tell you. It was about — well, it was partly about my mother. But it was also about, well, you know, Dane Metchnikov. I had these … I had—"
"I think you're trying to say something about the fantasies you had of having anal sex with Dane Metchnikov, Rob. Is that right?"
MISSION REPORT
Vessel A3—77, Voyage 036D51. Crew T. Parreno, N. Ahoya, E. Nimkin.
Transit time 5 days 14 hours. Position vicinity Alpha Centauri A.
Summary. "The planet was quite Earth-like and heavily vegetated. The color of the vegetation was predominantly yellow. The atmosphere matched the Heechee mix closely. It is a warm planet with no polar ice caps and a temperature range similar to Earth tropics at the equator, Earth temperate extending almost to the poles. We detected no animal life or signatures (methane, etc.) thereof. Some of the vegetation predates at a very slow pace, advancing by uprooting portions of a vinelike structure, curling around and rerooting. Maximum velocity measured was approximately 2 kilometers per hour. No artifacts. Parreno and Nimkin landed and returned with samples of vegetation, but died of a toxicodendron-like reaction. Great blisters formed over their bodies. Then they developed pain, itching and apparent suffocation, probably due to fluids accumulating in the lung. I did not bring them aboard the vessel. I did not open the lander, or dock it to the vessel. I recorded personal messages for both, then jettisoned the lander and returned without it."
Corporation assessment: No charge made against N. Ahoya in view of past record.
"Yeah. You remember good, Sigfrid. When I was crying, it was about my mother. Partly …"
"You told me that, Rob."
"Right." And I close up. Sigfrid waits. I wait, too. I suppose I want to be coaxed some more, and after a while Sigfrid obliges me:
"Let's see if I can help you, Rob," he says. "What do crying about your mother, and your fantasies about anal sex with Dane, have to do with each other?"
I feel something happening inside of me. It feels as though the soft, wet inside of my chest is starting to bubble into my throat. I can tell that when my voice comes out, it is going to be tremulous and desperately forlorn if I don't control it. So I try to control it, although I know perfectly well that I have no secrets of this sort from Sigfrid; he can read his sensors and know what is going on inside me from the tremble of a triceps or the dampness of a palm.
But I make the effort anyway. In the tones of a biology instructor explaining a prepared frog I say: "See, Sigfrid, my mother loved me. I knew it. You know it. It was a logical demonstration; she had no choice. And Freud said once that no boy who is certain he was his mother's favorite ever grows up to be neurotic. Only—"
"Please, Robbie, that isn't quite right, and besides you're intellectualizing. You know you really don't want to put in all these preambles. You're stalling, aren't you?"
Other times I would tear the circuits out of his chips for that, but this time he has my mood gauged correctly. "All right. But I did know that my mother loved me. She couldn't help it! I was her only son. My father was dead — don't clear your throat, Sigfrid, I'm getting to it. It was a logical necessity that she loved me, and I understood it that way with no doubt at all in my mind, but she never said so. Never once."
"You mean that never, in your whole life, did she say to you, 'I love you, son?'"
"No!" I scream. Then I get control again. "Or not directly, no. I mean, once when I was like eighteen years old and going to sleep in the next room, I heard her to say to one of her friends — girlfriends, I mean — that she really thought I was a tremendous kid. She was proud of me. I don't remember what I'd done, something, won a prize or got a job, but she right that minute was proud of me and loved me, and said so… But not to me."
"Please go on, Rob," Sigfrid says after a moment.
"I am going on! Give me a minute. It hurts; I guess it's what you call primal pain."
"Please don't diagnose yourself, Rob. Just say it. Let it come out."
"Oh, shit."
I reach for a cigarette and then stop the motion. That's usually a good thing to do when things get