturing, "To make some persons Stored Ancestors, this place is. Not for this person, though." Another long pause. "Or like, supposing some person is to wear tunic not one's own? Without permission? So is there to make needed repairs to person so not to do again, you see?" But Stan and Estrella didn't see. Finally she flapped her wrists at them in surrender. "Place is not exactly right for this person, no," she conceded. "But is all we have."
7
Hatching the Phoenix
I
My name is Gelle-Klara Moynlin, and I probably don't need any additional introduction. If I do, you just haven't been paying attention, because I'm in the newscasts often enough.
When we crossed the wavefront from the Crab supernova we were about half a day out from Earth. The crossing didn't set off any alarms or anything. I wouldn't even have noticed it, but my shipmind, Hypatia, is programmed to notice things that I don't, if she thinks they 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 that doomed old star blow up two or three times already 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 the Heechee screen on, but it showed nothing but the pebbly gray blur that's the Heechee idea of a good default. Hypatia can read that stuff, but I can't, so she changed the phase for me.
Then I saw a field of stars, looking exactly like any other field of stars. 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 had become brightest of all, it unexploded itself. It became a simple star again, so unremarkable that I couldn't even pick it out. The planets that they told me it had 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 repertory of human behaviors that are all her own idea, because I had never had them 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 I'm Gelle-Klara Moynlin, and 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, the thing 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 what 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 that 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 of money 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 things 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?"