"For some time Klara has financed a sort of resettlement program for seriously unhappy women. She pays their expenses to emigrate to the Core, and she's pretty sure she helped an ob-gyny woman not long ago. Her shipmind is checking it out."
"That would be nice of her—them," Stan said, momentarily distracted by the thought of having to pay money to get to the Core.
"She is nice," Estrella told him. "She has kind of let herself go a little -with all her troubles, you can't really blame her—but did you know that she kept me company while Dr. von Shrink was preparing my, uh, procedure?"
"She did," von Shrink confirmed. "And there's something else. I mentioned the fact that you said you were getting tired of Heechee food. So she's invited the two of you for lunch."
Gelle-Klara Moynlin's quarters weren't exactly in the "institute," but they were close. At their door a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman wearing a ruby necklace and a robe that left one shoulder bare was waiting for them. "Welcome," she said, though in a tone that was not particularly welcoming. "I'm Hypatia. Dr. Moynlin is waiting for you on the lanai."
The door behind her opened invitingly. Hypatia hadn't touched a thing, but then, Stan reflected, as an impalpable shipmind she really couldn't. She did step to one side to allow them to enter.
As soon as they were inside they both stopped short, staring. "Chairs," Stan muttered reverently, and Estrella added, "And look, a real table!"
That wasn't all of it, either. The floor was marble-tiled, with deep-pile throw rugs scattered about. There were shelves on the walls, some of them holding pretty little cups and statuettes, others loaded with actual paper-and-ink books. Before an actual fireplace, with actual flames coming out of the giant actual wooden log it held, was a couch big enough for a family—and was even, Stan thought at once, big enough to start one on, and to do so a lot more comfortably than he and Estrella ever had.
Hypatia had been wrong about where her mistress was. Gelle-Klara Moynlin wasn't out on the large, flowered lanai at the end of the room. She was standing by the couch, and she had one of those old-fashioned books in her hand. "Hello again, Estrella," she said. "And you must be Stan."
They shook hands. Her grip was warm and firm, and she gave his hand a little farewell squeeze before releasing it. But there was something wrong with the picture. Stan knew what Gelle-Klara Moynlin looked like, because everybody did. The eyebrows were as they should be, dark and thick, and the features were the ones he had seen in a thousand p-vid stories—Gelle-Klara Moynlin Rescued from Black Hole, Gelle-Klara Moynlin Finances 10,000-Home Low-Cost Housing Development, Gelle-Klara Moynlin Voted Most Famous Woman in Galaxy Sixth Year Running. But this edition of Gelle-Klara Moynlin was older and heavier-set than the pictures, meaning not so much that time had passed as that she had stopped bothering to keep its effects hidden. And, although her face was friendly, it was unmistakably sad.
However, she was making an effort. "Have a seat," she said hospitably, and then, taking note of the way Estrella was peering through the door at the adjacent rooms, "Or would you rather have the tour first?"
Estrella had an immediate response to that. "Tour, please," she said eagerly.
Actually, Stan would have preferred to get right to the promised lunch—the human-food lunch—but when he saw Klara's bathroom (soak tub, jet tub and twelve-head shower that would not leave any external part of any person's anatomy unsprayed) and her dressing room (three-paned mirror above racks of all the scents and powders Klara no longer bothered to use) and, most of all, her bedroom, he almost forgot the promise of lunch. The bed was a four-poster. Though as far as Stan knew Klara had no immediate intention of sharing it with anyone, it was easily large enough to accommodate an orgy.
It all just showed what you could do when you had unlimited funds, he thought, unable to resist a twinge of jealousy.
If Estrella had the same feeling she wasn't showing it. "May I?" she begged, and when Klara nodded consent she hopped up onto the bed at once, bouncing like a little girl.
Klara was actually smiling. "What about you, Stan?" she asked. "Want to give it a trial?"
He shook his head. In fact he did want that, but not with the owner standing there. She studied him for a moment, then surprised him by patting him on the shoulder. "Well, that takes care of the tour, so how about lunch? Only," she added as they turned back toward the room with the tables, "I think I ought to warn you. Hypatia's really a very good cook, but she needs raw materials to work with. Right now she's limited to what the Heechee food services can provide in the way of human foodstuffs, and I'm afraid they haven't quite got the hang of it yet."
II
Klara was right about that. They hadn't. The appointments were fine— crystal stemware, gold knives and forks, gold-rimmed plates, all on a snowy damask tablecloth. The food wasn't. Stan's cheese omelette was rubbery in texture and faintly chemical in taste, and the apple pie dessert had a surprising little tang of sauerkraut. The shipmind had presided while little wheeled servers brought the dishes to them, and then removed herself without explanation. "Hypatia's mortified," Klara whispered to her guests, but to Stan she didn't look as much mortified as just plain mad.
"Still," he told Estrella on the way home, "it makes a change from that Heechee muck."
"And Klara said Hypatia will cook for us whenever we like, all we have to do is call her."
"Nice of her," Stan said, thinking how much nicer that would be if the food were better.
"She is nice. Klara, I mean. She asked me if I wanted to get my face fixed. Said it wouldn't hurt, she'd had a lot bigger work done on herself, one time or another."
Stan asked, "Did you?"
"Do you want me to?"
"Hell, no," Stan said at once, though in fact he hadn't ever considered the possibility. "She's got some damn nerve, talking to you that way."
"Oh, she didn't mean it nasty, Stan. She was being kind. She's really nice, especially when you think of all she's been through," Estrella said, and then she had to tell what all that was. Stan had to agree that it was bad enough for anyone. The same giant wave that depopulated California had erased Klara's private South-Sea island of Raiwea as well. Speedy evacuation had meant that no lives had been lost, but nothing tangible remained of the little community that had been the most important thing in Klara's life. "That's why she's here," Estrella added. "She'd got kind of depressed. Dr. von Shrink said she's even talked about getting machine-stored, only he thinks she doesn't think of it as storage, she thinks of it as death."
"Huh," said Stan; evidently life could have its miseries even when you had unlimited funds to draw on. Then, observing that she was absently frowning, "Is something the matter?"
She shrugged, then said, "Oh, no, hon. Not at all. But did you ever hear of somebody named Wan?"
Stan thought for a minute before he decided. "I don't know. Maybe. Who is he?"
"Well, I don't know that," she admitted. "Only Klara and Dr. von Shrink were talking about him while they were getting ready for the procedure. They didn't seem to like him much." Then she grinned and changed the subject. "So did you want to hear about von Shrink's test?"
"I guess. What was it, peeing in a bottle?"
"Nothing like that." She pursed her lips. "It was a lot easier than that. Did you know that he's just a point, Stan?"
"Who, von Shrink? What do you mean he's just a point?"
"What I said. No dimension at all. After he asked me all his questions, what he did was just sort of focus himself inside me and look around. He saw the embryo, Stan. Our baby! Only of course it doesn't look much like a baby yet."