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pulled down over my ears. My nose was running. I was reading a book. I
was-what? Oh, maybe I was ten years old; and I was coughing as I read.
"Remember, dear Robin? Is good old days for you," said Essie from her
invisible place beside me.
"Good old days," I snorted. "You've been snooping around in my memories
again," I accused-without any real anger, because of course both of us had
invaded all of each other's memory stores often and completely before that.
"But just look, dear Robin," she said. "Look how things were." I didn't need
to be ordered to look. I couldn't have stopped. I had no trouble in
recognizing the scene, either. It was the Food Mines, where all of my
childhood was spent: the shale mines of Wyoming, where rock was quarried and
baked into keratogens, and then the oil was fed to yeasts and bacteria to make
the single-cell protein that fed most of the too-numerous and too-hungry human
race. In those mining towns you never got the smell of oil off you as long as
you lived, and as long as you lived was generally not very long.
"Anyway," I added, "I never said the old days were any good."
"Correct, Robin!" Essie cried triumphantly. "Good old days were distinctly
bad. Much worse than now, no? Are now no children compelled to grow up
breathing nasty hydrocarbon air, dying because cannot afford proper medical
treatment."
"Oh, sure, that's true enough," I said, "but still-"
"Wait to argue, Robin! Is more to see. What book do you read there? Is not
Huckly-berry Finn or Little Mermaid, I think."
I looked closer to oblige Essie, and then, with a shock, I saw the title.
She was right. It was no children's book. It was The User's Guide to
Medical Insurance Programs, and I remembered exactly when I had sneaked that
copy out of the house when my mother wasn't looking, so that I might try to
understand just what catastrophe we were facing.
"My mother was sick," I groaned. "We didn't have enough coverage for both of
us, and she-she-"
"She put off her own surgery so that you might have therapy, Robin,"
Essie said softly. "Yes, but that was later. Not this time. This time was only
that you needed better food and supplements, and could not afford them."
I was finding this pretty painful. "Look at my buck teeth," I said. "No money
fix them either, Robin. Was bad time for children, correct?"
"So you're playing the Ghost of Christmas Past," I snapped, trying
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to relieve the pressure by confusing her with a reference she wouldn't
understand.
But when you have gigabit resources, you can understand a lot. "No, nor are
you Scrooge," she said, "but consider. In these times, not so very far behind
us, whole Earth was overpopulated. Hungry. Full of strife and anger.
Terrorists, Robin. Remember violence and stupid murdering?"
"I remember all that."
"Of course. Now, what happened, Robin? I will tell. You happened. You and
hundreds other crazy, desperate Heechee-ship prospectors from Gateway.
Found technology of Heechee and brought it back to Earth. Found fine new
planets to live on-like discovery of America, only one thousand times greater-
and found ways for people to move there. Are now no more overcrowded places on
Earth, Robin. People have gone to newer places, built better cities. Have not
even damaged Earth to do so! Air is not destroyed by gasoline engines or
rocket exhausts; use loop to get into orbit, then anywhere! No one so poor
cannot have medicine now, Robin. Even organ transplants-and make organs out of
CHON material, so need not even wait for other person to die to snatch
secondhand bits out of corpse. Correct, Robin? Heechee Food Factory makes
organs now; developments you have played large part in bringing about. Have
extended meat life, always in good health, many decades; then transcribe mind
like us to live very much longer-in, again, development you have partly
financed and I have partly helped develop, so that not even dying is fatal.
You see no progress? Is not because no progress is there! Is because old
gloomy Robinette Broadhead looks hard at delicious feast of everything now on
plate of everyone alive and sees only what will later become, namely, shit."
"But," I said obstinately, "there are still the Foe."
Essie laughed. She seemed actually to find it funny. The picture disappeared.
We were back in the Spindle, and she leaned forward to kiss my cheek.
"Foe?" she said fondly. "Oh, yes, dear Robin. Foe are one more damn thing
after another, as you say. But will deal with as have always dealt.
Taking one damn thing at a time. And now get back to important earlier
business; we dance!"
She is a wonderful woman, my Essie. Real or not.
She was also quite right, in every way that one could logically argue, so I
succumbed to logic. I can't say that I really felt cheerful, but the novocaine [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]