Pohl, Frederik - Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

But at first It did not look as though I were going anywhere. “Albert,” I said, “you told me that you had worked out a course setting for Heechee Heaven from Gateway records. Can you do that for the Food Factory too?”

The two of them were sitting side by side in the PV tank, Albert puffing on his pipe, Sigfrid, hands clasped and silent, attentively listening. He would not speak until I spoke to him, and I was not doing that. “‘Fraid not,” Albert said apologetically. “We have only one known setting for the Food Factory, Trish Bover’s, and that’s not enough to be sure. Maybe point-six probable that it would get a ship there. But then what, Robin? It couldn’t come back. Or at least Trish Bover’s didn’t.” He settled himself comfortably, and went on, “There are, of course, certain alternatives.” He glanced at Sigfrid von Shrink beside him. “One might so manipulate Herter’s mind by suggestion that he would change his plans.”

“Would that work?” I was still talking to Albert Einstein. He shrugged, and Sigfrid stirred but did not speak.

“Oh, do not be such a baby,” Essie scolded. “Answer, Sigfrid.”

“Gospozha Lavorovna,” he said, glancing at me, “I think not. I believe my colleague has raised this possibility only so that I might dismiss it. I have studied the records of Peter Herter’s transmissions. The symbolism is quite obvious. The angelic women with the raptor beaks-what is a ‘hooked nose’, gospozha? Think of Payter’s childhood, and what he heard of the ‘cleansing’ of the world of the evil Jews. There is also the violence, the punitive emotions. He is quite ill, has in fact already suffered one coronary attack, and is no longer rational; he has, in fact, regressed to quite a childish state. Neither suggestion nor appeals to reason will work, gospozha. The only possibility would be perhaps long-term analysis. He would not likely agree, the shipboard computer could not well handle it and, in any case, there is not time. I cannot help you, gospozha, not with any real chance of success.”

Long and long ago I spent a couple of hundred mostly very unpleasant hours listening to Sigfrid’s reasonable, maddening voice, and I had not wanted ever to hear it again. But, you know, it wasn’t all that bad.

Beside me, Essie stirred, “Polymath,” she called, “have fresh coffee prepared.” To me she said, “I think will be here for some time.”

“I don’t know for what,” I objected. “I seem to be stymied.”

“And if you are,” she said comfortably, “we need not drink the coffee but can go back to bed. Meanwhile am quite enjoying this, Robin.”

Well, why not? I was strangely no more sleepy than Essie appeared to be. In fact, I was both alert and relaxed, and my mind had never been clearer. “Albert,” I said, “is there any progress on reading the Heechee books?”

“Not much, Robin,” he apologized. “There are other mathematical volumes such as the one you saw, but as yet no language-Yes, Robin?”

I snapped my fingers. The vagrant thought that had been in the back of my mind had come to the fore. “Gosh numbers,” I said. “Those numbers the book showed us. They’re the same as the ones the Dead Men call ‘gosh numbers.’”

“Sure thing, Robin,” he nodded. “They are basic dimensionless constants of the universe, or at least of this universe. However, there is the question of Mach’s Principle, which suggests-“

“Not now, Albert! Where do you suppose the Dead Men got them?”

He paused, frowning. Tapping out his pipe, he glanced at Sigfrid before he said, “I would conjecture that the Dead Men interfaced with the Heechee machine intelligence. No doubt there was some transmission both ways.”

“My very thought! What else do you conjecture the Dead Men might know?”

“That is very difficult to say. They are very incompletely stored, you know. Communication was extremely difficult at best and has now been interrupted entirely.”

I sat up straight. “And what if we got back in communication? What if somebody went to Heechee Heaven to talk to them?”

He coughed. Trying not to be patronizing, he said, “Robin, several members of the Herter-Hall party, plus the boy, Wan, have failed to get clear answers from them on these questions. Even our machine intelligence has succeeded only poorly-though,” he said politely enough, “that is primarily because of the necessity to interface with the shipboard computer, Vera. They are poorly stored, Robin. They are obsessive, irrational and often incoherent.”

Behind me Essie was standing with the tray of coffee and cups-I had hardly heard the bell from the kitchen to say it was ready. “Ask him, Robin,” she commanded.

I did not pretend to misunderstand. “Hell,” I said, “all right, Sigfrid. That’s your line of work. How do we trick them into talking to us?”

Sigfrid smiled and unlaced his hands. “It is good to speak to you again, Robin,” he said. “I would like to compliment you on your very considerable progress since we spoke last-“

“Get on with it!”

“Of course, Robin. There is one possibility. The storage of the female prospector, Henrietta, seems rather complete, except for her one obsession, that is, with the unfaithfulness of her husband. I think that if a machine program were written from what we know of her husband’s personality and interfaced with her-“

“Make a fake husband for her?”

“Essentially, yes, Robin,” he nodded. “It wouldn’t have to be exact. Because the Dead Men in general are so poorly stored, any responses that were inappropriate might be overlooked. Of course, the program would be quite-“

“Stow it, Sigfrid. Can you write a program like that?”

“Yes. With help from your wife, yes.”

“And then how do we get it in contact with Henrietta?”

He looked sidewise at Albert. “I believe my colleague can help there.”

“Sure thing, Sigfrid,” Albert said cheerily, scratching one foot with the toe of the other. “One. Write the program, with ancillaries. Two. Read it into a PMAL-2 flip processor, with a gigabit fast-access memory and necessary slave units. Three. Put it in a Five and fire it off to Heechee Heaven. Then interface it with Henrietta and start the interrogation. I’d give that, oh, maybe a point-nine probability of working.”

I frowned. “Why ship all that machinery around?”

Patiently he said, “It’s c, Robin. The speed of light. Lacking an FTL radio, we have to ship the machine to where the job is.”

“The Herter-Hall computer has an FTL radio.”

“Too dumb, Robin. Too slow. And I haven’t told you the worst part. All that hardware is pretty big, you know. It would just about fill a Five. Which means it arrives naked and undefended at Heechee Heaven. And we don’t know who is going to meet it at the dock.”

Essie was sitting beside me again, looking beautiful and concerned, holding a cup of coffee. I took it automatically and swallowed a gulp. “You said ‘just about’,” I pointed out “Does that mean a pilot could go along?”

“‘Fraid not, Robin. There’s only room for about another hundred and fifty kilos.”

“I only weigh half that!” I felt Essie tense beside me. We were getting right down to it, now. I felt more clear-headed and sure of myself than in weeks. The paralysis of inaction was loosening every minute. I was aware of what I was saying, and very conscious of what it meant to Essie-and unwilling to stop.

“That’s true, Robin,” Albert conceded, “but do you want to get there dead? There’s food, water, air. Your round-trip standard allowance, with all provision for regeneration, comes to more than three hundred kilos, and there simply is not-“

“Cut it out, Albert,” I said. “You know as well as I do that we’re not talking about a round trip. We’re talking about, what was it? Twenty-two days. That was flight time for Henrietta. That’s all I need. Enough for twenty-two days. Then I’ll be on Heechee Heaven and it won’t matter.”