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accessed me. More precisely still," he said apologetically, "the 'I' who is
now speaking to you is not your data-retrieval program, Albert Einstein."
"Then who?" I demanded.
He smiled, and by the smile I knew that I had, after all, understood him very
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well.
22
And Not Endings
When I was a three-year-old child in Wyoming, I was not discouraged from
believing in Santa Claus. My mother never said to me that Santa Claus was
real, but she wouldn't tell me that he wasn't, either.
In all my long life since there has never been a question that I wanted
answered more badly than I did that question then. I pondered it seriously,
especially toward the last half of the month of December. I was burning to
know. I could not wait to grow up-at least as far as, say, the teens__because
when I was that old, I believed, I would be wise enough to know the answer to
that question for sure.
When I was an adolescent sickie in the nut wards of the hospital at the
Food Mines, the doctors told me I would eventually get well. I would be able
to deal with my fears and confusions. I would be selfconfident, sure of
myself-at least enough so, they promised, that I could hold a job, or anyway
cross a street by myself I couldn't wait for that, either.
When I was a shit-scared prospector on Gateway- When I was a horrified
survivor of the mission to a black hole- When I was a sobbing mass of jelly on
Sigfrid von Shrink's analysis couch- When I was all those things, I promised
myself that, sooner or later, the time would come when I
would be wiser and more sure. When I was thirty, I thought that might come at
fifty. When I was fifty, I was positive it would happen by sixty-five or so.
When I was seventy, I thought that, well, at least when I died there would be,
anyway, some sort of final resolution of all the worries and uncertainties and
doubts.
And then when I was older than I had ever thought possible (not to mention
deader), with all the world's data available to me . . . why, I had the doubts
and worries still.
Then Albert came back from the Foe, with all the knowledge they had given him,
and offered to share it with me; and now what I want to know is how much older
can I grow without feeling grown up at last? And how much more can
I learn without being wise?
At least I know now why I have trouble with endings; it's because there isn't
any end to endlessness. People like me don't have ends. We don't have to.
The Galaxy is our Wrinkle Rock, and the reunion party goes on forever.
We have changes. We have interludes when we do something else for a while,
maybe even a very long while. We have ends to conversations, but each end is a
beginning of a new one, and the beginnings never stop, because that is what
"eternity" means.
I can tell you about some of the ends (which were also beginnings), as, for
example, Albert's conversation with Essie. "I apologize to you, Mrs.
Broadhead," he said, "because I know it must have been upsetting for you to
find a program of your own writing not responsive."
"Damn true," she said indignantly.
"But, you see, I'm no longer just your program. Part of me is now contributed
by the others."
"Others?"
"What you've been calling the Foe," he explained. "What the Heechee called the
Assassins. They are certainly not Assassins, or at least-"
"Oh?" Essie interrupted. "Can convince Sluggards of this? Not to mention any
other races benign creatures who are not Assassins may have wiped out?"
"Mrs. Broadhead," he said gently, "what I was about to say was that they were
not Assassins on purpose. The Sluggards were made of matter. It was not within
the experience of we-of these Others, that is to say, to suspect that bound
protons and electrons could possibly produce intelligence. Consider, please.
Suppose your grandfather had discovered
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that one of his primitive computers was doing something that might,
potentially, at some time in the future have interfered with his own plans.
What would he have done?"
"Smash it up," Essie agreed. "Grandfather had one hellish short temper."
"He would not, I am sure-" Albert smiled "-have considered that a machine
intelligence might have-what can I call it? Soul? At any rate, what we machine
intelligences have. So-the others-'smashed them up,' as you put it. It was no
problem for them; they observed that most matter creatures enjoyed
destruction, so they simply encouraged them to do so to each other."
I put in, "Are you saying that the Assassins love us now?"
"That is not one of their terms," Albert said politely. "And, actually,
you-myself included, I'm afraid-are rather rudimentary creatures by
comparison. But when it was discovered, in a routine check, that there were
machine-stored intelligences on the Watch Wheel, an investigation was
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