FOR US THE LIVING ROBERT A. HEINLEIN. A Puke (TM) Audiobook

Robert “A.” Heinlein.
FOR US THE LIVING ROBERT A. HEINLEIN.
From Grandmaster Robert “A.” Heinlein comes a long-lost first novel, written in 1939 and never before published, introducing ideas and themes that would shape his career and define the genre that is synonymous with his name.
JULY 12, 1939.
Perry Nelson is driving along the palisades when suddenly another vehicle swerves into his lane, a tire blows out, and his car careens off the road and over a bluff. The last thing he sees before his head connects with the boulders below is a girl in a green bathing suit, prancing along the shore.
When he wakes, the girl in green is a woman dressed in furs and the sun-drenched shore has transformed into snowcapped mountains. The woman, Diana, rescues Perry from the bitter cold and takes him inside her home to rest and recuperate.
Later they debate the cause of the accident, for Diana is unfamiliar with the concept of a tire blowout and Perry cannot comprehend snowfall in mid-July. Then Diana shares with him a vital piece of information: The date is now January 7. The year, 2086.
When his shock subsides, Perry begins an exhaustive study of global evolution over the past 150 years. He learns, among other things, that a United Europe was formed and led by Edward, Duke of Windsor; former New York City mayor LaGuardia served two terms as president of the United States; the military draft was completely reconceived; banks became publicly owned and operated; and in the year 2003, two helicopters destroyed the island of Manhattan in a galvanizing act of war. This education in the ways of the modern world emboldens Perry to assimilate to life in the twenty-first century.
But education brings with it inescapable truths, the economic and legal systems, the government, and even the dynamic between men and women remain alien to Perry, the customs of the new day continually testing his mental and emotional resolve.
Yet it is precisely his knowledge of a bygone era that will serve Perry best, as the man from 1939 seems destined to lead his newfound peers even further into the future than they could have imagined.
A classic example of the future history that Robert Heinlein popularized during his career, For Us, The Living marks both the beginning and the end of an extraordinary arc of political, social, and literary crusading that comprises his legacy. Heinlein could not have known in 1939 how the world would change over the course of one and a half centuries, but we have our own true world history to compare with his brilliant imaginings, rendering For Us, The Living not merely a novel, but a time capsule view into our past, our present, and perhaps our future.
The novel is presented here with an introduction by acclaimed science fiction writer Spider Robinson and an afterward by Professor Robert James of the Heinlein Society.
SPIDER ROBINSON was born in New York and holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the State University of New York. He has won three Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, among many others. Spider lives with his wife, Jeanne, in British Columbia, where they raise and exhibit hopes.
ROBERT JAMES received his doctorate from UCLA in 1995. A veteran teacher, he lives in Los Angeles, California, with his two children and enough books to keep all three of them happy. He has published a number of articles on Robert Heinlein.
If you are a fan of Robert Heinlein’s work, join the Heinlein Society at Heinlein society dot org.
FOR US, THE LIVING A Comedy of Customs By Robert “A.” Heinlein With an Introduction by SPIDER ROBINSON and an Afterward by ROBERT JAMES, PH.D.
SCRIBNER New York London Toronto Sydney Singapore SCRIBNER 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020.
Copyright (c) 2004 by The Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Trust Introduction
copyright (c) 2004 by Spider Robinson
Afterward copyright (c) 2004 by Robert James, Ph.D.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Scribner and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon and Schuster, the publisher of this work.
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DESIGNED BY ERICH HOBBING.
Text set in Janson Manufactured in the United States of America 13579 108642
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heinlein, Robert A.
(Robert Anson), date. For us, the living: a comedy of customs.
by Robert A. Heinlein. p. cm.
1. Traffic accident victims, Fiction.
2. Twenty-first century, Fiction.
3. Time travel, Fiction. I. Title.
PS3515.E288F67 2004
813’.54, dc22
2003065682
ISBN 0-7432-5998-X
for Heinlein’s Children “It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated to the unfinished work that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, ”
Lincoln at Gettysburg.
Editor’s note.
This novel was written by Robert Heinlein between 1938 and 1939 and was never edited while Heinlein was alive. While the novel is presented in its original form, minor editorial changes have been made for clarity and style.

INTRODUCTION RAH DNA.
“Any map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.”
Oscar Wilde.
Most authorities are calling this book Robert “A.” Heinlein’s first novel. I avoid arguing with authorities, it’s usually simpler to shoot them, but I think it is something far more important than that, myself, and infinitely more interesting.
But my disagreement is respectful, and I’m not prepared to dispute the point with sidearms, or even ripe fruit. Robert himself called For Us, The Living a novel, repudiating that label only once that I know of, in private correspondence, and the book clearly has at least as much right to be called a novel as, say, H. G. Wells’s When the Sleeper Wakes (Robert’s favorite novel, he once told me) or The Shape of Things to Come.
But no more right. And those two volumes are from the last stage of Wells’s illustrious career, at the point when, in Theodore Sturgeon’s memorable phrase, the master had “sold his birthright for a pot of message.” They are not the books to give to a reader unfamiliar with H. G. Wells, and this is not the book to give to the hypothetical blind Martian hermit unfamiliar with Robert A. Heinlein’s work. Like the Wells titles, or Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, this book is essentially a series of Utopian lectures, whose fictional component is a lovely but thin and translucent negligee, only half-concealing an urgent desire to seduce. At age thirty-two, Robert was already trying to save the world, and perfectly aware that the world was largely disinclined to be saved.
If this were really a novel in the same sense as any of Robert’s other long works, one would be forced to call at least its fictional aspect deficient, for many of its characters, quite uncharacteristically, achieve little depth and behave oddly. Even in his most exotic settings, Robert’s characters, even, or perhaps especially, his aliens, were always, always real. And in real life, the standard response to a man who tells you he was born 150 years ago in a different body is not, we may as well admit, simply to nod and begin explaining to him how keen everything is nowadays, as do all the people that Perry Nelson meets in 2086.
If one supposes, however, that none of these characters was ever intended, or needed, to be any more real than their colleague Mister A Square of Flatland, then one cannot help but be struck by how surprisingly much humanity, personality, and appeal they do manage to acquire for us, without ever shirking their lecturing duties. There is no question that by book’s end, Perry and his Diana are as real and alive as any other Heinlein couple, if more lightly sketched.
Nonetheless, I submit that there was never a day in his life when Robert Anson Heinlein the fiction writer would have written a two-page footnote, and certainly not to introduce character development. To me, that detail alone is sufficient proof that he simply was not thinking in story terms when he sat down to compose For Us, The Living.
That is why I say that it is so immensely much more than just his first novel. It is all of them, dormant.
It seems clear to me, as he himself admitted, that Robert began this book with the perfectly honorable artistic intention of lying through his teeth: of disguising a series of lectures as fiction, purely in order to bring them to the attention of those who, finding the implication of their own imperfection upsetting, would not knowingly consent to be lectured. He succeeded brilliantly; one may agree or disagree with any of the theories and ideas he puts forth here, but one will most certainly and emphatically do one or the other: I defy anyone to lose interest in the middle of the argument, this despite the extreme complexity and, in some cases, sheer profundity of the ideas discussed. Perry is easily as good at his job as Mister A Square, and does it at much greater length and (ahem) depth.
As thinly fictionalized lecture series, the book failed, for much the same reasons Robert himself had failed of election the previous year: in 1939, most of his ideas were, one is quite unsurprised to learn, wildly ahead of their time, radical, and opposed by powerful societal institutions.
Nonetheless, though unpublishable then, its completion was an event of almost inexpressible importance in twentieth century English letters.
Because here, I think, is what happened:
On some unknown day in the first four months of 1939, Robert Anson Heinlein sat looking gloomily at a carbon of the manuscript that had just been rejected a second time and found himself thinking back over the whole long, painful period of its creation, the endless hours hunched over a typewriter, staring at a blank piece of paper until beads of blood formed on his forehead. And as he did so, two revelations came to him, in this order: First, he realized, with surprise and warm pleasure, that the most enjoyable, almost effortless part of the entire experience had not been the world-saving he’d set out to accomplish, not the logical theories, mathematical proofs, or clever arguments of which he was so proud , but the storytelling part, that he had intended only as a come-on for the crowd. All at once, I think, it came to him that the lecturer must remain standing in the square, on a rickety soapbox, and speak at the top of his lungs, and be heckled by boobs , but the storyteller sits in cross-legged comfort in the shade, and his listeners crowd round to hear him whisper, offering beer for his sore throat. And when he is done, they give him money, without him even asking.
Second, he looked back over the lengthy and detailed imaginary future he had just thrown together as a set decoration, and saw the ideas stacked all round its empty stage , and realized it offered him a canvas so broad that, given enough time, he might contrive to spend all the rest of his working days in the sheer joy of telling stories, creating friends and heroes out of nothing, leaping across galaxies and inside hearts, and still end up putting across every insight and opinion he felt the world needed to hear.
In that moment, he understood for the first time that he wanted to be a storyteller. That he wanted to be a science fiction writer. No, I’m wrong: he realized that he was a science fiction writer, and accepted his doom. In the terminology of Roger Zelazny’s immortal novel Lord of Light, he took on his Aspect, and raised up his Attribute, and was born a god. In that moment, he ceased being Bob Heinlein, shipwrecked sailor and unemployed engineer, and became RAH, the Dean of Modern Science Fiction, the Man Who Sold The Moon, Lazarus Long, who cannot die. In my dreams, I can almost imagine what it must have felt like.
When he was good and ready, he announced the news to the rest of us, by sitting down in April and producing, first crack out of the box, one of the most unforgettable pieces of short fiction in the English language, “Lifeline.” Two years later, he was the Pro Writer Guest of Honor at Denvention, the Third World Science Fiction Convention in Denver, and everyone in that banquet hall already knew he owned the field. Five months after he gave his famous Guest of Honor speech on time-binding, “The Discovery of the Future,” Japan blindsided Pearl Harbor. But once that pesky distraction had been dispensed with, Robert turned his attention to the wow-science fiction literary world, and conquered that, too, with an ease, elegance, and speed that Hitler and Tojo could have learned from.
But everything began on that unknown day or night sometime in early 1939, when Robert had his own personal equivalent of the blinding flash in which Nikola Tesla suddenly saw in his head a complete 3-D working model of the first-ever AC electric motor, correctly tuned and broken in, ready to be manufactured without delay for testing.
The seeds of many of Robert’s major novels are clearly visible, here, needing only room and time to grow. The essential core of his entire career is implicit as DNA code buried in the pages of For Us, The Living: it constitutes an overflowing treasure chest of themes, ideas, theories, concepts, characters, and preoccupations he would draw on again and again for the next half century to inform his stories. Time travel; multiple identity; transcendence of physical death; personal privacy; personal liberty; personal and political pragmatism; using good technology for personal hedonistic comfort; balancing of privilege and responsibility; the arts, and especially new future artforms like dance in variable gravity; the metric system; rolling roads; then-unconventional loathing of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism; Alfred Korzybski’s general semantics; alternate histories; the nature of sexual love; alternatives to monogamy and conventional marriage; spirituality; the pseudospirituality of the loathsome Nehemiah Cheney, excuse me, Scudder; The Crazy Years; space travel, the Moon, and Diaspora to the stars , it’s all here, nascent, in thumbnail view. So is that splendid, unmistakable voice.
Robert’s ideas and opinions certainly evolved over time, particularly after he met his last wife, and this book is far from his last word on Utopia. But the differences themselves are fascinating and illuminating to any serious student of his work. It’s clear that, from the moment it finally dawned on him he was a storyteller, all Robert Heinlein really needed to produce that towering body of work that changed the world and put footprints on the Moon was time, typing paper, Virginia Gerstenfeld Heinlein, and a series of publishers’ royalty checks sufficient to keep them both smiling. He may not have consciously known, himself, just where his work would take him, in anything like the kind of detail this book prefigures. I rather hope not.
But the work already knew.
And now, thanks to Robert James, may he be as lucky in love as Lazarus, for as Long! And thanks to Michael Hunter, Eleanor Wood, and Sarah Knight, we all do.
We are deeply in their debt.
This may not (or may, I repeat: I won’t argue) be a novel in the classic sense, but to me it’s something more interesting. It’s a career in a box , a freeze-dried feast, a lifetime, latent in a raindrop , a lifework seed, waiting to be watered by our tears and laughter, RAH’s literary DNA, or half of it, at any rate. It’s worth remembering that this is one of the very few examples we’ll ever see of the writing of one of the century’s great lovers, the man who literally defined the word, love: the condition in which the welfare and happiness of another become essential to your own, before he met the love of his life. The difference is palpable; I’m not trying to offer a Zen koan when I say that it is in her very absence in this book that Ginny is perhaps even more present than in any other. One senses him yearning for her, straining to imagine her. The Portuguese word for “the presence of absence,” saudade, is the heart of fado, reading this book was an emotional as well as intellectual experience for me, is all I’m trying to say: I kept hearing Django play a bittersweet guitar as I turned the pages. To read this book is to know both Robert Heinlein and the late Virginia Heinlein much better, and that is something I’ve wanted to do all my adult life.
Fate has brought an unexpected gift from beyond the grave, for us, the living.
Spider Robinson Bowen Island, British Columbia 5 September 2003.
Spider robinson dot com.

FOR US, THE LIVING.
Chapter One.
“Look out!” The cry broke involuntarily from Perry Nelson’s lips as he twisted the steering wheel. But the driver of the green sedan either did not hear him or did not act. The next few seconds of action floated through his mind like slow motion. He saw the left front wheel of the green car float past his own, then the right wheel of his car crawled over the guard rail, his car slid after it and hung poised on the edge of the palisade. He stared over the hood and saw facing him the beach a hundred and thirty feet below. A blonde girl in a green bathing suit was catching a beach ball. She had jumped in the air to do it, both arms outstretched, one leg pointed. She was very graceful.
Beyond her a wave broke on the sand. The crest hung and dripped whipped cream.
He glanced back at the girl. She was still catching the beach ball. As she settled back on her feet, he drifted clear of the car and turned in the air away from her. Facing him were the rocks at the foot of the bluff. They approached as he watched them, separated and became individuals. One rock selected him and came straight toward him. It was a handsome rock, flat on one side and brilliant while in the sunshine. A sharp edge faced him and grew and grew and grew until it encompassed the whole world.
Perry got up, shook his head, and blinked his eyes. Then he recalled the last few seconds with startling clarity and threw up his hands in convulsive reflex. But the rock was not in front of his face. There was nothing in front of his face but whirling snowflakes. The beach was gone and the bluff and the rest of his world. Nothing but snow and wind surrounded him, wind that cut through his light clothing. A gnawing pain in the midriff resolved into acute hunger. “Hell!” said Perry. Hell. Yes, hell it must be, cold instead of hot.
He commenced to walk but his legs were weak under him and a giddiness assailed him. He staggered a few steps and fell on his face. He attempted to rise, but was too weak and decided to rest a moment. He lay still, trying not to think, but his confused brain still struggled with the problem. He was beginning to feel warmer when he found a solution. Of course! The girl in the green bathing suit caught him and threw him into the snow bank, soft snow bank, nice warm snow bank, nice, warm,
“Get up” the girl in the green bathing suit was shaking him. “Get up! Hear me? Get up!” What did she want, to hell with games, just because she wanted to play games was no reason to slap a fellow’s face. He struggled to his knees, then fell heavily. The figure beside him slapped him again and nagged him until he rose to his knees, then steadied him and helped him to his feet.
“Easy now. One arm over my shoulders. It’s not far.”
“I’m all right.”
“Don’t be a fool. Lean on me.” He looked down at the face of his companion and tried to focus his eyes. It was the girl in the green bathing suit, but what in hell was she doing dressed up like Admiral Byrd? Complete to the parka. But his tired brain refused to worry and he focused all of his attention on putting one icy leaden foot in front of another.
“Mind the steps. Easy. Now hold still.” The girl sang one clear note and a door opened in front of them. He stumbled inside and the door closed.
She guided him to a couch, made him lie down, and slipped away. Presently she returned with a cup of liquid. “Here. Drink this.” He reached for it, but his numbed fingers refused to grasp, and he spilled a little. She took the cup, lifted his head with her free arm, and held it to his lips. He drank slowly.
It was warm and spicy. He fell asleep watching her anxious face.
He awoke slowly, becoming aware of a deep sense of comfort and well-being almost before he was aware of his own ego. He lay on his back on a cushion as soft as a feather bed. A light cover was over him and as he stretched he became aware that he was ‘sleeping raw’. He opened his eyes. He was alone in a room of ample proportions possibly thirty feet long and oval in shape.
Opposite him was a fireplace of quaint but pleasing pattern. It consisted of a vertical hyperboloid, like half a sugar loaf some ten feet high, which sprang out from the wall. In the base a mighty yawning mouth had been carved out, the floor of which was level and perhaps ten inches above the floor of the room.
The roof of the mouth was another hyperboloid, hollow and eccentric to the first. On the floor of this gargantuan gape a coal fire crackled cheerfully and threw its reflections around the room. The room appeared almost bare of furniture except for the couch which ran two thirds of the way around the wall.
He turned his head at a slight noise and saw her coming in the door. She smiled and hurried to him. “Oh, so you are awake. How do you feel?” One hand sought his pulse.
“I feel grand.”
“Hungry?”
“I could eat a horse.”
She giggled. “Sorry, no horses. I’ll soon have something better for you. But you mustn’t eat too much at first.” She straightened up. “Let me get out of these furs.” She walked away while fumbling with a zipper at her throat. The furs were all one garment which slipped off her shoulders and fell to the floor. Perry felt a shock like an icy shower and then a warm tingle. The fur coverall was her only garment and she emerged as naked as a dryad.
But she took no note of it, simply picked up the coverall and glided to a cupboard, which opened as she approached, and hung it up. Then she proceeded to a section of the wall covered with a mural of Demeter holding a horn of plenty.
It slid up, exposing an incomprehensible aggregation of valves, doors, and shiny gadgets. She kept very busy for some ten minutes, humming as she worked.
Perry watched her in fascination. His amazement gave way to hearty appreciation for she was young, nubile, and in every way desirable. Her quick movements were graceful and in some way very cheerful and reassuring. Her humming stopped. “There!” she exclaimed, “All ready, if the invalid is ready to eat.” She picked up a laden tray and walked toward the far end of the room.
The mural slid back into place and the shiny gadgets were gone. She set the tray on the couch, then pulled a countersunk handle. The handle came out in her hand, dragging with it a shelf perhaps two feet wide and four long. She turned back towards Perry and called, “Come, eat while it’s hot.”
Perry started to get up, then stopped. She noticed his hesitation and a troubled look clouded her face. “What is the matter? Are you still too weak?”
“No”
“Sprain anything?”
“No”
“Then come, please. Whatever is the matter?”
“Well, I, uh, you, see I,” How the hell do you tell a pretty girl who is naked as a jaybird that you can’t eat with her because you are naked too?
Especially when she doesn’t seem to know what modesty is?
She bent over him with obvious concern. Oh, the hell with it, said Perry to himself, and climbed out of bed. He swayed a little.
“Shall I help you?”
“No, thanks. I’m OK.”
They sat down on opposite sides of the shelf table. She touched a button and a large section of the wall beside them slid up, exposing through glass a magnificent view. Across a canyon tall pines marched up a rugged mountainside.
Up the canyon to the right some seven or eight hundred yards a waterfall hung a curtain of gauze in the breeze. Then Perry looked down, down a direct drop from the window. Vertigo shook him and again he hung poised on the palisade and stared over the hood of his car at the beach. He heard himself cry out. In an instant her arms were about him, consoling him. He steadied himself. “I’m all right,” he muttered, “But please close the shutters.”
She neither argued nor answered, but closed them at once. “Now can you eat?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then do so and we will talk later.”
They ate in silence. He examined his food with interest. A clear soup; some jelly with a meaty flavor; a glass of milk; light rolls spread with sweet butter; and several kinds of fruit, oranges, sugar-sweet and large as grapefruit, with a skin that peeled easily like a tangerine, some yellow fruit that he did not recognize, and black-flecked bananas. The dishes were light as paper but covered with a hard shiny lacquer. The fork and spoon were of the same material. Finally he dropped the last piece of rind and ate the last crumb of roll. She had finished first and had been leaning on her elbows, watching him.
“Feel better?”
“Immensely.”
She transferred the dishes to the tray, walked over to the fireplace, dumped the load on the fire, and returned the tray to its rack among the shiny gadgets. (Demeter swung obligingly out of the way.) When she returned, she shoved the shelf-table back in its slot and extended a slender white tube.
“Smoke?”
“Thanks.” It was about four inches long and looked like some Russian atrocity. Probably scented, he thought. He inhaled gingerly, then drew one to the bottom of his lungs. Honest Virginia tobacco. The only thing in the house that seemed absolutely homey and normal. She inhaled deeply and then spoke.
“Now then, who are you and how did you get onto this mountainside? And first, your name?”
“Perry. What’s yours?”
“Perry? A nice name. Mine’s Diana.”
“Diana? I should think so. Perfect.”
“I’m a little too cursive for Diana,” she patted her thigh, “but I’m glad you like it. Now how did you get lost out in that storm yesterday without proper clothes and no food?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, you see, it was this way. I was driving down the palisade when a car tried to pass a truck on a hill coming towards me. I swung out to miss it and my right front wheel jumped the curb and over I went, car and all, the last I remember was staring down at the beach as I fell, until I woke up in the snow storm.”
“That’s all you remember?”
“Yes, and then you helping me, of course. Only I thought it was a girl in a green bathing suit.”
“In a what?”
“In a green bathing suit.”
“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “What did you say made you go over the palisade?”
“I had a blowout, I guess, when my wheel hit the curb.”
“What’s a blowout?”
He stared at her. “I mean that my tire blew out, when it struck the curb.”
“But why would it blow out?”
“Listen, do you drive a car?”
“Well, no”
“Well, if a pneumatic rubber tire strikes a sharp edge when you are going pretty fast, it’s likely to explode, blowout. In that case anything can happen. In my case I went over the edge.”
She looked frightened, and her eyes grew wide. Perry added, “Don’t take it so hard. I’m not hurt.”
“Perry, when did this happen?”
“Happen? Why, yester, No, maybe.”
“No, Perry, the date, the date!”
“July twelfth. That reminds me, does it often snow here.”
“What year, Perry?”
“What year? Why, this year!”
“What year, Perry, tell me the number.”
“Don’t you know? Nineteen-thirty-nine.”
“Nineteen-thirty-nine.” She repeated the words slowly.
“Nineteen-thirty-nine. But what the devil is wrong?”
She stood up and paced nervously back and forth, then stopped and faced him.
“Perry, prepare yourself for a shock.”
“OK, shoot.”
“Perry, you told me that yesterday was July twelfth, nineteen-thirty-nine.”
“Yes.”
“Well, today is January seventh, twenty-eighty-six.”

Chapter Two.
Perry sat very still for a long moment.
“Say that again.”
“Today is January seventh, twenty-eighty-six.”
“January, seventh, twenty, eighty, six, It can’t be, I’m dreaming, pretty soon I’ll wake up.” He looked up at her. “Then you’re not real after all.
Just a dream. Just a dream.” He put his head in his hands and stared down at the floor.
He was recalled to his surroundings by a touch on his arm. “Look at me, Perry. Take my hand.” She grasped his hand and squeezed it. “There. Am I real?
Perry, you must realize it. I don’t know who you are or what strange thing happened to you but here you are in my house in January twenty-eighty-six.
And everything is going to be all right.” She placed a hand under his chin and turned his face up to hers. “Everything is going to be all right. Place that in your mind.” He stared at her with the frightened eyes of a man who fears he is going crazy. “Now calm yourself and tell me about it. Why do you think that yesterday you were in nineteen-thirty-nine?”
“Well, I was, I tell you, It had to be nineteen-thirty-nine, because it was, it couldn’t be anything else.”
“Hum, That’s no help. Tell me about yourself. Your full name, where you live, where you were born, what you do and so forth.”
“Well, my name is Perry Vance Nelson. I was born in Girard, Kansas in nineteen-fourteen. I’m a ballistics engineer and a pilot. You see I’m an officer in the navy. Up until today I was on duty at Coronado, California.
Yesterday, or whenever it was, I was driving from Los Angeles to San Diego on my way back from a weekend when this guy in the green sedan crowds me and I crack up on the beach.”
She smoked and considered this. “That’s clear enough. Except of course that it would make you one hundred and seventy-two years old and doesn’t explain how you got here. Perry, You don’t look that old.”
“Well, what’s the answer?”
“I don’t know. Did you ever hear of schizophrenia, Perry?”
“Schizophrenia? Split personality.” He considered, then exploded. “Nuts! If I’m crazy it’s only in this dream. I tell you I am Perry Nelson. I don’t know anything about twenty-eighty-six and I know all about nineteen-thirty-nine.”
“That gives me a notion. I want to ask you some questions. Who was president in nineteen-thirty-nine?”
“Franklin Roosevelt.”
“How many states in the union?”
“Forty-eight.”
“How many terms did La Guardia serve?”
“How many? He was in his second term.”
“But you just told me that Roosevelt was president.”
“Sure. Sure. Roosevelt was president. La Guardia was Mayor of New York.”
“Oh.”
“Why did you ask that? Did La Guardia become president?”
“Yes. Two terms. Who were the most popular television actors in nineteen-thirty-nine?”
“Why, there weren’t any. Television wasn’t yet available. But listen, you are quizzing me about nineteen-thirty-nine. How do I know it’s twenty-eighty-six?”
“Come here, Perry.” She walked over the wall beside the fireplace and another section of the wall slid out of view. Disconcerting, thought Perry, everything slips and slides, Several rows of books were exposed. She handed him a slim volume. Perry read Astronomical Almanac and Ephemerides 2086. Then she dug out an old volume whose pages were brown with age. She opened it and pointed to the title page: The Galleon of God, Sinclair Lewis, first printing, 1947.
“Convinced?”
“I guess I’ll have to be, Oh, God!” he threw his cigarette in the fire and paced nervously up and down. Presently he stopped. “Look, is there any liquor here? Could I have a drink?”
“A drink, of what?”
“Whiskey, brandy, rum. Anything with a jolt in it.”
“I think I can take care of you.” She disturbed Demeter again and returned presently holding a square bottle filled with an amber liquid. She poured him three fingers in a cup and added a small yellow pill.
“What’s that?”
“Jamaica rum surrogate and a mild sedative. Help yourself. I’ve got an idea.” She left him and went to the far end of the room where she seated herself on the couch and pulled out a small panel set in the wall. It appeared to be the front of a drawer. She lifted up a screen approximately a foot square and pressed a series of buttons below. Then she spoke: “Los Angeles Archives? Diana 160-398-400-48A speaking. I request search of Los Angeles and Coronado newspapers of July 12, 1939 for report of automobile accident involving Perry Nelson, naval officer. Expedited rate authorized. Bonus on thirty minutes. Report back. Thank you, clearing line.” She left the drawer out and returned to Perry. “We will have to wait a while. Do you mind if I open the view now?”
“Not at all. I’d like to see it.”
They seated themselves at the west end of the room where they had eaten and the shutters peeled back. It was late afternoon and the sun was nearing the shoulder of the mountain. Snow lay in the canyon and the thin amber sunlight streamed through the pines. They sat quietly and smoked.
Diana poured herself a cup of surrogate, and sipped it. Presently a green light flashed from the open drawer and a single deep gong note sounded.
Diana pressed a button nearby and spoke, “Diana 400-48 answering.”
“Archives reporting. Positive. Disposition request.”
“Tele-vue-stat Reno station with tube delivery, destination G610L-400-48, expedite rate throughout, bonus on ten minutes. Thank you. Clearing.”
“You mentioned Reno. Are we near there?”
“Yes, we are about thirty kilometers south of Lake Tahoe.”
“Tell me, is Reno still a divorce mill?”
“A divorce mill? Oh, no, Reno is not, as you call it, a divorce mill. There are no such things as divorces anymore.”
“There aren’t? What do a man and his wife do if they can’t get along together?”
“They don’t live together.”
“Rather awkward in case one of them should fall in love again, isn’t it?”
“No, you see, Good heavens, Perry, what a lot there is to teach you. I don’t know where to start. However, I’ll just plunge in and try to answer your questions. In the first place, there isn’t any legal contract to be broken, not in your sense of the word. There are domestic contracts but they don’t involve marriage in the religious or sexual aspects. And any of these contracts can be dealt with like any other secular contract.”
“But doesn’t that make a rather confusing situation, homes broken up, children around loose, what about children? Who supports them?”
“Why they support themselves on their heritage.”
“On their heritage? They can’t all be heirs.”
“But they are, Oh, it’s too confusing. I’ll have to get some histories for you and a code of customs. These things are all bound up in major changes in the economic and social structure. Let me ask you a question. In your day what was marriage?”
“Well, it was a civil contract between a man and a woman usually sealed by a religious ceremony.”
“And what did this contract stipulate?”
“It stipulated a lot of things not specifically mentioned, but under it the two lived together, she worked for him, more or less, and he supported her financially. They slept together and neither one was supposed to have love affairs with anybody else. If they had children they supported them until they were grown up.”
“And what were the objects of this arrangement?”
“Well, principally for the benefit of the children, I guess. The children were protected and given a name. Also women were protected and supported and looked out for when they were bearing children.”
“And what did the man get out of it.”
“He got, well, a family and home life, and someone to do his cooking, and a thousand other little services, and if you will pardon me mentioning it, he had a woman to sleep with any time he needed one.”
“Let’s take the last first; was she necessarily the woman he wanted to ‘sleep’ with as you so quaintly put it?”
“Yes, I suppose so, else he probably wouldn’t have asked her to marry him.
No, by God, I know that is not true. It may be true when they first marry, but I know damn well that most married men see women every day that they would rather have than their own wives. I’ve watched ‘em in every port.”
“How about yourself. Perry?”
“Me? I’m not, I wasn’t married.”
“Didn’t you ever see a woman you wanted to enjoy physically?”
“Of course. Many of them.”
“Then why didn’t you marry?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to be tied down.”
“If a man didn’t have children to support and a wife to support would he be tied down by marriage?”
“Why yes, in a way. She would expect him to do everything with her and would raise Cain if he stepped out with other women and would expect him to entertain her sisters and her cousins and her aunts, and would be sore if he had to work on their anniversary.”
“Good Lord! What a picture you paint. I don’t understand all of your expressions but it sounds unbearable.”
“Of course not all women are like that, some of them are good sports, man to man, but you can’t tell when you marry them.”
“It sounds from your description as if men had nothing to gain by marriage but an available mistress. And tell me, weren’t there women for hire then at a lower cost than supporting one woman for life?”
“Oh yes, certainly. But they weren’t satisfactory to most men. You see, a man doesn’t like to feel that a woman goes to bed with him just for the money in his pocket.”
“But you just said that women married to be supported.”
“That’s not quite what I meant. Or that’s not all, at least not usually.
Anyhow it’s different. Besides men don’t always play the game. You see a man marries partially to have exclusive right to a woman’s attention, especially her body. But lots of them carry it to extremes. Marriage is no excuse for a man to slap his wife’s face for dancing twice with another man, as I’ve seen happen.”
“But why should a man want to have exclusive possession of a woman?”
“Well, he just naturally does. It’s in his nature. Besides a man wants to be sure his children aren’t bastards.”
“We are no longer so sure, Perry, that such traits are ‘nature’ as you call them. And bastard is an obsolete term.”
At this moment an amber light flashed at the other end of the room. Diana arose and returned shortly with a roll of papers. “They have arrived. Here, look.” She unrolled them and spread them on the shelf-table. Perry saw that they were photostatic copies of pages of the Los Angeles Times,
Harold-Express, and Daily News for July 13, 1939. She pointed to a headline:
NAVAL FLIER KILLED IN CAR CRASH. Torrey Pines, California July 12.
Lieutenant Perry V Nelson, Navy pilot of Coronado, was killed today when he lost control of the car he was driving and plunged over the palisade here to his death on the rock below. Lieut. Nelson jumped or was thrown clear of the car but landed head first in a pile of loose rock at the foot of the cliff, splitting his skull. Death was instantaneous. Miss Diana Burwood of Pasadena was bathing on the beach below and narrowly escaped injury.
She attempted to give first aid, then scaled the bluff and reported the accident with aid of a passing motorist.
There were similar stories in the other papers. The Daily News included a column cut of Perry in uniform. Diana examined this with interest. “The story checks perfectly, Perry. This is just a fair likeness of you, however.” Perry glanced at it.
“I should say that it wasn’t bad, considering the limitations of a half-tone reproduction.”
“The surprising thing is that it looks like you at all.”
“Why do you say that, Diana? Don’t you believe me?” His hurt showed plainly in his face.
“Oh, no, no, I believe that you are telling the literal truth, insofar as you know it. But think, Perry. The head that was photographed to take this picture has, if this newspaper account is true, been dust for more than a century.”
Perry stared at her and a look of horror crept into his eyes. He closed his eyes and clasped his head between his palms. He remained thus, face averted and body tensed for several minutes until he felt a gentle touch on his hair.
Diana bent over him, pity and compassion in her eyes. “Perry, please. Listen to me. I didn’t mean to distress you. I wouldn’t hurt you intentionally. I want to be your friend if you will let me.”
Gently she removed his hands from his temples. “It is a strange and marvelous thing that has happened to you, Perry, and I don’t understand it at all.
In some ways it is horrible and certainly terrifying. But it could be much worse, much worse. This is not a bad world in which you have landed. I think it is a rather kindly world. I like it and I am sure it must be better than being crushed and broken at the foot of the palisades. Please, Perry, I’d like to help you.”
He patted her hand. “You’re a good kid, Dian’, I’ll be all right. It’s the shock more than anything. The realization that all that world I know is dead and gone. I knew it of course when you told me what year it was, but I didn’t realize it until you pointed out to me that I’m dead, too, or at least that my body died.” He jumped to his feet. “But say! If my body is dead, where in God’s name did I get this!”, and he slapped his side.
“I don’t know, Perry, but I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
“Not just yet. But we can start a little action toward finding out. Come with me.” She opened out the drawer containing the communication instrument, and pushed one button. A pretty red-headed girl appeared on the screen and smiled. Diana spoke. “Reno, please relay Washington,
Bureau of records, Identification Sector.”
“Check, Diana.” The red head faded out.
“Does she know you?”
“Probably recognized me. You will understand.”
Shortly another face appeared, that of an iron grey studious man. Diana spoke. “Identification requested.”
“Which one of you?”
“Him.”
“Check. Take position.” The face turned away and a camera-like apparatus appeared.
“Put up your right hand, Perry,” whispered Diana. Perry did so. The grey haired man re-appeared.
“Listen, how can I analyze if you don’t hold position? Haven’t you ever used a phone before?”
“I, I guess not.” Perry looked confused.
The slight irritation vanished from the man’s voice. “What’s the trouble, friend? Lost your continuity?”
“I guess you’d call it that.”
“That’s different. I’ll fix you up in no time. Then you’ll probably have no trouble to orient. Now do just as I tell you. Right hand, palm toward me about twenty centimeters from the screen. Down a little. Now just a hair closer.
Your palm is tilted. Get it parallel to the screen. There. Hold it steady.” A soft shirring and a click. “That’s all. Do you want a full dossier or just name and number?”
Diana cut in. “Brief of dossier, please, with last entry in full.
Televuestat Reno station, tube delivery G610L-400-48, expedited rate.”
“Charge to him when I get his number?”
“No, to me, Diana, 160-398-400-48A.”
“Oh! I thought I recognized you.”
“This is private action.” Diana’s voice was cool and crisp.
The man looked indignant, then his face became impassive. “Madam, I am an official clerk of the Bureau of Records. I thoroughly understand the spheres of public and private action, and my oath and charge.”
Diana melted at once. “I’m sorry. I truly am. Please forgive me.”
He relaxed and smiled. “Of course, Miss Diana. You probably have to insist on the spheres. But, if you will permit, it would be an honor to provide this service for you.”
“No, please, make the routine charge. But may I do you some service?” She inclined her head. The clerk bowed in return. “A picture perhaps?”
“If madam permits.”
“My latest stereo. Face or full?”
He bowed without speaking.
“I’ll send both. They shall cross your brief in the tubes.”
“You are very kind.”
“Thank you. Clearing.” The screen went blank. “Well, Perry, we’ll know soon.
But I must get the poor chap his pictures. I didn’t mean to offend him, but he was too touchy.” She returned in a moment with two thin sheets and started to roll them up. Noticing Perry’s interest, she paused. “Would you care to see them?”
“Yes, of course.” The first picture was Diana’s face in natural colors with a half smile warming it. But Perry was startled almost into dropping it. For the portrait was completely stereoscopic. It was as if he were looking through a window of cellophane at Diana herself posed stationary three feet back of the frame.
“How in the world are these done?”
“I’m neither an optics student nor a photographer, but I know the picture really does have some depth to it. It’s a colloid about a half centimeter thick.
It is done with two cameras, so it works only on one axis. Turn it around sideways.” He did so. The picture went perfectly flat although remaining a fine photograph. “Now tilt it about forty-five degrees.” He did so and had the upsetting sensation of watching Diana’s beautiful features melt and run until no picture was visible, but just an iridescence like oil on water. “You have to look at it along the right axis and within a narrow view angle, but when you do the two images blend in the stereo illusion. The brain inter rets the confused double image given by two separated eyes as depth and by duplicating that confusion, they achieve the illusion.”
Perry stared at the picture a moment more and tilted and twisted it. Diana watched with interest and sympathetic amusement. “May I see the other picture?”
“Here it is.” Perry glanced at it, then swallowed. He had grown accustomed to Diana’s nudity, more or less, and had been too much occupied mentally to think much about it, but nevertheless he had been aware of it in one corner of his mind all the time. Still, he was startled to discover that the second picture portrayed all of Diana in her own sweet simplicity, nothing more, and that it was as amazingly lifelike as the first, real enough to pinch. He swallowed again.
“You intend to send this, er, uh, these pictures to a man you’ve just met on the phone.”
“Oh, yes, he wants them and I can afford it. And I was a bit rude. Of course some people would think it a bit brash for me to give him anything as intimate as a facial portrait but I don’t mind.”
“But, uh.”
“Yes, Perry?”
“Oh, well, nothing I guess. Never mind.”

Chapter Three.
Later while Diana monkeyed with the gadgets in the Demeter niche, the green light and gong note announced a tube delivery. “Get it, will you,
Perry?” she called. “I’ve got both hands full.” Perry puzzled with the controls, then found a small lever that opened the receptacle. He brought over the roll to Diana. “Read it aloud, Perry, while I finish dinner.” He unrolled it and first noticed a picture of a young man who resembled his own memory of himself. He commenced to read. “Gordon 932-016-755-82A, Genes class JM, born 2057 July 7.
Qualified and matriculated Arlington Health School 2075, transferred (approved) Adler Memorial Institute of Psychology 2077. Selected for research when Extra-sensory station was established by Master Fifield in 2080. Author of A Study of Deviant Data in Extra-Sensory Perception.
Co-author (with Pandit Kalimohan Chandra Roy) of Proteus: a History of the Ego. Address Sanctuary (F-2), California. Unofficially reported in voluntary cororal abdication in 2083 August and transferred at the request of Sanctuary Council to inactive status 2085 August, body to remain in Sanctuary. Credit account on transfer to inactive 11,018 dollars and thirty two cents, less depreciation 9,803 dollars and nine cents, credit account re-entered with service deduction 9,802 dollars and nine cents less 500 dollars credit convenience book 9,302 dollars, and nine cents, enclosed.”
Attached to the end of the roll was a small wallet or notebook. Inside Perry found that the leaves were money, conventional money, differing only slightly in size and design from money in 1939. In the back of the book was a pad of blank credit drafts, a check book.
“What do I do with this stuff, Diana?”
“Do with it? Anything you like, use it, spend it, live on it.”
“But it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to this fellow Gordon something-or-other.”
“You are Gordon 755-82.”
“Me? The hell I am.”
“You are, though. The Bureau of Records has already acknowledged it and has your account re-entered. You have the body listed as 932-016-755-82A. You can use any name you like, Perry, or Gordon, or George Washington, and the Bureau will gladly note the change in the record, but that number goes with that body and that credit account and they won’t change it. Of course you don’t have to spend it but if you don’t, nobody will, and it will just get bigger.”
“Can’t I give it away?”
“Certainly, but not to Gordon.”
Perry scratched his head. “No, I guess not. Say, what is this voluntary abdication stuff?”
“I’m not able to give a scientific account of it, but so far as anyone else is concerned it amounts to suicide by willing not to live.”
“Then Gordon is dead?”
“No, not according to the ideas of the people who monkey with these things. He simply was not interested in living here and chose to live elsewhere.”
“How come his body is here okay?”
“According to this report Gordon’s body, this body,” She pinched his cheeks. “, has been lying quietly in a state of arrested animation in the Sanctuary on the other side of this mountain. And so the mystery is partially cleared up.”
His wrinkled brow showed no satisfaction. “Yes, I suppose so. But each mystery is explained with another mystery.”
“There is just one mystery left that worries me, Perry, and that is why in the world you didn’t break a leg and maybe your brand-new neck in getting over here. But I’m glad you didn’t.”
“So am I. Lord!”
“But now I must get to work.” She stacked the supper dishes as she spoke.
“What work?”
“My paid work. I am not one of the ascetic souls that are content with their heritage checks. I’ve got to have money for ribbons and geegaws.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a tele-vue actress, Perry. I dance and sing a little, and occasionally take part in stories.”
“Are you about to rehearse?”
“No, I go on the waves in about twenty minutes.”
“Goodness, the studio must be close by or you’ll be late.”
“Oh, no, it will be picked up from here. But you will have to be a good boy and sit still and not ask questions for a while or I shall be late. Come. Sit over here. Now face the receiver so.” Another section of the wall flew up and Perry faced a flat screen. “There you can see the whole performance and watch me dance directly too.” She opened the communicator drawer and raised the small screen. A rather homely debonair young man appeared. He wore a helmet with bulges over his ears. A cigarette drooped from one corner of his sardonic mouth.
“Hi, Dian’.”
“Hello, Larry. Where j’a get the circles under your eyes?”
“That from you, and you so huffy about the private sphere of action. I had a blonde paint ‘em on.”
“She got the left one crooked.”
“Cut out the arcing and get down to work, wench. Got your setup made?”
“Yeah.”
“OK, testing.” Lights sprang out from the near end of the room. Diana walked to the center of the room, turned around twice, and walked back and forth and up and down, then returned to the communicator.
“OK, Larry?”
“There’s a halo in the lower left and it’s not in my side, I don’t believe.”
“I’ll take a look.” She returned with the tube that had contained the Gordon dossier in her hand. “Gone now, Larry?”
“Yeah, what was it?”
“This.” She held up the tube.
“Just like a female. Can’t integrate. Sloppy minds, unable to, ”
“Larry, one more crack out of you and I’ll report you for atavism, probably Neanderthal.”
“Cool down, small one. You have a super-magnificent brain. I love you for your intellect. Time’s running short. Want some music?”
“Give it a blast. Okay, turn it off.”
“What are you giving the mob tonight, Dian’?”
“Highbrow stuff. Watch it, you might get an idea.”
He glanced down at his controls. “Take your place, kid. I’m clearing.”
Diana went quickly to the middle of the room and the lights went out. The larger screen facing Perry came suddenly to life. Facing him in stereo and color was a brisk young man, who bowed and smiled and commenced to speak:
“Friends, we are again in the studios of the Magic Car et in the tower of the Edison Memorial overlooking Lake Michigan. We bring you tonight your favorite inter reter of the modern theme in dance, lovely Diana, who will present another stanza in the Poem of Life.”
The colors on the screen melted together, then faded to a light blue and a single high clear crystal note impinged on Perry’s ears. The note trembled, then pursued a minor melody. Perry felt a mood of sadness and nostalgia creep over him. Gradually the orchestra picked up the theme and embroidered it while on the screen the colors shifted, blended, and ranged in patterns. Finally the colors faded and the screen went dark as the harmony wafted out of the music leaving a violin alone carrying the theme in the darkness. A dim finger of light appeared and picked out a small figure far back. The figure was prone, limp, helpless. The music conveyed a feeling of pain and despair and over powering fatigue. But another theme encouraged, called for effort, and the figure stirred gently. Perry glanced over his shoulder and had to exert self-control to refrain from going to the poor forlorn creature’s assistance. Diana needed help, his heart told him, go to her! But he sat quietly and watched and listened. Perry knew little about dancing and nothing about it as a high art.
Ballroom dancing for himself and tap dancing to watch were about his level. He watched with intent appreciation the graceful, apparently effortless movements of the girl, without any realization of the training, study and genius that had gone before. But gradually he realized that he was being told a story of the human spirit, a story of courage, and hope, and love overcoming despair and physical hurt. He came to with a start when the dance ended leaving Diana with arms flung out, face to the sky, eyes shining, and smiling in joy as a single bright warm light poured over her face and breast. He felt happier than he had since his arrival, happy and relieved.
The screen went dark, then the ubiquitous young man re-appeared. Diana cut him off before he spoke, switched on the room lights and turned to Perry. He was surprised to see that she appeared shy and fussed.
“Did you like it, Perry?”
“Like it? Diana, you were glorious, incredible. I, I can’t express it.”
“I’m glad.
“And now I’m going to eat and we can visit some more.”
“But you just had dinner.”
“You didn’t watch me closely. I don’t eat much before dancing. But now watch, I’ll probably get it down on the floor and worry it like an animal. Are you hungry?”
“No, not yet.”
“Could you drink a cup of chocolate?”
“Yes, thanks.”
A few minutes later they were seated on the couch, Diana with her legs curled up under her, a cup of chocolate in one hand, an enormous sandwich in the other. She ate busily and greedily. Perry was amused to think that this hungry little girl was that unearthly glorious creature of a few minutes before. She finished, hiccoughed, looked surprised and murmured, “Excuse me,” then wiped up with one finger a blob of mayonnaise which had dropped on her tummy and transferred it to her mouth. “Now, Perry, let’s take stock.
Where are we?”
“Damned if I know. I know where I am and when I am and you tell me that I know who I am. Gordon zip, zip, zip and six zeros, but I might as well be a day old baby as for knowing what to do about it.”
“Not so bad as that, Perry. In addition to an identity you have acquired a nice credit account, not large but adequate and your heritage check will keep you going, too.”
“What is this heritage check business?”
“Let’s not go into that now. When you study the economic system you’ll understand. Right now it means a hundred and fifty dollars, more or less, every month. You could live comfortably on two-thirds of that, if you wanted to. What I wanted to talk about was the ‘what to do about it’ aspect.”
“Where do we start?”
“I can’t decide what you are to do about anything, but it seems to me that the very first thing to do is to bring you up to date so that you will fit in twenty-eighty-six. It is a rather different world. You must learn a lot of new customs and a century-and-a-half of history and a number of new techniques and so forth. When you are up to date, you can decide for yourself what you want to do, and then you can do anything you want.”
“It sounds to me as if I’d be too old to want to do anything by that time.”
“No, I don’t think so. You can start right away. I’ve got a number of ideas.
In the first place, while I haven’t very many useful books in this house, I do have a pretty fair history of the United States and a short world history.
Yes, and a dictionary and a fairly recent encyclopedia. Oh and I nearly forgot, an abridged code of customs that I had when I was a kid. Then I am going to call Berkeley and ask for a group of records on a number of subjects that you can play on the televue whenever you like. That will really be your most beneficial and easiest way to learn in a hurry.”
“How does it work?”
“It’s very simple. You saw my act in the televue tonight. Well, it’s just as easy to put a record on it and see and hear anything that you want to that has ever been recorded. If you wanted to, you could see President Berzowski open Congress in 2001 January. Or if you like, you could see any of my dances from records.”
“I’ll do that first. To hell with history!”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You will study until you are oriented. If you want to see me dance, I’ll dance for you.”
“OK, right now.”
She stuck out her tongue at him. “Be serious. Besides the records, I’ll think over who among my friends can help and I’ll get them to come talk with you and explain the things that I can’t.”
“Why do you take all this trouble about me, Dian’?”
“Why, anybody would, Perry. You were sick and cold and needed help.”
“Yes, but now you undertake to educate me and set me on my feet.”
“Well, I want to do it. Won’t you let me?”
“Well, maybe. But look here, oughtn’t I to get out of your house and find some other place to stay?”
“Why, Perry? You’re welcome here. Aren’t you comfortable?”
“Oh, of course. But how about your reputation? What will people say?”
“I don’t see how it could affect my reputation; you don’t dance. And what does it matter what people think, all they could think is that we were companions, if they bothered to think about it at all. Besides very few people except my friends will know. It is strictly in the private sphere of action.
The custom is quite clear.”
“What custom?”
“Why, the custom which says that what people do out of public service or private employment is private as long as it doesn’t violate the other customs.
Where people go, what they eat, or drink, or wear, or how they entertain themselves, or who they love, or how they play are strictly in the private sphere. So one must not print anything about it or broadcast it, or speak about it in a public place, without specific permission.”
“Paging Walter Winchell! What in the world is in your newspapers?”
“Lots of things. Political news and ships’ movements and public events and announcements of amusements and most anything about public officials, though their private sphere is much narrower. It’s an exception in the custom. And new creations in clothing and architecture and food and new scientific discoveries and lists of new televue records and broadcasts, and new commercial projects. Who’s Walter Winchell?”
“Walter Winchell, why he was a, Dian’, I don’t think you will believe it but he made a lot of money talking almost entirely about things in what you call the private sphere of action.”
She wrinkled her nose. “How disgusting!”
“People ate it up. But look, how about your friends? Won’t they think it strange?”
“Why should they? It isn’t strange. I’ve entertained lots of them.”
“But we aren’t chaperoned.”
“What’s ‘chaperoned’? Is it something like married?”
“Oh Lord, I give up. Listen, Dian’, just pretend like we never said anything about it. I’ll be most happy to stay if you want me to.”
“Didn’t I say I did?”
They were interrupted by the appearance of a large grey cat who walked out to the middle of the floor, calmly took possession, sat down, curled his tail carefully around him, and mewed loudly. He had only one ear and looked like a hard case. Diana gave him a stern look.
“Where have you been? Do you think this is any time to come home?”
The cat mewed again.
“Oh, so you’ll be fed now? So this is just the place where they keep the fish?”
The cat walked over, jumped on the couch, and commenced bumping his head against Diana’s side while buzzing loudly.
“All right. All right. Come along. Show me where it is.” He jumped down and trotted quickly over toward Demeter, tail straight as a smoke column on a calm day, then sat and looked up expectantly. He mewed again.
“Don’t be impatient.” Diana held a dish of sardines in the air. “Show me where to put it.” The cat trotted over in front of the fire. “All right. Now are you satisfied?” The cat did not answer, being already busy with the fish.
Diana returned to the couch and reached for a cigarette. “That’s Captain Kidd. He’s an old pirate with no manners and no morals. He owns this place.”
“So I gathered. How did he get in?”
“He let himself in. He has a little door of his own that opens up when he mews.”
“For Heaven’s sakes! Is that standard equipment for cats these days?”
“Oh no, it’s just a toy. He can’t let himself in my door. It opens only to my voice. But I made a record of the mew he used to let me know he wanted to come in the house and sent it to be analyzed and a lock set to it. Now that lock opens his own little door. I suppose that doors that open to a voice are somewhat marvelous to you, Perry?”
“Well, yes and no, we had such things but they weren’t commercially in use.
I’ve seen them work. In fact I believe that I could design one if I had to.”
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Really? I had no idea that technical advance was so marked in your day.”
“We had a fairly involved technical culture, but unfortunately most of it wasn’t used. People couldn’t afford to pay for the things that the engineers could build, especially luxuries like automatic doors and television and such.”
“Television isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. How else could one keep in touch? Why I would be helpless without it.”
“Yes, no doubt you feel that way about it. People were beginning to say that about the telephone in my day. But the fact remains while we knew how to accomplish pretty fair television we didn’t because there was no market.
People couldn’t afford it.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“I don’t know how to tell you. Perhaps I don’t see either, except in some way I can’t explain. But we did have a lot of unused or only partially used mechanical and technical knowledge. The application of any advance in invention or art was limited by whether or not there were people willing and able to pay for it. I served for a couple of years in one of the big aircraft carriers. There were boys in her, enlisted men, who used the most amazing technical devices, mechanical brains that could solve the most involved ballistic problems, problems in calculus using a round dozen variables, problems that would have taken an experienced mathematician days to solve. The machine solved them in a split second and applied the solutions, yet more than half of those boys came from homes that didn’t have bathtubs or central heating.”
“How awful! How in the world could they stay clean and healthy in such houses?”
“They couldn’t. I don’t suppose that I can make you realize just what the conditions were in which a lot of peopl