What he was doing this time was huddling over a diagnostics screen that was taking in readings from the Kugelblitz. I didn't see him lift his head to glance at me, but he knew I was there all right. He took another few micros before he acknowledged my presence, though. Then he said, "So you screwed up and let him get away."
That was Thor for you, always getting right to the point, never mind whose feelings might be hurt. I stood my ground. "We don't know that. We found his body."
Thor growled, "After he didn't need it anymore. Didn't you talk to the four female organic humans he left behind? They said his 'Dr. Death' machine-stored him and they both took off in a message rocket."
I didn't answer that, since he was right. I had failed to consider the possibility that Wan had stored a torpedo ship on the other side of the mountains. In fact, he was sufficiently right that he didn't bother going on with it, but changed the subject. "Got any idea what you're going to do now?"
"Not really," I said. "Matter of fact, I wanted to talk to you about that."
He did look up at me that time, blinking as though surprised. "Me? Why me, Marc?" But he knew why him, all right. Thor is definitely the most powerful person I know, AI, stored or oganic, and I'm not talking about the firepower he can control. The Board listens when he speaks.
I said, "I thought you might have some ideas for me."
"Ideas?" He said it as though he'd never had an idea in his life, and didn't know how to go about having one. Then he said, "Well, I don't know. Maybe. I've been thinking I need a little more autonomous control for some of the more remote orbiting weapons. Think that might interest you?"
"Not," I said, "in the least." What he was talking about was about as challenging as operating a thermostat. "I want something that's worth doing, and is at least as interesting as my life was before I divided."
"And you want me to provide it for you?" He looked at me the way the five-star general he was choosing to be at that moment might look at some annoying buck private who didn't know he wasn't supposed to bother the great man. "Why should I, Marc?"
"No reason," I said. "I just thought you might. Oh, and by the way. Did you know that Wan Santos-Smith seems to know something about a star-disruptor?" That made him look at me with more interest, so while I had his attention I hit him with the other thing. I pointed at the Kugelblitz on his screen. "Do you know the Kugels can project themselves out of the blitz when they want to?"
He grunted. "Of course I know. Outside of the little clumps of them they use for spying, they can detach clusters of themselves into containment—what they did when they went with you to Arabella."
"Not into containment, Thor. Outside of the containment." And I told him about how Kugel had blasted Wan's armament. I didn't have to tell him how they could do the same with all of his. I didn't have to. When I left him he was busily reconfiguring his whole armament system.
But before I left he did a few things for me. Thor wasn't the easiest friend to have, but he always paid his debts.
So I've got a ship—Thor managed to get it lost from the register of vessels—and I'm on my way.
I wasn't sure it was what I wanted to do when Thor first brought it up, because that forty-thousand-to-one time dilation was a worrier. But Thor pointed out that that was a problem for organic humans, but not for us. I'm within a couple of orders of magnitude as much faster than organic humans as they are than the Core, and I can be in and out of it in a matter of seconds, ten minutes at the most if I want to hang around, and so when we come back no more than a few human-scale days will have passed.
I don't know what I'll find there, but it'll be interesting. Maybe my old friend Breeze? Maybe some new ones. I don't know, but I think I'll give it a try.
10
The Dream Machine
I
The last thing Stan could have expected, on that wholly Heechee planet he had found himself on, was to find another human being knocking at his door. Especially one who claimed to be headshrinker to the legendary Robinette Broadhead.
Still, it took Stan no more than a minute to get over his surprise, Estrella not even that long. Almost at once she was hastening to offer their visitor food, drink, a place to sit down, as flusteredly welcoming as a bride whose husband's mother has just without warning come to call.
Von Shrink refused all the offers. Very politely, and also very definitely. "You see," he explained, "I am not an organic person, or even a material one. I'm a computer simulation. What you see is only an optical image. I can't physically either eat or drink."
Stan grinned. "That's just as well," he said. "I don't think we have anything very drinkable anyway. Actually I'm not all that sure about the food, either, so what can we do for you?"
"A lot, I hope," von Shrink said pleasantly. "But I think I am being inconsiderate. You two are hungry, aren't you?"
Actually, that was precisely the thought in Stan's mind, but it was Estrella who answered. "I guess we are, but I'd be uncomfortable if we were eating and you were just sitting there."
Von Shrink beamed. "That is the easiest problem in the world to solve. You go ahead with your meal while I'm silling—simulated sitting, I mean—and drinking a glass of simulated sherry to keep you company."
Obediently, if still a bit confusedly, Stan and Estrella began picking over the current supply of food packages, while the psychiatrist pulled out of the air a small table, a straightbacked chair, a bottle and a glass. By the time Stan had unwrapped what proved to be a flat, round, green-colored, fishy-flavored sort of a biscuit, von Shrink had rolled a sip of the imaginary wine around his imaginary mouth and was holding the imaginary glass up to the light. "A bit thready," he pronounced, "but decent enough. I suppose you know why I'm here."
Estrella looked at Stan, who shrugged. "Is it about that guy who hates us?"
Von Shrink beamed. "Exactly. I expected you would be clever and I'm pleased to see that you are. Now, have you been told what Achiever was doing when his problem began?"
Stan was frowning. "Achiever?"
"Did no one tell you his name? That's it, Achiever, and he was on a rather important mission."
"He was looking for these Assassins," Estrella said, nodding, "but we don't exactly know who they were."
"She means," Stan corrected, "we know that they killed intelligent races and all, a long time ago, but we don't know why."
Von Shrink studied his glass for a moment.
Then he looked at them with an almost mischievous expression. "Would you like to discuss those Assassins in more detail?" he asked. "You see, I am quite an elderly program now, and I know that often I am quite garrulous. But if you want to—"
Stan shrugged, but Estrella said at once, "Yes, I definitely would."
Von Shrink gave her a warm smile. "Then, as to the question of why the Assassins were, well, Assassins, on so large a scale, I'm not sure I know the answer, either. I'm not sure anyone does. The best guess I have heard is that the Kugels were afraid that other intelligences, particularly organic intelligences, might interfere with their plans, whatever they are."
Stan was getting impatient. "You keep saying these things that we don't know anything about," he complained. "What are Kugels?"
"I'm sorry. Really. You see, the problem is that I know so much that it sometimes is difficult for me to assess just how little organic humans know—oh, confound it," he said, biting his simulated lip, "I've done it again, haven't I? I truly don't mean to demean you in any way. It is a fact that I do know a great deal. I've been around, as an AI, for a very long time, and I've been doing things all that time—"