Frederik Pohl - Gateway (Sf Masterworks 09)

In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britains oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English languages finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were and remain landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of todays leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.

Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

Welcome to the SF Gateway.

My name is Robinette Broadhead, in spite of which I am male. My analyst (whom I call Sigfrid von Shrink, although that isn't his name; he hasn't got a name, being a machine) has a lot of electronic fun with this fact:

"Why do you care if some people think it's a girl's name, Rob?"

"I don't."

"Then why do you keep bringing it up?"

He annoys me when he keeps bringing up what I keep bringing up. I look at the ceiling with its hanging mobiles and pinatas, then I look out the window. It isn't really a window. It's a moving holopic of surf coming in on Kaena Point; Sigfrid's programming is pretty eclectic. After a while I say, "I can't help what my parents called me. I tried spelling it R-O-B-I-N-E-T, but then everybody pronounces it wrong."

"You could change it to something else, you know."

"If I changed it," I say, and I am sure I am right in this, "you would just tell me I was going to obsessive lengths to defend my inner dichotomies."

"What I would tell you," Sigfrid says, in his heavy mechanical attempt at humor, "is that, please, you shouldn't use technical psychoanalytic terms. I'd appreciate it if you would just say what you feel."

"What I feel," I say, for the thousandth time, "is happy. I got no problems. Why wouldn't I feel happy?"

We play these word games a lot, and I don't like them. I think there's something wrong with his program. He says, "You tell me, Robbie. Why don't you feel happy?"

I don't say anything to that. He persists. "I think you're worried."

"Shit, Sigfrid," I say, feeling a little disgust, "you always say that. I'm not worried about anything."

He tries wheedling. "There's nothing wrong with saying how you feel."

I look out the window again, angry because I can feel myself trembling and I don't know why. "You're a pain in the ass, Sigfrid, you know that?"

He says something or other, but I am not listening. I am wondering why I waste my time coming here. If there was anybody ever who had every reason to be happy, I have to be him. I'm rich. I'm pretty good-looking. I am not too old, and anyway, I have Full Medical so I can be just about any age I want to be for the next fifty years or so. I live in New York City under the Big Bubble, where you can't afford to live unless you're really well fixed, and maybe some kind of celebrity besides. I have a summer apartment that overlooks the Tappan Sea and the Palisades Dam. And the girls go crazy over my three Out bangles. You don't see too many prospectors anywhere on Earth, not even in New York. They're all wild to have me tell them what it's really like out around the Orion Nebula or the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. (I've never been to either place, of course. The one really interesting place I've been to I don't like to talk about.)

"Or," says Sigirid, having waited the appropriate number of microseconds for a response to whatever it was he said last, "if you really are happy, why do you come here for help?"

I hate it when he asks me the same questions I ask myself. I don't answer. I squirm around until I get comfortable again on the plastic foam mat, because I can tell that it's going to be a long, lousy session. If I knew why I needed help, why would I need help?

"You're a pain in the ass, Sigfrid, you know that?"

"Rob, you aren't very responsive today," Sigfrid says through the little loudspeaker at the head of the mat. Sometimes he uses a very lifelike dummy, sitting in an armchair, tapping a pencil and smiling quirkily at me from time to time. But I've told him that that makes me nervous. "Why don't you just tell me what you're thinking?"

"I'm not thinking about anything, particularly."

"Let your mind roam. Say whatever comes into it, Rob."

"I'm remembering" I say, and stop.

"Remembering what, Rob?"

"Gateway?"

"That sounds more like a question than a statement."

"Maybe it is. I can't help that. That's what I'm remembering: Gateway."

I have every reason to remember Gateway. That's how I got the money and the bangles, and other things. I think back to the day I left Gateway. That was, let's see, Day 31 of Orbit 22, which means, counting back, just about sixteen years and a couple of months since I left there. I was thirty minutes out of the hospital and couldn't wait to collect my pay, catch my ship, and blow.

Sigfrid says politely, "Please say what you're thinking out loud, Robbie."

"I'm thinking about Shikitei Bakin," I say.

"Yes, you've mentioned him. I remember. What about him?" I don't answer. Old, legless Shicky Bakin had the room next to mine, but I don't want to discuss it with Sigfrid. I wriggle around on my circular mat, thinking about Shicky and trying to cry.

"You seem upset, Rob."

I don't answer to that, either. Shicky was almost the only person I said good-bye to on Gateway. That was funny. There was a big difference in our status. I was a prospector, and Shicky was a garbageman. They paid him enough money to cover his life-support tax because he did odd jobs, and even on Gateway they have to have somebody to clean up the garbage. But sooner or later he would be too old and too sick to be any more use at all. Then, if he was lucky, they would push him out into space and he would die. If he wasn't lucky, they'd probably send him back to a planet. He would die there, too, before very long; but first he would have the experience of living for a few weeks or so as a helpless cripple.