The Annals of the Heechee Page 5

  For all of this the schoolthing was quite adequate. It even looked reassuring. It had a face. When it was wearing its normal schoolthing equipage, it appeared to be a little old woman in a shapeless gown. The gown was cosmetic, of course. So was the smiling face. So were all of its physical attributes, for when school was not in session the schoolthing did quite other jobs and wore quite other appearances. And, of course, when more help was needed—when the children needed more supervision at exercise time or if any special problem should arise—the schoolthing coopted as many other artificial intelligences as needed from the Wheel pool.

  Sneezy noticed subconsciously that the schoolthing was hovering around Oniko much of the time, but he was too busy trying to prove to the satisfaction of his number-theory program that 53 was congruent to 1421 to the base 6 to pay much attention. It wasn’t that number theory was difficult for Sneezy. Far from it. Like all Heechee children, he had absorbed most of its principles at about the same time he learned to read. What made mathematics challenging for Sneezy was the silly human system of counting—to the base 10, imagine! With positional notation, so that if you got two digits in the wrong order, the number was hopelessly wrong!

  Then, “Exercise time!” the schoolthing chirped cheerily, and Sneezy found out why the schoolthing was paying particular attention to Oniko Bakin.

  All the individual teaching programs logged off. The restraining straps slid away from the small ones. The children stood up and stretched and, laughing and shoving, trooped out to the safe area outside the schoolhall. Except Oniko. She remained behind.

  Sneezy didn’t notice that at first, because he was busy, as all the children were busy, with the vigorous muscle-against-muscle tuggings and shovings and bendings and pressings that all of them had to perform twenty times a day. That was mandatory all over the Wheel, and not just for children. The light pull of the Watch Wheel was enervating. It didn’t encourage children to develop strong muscles, or adults to keep them. In any practical sense, as long as they stayed on the Wheel, that wouldn’t matter, because what did a human or Heechee need muscles for there?

  But no one would stay on the Wheel forever, and once they got back to normal gravity, they would regret the flab accumulated on the Wheel.

  Sneezy, being Heechee, was more methodical and purposeful in his exercising than most of the human students. He finished early and looked around. When he saw that Oniko wasn’t in the play pit, he peered into the schoolhall. There she was. The girl was strapped into a sort of jointed metal casing that followed the shape of her body. An exoskeleton! And the contraption was writhing and twisting and bending with the girl inside it.

  “Oh,” said Sneezy, understanding at once. “You’re being acclimated to gravity.”

  Oniko opened her eyes and looked at him levelly without answering. She was gasping for breath. Heechee are no better at reading human expressions than humans are with those of the Heechee, but Sneezy could see the strain lines on her face and the sweat on her brow.

  “It’s good that you’re doing that,” he said. Then it occurred to him to be tactful. “Do you mind my being here?” he asked, because the girl was certainly being twisted and shaped into some rather extraordinary positions.

  “No,” she panted.

  Sneezy tarried indecisively. As he looked more closely he could see that it was not only exercise she was given. A stinger needle was in the vein of her arm, gently seeping some sort of fluid into her bloodstream. She saw his eye and managed to say, “I’m being recalcified. To make my bones stronger.”

  “Yes, of course,” Sneezy said encouragingly. “I guess your habitat didn’t have much surface gravity? But this will help, I’m sure.” He thought for a moment, and then said in charity, “I guess you can’t do the real exercises yet, Oniko.”

  She took a deep breath. “Not yet,” she said. “But I will!”

  When the next half-holiday came around, Sneezy and Harold planned to visit the coconut grove. Oniko was just outside the schoolhall door as they left, and on impulse Sneezy said to her, “We’re going to get some coconuts. Do you want to come along?”

  Harold grunted annoyance from behind him, but Sneezy paid no attention. Oniko pursed her lips, considering the invitation. Her poise and manner were very nearly adult as she said, “Yes, thank you very much. I would enjoy that.”

  “Sure,” Harold put in, “but what about lunch? I only brought enough for myself”

  “I already have my lunch,” said the girl, patting her school bag, “since I was planning to explore the Wheel today, anyhow. It’s quite interesting, I think.”

  Harold was indignant. “Interesting! Look, kid, it’s not just interesting. It’s the most important thing in the whole universe. It’s the only thing that keeps the whole human race safe!—Heechee too,” he added as an afterthought. “I mean, if we weren’t on guard every minute who knows what would happen?”

  “Of course,” Oniko said politely. “I know that it is our task to monitor the kugelblitz. That is why we are all here, certainly.” The look she gave Harold was almost maternal. “Both my parents are watchers,” she said, with that self-deprecatory tone that announces great pride, “and my uncle Tashi as well. Nearly everyone where I come from is good at that sort of thing. Probably when I grow up I will be too.”

  If there was one thing Harold couldn’t stand when he was condescending to someone, it was to be condescended to. He glowered. “Are we going to get some coconuts,” he demanded, “or are we going to stand around talking all day? Let’s get going!”

  He turned, leading the way. His expression said that he personally had had no part in inviting this funny new human kid with the pod, and expected nothing good to come of it.

  In a moment it seemed he was right.

  The coconut grove was not far from the schoolhall in the curved geometry of the Wheel. In fact, it was directly “above” the school. There was a lift chain just a few dozen meters away, at the intersection of two main corridors, but in the light gravity of the Wheel active children seldom bothered with such things. Harold pushed a door open to reveal the vertical shaft with handholds just next to the schoolhall. He scuttled up out of sight. Sneezy nodded encouragingly to the girl; she hesitated.

  “I don’t think I can manage that yet,” she said.

  “Naturally,” sneered Harold from above.

  “No problem,” said Sneezy at once, embarrassed at his lack of thoughtfulness. “We’ll take the lift,” he called up the shaft, and didn’t wait to listen for Harold’s answer.

  They got it, all the same, when they stepped carefully off the lift chain and found Harold waiting. “Oh, God,” he said, “if she can’t handle the ladders, how’s she going to climb a tree?”

  “I’ll climb for her,” Sneezy said. “You go ahead.”

  Ungraciously Harold turned away to pick the best tree for himself.

  He went up, hands and feet, like a monkey. The coconut trees were a dozen meters tall before you got to the crown, but they were no trouble for an agile child to climb with only Wheel weight. Harold, vain of the muscles he religiously cultivated, had naturally chosen the tallest and richest-laden, and Oniko looked up at him with some fear.

  “Just stand clear,” Sneezy encouraged, “in case he drops one.”

  “I won’t damn well drop one!” snapped Harold from above, sawing away at one of the husks.

  “It probably wouldn’t hurt even if he did,” said Sneezy, “but all the same—”

  “All the same you think I’ll break,” said Oniko with dignity. “Don’t worry about me. Climb a tree. I’ll watch.”

  Sneezy glanced around and chose a shorter tree with fewer fruits, but, he thought, larger ones. “We’re only allowed two each,” he explained, “or else the guardthing will report us. I’ll be right back.”

  And he swarmed up his tree even faster than Harold and made his choice among the triangular green fruits. He carefully tossed three good ones to the ground a few meters away from Oniko, and when
he was down again she was studying them in surprise. “But these aren’t coconuts!” she exclaimed. “I’ve seen pictures of coconuts. They’re brown and hairy and hard.”

  “Those are inside the green stuff,” Sneezy explained. “Take that big one. Tap it with your knuckles to make sure it’s ripe—”

  But she didn’t know how to do that, either. Sneezy did it for her and handed the nut back to her. Oniko took it in her hand and hefted it thoughtfully.

  Although it weighed nothing much on the Wheel, its mass was the same as it would have been anywhere else in the universe, and it looked formidably hard to penetrate.

  “How do we get the green stuff off?” she asked.

  “Tell her to give it to me, Dopey,” Harold ordered from behind them, his own coconuts already on the ground. He snatched it, and with two quick strokes of his knife he had the stem end open and handed it back to her. “Drink it,” he commanded. “It’s good.”

  The girl looked at it suspiciously, then at Sneezy. He nodded encouragement. Hesitatingly she lifted it to her lips. Tasted. Made a face. Rummaged around the inside of her mouth with her tongue, exploring the flavor of the coconut juice. Tried a larger sip—and reported in surprise, “Why, yes, it is good!”

  “We’ll open them up and get the meat later,” Sneezy said, working on his own coconut. “Maybe we should eat our lunches now; the juice is good to drink with the sandwiches.”

  But though Sneezy’s family had adopted the human habit of sandwiches, Oniko’s had not. What she pulled out of her bag was a collection of lumpy little objects in gaily colored paper. In the red, a pickled plum. In the golden, a hard, brown piece of something she said was fish, although neither Sneezy nor Harold was willing to taste it to find out. Nor was Oniko interested in Harold’s extra deviled egg, nor in the ham sandwiches Sneezy had persuaded his father to let him take. Ham was enough of an adventure for Sneezy; he had only in the last year begun to accept human food—or as close to real human food as the Wheel’s synthesizers created.

  “But you should try these,” Oniko scolded.

  “Thank you, no,” said Sneezy. Harold was less diplomatic; he made throwing-up noises.

  “But I try your food,” Oniko pointed out. “These coconuts, for in-stance, are quite good.” She took another deep sip, found the nut empty. Silently Sneezy opened another and passed it over to her. “I think,” she said judiciously, “that when I grow up and return to Earth I will buy an island where these grow, and then I too will be able to climb the trees.”

  Both boys stared at her. They were almost equally astonished, though for different reasons. Harold because he was deeply impressed at the girl’s casual assumption of such wealth—buy an island? Return to earth? One must be very rich to contemplate either! And Sneezy was simply baffled by the entire concept of owning land at all. “I have been told of such nice islands,” Oniko went on. “There is one called Tahiti, which is said to be very pretty. Or perhaps one nearer the islands of Japan, so I can visit my relatives whom I have never met.”

  “You have relatives in Japan, Earth?” asked Harold, suddenly respectful. His own family were descendants of early settlers on Peggys Planet. Earth was not much more than a myth to him. “But I thought you were born on a Heechee artifact.”

  “I was, and my parents before me,” Oniko said, taking another sip of the coconut milk and settling down to repeat once again an often-told story. “But my father’s father, Aritsune Bakin, married in the great temple at Nara. Then he took his bride to Gateway and sought their fortune. His father’s father had himself been a Gateway prospector, but was badly injured and confined to the asteroid. He had some money. When he died, that money paid for my father’s father’s trip, with his wife along. They took only one trip. The first time out they found their destination was the artifact. There were eighteen large Heechee ships there, none of which could be made to fly by them, and their own ship would no longer respond to the controls.”

  “That was so that the information from the artifact would be kept secret until the proper time,” Sneezy put in in some embarrassment. He had already heard a fair amount of criticism of Heechee practices with their abandoned ships and stations.

  “Yes, of course,” said Oniko forgivingly. “Six other Gateway ships arrived at the same destination and were all, of course, marooned there. There were four Threes, a One, and another Five, like my grandfather’s, so in all there were twenty-three original prospectors. Fortunately, eight of them were women of childbearing age, so the colony survived. When finally we were—” For the first time, she hesitated.

  “When you were rescued?” Harold offered.

  “We were not rescued. We were never lost, merely detained. So when finally we were visited again, just four years ago, the population of the artifact was eighty-five. I was just a small child then, of course. Some of us went directly to Earth or other places, but because I was little my parents remained so that I could begin to be prepared for these horrible heavy places.”

  “You think this is heavy!” Harold snickered. “Wow. Wait’ll you try Peggys Planet! Or Earth!”

  “I shall,” Oniko said firmly.

  “Sure you will,” Harold said skeptically. “What about the money?”

  “Of course, original Gateway rules applied,” Oniko explained. “There were earned bonuses and royalties for the prospectors and their descendants. According to the rules, the value of the artifact and its contents was estimated at two billion eight hundred million and some odd dollars, divided by the number of prospectors who reached there alive, twenty-three.”

  “Wow!” said Harold, goggle-eyed as he did arithmetic in his head.

  “Of course,” Oniko added apologetically, “my parents are the only descendants of four out of the original twenty-three, so I will inherit all four shares—about one-sixth of the total—if they die without having any other children—I hope they will not,” she finished.

  “Wow.” Harold was speechless. Even Sneezy was impressed, though not with the money this child possessed—avarice was not a Heechee vice. But he admired her for the lucid, cogent way she told her story.

  “Really,” she said, “it was quite nice there when the new people came. Many new experiences! Much to talk about! Not that it wasn’t very nice before—oh, what is happening?” she finished in distress, gazing around.

  It was getting dark. The overhead light dimmed swiftly, replaced by a much fainter red glow. In a moment it was as dark as it ever got in the coconut grove—dark enough so that the palms, evolved to thrive in the circadian rhythm of the Earth’s tropical climates, had their period of rest before the lights came on again and photosynthesis resumed. “It’s so the trees won’t get sick,” Sneezy explained. “But they’ll leave the red lights on so we can see; the trees don’t mind that.”

  Sneezy didn’t mind that either, as Harold well knew. The older boy chortled, “Dopey’s afraid of the dark, you know.”

  Sneezy looked away. It was untrue, but it was not wholly false. In the densely packed star cluster at the Heechee core there was seldom a time on the surface of any planet without one degree or another of sunlight. Darkness was not exactly frightening, but it was at least discomfiting. He said, “You were telling us about where you came from?”

  “Oh, yes, Sternutator. It was so nice! Even the original prospectors came to love it, I think, though of course they wished they could see their families again. But there was plenty of food and water, and much to do. We had a great many Heechee books, and more than one hundred Heechee Ancient Ancestors stored there to talk to. They taught us how to use the pods,” she said proudly, patting hers.

  Sneezy reached out a finger to touch hers and felt the warm stirrings of the presence within. “Your Ancestor seems very nice,” he told her.

  “Thank you,” she said gravely.

  “Your pod is much smaller than mine, though,” he offered.

  “Oh, yes. We don’t need the microwave, you see. We only have them for the Ancestors. My fat
her says we had much to learn from the Heechee—once we learned the language, of course.”

  “Thank you,” said Sneezy in return. He wasn’t sure what he was thanking her for, but it seemed polite.

  Harold was not in a polite mood. “What we had to learn from the Heechee,” he said, “was how to be cowards. And we just wouldn’t learn that!”

  Sneezy felt the knots of muscles at his shoulders gather. Heechee emotions aren’t the same as human emotions, but even the Heechee can feel annoyance. He said unsteadily, “I do not want you to call me a coward, Harold.”

  Doggedly, Harold said, “Oh, I’m not talking about you personally, Dopey, but you know as well as I do what the Heechee did. They just ran away and hid.”

  “I do not want you to call me Dopey, either, anymore.”

  Harold jumped to his feet. “And what are you going to do about it?” he sneered.

  Sneezy rose more slowly, wondering at himself He was ill at ease in the gloomy palm grove, but he was also beginning to shake for other reasons. “I am going to tell you that it is wrong for you to call me that. No one else does.”

  “No one else knows you as well as I do,” Harold said stubbornly. Sneezy perceived that the human boy’s feelings had been hurt in some way—it did not occur to Sneezy to use the word “jealousy.” Harold’s forearms were raised, his fists were clenching; why, Sneezy marveled, it looked as though he wanted to fight.

  Perhaps he would have. Perhaps Sneezy would have fought him back. Heechee did not usually practice violence on each other, but Sneezy was a very young Heechee, not as civilized as he would be in another decade or so.

  What stopped them had nothing to do with civilization. It was Oniko. She made a gagging sound, glared at the coconut in her hand in revulsion, then suddenly flung it away.