Gateway Chapter 17: A Planet with a Human Face
This chapter is short. Maybe the shortest therapy chapter so far. But short does not mean small. Sometimes the shortest sessions are the ones that crack things open.
Rob has a dream. And the dream is weird. And Sigfrid is very, very interested.
The Crying Planet
Rob describes a dream to Sigfrid. In the dream, there is a planet. But it is not just a planet. It has a face. A human face. And the face is crying.
Not a metaphor-in-the-dream kind of crying. Actual tears. A whole planet, round and huge and hanging in space, with a face twisted up in grief, weeping.
And Rob, floating somewhere nearby, watching it, feels responsible. He does not know why. He does not know what he did. But the guilt is there, heavy and specific, like he personally caused this planet to cry.
If you have ever had one of those dreams where you feel terrible about something but cannot figure out what you did wrong, you know this feeling. Your brain hands you the guilt without the explanation. You wake up feeling awful and cannot point to a reason.
Rob’s dream is that, but on a planetary scale.
Whose Face Is It?
Sigfrid does what Sigfrid does. He asks the question Rob does not want to answer.
“Do you recognize the face?”
Rob hesitates. This is the kind of hesitation we have seen before. The half-second pause where his brain is deciding whether to tell the truth or dodge. We know the pattern by now. Seventeen chapters in, we can read Rob’s hesitations like punctuation.
He does not say yes. He does not say no. He gets vague. He talks around it. And Sigfrid, patient as always, waits.
The AI does not push too hard here. That is important. Sigfrid has learned something about Rob over these sessions. Push too fast and Rob shuts down completely. Push too slow and he deflects forever. There is a narrow window where the truth can come through, and Sigfrid is trying to keep that window open.
Mother, Maybe
The conversation drifts toward maternal figures. Not in a direct, “was it your mother’s face” kind of way. More like Sigfrid gently steering the river in that direction and seeing if Rob will float there on his own.
And Rob sort of does. He talks about responsibility. About feeling like you caused someone’s pain. About watching someone suffer and knowing it is your fault, even when you cannot explain how.
This is mother territory. We know from earlier chapters that Rob’s mother had a hard life. We know she died. We know Rob carries guilt about her, about not being enough, about not saving her from the food mines and the poverty and the slow grinding sadness of their life on Earth.
But the planet face might not be his mother. Or it might not only be his mother. That is the thing about dreams in therapy. They compress everything into one image. The crying planet could be his mother and Klara and every person Rob feels he has failed, all smashed together into one weeping sphere.
Pohl does not give us a neat answer. He never does. He gives us the question and lets it sit there, getting heavier.
Rob Fights Back
Here is where the chapter gets tense.
Rob senses something. He can feel that Sigfrid is getting close. Not close to a specific memory, exactly. More like close to the zone where the real pain lives. The area Rob has been circling for years without ever stepping inside.
And his reaction is physical. He loosens the restraining straps on the couch. He shifts his body. He prepares himself the way you prepare for a confrontation, not a conversation.
This is not the first time Rob has gotten physical in therapy. We saw him scream on the floor in Chapter 7. We have seen him kick the mat. But this is different. This is not a breakdown. This is a deliberate, conscious decision to get ready for a fight.
Rob is not falling apart. He is gearing up. He knows what is coming and he is choosing to resist it instead of run from it.
That is actually progress, in a strange way. Running means you do not even want to look at the thing. Fighting means you see it and you are choosing to stand your ground, even if your ground is “I refuse to talk about this.” At least he is in the room. At least he is facing the direction of the truth, even if his fists are up.
Sigfrid Knows
And Sigfrid knows. The machine can read Rob’s vitals. Heart rate. Skin conductance. Breathing patterns. Muscle tension. Every time Rob loosens a strap or shifts on the couch, Sigfrid registers it. The AI does not have feelings, but it has data, and the data is screaming.
Sigfrid is close to something. Rob is close to something. And neither of them is backing down.
The chapter ends there. No resolution. No breakthrough. Just two entities, one human and one machine, standing at the edge of something big and staring at each other.
Why This Tiny Chapter Matters
Three pages. Maybe four. But Pohl packs a lot into them.
First, the dream image. A crying planet with a human face. That is one of those images that sticks in your head long after you close the book. It is science fiction doing what science fiction does best: taking an emotional truth and making it literal. Rob feels responsible for someone’s suffering, so his brain shows him a whole world in tears.
Second, the physical tension. Rob is changing. In early therapy chapters, he was clever and evasive. He played word games with Sigfrid. He distracted and deflected. Now he is loosening straps and getting ready to fight. He is not running anymore. He is just refusing to surrender.
Third, the pacing. Pohl puts this tiny, dense chapter between longer action chapters on purpose. It is a breath. A pause. But the kind of pause where you hold your breath, not release it. We know something is coming. Rob knows something is coming. Even Sigfrid, in its algorithmic way, knows something is coming.
We are getting close to whatever Rob has been hiding since page one. The crying planet is not just a dream. It is a warning. The face on that planet belongs to someone specific, and when Rob finally says the name, everything is going to break open.
But not yet. Not this chapter. This chapter is the moment before the moment. The inhale before the scream.
Book: Gateway by Frederik Pohl (1977) | Hugo Award, Nebula Award, John W. Campbell Memorial Award Winner
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