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Dortmund to arrange for a mausoleum for Lurvy's father as soon as his remains
got back from the
Food Factory. So was Wan, getting rich on PV appearances as The Boy from
Heechee Heaven; so was
Janine, having a marvelous time meeting her singing-star pen-pals at last in
the flesh. So was I.
We were all rich in money and fame. What they would make of it, after all, I
could not guess. But what I wanted at last became clear. "Get a sweater,
Essie," I said. "Let's go for a walk."
We strolled down to the edge of the icy water, holding hands. "Why, is
snowing," Essie announced, peering up at the bubble seven hundred meters over
our heads. Usually you can't see it very clearly, but tonight, edge-lighted
from the heaters that keep snow or ice from crumbling it, it was a milky dome,
broken with reflections from lights on the ground, stretching from horizon to
horizon.
"Is it too cold for you?"
"Perhaps just here, near the water," she acknowledged. We climbed back up the
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
slope to the little palm grove by the fountain and sat on a bench to watch the
lights on Tappan Sea. It was comfortable there. The air never gets really cold
under the bubble, but the water is the Hudson, running naked through seven or
eight hundred kilometers before it hits the Palisades Dam, and every once in a
while in winter chunks of sheet ice bob under the barriers and wind up rubbing
against our boat dock.
"Essie," I said, "I've been thinking."
"Know that, dear Robin," she said.
"About the Oldest One. The machine."
"Oh, really?" She pulled her feet up to get them off the grass, damp from
vagrant drifts from the fountain. "Very fine machine," she said. "Quite tame,
since you pulled its teeth.
Provided is not given external effectors, or mobility, or access to control
circuits of any kind-
yes, quite tame."
"What I want to know," I said, "is whether you could build one like it for a
human being."
"Ah!" she said. "Hum. Yes, I think so. Would take some time and, of course,
large sums of money, but yes."
"And you could store a human personality in it-after the person died, I mean?
As well as the Dead Men were stored?"
"Quite a good bit better, would say. Some difficulties. Mostly biochemical,
not my department." She leaned back, looking upward at the iridescent bubble
overhead and said consideringly: "When I write computer program, Robin, I
speak to computer, in some language or other. I tell it what it is and what it
is to do. Heechee programming is not the same. Rests on direct chemical
readout of brain. Old Ones brain is not chemically quite identical with yours
and
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederi...0-%20Beyond%20The%20Blue%20Ev
ent%20Horizon.txt (117 of 121) [1/15/03 6:32:56 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Heechee%202%20-%20Beyond
%20The%20Blue%20Event%20Horizon.txt mine, therefore Dead Man storage is very
far from perfect. But Old Ones must be much farther from actual Heechee, for
whom process was first developed. Heechee man-aged to convert process without
any apparent difficulty, therefore it can be done. Yes. When you die, dear
Robin, is possible to read your brain into a machine, then put machine in
Heechee ship and fly it off to Sagittarius YY
black hole, where it can say hello to Gelle-Klara Moynlin and explain episode
was not your fault.
For this you have my guarantee, only you must not die for, say, five to eight
years yet, to allow for necessary research. Will you promise that for me,
please."
There are times when something catches me so by surprise that I don't know
whether to cry, or get angry, or laugh. In this case I stood up quickly and
stared down at my dear wife. And then
I decided which to do, and laughed. "Sometimes you startle me, Essie," I said.
"But why, Robin?" She reached out and took my hand. "Suppose it was the other
way around, hey? Suppose it was I who, many years ago, had been through a very
great personal tragedy. Exactly like yours, Robin. In which someone I loved
very much was harmed very severely, in such a way that
I could never see that person or explain to her what happened. Do you not
think I would want very much to at least speak to her again, in some way, to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]