"Oh, quite a lot, actually. You know most of the things you were invested in while we were still Outside have kind of evaporated—it's been a long time there. But you got in on a lot of good ones. Like all those Here Afters that are still really pulling in the bucks, and your fleets of spaceships, with all the factories and landing places that go with them; they're doing well, too."
"Fine," Klara said, and dismissed her. "That's all right, then. I'd like to keep a few million for myself, just in case something comes up, but I don't really have much use for all that much money. After all, I don't think I'd be likely to going Outside again."
"Great," said Sigfrid, beaming. "We'll do that. And if Klara's money isn't enough to do the job, why, we can start thinking about something like taxes."
That was nearly the end of the party, as far as decision making was concerned. A moment later Burnish and Thermocline made their excuses and popped out of sight, "to conform these proposals with the will of the Stored Minds," they said—followed by Marc Antony. Sigfrid, however, made no move to leave. He turned toward Stan and Estrella. "Let's talk," he said. "What did you think?"
Stan frowned. "About what just happened? What I think is that we pretty much didn't belong here. What do I know about economics and legislation and all that?"
Sigfrid took the question at face value. "About, I would say, as much as most organic humans do when they're seventeen."
"Almost eighteen," Stan pointed out immediately, but Estrella overrode him.
"I'm twenty-four, Sigfrid," she said, "and I don't know that much, either. Slaughterhouse people didn't go to college."
"True," Sigfrid acknowledged. "You're not in the slaughterhouse anymore, though, are you?"
"I don't see any college campuses around here."
"You don't need a campus, Estrella. All you need is teaching. That can be arranged."
"You mean there are teachers in the Core?"
"Quite a few. More important there are teaching programs on basically every subject you can imagine. Are you interested?"
"I guess so," Stan said, not sounding entirely convinced.
"I'll see you get information," Sigfrid promised. He stood up. "Oh," he added, looking mildly embarrassed. "There's one other thing. I'd like to ask you for a favor."
Stan's guard didn't go up at once. Then he remembered the strange conversation with Achiever and, suddenly suspicious, asked, "Does it have anything to do with that crazy Heechee?"
"It does," von Shrink admitted. "You know, you two have really been a great help with him already. Now I'd like to ask you to do something more." He raised his hand to ward off refusal. "I know how you feel, especially you, Estrella. But you're the only human being he really knows, through the dream machine."
Estrella was already violently shaking her head. "He hates me, Doctor!"
"He did, yes. To a degree he still does. But we want to get him over that, and you can help."
Stan frowned. "What do you want us to do, exactly?"
"Just spend some time with him. Well, quite a lot of time, actually, it would mean seeing him every day for a few weeks—"
"Weeks!" Estrella's voice was shaking. "You don't know what it's like. Remember, I know what rotten feelings he has. I know what he thinks. And I hate it!"
"Yes," von Shrink conceded. "Still—well, I won't press it now. But will you think it over, please?"
They did think it over, quite a lot, and even talked it over, even more. Estrella said the idea just made her whole body quiver.
"Of course," Stan said thoughtfully, "it wouldn't hurt for us to do Sigfrid a favor when he asks for it."
"Please, not that favor. Maybe some other time, but not now, not when I'm just getting used to being happy!"
Which effectively terminated that conversation for Stan. And in bed that night, holding with his hand the hand Estrella had thrown across his chest, Stan was thinking thoughts that seventeen-year-olds seldom think.
They had to do with happiness.
He was thinking about his own situation. Most seventeen-year-olds, he told himself, would not really be very pleased about being lumbered with the care of a child.
But was he?
Surprisingly, the answer seemed to be that he was. In fact, he was, as far as he could tell, quite—well—yes, actually quite frequently and reliably happy.
That was a wholly new feeling for Stan. He could not remember a time since his mother's death when he had felt happiness for more than a few minutes at a time.
But there it was.
II
The sessions with Stork were as fascinating as ever, the glimpses the lookplates gave them of the galaxy Outside were as titillating—though less and less understandable. Even, for both of them, the pleasure of schooling as great.
If Sigfrid von Shrink wanted them educated, Estrella and Stan agreed, they weren't going to say no, even though school wasn't exactly what they had expected. No classroom. No fellow students. No teacher, exactly—not what either of them had meant by the word teacher, anyway. What they got was a cheerful, elderly man—a simulation, of course—who wore a toga and began their first session by saying matter-of-factly, "We're going to talk about economics. What do you think about money? What's the point of having it in the first place?" And when Estrella guessed, "to buy things," and Stan ventured, "so we can get paid for our work," the old fellow smiled and nodded, and asked them why that was better than barter, say, or, come to that, just letting everybody produce what they wanted to produce and take what they wanted to take from the world's general store.
By the time the session was over they had got to the Dutch tulip craze of the seventeenth century, the Great Depressions of the twentieth and twenty-first and half a dozen other financial disasters. Then the teacher pretended to yawn. He glanced at the imaginary watch on his imaginary wrist and said, "That should do it for now. I've tinkered a bit with your lookplates. They'll display more on any subject you like; just say the name of it, and keep going until you've got what you want. Next time, let's talk about history. Till then—" And, nodding a courteous good-bye, he disappeared. His name, he said, was Socrates.
Sure enough, the lookplates did as he promised. When they said "gold standard," the lookplates displayed all kinds of things, from Roman coins clipped to the size of pharmacy pills to bearded, weary men doggedly sluicing wet sand in the Gold Rush of 1849.
When they told Klara about it, she demanded to see some of those things for herself. Hypatia made it happen. They watched empires rise and fall, wars depopulate whole nations. Klara began looking less and less pleased with the plate, as the wars began to multiply. Then, without saying a word, she abruptly left the room and did not return.
Hypatia remained, watching them silently as she lounged on a couch. Stan turned to her. "What's the matter?" he asked.
The shipmind gave a sinuous shrug. "Klara doesn't like wars." She seemed about to leave it at that, then reconsidered. "Have you ever heard of the Crabbers? I suppose not. They were a nonhuman race from the old times that were wiping themselves out with wars when their star went nova and finished the job for them. They were horrid people, a lot like those old monks that murdered the original me. And then, just as she was showing signs of handling that, along came that big tsunami."
"Right," Stan said, pleased to remember. "The one that messed California up."
Hypatia set him straight. "The one that destroyed a lot of places. One of those was Klara's private island."
It was Estrella's turn to remember. "She had some orphans living there, right?"
"She provided a home for a number of children who didn't have one, yes. But that isn't all. Maybe you don't know that Klara really wanted to have a child of her own body. She had ova stored on her island, hoping to find the right man to fertilize them. She didn't. The ova were destroyed with the island." She paused, looking at Estrella. "I think that's why she's so thrilled about your child."