The Boy Who Would Live Forever

I

The news from Earth was terrible, all right: tens of millions dead, great cities forever erased. It was more than Stan and Estrella could take in right away. Estrella wept. Stan sat stunned and wordless before the look-plate for long minutes before either of them could even talk about it. Then they talked for hours. Over and over. Finding new ways to express the same thoughts of shock and undirected anger and woe.

Then, when Estrella fell asleep, Stan began to remember the other wholly unexpected news, the thing Estrella had told him.

Even overshadowed by what had happened on Earth, that news still shook Stan up. It changed things. He had become pleasantly accustomed to making love as a regular reward for the day's activities, but parenthood had never crossed his mind. ("My God, Strell, didn't you ever take your shots?" "Exactly what shots are you talking about, Stan? In case you didn't know it, virgins don't need contraceptive shots. And that's what I was, a virgin, remember? Anyway, until just before we shipped out I was.")

It was worse, not better, that Estrella's pregnancy was only a possibility. How strong a possibility Stan could not tell, and that was the worst part. Approaching fatherhood he could deal with, if he had to. Childlessness he could deal with too—rather easily, in fact. Uncertainty was tougher.

Estrella was small help. "Certainly there are pregnancy tests, Stan. You don't even need to take a test. If you're sexually active, your toilet checks your pee every time you go to the bathroom. Have you got one of those toilets with you, Stan? No? What a pity."

Stan found a straw to catch at. "But, hey, the Heechee must know how to tell if a person's pregnant, mustn't they?"

She gave him the look of total patience that encodes a state of utter exasperation. "You seem to have missed it, but, Stan, the Heechee are a different species."

He persisted. "How about Dr. von Shrink, then? He ought to know that stuff."

"He isn't even organic, Stan!" But then she thought for a moment, and added reluctantly, "I guess we could ask, anyway. I'll call the, uh, the institute."

And then, when she came back from the lookplates and said, "They say to come over. Dr. von Shrink will meet us there," Stan didn't gloat. He didn't even say, "I told you so," because while she was gone he had gone back to thinking about the other thing he had learned from that damnable dream-machine experience, namely that Estrella thought he was a clumsy lover.

Well, who was she to judge? The only other man she ever did it with was that Gateway bastard—what was his name?—Montefiore. Fat, loud and sloppy—was it possible that Estrella thought he was better at making love than himself?

So deep was Stan in those punishing thoughts that he hardly heard Estrella calling him from the doorway. When he joined her she looked at him with curiosity. "Are you all right?" she asked.

He shrugged morosely. "Why wouldn't I be? Let's go!"

On their way to the place they had decided to call an institute, let the Heechee call it whatever they liked, Stan hadn't forgotten any of those depressing thoughts, but he at least pushed them to the back of his mind.

Getting there was no real problem. Achiever had chosen to walk over when he paid his calls, but then Achiever was pretty loopy anyway. Salt had told them a quicker way. One of those whirring three-wheeled carts carried them a kilometer or two underground, and a ramp brought them to a large suite of rooms furnished pretty much like the lounge on the spacecraft that had brought them here. The rooms were fitted with plenty of perches and screens and desks, but with nothing that looked at all like any part of a hospital—at least, not any hospital as either Stan or Estrella understood a hospital to be. It was low-ceilinged and windowless, but comfortably lit by glowing walls. Fifteen or twenty Heechee were there, coming and going, talking, eating, nibbling on little mushroomy things in polished silvery bowls, working at the lookplates or simply dozing.

There was one human.

He was in a conversation with the Heechee female Stan recognized as Salt, but he looked up with what seemed like real pleasure when Stan and Estrella came in. "My dear friends," Sigfrid von Shrink exclaimed, coming toward them—not offering his hand to be shaken, because how could you shake the hands of a virtual image?, but welcoming in every other way. "I promise that this won't take long at all. Estrella, you can go right in with Catenary here—" indicating an elderly female hovering nearby. "I will be in in a moment."

Estrella sighed, put up her face to Stan to be kissed, and obeyed. As Stan watched her go von Shrink added, "You could have come along inside if you wanted to, Stan, but there's no real need for you to be there. Nothing serious will be done, just a few rather embarrassing questions I need to ask. Salt"—who was silently waiting beside him—"can get you anything you need. Are you hungry?"

Stan was shaking his head. "No, thanks. I've had about all the weird Heechee food I want for a while."

Von Shrink tarried on the verge of turning away. "Is that a problem, Stan? Well, look, I'm needed inside right now, but we'll talk when I get back. Meanwhile, here's Salt."

Who, of course, took efficient charge of things. Conducted Stan to a perch, between the tines of which someone had already placed a pillow, commanded a table to rise up before him, placed on the table a silvery bowl of what looked like broken-up bits of the kind of mold you sometimes found growing wild in your bathroom in Istanbul. "Cannot offer other conversational partners than self here," Salt said, "because none of others present speak you tongue, though some will no doubt come to speak for me to translate. Meanwhile"—gesturing toward the bowl— "try."

Stan looked at the mushroomy bits again and shook his head. "I don't think so."

"No harm will come," she urged. "Have already confirmed this with Dr. von Shrink, who caused tests to be made." Then, glancing up at some Heechee, diffidently approaching, "Ah. Others now here to condole you on terrible tragedy recently happening on your home planet."

Condole him they did, one after another and at considerable length, Salt doing her best to translate. Sometimes what they say was a simple expression of sympathy—"most very deeply wish had never happened unfortunate incident your species experiencing." More often, and queerly, they seemed to be apologizing for their own inadequacies in the matter: "Regret quite altogether sincerely our people's inability to prevent or otherwise minimize stated event" and "at first were made to feel stated event was typical barbaric act of long-gone wicked Assassins, misconception which unfortunately was in error conveyed to you." And though out of politeness Stan endured it as long as he could, the time came when he had to beg Salt to make them stop.

"Is too much quantity of same thing?" she ventured, looking thoughtful. "Yes. Perhaps this is so. Wait, please." And, holding her skinny arms above her head for attention, she rose and addressed the room in the familiar hisses, groans and whines of one or another of the Heechee tongues. It seemed to do the trick. The assembled well-wishers milled about for a moment, then went back to their own affairs. "Better now?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," he said gratefully. "It's kind of all these patients to take an interest—I mean, that's what they are, aren't they? Or doctors?"

"Not neither one," she said firmly. "These persons here for improvement simply reside at this place until again regain—" she paused, then with some pride took the word out and delivered it to him"—concinnity."

If she had intended to impress Stan with her vocabulary, she succeeded. "You got me," he confessed. "What's that?"

She said complacently, "Your word concinnity is implying all things satisfactory and ordered, a state normal to persons of our species. Persons here lack same. For example. Person over there with back toward us, seems perhaps asleep. His name is Permeable. His age is great and he to soon become Stored Mind, but must resolve certain worries first. Next to him, Turbidity, and over against wall, Inverse Square—female who just addressed you, you remember. Spoke of sorrow at great loss of your species' life. These two very seriously lacking concinnity. Inverse Square known to have said things not at all true. Turbidity made commitment to colleagues at locus of employment that he would perform act of a certain nature. However, did not in fact do so, although nothing prevented."

"And none of them are doctors?"

"Not any at all," she said positively. "Only member of that class you term 'doctor' present on Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four is human simulation Sigfrid von Shrink, who as-you-say 'treats' mostly humans, no matter how busy may be with other interests.''

Stan sighed, unwilling to try anymore to untangle what the Heechee thought this clinic was all about. Instead, he said, "Yes, he's a very kind person."

"Are in agreement, yes."

"And I know he's busy. It was nice of him to make a special trip for us."

"Did not," Salt politely corrected him. "Was here on business of other human person and simulation."

That made Stan scratch his head and frown. He turned to look at her face-on. "Salt," he said, "there are times when I don't know what the hell you're trying to say. Why was von Shrink here, exactly?"

She wriggled her fingers in apology. "Do not know why exactly, but, in general, his presence here related to two persons, one, human female Gelle-Klara Moynlin, two, simulated human female termed Hypatia. Have you familiarity with these persons?"

"With Moynlin, sure," Stan said, impressed. "Everybody knows who she is. Used to be Robinette Broadhead's girlfriend. Got a lot of money. What's she doing here?"

"Recall previous discussion, Stan? Moynlin brought here by von Shrink simulation for improvement of concinnity, as discussed. This concinnity lost at time of great physical damage occurring your planet. You remember this, too?" And then, looking past him, she added, "However, now no further need for polite passing-the-time conversation at this juncture. Estrella, who is loved incessantly by you, now returns."

And when he turned around there she was coming toward him, arms outstretched, her expression both happy and faintly scared. "It's true, hon," she told him. "We're going to have a baby."

Stan had taken Estrella's suspicion as gospel. All the same the words hit him with a solid impact, as though the fact that they were no longer the only two persons who knew it made it suddenly more real.

"It's true," von Shrink confirmed, beaming. "I estimate it to be a thirty-five-day-old embryo, and it is perfectly healthy in every way I could determine. Of course," he added, "I'm primarily a psychoanalyst, not a medical doctor. You will really need a gynecologist before long. Fortunately, Klara thinks she knows of one—you know who Klara is, I expect? Gelle-Klara Moynlin? Very active in philanthropy?"

This time Stan said only, "Yes."

"For some time Klara has financed a sort of resettlement program for seriously unhappy women. She pays their expenses to emigrate to the Core, and she's pretty sure she helped an ob-gyny woman not long ago. Her shipmind is checking it out."

"That would be nice of her—them," Stan said, momentarily distracted by the thought of having to pay money to get to the Core.

"She is nice," Estrella told him. "She has kind of let herself go a little -with all her troubles, you can't really blame her—but did you know that she kept me company while Dr. von Shrink was preparing my, uh, procedure?"

"She did," von Shrink confirmed. "And there's something else. I mentioned the fact that you said you were getting tired of Heechee food. So she's invited the two of you for lunch."

Gelle-Klara Moynlin's quarters weren't exactly in the "institute," but they were close. At their door a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman wearing a ruby necklace and a robe that left one shoulder bare was waiting for them. "Welcome," she said, though in a tone that was not particularly welcoming. "I'm Hypatia. Dr. Moynlin is waiting for you on the lanai."

The door behind her opened invitingly. Hypatia hadn't touched a thing, but then, Stan reflected, as an impalpable shipmind she really couldn't. She did step to one side to allow them to enter.

As soon as they were inside they both stopped short, staring. "Chairs," Stan muttered reverently, and Estrella added, "And look, a real table!"

That wasn't all of it, either. The floor was marble-tiled, with deep-pile throw rugs scattered about. There were shelves on the walls, some of them holding pretty little cups and statuettes, others loaded with actual paper-and-ink books. Before an actual fireplace, with actual flames coming out of the giant actual wooden log it held, was a couch big enough for a family—and was even, Stan thought at once, big enough to start one on, and to do so a lot more comfortably than he and Estrella ever had.

Hypatia had been wrong about where her mistress was. Gelle-Klara Moynlin wasn't out on the large, flowered lanai at the end of the room. She was standing by the couch, and she had one of those old-fashioned books in her hand. "Hello again, Estrella," she said. "And you must be Stan."

They shook hands. Her grip was warm and firm, and she gave his hand a little farewell squeeze before releasing it. But there was something wrong with the picture. Stan knew what Gelle-Klara Moynlin looked like, because everybody did. The eyebrows were as they should be, dark and thick, and the features were the ones he had seen in a thousand p-vid stories—Gelle-Klara Moynlin Rescued from Black Hole, Gelle-Klara Moynlin Finances 10,000-Home Low-Cost Housing Development, Gelle-Klara Moynlin Voted Most Famous Woman in Galaxy Sixth Year Running. But this edition of Gelle-Klara Moynlin was older and heavier-set than the pictures, meaning not so much that time had passed as that she had stopped bothering to keep its effects hidden. And, although her face was friendly, it was unmistakably sad.

However, she was making an effort. "Have a seat," she said hospitably, and then, taking note of the way Estrella was peering through the door at the adjacent rooms, "Or would you rather have the tour first?"

Estrella had an immediate response to that. "Tour, please," she said eagerly.

Actually, Stan would have preferred to get right to the promised lunch—the human-food lunch—but when he saw Klara's bathroom (soak tub, jet tub and twelve-head shower that would not leave any external part of any person's anatomy unsprayed) and her dressing room (three-paned mirror above racks of all the scents and powders Klara no longer bothered to use) and, most of all, her bedroom, he almost forgot the promise of lunch. The bed was a four-poster. Though as far as Stan knew Klara had no immediate intention of sharing it with anyone, it was easily large enough to accommodate an orgy.

It all just showed what you could do when you had unlimited funds, he thought, unable to resist a twinge of jealousy.

If Estrella had the same feeling she wasn't showing it. "May I?" she begged, and when Klara nodded consent she hopped up onto the bed at once, bouncing like a little girl.

Klara was actually smiling. "What about you, Stan?" she asked. "Want to give it a trial?"

He shook his head. In fact he did want that, but not with the owner standing there. She studied him for a moment, then surprised him by patting him on the shoulder. "Well, that takes care of the tour, so how about lunch? Only," she added as they turned back toward the room with the tables, "I think I ought to warn you. Hypatia's really a very good cook, but she needs raw materials to work with. Right now she's limited to what the Heechee food services can provide in the way of human foodstuffs, and I'm afraid they haven't quite got the hang of it yet."

II

Klara was right about that. They hadn't. The appointments were fine— crystal stemware, gold knives and forks, gold-rimmed plates, all on a snowy damask tablecloth. The food wasn't. Stan's cheese omelette was rubbery in texture and faintly chemical in taste, and the apple pie dessert had a surprising little tang of sauerkraut. The shipmind had presided while little wheeled servers brought the dishes to them, and then removed herself without explanation. "Hypatia's mortified," Klara whispered to her guests, but to Stan she didn't look as much mortified as just plain mad.

"Still," he told Estrella on the way home, "it makes a change from that Heechee muck."

"And Klara said Hypatia will cook for us whenever we like, all we have to do is call her."

"Nice of her," Stan said, thinking how much nicer that would be if the food were better.

"She is nice. Klara, I mean. She asked me if I wanted to get my face fixed. Said it wouldn't hurt, she'd had a lot bigger work done on herself, one time or another."

Stan asked, "Did you?"

"Do you want me to?"

"Hell, no," Stan said at once, though in fact he hadn't ever considered the possibility. "She's got some damn nerve, talking to you that way."

"Oh, she didn't mean it nasty, Stan. She was being kind. She's really nice, especially when you think of all she's been through," Estrella said, and then she had to tell what all that was. Stan had to agree that it was bad enough for anyone. The same giant wave that depopulated California had erased Klara's private South-Sea island of Raiwea as well. Speedy evacuation had meant that no lives had been lost, but nothing tangible remained of the little community that had been the most important thing in Klara's life. "That's why she's here," Estrella added. "She'd got kind of depressed. Dr. von Shrink said she's even talked about getting machine-stored, only he thinks she doesn't think of it as storage, she thinks of it as death."

"Huh," said Stan; evidently life could have its miseries even when you had unlimited funds to draw on. Then, observing that she was absently frowning, "Is something the matter?"

She shrugged, then said, "Oh, no, hon. Not at all. But did you ever hear of somebody named Wan?"

Stan thought for a minute before he decided. "I don't know. Maybe. Who is he?"

"Well, I don't know that," she admitted. "Only Klara and Dr. von Shrink were talking about him while they were getting ready for the procedure. They didn't seem to like him much." Then she grinned and changed the subject. "So did you want to hear about von Shrink's test?"

"I guess. What was it, peeing in a bottle?"

"Nothing like that." She pursed her lips. "It was a lot easier than that. Did you know that he's just a point, Stan?"

"Who, von Shrink? What do you mean he's just a point?"

"What I said. No dimension at all. After he asked me all his questions, what he did was just sort of focus himself inside me and look around. He saw the embryo, Stan. Our baby! Only of course it doesn't look much like a baby yet."

She was going too fast for him. "Wait a minute. He was inside you? How'd he do that?"

"He just did it, Stan." She yawned and changed the subject. "You know what? I wish I could've borrowed that couch for a couple of hours."

"Yes," he said absently, "sure. Me too." He wasn't thinking about the couch, though, because he now had other things to ruminate on, and he was ruminating so hard that, until Estrella nudged him, he didn't notice that they had arrived at their own apartment.

They were trying to decide whether to call on Hypatia for a final meal when someone was at the door.

When Stan opened it he was surprised to see Hypatia standing there, with a couple Heechee guiding motorized pallets behind her. "Dr. Moynlin's compliments," she said. "She just received some new furnishings from Earth, and wonders if you can use these others."

And while Stan and Estrella watched the two Heechee rolled their goods into the apartment; and even before they had everything set up, Stan and Estrella recognized that they were being given that same large and obviously comfortable four-poster bed, with rose-colored sheets that seemed to be made of raw silk. When the bed was installed and made neatly, hospital corners and all, Estrella firmly escorted them to the apartment door. "Thank Klara very much for us," she told the shipmind, "but right now I want to try this thing out."

They did try it out. It turned out to be satisfactory in all respects, and Stan was not a bit clumsy, in neither Estrella's opinion nor his own. When at last they went to sleep, it was with Estrella in his arms, and all was as right as could be with everything on the Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four.