She was frowning. "Did you see how Salt looked?"
Stan considered. "Well, maybe a little tired...."
"Tired! You don't get that kind of skin color from just being tired, hon. I wonder if she's sick."
"Nah," said Stan, dismissing the question with the complete confidence of absolute ignorance on the subject of Heechee health. "So are we going to do it?"
"Well, why not? But if we are, first we're going to practice. Like now, hon."
It wasn't until that conversation was long over and Stan and Estrella were playing duets on their lanai that Estrella abruptly said, "Oh, my God," and put down her flute.
Stan took his lips away from the mouthpiece of his trumpet. "What's the matter?"
"Stan, I just thought. The way we were looking around Klara's apartment, you know? If we can see into other people's homes any time we want to, do you suppose they can—?"
He blinked at her. "What are you, crazy? Why would they want to look in at us?"
"But suppose they do?"
"They wouldn't!" he said doggedly.
III
Firmly though he had spoken, the question worried at Stan's thoughts until, three or four practice sessions later, Sigfrid von Shrink dropped in. When they put the question to him, it turned out that they not only would, they did. "Heechee have different standards of morality than we do," he told them. "They don't think sexual intercourse has to be private. With them it only happens when the female is in estrus, so it's comparatively infrequent, and sometimes they make a little ceremony out of it."
"Wait one damn minute," Estrella said with determination. "We're not Heechee! Can we turn those cameras off or not?"
"Of course you can, if that's what you want," he said. "They aren't exactly cameras, but I know what you mean. Wait a moment. All right, they're turned off now."
"As easily as that?" Stan demanded.
"Of course. Why not? But you know you'll be depriving your friends of some entertainment."
"They can damn well stay deprived!" Stan said hotly. "We don't make love to entertain them!"
"Not just the making love, Stan. The music practice. The eating. Everything you do, really. Still, I suppose they'll understand if you don't want them watching you, I think. Anyway," he said, forcibly changing the subject, "they've enjoyed listening to you two practicing—well, perhaps 'enjoyed' isn't the right word, because Heechee ideas of music aren't at all like our own, but they found it interesting. So what about what Salt asked you? Would you mind going down to do it at the—ah—institution?"
"Well, sure," Stan said. "We never said we wouldn't."
In the event, their recital was a great success. That is, no one walked out. No one hissed, either, except to the extent that Heechee sometimes did hiss when speaking the language of Do. They performed the Bach transcriptions that Estrella had made up for them, based on duets she had learned in her one scant year at the conservatory; they did some Gershwin and Jelly Roll Morton and a few extracts from Mahler, and when they were through, four or five of the several dozen Heechee in the room politely clapped their hands as they had learned to do in their days Outside. Even the greater number of Heechee who had never been Outside tried to emulate them, though not very successfully. Skinny Heechee palms were not meant for applauding.
Then the little platform the Heechee had provided for them sank back into the floor. They were quickly surrounded by a dozen or more Heechee, Salt leading a pair of elderly males to meet them, Yellow Jade by her side with hand outstretched to shake Stan's hand. "You performed with much excellence," he told them both. "Therefore you were greatly enjoyed by the public as well as by myself and"—he gestured at the two ancients by Salt's side—"my two sons, name of Warm, this one, and Ionic Solvent, this other. Have lately returned from prolonged period Outside. Unfortunately do not speak your language but ask me express pleasure at meeting."
"Delighted," Stan said unconvincingly. "Well, Strell, don't you think we ought to be going?" And then, all the way home after the event, Stan and Estrella were complaining about the bizarre approximations of human food their Heechee hosts, eager to please but imperfectly informed, had laid out for them. About the shocking state of Salt's complexion. And about trying to reconstruct the story of Yellow Jade's astonishing two sons, now old and near enough to death to have come back to the Core to die, and thus enter the Stored Minds. And about the fact that neither of them spoke English, because their seventy-some years of service had been spent on the Jen Hao planet, where English was spoken only by visitors. About the fact that they were triple the age of their father, because Yellow Jade had left them Outside when he returned to the Core. And, anyway, where was Sigfrid?
"He probably had something else to do?" Estrella offered.
"What difference does that make? He's an AI. He's always doing fourteen or fifteen things at once." And then, as they made the last turn before their doorway, "He should've been there." And then their door came in sight and he was.
Sigfrid took his usual immaterial seat, accepted his simulated glass of wine to keep them company, and said, "I really enjoyed the Bach chaconne. I've heard it before, but never better."
Stan looked suspicious. "I didn't see you."
"I didn't show myself, Stan. I didn't want to disturb anyone, but I wouldn't have missed the event. Anyway, the reason I'm here is that I wanted to invite you to a little gathering at Klara's."
"She's back?"
"She will be soon indeed, Estrella. She's very fond of you, you know."
Estrella ventured, "Salt said she went to look at those australo— whatever-you-call-them things."
"Yes, that is true," von Shrink conceded. "There is some concern about them. She went to see if she could help." And, when Stan demanded to know more about those "concerns," Sigfrid only shook his head. "It is nothing that need trouble you. Only some suspicion that the previous owner of the hominids may be planning something unwise. You've heard of him? Wan Santos-Smith? A very unpleasant man, and it seems that some of his people were seen snooping around the Old Ones." He shook his head and repealed, "No doubt Klara will tell you all about it when she returns. Is there anything else?"
Stan debated pressing the issue, decided the chances of getting satisfaction were too slim to pursue and changed the subject. "I noticed Achiever wasn't there either."
"Ah," von Shrink said regretfully, "Achiever. No, he isn't in a position to attend a performance just now. It's a sad story." He looked from one to the other of them, uncharacteristically indecisive. Then he added inquiringly, "I didn't know whether or not you would want to be kept informed—"
"We would," Estrella said briefly.
Von Shrink's simulation sighed and nodded. "I supposed that would be so," he said. "Once you've shared the Dream Machine with someone there's always a kind of bond, isn't there? Anyway, your experience with Achiever had a profound effect on him. As a result, at present he is being nurtured by a group of Stored Minds. That's what they call it, nurturing. It means that he is temporarily placed in storage himself, and the other Stored Minds try to complete his healing. They started that as soon as they learned what was at the basis of his problem—"
He stopped there, apparently willing to let it drop at that point. Estrella wasn't. "Which was?" she demanded. "Come on, Dr. von Shrink. Seeing as I was involved, I have a right to know!"
"I suppose you do, Estrella. It's rather nasty—"
"Tell!" Stan barked.
He sighed again. "Well, when Achiever left the Core, he happened to be in the company of a nubile Heechee female named Breeze. She began to come into estrus as the flight proceeded. Achiever's body reacted to that, of course; any male Heechee's would have. But then at the last moment he was dropped off on Gateway, with no suitable female to be found anywhere. And—" he lowered his voice, though it was no longer possible for anyone to be listening— "he did something quite traumatic. He attempted intercourse with a female human."