Pohl, Frederik - Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

“Why don’t you quit?”

“I would if I could! But if I quit, then what? Then he has no one on his side at all. Then what would he do, Mr. Broadhead? Also-“ he shrugged, “he is a very old friend, Mr. Broadhead. He was at school with my father. No. I can’t quit. Also I can’t do what he asks. But perhaps you can. Not by handing over a quarter of a billion dollars, no, because you have never had that kind of money. But you can make him an equal partner with that. I think he would-no. I think he might accept that.”

“But I’ve already-“ I stopped. If Haagenbusch did not know I had already given half my holdings to Bover, I wasn’t going to tell him. “Why wouldn’t I void the contract too?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You might. But I think you would not. You are a symbol to him, Mr. Broadhead, and I believe he would trust you. You see, I think I know what it is he wants from all this. It is to live the way you do, for all that remains of his life.”

He stood up. “I do not expect you to agree to this at once,” he said. “I have perhaps twenty-four hours before I must reply to Mr. Herter. Please think about this, and I will speak to you in one day.”

I shook his hand, and had Harriet order him a taxicart, and stood with him in the driveway until it rolled up and bore him briskly away into the early night.

When I came back into my own room Essie was standing by the window, looking out at the lights on the Tappan Sea. It was suddenly clear to me who her visitors had been this day. At least one had been her hairdresser; that tawny Niagara of hair hung true and even to her waist once more, and when she turned to smile at me it was the same Essie who had left for Arizona, all those long weeks before.

“You were so very long with that little man,” she remarked. “You must be hungry.” She watched me standing there for a moment, and laughed. I suppose that the questions in my mind were written on my face, because she answered them. “One, dinner is ready now. Something light, which we can eat at any time. Two, it is laid out in our room whenever you care to join me there. And, three, yes, Robin, I have Wilma’s assurance that all of this is quite all right. Am much more well than you think, Robin dear.”

“You surely look about as well as a person can get,” I said, and must have been smiling because her pale, perfect eyebrows came down in a frown.

“Are you amused at spectacle of horny wife?” she demanded. “Oh, no! No, it is not that at all,” I said, putting my arms around her. “I was just wondering a moment ago why it was that anybody would want to live the way I do. Now I know.”

Well. We made love tentatively and slowly, and then when I found out she wasn’t going to break we did it again, rougher and rowdier. Then we ate most of the food that was waiting for us on the sideboard, and lounged around and hugged each other until we made love again. After that we just sort of drowsed for a while, spooned together, until Essie commented to the back of my neck, “Pretty impressive performance for old goat, Robin. Not too bad for seventeen-year-old, even.”

I stretched and yawned where I lay, rubbing my back against her belly and breasts. “You sure got well in a hurry,” I commented.

She didn’t answer, just nuzzled my neck with her nose. There is a sort of radar that cannot be seen or heard that tells me true. I lay there for a moment, then disengaged myself and sat up. “Dearest Essie,” I said, “what aren’t you telling me?”

She lay within my arm, face against my ribs. “About what?” she asked innocently.

“Come on, Essie.” When she didn’t answer, I said, “Do I have to get Wilma out of bed to tell me?”

She yawned and sat up. It was a false yawn; when she looked at me her eyes were wide awake. “Wilma is most conservative,” she said, shrugging. “There are some medicines to promote healing, corticosteroids and such, which she did not wish to give me. With them there is some slight risk of consequences many years from now-but by then, no doubt, Full Medical will be able to cope, I am sure. So I insisted. It made her angry.”

“Consequence! You mean leukemia!”

“Yes, perhaps. But most likely not. Certainly not soon.”

I got out of the bed and sat naked on the edge so that I could see her better. “Essie, why?”

She slipped her thumbs under her long hair and pushed it back away horn her face to return my stare. “Because I was in a hurry,” she said. “Because you are, after all, entitled to a well wife. Because it is uncomfortable to pee through a catheter, not to say unesthetic. Because was my decision to make and I made it.” She threw the covers off her and lay back. “Study me, Robin,” she invited. “Not even scars! And inside, under skin, am fully functional. Can eat, digest, excrete, make love, conceive your child if we should wish. Not next spring or maybe next year. Now.”

And it was all true. I could see it for myself. Her long pale body was unmarked-no, not entirely; down her left side was an irregular paler patch of new skin. But you had to look to see it, and there was nothing else at all to show that a few weeks earlier she had been gouged, and mutilated, and in fact dead.

I was getting cold. I stood up to find Essie’s robe for her and put my own on. There was still some coffee on the sideboard, and still hot “For me too,” Essie said as I poured.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“When I am tired,” she said practically, “you will know, because I will roll over and go to sleep. Has been very long time since you and I were like this, Robin. Am enjoying it.”

She accepted a cup from me and looked at me over the rim as she sipped it. “But you are not,” she observed.

“Yes I am!” And I was; but honesty made me add, “I puzzle myself sometimes, Essie. Why is it that when you show me love it comes out in my head feeling like guilt?”

She put down her cup and lay back. “Do you wish to tell me about it, dear Robin?”

“I just have.” Then I added, “I suppose, if anybody, I should call up old Sigfrid von Shrink and tell him.”

“He is always available,” she said.

“Hum. If I start with him God knows when I’d ever finish. Anyway, he’s not the program I want to talk to. There’s so much going on, Essie! And it’s all happening without me. I feel left out.”

“Yes,” she said, “am aware this is how you feel. Is something you wish to do, so will not feel left out any more?”

“Well-maybe,” I said. “About Peter Herter, for instance. I’ve been fooling around with a kind of an idea that I’d like to talk over with Albert Einstein.”

She nodded. “Very well, why not?” She sat up on the edge of the bed.. “Hand me my slippers, please. Let us do this now.”

“Now? But it’s late. You shouldn’t be-“

“Robin,” she said kindly, “I too have talked with Sigfrid von Shrink. Is good program, even if not written by me. Says you are good man, Robin, well adjusted, generous, and to all of this I also can testify, not to add excellent lover and much fun to be with. Come into study.” She took my hand as we walked into the big room looking over the Tappan Sea and sat before my console in the comfortable loveseat. “However,” she went on, “Sigfrid says you have great talent for inventing reasons not to do things. So I will help you get off dime. Daite gorod Polymat.” She was not talking to me, but to the console, which sprang at once into light “Display both Albert and Sigfrid programs,” she ordered. “Access both files in interactive mode. Now, Robin! Let us pursue questions you have raised. After all, I am quite interested too.”

This wife of so many years, this S. Ya. Lavorovna I married, she surprises me most when I least expect it. She sat quite comfortably beside me, holding my hand, while I talked quite openly about doing the things that I had most wanted not to want. It was not just a matter of going to Heechee Heaven and the Food Factory and stopping old Peter Herter from messing up the world. It was where I might go after that