Frederik Pohl - Gateway

“I mean, I can imagine that if we were Heechee in this ship, instead of the human clods we really are — why, then, we’d know what we were doing. We’d come out here and look around and say, ’Oh, hey, look, our friends here-’ or, you know, whatever it was that was here when they set a course for this place — ’our friends must’ve moved. They’re not home anymore.’ And then we’d say, ’Oh, well, what the hell, let’s see if they’re next door.’ And we’d push this thing here and this one there, and then we’d zap right over to that big blue one—” She paused and looked at him, still holding my arm. “Only we’re not Heechee, Sam.”

“Christ, Klara! I know that. But there has to be a way—”

She nodded. “There sure does, but we don’t know what it is. What we know, Sam, is that no ship ever has changed its course settings and come back to tell about it. Remember that? Not one.”

He didn’t answer her directly; he only stared at the big blue star in the viewscreen and said: “Let’s vote on it.”

The vote, of course, was four to one against changing the settings on the course board, and Ham Tayeh never got from in between Sam and the board until we had passed light-speed on the way home.

The trip back to Gateway was no longer than the trip out, but it seemed like forever.

It feels as if Sigfrid’s air conditioning isn’t working again, but I don’t mention it to him. He will only report that the temperature is exactly 22.50 Celsius, as it always has been, and ask why I express mental pain as being too hot physically. Of that crap I am very tired.

“In fact,” I say out loud, “I am altogether tired of you, Siggy.”

“I’m sorry, Rob. But I would appreciate it if you would tell me a little more about your dream.”

“Oh, shit.” I loosen the restraining straps because they are uncomfortable. This also disconnects some of Sigfrid’s monitoring devices, but for once he doesn’t point that out to me. “It’s a pretty boring dream. We’re in the ship. We come to a planet that stares at me, like it had a human face. I can’t see the eyes very well because of the eyebrows, but somehow or other I know that it’s crying, and it’s my fault.”

“Do you recognize that face, Rob?”

“No idea. Just a face. Female, I think.”

“Do you know what she is crying about?”

“Not really, but I’m responsible for it, whatever it is. I’m sure of that.”

Pause. Then: “Would you mind putting the straps back on, Rob?”

My guard is suddenly up. “What’s the matter,” I sneer bitterly, “do you think I’m going to leap off the pad and assault you?”

“No, Robbie, of course I don’t think that. But I’d be grateful if you would do it.”

I begin to do it, slowly and unwillingly. “What, I wonder, is the gratitude of a computer program worth?”

He does not answer that, just outwaits me. I let him win that and say: “All right, I’m back in the straitjacket, now what are you going to say that’s going to make me need restraint?”

“Why,” he says, “probably nothing like that, Robbie. I just am wondering why you feel responsible for the girl in the planet crying?”

“I wish I knew,” I say, and that’s the truth as I see it.

“I know some reality things you do blame yourself for, Robbie,” he says. “One of them is your mother’s death.”

I agreed. “I suppose so, in some silly way.”

“And I think you feel quite guilty about your lover, Gelle-Klara Moynlin.”

I thrash about a little. “It is fucking hot in here,” I complain.

“Do you feel that either of them actively blamed you?”

“How the fuck would I know?”

“Perhaps you can remember something they said?”

“No, I can’t!” He is getting very personal, and I want to keep this on an objective level, so I say: “I grant that I have a definite tendency toward loading responsibility on myself. It’s a pretty classic pattern, after all, isn’t it? You can find me on page two hundred and seventy-seven of any of the texts.”

He humors me by letting me get impersonal for a moment. “But on the same page, Rob,” he says, “it probably points out that the responsibility is self-inflicted. You do it to yourself, Robbie.”

“No doubt.”

“You don’t have to accept any responsibility you don’t want to.”

“Certainly not. I want to.”

He asks, almost offhandedly, “Can you get any idea of why that is? Why you want to feel that everything that goes wrong is your responsibility?”

“Oh, shit, Sigfrid,” I say in disgust, “your circuits are whacko again. That’s not the way it is at all. It’s more — well, here’s the thing. When I sit down to the feast of life, Sigfrid, I’m so busy planning on how to pick up the check, and wondering what the other people will think of me for paying it, and wondering if I have enough money in my pocket to pay the bill, that I don’t get around to eating.”

He says gently, “I don’t like to encourage these literary excursions of yours, Rob.”

“Sorry about that.” I’m not, really. He is making me mad.

“But to use your own image, Rob, why don’t you listen to what the other people are saying? Maybe they’re saying something nice, or something important, about you.”

I restrain the impulse to throw the straps off, punch his grinning dummy in the face and walk out of that dump forever. He waits, while I stew inside my own head, and finally I burst out: “Listen to them! Sigfrid, you crazy old clanker, I do nothing but listen to them. I want them to say they love me. I even want them to say they hate me, anything, just so they say it to me, from them, out of the heart. I’m so busy listening to the heart that I don’t even hear when somebody asks me to pass the salt.”

Pause. I feel as if I’m going to explode. Then he says admiringly, “You express things very beautifully, Robbie. But what I’d really—”

“Stop it, Sigfrid!” I roar, really angry at last; I kick off the straps and sit up to confront him. “And quit calling me Robbie! You only do that when you think I’m childish, and I’m not being a child now!”

“That’s not entirely cor—”

“I said stop it!” I jump off the mat and grab my handbag. Out of it I take the slip of paper S. Ya. gave me after all those drinks and all that time in bed. “Sigfrid,” I snarl, “I’ve taken a lot from you. Now it’s my turn!”

We dropped into normal space and felt the lander jets engage. The ship spun, and Gateway drifted diagonally down across the viewscreen, lumpy pear-shaped blob of charcoal and blue glitter. The four of us just sat there and waited, nearly an hour it took, until we felt the grinding jar that meant we had docked.

Klara sighed. Ham slowly began to unstrap himself from his sling. Dred stared absorbedly at the viewscreen, although it was not showing anything more interesting than Sirius and Orion. It occurred to me, looking at the three others in the capsule, that we were going to be as unpleasant a sight to the boarding crews as some of the scarier returnees had been for me in that long-ago, previous time when I had been a fresh fish on Gateway. I touched my nose tenderly. It hurt a great deal, and above all it stank. Internally, right next to my own sense of smell, where there was no way I could get away from it.

We heard the hatches open as the boarding crew entered, and then heard their startled voices in two or three languages as they saw Sam Kahane where we had put him in the lander. Klara stirred. “Might as well get off,” she murmured to no one, and started toward the hatch, now overhead again.

Dr. Asmenion . You all ought to know what a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram looks like. If you find yourself in a globular cluster, or anywhere where there’s a compact mass of stars, it’s worth plotting an H-R for that group. Also keep your eye out for unusual spectral classes. You won’t get a nickel for F’s, G’s or K’s; we’ve got all the readings on them you could want. But if you happen to find yourself orbiting a white dwarf or a very late red giant, make all the tape you’ve got. Also O’s and B’s are worth investigating. Even if they’re not your primary. But if you happen to be in close orbit in an armored Five around a good bright O, that ought to be worth a couple hundred thousand at least, if you bring back the data.