The Boy Who Would Live Forever

I

The last thing Stan could have expected, on that wholly Heechee planet he had found himself on, was to find another human being knocking at his door. Especially one who claimed to be headshrinker to the legendary Robinette Broadhead.

Still, it took Stan no more than a minute to get over his surprise, Estrella not even that long. Almost at once she was hastening to offer their visitor food, drink, a place to sit down, as flusteredly welcoming as a bride whose husband's mother has just without warning come to call.

Von Shrink refused all the offers. Very politely, and also very definitely. "You see," he explained, "I am not an organic person, or even a material one. I'm a computer simulation. What you see is only an optical image. I can't physically either eat or drink."

Stan grinned. "That's just as well," he said. "I don't think we have anything very drinkable anyway. Actually I'm not all that sure about the food, either, so what can we do for you?"

"A lot, I hope," von Shrink said pleasantly. "But I think I am being inconsiderate. You two are hungry, aren't you?"

Actually, that was precisely the thought in Stan's mind, but it was Estrella who answered. "I guess we are, but I'd be uncomfortable if we were eating and you were just sitting there."

Von Shrink beamed. "That is the easiest problem in the world to solve. You go ahead with your meal while I'm silling—simulated sitting, I mean—and drinking a glass of simulated sherry to keep you company."

Obediently, if still a bit confusedly, Stan and Estrella began picking over the current supply of food packages, while the psychiatrist pulled out of the air a small table, a straightbacked chair, a bottle and a glass. By the time Stan had unwrapped what proved to be a flat, round, green-colored, fishy-flavored sort of a biscuit, von Shrink had rolled a sip of the imaginary wine around his imaginary mouth and was holding the imaginary glass up to the light. "A bit thready," he pronounced, "but decent enough. I suppose you know why I'm here."

Estrella looked at Stan, who shrugged. "Is it about that guy who hates us?"

Von Shrink beamed. "Exactly. I expected you would be clever and I'm pleased to see that you are. Now, have you been told what Achiever was doing when his problem began?"

Stan was frowning. "Achiever?"

"Did no one tell you his name? That's it, Achiever, and he was on a rather important mission."

"He was looking for these Assassins," Estrella said, nodding, "but we don't exactly know who they were."

"She means," Stan corrected, "we know that they killed intelligent races and all, a long time ago, but we don't know why."

Von Shrink studied his glass for a moment.

Then he looked at them with an almost mischievous expression. "Would you like to discuss those Assassins in more detail?" he asked. "You see, I am quite an elderly program now, and I know that often I am quite garrulous. But if you want to—"

Stan shrugged, but Estrella said at once, "Yes, I definitely would."

Von Shrink gave her a warm smile. "Then, as to the question of why the Assassins were, well, Assassins, on so large a scale, I'm not sure I know the answer, either. I'm not sure anyone does. The best guess I have heard is that the Kugels were afraid that other intelligences, particularly organic intelligences, might interfere with their plans, whatever they are."

Stan was getting impatient. "You keep saying these things that we don't know anything about," he complained. "What are Kugels?"

"I'm sorry. Really. You see, the problem is that I know so much that it sometimes is difficult for me to assess just how little organic humans know—oh, confound it," he said, biting his simulated lip, "I've done it again, haven't I? I truly don't mean to demean you in any way. It is a fact that I do know a great deal. I've been around, as an AI, for a very long time, and I've been doing things all that time—"

Stan's impatience was mounting. "Kugels," he reminded. "What the hell are Kugels?"

"I keep on doing it, do I not?" von Shrink said remorsefully. "Let me try to clarify what I have been saying. The reason we call the individual particles of the Assassins Kugels is that they exist in what is known as a Kugelblitz. What is a Kugelblitz? It is the name given to a black hole whose contents are energy, rather than matter. You see, that is what the Assassins are. They are energy creatures, and long ago, before the Heechee retreated to their Core, where we now are...."

Von Shrink didn't start at the beginning, exactly, but close enough to try Stan's patience. But, as Estrella seemed to be hanging on every word, he kept his peace. He ate while he listened, one bizarre combination of textures and flavors after another as he heard one weird story after another of races slaughtered and Heechee deciding to retreat to the Core. He kept on listening long after he had finished eating and the two of them had picked up all the crumbs and wrappers and put them in the disposer— they still listening, and the nonexistent (but nevertheless a person, and not only that but a person who possessed the gift of dominating a conversation) Sigfrid von Shrink still talking.

It was all interesting enough. All the same, Stan was not sorry when their doorbell growled. "Excuse me," he said, glad enough to get off that padded, but still far from comfortable, Heechee perch. Surprisingly, though, Estrella had listened attentively throughout and still wanted more. "One thing, Dr. von Shrink," she said. "These Assassins? Are they still around? Should we be worrying about them?"

Stan tarried for the answer, but it took a moment to come. "As to your first question," von Shrink said at last, "yes, they are still around, in their Kugelblitz. As to your second—well, they are being watched very carefully in a large wheel-shaped space station built for that purpose. But yes, perhaps we do need to worry—not much, perhaps, but a bit. Now should we not answer your door?"

Von Shrink himself led the way through the connecting rooms to the outside door. Where he waited politely for Stan to open it.

There was no one there. Whoever had rung the bell had already gone away, but not without leaving a curious object behind. The thing was constructed of woven strands of blue-gleaming Heechee metal and was roughly, it seemed to Stan, the size of a coffin. He had no idea of its use or provenance.

Sigfrid von Shrink, however, clearly did. "Stan, Estrella," he said, sounding almost remorseful, "this is the device I have been waiting for, and now I must confess that I have not been candid with you. The reason I am here is that I am going to ask a favor of you, and it has to do with this device. Which," he added, "we'd better carry inside, shouldn't we? Estrella? Could you give us a hand here, please?"

That turned out to mean that Estrella took one end of the thing while Stan took the other. Sigfrid von Shrink, being impalpable, was therefore of no use in any kind of heavy lifting. He led the way, though.

Fortunately the thing was lighter than it looked. Von Shrink stopped near the exit to the balcony. "You can set it down here," he said, smiling. "Now, if you'll just lift the top section off—they're hinged, you see—yes, that's fine." He bent to examine it at close range. The thing had opened into a pair of woven metal shells, each with a woven metal lid. For a moment Stan wondered if this might be the Heechee version of a double bed.

He was pretty sure it wasn't when von Shrink straightened up and said, "It looks like it's in working order. By any chance, do either of you recognize this? No? Well, I didn't expect you would but—I'm not quite sure how old you are—do either of you remember those times when everybody in the world seemed to go crazy for a little while?"

"Sure," Stan said, and Estrella chimed in:

"The crazy times, yes. They were very bad on the ranch, but they stopped when we were on Gateway. What people said was that they were caused by some orphan kid, using a Heechee dream machine kind of thing. I think the kid's name was something like Wan?"

"Exactly like Wan," von Shrink agreed. "That indeed was his name, and he's still around, too, and still causing trouble. But Wan is not the subject of our present concerns. Since you remember that much, you will understand when I tell you that this thing is a version of what you called a dream machine, technically known as a 'telempathic psychokinetic transceiver.' This particular model, however, isn't capable of causing that sort of widespread trouble. Its range is too short. What the Heechee use this for is to prevent antisocial behavior." He patted it, or gave the impression of patting it, almost affectionately. "The way it works, if the two of you were to get into the two sides of it and it were properly activated, each of you would at once feel everything the other was feeling. You see? You would even know things the other had in his subconscious but wasn't himself consciously aware of."

Stan had been looking puzzled and feeling a tad resentful of this lecturing, but now his interest was piqued. "Really?" he asked. "You mean, like even things that Strell didn't know about herself?"

But Estrella, who had been thinking along the same lines, frowned. "I'm not sure I'd want the whole world listening in like that."

"Of course not, my dear," von Shrink soothed. "It wouldn't happen that way. Wan's machine in the Oort cloud was broadcasting to the whole solar system. This one is a closed circuit for just the two of you. Or rather," he said, sounding a bit uneasy, "for one of you and someone else. You see, I'd like to try using it to see if it could help Achiever."

The expression on Estrella's face was mostly of surprise, with a touch of worry. Stan's was more like anger and affront. "You mean jump in that thing with that lunatic?" he demanded.

Von Shrink sighed. "I know it is rather a lot to ask of you," he said. "Opening your mind to a nonhuman, and a rather troubled one, at that." He paused for a moment, congitating. Then he said, "You'll certainly want to talk it over before you give me an answer, won't you? So I'll leave you for a bit. Well," he added honestly, "not for that reason alone. I don't think you can have any idea how stressful it is for a machine intelligence like myself to try to carry on real-time conversations with organics like the two of you. The processing rates are so different, you see, and I do have certain other—ah—concerns which need attending to." For a moment Stan thought he was going to tell what those other concerns were, but he didn't. He simply added, "So I'll run a few errands, and then I'll be back to talk to you after Achiever gets here. Good-bye for now," he finished, and walked out of the room.

For someone who had never been flesh and blood himself he was certainly good at simulating it, Stan thought. A moment later he and Estrella heard the sssshhhh of the outer door opening and closing. Whether it had actually done so, or whether that was simply more simulating for the sake of enhancing the illusion that von Shrink was physically real Stan could not say.

In any case, he was gone. But the problem he had left them remained.

II

After Sigfrid von Shrink left, Stan and Estrella sat wordless on their perches. It wasn't that they had nothing to say. They had too much, and didn't know where to begin.

Stan was the one to make a start. "That son of a hitch," he announced, "has some nerve! Where does he get off, coming in here and asking me to swap minds with that nutcase?"

Estrella didn't answer, exactly, except to say, "He's a nice man, Stan."

"Well, hell! Everybody's nice when they're trying to talk you into something!"

"I don't mean like that." She hesitated before adding, "I mean, like the first time he saw me he didn't look shocked, or give me that gee-what-a-pity look, or anything like that."

Stan was puzzled until he noticed that Estrella was fingering her left cheekbone. "Oh," he said awkwardly. "Well—" And ran out of things to say at that point, because, in fact, he had just about forgotten that there was anything odd about Estrella's eyes. He fidgeted and hemmed and hawed, and said at last, "Hell, Strell, nobody cares about that, do they?"

The look she gave him was both fond and sad. Then she dismissed the subject. "Let's talk about this other business."

They did talk. Talked and talked, and kept on talking, and never did come to any satisfactory conclusion. Perhaps that was because there wasn't one. Stan summed it all up by saying rebelliously, "I just hate the idea of anybody else getting inside my head."

"I know, hon," Estrella told him, touching his shoulder with affection. "The thing is, we owe them, don't we? Bringing us here, giving us a place to live and all that?" Stan shrugged, and Estrella covered a little yawn. "I'm going to take a lie-down," she told him. "We can talk more later if you want."

She kissed the top of his head in passing, but then she had definitely passed, without any invitation to join her in word, look or gesture.

It occurred to Stan that his, uh, his possl-Q, as someone had once in his hearing called it, meaning "Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters"—that his beloved, to put it in another way, and actually a way that he was still trying to get used to—that Estrella, to subsume all those things in a single name, sure was sleeping a lot lately. With as much wisdom as he had to bring to bear on the subject, Stan told himself that she was probably getting her period. It was a useful theory to Stan, since it might also account for her recent changeableness. Indeed, it was the kind of theory that spared Stan from having to try to guess reasons for those elements of female behavior which he had no hope of understanding.

Which seemed to be most of them.

In the course of these ruminations Stan had strolled out onto the lanai again. As before, those lovely meadows, woods and mica-topped hills were spread out before him. Which gave him an idea. He had been wanting to walk around down there, and why not now?

The first problem was the corkscrew ramp that had brought them to the apartment. He discovered at once that there was nothing conceptually challenging about it, just a lot of walking downhill until there was a door marked "exit." It didn't display that word in English, of course. What it showed was a squiggly, blue-lit arrow that Stan took to mean the same thing, and did.

Before him lay a wide and beautiful expanse—just like in Alice in Wonderland, he told himself, inhaling the warm, spicy air. There was a spring in his step that wasn't only due to the fact that this planet's gravity was almost ten percent less than Earth normal. Being there felt good. Underfoot a springy green and violet grass cushioned his step. All around him in the air were faint clouds of pinkish fluff, like the seed-carriers of cottonwood trees that he had read of on Earth, but had never seen. In the distant sky, away from the hilltops, were the remains of a dissipating rainbow.

It was, he agreed with himself, about the nicest place he had ever been in. Would have been nicer still, of course, if Estrella were strolling it with him. He would have liked pointing out to each other the leathery little bugs that peered out from clumps of the grass. Or the perky little flowers, that when he bent to see if they had a fragrance—

"Jesus," he said, rapidly straightening, because several of those pretty blooms had begun nibbling his hand.

It wasn't just that Estrella would have made this good thing even better by her presence. The long and short of it was she was just good to be around on any occasion. It occurred to Stan to wonder if he was in love with her. He had no reliable data on what being "in love" was like, and could only suppose that it was possible.

Which led him to ask the reciprocal question: Was Estrella in love with him?

The more Stan thought about it, the less sure he was of the answer. Why should she be? He wasn't protecting her from dangers, or solving life's recurring problems for her—if anything, Estrella was better at dealing with the world than he. He wasn't particularly good-looking. (Well, if that mattered, with those eyes, neither was she.) And he had to admit that he was certainly terribly young for her to take seriously—a mere teenager to her quite grown-up twenty-three. Or four. Or even more, because Estrella had never mentioned her exact age. That was quite a difference, even without considering the fact that, generally speaking, the man was supposed to be older than the girl.

Displeased by his thoughts, Stan kicked at one of the scurrying bugs and missed. He dropped to his knees, then rolled over onto his side. He stretched out on the warm turf, making sure that none of the carnivorous blossoms was nearby; he pillowed his head on his arm and closed his eyes.

He didn't know that he dozed, only that he was awakened by hard Heechee fingers shaking his shoulder.

Eyes open, he saw an unfamiliar face—Heechee, male, young, looking either angry or amused. The stranger was holding a sort of crystalline daisy in his free hand. He put it to Stan's ear, and it spoke to him: "Stan person! We search for you! Please immediately come. Achiever here already. Doctor Shrink soon to arrive. Request you here quickly, please." And then, as an afterthought, "This person speaking is Salt. Thank you. I thank you very much."

Achiever was there, all right, prowling critically around their rooms. So were two female Heechee, Salt and one Stan didn't recognize, and Estrella. Who took Stan's hand fondly enough to blur the memory of his recent worries and introduced him to the new female. "This is Delete," she said, and Salt chimed in:

"Old friend, Stan person. Also person of major skill in device's operation. Fortunately has excellent use of languages of your species as well."

Stan realized the new female was extending a bony hand to be shaken. "Glad to meet you," he said automatically, then winced as he felt Delete's grip. She didn't let go of his hand as, looking him straight in the eye, she addressed him:

"You were not present for briefing," she said. "Therefore I must repeat essence of it. First, operation of—I do not have the words—of communicating machine of wishes and fears will cause no long-lasting harm. This is known to be so from much experience, even of your species, with previous models. Second, interspecies use of same has not been attempted previously in this form, so possibility exists the first point does not apply. Third, in any case we proceed with procedure now."

That brought Estrella up short. "Hey! What's the hurry? Isn't Dr. von Shrink supposed to be here?"

"That is true," Salt agreed. "Is not known why he is not. In most cases he had been exhibiting promptness."

"Will surely present self quite soon," Delete informed them. "After which can make use of device in order to benefit"—she gave Achiever a cold glance—"this person here who possesses quite bad potential."

Achiever, who had been picking things up and setting them down again without paving any detectable attention to the others in the room, stopped long enough to give Delete a noticeably unpleasant look. Without taking his eyes off her he addressed Stan and Estrella: "Meaning of this wicked witch's statement is that I will no longer do undesirable things, do you understand her?"

"Maybe not," Stan said. "What kind of undesirable things?"

Achiever turned that baleful look on Stan. "I give you example. You wear garment. I like same garment. You go away and leave me with garment, I take garment and wear it, you not having given permission for same."

Delete made an attempt at a sardonic human laugh very like Achiever's own. "It was not the mere wearing of garments in your personally individual case, is that not so?" she asked.

Achiever returned his glare to her. "Why ask this question? Have firm opinion of your Tightness already, is not this so?"

"Require you to confirm," Delete went on remorselessly. "Impropriety was not garment-linked. Linkage of impropriety was to living female of human species. Confirm or deny!"

Achiever was silent for a long moment before responding. "I do not do either," he declared, and turned back to Stan. "What is your thinking, Stan?" he demanded. "Do we then to share our deeply held secrets without further chattering?"

In truth, Stan hadn't quite made his mind up about that. He didn't answer. The Heechee gave a belly-shrug. "Then why should we not proceed with the project? These two are trained assistants, quite capable of substituting for nonexistent human, are they not? Therefore join me, then." And he got into the machine.

Stan stared at the other half of the device, then turned to Estrella, a wry smile on his face.

"Wish me luck," he said.

But then, as he lifted one foot to climb in, someone spoke in his ear. No one was in sight, but he recognized the voice of Sigfrid von Shrink.

"Not you, Stan. Estrella."

When Stan turned around, the psychiatrist was there—in animated simulation at least. "I do apologize for keeping you waiting," he said. "It was because of some troubling events that have to do with finances and construction of living space, and other matters. A number of persons in the Core are concerned over these matters and I was in conference with several of them—organics, you see. So of course that took a ridiculous quantity of time—no offense," he added hastily. Then he turned toward the dream machine, where Achiever was sullenly looking up at them. "Things appear in order, but we should get on with this. Estrella? If you will take your place again, please? And now I will just close the cover...."

III

Actually the two of them weren't in the shell that long, though Stan might not have agreed. For him, fretfully waiting, it was a whole lot longer than he wanted it to be.

Stan thought of eating, but not alone; he thought of sleeping, but it was impossible to go to sleep while Estrella was experiencing what he could only, but didn't want to, imagine. He settled for another session before the lookplate.

He was getting better at it. Quickly the screen began displaying scenes of Earthly events, with menus running down the side of the picture to suggest trails to follow. There were many trails. Too many trails, often keyed with the names of individuals Stan had never heard of—Elwon van Jasse, Marjorie Abbot, Rebecca Shapiro, a hundred others—or subject matters about which Stan knew little and cared less. What did stock price on the all-Europe exchange matter to him? Or the plan to dig an irrigation canal from the Mediterranean Sea to the Qattara Depression, thus turning part of the Sahara into beachfront property? He caught at a reference to his former hometown, but when he followed it up it had to do only with forthcoming elections to Istanbul's city council. Among the thousand names that offered themselves for his attention he spotted one he had heard of—Wan, a.k.a. a long string of names that Stan definitely had not previously heard of, but definitely the kid who had loosed the Wrath of God on the human race; but when he checked it out it was only a police report saying that the man, no longer a kid, was wanted for a variety of offenses.

He was desultorily checking the state of buffalo herds on the grazing areas of the American West, in case Estrella might be interested, when there was a sort of metallic scratching sound behind him. "Estrella?" he said, turning hopefully around.

It wasn't Estrella. It was the unpleasant Heechee male, Achiever. Evidently he had let himself out of the wicker-work coffin and broken off the—what would you call it? The electronic communion between Estrella and himself?

Achiever didn't look happy. The ropy muscles of his face were working like a nest of serpents. He gave one quick nod to Stan, spoke two words— "extremely horrible!"—and left the apartment, closing the door behind him.

Apparently the ordeal was over. A moment later Stan heard the twittering of the two Heechee females, and got to the doorway of the room in time to see them helping Estrella out of her side of the gadget.

She looked not only tired but worrisomely sad, Stan thought. Next to the dream machine Sigfrid von Shrink stood, gazing down at her with an expression of concern. No more concern than Stan felt, of course; he hurried toward them.

Von Shrink quickly interposed himself, intangible but forbidding. "Estrella is quite well, Stan," he said, "but you can't talk to her until I have interviewed her. Wait outside, please. And don't worry."

IV

Easy to say, impossible to do. Stan did go outside, all right, but to refrain from worrying was impossible.

What, he asked himself plaintively, if von Shrink were wrong? Or lying to him, and something really was the matter with Estrella? What if she died? He felt a chill in his heart as he contemplated the possibility of an ongoing life without Estrella ... without the companionship of another human in this world of alien freaks ... without the sex. He looked at the doorway he had just passed through, and couldn't resist approaching it, trying to listen to what was going on inside.

It didn't work. He could hear a faint, breathy sound that he thought might be whispering, but he couldn't make out the words.

Then the two Heechee females came out, looked at him curiously, bade him polite good-byes and left. That was it. Unsurprisingly—Stan had lost the capacity to be surprised at any new development, as long as it was unpleasant—he was kept waiting outside the dream-machine room longer than the whole time Estrella had been in the capsule. That was not a good thing. After trying the lookplate again, finding no more of interest than before, he had nothing to do.

That gave him plenty of time to build up anger against—well, against everybody concerned, but against von Shrink most of all: von Shrink, the one who was keeping Estrella from him.

Then, when anger had worn itself out, it was time for worry about countless unpleasing what-ifs. What if this mind-machine thing had changed Estrella's feelings for him to something colder and worse? What if these sessions in the coffin had to happen again, and maybe more than just once again—wouldn't that inevitably change Estrella's feelings about the person who wasn't allowed to share them with her? What if—

Stan felt physically unwell then. That was the worst what-if of all, the sickening possibility that this foul Heechee invention, the one that, back in Stan's Istanbul days, had driven the whole human race crazy every few weeks, might have done some real damage to Estrella. Made her insane. Killed her, even. And then there he was again, repeating all those horrid thoughts about how he would be left alone, as alone as any person could ever be, the only real human being on this planet of alien creatures, inside this vast black hole, shut off by space and by what were rapidly becoming decades and centuries of time from every other person he had ever in his life known.

That was when Estrella showed up in the doorway.

She wasn't dead at all or even insane; maybe (he thought) a little more tired-looking than the last time he had seen her but apparently well enough.

"Stan?" she said. "I need something to eat. But first, could you hold me for a minute, please?"

She felt fine, she said, swallowing the last of a crunchy, pink-striped, lemon-yellow square of Heechee food. Well, yes, she was a little tired. That was all. No, the things the machine did to you didn't hurt. Exactly.

Then what was being in it like, exactly?

When Stan asked that she sighed a great, deep sigh. They were sitting side-by-side on one of the Heechee bedding rolls; she screwed up her face unhappily.

"Sigfrid kept asking me that," she said, sounding apologetic. "I tried to tell him, but I don't think I ever got it exactly right. Part of it was this feeling that I was this really awful smelly, bloated cow of a person. That was because that was what some Heechee thought human beings were like, Sigfrid said. Maybe all of them, only maybe most of them were too polite to show it. Another part of it was that there were all these bad, really awful feelings that were coming out of Achiever. I don't mean just anger and unhappiness, although there were plenty of those. The worst of them was what Achiever felt about himself. I couldn't make much sense of that, Stan. I mean, I don't know why he felt that way. But there sure were some powerful bad feelings inside his head.... And then, you know, there was this other thing. The thing about me suddenly being part of somebody else, and I just don't know how to tell you what that was like."

She was silent for a moment, and Stan took the opportunity. "Strell? What did you mean about being a cow?"

She seemed reluctant. "It's kind of embarrassing. Sometimes I was this fat parade-balloon kind of woman, with breasts as big as basketballs. I was naked. My skin was all purple, and—"

"Wait a minute. You said purple. Were you dreaming in color?"

"It wasn't a dream. But, yes, it was all in color—and touch and smell, too. That's not the worst, though. Sometimes I was fat, but not all that fat, and that was because I wasn't human anymore. I was a Heechee, Stan."

He gaped at her. She nodded. "I know. But that's the way it was. I was a female Heechee, complete with that square head and bald skull and all. That part was really bad, Stan. I was scared half to death."

He hugged her, thinking. Then he had to ask the question. "Strell? How could you tell?"

She turned her head to look up at him. "Tell what?"

"That these women were actually all supposed to be you?"

"Oh. Well, I knew," she said, reaching up to touch the cheekbone that the buffalo had stepped on. "You know, my eyes were always this way in the dream. Stan? Now let's talk about something else, please?"

That was all she would say. Every question after that she answered with, "I don't know," or shook her head and didn't answer at all. She kept on not knowing, no matter how he phrased the questions, until finally she begged him to give it up. "I'm getting tired, Stan," she said plaintively. "Maybe we could go to sleep now."

"I guess," he said absently, and then he nosed into the side of her throat. In a different tone he said, "Do you know what I'd like to do?"

Estrella didn't exactly draw away, but she did stiffen a little. "Honey, I'm sorry. I just don't feel like it."

"Not that," he said. "The other thing."

Then she saw that he was looking at the dream machine. She let go of him completely then, sitting up straight. "I don't think we ought to."

"Why not?"

To answer that question Estrella had a hundred good reasons to offer. It might be dangerous. They might break something. Von Shrink might be angry. It might not even work without von Shrink or one of the Heechee females in attendance. But none of the reasons could prevail against Stan's jealous desire to experience what Estrella had experienced, and in the long run none of them mattered.

"Oh, hell," she said at last, "all right, then. Why not? But don't blame me if we get in a lot of trouble."

V

What was being in the dream machine like?

Stan couldn't answer that question for himself even while it was going on—which wasn't for very long; Estrella put a stop to it after no more than a minute, flinging the lid off her half of the device and climbing out, sobbing.

Then what had it been like, as close as Stan could fit words to it. Like the most vivid and disturbing kind of dream. Like opening someone else's private mail, filled with the most disturbing kind of secrets. Like finding that the one person in the universe you knew best was really someone you hardly knew at all.

What it was not at all like was that terrible Wrath of God that he remembered from long ago in Istanbul. In some ways it was worse. At least that horrible sick yearning that had invaded everyone's mind in those old days had had nothing to do with Stan personally. This one, though, was a whole other matter entirely. It wounded him with blows he had never seen coming. "Estrella?" he said, having just made up his mind to say nothing about it. "Tell me the truth, now. When we make love—I mean, honestly, Strell, am I really all that, you know, like, I mean, clumsy and, well, selfish?"

She wailed, "I told you we shouldn't do it!"

"Yes, but—"

"Yes, but what about me? I can't help the way I look, can I? I'm sorry I'm so ugly!"

"I never said—" he began indignantly, and then shut up. Whether he had ever said it or not was irrelevant. You could deny things you had actually said, or apologize for them. But the idle thoughts that might— sometimes—cross your mind were something else. Either they were there or they weren't there. How could you deny feelings that you hadn't even known you had?

And why the hell had he ever wanted to do this damn stupid thing?

He hugged Estrella to him. The best thing they could do was to never talk about it again, he resolved. A resolution he kept for more than a minute, though not as much as two, while they held each other and agreed that neither of them could be held responsible for things they didn't really mean, because Stan was not only very satisfying, mostly, but definitely the only lover Estrella ever wanted, and Estrella was dear to Stan in all her parts and there was not one single thing he would want changed.

Then he couldn't help himself. "Strell? There was one funny thing—"

"I'm glad you think it was funny!" But she had stopped sobbing.

"No, I mean, I didn't understand it. There was this feeling that you were protecting something, that you didn't want anybody to know— something you were hiding."

She lifted her head and gave him a long look. Then she sighed and said, "I guess I should tell you. It's just that I wasn't absolutely sure, and I didn't know how you'd feel about it, and—"

"Strell! About what?"

She opened her mouth to answer, then looked away. There were noises from outside the apartment, faint but definite. "What's that?" she asked.

"Strell! Tell me!"

"Well," she said, "the thing is, I think I might be pregnant."

Which is precisely when the door-thing blared its summons. Stan went to answer, staring back over his shoulder at the source of this incredible news ... only to find that when he opened it the two female Heechee were there, talking over each other to give him more incredible news still. "It is a bad thing we come to tell you," Salt said mournfully, while Delete added:

"It concerns your home planet. It could not be helped."

And Salt: "No, it could not. Although if our people had had more time—if they had studied the relevant geology with appropriate care—"

Delete made the negative belly-twitch. "No! Not even then, I think. We could not have helped, probably. It would have happened in any case, I believe."

Estrella had reached her limit. "What the hell are you two talking about? What would have happened?"

"The event," Salt explained. "The recent disastrous occurrence which has caused the dying of so many of your speciesmates. It could not have been averted, I believe, so that all we can do now is condole. Which we do with great sincerity."