Pohl, Frederik - Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

That was frightening. Especially as Wan assured them that Tiny Jim had always been the most sensible of the Dead Men. It puzzled Lurvy that she was not more terrified than she was, but there had been so many alarms and terrors that she had become used to them. Her circuits were scrambled, too.

And the messages! In one five-minute burst of clear transmission Paul had recorded fourteen hours of them. Commands from downlink: “Report all control settings shuttle ship. Attempt secure tissue samples Heechee/Old Ones. Freeze and store berryfruit leaves, fruits, stems. Exercise extreme caution.” Half a dozen separate communications from her father; he was lonesome; he didn’t feel well; he was not receiving proper medical attention because they had taken the mobile bioassay unit away; he was being barraged by peremptory orders from Earth. Information messages from Earth: their first reports had been received, analyzed and interpreted for them, and now there were suggestions for follow-up programs beyond counting. They should interrogate Henrietta about her references to cosmological phenomena-Shipboard-Vera was making a hash of it, and Downlink-Vera could not communicate in real time, and old Payter did not know enough astrophysics to ask the right questions, so it was up to them. They should interrogate all the Dead Men on their memories of Gateway and their missions-assuming they remembered anything. They should attempt to find out how living prospectors became stored computer programs. They should-They should do everything. All at once. And almost none of it was possible; tissue samples of the Heechee, forsooth! When an occasional message was clear and personal and undemanding, Lurvy treasured it.

And some of those were surprises. Besides the fan letters from Janine’s pen-pals and the continuing plea for any information they might come across from Trish Bover’s relict, there was one for Lurvy personally, from Robinette Broadhead:

“Dorema, I know you’re being swamped. Your whole mission was important and hazardous to begin with, and now it turns out about a million times more so. All I expect from you is that you do the best you can. I don’t have the authority to override Gateway Corp orders. I can’t change your assigned objectives. But I want you to know I’m on your side. Find out all you can. Try not to get into a spot you can’t retreat from. And I’ll do everything I can to see that you get rewarded as fully and lavishly as you can hope for. I mean it, Lurvy. I give you my word.”

It was a strange message, and oddly touching. It was also a surprise to Lurvy that Broadhead even knew her nickname. They had not exactly been intimates. When she and her family were interviewing for the Food Factory assignment they had met Broadhead several times. But the relationship had been of suppliant and monarch, and there was not much close interpersonal friendship involved. Nor had she particularly liked him. He was candid and amiable enough-high-rolling multimillionaire with an easy-going manner, but sharply on top of every dollar he spent and every development in every project he was involved in. She did not like being a client to a capricious Titan of finance.

And, to be fair, she had come to their meetings with a faint prejudice. She had heard about Robinette Broadhead long before he played any part in her own life. In Lurvy’s own time on the Gateway asteroid and in its ships, she had once gone out in a three-person ship with an elderly woman who had once been shipmate with Gelle-Kiara Moynlim. From the woman Lurvy had heard the story of Broadhead’s last mission, the one that made him a multimillionaire. There was something questionable about it. Nine people had died on that mission. Broadhead was the only survivor. And one of the casualties had been Kiara Moynlin, with whom (the old woman said) Broadhead had been in love. Maybe it was Lurvy’s own experience with a mission in which most of the crew had died that colored her feelings. But they were there.

The curious thing about the Broadhead mission was that maybe “died” was not the right word for the casualties. This Kiara and the rest had been trapped in a black hole, and perhaps they were still there, and perhaps still alive-prisoners of slowed-down time, maybe no more than a few hours older after all the years.

So what was the hidden agenda in Broadhead’s message to Lurvy? Was he urging them on to try to find a way to penetrate Gelle-Kiara Moynlin’s prison? Did he know himself? Lurvy could not tell, but for the first time she thought of their employer as a human being. The thought was touching. It did not make Lurvy feel less afraid, but perhaps a little less alone. When she brought her latest batch of tapes to Paul, in the Dead Men’s room, to record at high speed and transmit when he could, she tarried to put her arms around him and cling, which surprised him very much.

When Janine returned to the Dead Men’s room from an exploration with Wan, something told her to move quietly. She looked in without being heard, and saw her sister and brother-in-law sitting comfortably against a wall, half listening to the maniac chatter of the Dead Men, half chatting desultorily with each other. She turned, put her finger to her lips and led Wan away. “I think they want to be alone,” she explained. “Anyway, I’m tired. Let’s take a break.”

Wan shrugged. They found a convenient spot at an intersection of corridors a few dozen meters away and he settled himself pensively beside the girl. “Are they conjugating?” he asked.

“Cripes, Wan. You’ve only got the one thing on your mind all the time.” But she was not annoyed, and let him move close to her, until one hand approached her breast. “Knock it off,” she said mildly.

He withdrew his hand. “You are being very disturbed, Janine,” he said, pouting.

“Oh, get off my back.” But when he moved millimeters away, she let herself move a little closer again. She was quite content to have him want her and quite serene in believing that when anything happened, as “anything” sooner or later surely would, it would be when she wanted it to happen. Nearly two months with Wan had made her like him, and even trust him, and the rest could wait. She enjoyed his presence.

Even when he was grouchy. “You are not competing properly,” he complained.

“Competing at what, for the Lord’s sake?”

“You should talk to Tiny Jim,” he said severely. “He will teach you better strategies in the reproduction race. He has fully explained the male role to me, so that I am sure I can compete successfully. Of course, yours is different. Basically, your best choice would be to allow me to copulate with you.”

“Yes, you’ve said that. You know what, Wan? You talk too much.”

He was silent for a moment, perplexed. He could not defend himself against that charge. He did not even know why it was a charge. In most of his life the only mode of interaction he had had was talk. He rehearsed all of Tiny Jim’s teachings in his mind, and then his expression cleared. “I see. You want to kiss first,” he said.

“No! I don’t want to kiss ‘first’, and get your knee off my bladder.”

He released her unwillingly. “Janine,” he explained, “close contact is essential to ‘love’. This is true of the lower orders as well as of us. Dogs sniff. Primates groom. Reptiles coil around each other. Even rose shoots nestle close to the mature plant, Tiny Jim says, although he does not believe that is a sexual manifestation. But you will lose the reproductive race if you are not careful, Janine.”

She giggled. “To what? Old dead Henrietta?” But he was scowling and she took pity on him. She sat up and announced, kindly enough, “You’ve got some really wrong ideas, do you know that? The last thing I want, even if we ever do get around to your goddam conjugation, is to get caught in a place like this.”