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6
Out Where the Black Holes Spin

Eloping with a lunatic was not, on balance, very much better than being bored out of her mind in Port Hegramet. It was different, oh, heavens, yes, it was different! But parts of it were equally boring, and parts of it simply scared her to death. Since the ship was a Five there was room for the two of them—or should have been. Since Wan was young, and rich, and almost, in a way, handsome—if you looked at him the right way—the trip should have been lively enough. Neither of those was true.

And besides, there were the scary parts.

If there was one thing every human being knew about space, it was that black holes were meant to be stayed away from. Not by Wan. He sought them out. And then he did worse than that.

What the gidgets and gadgets were that Wan played with Doily did not know. When she asked, he wouldn't answer. When, wheedling, she put one of her puppets on her hand and asked through its mouth, he scowled and frowned and said, "If you are going to do your act do something funny and dirty, not ask questions that are none of your business." When she tried to find out why they were none of her business, she was more successful. She didn't get a straight answer. But from the bluster and confusion with which Wan responded it was easy to figure out they were stolen.

And they had something to do with black holes. And, although Dolly was almost positive that she had heard, once, that there was no way in or out of a black hole, she was also almost positive that what Wan was trying to do was to find some certain black hole and then to go into it. That was the scary part.

And when she wasn't scared half out of her young mind, she was bone-crackingly lonesome, for Captain Juan Henriquette Santos-Schmitz, the dashing and eccentric young multimillionaire whose exploits still titillated the readers of gossip services, was rotten company. After three weeks in his presence, Dolly could hardly stand the sight of him.

Although she admitted to herself, trembling, that the sight of him was a lot less worrisome than the sight she was actually looking at.

What Dolly was looking at was a black hole. Or not really at the hole itself, for you could look at that all day and not see anything; black holes were black because they could not be seen at all. She was actually seeing a spiraling aurora of bluish, violetish light, unpleasant for the eyes even through the viewing plate over the control panel. It would have been far more unpleasant to be exposed to. That light was only the iceberg tip of a flood of lethal radiation. Their ship was armored against such things, and so far the armor had easily held. But Wan was not within the armor. He was down in the lander, where he had tools and technologies that she did not understand, and that he refused to explain. And she knew that at some time, in some such situation, she would be sitting in the main ship and would feel the little lurch that meant the lander had disengaged. And then he would be venturing even closer to one of these terrible objects! And what would happen to him then? Or to her? Not that she would go with him, certainly! But if he died, and left her alone, a hundred light-years from anything she knew—what then?

She heard an angry mumble and knew that at least that time was not now. The hatch opened and Wan crawled out of the lander, wrathful. "Another empty one!" he snarled at her, as though he were holding her accountable for it.

And, of course, he was. She tried to look sympathetic rather than scared. "Aw, honey, what a pity. That makes three of them."

"Three! Huh! Three with you along, you mean. More than that in all, indeed!" His tone was scornful, but she didn't mind the scorn. It was drowned in the relief when he slipped past her. Dolly moved inconspicuously as far away from the control board as she could—not far, in a Heechee ship that would have fit readily into a good-sized living room. As he sat down and consulted his electronic oracles she kept silent.

When Wan talked to his Dead Men he did not invite Dolly to take part. If he conducted his end of the conversation in words she could at least hear that half of it. If he tapped out instructions on his keyboard she did not have even that much. But this time she could figure it out easily enough. He punched out his questions, scowled at what one of the Dead Men said in his earphones, punched out a correction, and then set up a course on the Heechee board. Then he took the headphones off, scowled, stretched, and turned to Dolly. "All right," he said, "come, you can pay another installment on your passage."

"Why, sure, honey," she said obligingly, though it would have been so very much nicer if he didn't always have to put it like that. But her spirits were a little higher. She felt the tiny suggestion of a lurch that meant that the spacecraft was starting off on another trip, and indeed, the great blue and violet horror on the screen was already dwindling away. That made up for a lot!

Of course, it only meant they were on their way to the next one.

"Do the Heechee," commanded Wan, "and, let me see, yes. With Robinette Broadhead."

"Sure, Wan," said Dolly, retrieving her puppets from where Wan had kicked them and slipping them over her hands. The Heechee did not, of course, look like a real Heechee; and as a matter of fact the Robinette Broadhead was pretty libelous, too. But they amused Wan. That was what mattered to Dolly, since he was paying the bills. The first day out of Port Hegramet he had boastfully shown Dolly his bankbook. Six million dollars automatically socked into it every month! The numbers staggered Dolly. They made up for a lot. Out of all that cataract of cash there had to be a way, sooner or later, of squeezing a few drops for herself. To Dolly there was nothing immoral in such thoughts. Perhaps in an earlier day Americans would have called her a golddigger. But most of the human race, through most of its history, would only have called her poor.

So she fed him and bedded him. When he was in a bad mood she tried to look invisible, and when he wanted entertainment she tried to entertain:

"Hallo thar, Mr. Heechee," said the Broadhead hand, Dolly's fingers twisting to give it a simpering grin, Dolly's voice thick and cornpone-bumpkin (part of the libel!). "I'm moughty pleased to make your acquaintance."

The Heechee hand, Dolly's voice a serpentine whine: "Greetings, rash Earthman. You are just in time for dinner."

"Aw, gosh," cried the Broadhead hand, grin widening, "I'm hungry, too. What's fer dinner?"

"Aargh!" shrieked the Heechee hand, fingers a claw, mouth open. "You are!" And the right-hand fingers closed on the left-hand puppet.

"Ho! Ho! Ho!" laughed Wan. 'That is very good! Though that is not what a Heechee looks like. You do not know what a Heechee is."

"Do you?" asked Dolly in her own voice.

"Nearly! More nearly than you!"

And Dolly, grinning, raised the Heechee hand. "Oh, but you're wrong, Mr. Wan," came the silky, snaky Heechee voice. "This is what I look like, and I'm waiting to meet you in the next black hole!"

Crash went the chair Wan was sitting on as he sprang up. "That is not funny!" he shouted, and Dolly was astonished to see he was trembling. "Make me food!" he demanded, and stomped off to his private lander, muttering.

It was not wise to joke with him. So Dolly made him his dinner and served him with a smile she did not feel. She gained nothing from the smile. His mood was fouler than ever. He screeched: "Stupid woman! Have you eaten all the good food when I was not looking? Is there nothing left fit to be eaten?"

Dolly was near tears. "But you like steak," she protested.

"Steak! Of course I like steak, but look at what you serve for dessert!" He pushed the steak and broccoli out of the way to seize the plate of chocolate-chip cookies and shake it under her nose. Cookies sailed away in all directions, and Dolly tried to retrieve them. "I know it's not what you'd like, honey, but there isn't any more ice cream."

He glared at her. "Huh! No more ice cream! Oh, very well, then. A chocolate soufflé—or a flan—"

"Wan, they're almost all gone, too. You ate them."

"Stupid woman! That is not possible!"

"Well, they're gone. Anyway, all that sweet stuff isn't good for you."

"You have not been appointed my nurse! If I rot my teeth I will buy new ones." He struck at the dish in her hand, and the cookies went flying indeed. "Jettison this trash. I do not wish to eat at all now," he snapped.

It was just another typical meal on the frontiers of the Galaxy. It finished typically, too, with Dolly clearing away the mess and weeping. He was such a terrible person! And he didn't even seem to know it.

But as a matter of fact, Wan did know that he was mean, antisocial, exploitive—a whole long list of things that had been explained to him by the psychoanalysis programs. More than three hundred sessions of them. Six days a week, for almost a year. And at the end he had terminated the analysis with a joke. "I have a question," he told the holographic analyst, displayed for him as a good-looking woman, old enough to be his mother, young enough to be attractive, "and the question is this: How many psychoanalysts does it take to change a light bulb?"

The analyst said, sighing, "Oh, Wan, you're resisting again. All right. How many?"

"Only one," he told her, laughing, "but the light bulb has to really want to change. Haw-haw! And you see, I don't."

She looked directly at him for a silent moment. The way she was displayed, she was sitting on a sort of bean-bag chair, with her legs tucked under her, a note pad in her hand, a pencil in the other. She used it to push up the glasses that were sliding down her nose as she looked at him. As with everything else in her programing, the gesture was meant to have a purpose, the reassuring indication that she was, after all, only another human being like himself, not an austere goddess. Of course, human she was not. But she sounded human enough as she said, "That's really a very old joke, Wan, What's a light bulb?"

He shrugged irritably. "It is a round thing that gives off light," he guessed, "but you are missing the point. I do not wish to be changed anymore. It is not fun for me. It was not my desire to begin this in the first place, and now I have decided to end it."

The computer program said peacefully, "That's your right, of course, Wan. What will you do?"

"I will go looking for my—I will go out of here and enjoy myself," he said savagely. "That is also one of my rights!"

"Yes, it is," she agreed. "Wan? Would you like to tell me what it was you started to say, before you changed your mind?"

"No," he said, getting up, "I would not like to tell you what it is I will do; instead, 1 will do it. Good-bye."

"You're going to look for your father, aren't you?" the psychoanalytic program called after him, but he didn't answer. The only indication he gave that he heard was that instead of merely closing the door, he slammed it.

A normal human being—in fact, almost any human being at all, really—would have told his analyst

that she was right. Would have at some time in three long weeks have told his ship companion and bed companion the same thing, if only to have someone to share in his outside-chance hope and his very real fear. Wan had never learned to share his feelings, because he had never learned to share anything at all. Brought up in Heechee Heaven, without any sort of warm-blooded human companion for the most crucial decade of his childhood, he had become the archetype of a sociopath. That terrible yearning for love was what drove him to seek his lost father through all the terrors of space. Its total lack of fulfillment made it impossible for him to accept love, or sharing, now. His closest companions for those terrified ten years had been the computer programs of stored, dead intelligences called the Dead Men. He had copied them and taken them with him when he took a Heechee starship, and he talked to them, as he would not to flesh-and-blood Dolly, because he knew they were only machines. They didn't mind being treated that way. To Wan, flesh-and-blood human beings were also machines—vending machines, you might call them. He had the coin to make them yield what he wanted. Sex. Or conversation. Or the preparation of his food, or cleaning up after his piggish habits.

It did not occur to him to consider a vending machine's feelings. Not even when the vending machine was actually a nineteen-year-old female human being who would have been grateful for the chance of being allowed to think she loved him.