Orbis said, "Sorry. I don't have any of those things. I don't have anything at all. I'm penniless."
The young woman looked crestfallen. "Oh, Mr. McClune," she cried. "What a pity! I'm afraid that, to protect its interests, that means Here After will be forced to entertain offers from third-party bidders."
She wasn't perky anymore. Indeed, the look on her face had become pretty grim, and Orbis didn't like the sound of what she was saying. "What are you talking about?" he demanded. "You think you can sell me to somebody?"
"Oh, no," the young woman conceded. "That would be illegal in nearly all jurisdictions. But that isn't the question, is it? It's the hardware in which your program is stored that is definitely Here After property, and thus, like any other asset, can be sold on the open market." She gave a winsome little shrug. "The fact that your stored mind would follow the hardware is perhaps a little unfortunate for you. But not, of course, the company's problem." She paused, looking him over with an expression of sympathy. "Actually," she confided, "this is the part of the job that I hate, but what can I do?"
"You could turn me off," he said.
She looked shocked. "Oh, no, Mr. McClune! If I did that, then the company's equity would be diminished, and they wouldn't like that." She shook her head. "No, Mr. McClune," she said firmly, "you'll just have to make the best of it. Good heavens! Don't you think you owe Here After a little gratitude? If it wasn't for them you'd be dead."
As time passed—minutes, perhaps, or days or weeks; Orbis McClune had no way of measuring it and nothing to measure it against—McClune began to learn the rules of his new existence. First he learned how to make all his (nonexistent) parts move pretty much as he wanted them to in this nonexistent gigabit space those cursed people at Here After had consigned him to. That meant that when he finished the exercises he could walk and he could talk. He even had people to talk to, or at least people who wanted to talk to him, because it turned out he and the ancient drunk were not the only ones in machine storage. There were scores of others, maybe many more than that. They all had one thing in common, too, he discovered. None of them had the kind of marketable skill that would induce someone to buy up their contracts.
Oh, there were a few inquiries. An elderly man, still organic, had sent a doppel into the eigenspace of Here After's available merchandise to look for a valet. By "valet," it turned out, he meant a body servant whose effectors could bathe, feed and change him, among other duties, because he could no longer do any of those things for himself—and concluded quite soon that Orbis McClune wasn't temperamentally suited for the position. Then there was the woman who never said exactly what she was looking for, but gave Orbis one quick glance, snapped, "Not him," and left.
The one who said he represented a Mr. Santos-Smith didn't seem any more promising. He didn't care to tell anything about who Mr. Santos-Smith was, either. He looked disdainfully around the bare room that was all Orbis had been able to generate for himself—those who lived on the bounty of Here Afters stockholders weren't allowed much profligacy — and rattled off his questions. Did Orbis know how to operate a spacecraft? Could he run a black-hole penetrator? Did he have any technical skills at all? And when all the answers were "no," he snapped his little black briefcast shut and left without another word.
Which made it all the more surprising when, soon after, Mr. Santos-Smith himself showed up. He was slight, sallow and of no particular age at all in appearance, and he said, "Call me Wan. I have one question for you. What do you think of the Heechee?"
That one came out of left field for Orbis. It had been a long time since anyone had encouraged him to say how he felt on that subject. He took a deep breath. "The Heechee," he said, "are the worst thing that ever happened to the human race. They should burn in hell forever. I hate them! I wish every last one of them were dead, and—"
Wan raised his hand. "Enough," he said. "You've got the job."
Orbis frowned. "Doing what?"
"Helping me get back some things that they stole from me. Only for now," he added, his fingers stealing toward a touchpad at his belt, "we don't want to waste energy, do we? So I'm going to turn you off for a while if you don't mind. Or even if you do."
12
Fatherhood
I
The news from Earth was terrible, all right: tens of millions dead, great cities forever erased. It was more than Stan and Estrella could take in right away. Estrella wept. Stan sat stunned and wordless before the look-plate for long minutes before either of them could even talk about it. Then they talked for hours. Over and over. Finding new ways to express the same thoughts of shock and undirected anger and woe.
Then, when Estrella fell asleep, Stan began to remember the other wholly unexpected news, the thing Estrella had told him.
Even overshadowed by what had happened on Earth, that news still shook Stan up. It changed things. He had become pleasantly accustomed to making love as a regular reward for the day's activities, but parenthood had never crossed his mind. ("My God, Strell, didn't you ever take your shots?" "Exactly what shots are you talking about, Stan? In case you didn't know it, virgins don't need contraceptive shots. And that's what I was, a virgin, remember? Anyway, until just before we shipped out I was.")
It was worse, not better, that Estrella's pregnancy was only a possibility. How strong a possibility Stan could not tell, and that was the worst part. Approaching fatherhood he could deal with, if he had to. Childlessness he could deal with too—rather easily, in fact. Uncertainty was tougher.
Estrella was small help. "Certainly there are pregnancy tests, Stan. You don't even need to take a test. If you're sexually active, your toilet checks your pee every time you go to the bathroom. Have you got one of those toilets with you, Stan? No? What a pity."
Stan found a straw to catch at. "But, hey, the Heechee must know how to tell if a person's pregnant, mustn't they?"
She gave him the look of total patience that encodes a state of utter exasperation. "You seem to have missed it, but, Stan, the Heechee are a different species."
He persisted. "How about Dr. von Shrink, then? He ought to know that stuff."
"He isn't even organic, Stan!" But then she thought for a moment, and added reluctantly, "I guess we could ask, anyway. I'll call the, uh, the institute."
And then, when she came back from the lookplates and said, "They say to come over. Dr. von Shrink will meet us there," Stan didn't gloat. He didn't even say, "I told you so," because while she was gone he had gone back to thinking about the other thing he had learned from that damnable dream-machine experience, namely that Estrella thought he was a clumsy lover.
Well, who was she to judge? The only other man she ever did it with was that Gateway bastard—what was his name?—Montefiore. Fat, loud and sloppy—was it possible that Estrella thought he was better at making love than himself?
So deep was Stan in those punishing thoughts that he hardly heard Estrella calling him from the doorway. When he joined her she looked at him with curiosity. "Are you all right?" she asked.
He shrugged morosely. "Why wouldn't I be? Let's go!"
On their way to the place they had decided to call an institute, let the Heechee call it whatever they liked, Stan hadn't forgotten any of those depressing thoughts, but he at least pushed them to the back of his mind.