orbit the big one, but a little cinder of a red dwarf nearby. They say the
dwarf  is  probably a distant binary with the blue B, but they also say it
shouldn't be because of the difference in ages of the two stars. Give them
a  few  more years to argue and they'll probably know. One wonders why the
Heechee  would  have  put  their  spacelines  junction  in orbit around so
undistinguished a star, but one wonders a lot about the Heechee.
   However,  all  that  doesn't  affect  the  pocketbook  of  the team who
happened  to  find  the  place.  They get a royalty on everything that any
later  prospector finds! I don't know what they've made so far, but it has
to  be  in the tens of millions apiece. Maybe the hundreds. And that's why
it  doesn't  pay  to  go  with  an out-pilot; you don't really have a much
better chance of scoring, and you have to split what you get.
   So  we  went down the list of upcoming launches and hashed them over in
the  light  of  our  five-day expertise. Which wasn't much. We appealed to
Gelle-Klara  Moynlin  for  advice.  After  all,  she'd been out twice. She
studied the list of flights and names, pursing her lips. "Terry Yakamora's
a  decent  guy,"  she  said.  "I  don't know Parduk, but it might be worth
taking  a  chance  on  that  one.  Lay  off  Dorlean's  flight.  There's a
million-dollar  bonus,  but what they don't tell you is that they've got a
bastard  control  board  in  it.  The  Corporation's experts have put in a
computer  that's  supposed  to override the Heechee target selector, and I
wouldn't  trust  it.  And,  of  course,  I wouldn't recommend a One in any
circumstances."
   Lois  Forehand  asked,  "Which  one would you take if it was up to you,
Klara?"
   She  scowled thoughtfully, rubbing that dark left eyebrow with the tips
of  her  fingers.  "Maybe  Terry. Well, any of them. But I'm not going out
again  for a while." I wanted to ask her why, but she turned away from the
screen  and said, "All right, gang, let's get back to the drill. Remember,
up for pee; down, close, wait ten and up for poo."

   I  celebrated  completing  the week on ship-handling by offering to buy
Dane  Metchnikov  a  drink.  That  wasn't  my  first  intention.  My first
intention  had  been to buy Sheri a drink and drink it in bed, but she was
off  somewhere.  So  I  worked  the  buttons  on  the  piezophone  and got
Metchnikov.
   He  sounded  surprised  at  my  offer.  "Thanks,"  he  said,  and  then
considered.  "Tell  you what. Give me a hand carrying some stuff, and then
I'll buy you a drink."
   So  I  went down to his place, which was only one level below Babe; his
room  was  not  much  better than my own, and bare, except for a couple of
full  carry-alls.  He  looked  at me almost friendly. "You're a prospector
now," he grunted.
   "Not really. I've got two more courses."
   "Well,  this  is  the last you see of me, anyway. I'm shipping out with
Terry Yakamora tomorrow."
   I was surprised. "Didn't you just get back, like ten days ago?"
   "You  can't  make  any money hanging around here. All I was waiting for
was  the right crew. You want to come to my farewell party? Terry's place.
Twenty hundred."
   "That sounds fine," I said. "Can I bring Sheri?"
   "Oh,  sure,  she's  coming anyway, I think. Buy you the drink there, if
you don't mind. Give me a hand and we'll get this stuff stored."
   He  had accumulated a surprising amount of goods. I wondered how he had
managed  to  stash them all away in a room as tiny as my own: three fabric
carriers  all  stuffed  full, holodisks and a viewer, book tapes and a few
actual  books.  I took the carriers. On Earth they would have weighed more
than  I  could  handle,  probably  fifty  or sixty kilos, but of course on
Gateway  lifting them was no problem; it was only tugging them through the
corridors  and  jockeying  them down the shafts that was tricky. I had the
mass,  but  Metchnikov had the problems, since what he was carrying was in
odd  shapes and varying degrees of fragility. It was about an hour's haul,
actually.  We  wound  up  in a part of the asteroid I'd never seen before,
where  an  elderly  Pakistani  woman counted the pieces, gave Metchnikov a
receipt and began dragging them away down a thickly vine-grown corridor.
   "Whew," he grunted. "Well, thanks."
   "You're  welcome."  We  started  back  toward  a  dropshaft, and making
conversation,  I  assume  out of some recognition that he owed me a social
favor and should practice some social skills, he said:
   "So how was the course?"
   "You  mean  apart  from  the  fact that I've just finished it and still
don't have any idea how to fly those goddamned ships?"
   "Well,  of  course  you  don't,"  he said, irritably. "The course isn't
going  to  teach you that. It just gives you the general idea. The way you
learn,  you  do it. Only hard part's the lander, of course. Anyway, you've
got your issue of tapes?"
   "Oh,  yes." There were six cassettes of them. Each of us had been given
a  set when we completed the first week's course. They had everything that
had  been said, plus a lot of stuff about different kinds of controls that
the Corporation might, or might not, fit on a Heechee board and so on.
   "So play them over," he said. "If you've got any sense you'll take them
with  you  when you ship out. Got plenty of time to play them then. Mostly
the ships fly themselves anyway."
   "They'd  better,"  I said, doubting it. "So long." He waved and dropped
onto  the down-cable without looking back. Apparently I had agreed to take
the drink he owed me at the party. Where it wouldn't cost him anything.
   I  thought of looking for Sheri again, and decided against it. I was in
a  part of Gateway I didn't know, and of course I'd left my map back in my
room. I drifted along, more or less at random, past star-points where some
of the tunnels smelled musty and dusty and there weren't many people, then
through  an inhabited section that seemed to be mostly Eastern European. I
didn't recognize the languages, but there were little notes and wall signs
hanging from the everywhere-growing ivy that were in alphabets that looked
Cyrillic  or  even  stranger. I came to a dropshaft, thought for a moment,
and  then  caught  hold  of  the  up-cable. The easy way not to be lost on
Gateway is to go up until you get to the spindle, where "up" ends.
   But  this  time  I  found  myself passing Central Park and, on impulse,
dropped off the up-cable to sit by a tree for a while.
   Central Park isn't really a park. It's a large tunnel, not far from the
center  of rotation of the asteroid, which has been devoted to vegetation.
I  found  orange trees there (which explained the juice), and grape vines;
and  ferns  and  mosses,  but no grass. I am not sure why. Probably it has
something  to  do  with  planting only varieties that are sensitive to the
available  light, mostly the blue gleam from the Heechee metal all around,
and  perhaps  they couldn't find a grass that could use it efficiently for
its  photochemistry.  The  principal reason for having Central Park in the
first  place was to suck up CO2 and give back oxygen; that was before they
spread planting all over the tunnels. But it also killed smells, or anyway
it  was  supposed  to, a little, and it grew a certain amount of food. The
whole  thing  was  maybe eighty meters long and twice as tall as I was. It
was  broad enough to have room for some winding paths. The stuff they grew
in looked a lot like good old genuine Earthside dirt. What it was, really,
was  a  humus  made  out  of the sewage sludge from the couple of thousand
people who had used Gateway toilets, but you couldn't tell that by looking
at it, or by smelling it, either.
   The  first  tree  big enough to sit by was no good for that purpose; it
was  a  mulberry,  and  under it were spread out sheets of fine netting to
catch the dropping fruit. I walked past it, and down the path there were a
woman and a child.
   A  child!  I hadn't known there were any children on Gateway. She was a
little  bit  of  a  thing, maybe a year and a half, playing with a ball so
big, and so lazy in the light gravity, that it was like a balloon.
   "Hello, Rob."
   That  was  the other surprise; the woman who greeted me was Gelle-Klara
Moynlin. I said without thinking, "I didn't know you had a little girl."
   "I  don't.  This  is  Kathy  Francis, and her mother lets me borrow her
sometimes. Kathy, this is Rob Broadhead."
   "Hello,  Rob,"  the  little thing called, studying me from three meters
away. "Are you a friend of Klara's?"
   "I hope so. She's my teacher. Do you want to play catch?"
   Kathy  finished  her study of me and said precisely, each word separate
from  the one before it and as clearly formed as an adult's, "I don't know
how  to  play catch, but I will get six mulberries for you. That's all you
can have."
   "Thank  you."  I  slumped down next to Klara, who was hugging her knees
and watching the child. "She's cute."
   "Well,  I  guess  so.  It's  hard to judge, when there aren't very many
other children around."
   "She's not a prospector, is she?"
   I  wasn't  exactly  joking,  but Klara laughed warmly. "Her parents are
permanent-party.  Well,  most  of  the  time.  Right  now her mother's off
prospecting;  they do that sometimes, a lot of them. You can spend just so
much time trying to figure out what the Heechee were up to before you want
to try your own solutions to the puzzles."
   "Sounds dangerous."
   She  shushed  me.  Kathy came back, with three of my mulberries in each
open  hand, so as not to crush them. She had a funny way of walking, which
didn't  seem to use much of the thigh and calf muscles; she sort of pushed
herself  up on the ball of each foot in turn, and let herself float to the
next  step.  After I figured that out I tried it for myself, and it turned
out  to  be a pretty efficient way of walking in near-zero gravity, but my
reflexes  kept  lousing it up. I suppose you have to be born on Gateway to
come by it naturally.
   Klara  in  the  park was a lot more relaxed and feminine than Klara the
teacher. The eyebrows that had looked masculine and angry became outdoorsy
and friendly. She still smelled very nice.
   It was pretty pleasant, chatting with her, while Kathy stepped daintily
around us, playing with her ball. We compared places we'd been, and didn't
find  any  in  common.  The one thing we did find in common was that I was
born almost the same day as her two-year-younger brother.
   "Did you like your brother?" I asked, a gambit played for the hell of it.
   "Well,  sure.  He was the baby. But he was an Aries, born under Mercury
and  the Moon. Made him fickle and moody, of course. I think he would have
had a complicated life."

   |      This Park Is MONITORED By Closed-Circuit PV
   |
   |      You  are  welcome  to  enjoy  it.  Do not pick
   |  flowers  or  fruit. Do not damage any plant. While
   |  visiting,  you  may  eat  any  fruits  which  have
   |  fallen, to the following limits:
   |      Grapes, cherries
   |      8 per person
   |      Other small fruits or berries
   |      6 per person
   |      Oranges, limes, pears
   |      1 per person
   |      Gravel  may not be removed from walks. Deposit
   |  all trash of any kind in receptacles.
   |      MAINTENANCE DIVISION THE GATEWAY CORPORATION

   I  was less interested in asking her about what happened to him than in
asking  if  she  really  believed  in  that  garbage, but that didn't seem
tactful,  and  anyway she went on talking. "I'm a Sagittarius, myself. And
you-oh, of course. You must be the same as Davie."
   "I guess so," I said, being polite. "I, uh, don't go much for astrology."
   "Not astrology, genethlialogy. One's superstition, the other's science."
   She  laughed.  "I  can  see  you're  a  scoffer. Doesn't matter. If you
believe,  all  right;  if you don't-well, you don't have to believe in the
law  of  gravity  to  get  mashed  when  you  fall off a two-hundred story
building."
   Kathy,  who  had sat down beside us, inquired politely, "Are you having
an argument?"
   "Not really, honey." Klara stroked her head.
   "That's  good,  Klara,  because  I have to go to the bathroom now and I
don't think I can, here."
   "It's  time  to  go  anyway.  Nice  to  see  you,  Rob.  Watch  out for
melancholy,  hear?"  And they went away hand in hand, Klara trying to copy
the little girl's odd walk. Looking very nice... for a flake.

   That  night  I  took Sheri to Dane Metchnikov's going-away party. Klara
was there, looking even nicer in a bare-midriff pants suit. "I didn't know
you knew Dane Metchnikov," I said.
   "Which  one  is  he?  I  mean,  Terry's  the one who invited me. Coming
inside?"
   The  party  had  spilled out into the tunnel. I peered through the door
and  was  surprised to find how much room there was inside; Terry Yakamora
had  two  full  rooms, both more than twice the size of mine. The bath was
private  and  really  did  contain a bath, or at least a showerhead. "Nice
place,"  I  said  admiringly,  and  then discovered from something another
guest said that Klara lived right down the tunnel. That changed my opinion
of Klara: if she could afford the high-rent district, why was she still on
Gateway?  Why  wasn't  she back home spending her money and having fun? Or
contrariwise,  if  she  was  still  on Gateway, why was she fooling around
keeping  barely  even  with  the  head  tax  by  working  as  an assistant
instructor,  instead  of going out for another killing? But I didn't get a
chance  to  ask  her.  She  did  most of her dancing that night with Terry
Yakamora and the others in the outgoing crew.
   I  lost  track  of Sheri until she came over to me after a slow, almost
unmoving  fox-trot,  bringing  her partner. He was a very young man-a boy,
actually;  he looked about nineteen. He looked familiar: dark skin, almost
white  hair,  a  wisp  of  a  jaw-beard  that drew an arc from sideburn to
sideburn by way of the underside of his chin. He hadn't come up from Earth
with me. He wasn't in our class. But I'd seen him somewhere.
   Sheri introduced us. "Rob, you know Francesco Hereira?"
   "I don't think so."
   "He's from the Brazilian cruiser." Then I remembered. He was one of the
inspectors  who  had gone in to fish through the baked gobbets of flesh on
the shipwreck we'd seen a few days earlier. He was a torpedoman, according
to  his cuff stripes. They give the cruiser crews temporary duty as guards
on  Gateway, and sometimes they give them liberty there, too. He'd come in
in  the regular rotation about the time we arrived. Somebody put on a tape
for  a  hora just then, and after we were through dancing, a little out of
breath,  Hereira  and  I  found ourselves leaning against the wall side by
side, trying to stay out of the way of the rest of the party. I told him I
had just remembered seeing him at the wreck.
   "Ah, yes, Mr. Broadhead. I recall."
   "Tough job," I said, for something to say. "Isn't it?"
   He  had  been  drinking  enough  to  answer  me,  I  guess.  "Well, Mr.
Broadhead,"  he said analytically, "the technical description of that part
of  my job is 'search and registry.' It is not always tough. For instance,
in  a  short  time  you will no doubt go out, and when you come back I, or
someone  else  in my job, will poke into your holes, Mr. Broadhead. I will
turn  out your pockets, and weigh and measure and photograph everything in
your  ship.  That is to make sure you do not smuggle anything of value out
of  your  vessel  and  off  Gateway without paying the Corporation its due
share.  Then I register what I have found; if it is nothing, I write 'nil'
on  the  form,  and  another crewman from another cruiser chosen at random
does the same thing exactly. So you will have two of us prying into you."
   It  didn't  sound  like  a  lot  of fun for me, but not as bad as I had
thought at first. I said so.
   He flashed small, very white teeth. "When the prospector to be searched
is  Sheri  or  Gelle-Klara  over  there, no, not bad at all. One can quite
enjoy  it. But I have not much interest in searching males, Mr. Broadhead.
Especially  when they are dead. Have you ever been in the presence of five
human bodies that have been dead, but not embalmed, for three months? That
was  what  it  was  like  on  the  first  ship I inspected. I do not think
anything will be that bad ever again."
   Then  Sheri  came  up and demanded him for another dance, and the party
went on.
   There  were  a  lot of parties. It turned out there always had been, it
was  just  that we new fish hadn't been part of the network, but as we got
nearer graduating we got to know more people. There were farewell parties.
There  were  welcome-back  parties,  but not nearly as many of those. Even
when  crews  did  come back, there was not always any reason to celebrate.
Sometimes  they  had  been gone so long they had lost touch with all their
friends.  Sometimes,  when  they  had  hit  fairly lucky, they didn't want
anything but to get off Gateway on the way home. And sometimes, of course,
they  couldn't  have  a  party  because  parties  aren't  permitted in the
intensive care rooms at Terminal Hospital.
   It  wasn't  all  parties;  we had to study. By the end of the course we
were supposed to be fully expert in ship-handling, survival techniques and
the  appraisal  of  trade  goods. Well, I wasn't. Sheri was even worse off
than  I. She took to the ship-handling all right, and she had a shrewd eye
for  detail  that would help her a lot in appraising the worth of anything
she  might find on a prospecting trip. But she didn't seem able to get the
survival course through her head.
   Studying with her for the final examinations was misery:
   "Okay,"  I'd  tell  her,  "this  one's a type-F star with a planet with
point-eight surface G, a partial pressure of oxygen of 130 millibars, mean
temperature  at the equator plus forty Celsius. So what do you wear to the
party?"
   She  said accusingly, "You're giving me an easy one. That's practically
Earth."
   "So what's the answer, Sheri?"
   She  scratched  reflectively  under her breast. Then she shook her head
impatiently. "Nothing. I mean, I wear an airsuit on the way down, but once
I get to the surface I could walk around in a bikini."

   |      DUTY AND LEAVE ROSTER USS MAYAGUEZ
   |
   |      1.  Following officers and crewpersons tr temp
   |  dy  stns  Gateway  for  contraband  inspection and
   |  compliance patrol;
   |      LINKY, Tina
   |      W/O
   |      MASKO, Casimir E.
   |      BsnM 1
   |      MIRARCHI, Lory S
   |      S2 2.
   |      Following officers and crewpersons authd 24-hr
   |  temp dy Gateway for R&R;
   |      GRYSON, Katie W
   |      LtJ
   |      HARVEY, Iwan
   |      RadM
   |      HLEB, Caryle T
   |      S1
   |      HOLL, William F Jr
   |      S1   3.   All  officers  and  crewpersons  are
   |  cautioned  once  again  to  avoid  any  repeat any
   |  dispute  with  officers  and  crewpersons of other
   |  patrol   vessels  regardless  of  nationality  and
   |  regardless  of  circumstances, and to refrain from
   |  divulging  classified  information  to  any person
   |  whatsoever.  Infractions  will  be  dealt  with by
   |  complete deprivation of Gateway leave, in addition
   |  to  such  other punishments as a defaulter's court
   |  may  direct.  4.  Temporary  duty  on Gateway is a
   |  privilege,  not  a right. If you want it, you have
   |  to earn it.
   |      By Command of the CAPTAIN USS MAYAGUEZ

   "Shithead! You'd be maybe dead in twelve hours. Earth-normal conditions
means  there's  a good chance of an Earth normal-type biology. Which means
pathogens that could eat you up."
   "So all right-" she hunched her shoulders, "so I'd keep the suit until,
uh, I tested for pathogens."
   "And how do you do that?"
   "I  use the fucking kit, stupid!" She added hastily, before I could say
anything, "I mean I take the, let's see, the Basic Metabolism disks out of
the freezer and activate them. I stay in orbit for twenty-four hours until
they're  ripe,  then  when  I'm down on the surface I expose them and take
readings with my, uh, with my C-44."
   "C-33. There's no such thing as a C-44."
   "So  all  right.  Oh,  and also I pack a set of antigen boosters, so if
there's  a  marginal  problem  with  some sort of microorganism I can give
myself a booster shot and get temporary immunity."
   "I  guess that's all right, so far," I said doubtfully. In practice, of
course,  she  wouldn't  need  to  remember  all  that.  She would read the
directions on the packages, or play her course tapes, or better still, she
would  be  out  with  somebody  who had been out before and would know the
ropes.  But  there  was also the chance that something unforeseen would go
wrong  and she would be on her own resources, not to mention the fact that
she had a final test to take and pass. "What else, Sheri?"
   "The  usual,  Rob!  Do I have to run through the whole list? All right.
Radio-relay; spare powerpack; the geology kit; ten-day food ration-and no,
I  don't  eat  anything I find on the planet at all, not even if there's a
McDonald's  hamburger  stand right next to the ship. And an extra lipstick
and some sanitary napkins."
   I waited. She smiled prettily, outwaiting me.
   "What about weapons?"
   "Weapons?"
   "Yes, God damn it! If it's nearly Earth normal, what are the chances of
life being there?"
   "Oh,  yes. Let's see. Well, of course, if I need them I take them. But,
wait  a  minute,  first  I  sniff  for  methane in the atmosphere with the
spectrometer  reading  from orbit. If there's no methane signature there's
no life, so I don't have to worry."
   "There's  no  mammalian  life,  and  you  do  have to worry. What about
insects? Reptiles? Dluglatches?"
   "Dluglatches?"
   "A  word I just made up to describe a kind of life we've never heard of
that doesn't generate methane in its gut but eats people."
   "Oh,  sure.  All  right,  I'll  take  a  sidearm  and  twenty rounds of
soft-nosed ammo. Give me another one."
   And  so we went on. When we first started rehearsing each other what we
usually  said  at  a  point  like  that was either, "Well, I won't have to
worry,  because  you'll  be there with me anyway," or "Kiss me, you fool."
But we'd kind of stopped saying that.
   In spite of it all, we graduated. All of us.
   We gave ourselves a graduation party, Sheri and me, and all four of the
Forehands,  and  the others who had come up from Earth with us and the six
or  seven who had appeared from one place or another. We didn't invite any
outsiders,  but our teachers weren't outsiders. They all showed up to wish
us  well. Klara came in late, drank a quick drink, kissed us all, male and
female, even the Finnish kid with the language block who'd had to take all
his  instruction  on  tapes.  He  was  going  to have a problem. They have
instruction  tapes for every language you ever heard of, and if they don't
happen  to  have your exact dialect they run a set through the translating
computer  from  the nearest analogue. That's enough to get you through the
course,  but after that the problem starts. You can't reasonably expect to
be  accepted  by  a  crew  that can't talk to you. His block kept him from
learning  any  other  language, and there was not a living soul on Gateway
who spoke Finnish.
   We  took  over  the  tunnel three doors in each direction past our own,
Sheri's,  the  Forehands'  and  mine. We danced and sang until it was late
enough for some of us to begin to drop off, and then we dialed in the list
of open launches on the PV screen. Full of beer and weed, we cut cards for
first pick and I won.

   Something  happened  inside  my  head.  I didn't sober up, really. That
wasn't it. I was still feeling cheerful and sort of warm all over and open
to  all  personality  signals  that  were coming in. But a part of my mind
opened  up  and  a  pair of clear-seeing eyes peered out at the future and
made  a  judgment. "Well," I said, "I guess I'll pass my chance right now.
Sess, you're number two; you take your pick."
   "Thirty-one-oh-nine,"  he  said promptly; all the Forehands had made up
their minds in family meeting, long since. "Thanks, Rob."

   |      Classifieds.
   |
   |      GILLETTE, RONALD C., departed Gateway sometime
   |  in  last  year.  Anyone having information present
   |  whereabouts  please  inform  wife,  Annabelle,  do
   |  Canadian Legation, Tharsis, Mars. Reward.
   |
   |      OUTPILOTS, REPEAT winners, let your money work
   |  for  you  while  you're  out. Invest mutual funds,
   |  growth stocks, land, other opportunities. Moderate
   |  counseling fee. 88-301.
   |
   |      PORNODISKS  FOR  those  long, lonely trips. 50
   |  hours $500. All interests or to order. Also models
   |  wanted. 87-108.

   I  gave him a carefree, drunken wave. He didn't really owe me anything.
That  was  a  One, and I wouldn't have taken a One for any price. For that
matter, there wasn't anything on the board I liked. I grinned at Klara and
winked;  she  looked  serious  for  a  minute, then winked back, but still
looked  serious.  I  knew  she realized what I had come to understand: all
these  launches were rejects. The best ones had been snapped up as soon as
they were announced by returnees and permanent-party.
   Sheri  had  drawn  fifth  pick,  and  when  it came her turn she looked
directly  at  me.  "I'm going to take that Three if I can fill it up. What
about it, Rob? Are you going to come or not?"
   I  chuckled.  "Sheri,"  I  said,  sweetly  reasonable,  "there's  not a
returnee that wants it. It's an armored job. You don't know where the hell
it might be going. And there's far too much green in the guidance panel to
suit  me." (Nobody really knew what the colors meant, of course, but there
was   a   superstition  in  the  school  that  a  lot  of  green  meant  a
superdangerous mission.)
   "It's the only open Three, and there's a bonus."
   "Not  me, honey. Ask Klara; she's been around a long time and I respect
her judgment."
   "I'm asking you, Rob."
   "No. I'll wait for something better."
   "I'm  not  waiting,  Rob. I already talked to Willa Forehand, and she's
agreeable. If worse comes to worst we'll fill it out with-anybody at all,"
she  said,  looking at the Finnish kid, smiling drunkenly to himself as he
stared  at  the  launch  board.  "But-you  and I did say we were going out
together."
   I shook my head.
   "So  stay  here and rot," she flared. "Your girlfriend's just as scared
as you are!"
   Those  sober  eyes  inside  my  skull  looked at Klara, and the frozen,
unmoving  expression  on  her face; and, wonderingly, I realized Sheri was
right. Klara was like me. We were both afraid to go.


        Chapter 11

   I  say  to  Sigfrid, "This isn't going to be a very productive session,
I'm afraid. I'm just plain exhausted. Sexually, if you know what I mean."
   "I certainly do know what you mean, Rob."
   "So I don't have much to talk about."
   "Do you remember any dreams?"
   I  squirm on the couch. As it happens, I do remember one or two. I say,
"No." Sigfrid is always after me to tell him my dreams. I don't like it.
   When  he  first  suggested  it I told him I didn't dream very often. He
said  patiently, "I think you know, Rob, that everyone dreams. You may not
remember the dreams in the waking state. But you can, if you try."
   "No, I can't. You can. You're a machine."
   "I  know  I'm a machine, Rob, but we're talking about you. Will you try
an experiment?"
   "Maybe."
   "It  isn't hard. Keep a pencil and a piece of paper beside your bed. As
soon as you wake up, write down what you remember."
   "But I don't ever remember anything at all about my dreams."
   "I think it's worth a try, Rob."
   Well, I did. And, you know, I actually did begin to remember my dreams.
Little  tiny fragments, at first. And I'd write them down, and sometimes I
would  tell  them to Sigfrid and they would make him as happy as anything.
He just loved dreams.
   Me,  I  didn't  see  much  use  in  it.... Well, not at first. But then
something happened that made a Christian out of me.
   One morning I woke up out of a dream that was so unpleasant and so real
that  for  a few moments I wasn't sure it wasn't actual fact, and so awful
that  I didn't dare let myself believe it was only a dream. It shook me so
much  that I began to write it down, as fast as I could, every bit I could
remember.  Then there was a P-phone call. I answered it; and, do you know,
in  just the minute I was on the phone, I forgot the whole thing! Couldn't
remember  one  bit  of  it. Until I looked at what I had written down, and
then it all came back to me.
   Well, when I saw Sigfrid a day or two later, I'd forgotten it again! As
though  it  had  never happened. But I had saved the piece of paper, and I
had  to  read  it  to him. That was one of the times when I thought he was
most pleased with himself and with me, too. He worried over that dream for
the  whole hour. He found symbols and meanings in every bit of it. I don't
remember  what  they were, but I remember that for me it wasn't any fun at
all.
   As  a matter of fact, do you know what's really funny? I threw away the
paper  on the way out of his office. And now I couldn't tell you what that
dream was to save my life.
   "I  see  you  don't want to talk about dreams," says Sigfrid. "Is there
anything you do want to talk about?"
   "Not really."
   He  doesn't  answer that for a moment, and I know he is just biding his
time  to  outwait me so that I will say something, I don't know, something
foolish. So I say, "Can I ask you a question, Sigfrid?"
   "Can't  you  always,  Rob?"  Sometimes  I think he's actually trying to
smile. I mean, really smile. His voice sounds like it.
   "Well,  what  I  want  to know is, what do you do with all the things I
tell you?"
   "I'm  not sure I understand the question, Robbie. If you're asking what
the information storage program is, the answer is quite technical."
   "No,  that's not what I mean." I hesitate, trying to make sure what the
question  is, and wondering why I want to ask it. I guess it all goes back
to  Sylvia, who was a lapsed Catholic. I really envied her her church, and
let  her know I thought she was dumb to have left it, because I envied her
the  confession.  The inside of my head was littered with all these doubts
and fears that I couldn't get rid of. I would have loved to unload them on
the  parish  priest.  I  could  see  that  you  could  make  quite  a nice
hierarchical  flow  pattern,  with  all  the  shit from inside my own head
flushing  into  the  confessional, where the parish priest flushes it onto
the  diocesan  monsignor  (or  whoever; I don't really know much about the
Church),  and  it all winds up with the Pope, who is the settling tank for
all the world's sludge of pain and misery and guilt, until he passes it on
by  transmitting  it directly to God. (I mean, assuming the existence of a
God,  or  at least assuming that there is an address called "God" to which
you can send the shit.)
   Anyway,  the point is that I sort of had a vision of the same system in
psychotherapy:  local drains going into branch sewers going into community
trunk  lines treeing out of flesh-and-blood psychiatrists, if you see what
I mean. If Sigfrid were a real person, he wouldn't be able to hold all the
misery  that's  poured  into  him.  To  begin  with, he would have his own
problems.  He would have mine, because that's how I would get rid of them,
by  unloading  them  onto  him.  He would also have those of all the other
unloaders  who  share the hot couch; and he would unload all that, because
he had to, onto the next man up, who shrank him, and so on and so on until
they got to-who? The ghost of Sigmund Freud?
   But  Sigfrid  isn't  real. He's a machine. He can't feel pain. So where
does all that pain and slime go?
   I try to explain all that to him, ending with: "Don't you see, Sigfrid?
If  I  give  you  my  pain  and you give it to someone else, it has to end
somewhere.  It  doesn't  feel real to me that it just winds up as magnetic
bubbles in a piece of quartz that nobody ever feels."
   "I  don't think it's profitable to discuss the nature of pain with you,
Rob."
   "Is it profitable to discuss whether you're real or not?"
   He  almost  sighs.  "Rob,"  he  says, "I don't think it's profitable to
discuss  the nature of reality with you, either. I know I'm a machine. You
know  I'm a machine. What is the purpose in our being here? Are we here to
help me?"

   It's  very  healthy  that  you  view  your  breakup  with Drusilla as a
learning experience, Rob.
   I'm a very healthy person, Sigfrid, that's why I'm here.
   Anyway,  that's  what  life  is,  just  one  learning  experience after
another,  and  when  you're  through with all the learning experiences you
graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die.

   "I sometimes wonder," I say, sulking.
   "I  don't  think  you actually wonder about that. I think you know that
you  are  here  to  help  you,  and  the way to do it is by trying to make
something  happen  inside  you.  What  I  do  with  the information may be
interesting  to your curiosity, and it may also provide you with an excuse
to spend these sessions on intellectual conversation instead of therapy-"
   "Touche, Sigfrid," I interrupt.
   "Yes.  But  it  is what you do with it that makes the difference in how
you  feel,  and  whether you function somewhat better or somewhat worse in
situations  that  are  important  to you. Please concern yourself with the
inside of your own head, Rob, not mine."
   I  say  admiringly,  "You  sure  are  one  fucking intelligent machine,
Sigfrid."
   He  says, "I have the impression that what you're actually saying there
is, 'I hate your fucking guts, Sigfrid.'"
   I  have  never heard him say anything like that before, and it takes me
aback,  until I remember that as a matter of fact I have said exactly that
to him, not once but quite a few times. And that it's true.
   I do hate his guts.
   He is trying to help me, and I hate him for it very much. I think about
sweet, sexy S. Ya. and how willing she is to do anything I ask her, pretty
nearly. I want, a lot, to make Sigfrid hurt.


        Chapter 12

   I  came  back  to  my  room  one  morning and found the P-phone whining
faintly,  like  a  distant, angry mosquito. I punched the message code and
found  that  the  assistant personnel director required my presence in her
office  at  ten  hundred  hours that morning. Well, it was later than that
already.  I  had  formed  the  habit  of  spending a lot of time, and most
nights,  with  Klara.  Her  pad was a lot more comfortable than mine. So I
didn't get the message until nearly eleven, and my tardiness in getting to
the  Corporation  personnel  offices  didn't help the assistant director's
mood.
   She  was a very fat woman named Emma Fother. She brushed off my excuses
and  accused,  "You graduated your courses seventeen days ago. You haven't
done a thing since."
   "I'm waiting for the right mission," I said.
   "How  long  are  you going to wait? Your per capita's paid up for three
more days, then what?"
   "Well,"  I  said, almost truthfully, "I was going to come in to see you
about that today anyway. I'd like a job here on Gateway."
   "Pshaw."  (I'd  never  heard  anyone say that before, but that's how it
sounded.) "Is that why you came to Gateway, to clean sewers?"

   |      MISSION REPORT
   |
   |      Vessel  3-31, Voyage 08D27. Crew C. Pitrin, N.
   |  Ginza, J. Krabbe.
   |      Transit  time  out  19  days 4 hours. Position
   |  uncertain, vicinity (21. y.) Zeta Tauri.
   |      Summary: "Emerged in transpolar orbit planet .
   |  88  Earth  radius  at . 4 A. U. Planet possessed 3
   |  detected   small  satellites.  Six  other  planets
   |  inferred by computer logic. Primary K7.
   |      "Landing  made. This planet has evidently gone
   |  through  a  warming period. There are no ice caps,
   |  and the present shorelines do not appear very old.
   |  no  detected  signs  of habitation. no intelligent
   |  life.
   |      "Finescreen  scanning located what appeared to
   |  be  a  Heechee rendezvous station in our orbit. We
   |  approached  it.  It  was  intact.  In  forcing  an
   |  entrance  it exploded and N. Ginza was killed. Our
   |  vessel  was  damaged  and  we  returned, J. Krabbe
   |  dying  en route. no artifacts were secured. Biotic
   |  samples   from   planet  destroyed  in  damage  to
   |  vessel."

   I  was  pretty  sure  that was a bluff, because there weren't that many
sewers;  there  wasn't  enough  gravity  flow  to support them. "The right
mission could come along any day."
   "Oh,  sure,  Rob.  You  know, people like you worry me. Do you have any
idea how important our work here is?"
   "Well, I think so-"
   "There's  a  whole  universe  out  there for us to find and bring home!
Gateway's  the only way we can reach it. A person like you, who grew up on
the plankton farms-"
   "Actually it was the Wyoming food mines."
   "Whatever!  You  know  how desperately the human race needs what we can
give  them.  New  technology.  New power sources. Food! New worlds to live
in."  She  shook  her  head  and  punched  through the sorter on her desk,
looking both angry and worried. I supposed that she was check-rated on how
many  of  us idlers and parasites she managed to get to go out, the way we
were  supposed  to,  which  accounted for her hostility-assuming you could
account  for  her  desire  to  stay  on  Gateway  in  the first place. She
abandoned  the sorter and got up to open a file against the wall. "Suppose
I do find you a job," she said over her shoulder. "The only skill you have
that's any use here is prospecting, and you're not using that."
   "I'll take any-almost anything," I said.
   She  looked  at  me  quizzically and then returned to her desk. She was
astonishingly graceful, considering she had to mass a hundred kilos. Maybe
a fat woman's fantasy of not sagging accounted for her desire to hold this
job  and  stay  on  Gateway. "You'll be doing the lowest kind of unskilled
labor," she warned. "We don't pay much for that. One-eighty a day."
   "I'll take it!"
   "Your per capita has to come out of it. Take that away and maybe twenty
dollars a day for toke money, and what do you have left?"
   "I could always do odd jobs if I needed more."
   She  sighed.  "You're  just  postponing the day, Rob. I don't know. Mr.
Hsien,  the  director,  keeps a very close watch on job applications. I'll
find  it  very hard to justify hiring you. And what are you going to do if
you get sick and can't work? Who'll pay your tax?"
   "I'll go back, I guess."
   "And  waste  all  your  training?" She shook her head. "You disgust me,
Rob."
   But  she  punched  me out a work ticket that instructed me to report to
the  crew  chief  on  Level  Grand,  Sector North, for assignment in plant
maintenance.
   I  didn't like that interview with Emma Fother, but I had been warned I
wouldn't.  When  I  talked  it  over  with Klara that evening, she told me
actually I'd got off light.
   "You're  lucky  you drew Emma. Old Hsien sometimes keeps people hanging
until their tax money's all gone."
   "Then  what?"  I  got up and sat on the edge of her cot, feeling for my
footgloves. "Out the airlock?"
   "Don't  make fun, it could conceivably come to that. Hsien's an old Mao
type, very hard on social wastrels."
   "You're a fine one to talk!"
   She  grinned,  rolled  over,  and rubbed her nose against my back. "The
difference between you and me, Rob," she said, "is that I have a couple of
bucks  stashed  away from my first mission. It didn't pay big, but it paid
somewhat.  Also  I've  been out, and they need people like me for teaching
people like you."
   I leaned back against her hip, half turned and put my hand on her, more
reminiscently  than  aggressively.  There  were certain subjects we didn't
talk much about, but-"Klara?"
   "Yes?"
   "What's it like, on a mission?"
   She  rubbed  her  chin  against my forearm for a moment, looking at the
holoview of Venus against the wall. "... Scary," she said.
   I waited, but she didn't say any more about it, and that much I already
knew.  I was scared right there on Gateway. I didn't have to launch myself
on  the  Heechee  Mystery  Bus  Trip to know what being scared was like, I
could feel it already.
   "You  don't really have a choice, dear Rob," she said, almost tenderly,
for her.
   I  felt  a sudden rush of anger. "No, I don't! You've exactly described
my  whole life, Klara. I've never had a choice-except once, when I won the
lottery  and  decided  to  come  here.  And  I'm not sure I made the right
decision then."
   She  yawn