Indeed it did amuse. Some. Not a lot, though, because Stan wasn't all that interested in seeing people he didn't know doing things he didn't understand—studying the internal workings of a variable star, creating huge orbiting habitats around stars which lacked habitable planets, performing other tasks he did not comprehend at all. As he switched channels he did catch one familiar name. Wan. The marooned boy who had caused the Wrath of God that had killed his father. Now, it seemed, he had stolen a vast amount of advanced weaponry and instrumentation (though "stolen" didn't sound like quite the right word, since Wan appeared to have left payment for the lot) ... and now was a fugitive somewhere in the galaxy. Or maybe even somewhere outside it; no one seemed to know.
Stan sighed, stood up, again began to pace around. Into the room with the dispenser, but he didn't really want to eat again; into the sleeping room, but, although Estrella seemed to be doing it very well, he had no desire to go back to sleep again. He wound up on the lanai, his trumpet hanging by his side. He didn't play it, though. He was thinking of the last time he'd played it on Earth, and of Tan, and of Naslan, Tan's pretty sister, and of the Brit woman on Gateway who had finally earned herself a modest stake....
They all had one thing in common. Every one of them, he suddenly realized, was by now long dead.
How long was long dead? Stan tried to calculate. He and Estrella had been—what?—maybe six or seven days in the Core, no more than that. But those six or seven Core days were 40,000 times six or seven as many days out in the galaxy. That came to centuries—maybe even a thousand years!
Those were thoughts that did not bear thinking, and so Stan stopped thinking them. He put his trumpet on the glassy floor and his elbows on the lanai wall, consciously making himself think of the view before him. Leaning farther over the rail, he gazed at the distant, shining mountaintop.
Then a voice from behind him observed thoughtfully, "I could easily push you right over. You would then die, and no one would ever know."
III
Stan suspected who it was before he straightened up, and when he turned it was as he had guessed. Another guest had arrived, and his name was Achiever.
The visitor was no longer wearing his garish choice of Gateway garments, but even in the standard Heechee smock and sandals he seemed as harshly unpleasant as ever. Stan quickly moved away from the rail, turning to face the Heechee. "How did you get in here?" he demanded.
Achiever's cheek muscles rippled. "Am not required to tell you that. In fact," he added, "am not required to tell you any at all thing unless I choose to. Do you comprehend this fact?"
Stan warily eyed the Heechee. He wasn't exactly afraid. He wasn't a stranger to this kind of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, because the streets of Istanbul had had their full share of louts, bullies and worse. None of those, however, had been a Heechee, and a crazy one at that, with whatever street-fighting skills a mad Heechee might possess.
On the plus side for Stan were his considerable advantages of height, reach and weight. He did not think Achiever could do him much physical harm. He even thought that in a hand-to-hand fight he could probably wipe the floor with this son of a bitch ... but then Estrella came out on the balcony, looking wonderingly at Achiever. Stan was less sure that she wouldn't get hurt if there were a fracas.
He decided to be placating. "I take it back. I'm not asking you anything."
The Heechee glanced at Estrella, then ignored her. "Not even about why I hate you so?"
Stan shook his head. "Not even that."
Achiever made a chuffing sound, perhaps an attempt to mimic a human laugh. "Then," he said triumphantly, "shall tell you." He locked his long fingers over the rippling muscles of his belly and began to lecture. "When you two first trespassed, our people naturally concerned that, in recklessness of you, might bring about danger from race of evil creatures we call—"
"The Assassins." Stan nodded. "Sure. We know all about that."
Achiever gave him a loathing look. "Do you so? I do not speak of how this situation is now. I speak of something else, of a place unendurable to live in."
"You mean Gateway, right?"
Achiever unlocked his fingers and flapped his wrists. "You consider yourself wise, but do not know everything," he stated. "You do not know what it was like on the object identified as Vehicle Storage Forty-Three— what you call 'Gateway.' Where I was for very long time. Where I was required to check course records of every spacecraft present, looking if any of their voyages brought in any near where to the Assassins. Are you understanding what I speak?" And then, when both Estrella and Stan nodded: "No! That is not true, for you do not understand how boring is such work, and how horrid the being there! The whole storage asteroid was crawling with your people. The noise! The crowding! The up-and-downing in those foul vertical shafts, holding by ropes! Most of all, the swell!"
He was getting on their nerves. "We don't like the way you smell either," Stan commented.
"How insulting you are, to compare this! You stink of corruption, of excrement, of vile things! But was not the smell alone, foul though it was. Behavior was even worse! They spoke so loudly! They touched so often, sometimes with violence, quite often touching even me! And from this was no escape, ever, for four long years!" The muscles of his face now looked like a serpents' nest. "Let me tell you what was worst of all! There is nothing of privacy on the vessel storage, anywhere. But there was kind of a lake in the shell of the asteroid, and sometimes no human was nearby. I could not always stay there, for then sometimes males and females went there and coupled. Coupled! Physically joined their sexual organs! In spite of fact that females were not in season!"
Estrella frowned at him. "How in the world would you know that?" she asked.
"I do know! Made sure! Observed each those females after coupling. Not one, not a one of them, had baby!"
For Stan the difficulty was trying to keep from laughing out loud, but Estrella was kinder. "I can see that it must have been awful for you," she offered.
"Extremely awful! In manners too repellent for you to guess!"
Estrella's sympathy was strained, but not yet exhausted. "I'm really sorry," she assured him. "What about the people who replaced you? Are they having the same difficulties?"
"They?" Achiever said with contempt. "No! Not in the least! Now live in great comfort, in a habitat external to galactic halo, where they simply watch place of Assassins. Do only that, nothing more. I dislike them very much. Almost as much as I dislike you. I do not know if can stand this intimate interfacing to come, but do know I wish to leave you now."
He didn't say good-bye. He went, all right, but without another word, leaving Estrella and Stan to try to figure out what he had been talking about. "Hell," Stan complained. "Can't any of these people say what they have on their mind, without all this hinting around crap? What is this 'intimate interfacing' he's talking about?"
Estrella didn't answer, although they both knew what the answer had to be: They didn't have a clue.
IV
For the rest of that day they were left to their own devices, giving them plenty of time to debate what Achiever had meant by what he had said— though not, of course, enough time to come to a satisfying answer. They ate again, and watched incomprehensible human newsreels for a while, and finally went to sleep. Separately. Fairly glumly, too, for Stan at least.