The Boy Who Would Live Forever

I

Here is what Stan and Estrella discovered: it was one thing to be the very first visitors from Outside ever to have crashed in on the flabbergasted Heechee. It was quite another thing just to be two out of dozens of them ... then out of scores ... then to be merely a tiny fraction of a flood of more visitors than either Stan or Estrella could count. Especially when most of the other visitors had a lot more interesting things to say than either Estrella or Stan.

They weren't neglected, exactly. Now and then some particularly kindly Heechee might pause in its dash from one part of Door to another long enough to inquire if they needed additional food or drink, or. a place to relieve their bladders. But if the answer was no, that was the end of it, and that particular Heechee was gone, never to be seen again. "Or," Stan said moodily, "maybe it's the same one every time, because how do you tell them apart?"

Estrella didn't give him an answer to that, because she didn't have one. Some of the Heechee were considerate enough to wear something unusual about their costume—an unexpected color of the tunic, a gewgaw around their thin necks, an unusual pattern on the eight-sided medallion they wore on their undignified between-the-legs pouches—unusual enough that Estrella could keep it in her mind for a time, but not usually for a very long time.

This place they called "Door" was really getting crowded. Ship traffic seemed to be heavy both ways, plenty of Heechee ships beading Out into the great external galaxy, even more ships coming in. Sometimes these latter were returning Heechee back from hastily surveying the outside worlds, but by the second day, more and more often they were ships with human crews. And those were just the ships that had slipped through the Schwarzschild barrier in one direction or the other. Local traffic was heavier still. Ships were coming to Door from all over the Core, either because they were needed for some Heechee purpose Estrella could not imagine, or simply because Door was where the excitement was. The extreme excitement. In fact just about the only real excitement the Heechee race had known for that whole generation that had passed since they had hidden themselves in the Core.

It was no wonder that half the Heechee race seemed to want to come and share in it.

After spending so many dull and lonely days in the cramped space of their souped-up old Five, Stan and Estrella weren't averse to a little company. Not necessarily this company, though, with their skull-bare heads and squeezed-flat bodies. The press of alien bodies cramped their style.

As their second day in this bizarre new place became their third, the problem began to be acute. During the many days they had been locked up in their spartan Five Stan had rarely suffered boredom because, when all else failed, there had always remained one always delightful, never-failing source of entertainment for the two of them.

But that was then. This was now. Now Estrella demurred whenever Stan put a friendly hand on her, because there was always the chance, often a very good chance, that some Heechee would burst in to catch them at some private moment.

Then the bad situation got worse.

As the crowding increased, the two humans could no longer be spared a chamber of their own. Their room now had to be shared with two, three, even more fellow tenants, Heechee tenants, who might look as though they were sound asleep in their bundles of fake vegetation, but were as likely as not to be peering out at the strangers.

At least Estrella thought they might, and that was just as bad. She didn't even seem to want to cuddle, either, not with those skeletal snorers in the same room. Even more perplexing to Stan was that Estrella, who on the trip had given as much attention to lovemaking as Stan himself, now didn't seem to regret its absence. The novelty of the place excited her. She was trying to learn a few words of the Heechee language, without success. Fortunately there were humans arriving who spoke Heechee and, wonderfully, even a few Heechee who spoke English. It seemed that Estrella had met one or two of them.

In fact, she made a friend.

Stan found this out while he was standing in the hallway, looking up and down to see where Estrella had gotten herself this time. A Heechee approached purposefully. This Heechee was taller and heavier than most but was, Stan was pretty sure, female. "Are you the Stan person?" she asked—blessedly, in English! "By my name I am called Salt, and I have an inviting for you. That is inviting to come to my home in valley below Shining Mica Mountains, on Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four. Climate will have been to your liking. Diurnal cycle, same. And there many persons of my species are extremely eager to meet persons of your species. To live there with us. For, if this is your wish, all of your life."

"Not a chance," Stan said at once, thinking that was a pretty hateful proposition—live the rest of his life as a spectacle for a planet of nosy scarecrows!—and almost immediately changing his mind because it did seem a lot better than anything they had going for them here on Door. "I mean, uh—well, I'll have to ask Estrella about that before I can say one way or another. She's gone off somewhere, I don't know who with—"

"Was with I," said Salt. "Has agreed pending confirmation. Now up to you."

II

Salt had spent some eighteen months Outside, mostly on Peggys Planet, Estrella told him when she came back. "That's where she learned English. Notice anything different about me?"

She pirouetted before him, waiting for a response. He didn't have one, so he tried the standard male cop-out: "You look prettier than ever, hon."

Estrella seemed resigned. "Not me, I mean. My dress. Salt helped me let it out, out of human-being clothes she brought home from Peggys Planet. Do you like it?"

"Of course I do," Stan said, doing his best to be reasonable, "but is that what we want to talk about right now?"

"Not if you don't want to. I was just thinking that, you know, you've never seen me in a real dress before. Salt has lots of them, too. You can see them on the ship."

Stan didn't have to say, What do you mean, on the ship? What ship? The expression on his face said it for him, and Estrella answered just as though he had asked it out loud. "The ship to Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four, of course. I'm sure we'll like it." She paused, then remembered the other thing she wanted to tell him. "Oh, yes. Salt says it's a big ship. Big enough so that you and I will have a room of our own."

The ship was big indeed. Stan was sure of that, although all he could see of the spacecraft's outside was the metal snout that protruded into its docking bay, like the lander on a Gateway ship. This one didn't seem to be a lander, though. When they got into it they found themselves in a spindle-shaped chamber with Heechee resting-props scattered about, three separate control carrels with knurled boards and viewscreens and two two-meter tall pillars stuffed with racks of, of all things, those rolled-up crystalline things the Gateway people called prayer fans. A young male Heechee was perched before one of the control boards. He looked up as Salt led them in, and spoke briskly to her. She replied in more placating tones, but without apparent success. She turned to Stan and Estrella. "He, whose name is called by Dark Smoke, wants that you two go away," she said.

"Why?" asked Stan, but Estrella took his hand.

"Come on," she whispered softly. "We don't want to make trouble." Sulkily he let her lead him back toward the outer bay, but the Heechee female, who had turned back to the male, caught sight of what they were doing.

"Stop at once," she said. "Where do you wish to go?" And then, when Estrella tried to explain that they were leaving the ship, as ordered, "No, do not do that. It is not the needed thing at this time. Dark Smoke has no adequate authority of this sort to deny you passage. You will wait while I discuss."

Discuss the two Heechee did, for rather longer than seemed reasonable to Stan. A third Heechee appeared from the entrance and immediately joined in the debate. They weren't shouting at each other, as Stan would have expected from humans trying to settle a controversial point, but all three of them sounded quite insistent as they gestured toward each other, toward the human pair and toward one of the doors at the end of the chamber.

Then the argument stopped, as though cut off by some invisible stage director, and Salt came back to the humans. "I will direct you to place of privacy chamber now," she said. "You will follow."

Estrella tarried. "What was the problem, Salt?"

"No problem. No problem now," the Heechee corrected herself. "You go to chamber. We start spacecraft. You come out later, if you so want. One thing only. If during trip to Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four you see male dressed in peculiar clothing who also is passenger you do not speak to him. He extremely tired of your kind."