One of the penalties of being rich and famous is that a lot of people invite you to be their guests, and almost all of them expect to be invited back. Hosting is not one of my skills. Essie, on the other hand, really likes it, so over the years we worked out a good way to handle guests. It's very simple. I hang around them as long as I am enjoying it-that can be several hours, sometimes five minutes. Then I disappear to my study and leave the hosting to Essie. I am particularly likely to do this when, for any reason, there is tension among the guests. It works fine-for me.

But then it stops working sometimes, and then I'm stuck. This was one of the times. I couldn't leave them to Essie, because Essie was busy. I didn't want to leave them alone, because we had already done that for a goodish long period. And of tension there was plenty. So there I was, trying to remember how to be gracious when I didn't have a fallback position: "Would you like a drink?" I asked jovially. "Something to eat? There are some good programs to watch, if Essie hasn't killed the circuits so she can deal with Albert-"

Janie Yee-xing interrupted me with a question. "Where are we going, Mr. Broadhead?"

"Well," I said, beaming-jovial; good host; try to make the guests feel at ease, even when they ask you a perfectly good question that you haven't thought of an answer for because you've been thinking about a lot of more urgent things. "I guess the question is, where would you like to go? I mean, it looks like there's no point in chasing after the sailship."

"No," Yee-xing agreed.

"Then I suppose it's up to you. I didn't think you'd want to stay in the guardhouse-" reminding them that I'd done them all a favor, after all.

"No," Yee-xing said again.

"Back to the Earth, then? We could drop you at one of the loop points. Or Gateway, if you like. Or-let's see, Audee, you're from Venus in the first place, right? Do you want to go back there?"

It was Walthers' turn to say, "No." He left it at that. I thought it was very inconsiderate of my guests to give me nothing but negatives when I was trying to be hospitable to them.

Dolly Walthers bailed me out. She raised her right hand, and it had one of those hand puppets pf hers on it, the one that was supposed to look like a Heechee. "The trouble is, Mr. Broadhead," she said, not moving her lips, in a syrupy, snaky kind of voice, "none of us have any place much to go to."

Since that was obviously true, n.o.body seemed to have anything to say to it. Then Audee stood up. "I'll take that drink now, Broadhead," he growled. "Dolly? Janie?"

It was obviously the best idea any of us had had in some time. We all agreed, like guests arriving too early at a party, finding something to do so we would not obviously be doing nothing.

There were things to do, to be sure, and the biggest of them in my mind was not to be cordial to my company. That biggest thing wasn't even trying to a.s.similate the fact that we had (perhaps) seen an actual, operating Heechee vessel with Heechee inside it. It was my gut again. The doctors said I could lead a normal life. They hadn't said anything about one as abnormal as this, so I was feeling my age and frailty. I was glad to take my gin and water and sit down, next to the make-believe fireplace with its make-believe flames, and wait for someone else to carry the ball.

Which turned out to be Audee Walthers. "Broadhead, I appreciate your getting us out of stir, and I know you've got things of your own to do. I suppose the best thing is for you to set all three of us down in the handiest place you can find and go about your business."

"Well, there are lots of places, Audee. Isn't there one you'd like better than another?"

"What I would like," he said, "-what I think we would all like, is to have a chance to figure out what we want to do by ourselves. I guess you've noticed we've got some personal problems that need to get worked out." That is not the kind of statement you want to agree to, and I certainly couldn't deny it, so I just smiled. "So what we need is a chance to get off by ourselves and talk about them."

"Ah," I said, nodding. "I guess we didn't give you enough time, when Essie and I left you alone?"

"You left us alone. Your friend Albert didn't."

"Albert?" It had never occurred to me that he would present himself to guests, especially without being invited.

"All the time, Broadhead," said Walthers bitterly. "Sitting right where you are now. Asking Dolly a million questions."

I shook my head and held out my gla.s.s for a refill. It probably wasn't a good idea, but I didn't have any ideas that I thought were good. When I was young and my mother was dying-because she couldn't afford medical care for both of us, guilt, guilt, guilt, and decided to get it for me- there was a time when she didn't recognize me, didn't remember my name, talked to me as though I were her boss or the landlord or some guy she'd dated before she married my father. A bad scene. It was almost worse to have her that way than to know she was dying: a solid figure crumbling before my eyes.

The way Albert was crumbling now.

"What kind of questions did he ask?" I asked, looking at Dolly.

"Oh, about Wan," she said, fiddling with the hand puppets but speaking with her own voice-though still without moving her lips much. "About where he was going, what he was doing. Mostly he wanted me to show him all the objects Wan was interested in on the charts."

"Show me," I said.

"I can't run that thing," she said peevishly, but Janie Yee-xing got up and was at the controls before she finished talking. She touched the display board, frowned, punched out a combination, scowled, and turned back to the rest of us.

"Mrs. Broadhead must have locked it when she took your pilot out of the circuit," she said.

"Anyway," said Dolly, "it was all black holes, one kind or another."

"I thought there only was one kind," I said, and she shrugged. We were all cl.u.s.tered around the control seat, looking up at the viewplate, which was showing nothing but stars. "d.a.m.n him," I said.

And from behind us Albert's voice said frostily, "I am sorry if I have inconvenienced you, Robin."

We all turned like the figures in one of those old German town clocks. He was sitting on the edge of the seat I had just vacated, studying us. He looked different. Younger. Less self-a.s.sured. He was turning a cigar in his hands-cigar, not the pipe-and his expression was somber. "I thought Essie was working on you," I said-I am sure-irritably.

"She has finished, Robin. She is coming now, in fact. I think it is fair for me to say that she found nothing wrong-isn't that right, Mrs. Broadhead?"

Essie came in the door and stopped there. Her fists were on her hips, her eyes fastened on Albert. She didn't even look at me.

"Is right, program," she declared gloomily. "Have found no programming error."

"I am glad to hear that, Mrs. Broadhead."

"Do not be glad! Fact remains, you are one screwed-up program. So tell me, intelligent program with no fault in programming, what is next step?"

The hologram actually licked its lips nervously. "Why," said Albert hesitantly, "I would suppose you might want to check the hardware."

"Precisely," said Essie as she reached to pull his datafan out of its socket. I could swear I saw a fleeting expression of panic on Albert's face, the look of a man going under the anesthetic for major surgery. Then it disappeared with the rest of him. "Go on talking," she ordered over her shoulder, putting a loupe in her eye and beginning to scan the surface of the fan.

But what was there to talk about? We watched while she studied every corrugation of the fan. We drifted after her when, scowling, she took the fan to her workroom, and watched silently while she touched the fan with calipers and probes, plugged it in a test socket, pressed b.u.t.tons, turned verniers, read results off the scales. I stood there rubbing my belly, which had begun to be unpleasant to me again, and Audee whispered, "What's she looking for?" But I didn't know. A nick, a scratch, corrosion, anything, and whatever it was she didn't find it.

She stood up, sighing. "Is nothing there," she said.

"That's good," I offered.

"That's good," she agreed, "because if was anything serious I could not fix here. But is also bad, Robin, because is obvious that b.u.g.g.e.ry program is all bugged to h.e.l.l. Has taught me lesson in humility, this."

Dolly offered, "Are you sure he's busted, Mrs. Broadhead? While you were in the other room he seemed coherent enough. A little peculiar, maybe."

"Peculiar! Dolly-lady, all the time I check him you know what he's talking about? Mach's Hypothesis. Missing ma.s.s. Black holes blacker than regular black holes. Would need to be a real Albert Einstein to understand-hey! What's that? Was talking to you?"

And when she had heard confirmation from the others she sat with her lips compressed in thought for some time. Then she shook herself "Oh, h.e.l.l," she said dismally, "is no good to try to guess at problem. Is only one person who knows what is wrong with Albert, and that is Albert himself."

"And what if Albert won't tell you?" I asked.

"Is wrong question," she said, plugging in the fan. "Proper question is 'What if Albert can't?'"

He looked all right-almost all right, anyway. He sat fumbling with his cigar in his favorite chair-which was also my own favorite seat, but at that moment I was not disposed to argue it with him. "Now, Albert," she said, her tone kindly but firm, "you know you are screwed up, correct?"

"A little aberrant, I think, yes," he said apologetically.

"Aberrant as all h.e.l.l, I think! Well, now here is what we do, Albert. First we ask you some simple factual questions-not about motivations, not about hard theoretical stuff! Only questions that can be resolved by objective facts. You understand?"

"Certainly I understand, Mrs. Broadhead."

"Right. First. Understand you were chatting with guests while Robin and I were in Captain's Chambers."

"That is correct, Mrs. Broadhead."

She pursed her lips. "Strikes me as unusual behavior, no? You were questioning them. Please tell us what questions were and your answers."

Albert shifted position uneasily. "Mostly I was interested in the objects Wan was investigating, Mrs. Broadhead. Mrs. Walthers was good enough to pick them out for me on the charts." He pointed at the display, and when we looked at it, sure enough, it was showing a series of charts, one after another. "If you look at them carefully," said Albert, pointing with his unsmoked cigar, "you will see that there is a definite progression. His first targets were simple black holes, which are indicated on the Heechee charts by these marks like fishhooks. Those are danger signs in the Heechee cartography."

"How you know this?" Essie demanded, and then: "No, purge that question. I a.s.sume you have good reason for this a.s.sumption."

"I do, Mrs. Broadhead. I have not been entirely forthcoming with you in this respect."

"Ha! Are getting somewhere! Now continue."

"Yes, Mrs. Broadhead. The simple black holes each had two check marks. Then Wan investigated a naked singularity-a nonrotating black hole, in fact the one that Robin himself had such a terrible experience with many years ago. It was there that he found Gelle-Klara Moynlin." The image flickered, then showed the naked blue ghost star before returning to the chart. "This one has three fishhooks, meaning more danger. And finally"-wave of the hand, the picture altering to show a different section of the Heechee chart-"this is the one Mrs. Walthers identified for me as the one Wan was heading for next."

"I didn't say that!" Dolly objected.

"No, Mrs. Walthers," Albert agreed, "but you did say that he looked at it frequently, that he discussed it with his Dead Men, and that it terrified him. I believe that it is the one he is aiming at."

"Very fine," applauded Essie. "Have pa.s.sed first test admirably, Albert. Now will proceed with second part, without, this time, partic.i.p.ation from audience," she added, .glancing at Dolly.

"I'm at your service, Mrs. Broadhead."

"To be sure you are. Now. Factual questions. What is meant by term missing ma.s.s?"

Albert looked uneasy, but he responded promptly enough. "The so-called missing ma.s.s is that quant.i.ty of ma.s.s which would account for various galactic orbits, but has never been observed."

"Excellent! Now, what is Mach's Hypothesis?"

He licked his lips. "I am not really comfortable with speculative discussions about quantum mechanics, Mrs. Broadhead. I have difficulty believing that G.o.d plays dice with the universe."

"Have not asked for belief! Keep to rules, Albert. Am only asking for definition of widely used technical term."

He sighed and shifted position. "Very well, Mrs. Broadhead, but allow me to put it in tangible terms. There is reason to believe that some sort of very large-scale tampering is going on with the expansion-contraction cycle of the universe. The expansion is being reversed. The contraction is being made to proceed, it would appear, to a single point-the same as before the Big Bang."

"And what was that?" Essie demanded.

He shuffled his feet. "I really am getting quite nervous, Mrs. Broadhead," he complained.

"But you can answer the question-in terms of what is generally believed."

"At what point, Mrs. Broadhead? What is believed now? What was believed, let us say, before the days of Hawking and those other quantum people? There is one definite statement about the universe at its very beginning, but it is a religious one."

"Albert," said Essie warningly.

He grinned weakly. "I was only going to quote St. Augustine of Hippo," he said. "When he was asked what G.o.d was doing before He created the universe, he replied that He was creating h.e.l.l for people who asked that question."

"Albert!"

"Oh, very well," he said irritably. "Yes. It is thought that prior to some very early time-no later than the fraction one over 10" of a second before it-relativity can no longer account for the physics of the universe and some sort of 'quantum correction' must be made. I am getting quite tired of this schoolboy quiz, Mrs. Broadhead."

I have not often seen Essie shocked. "Albert!" she cried again, in a quite different tone. Not warning. Astonished, and disconcerted.

"Yes, Albert," he said savagely, "that is who you created and who I am. Let us stop this, please. Have the goodness to listen. I do not know what happens before the Big Bang! I only know that there is someone somewhere who thinks he does know and can control it. This frightens me very much, Mrs. Broadhead."

"Frightens'?" gasped Essie. "Who has programmed to be 'frightened' in you, Albert?"

"You have, Mrs. Broadhead. I can't live with that. And I do not wish to discuss it further."

And he winked out.

He didn't have to do that. He could have spared our feelings. He could have pretended to exit through a door, or disappeared when we were looking the other way. He didn't do either of those things. He just vanished. It was just as though he were a truly real human being in just such a spat, finishing it off by flouncing out and slamming the door in anger. He was too angry to be careful of appearances.

"Is not supposed to lose temper," said Essie dismally.

But he had; and the shock of that was not nearly as great as the shock that came when we discovered that the viewscreen still would not respond to its controls, and neither would the piloting board.

Albert had locked them both. We were heading at a steady acceleration toward we did not know what.

20 Unwanted Encounter

The phone was ringing in Wan's ship. Well, it was not really a phone, and it certainly wasn't ringing; but there was the signal to show that someone was directing a message to the ship on the FTL radio. "Off!" shouted Wan, waking up indignantly from his sleep. "I will speak to no one!" And then, somewhat more awake, he looked not only angry but puzzled. "It has been turned off," he said, staring at the FTL radio, and the look on his face went the rest of the way across the spectrum to fear.

What makes Wan less than loathsome to me, I think, is that ulcer of fear that ate away at him always. Heaven knows he was a brute. He was surly; he was a thief he cared for nothing but himself. But that only means that he was what we all once were, but we are socialized out of it by parents and playmates and school and police. No one had ever socialized Wan, and so he was still a child. "I will speak to no one!" he shouted, and woke Klara.

I can see Klara as she was then, since now I can see so much that was hidden. She was tired, she was irritable, and she had had all of Wan any person could be expected to stand. "You might as well answer it," she said, and Wan glared at her as though she were insane.

"Answer? Of course I shall not answer! It is only at most some interfering bureaucrat to complain that I have not followed the exact proper procedures-"

"To complain that you stole the ship," she corrected mildly, and crossed to the FFL radio. "How do you answer it?" she asked.

"Do not be foolish!" he howled. "Wait! Stop! What are you doing?"

"Is it this lever?" she asked, and his yell was answer enough. He leaped across the tiny cabin, but she was larger than he and stronger. She fended him off. The signal chirp stopped; the golden light went off; and Wan, suddenly relaxing, laughed out loud.

"Ho, what a fool you are! There is no one there," he cried.

But he was wrong. There was a hissing sound for a moment, then recognizable words-almost recognizable, at least. A shrill and queerly stressed voice said: "I fill to you no harrum."

For Klara to understand what had been said took considerable thought, and then when she had understood it, it did not achieve its desired effect. Was it what it sounded like? Some stranger, with a terrible hissing speech impediment, trying to say "I will do you no harm"? And why would he say that? To be rea.s.sured that you are not in danger at a time when you had no reason to think you were is not rea.s.suring.

Wan was scowling. "What is it?" he cried sharply, beginning to sweat. "Who is there? What do you want?"