The Annals of the Heechee

22 AND NOT ENDINGS

When I was a three-year-old child in Wyoming, I was not discouraged from believing in Santa Claus. My mother never said to me that Santa Claus was real, but she wouldn’t tell me that he wasn’t, either.

In all my long life since there has never been a question that I wanted answered more badly than I did that question then. I pondered it seriously, especially toward the last half of the month of December. I was burning to know. I could not wait to grow up-at least as far as, say, the teensbecause when I was that old, I believed, I would be wise enough to know the answer to that question for sure.

When I was an adolescent sickie in the nut wards of the hospital at the Food Mines, the doctors told me I would eventually get well. I would be able to deal with my fears and confusions. I would be selfconfident, sure of myself-at least enough so, they promised, that I could hold a job, or anyway cross a street by myself I couldn’t wait for that, either.

When I was a shit-scared prospector on Gateway—When I was a horrified survivor of the mission to a black hole. When I was a sobbing mass of jelly on Sigfrid von Shrink’s analysis couch—When I was all those things, I promised myself that, sooner or later, the time would come when I would be wiser and more sure. When I was thirty, I thought that might come at fifty. When I was fifty, I was positive it would happen by sixty-five or so. When I was seventy, I thought that, well, at least when I died there would be, anyway, some sort of final resolution of all the worries and uncertainties and doubts.

And then when I was older than I had ever thought possible (not to mention deader), with all the world’s data available to me why, I had the doubts and worries still.

Then Albert came back from the Foe, with all the knowledge they had given him, and offered to share it with me; and now what I want to know is how much older can I grow without feeling grown up at last? And how much more can I learn without being wise?

At least I know now why I have trouble with endings; it’s because there isn’t any end to endlessness. People like me don’t have ends. We don’t have to.

The Galaxy is our Wrinkle Rock, and the reunion party goes on forever. We have changes. We have interludes when we do something else for a while, maybe even a very long while. We have ends to conversations, but each end is a beginning of a new one, and the beginnings never stop, because that is what “eternity” means.

I can tell you about some of the ends (which were also beginnings), as, for example, Albert’s conversation with Essie. “I apologize to you, Mrs. Broadhead,” he said, “because I know it must have been upsetting for you to find a program of your own writing not responsive.”

“Damn true,” she said indignantly.

“But, you see, I’m no longer just your program. Part of me is now contributed by the others.”

“Others?”

“What you’ve been calling the Foe,” he explained. “What the Heechee called the Assassins. They are certainly not Assassins, or at least—”

“Oh?” Essie interrupted. “Can convince Sluggards of this? Not to mention any other races benign creatures who are not Assassins may have wiped out?”

“Mrs. Broadhead,” he said gently, “what I was about to say was that they were not Assassins on purpose. The Sluggards were made of matter. It was not within the experience of we-of these Others, that is to say, to suspect that bound protons and electrons could possibly produce intelligence. Consider, please. Suppose your grandfather had discovered that one of his primitive computers was doing something that might, potentially, at some time in the future have interfered with his own plans. What would he have done?”

“Smash it up,” Essie agreed. “Grandfather had one hellish short temper.”

“He would not, I am sure—” Albert smiled “—have considered that a machine intelligence might have-what can I call it? Soul? At any rate, what we machine intelligences have. So-the others-’smashed them up,’ as you put it. It was no problem for them; they observed that most matter creatures enjoyed destruction, so they simply encouraged them to do so to each other.”

I put in, “Are you saying that the Assassins love us now?”

“That is not one of their terms,” Albert said politely. “And, actually, you-myself included, I’m afraid-are rather rudimentary creatures by comparison. But when it was discovered, in a routine check, that there were machine-stored intelligences on the Watch Wheel, an investigation was ordered.” He smiled again. “You passed the test. So they do not wish to be Foe to you, they only wish that no one do anything to interfere with their plan-and,” he added seriously, “I do urge, Robin, that you do your best to see that no one does.”

“You mean their plan to make the universe go back to where it started?”

“The plan to make a better one,” Albert corrected.

“Ha,” said Essie, shaking her head. “Better for them, you mean.”

“I mean better for all of us.” Albert smiled. “Because by the time the expansion stops and the failback begins, we will all be like they are. We almost are already, you know-those of us who are machine-stored, at least. That’s why they were able to communicate with me.”

“Holy smoke,” whispered my dear wife, Essie.

And I can tell you about his conversation with Julio Cassata:

“You know, of course,” Albert said to him conversationally, “that weapons can never harm the others.”

“The Foe! And that’s what we’re going to find out, Einstein!”

Albert puffed gravely on his pipe. He shook his head. “Don’t you know why you must fail yet? Your very best hope is to find some way of destroying the kugelblitz that the Watch Wheel was set up to guard, just outside our own Galaxy. Tell me, General Cassata, do you have any reason at all to believe that our Galaxy is in any way special?”

“It’s got us in it!” Cassata barked.

“Yes,” Albert agreed, “it uniquely has us. But what makes you think it uniquely has the Foe? Do you suppose that our Galaxy is special?”

“Oh, Jesus, Albert,” Cassata began, “if you’re trying to tell me what I think you’re trying to tell me—”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you, General Cassata. The others were not concerned about a single galaxy. It is the whole universe that they are planning to rebuild! A universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies, about almost all of which we know nothing at all.”

“Yes, of course,” he said desperately, “but we know they’re here because we know they’ve intervened in this galaxy.”

“That,” said Albert somberly, “is how we can be certain that they are not just here. You can’t possibly believe that only our Galaxy is capable of evolving intelligent life. Any galaxy could! Perhaps even gas clouds in intergalactic space could! If the others were intent on keeping organic intelligence from interfering with their project, they would surely be wise enough to cover all the bases.”

“So even if we could wipe the kugelblitz out—”

“You can’t. But if you could,” said Albert, “it would be like swatting one tsetse fly and thinking that encephalitis was wiped out forever.”

He puffed smoke in silence for a while, looking at Julio Cassata. Then he smiled. “That’s the bad news,” he said. “The good news is that you’re out of a job.”

“Out of a-?”

“Unemployed, yes.” Albert nodded. “There is of course no further need for the Joint Assassin Watch Service. Which implies that it can no longer give orders. Which implies that you need not return to be terminated. Which implies that you are quite at liberty to remain in your present state indefinitely, like the rest of us.”

Cassata’s eyes went wide. “Oh, wow,” he said, looking at Alicia Lo.

And I can tell you about Albert’s conversation with Alicia Lo:

“I’m sorry if I was cryptic, Ms. Lo,” he began, “but when the others studied you on our flight to the Watch Wheel—”

“Dr. Einstein! I didn’t know there were F—were others with us on that flight!”

He smiled. “Neither did I at the time, though of course I realize I should have presumed it. They were there. They’re here now, in my program; they’re anywhere they want to be, Ms. Lo, and I suppose they will be for the indefinite future, since we are very interesting to them. You more than the rest of us.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because you were a volunteer,” Albert explained. “I had no choice; I was created as a computer program, and that’s all I ever was. Robinette died. Machine storage was his only remaining option. Both General Cassata and Mrs. Broadhead were doppels of living persons-but you-why, you chose machine storage! You abandoned your material body deliberately.”

“Just because my material body was sick, and fairly ugly, and—”

“Because you perceived that machine storage was better,” Albert said, nodding. “And the others found that quite reassuring, since it is better, and they have little doubt that long before the question becomes critical, all the rest of the human and Heechee races will follow your example.”

Alicia Lo looked at Julio Cassata. She said the same thing he had said: “Wow!”

And I can tell you about Albert’s conversation with me-or at least about one last part of it. It was an ending that was also a beginning, because he had something for me. “I do regret that I couldn’t attend to your questions when you wanted me to, Robin,” he said, “but it wasn’t possible while I was learning.”

I said forgivingly, “I suppose it took a long time to learn everything they know.”

“Everything! Oh, Robin, I learned next to nothing. Do you have any idea how old they are? And how much they’ve learned? No,” he said, shaking his head, “I didn’t learn the whole history of their race or how to go about causing a universe to fall back on itself. In fact, I didn’t learn any of those practical things at all.”

“Hell,” I said, “why not?”

“I didn’t ask,” he said simply.

I thought that over. I said, “Well, I suppose when the time is ripe, they’ll have all sorts of things to tell us—”

“I doubt that very much,” Albert said. “Why should they? Would you try to teach space navigation to a cat? Maybe some day, when everyone has progressed to the next stage of evolution—”

“You mean like you?”

“I mean like us, Robin,” he said gently. “When all the humans and Heechee who are alive decide to be more alive, and permanently alive—as we are-then maybe there’ll be a chance to carry on a real dialogue . . . But for the next few million years, I think they’ll just leave us alone-if we leave them alone.”

I shuddered. “That,” I said, “I will certainly be happy to do.”

“I’m glad,” said Albert.

There was something about his voice that made me turn and look at him. It wasn’t Albert’s voice anymore. It was another voice, one that I had heard before. And it wasn’t Albert speaking to me anymore.

It was Someone quite different. “After all,” He added, smiling, “the others are My children, too.”

So maybe I never will reach that wonderful time of wisdom and maturity when I know the answers to all the questions that continue to worry at me.

But maybe just to go on asking them is enough.