The Boy Who Would Live Forever

I

Estrella never seemed to get tired of Stan's company, and Stan certainly never did of Estrella's. Still, there was a whole unexplored world out there for them. Little by little they nibbled at it—a visit to the institute, a walk around the valley between it and them. Sometimes they went out alone, sometimes with one of the Heechee. The male named Yellow Jade was particularly good company, because he had a real, and unHeecheelike, fondness for the outdoors. "Look," he would say, delicately lifting a fern frond to reveal a pulsing little mass of pale pink jelly. "This by name is called—" a chirp and something like a sneeze. "His species by diet eat—" another unpronouncable Heechee name "—and in turn self is eaten by—" a third name, this one more promising for Stan because it only had one syllable.

He tried his luck. "Fkweesh?" he ventured.

Yellow Jade looked stricken. "Is far better thing if you not do that," he advised. "Look, here is other different creature, not so interesting but somewhat." And he showed them one creature after another—the flowers that actually were voracious little animals, the tree snakes that glided from branch to branch, the ugly, sharp-toothed fish that lived in the little pond—until even Estrella was beginning to yawn. Then he did the best thing of all. Which was to escort them back to their apartment. "Because," he told them earnestly, "is known to us your species enjoys to couple even when female not fertile. Or, in your individual case, when already made fertilized." Which made Stan grin, because it was true enough.

It wasn't all sex, though. They found plenty else to do with their time. They played word games, considered names for the baby, discussed Hypatia's failings as a cook, chatted with Salt on the lookplate, played with those same lookplates in some of the many other ways they could be used.

They even found a news program on one of the plates—human news, from Outside!—delivered by a human announcer whom Estrella thought exceptionally good-looking. Stan couldn't see that at all. He didn't care much for the program, either, because the announcer seemed to be in a constant, unwinnable race to keep up with the things that were happening in the outside galaxy. Each time he appeared he seemed farther behind. Elections came and were replaced by new ones like the flickering of fireflies. Disasters were healed by the time he finished describing them. And when there was something that sounded really interesting—what did he mean when he spoke of a Foe expedition to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud?—there never seemed to be any explanation or follow-up.

But it still struck Stan as of great interest. "A human news broadcast!" he marveled. "Why, Strell, that has to mean that there are a lot of us in the Core now!"

She managed not to laugh. "There sure are, hon. Weren't you listening when Yellow Jade showed me how to access some of the others on the small plate?"

He looked guilty. "I might've been resting."

"Oh, right," she said, remembering. "You snored a lot, too. Anyway, right here on this planet there's Alice and Sandra—she's machine-stored, though—and there's also Beth and Keichiko and Maureen and Daisy, but it's harder to reach them because they're on other planets. And there are lots of others, but some of them don't speak English, and some don't want to."

Stan blinked at that, was more startled still when she told him that, near as she could estimate, there were now several thousand other humans in the Core.

"Where'd all those people come from?" he marveled.

Estrella said wisely, "It's the time differential, Stan. Like this Bill Tartch, trying to keep up with the news. Things move a lot faster Outside. There's plenty of time to emigrate."

Stan found himself displeased. He had felt a lot more important when he and Estrella were rarer than they were now. Any time now, he thought, human beings they didn't even know might be dropping in on them in person.

What he hadn't expected was that one of those follow humans would arrive at their apartment that very day. But one did.

The doorbell (they couldn't think of what else to call it) told them that someone was waiting outside. It didn't tell them that the person was female, good-looking, blonde, blue-eyed, carrying a little black bag and, above all, human. "Hello," she said brightly. "Dr. von Shrink said I should come out and check you over. I'm an ob-gyny. My name is Dr. Dorothy Kusmeroglu."

An electric shock went through Stan when he heard the name. "Kusmeroglu? Really? You're Turkish? Maybe from Istanbul—"

"Oh, no. Not me. That could've been where my couple-of-greats-grandfather came from, though," she said, looking around the apartment as though she were preparing to make an offer on it. "Somewhere on Earth, anyway, but I've never been there. I'm third-generation Martian. Can we use the bedroom, Estrella? And I think it's better if Stan stays out here."

So Stan was again left to bite his fingernails while he waited for whatever had to be done with Estrella, now clearly the alpha star of their little constellation. It didn't take long. When they came out both were smiling. "Everything is perfect, Stan," the doctor told him. "You can see it for yourself, because I've got a little present for you." She rummaged in her bag, pulled out an iridescent, olive-colored bracelet. "Put this on, Estrella. It's the latest thing from Outside to see how your baby's doing—I hear they call it 'Stork,' there, but maybe that's too cute for you? Anyway, when you want to make it work you just say, 'Stork, display.'" And then, when Estrella didn't act at once, she said impatiently, "Come on, hon. I haven't got all day."

Estrella looked at Stan, got no help there and finally sighed. "All right. Stork. Display."

A faint cloud of pale pink swirled beside Estrella's body and immediately collapsed into a minute, doll-like figure. It floated in the air a meter or so from Estrella's face, making her draw back in sudden surprise. It didn't look like a baby to Stan. It looked like something you might step on in the street, and immediately try to scrub off your shoe.

But then, as it slowly rotated before their eyes, it began to look like— well, not like anything you'd call human, but a little like one of those crude, prehistoric attempts to capture a human form in stone. There was a head—eyeless, earless, but with something rather like a chin. There were spindly limbs and tiny hands and feet. And there was—

"My God," Stan breathed. "Has he got an erection already?"

Dr. Kusmeroglu gave him a patient little laugh. "That's the umbilical cord. He hasn't got a penis yet—hold on," she interrupted herself, peering hard at the tiny animalcule. "Huh,' she said. "Never will have, either. You see the external genitalia, up there in the crotch? Well, up to now the embryo hasn't had any gender, but around now is when the genitalia migrate. If they go up it's a girl, down they turn into testicles and it's a boy. And this one's migrating up." She lifted her eyes to meet Estrella's. "So you've got a little girl, hon. Congratulations."

While Stan was trying to get used to the proposition that he was not only becoming a father, but a father to an actual, visible (if not yet fully formed) human being, complete with arms, legs and gender, Dr. Kusmeroglu snapped her bag shut. "By the way," she said, "she isn't an embryo anymore. From now on she's a fetus. Now I have to get moving. I don't want to miss my flight to Mostly Water Planet of Bright Yellow Star."

"You came in a spaceship? Just to see us?" Stan marveled.

"Of course. There aren't that many pregnant human beings in the Core right now, are there? Now, when we move to the implantation procedure—" She paused, biting her lip in thought.

That scared Stan. "Is something the matter?" he demanded.

"Oh, no, of course not. Not really. It's just that I don't think there are any suitable implantation animals here. That kind of thing is usually done earlier in the pregnancy, but that's mostly for the mother's convenience. There's no great hurry. We can order a suitable surrogate from Outside—"

"Stop!" Estrella commanded. "What are you talking about?"

Dr. Kosmeroglu looked faintly bewildered. "Didn't I make myself clear? I'm talking about a surrogate mother, of course, what else? A mammal large enough to carry your baby to term—of course, one that has been genetically modified so that it won't reject the fetus. So the question is, what kind would you prefer? In most of the world it's usually water buffalo. They're a good size, and they're cheap and plentiful. I prefer to use cows, myself."

Estrella was looking at the woman in horror. "My baby? Inside an animal?"

"Of course inside an animal," the doctor said impatiently. "What else would you do? You don't want to go through parturition yourself, do you? All that pain and mess? Not to mention nine months of trying to get comfortable with a belly that keeps getting bigger and bigger every day? Nobody does now, except—Oh, wait." She paused and gave Estrella a more appraising look. "Listen, you're not one of those religious fanatics, are you?"

Estrella tried to answer but couldn't. She settled for just shaking her head.

The doctor sighed and stood up. "Look," she said kindly, "I know this is a big step for you. Talk it over, the two of you. If you've got something against using bovids, there are other mammalian choices. One or two species of bear are good, and sometimes we can time the pregnancy to coincide with their hibernation so there's not even the slight risk of accident you get when your surrogate is left out to feed and so on. That bear procedure, or the water buffalo, is done mostly in Hindu areas, because, you know, they've got that cow thing. I've even heard of people using one of the marine mammals, now and then, though I can't imagine why. Not on Mars, of course; even now we don't have that kind of bodies of water, so I don't have any personal experience. Anyway, I think it would be pretty troublesome to try to bring an orca here. Excuse me." She turned away, raising her hand apologetically. To the air she said, "Time?" She listened for a moment, then grimaced. "I really have to get going, and anyway I guess you've got the picture. Call me if you have any questions—and, of course, when you've made up your mind about the surrogate."

And she was gone. Stan and Estrella looked at each other. Stan said, "What do you think, would you want to do something like that?"

"Over my dead body," Estrella said firmly. "Let's get something to eat. If we're going to keep that baby inside me where it belongs, we'd better feed it."

II

Stork was a wonderful toy. Surprisingly, more for Stan than for Estrella; she was interested in seeing it four or five times a day but not much more, while Stan would sit, studying the tiny molecule, for an hour or two at a time, until Estrella got tired of doing odds and ends without him and informed him she wasn't getting enough exercise for the baby's good. So they went for more of those long walks in the countryside, enjoying the fragrance of growing things, pleased by the beauty of the tall trees with their frizzy crown of branches. On this day, the little animals that pretended to be plants were flowering, yellow and blue and red, and the ruse was working for them. Clouds of tiny flying things hovered around them, not evidently discouraged by the fact that so many of them were being eaten. There were fish in the pond, too, nasty snakelike things with bright orange eyes. If Estrella had had some thought of a quick swim she gave that up as soon as she saw them writhing around, just below the surface.

But the day had a pleasant surprise. When they got back to their apartment they found a stack of hexagonal boxes, great and small, just inside the door. What they contained was the personal possessions they had had in their Five, left behind on Door and finally returned to them by some considerate Heechee. The smallest of the boxes held half a dozen of Stan's old sheet-music selections, and that was all they needed to get their instruments out of the wall cupboard and begin to play. It was a nice way to end a day.

And, the next morning, a nice way to begin one, too. It was Estrella's flute, played as she was sitting on the side of their bed, that woke Stan up, and he only took a moment to use the waste disposer before he joined her in a couple of choruses of "Stardust" and "The Jelly Roll Rag." Then Stan remembered that he hadn't used the drencher that morning, and he invited Estrella to join him, and one thing led to another and they found themselves right back in bed again. After that Stan didn't think he had gone back to sleep again, but the next thing he knew he heard that soft, deep-down low-frequency rumble that meant there was something in the food dispenser. "Estrella?" he called.

It took a moment for her to show herself, coming in off the balcony and still brushing her hair. "What?" she asked.

"Did you order lunch?"

She frowned. "Well, I did say, out loud, that I was getting hungry."

Which led Stan to observe that, as a matter of fact, so was he. "Let's see what we've got," he said.

When they had punctured the bubble-covers, what they'd got was a total surprise to both. The smell of Estrella's meal identified itself even before Stan saw what it was: chili. Served in a bread bowl, with sides of guacamole and two kinds of salsa, with a dab of sour cream on top and a scattering of corn chips all around. "Real Texas-style chili," Estrella announced, as soon as she had had a taste.

Stan objected, "You weren't from Texas, were you?"

"I said Texas-style. The only style worth eating. I even think I can taste a little rattlesnake meat in it. But what've you got?"

Stan had already eaten two of his half-dozen slippery-looking green things, and was covetously eyeing the platter of some kind of a roast surrounded by vegetables. "Stuffed grape leaves," he announced. "Haven't had those since my last birthday, and the meat looks good. And, look—" pointing to a pouted copper pot, accompanied by a pair of tiny cups, "there's real Turkish coffee, too."

Estrella tasted a forkful of the perfectly prepared guacamole. "We should thank her," she said meditatively.

Stan had already moved on to the next course. "I think it's lamb," he said, tasting. "You know, I never had roast lamb before? Couldn't afford it."

Estrella didn't answer. After a moment of struggling with her notions of acceptable behavior, she gave up and licked the plate. They gazed at each other in rapture. "Things are definitely looking up," Stan told Estrella.

She nodded, but had a question. "Do you have any idea what's going on?"

"God knows. I don't. All I know is that's about the best meal I've had since—since—" He frowned, casting his mind back over the rations in their Five, the occasional splurge in Gateway's spindle, Mrs. Kusmeroglu's cooking way back in Istanbul. "Since ever," he finished. "Now how about we take another look at our daughter?"

Their daughter had to wait, while Estrella called Klara's home to thank her, or maybe Hypatia, but in any case whoever had provided that meal. Curiously, there was no answer.

When Stork had done its thing, Estrella took a good, long look at the baby and decided she hadn't changed much. Stan was less sure. "Is that an eye?" he demanded. "What's it doing on the side of her head? And what's that thing at the back of her head, right where it joins the neck? Some kind of wart?"

"Babies in the womb don't get warts. I think." She was on the little lookplate again.

Stan took his mind off the unborn child long enough to ask what she was looking at. She moved slightly so he could see the plate. "Our new neighbors," she said.

What the lookplate showed was a lanai very like their own. It looked out on the same valley and the same Mica Mountains beyond. Eight or ten inarguable humans, male and female, were sharing a meal on it, passing around oddly shaped ceramic dishes and small wicker baskets.

"They're Chinese or something," he pointed out. Estrella didn't dispute it. "Well, maybe we should visit them sometime. What's on the other plates?"

The answer to that was, not much, or, alternatively, far too much to take in. Stan watched the parade of strange-looking people doing unidentifiable things in unrecognized places. "Oh, hell," he grumbled at last. "I don't have a clue."

She was sympathetic. "Me, too." They left it at that. They both know that the villain was that terrible ratio, 40,000 to 1. To compress forty thousand Outside hours into one Core hour program meant that a lot—in fact, nearly everything—had to be left out.

"Well, hell," Stan said moodily. "I guess it doesn't matter. We're never going to go Outside again anyway."

They had another meal, very nearly as rapturous as the one before, and as Stan was gathering up the dishes to put in the waste the door growled at them. It was Salt, belly muscles nervously rippling under her gown. "Did not wish to interrupt your feeding," she said. "But all right to enter now?"

"Sure," Stan said, thinking that Salt was not looking her best. Her skin color seemed—well, not exactly right, though with a Heechee how could you tell?

Once inside she brightened. She sat down on the edge of an actual chair, her pod sticking awkwardly into air. She accepted a cup of tea and nibbled on the chocolate-covered biscuits the dispenser had included with the tea quite as though enjoying them. She gave the little sneeze that was the Heechee equivalent of clearing her throat, then began: "Have request to request of you. Human courtesy custom, however, requires I first ask of you what questions or requests you may have of me?"

"Well," Stan said, "actually we've been wondering if Klara is at home. We haven't spoken to her in quite a while—"

"Have not?" Salt asked politely. "Wish to verify?"

She didn't wait for an answer to that, but turned to the lookplates. A few soft-voiced commands to the small one—in one of the Heechee languages, of course—and it displayed an interior view of Klara's apartment. The view changed as they watched, as though the camera were hunting through the rooms. All the rooms were in order—bedroom and bathroom included—but there was no sign of either Klara or her shipmind.

"Quite sorry," Salt apologized. "Not present, as you have seen."

"And you don't have any idea of where she's gone?"

Salt's skull muscles twitched. "Any idea? But yes, have some idea, simply do not know if it is good idea. She spoke of persons called 'Old Ones,' now resident on One Moon Planet of Pale Yellow Star Fourteen. Perhaps has gone to see them."

Stan gave another of those dissatisfied grunts he was getting really good at, and Salt again politely sneezed. "May I at present time request the request I spoke of?"

Stan shrugged. "Request on."

"Is perhaps excessive, this request," she said regretfully. "All the same wish to request it. Have greatly enjoyed peculiar 'musical' sounds produced by you, on balcony and elsewhere. Is possible you produce same sounds in other venue? That is, in place you term 'institution'? Doing same for entertainment and education of persons resident therein and nearby?"

Then, before either of them could answer, she rose. "Am aware, as stated, request possibly excessive. I will now depart, leaving time for you, and also you, Estrella, to consider before giving answer. But would be quite greatly appreciated."

When she was gone, Stan and Estrella looked at each other. "What do you think, Strell? Should we do it?"

She was frowning. "Did you see how Salt looked?"

Stan considered. "Well, maybe a little tired...."

"Tired! You don't get that kind of skin color from just being tired, hon. I wonder if she's sick."

"Nah," said Stan, dismissing the question with the complete confidence of absolute ignorance on the subject of Heechee health. "So are we going to do it?"

"Well, why not? But if we are, first we're going to practice. Like now, hon."

It wasn't until that conversation was long over and Stan and Estrella were playing duets on their lanai that Estrella abruptly said, "Oh, my God," and put down her flute.

Stan took his lips away from the mouthpiece of his trumpet. "What's the matter?"

"Stan, I just thought. The way we were looking around Klara's apartment, you know? If we can see into other people's homes any time we want to, do you suppose they can—?"

He blinked at her. "What are you, crazy? Why would they want to look in at us?"

"But suppose they do?"

"They wouldn't!" he said doggedly.

III

Firmly though he had spoken, the question worried at Stan's thoughts until, three or four practice sessions later, Sigfrid von Shrink dropped in. When they put the question to him, it turned out that they not only would, they did. "Heechee have different standards of morality than we do," he told them. "They don't think sexual intercourse has to be private. With them it only happens when the female is in estrus, so it's comparatively infrequent, and sometimes they make a little ceremony out of it."

"Wait one damn minute," Estrella said with determination. "We're not Heechee! Can we turn those cameras off or not?"

"Of course you can, if that's what you want," he said. "They aren't exactly cameras, but I know what you mean. Wait a moment. All right, they're turned off now."

"As easily as that?" Stan demanded.

"Of course. Why not? But you know you'll be depriving your friends of some entertainment."

"They can damn well stay deprived!" Stan said hotly. "We don't make love to entertain them!"

"Not just the making love, Stan. The music practice. The eating. Everything you do, really. Still, I suppose they'll understand if you don't want them watching you, I think. Anyway," he said, forcibly changing the subject, "they've enjoyed listening to you two practicing—well, perhaps 'enjoyed' isn't the right word, because Heechee ideas of music aren't at all like our own, but they found it interesting. So what about what Salt asked you? Would you mind going down to do it at the—ah—institution?"

"Well, sure," Stan said. "We never said we wouldn't."

In the event, their recital was a great success. That is, no one walked out. No one hissed, either, except to the extent that Heechee sometimes did hiss when speaking the language of Do. They performed the Bach transcriptions that Estrella had made up for them, based on duets she had learned in her one scant year at the conservatory; they did some Gershwin and Jelly Roll Morton and a few extracts from Mahler, and when they were through, four or five of the several dozen Heechee in the room politely clapped their hands as they had learned to do in their days Outside. Even the greater number of Heechee who had never been Outside tried to emulate them, though not very successfully. Skinny Heechee palms were not meant for applauding.

Then the little platform the Heechee had provided for them sank back into the floor. They were quickly surrounded by a dozen or more Heechee, Salt leading a pair of elderly males to meet them, Yellow Jade by her side with hand outstretched to shake Stan's hand. "You performed with much excellence," he told them both. "Therefore you were greatly enjoyed by the public as well as by myself and"—he gestured at the two ancients by Salt's side—"my two sons, name of Warm, this one, and Ionic Solvent, this other. Have lately returned from prolonged period Outside. Unfortunately do not speak your language but ask me express pleasure at meeting."

"Delighted," Stan said unconvincingly. "Well, Strell, don't you think we ought to be going?" And then, all the way home after the event, Stan and Estrella were complaining about the bizarre approximations of human food their Heechee hosts, eager to please but imperfectly informed, had laid out for them. About the shocking state of Salt's complexion. And about trying to reconstruct the story of Yellow Jade's astonishing two sons, now old and near enough to death to have come back to the Core to die, and thus enter the Stored Minds. And about the fact that neither of them spoke English, because their seventy-some years of service had been spent on the Jen Hao planet, where English was spoken only by visitors. About the fact that they were triple the age of their father, because Yellow Jade had left them Outside when he returned to the Core. And, anyway, where was Sigfrid?

"He probably had something else to do?" Estrella offered.

"What difference does that make? He's an AI. He's always doing fourteen or fifteen things at once." And then, as they made the last turn before their doorway, "He should've been there." And then their door came in sight and he was.

Sigfrid took his usual immaterial seat, accepted his simulated glass of wine to keep them company, and said, "I really enjoyed the Bach chaconne. I've heard it before, but never better."

Stan looked suspicious. "I didn't see you."

"I didn't show myself, Stan. I didn't want to disturb anyone, but I wouldn't have missed the event. Anyway, the reason I'm here is that I wanted to invite you to a little gathering at Klara's."

"She's back?"

"She will be soon indeed, Estrella. She's very fond of you, you know."

Estrella ventured, "Salt said she went to look at those australo— whatever-you-call-them things."

"Yes, that is true," von Shrink conceded. "There is some concern about them. She went to see if she could help." And, when Stan demanded to know more about those "concerns," Sigfrid only shook his head. "It is nothing that need trouble you. Only some suspicion that the previous owner of the hominids may be planning something unwise. You've heard of him? Wan Santos-Smith? A very unpleasant man, and it seems that some of his people were seen snooping around the Old Ones." He shook his head and repealed, "No doubt Klara will tell you all about it when she returns. Is there anything else?"

Stan debated pressing the issue, decided the chances of getting satisfaction were too slim to pursue and changed the subject. "I noticed Achiever wasn't there either."

"Ah," von Shrink said regretfully, "Achiever. No, he isn't in a position to attend a performance just now. It's a sad story." He looked from one to the other of them, uncharacteristically indecisive. Then he added inquiringly, "I didn't know whether or not you would want to be kept informed—"

"We would," Estrella said briefly.

Von Shrink's simulation sighed and nodded. "I supposed that would be so," he said. "Once you've shared the Dream Machine with someone there's always a kind of bond, isn't there? Anyway, your experience with Achiever had a profound effect on him. As a result, at present he is being nurtured by a group of Stored Minds. That's what they call it, nurturing. It means that he is temporarily placed in storage himself, and the other Stored Minds try to complete his healing. They started that as soon as they learned what was at the basis of his problem—"

He stopped there, apparently willing to let it drop at that point. Estrella wasn't. "Which was?" she demanded. "Come on, Dr. von Shrink. Seeing as I was involved, I have a right to know!"

"I suppose you do, Estrella. It's rather nasty—"

"Tell!" Stan barked.

He sighed again. "Well, when Achiever left the Core, he happened to be in the company of a nubile Heechee female named Breeze. She began to come into estrus as the flight proceeded. Achiever's body reacted to that, of course; any male Heechee's would have. But then at the last moment he was dropped off on Gateway, with no suitable female to be found anywhere. And—" he lowered his voice, though it was no longer possible for anyone to be listening— "he did something quite traumatic. He attempted intercourse with a female human."

"He committed rape?" Estrella said, unbelieving.

"No, not rape," von Shrink corrected at once. "Not quite actual sexual intercourse at all. If that had happened, I expect Achiever wouldn't have been able to live with himself. But he did attempt some, well, foreplay. He thinks the human female was at fault, and in a sense perhaps she was. It appears that she had done very poorly as a Gateway prospector. In fact, she had gone broke. So, in order to pay her bills on the asteroid, she resorted to, well, prostitution."

"My God!" Estrella said. "With a Heechee?"

Von Shrink nodded gravely. "That accounts for some of the things you felt when you shared a Dream Couch with him. It wasn't you he hated. It was that poor woman on Gateway. But you were handy."

And as soon as he was gone Estrella sat before one of the lookplates. Stan was wandering idly toward the lanai when she called him back. "Stan? Are these the old things Dr. von Shrink was talking about?"

He strolled around to where he could see into the lookplate. What it displayed was a pair of odd-looking creatures, manlike to a degree, apelike almost as much. They wore rough-knit kilts and not much else, and they both sported thin, unkempt beards. They were eating some kind of fruits and jabbering to each other in a language Stan had never heard before.

As he and Estrella stared at them, Stan shook his head. "Do you think they're people?"

"Do they look like people to you?"

"No, but—Hey!" He snapped his fingers. "They came from where Wan was, way back when he was the crazy kid that was using the Dream Machine way back when—"

"I remember. The Wrath of God, they called it."

"Right. Wan's doing. That's what the Old Ones were, some kind of prehistoric humans that the Heechee had put out there for some reason or other. I guess he thinks he owns them."

"Huh." Estrella examined the shaggy ones on the screen, then emitted a small scream. Their feeding over, the smaller of the two creatures— beard or none, evidently the female—had dropped to hands and knees, while the larger, definitely and now quite conspicuously the male, was preparing to enter her from behind.

"Hey," said Stan, amused. "They're really going at it, aren't they."

Estrella turned the lookplate off. "Fair's fair, Stan. We didn't want people looking at us when we were making love, did we? So we shouldn't watch them."

"But they're animals, Strell! And it's interesting, kind of."

She shook her head, firmly indicating that the subject was closed. "I've got a better idea. Let's get some of that good food, right? What I'm thinking of is, let's see, a thick, juicy, rare steak—beef, not buffalo—and some of those fries and a salad with maybe a little avocado cut up in it—"

"Make it two," Stan said, his expression lightening. "And make it fast, will you please?" And then they sat back to wait.

But it wasn't made fast.

In fact, for quite a while, half an hour or so at the least, it wasn't made at all, although both Stan and Estrella repeated their orders several times. When at last they did hear the remote rumble that told them something had arrived, Stan snapped, "About damn time!" and Estrella beat him to the dispenser.

What was waiting for them did not come under any of those crystalline dones, nor did it look at all like the steaks they had envisioned. It was two packets in the colored wrappings of Heechee food. When, incredulously, they opened them up they discovered that they weren't Heechee food—weren't even as good as Heechee food! They were bricks of something brownish and tough that smelled vaguely of clam beds and tasted like not very good pemmican. "What the hell?" Stan exclaimed. "What's going on here?"

But Estrella had no answer for him, and after tasting a crumb of her own bar was as irritated as he. "If this is what they're feeding pregnant women I'm going to go down to the lake and catch a couple of those ugly little fish and fry them up."

IV

She didn't do that. She ate those horrid messes, and ate all the other horrid messes the dispenser kept giving them in lieu of real food. They had no one to complain to, either. Sigfrid didn't come back. In spite of what he had said, Klara hadn't returned, either. Yellow Jade was so wrapped up in his senile sons that he didn't show up at all, and the one time they did catch a glimpse of Salt she was impenetrably surrounded by a crush of male Heechee. "They don't seem to care what she looks like," Estrella sniffed.

"She has certainly let herself go," Stan agreed. "Want to see if we can catch some news?"

They could. They did, but took very little joy from it. The brainless, but good-looking, newscaster they had seen before was long gone. No one had really replaced him. The lookplate simply displayed views of whatever they requested, and most of the views were unpleasing. Stan had seen some shots of fascinating-looking floating cities, but when he found them again they were in various stages of disrepair. Whole planets seemed to be abandoned—forested where there had been skyscrapers, burned out, iced over. "Remember the pictures they had in the Gateway museum?" Stan asked. "Those were the kind of things the Foe did, but the Foe aren't still doing them, are they?" Estrella only shook her head sadly, without answering.

Then Stan asked for, and got, a look at Istanbul. It too seemed nearly deserted. The Kemal Ataturk Towers were still standing, but apparently vacant glass broken out of the windows, no sign of people going in or out. "Jesus," Stan said. "What do you think happened?"

"I wish I knew," Estrella said, and then changed her mind. "No, maybe I'm better off if I don't know. Let's do something else. How about another look at the kid?"

That, at least, was always rewarding. Every day the tiny creature in Estrella's belly showed new things to marvel at. Those eye things that had seemed to be growing out of the baby's temples were slowly migrating toward the front of her head, where they belonged. Her skin had become so thin that Estrella swore she could see the blood vessels beneath it. (Stan was less sure.) And then one day, while Estrella was back at her lookplates while Stan was studying Stork's display, she jumped. Stan was yelling at her. "Strell! Guess what the hell what! She's sucking her thumb!"

And so, Estrella agreed, she was. Not only that. Day by day the baby's head turned from side to side, her legs flexed and extended, the little arms and hands experimenting with new positions—folded over the little chest, clasped prayer-like before the face, stretched almost straight at the sides. It was a magical slide show, always changing.

When they took time from the contemplation of their unborn, there was plenty to interest them in the lookplates—mostly incomprehensible, yes, but provocative. When they saw a procession of hooded children marching steadfastly into the shallows, and then the deeps, of some ocean, somewhere in the outside galaxy, they could only wonder what was going on. When the lookplate flared with appalling light as some star, also some unknown where, seemed to destroy itself in an eruption of flame they could only admire the spectacle, with no clue of what it meant.

Not counting the food, Stan and Estrella were almost content to be ignored by their friends. Sex was great sport again, now practiced in private. The food, they told each other, really wasn't much worse than they had had in their old Five. The lanai was as lush as ever....

All the same, when their door growled for the first time in days, they both hurried to open it.

The caller wasn't any of their first choices. It was Achiever. Without preamble he asked, "Have asked on earlier occasion if you had been asked. Now I ask again. Well? What is your answer?"

"Oh, hell," Stan said. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about. Answer to what?"

The muscles under Achiever's cheekbones were twitching madly. "How can you ask me answer to what? Have recently experienced significant event, somewhat pleasurable but very tiring, have retained little patience. Is it possible you have not yet been asked?"

"Asked what?" Stan demanded, now well on the way to becoming belligerent. But so was Achiever. He stomped a few steps away from the door, the fur at the back of his neck erect with anger, then stepped back. "This is not to any degree acceptable!" he shouted. "I am greatly enraged. Therefore I shut you off without customary convention of good-bye!" And he turned on his narrow heel and stomped away.

Estrella and Stan were in their bedroom, no longer fully dressed and no more than half-heartedly picking at their latest consignment of the marginally edible, not talking much, really, about Achiever because what was there still to say about that volatile and unlikeable Heechee?—when the door growled and the visitor turned out to be Salt, looking somehow radiant and in no respect purple. "Possibly can come in?" she asked, and took their silence as affirmative.

"Oh, absolutely," Stan assured her, a little tardily—she was already perched in their living room and looking expectantly from one to the other of them. "You have been speaking with Achiever," she told them. "I know this because he so informed me. It is partly relevant to him that I come to see you."

Stan pulled the robe he had grabbed up tighter around him. "Is anything wrong?"

"Nothing is in the least wrong of any description," Salt said, the tone of her voice sounding as though that were true. If she had been human, Stan would have said she was beaming. "Quite in actuality contrariwise. First must apologize to you for did not invite you to ceremony. Reason for this: other party and I well aware of your cultural modesty tabus."

"What ceremony?" Stan asked, baffled.

Estrella was quicker on the uptake. "What are you saying? Are you actually—have you been—"

"Have exactly been, yes," Salt confirmed delightedly. "And also have exactly done, with use of Achiever as fertilizing person. Am therefore quite knocked up, I say in particular to Estrella, just like you!"