With some difficulty he found the other sleeping box and climbed into it, hoping, very seriously hoping, that the next day would be better.
II
It was, too.
When he awoke he discovered Estrella up long before him. On one of the tables were a dozen CHON-food packages that hadn't been there the night before. More than that (so Stan found when he had gulped down a jellied substance that tasted like seafood and a crunchy one that tasted like maple fudge) she had figured out how to use the bathing appliance. Then she had used it to clean not only herself but their whole collection of soiled clothing, the balcony railing now festooned with his and her garments drying rapidly under Warm Old Star Twenty-Four. Stan tried the shower himself, marveling at her cunning. It wasn't exactly a shower. It was a repeated pulse of bucketsful of tepid water, ten or twenty liters at a time, seconds apart. There wasn't exactly any soap, either. What there was was a rack of tangled plants, like an elongated windowbox of crabgrass all around the drenching cubicle. Following Estrella's advice, Stan tore handfuls off to use as washcloths, and discovered that they fizzed and slowly disintegrated in the water, leaving his skin tingly and clean.
Odd, yes, but it did the job. There didn't seem to be anything like a towel—because, Stan conjectured, the Heechee didn't need that sort of thing as water would roll right off their slick, shiny skin. But, although he was still hungry, he was cleaner than he had been for a long time, if wetter, and it elevated his spirits. It seemed to have done something for Estrella's, too, because when he threw his arms around her in a friendly, if naked, hug she hesitated only a moment before she hugged him back. And then, as his embrace became more intimate, she responded in kind, and the hunger that had just crossed his mind faded away again, replaced by a more urgent need.
Then it was almost like old times. If a Heechee litter box wasn't the ideal arena for having sex, it would do. It did. Then they lay spooned together for a time, Stan's face buried in Estrella's hair, and all was well on the Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four.
Just when he thought she had fallen asleep again, she stirred. She picked up a clump of the vegetation they were lying on and rubbed it between her fingers. She said thoughtfully, "You know, I think we're supposed to get inside this stuff like the Heechee do, instead of on top of it."
He blinked at the back of her head. "What?"
"They do it because their ancestors were some kind of burrowing animals," she explained. "Salt told me. It's probably why they build underground, and dig tunnels on other planets, do you see?"
"Huh," Stan said and then, having nothing more urgent to do, pulled her toward him for a kiss. Which might once more have gone farther, but then the doorbell made its not at all bell-like sound, somewhere between a growl and a deep-toned purr, the sort of thing you might expect from a lion waking out of deep sleep.
When they scrambled into enough clothing to pass in an emergency and opened the door the person standing before them was the Heechee female, Salt. She was holding out a net bag full of food packets. "Here," she said, handing it to Stan. "For you, these. Is old custom here for first guest in new house to bring gifts of food. Custom is only symbolic, since plenty food always available at dispenser. However," she added, looking faintly embarrassed, "when I arrive here to be first guest, surprise, place is dark, you both asleep. So I leave gift of food and go. Then I come again also with food—custom unclear regarding such circumstances. You forgive?
Of course they forgave, especially when Salt showed them where the "dispenser" was and how to make it dispense food whenever they liked. Which, they found, was easy enough: you simply turned it on and told it, in English, what you wanted. "In English?" Stan demanded suspiciously.
"Yes, in English of course. Have arranged this for your convenience immediately upon arrival."
And how did you turn it on? Why, nothing was simpler. As with the outside door you simply pressed the palm of your hand on the appropriate spot on the wall—Salt showed them where those spots were. "But press carefully," she urged. "Whole palm in close contact, please. With our people is not so demanding, but did not operate for you at first touching because of excess flesh and lipids in digits obscuring the scan."
Stan nodded, grateful to have understood at least one thing. "So the door has a perfect lock, right? Nobody's going to be able to steal the contents?"
Salt looked at him uncertainly. "'Steal?' Is to say, take without permission? Why anyone would do that?" Then, when Stan didn't respond: "Now I show you all other things." And she did, pretty nearly: showed how the same trick would activate the room lights, to any intensity they chose; and the lookplates, producing any number of possible channels to watch; and the wall cupboards—
In one of which were Stan's trumpet and Estrella's flute.
"Hey," Stan cried, grabbing for the instrument. He inspected it all over and even played a couple of quick riffs before, grinning, he let Salt speak again.
But by then she had little to say, only, "Let us go to lanai to rest and talk, all right?"
They did, all three of them appreciatively breathing in the sweet scents of Forested Planet's forests. Salt studied their faces, then demanded, "Is this not wholly beauteous? We consider it so, very much!"
"Very beautiful," Stan said dutifully, but Estrella didn't chime in as he expected.
Instead, "What I don't understand," she said, "is where all the people are. Didn't you say this planet was inhabited?"
"Certainly I said this. It is so, in large numbers."
"Then where are all the buildings—homes, factories, anything at all?"
Salt choked slightly, then said forgivingly, "I forget you not our people. Structures underground, of course."
"But this isn't underground," Stan objected.
"Is of course so," Salt corrected him. "Is on hillside. Balconies only outside. I remember," she said thoughtfully, "on human world everything stick up into the air. Not here, though. Heechee prefer inside, not outside. Now look more close." And when Stan squinted he did see somethings that peeped out of the sides of the hills, regularly spaced somethings that did not look natural. "You see? On other hills are other balconies et cetera. Not factories, of course. But places of work, such as my own"—she gestured with a skeletal hand—"down there, behind large tree forest."
"And what do you do in your place of work?" Estrella asked.
Well, that wasn't answered so readily. In fact, Salt didn't appear to understand the question; she contorted the muscles of her face, shrugged her whole body and then said, "I help others to do things for persons, others having done things of same sort once for me."
"What sort of things?"
"What is needed to complete their persons."
Estrella frowned. "Do you mean like a school?"
"School? Not at all school. No."
"Then a religious institution?"
But Salt did not seem to know what a "religious institution" might be, and showed signs of contusion, or as close to human confusion as a Heechee could look. "Do wait," she ordered, and was silent for a moment— perhaps, Stan thought, communicating with her Stored Mind for advice on what to say to a human who asked difficult questions.
Then she looked up and changed the subject. "Look above you. Do you see?" she asked. "I indicate those three bright stars there."
Puzzled, Stan looked up at the sky. He could see nothing unusual— well, not unusual for this place, anyway, although it was like no earthly sky ever. Warm Old Star Twenty-Four was high in the sky. It wasn't alone, either. Stan could make out the largest of the planet's moons tagging after its primary, spectral silver in the blue, blue sky, of course, plus the inevitable sprinkling of daylight stars, at least twelve or fifteen of them in gold and ruby and pale, a sky normal for any planet in the crowded Core. "Which ones?" he asked.