hey  could in fact be
controlled precisely. The superficial mechanics of the process were known.
Each  ship possessed five main-drive verfliers, and five auxiliaries. They
located  coordinates  in space (how?), and, once set, the ship went there.
Again, how? It then returned unerringly to its place of origin, or usually
did,  if  it did not run out of fuel or encounter a mischance-a triumph of
cybernetics  that  S.  Ya.  knew  no  human  agency  could  reproduce. The
difficulty  was  that until this very second no human being knew quite how
to read the controls.
   But what about the next second, or the one after that? With information
pouring  in,  from  the  Food  Factory  and  Heechee Heaven; with Dead Men
talking;  with  at  least one semicompetent human pilot, the boy, Wan-with
all  this,  and  especially  with the flood of new knowledge that might be
unlocked from the prayer fans...
   How  long  before  some  of the mysteries were solved? Perhaps not very
long at all.
   S.  Ya.  wished  she  could  be a part of it all, as her classmates had
become.  As  her husband had become. She wished even more that she did not
suspect  what  part he most wanted to play. But the suspicion remained. If
Robin could make a Heechee ship fly him to any destination he chose in all
the universe, she thought she knew what that destination would be.

   Semya  Yagrodna  Lavorovna-Broadhead called to her secretary, "How much
time do I have?"
   The  program  appeared  and  said,  "It  is  now  five  twenty-two. Dr.
Liederman is expected at six forty-five. You will then be prepared for the
procedure,  which will occur at eight o'clock. You have a little more than
an hour and a quarter. Perhaps you would like to rest?"
   S. Ya. chuckled. It always amused her when her own programs offered her
advice.  She did not, however, feel any need to respond to it. "Have menus
been prepared for today and tomorrow?" she asked.
   "Nyet, gospozha."
   That  was  both  a  relief and a disappointment. At least Robin had not
prescribed  more fattening foods for today-or perhaps his prescription had
been overruled, because of the operation? "Select something," she ordered.
The  program  was quite capable of preparing menus. It was only because of
Robin  himself  that  either  of  them ever gave a thought to such routine
chores. But Robin was Robin, and there were times when cooking was a hobby
for him, cutting onions paper-thin for a salad and standing to stir a stew
for  hours. Sometimes what he produced was awful, sometimes not; Essie was
not  critical,  because  she  was not very interested in what she ate. And
also  because  she  was  grateful that she felt no need to concern herself
with  such matters; in this respect, at least, Robin surpassed her father.
"No,  wait,"  she  added, struck with a thought. "When Robin comes home he
will  be  hungry.  Serve  him  a snack-those crullers, and the New Orleans
coffee. As at the Cafe du Monde."
   "Da, gospozha." How devious you are, thought Essie, smiling to herself.
One hour and twelve minutes left.
   It would do no harm to rest.
   On the other hand, she was not sleepy.
   She  could, she thought, interrogate her medical program again. But she
had  no  real  wish  to  hear about the procedures she faced an additional
time.  Such  large pieces to take from someone else's body for the sake of
her  own!  The  kidney,  yes.  One  might  well  sell  that and still have
something  left. As a student, Essie had known comrades who had done that,
might  even  have done it herself if she had been just a shade poorer than
she  actually was. But, although she knew very little more of anatomy than
her father had taught her at his knee, she knew enough to be sure that the
person,  or  persons,  who had given her all those other tissues would not
have enough left to go on living with. It was a queasy feeling.
   Almost  as  queasy  as  that other feeling that came with knowing that,
even  with  Full  Medical,  from this particular invasion of her person by
Wilma Liederman's knives she might not return.
   Still an hour and eleven minutes.
   Essie  sat  up  once  more.  Whether she was to live or not, she was as
dutiful  a  wife  as  she  had been a daughter, and if Robin wished her to
concern  herself with prayer fans and Heechee she would. She addressed the
computer terminal. "I wish the Albert Einstein program."


        12 Sixty Billion Gigabits

   When  Essie  Broadhead  said, "I wish the Albert Einstein program," she
set  a  large  number  of  events in motion. Very few of these events were
visible  to the unaided senses. They did not take place in the macroscopic
physical world, but in a universe composed largely of charges and pathways
operating  on  the  scale of the electron. The individual units were tiny.
The  total  was  not,  being  made  up  of  some sixty billion gigabits of
information.
   At  Akademogorsk,  young  S.  Ya. 's professors had schooled her in the
then  current  computer logics of ion optics and magnetic bubbles. She had
learned  to  trick  her  computers  into doing many marvelous things. They
could  find  million-digit  prime  numbers  or  calculate  the  tides on a
mud-flat  for  a  thousand  years.  They  could take a child's scribble of
"House"  and  "Daddy"  and  refine  it  into an engineer's rendering of an
architectural  plan,  and a tailor's dummy of a man. They could rotate the
house,  add  a  sunporch,  sheath  it in stucco or cover it with ivy. They
could  shave  off  a  beard,  add  a  wig, costume the man for yachting or
golfing,   for  boardroom  or  bar.  These  were  marvelous  programs  for
nineteen-year-old Semya. She found them thrilling. But she had grown since
then.  By  comparison  with  the  programs  she  was  now writing, for her
secretary,  for  "Albert  Einstein"  and for her many clients, those early
ones  were slow and stumbling caricatures. They did not have the advantage
of  circuits  borrowed from Heechee technology, or of a circulating memory
store of 6 X b'9 bits.
   Of  course,  even Albert did not use all sixty billion gigabits all the
time. For one thing, they were not all shared. Even the shared stores were
occupied  by  tens  of  thousands of programs as subtle and complicated as
Albert, and by tens of millions of duller ones. The program called "Albert
Einstein" slipped through and among the thousands and the millions without
interference.  Traffic  signals  warned  him  away from occupied circuits.
Guideposts  led  him  to  subroutines  and libraries needed to fulfill his
functions.  His path was never a straight line. It was a tree of branching
decision  points,  a lightning-stroke of zigzag turns and reverses. It was
not truly a "path", either; Albert never moved. He was never in a specific
place  to move from. It is at least arguable whether Albert "was" anything
at  all.  He had no continuous existence. When Robin Broadhead was through
with him and turned him off he ceased to be, and his subroutines picked up
other  tasks.  When  he  was  turned  on  again  he recreated himself from
whatever  circuits were idle, according to the program S. Ya. had written.
He was no more real than an equation, and no less so than God.
   "I wish..." S. Ya. Lavorovna-Broadhead had said.
   Before   her   voice   was   halfway   through   the  first  vowel  the
sound-activated gate in the monitor's receiver summoned up her secretarial
program.  The  secretary  did  not appear. She read the first trace of the
name that followed... "-the Albert Einstein..."
   -matched  it against her command store, made a probabilistic assessment
of the rest and issued an instruction. That was not all the secretary did.
Before  that  she had recognized the voice of S. Ya. and confirmed that it
was  that of an authorized person-the person who had written her, in fact.
She checked her store for undelivered messages, found several, and weighed
their  urgency.  She  made  a quick sweep of Essie's telemetry readings to
estimate  her  physical  condition,  retrieved the memory of her proximate
surgery,  balanced  them against the messages and the present instruction,
and  decided  the  messages  need  not  be delivered, and in fact could be
handled  by Essie's surrogate. All that took very little time and involved
only a minor fraction of the secretary's full program. She did not need to
remember,  for  instance,  what  she  was supposed to look like or how her
voice was supposed to sound. So she did not bother.
   The secretary's instruction woke "Albert Einstein".
   He  did  not  at first know that he was Albert Einstein. As he read his
program  he discovered several things about himself. First, that he was an
interactive  information-retrieval  program, whereupon he searched for and
found  addresses  for  the  principal  categories  of  information  he was
supposed  to  supply.  Second,  that he was heuristic and normative, which
obliged him to look for the rules, in the form of go and no-go gates, that
determined  his  decision-making. Third, that he was the property of Robin
a.  k.  a. Robinette, Rob, Robby, Bob or Bobby-Stetley Broadhead and would
be  required  to  interact  with  him  on  a  basis of "knowing" him. This
impelled  the  Albert  program  to  access  the Robin Broadhead files, and
rehearse their contents-by far the most time-consuming part of his task so
far.  When all this was done he discovered his name and the details of his
appearance.  He  made  a  series  of arbitrary choices of costume-pullover
sweater,  or stained gray sweatshirt; slippers or frayed tennis shoes with
a toe poking out; socks or none-and appeared in the tank of the monitor in
the  guise of the real Albert Einstein, pipe in hand, mild eyes humorously
inquiring, before the last echo of the command had died.
   "...program."
   He  had  had plenty of time. It had taken Essie nearly four-tenths of a
second to speak his name.
   As  she  had  spoken  in  English, he greeted her in the same language.
"Good..." quick check of local time, "morning," fast assessment of Essie's
mood  and  condition,  "Mrs.  Broadhead."  If she had been dressed for the
office he would have called her "Lavorovna."
   Essie studied him appraisingly for several seconds, an infinity of time
for  Albert.  He  did  not waste it. He was a shared-time program, and the
parts  of  his  capacity  that  were  not  in active use at any particular
pico-second busied themselves at other tasks.
   Whatever  task was going. While he waited, parts of him were excused to
help  other  programs  make  a weather forecast for a sport-fishing vessel
leaving  Long  Island  Sound,  teach  the conjugation of French verbs to a
little girl, animate a sexual doll for a wealthy, and quirky, old recluse,
and tally gold prices received from the Peking exchange. There were almost
always  other  tasks  on line. When there were not, there were the waiting
batch-process   files   of  less  urgent  problems-nuclear  particle  path
analysis,  the  refinement  of asteroid orbits, the balancing of a million
checkbooks-that  any of the sixty billion gigabits might turn a hand to in
an idle moment.
   Albert  was  not  the  same  as  Robin's other programs-the lawyer, the
doctor,  the  secretary,  the  psychoanalyst, or any of the surrogates who
functioned  for Robin Broadhead when Robin was busy or disinclined. Albert
shared  many  memories with them. They freely accessed each other's files.
Each  had  a  specific  universe of action, tasked for specific needs; but
they could not carry out their tasks without awareness of each other.
   Apart  from  that,  they  were  each  the  personal  property  of Robin
Broadhead,  slaved  to his will. So sophisticated was Albert that he could
read  contextual  clues  and deduce imperatives. He was not limited in his
responses  by what Robin said to him. He was able to read deeper questions
from  the  totality  of  everything  Robin  had  ever  said, to any of his
programs.  Albert  could  not  betray  a confidence of Robin's, or fail to
recognize what was confidential. Generally.
   There  were  exceptions. The person who had written Albert's program in
the first place could easily write an overriding command, and had.

   "Robin  instructed  you  to  prepare  summaries for me," Essie told her
creation.  "Give  them  to  me  now."  She  watched  critically  and  also
admiringly  as  the program she bad written nodded, scratched its ear with
its  pipestem  and  began  to  speak. Albert was quite a good program, she
thought  with pride. For a collection of electronic impulses living in rag
stores-weakly  crystalline  dichalcogenides  with  the  structure of a wet
dishrag-Albert was a rather attractive person.
   She  adjusted  her  tubes and piping and leaned back against pillows to
listen to what Albert had to say. It was all most exceedingly interesting.
Even  to her, even at this time when in-what was it? in less than one hour
ten  minutes  she  would be sponged and stripped and shaved and basted for
further  invasions  of her inner person. As all she demanded of the Albert
program at this time was edited memories of conversations that had already
occurred,  she  knew that he had dismissed large parts of himself to other
work.  But  what  was  left, she observed critically, was quite solid. The
transition  from  the  interactive  Albert waiting for her question to the
remembered  Albert  talking  to  her husband was done smoothly and without
jumps-if  one  did  not look for such minor imperfections as that the pipe
was  suddenly  alight,  and  the socks abruptly pulled up over the ankles.
Satisfied,  Essie  paid  attention to the content of what was going on. It
was  not  just one conversation, she perceived. There were at least three.
Robin must have been spending a lot of time talking to his science program
in  Brasilia, and while one part of her mind was listening to the exciting
news  from Heechee Heaven another part was smiling at herself. How amusing
that she should be pleased at this evidence that he had not used his hotel
suite  for  other purposes! (Or at least not exclusively, she amended.) He
could  not  have  been blamed if he had chosen a living companion instead.
Even  a  female  one.  Under  the  circumstances,  with a main lover in no
condition  to be very responsive, she would certainly have felt free to do
the  same. (Well, not certainly. There was enough early Soviet prudishness
left  in Essie for at least a doubt.) But she admitted to herself that she
was  pleased, and then made herself attend to the truly fascinating things
that were being said. So much happening! So much to absorb!
   First,  the Heechee. The Heechee in Heechee Heaven were not Heechee! Or
at  least  those  Old Ones were not. It was proved by the bio-assay of the
DNA,  Albert was earnestly assuring her husband, punctuating his arguments
with pipe thrusts. The bioassay had produced not an answer but a puzzle, a
basic  chemistry  that  was  neither human, nor yet inhuman enough to come
from  creatures  evolved  around  some  other  star.  "Also," said Albert,
puffing,  "there  is  the  question of the Heechee seat. It does not fit a
human  being.  But  neither  does  it fit the Old Ones. So for whom was it
designed? Alas, Robin. We do not know."
   A quick flicker, the socks now gone, the pipe out and being filled, and
Albert  was  talking  about  prayer  fans.  He had not, Albert apologized,
unriddled  the  fans.  The literature was vast but he had searched it all.
There  was no imaginable application of energy and no instrumentation that
had  not  been  applied  to  them.  Yet  they  had  stayed  mute. "One can
speculate,"  Albert  said,  striking a match to his pipe, "that all of the
fans left for us by the Heechee are garbled, perhaps to tantalize us. I do
not  believe  this. Rafliniert 1st der Herr Hietschie, aber Boshaft 1st er
nicht," In spite of everything, Essie laughed out loud. Der Herr Hietschie
indeed! Had she written this sense of comedy into her program? She thought
of  interrupting  him  to  command  that  he  display  this section of his
instructions,  but  already  that  replay  had  ended  and a slightly less
rumpled  Albert  was  talking about astrophysics. Here Essie almost closed
her  ears,  for  she  quickly  had  enough of curious cosmologies. Was the
universe  open-ended  or closed? She did not strongly care. Was some large
quantity of mass "missing", in the sense that not enough could be observed
to  account  for  known gravitational effects? Very well, then let it stay
missing.  Essie  felt  no  need to go looking for it. Someone's fantasy of
storms   of   indetectible   pious,   and   someone   else-someone   named
Kiube's-notion  that  mass  might  be created from nothing, interested her
very  little.  But when the conversation switched to black holes, she paid
close  attention.  She  was not really concerned with the subject. She was
concerned with Robin's concern for it.
   And  that,  she  told herself justly as Albert rambled on, was petty of
her.  Robin  had kept no mean secrets. He had told her at once of the love
of  his life, the woman named Gelle-Klara Moynlin whom he had abandoned in
a black hole-had told her, actually, far more than she wanted to know.
   She said, "Stop."
   Instantly  the  three-dimensional figure in the tank abandoned the word
it  had  been  speaking in midsyllable. It gazed politely at her, awaiting
orders.
   "Albert,"  she  said carefully, "why did you tell me Robin was studying
question of black holes?"
   The  figure  coughed.  "Why, Mrs. Broadhead," Albert said, "I have been
playing a recording prepared especially for you."
   "Not this time. Why did you volunteer this information other time?"
   Albert's expression cleared and he said humbly, "That directive did not
come from my program, gospozha."
   "I  thought  not!  You  have  been  interacting with the psychoanalytic
program!"
   "Yes, gospozha, as you programmed me to do."
   "And  what  was  the  purpose of this intervention from the Sigfrid von
Shrink program?"
   "I  cannot  say for sure-but," he added hastily, "perhaps I can offer a
guess.  Perhaps  it  is  that the Sigfrid estimates your husband should be
more open with you."
   "That program is not charged with care of my mental health!"
   "No,  gospozha,  not  with yours, but with your husband's. Gospozha, if
you  wish  more information, let me suggest that you consult that program,
not me."
   "I  can  do  more  than  that!" she blazed. And so she could. She could
speak  three  words-Daite  gorod  Polymat-and Albert, Harriet, Sigfrid von
Shrink,  every one of Robin's programs would be subsumed into the powerful
program  of  her  own, Polymath, the one she had used to write them in the
first  place, the overriding program that contained every instruction they
owned. And then let them try cunning evasions on her! Then let them see if
they  could  maintain  the  confidentiality of their memories! Then "God,"
Essie  said  aloud,  "am  actually  planning  to  teach  lesson  to my own
programs!"
   "Gospozha?"
   She  caught  her breath. It was almost a laugh, nearly a sob. "No," she
said,  "cancel  above.  I find no fault with your programming, Albert, nor
with  shrink's.  If  shrink  program  judges Robin should release internal
tensions,  I  cannot  overrule  and  will not pry. Further," she corrected
herself fairly.
   The  curious  thing about Essie Lavorovna-Broadhead was that "fairness"
meant  something  to  her,  even in dealing with her constructs. A program
like Albert Einstein was large, complex, subtle, and powerful. Not even S.
Ya.  Lavorovna  could  write  such  a  program  alone; for that she needed
Polymath.  A program like Albert Einstein learned, and grew, and redefined
its  tasks as it went along. Not even its author could say why it gave one
bit  of  information  and  not another. One could only observe that it was
working,  and  judge it by how it carried out its orders. It was unfair to
the program to "blame" it, and Essie could not be so unfair.
   But,  as  she  moved  restlessly  among her pillows (twenty-two minutes
left!)  it  came  to  her that the world was not entirely fair to her. Not
fair  at  all!  It was not fair that all these fairytale wonders should be
pouring  in  upon the world-not now. It was not fair that these perils and
perplexities  should manifest themselves, not now, not while she might not
live to see how they came out. Could Peter Herter be dealt with? Would the
others of his party be saved? Could the lessons of the prayer fans and the
explorers  make  it possible to do all the things Robin promised, feed the
world,  make  all  men well and happy, allow the human race to explore the
universe? All these questions, and before this day's sun had set she might
be  dead  and  never  to know the answers! It was not fair, any of it. And
least  fair  was  that if she died of this operation she would never know,
truly,  which  way Robin would have chosen, if somehow his lost love could
be found again.
   She  became  aware  that  time was passing. Albert sat patiently in the
tank,  moving  only occasionally to suck his pipe or scratch under the hem
of his floppy sweater-to remind her, that is, that he was still in standby
mode.
   Essie's  thrifty  cybernetician's  soul was indignantly ordering her to
use  the program or turn it off-what a shocking waste of machine time! But
she hesitated. There were questions still to ask.
   At  the  door the nurse was looking in. "Good morning, Mrs. Broadhead,"
she said when she saw that Essie was wide awake.
   "Is it time?" Essie asked, her voice suddenly unsteady.
   "Oh,  not for a few minutes yet. You can go on with your machine if you
want to."
   Essie  shook  her  head.  "Is  no  point,"  she  said and dismissed the
program.  It  was  a  decision lightly taken. It did not occur to her that
some of the unasked questions might be consequential.
   And  when  Albert  Einstein  was  dismissed he did not allow himself to
disintegrate at once.
   "The  whole  of  anything is never told," said Henry James. Albert knew
"Henry  James"  only  as  an  address, the information behind which he had
never  had occasion to seek. But he understood the meaning of that law. He
could  never  tell the whole of anything even to his master. He would fail
in his programming if he tried.
   But what parts of the whole to select?
   At  its  lowest  structural  level,  Albert's program was gated to pass
items of a certain measured "importance" and reject others. Simple enough.
But  the  program  was  redundant.  Some  items came to it through several
gates,  sometimes as many as hundreds of gates; and when some of the gates
said  "go"  and  others said "no go," what was a program to do? There were
algorithms  to  test  importance,  but  at  some  levels of complexity the
algorithms  taxed  even  the  resources  of sixty billion gigabits-or of a
universe  full  of  bits; Meyer and Stockmeyer had proved, long ago, that,
regardless  of  computer power, problems existed which could not be solved
in  the  life  of  the  universe.  Albert's  problems  were not quite that
immense.  But  he  could  not  find  an  algorithm  to decide for him, for
instance,  whether  he should bring up the puzzling implications of Mach's
Principle  as  applied  to  Heechee  history.  Worse. He was a proprietary
program.  It would have been interesting to pass on his conjectures on the
subject to a pure science research program. But that his basic programming
did not permit.
   So Albert held himself together for nearly a millisecond, reconsidering
his  options.  Should  he,  next  time  Robin  summoned him, volunteer his
misgivings  about the potentially terrifying truth that lay behind Heechee
Heaven?
   He  reached  no conclusion in all that long one thousandth of a second,
and his parts were needed elsewhere.
   So Albert allowed himself to come apart.
   This  part  he poured into slow memory, that part into ongoing problems
as  needed,  until all of Albert Einstein had soaked into the 6 x 10 bits,
like  water  into  sand,  until  not  even  a  stain was left. Some of his
routines joined with others in a simulated war game, in which Key West was
invaded from Grand Cayman. Some turned up to assist the traffic-controller
program  at  Dallas-Fort  Worth,  as  Robin  Broadhead's plane entered its
landing  pattern.  Much, much later, some of him helped to monitor Essie's
vital functions as Dr. Wilma Liederman began to cut. One little bit, hours
after,  helped  to solve the mystery of the prayer fans. And the simplest,
crudest,  tiniest  part  of  all  stayed  on to supervise the program that
prepared  Cajun  coffee and beignets for Robin when he arrived, and to see
that the house was clean for him. Sixty billion gigabits can do much. They
even do windows.


        13 At the Halfway Point

   To love someone is a grace. To marry someone is a contract. The part of
me  that  loved  Essie,  was  loving  her wholeheartedly, sank in pain and
terror  when  she relapsed, surged in fearful joy when she showed signs of
recovering. I had plenty of occasion for both. Essie died twice in surgery
before I could get home, and again, twelve days later, when they had to go
in again. That last time they made her clinically dead on purpose. Stopped
heart  and  breath,  kept  only  the  brain  alive.  And  every  time they
reanimated  her  I  was  frightened to think she would live because if she
lived  it meant she might die one more time, and I could not stand it. But
slowly,  painfully,  she  began to gain weight, and Wilma told me the tide
had  turned,  as  when  the spiral begins to glow in a Heechee ship at the
halfway  point and you know you're going to live through the trip. I spent
all  that  time,  weeks and weeks of it, hanging around the house, so that
when Essie could see me I would be there.
   And  all  that time the part of me that had contracted to be married to
her  was  resenting  the bond, and wishing I were free. How do you account
for  that? That was a good occasion for guilt, and guilt is a feeling that
comes  readily  to me-as my old psychoanalytic program used to tell me all
the  time.  And  when  I  went  in  to  see Essie, looking like a mummy of
herself,  the  joy  and worry filled my heart and the guilt and resentment
clogged  my  tongue. I would have given my life to make her well. But that
did  not seem a practical strategy, or at least I could not see any way to
make  that  deal, and the other guilty and hostile part of me wanted to be
free to dwell on lost Kiara, and whether somehow I might find her again.
   But  she  mended,  Essie did. She mended fast. The sunken bags of flesh
under  her  eyes  filled  to  be  only  bruises. The tubes came out of her
nostrils. She ate like a pig. Before my very eyes she was filling out, the
bust  beginning  to  swell, the hips regaining their power to startle. "My
compliments  to  the  doctor," I told Wilma Liederman when I caught her on
her way in to see her patient.
   She said sourly, "Yes, she's doing fine."
   "I don't like the way you said that," I told her. "What's the matter?"
   She relented. "Nothing, really, Robin. All her tests are fine. She's in
such a hurry, though!"
   "That's good, isn't it?'"
   "Up  to a point it is. And now," she added, "I have to get in to see my
patient.  Who  will be up and about any day now and, maybe, back to normal
in a week or two." What good news that was! And how reluctantly I received
it.
   I  went  through  all  those  weeks  with  something  hanging  over me.
Sometimes  it  seemed  like  doom,  like old Peter Herter blackmailing the
world  and  nothing  the  world could do to resist it, or like the Heechee
stirring  into  anger  as  we  invaded  their  complex and private worlds.
Sometimes  it  seemed  like golden gifts of opportunity, new technologies,
new  hopes,  new  wonders  to  explore and exploit. You would think that I
would distinguish between hopes and worries, right? Wrong. Both scared the
hell out of me. As good old Sigfrid used to tell me, I have a great talent
not only for guilt but also for worry.
   And  when  you  came right down to it, I had some fairly real things to
worry  about.  Not  just  Essie. When you reach a certain age you have, it
seems  to  me,  a  right to expect some parts of your life to stay stable.
Like  what, for instance? Like money, for instance. I was used to a lot of
it,  and  now here was my lawyer program telling me that I had to watch my
pennies.  "But  I  promised Hanson Bover a million cash," I said, "and I'm
going to pay it. Sell some stock."
   "I've  sold  stock, Robin!" He wasn't angry. He wasn't programmed to be
able to be really angry, but he could be wretched and he was.
   "So sell some more. What's the best to get rid of?"
   "None  of  it  is  'best,' Robin. The food mines're down because of the
fire.  The fish farms still haven't recovered from losing the fingerlings.
A month or two from now..."
   "A month or two from now isn't when I want the money. Sell." And when I
signed  him off and called Bover up to find out where to send his million,
he actually seemed surprised.
   "In  view of Gateway Corp's action," he said, "I thought you'd call our
arrangement off."
   "A deal is a deal," I said. "We can let the legalities hang. They don't
mean much while Gateway has preempted me."
   He  was  suspicious immediately. What is it that I do that makes people
suspicious  of me when I am going miles out of my way to be fair?' "Why do
you  want  to hold off on the legalities?" he demanded, rubbing the top of
his head agitatedly-was it sunburned again?
   "I  don't  'want' to," I said, "it just doesn't make any difference. As
soon as you lift your injunction Gateway will drop theirs on me."
   Alongside  Bover's  scowling face, my secretary program's appeared. She
looked  like  a cartoon of the Good Angel whispering into Bover's ear, but
actually what she was saying was for me: "Sixty seconds until Mr. Herter's
reminder," she said.
   I  had  forgotten  that  old Peter had given us another of his two hour
notices.  I said to Bover, "It's time to button up for Peter Herter's next
jab,"  and hung up-I didn't really care if he remembered, I only wanted to
terminate  the  conversation.  Not  much buttoning up was involved. It was
thoughtful-no,  it was orderly-of old Peter to warn us each time, and then
to  perform  so  punctually.  But  it  mattered more to airline pilots and
automobus's than to stay-at-homes like me.
   There was Essie, however. I looked in to make sure she was not actually
being perfused or catheterized or fed. She wasn't.
   She  was asleep-quite normally asleep, with her dark-gold hair spilling
all  around her, and gently snoring. And on the way back to my comfortable
console chair I felt Peter in my mind.
   I  had  become  quite a connoisseur of invasions of the mind. It wasn't
any  special  skill.  The  whole  human race had, over a dozen years, ever
since the fool kid, Wan, began his trips to the Food Factory. His were the
worst,  because  they lasted so long and because he shared his dreams with
us.  Dreams  have  power;  dreams  are  a  kind  of  released insanity. By
contrast, the one light touch we'd had from Janine Herter was nothing, and
Peter  Herter's precise two-minute doses no worse than a traffic light you
stop  a  minute, and wait impatiently until it is over, and then you go on
your  way.  All  I  ever felt from Peter was the way he felt-sometimes the
gut-griping  of  age,  sometimes  hunger or thirst, once the fading, angry
sexual lust of an old man all by himself. As I sat down I remember telling
myself  that this time was nothing at all. More than anything else, it was
like having a little dizzy spell, too much crouching in one position, when
you  stand up you have to pause a moment until it goes away. But it didn't
go  away.  I felt the blurriness of seeing things with two sets of eyes at
once,  and the inarticulate anger and unhappiness of the old man-no words;
just  a  sort  of tone, as though someone were whispering what I could not
quite hear.
   It  kept  on  not going away. The blurriness increased. I began to feel
detached and almost delirious. That second vision, that is never sharp and
clear,  began  to  show  things  I had never seen before. Not real things.
Fantasy  things.  Women  with  beaks  like birds of prey. Great glittering
metal monsters rolling across the inside of my eyelids. Fantasies. Dreams.
   The two-minute measured dose of reminder had gone off track. The son of
a bitch had fallen asleep in the cocoon.

   Thank  God for the insomnia of old men! It didn't last eight hours, not
much more than one.
   But  they  were  sixty-odd unpleasant minutes. When I felt the unwanted
dreams  slide  tracelessly  out of my mind, and was sure they were gone, I
ran to Essie's room. She was wide awake, leaning back against the pillows.
"Am  all  right, Robin," she said at once. "Was an interesting dream. Nice
change from my own."
   "I'll kill the old bastard," I said.
   Essie shook her head, grinning up at me. "Not practical," she said.
   Well, maybe it wasn't. But as soon as I had satisfied myself that Essie
was  all  right,  I  called  for Albert Einstein: "I want advice. Is there
anything that can be done to stop Peter Herter?"
   He scratched his nose.
   "You  mean  by  direct  action,  I  assume. No, Robin. Not by any means
available now."
   "I don't want to be told that! There must be something!"
   "Sure  thing,  Robin,"  he  said slowly, "but I think you're asking the
wrong  program. Indirect measures might work. As I understand it, you have
some  legal  questions unresolved. If you could resolve them, you might be
able to meet Herter's demands and stop him that way."
   "I've  tried  that!  It's the other way around, damn it! If I could get
Herter  to  stop,  then  maybe  I  could  get Gateway Corp to give me back
control.  Meanwhile  he's  screwing  up  everybody's  mind,  and I want it
stopped! Isn't there some kind of interference we could broadcast?"
   Albert  sucked  his  pipe. "I don't think so, Rob," he said at last. "I
don't have a great deal to go on."
   That startled me. "You don't remember what it feels like?"
   "Robin," he said patiently, "I don't feel anything. It is important for
you  to  remember  that  I  am  only a computer program. And not the right
program,  really,  to  discuss  the  exact  nature of the signals from Mr.
Herter-your  psychoanalytic  program might be more helpful. Analytically I
know  what happened-I have all the measurements of the radiation involved.
Experientially, nothing. Machine intelligence is not affected. Every human
being  experienced  something, I know because there are reports to say so.
There  is  evidence  that  the  larger-brained mammals-primates, dolphins,
elephants-were  also disturbed; and maybe other mammals were too, although
the  evidence is sketchy. But I have not experienced it directly.... As to
broadcasting  an interfering pattern, yes, perhaps that could be done. But
what  would be the effect, Robin? Bear in mind that the interfering signal
would  come  from  a nearby point, not one twenty-five light-days away; if
Mr. Herter can cause some disorientation, what would a random signal do at
close range?"
   "It would be bad, I guess."
   "Sure  thing, Robin. Probably worse than you guess, but I could not say
without  experimentation.  The subjects would have to be human beings, and
such experiments I cannot undertake."
   Over  my shoulder Essie's voice said proudly, "Yes, you exactly cannot,
as who would know better than I?"
   She  had  come up behind me without a sound, barefoot in the thick rug.
She  wore  a  neck-to-ankle  robe  and  her  hair was done up in a turban.
"Essie, what the hell are you doing out of bed?" I demanded.
   "My  bed  has become excessively tedious," she said, kneading my ear in
her  fingers,  "especially  occupied  alone.  Do  you  have plans for this
evening, Robin? Because, if invited, I would like to share yours."
   "But..."  I  said, and, "Essie..." I said, and what I wanted to say was
either  "You  shouldn't  be  doing  this  yet!"  or  "Not  in front of the
computer!" She didn't give me a chance to decide which. She leaned down to
press  her  cheek against mine, perhaps so that I might feel how round and
full it had once again become.
   "Robin,"  she  said  sunnily, "I am far more well than you believe. You
may ask the doctor, if you wish. She will tell you how very rapidly I have
healed."  She  turned  her head to kiss me quickly and added, "I have some
affairs  of  my  own for the next few hours. Please continue chatting with
your  program  until then. I am sure Albert has many interesting things to
tell you, isn't that so, Albert?"
   "Sure thing, Mrs. Broadhead," the program agreed, puffing cheerfully on
his pipe.
   "So,  then.  It's  settled." She patted my cheek and turned away, and I
have  to  say that as she walked back to her room she did not in the least
look  unwell.  The  robe was not tight, but it was shaped to her body, and
the  shape  of  her  body  was  really  fine. I could not believe that the
wadding of bandage all along her left side was gone, but there was no sign
of it.
   Behind  me,  my  science  program  coughed.  I  turned back, and he was
puffing on his pipe, his eyes twinkling.
   "Your wife is looking very well, Robin," he said, nodding judiciously.
   "Sometimes, Albert," I said, "I don't know just how anthropomorphic you
are. Well. What very interesting things do you want to tell me about?"
   "Whatever  you  want to hear, Robin. Shall I continue on the subject of
Peter  Herter? There are some other possibilities, such as the abort mode.
That is, setting aside for the moment the legal complications, it would be
possible  to  command  the shipboard computer, known as 'Vera', to explode
the fuel tanks on the orbital craft."
   "Hell it would! We'd destroy the greatest treasure we've ever found!"
   "Sure  thing,  Robin,  and  it's even worse than that. The chance of an
external  explosion damaging the installation Mr. Herter is using is quite
small.  It might only anger him. Or strand him there, to do as he chooses,
as long as he lives."
   "Forget it! Don't you have anything good to tell me about?"
   "As  a  matter  of  fact,  Robin,"  he  grinned, "I do. We've found our
Rosetta  stone." He shrank away to a dwindling spray of colored flecks and
disappeared.  As a luminous spindle-shaped mass of lavender color replaced
him in the tank, he said, "That is the image of the beginning of a book."
   "It's blank!"
   "I  haven't started it yet," he explained. The shape was taller than I,
and  about half as thick as it was tall. It began to shift before my eyes;
the  color  thinned out until I could see through it clearly and then one,
two, three dots began to appear inside it, points of bright red light that
spun  themselves  out  in a spiral. There was a sad chittering sound, like
telemetry  or  like  the  amplified  chirps of marmosets. Then the picture
froze. The sound stopped. Albert's voice said:
   "I  have  stopped it at this point, Robin. It is probable that sound is
language, but we have not yet been able to isolate semantic units from it.
However,  the 'text' is clear. There are one hundred thirty-seven of those
points of light. Now watch while I run a few more seconds of the book."
   The  spiral  of  137  tiny  stars  doubled itself. Another coil of dots
lifted  itself  from  the  original and floated to the top of the spindle,
where  it  hung  silently.  The  chitter  of  language began again and the
original  spiral  expanded itself, while each of the dots began to trace a
spiral  of  its  own.  When  it  was  finished there was one large spiral,
composed of 137 smaller spirals, each composed of 137 dots. Then the whole
red pattern turned orange and it froze.
   "Do you want to try to interpret that, Robin?'" Albert's voice asked.
   "Well, I can't count that high. But it looks like 137 times 137, right?"
   "Sure thing, Robin. 137 squared, making 18,769 dots in all. Now watch."
   Short  green  lines  slashed  the  spiral into ten segments. One of the
segments  lifted  itself  off,  dropped  to  the bottom of the spindle and
turned  red again. "That's not exactly a tenth of the number, Robin," said
Albert.  "By counting you find that there are now 1840 dots at the bottom.
I'll  proceed." Once again, the central figure changed color, this time to
yellow.  "Notice the top figure." I looked closely, and saw that the first
dot  had  turned orange, the third yellow. Then the central figure rotated
itself  on the vertical axis and spun out a three-D column of spirals, and
Albert said, "We now have a total of 137 cubed dots in the ce