Frederik Pohl - Gateway

She shook her head. “No,” she said, her voice muffled. I could feel her trembling as much as I was. “Get on the phone, Rob. We’ll file for it now. Before we change our minds.”

The next day I quit my job, packed my belongings into the suitcases I had brought them in, and turned them over for safekeeping to Shicky, who looked wistful. Klara quit the school and fired her maid — who looked seriously worried — but didn’t bother about packing. She had quite a lot of money left, Klara did. She prepaid the rent on both her rooms and left everything just the way it was.

We had a farewell party, of course. We went through it without my remembering a single person who was there.

And then, all of a sudden, we were squeezing into the lander, climbing down into the capsule while Sam Kahane methodically checked the settings. We locked ourselves into our cocoons. We started the automatic sequencers.

And then there was a lurch, and a falling, floating sensation before the thrusters cut in, and we were on our way.

“Good morning, Rob,” says Sigfrid, and I stop in the door of the room, suddenly and subliminally worried.

“What’s the matter?”

“There’s nothing the matter, Rob. Come in.”

“You’ve changed things around,” I say accusingly.

“That’s right, Robbie. Do you like the way the room looks?”

I study it. The throw pillows are gone from the floor. The nonobjective paintings are off the wall. Now he’s got a series of holopictures of space scenes, and mountains and seas. The funniest thing of all is Sigfrid himself: he is speaking to me out of a dummy that’s sitting back in a corner of the room, holding a pencil in its hands, looking up at me from behind dark glasses.

“You’ve turned out very camp,” I say. “What’s the reason for all this?”

His voice sounds as though he were smiling benevolently, although there is no change in the expression on the face of the dummy. “I just thought you’d enjoy a change, Rob.”

I take a few steps into the room and stop again. “You took the mat away!”

“Don’t need it, Rob. As you see, there’s a new couch. That’s very traditional, isn’t it?”

He coaxes, “Why don’t you just lie down on it? See how it feels.”

“Um.” But I stretch out on it cautiously. How it feels is strange; and I don’t like it, probably because this particular room represents something serious to me and changing it around makes me nervous. “The mat had straps,” I complain.

“So does the couch, Rob. You can pull them out of the sides. Just feel around… there. Isn’t that better?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I think,” he says softly, “that you should let me decide whether for therapeutic reasons some sort of change is in order, Bob.”

I sit up. “And that’s another thing, Sigfrid! Make up your flicking mind what you’re going to call me. My name isn’t Rob, or Robbie, or Bob. It’s Robinette.”

“I know that, Robbie—”

“You’re doing it again!”

A pause, then, silkily, “I think you should allow me the choice of the form of address I prefer, Robbie.”

“Um.” I have an endless supply of tbose noncommittal nonwords. In would like to conduct the whole session without revealing any more than that. What I want is for Sigfrid to reveal. I want to know why he calls me by different names at different times. I want to know what he finds significant in what I say. I want to know what he really thinks of me… if a clanking piece of tin and plastic can think, I me

Of course, what I know and Sigfrid doesn’t is that my good friend S. Ya. has piece of tin and plastic can think, I mean. practically promised to let me play a little joke on him. I am looking to that a lot.

“Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Rob?” piece of tin and plastic can thinko, I mean.

“No.” piee of tin and plastic can think,

He waits. I am feeling somewhat hostile and noncommunicative. I think part of it is because I am so much looking forward to the time when I can play a litk on Sigfrid, but the other part is because he has changed around piece of tin and plastic can think, I mean. the auditing room. That’s the kind of thing they used to do to me when I had my psychotic episode in Wyoming. Sometimes i’d come in for a session and piece of tin and plastic can think, I mean. they’d have a hologram of my mother, for Christ’s sake. It looked exactly like her, but it didn’t smell like her or feel like her; in fact, you couldn’t feel it at all, it was only light. Sometimes they’d have me come in there in the dark and something warm and cuddly would take me in its arms and whisper to me. I didn’t like that. I was crazy, but I wasn’t that crazy.

Vessel 1-8, Voyage 013D6. Crew F. Ito. piece of tin and plastic can think, I mean.

Transit time 41 days 2 hours. Position not identified. Instrument recordings damaged. piece of tin and plastic can think, I mean. ass=“InsertBlock”> Transcript of crewman’s tape follows: “The planet seems to have a surface gravity in excess of 2.5, but I am going to attempt a landing. Neither visual nor radar scanning penetrates the clouds of dust and vapor. It really is not looking very good, but this is my eleventh launch. I am setting the automatic return for 10 days. If I am not back by then with the lander I think the capsule will return by itself. I wish I knew what the spots and flares on the sun meant.”

Crewman was not aboard when ship returned. No artifacts or samples. Landing vehicle not secured. Vessel damaged.

Sigfrid is still waiting, but I know that he won’t wait forever. Pretty soon he’s going to start asking me questions, probably about my dreams.

“Have you had any dreams since I last saw you, Rob?”

I yawn. The whole subject is very boring. “I don’t think so. Nothing important, I’m sure.”

“I’d like to hear what they were. Even a fragment.”

“You’re a pest, Sigfrid, do you know that?”

“I’m sorry you feel I’m a pest, Rob.”

“Well… I don’t think I can remember even a fragment.”

“Try, please.”

“Oh, cripes. Well.” I get comfortable on the couch. The only dream I can think of is absolutely trivial, and I know there’s nothing in it that relates to anything traumatic or pivotal, but if I told him that he would get angry. So I say obediently, “I was in a car of a long railroad train. There were a number of cars hooked up together, and you could go from one to the other. They were full of people I knew. There was a woman, a sort of motherly type who coughed a lot, and another woman who — well, she looked rather strange. At first I thought she was a man. She was dressed in a sort of utility coverall, so you couldn’t tell from that whether she was male or female, and she had very masculine, bushy eyebrows. But I was sure she was a woman.”

“Did you talk to either of these women, Rob?”

“Please don’t interrupt, Sigfrid, you make me lose my train of thought.”

“I’m sorry, Rob.”

I go on with the dream: “I left them — no, I didn’t talk to them. I went back into the next car. That was the last one on the train. It was coupled to the rest of the train with a sort of — let’s see, I don’t know how to describe it. It was like one of those expanding gatefold things, made out of metal, you know? And it stretched.”

I stop for a moment, mostly out of boredom. I feel like apologizing for having such a dumb, irrelevant dream. “You say the metal connector stretched, Rob?” Sigfrid prompts me.

“That’s right, it stretched. So of course the car I was in kept dropping back, farther and farther behind the others. All I could see was the taillight, which was sort of in the shape of her face, looking at me. She—” I lose the thread of what I am saying. I try to get back on the track: “I guess I felt as though it was going to be difficult to get back to her, as if she- I’m sorry, Sigfrid, I don’t remember clearly what happened around there. Then I woke up. And,” I finish virtuously, “I wrote it all down as soon as I could, just the way you tell me to.”