His expression had changed. “It’s a question of funding, Robin,” he said apologetically. “There’s a great deal of machine time involved here.”
“Do it! As far as you can go. I’ll have Morton sell some more stock. What else have you got?”
“Something nice, Robin,” he grinned, shrinking in size until he was just a little face in the corner of the tank. Colors flowed in the center of the display and fused into a set of Heechee controls, displaying a pattern of color on five of the ten panels. The others were blank. “Know what that is, Robin? That’s a composite of all the known Gateway flights that wound up at Heechee Heaven. All the patterns you see are identical in all seven known missions. The others vary, but it’s a pretty good conjecture that they are not directly involved in course- setting.”
“What are you saying, Albert?” I demanded. He had caught me by surprise. I found that I was beginning to shake. “Do you mean if we set ship controls for that pattern we could get to Heechee Heaven?”
“Point nine five yes, Robin,” he nodded. “And I have identified three ships, two on Gateway and one on the Moon, that will accept that setting.”
I put on a sweater and walked down to the water. I didn’t want to hear any more.
The trickle pipes had been busy. I kicked my shoes off to feel the damp, pilowy grass and watched some boys, wind-trolling for perch, near the Nyack shore, and I thought: This is what I bought by risking my life on Gateway. What I paid for with Kiara’s.
And: Do I want to risk all this, and my life, again?
But it wasn’t really a question of “want to”. If one of those ships would go to Heechee Heaven and I could buy or steal a passage on it, I would go.
Then sanity saved me, and I realized I couldn’t, after all. Not at my age. And not the way Gateway Corp was feeling about me. And, most of all, not in time. The Gateway asteroid orbits at right-angles to the ecliptic, just about. Getting there from Earth is a tedious long job; by Hohmann curves twenty months or more, under forced acceleration more than six. Six months from now those ships would have been there and back.
If they were coming back, of course.
The realization was almost as much of a relief as it was a sick, hungry sense of loss.
Sigfrid von Shrink never told me how to get rid of ambivalence (or guilt). He did tell me how to deal with them. The recipe is, mostly, just to let them happen. Sooner or later they burn themselves out. (He says.) At least, they don’t have to be paralyzing. So while I was letting this ambivalence smolder itself into ash I was also strolling along the water, enjoying the pleasant under-the-bubble air and gazing proudly at the house I lived in and the wing where my very dear, and for some time wholly platonic, wife was, I hoped, getting herself good and rested. Whatever she was doing, she wasn’t doing it alone. Twice a taxicart had brought someone over from the tube stop. Both of them had been women; and now another taxicart pulled up and let out a man, who gazed around quite unsurely while the taxi rolled itself around the circle and hurried off to its next call. I somehow doubted that he was for Essie; but I could think of no reason why he would be for me, or at least why he could not be dealt with by Harriet. So it was a surprise when the rifle-speaker under the eaves swiveled around to point at me and Harriet’s voice said, “Robin?’ There’s a Mr. Haagenbusch here. I think you ought to see him.”
That was very unlike Harriet. But she was usually right, so I strolled up the lawn, rinsed my bare feet at the French windows and invited the man into my study. He was a pretty old specimen, pink-skin bald, with a dapper white pair of sideburns and a carefully American accent-not the kind people born in the United States usually have. “Thank you very much for seeing me, Mr. Broadhead,” he said, and handed me a card that read:
Herr Doktor Advokat Wm. I. Haagenbusch
“I’m Pete Herter’s lawyer,” he said. “I flew this morning from Frankfort because I want to make a deal.”
How very quaint of you, I thought; imagine coming in person to conduct business! But if Harriet wanted me to see this old flake she had probably talked it over with my legal program, so what I said was, “What kind of a deal?”
He was waiting for me to tell him to sit down. I did. I suspected he was also waiting for me to order coffee or cognac for two, as well, but I didn’t particularly want to do that. He took off black kid gloves, looked at his pearly nails and said: “My client has asked for $250,000,000 paid into a special account plus immunity from prosecution of any kind. I received this message by code yesterday.”
I laughed out loud. “Christ, Haagenbusch, why are you telling me? I haven’t got that kind of money!”
“No, you don’t,” he agreed. “Outside of your investment in the Herter-Hall syndicate and some fish-farm stock, you don’t have anything but a couple of places to live and some personal effects. I think you could raise six or seven million, not counting the Herter-Hall investment. God knows what that might be worth right now, everything considered.”
I sat back and looked at him. “You know I got rid of my tourist stuff. So you checked me out. Only you forgot the food mines.”
“No, I don’t think so, Mr. Broadhead. My understanding is that that stock was sold this afternoon.”
It was not altogether pleasant to find out that he knew more about my financial position than I did. So Morton had had to sell that out, too! I didn’t have time to think about what that implied just then, because Haagenbusch stroked his sideburns and went on: “The situation is this, Mr. Broadhead. I have advised my client that a contract obtained under duress is not enforceable. He therefore no longer has any hope of attaining his purposes through an agreement with the Gateway Corporation, or even with your syndicate. So I have received new instructions: to secure immediate payment of the sum I have mentioned; to deposit it in untraceable bank accounts in his name; and to turn it over to him when, and if, he returns.”
“Gateway won’t like being blackmailed,” I said. “Still, they may not have any choice.”
“Indeed they do not,” he agreed. “What is wrong with Mr. Herter’s plan is that it won’t work. I am sure they will pay over the money. I am also sure that my communications will be tapped and my offices bugged, and that the justice departments of every nation involved in the Gateway treaty will be preparing indictments for Mr. Herter when he returns. I do not want to be named in those indictments as an accomplice, Mr. Broadhead. I know what will happen. They’ll find the money and take it back. They’ll void Mr. Herter’s previous contract on grounds of his own noncompliance. And they’ll put him-him at least-in jail.”
“You’re in a tough situation, Mr. Haagenbusch,” I said.
