Time Enough for Love (26 page)

“A pretty penny, I’m certain. Did Ira comment?”

“Ira does not bother with such matters. But I did not report costs to him; I charged it all to you, Lazarus.”

“Whee! Am I bankrupt?”

“No, sir; I paid it from the Senior’s unlimited drawing account. That seemed best to me, Lazarus, as the work was done in your ship. Perhaps they wonder why the Senior wants a second computer, of high capacity, installed in his ship. I know the project engineer wondered; I snubbed him firmly. But wonder is all they can do; the Senior is not accountable to anyone. I hinted quite broadly that Mr. Chairman Pro Tem would be annoyed if anyone attempted to snoop into your affairs. Not that anyone can tell what a computer really is, just from looking at it—even the manufacturer.”

“This manufacturer—Low bidder?”

“Should I have placed it for bid, sir?” Minerva sounded worried.

“Hell, no! If you had, I would have told you to tear it out and start over—then we would have hunted for the best supplier. Minerva my dear, once you leave here, it may be many years before you have any factory service; you’ll have to maintain yourself. Unless Ira can minister to a sick computer?”

“He can’t.”

“You see? Dora is gold and platinum where a cheaper computer is copper and aluminum. I hope your new carcass is just as expensive.”

“It is, Lazarus. My new me is even more reliable than my old me—and smaller and faster, as much of me—‘old me’—is about a century old; the art has improved.”

“Hm. Must see what ought to be replaced in Dora, if anything.”

Minerva made no comment. Lazarus said, “My dear, when you don’t talk, it is louder than when you do. Have you been overhauling Dora?”

“I stockpiled some components, Lazarus. But Dora won’t let herself be touched unless you order it.”

“Yeah, she hates to let a doctor poke around inside her. But if she needs it, she’ll get it—under anesthesia. Minerva, it would be smart, with two of you in the ship, for Dora to carry your maintenance instructions in her permanents, and hers in yours—so that you can nurse each other.”

Minerva answered simply, “We have been waiting for you to tell us to do so, Lazarus.”

“You mean
you
have been waiting; it is not something Dora would think of. So now I’m telling you both, and let her hear my voice say so. Minerva, I wish you would get over being so humble with me.
You
should have proposed it; you think faster than I do by many orders of magnitude; I’ve got flesh-and-blood limitations. How are you coming on astrogation? Is she teaching you to pilot? Or balking?”

“Lazarus, I am now as skillful a pilot as she is, in my other me.”

“Like fun. You’re a copilot. You’re not a pilot until you’ve made an n-space jump unassisted. Even Dora gets jumpy before a jump—and she’s made hundreds.”

“I stand corrected, Lazarus. I am a very highly trained copilot. But I’m not afraid to do it, if the time comes. I’ve rerun all of Dora’s jumps in real time, and she tells me I know how.”

“You may have to someday, if disaster hits. Ira isn’t the pilot I am, I’m certain. With me no longer aboard, your new skill may save his life sometime. What else do you know? Heard any good ones lately?”

“I don’t know, Lazarus. I’ve heard some stories, bawdy ones I believe, from listening to the technicians installing my twin. But I don’t know that they are funny.”

“Don’t bother. If it’s a bawdy story, I heard one like it at least a thousand years back. Now the key question—How fast can you cut loose if Ira decides to jump? Assume a coup d’état and he’s running for his life.”

“One-fifth of a second, minus.”

“Huh? You’re not pulling my leg? I mean how long to put your whole personality aboard the ‘Dora.’ Not leave anything behind and not leave the computer here aware that she ever was Minerva—for anything less would not be fair to yourself, dear. The ‘Minerva’ left behind would grieve.”

“Lazarus, I am speaking not from theory but from experience, as I knew it was the critical aspect of this twinning. So, once I dismissed the contractor and had twinned my permanents and logics and my running temporaries, I experimented, cautiously at first; I simply paralleled me, as I described to you. That’s easy, I just have to balance the lag at each end, to stay synchronous in real time—but I have to do that with my remote extensionals at all times; I’m used to it.

“Then I tried, very cautiously, suppressing myself, first at the ship end, then at the Palace end, with a self-program to revert to full twinning in three seconds. No trouble, Lazarus, not even the first time. Now I can do it in less than two hundred milliseconds and run all checks to be certain that I have neglected nothing. I have done so seven times since you asked that question. Did you notice a lag in my voice at times? Approximately a thousand-kilometer lag?”

“What? My dear, I am not equipped to notice a lag of less than thirty thousand kilometers at speed ‘c.’” He added, “Call it a tenth of a second. You flatter me.” Lazarus added thoughtfully, “But a tenth of a second is a hundred million of the nanoseconds you use. Or a hundred milliseconds. What’s that in your time? About a thousand of my days?”

“Lazarus, that is not how I would express it. I split much smaller than a nanosecond in many things I do—a ‘millishake’ or less. But I’m just as comfortable in your time; I am right now with my personal me. I could not enjoy singing, or this quiet talk with you, if in my personal mode I were forced to consider each nanosecond. Do you count each of your heartbeats?”

“No. Or rarely.”

“It is somewhat the same with me, Lazarus. The things I do quickly I do with no effort and with no conscious attention other than necessary self-program. But the seconds and minutes and hours I spend with you, in personal mode, I savor. I do not chop them into nanoseconds; I grasp them whole and enjoy them. All the days and weeks you have been here I hold as a single ‘now’ and cherish it.”

“Uh…hold it, dear! Are you saying that, well, the day Ira introduced us to each other is still ‘
now
’ to you?”

“Yes, Lazarus.”

“Let me sort this out. Is tomorrow ‘now’ to you also?”

“Yes, Lazarus.”

“Uh…but if that is so, you can predict the future.”

“No, Lazarus.”

“But—Then I don’t understand it.”

“I could print out the equations, Lazarus, but such equations would merely describe the fact that I am constructed to treat time as one of many dimensions, with entropy but one operator and with ‘the present’ or ‘now’ a variable held in steady state for a wide or narrow span. But in dealing with
you
I must necessarily move with the wave front that is
your
personal now—or we cannot communicate.”

“My dear, I’m not sure we
are
communicating.”

“I am sorry, Lazarus. I have
my
limitations, too. But were I able to choose, I would choose
your
limitations. Human. Flesh-and-blood.”

“Minerva, you don’t know what you are saying. A flesh-and-blood body can be a burden…especially when its maintenance begins to occupy most of one’s attention. You have the best of both worlds—designed in man’s own image to do what makes him distinctively human—but better, faster—
much
faster!—and more accurately, than he can do it—without the aches and pains and inefficiencies of a body that must eat and sleep and make mistakes. Believe me.”

“Lazarus…what is ‘Eros’?”

He looked into the gloom and saw in his mind’s eye how solemnly and sorrowfully she stared back. “Good God, girl—do you want to go to bed with him that badly?”

“Lazarus, I do not
know
. I am a ‘blind man.’ How
can
I know?”

Lazarus sighed. “I’m sorry, dear. Then you know why I have kept Dora a baby.”

“Only as conjecture, Lazarus. One that I have not and will not discuss with anyone.”

“Thank you—you are a lady, dear. You do know. Or you know part of my reason. But I’ll tell you all of it—when I feel up to it—and then you will know what I mean by ‘love’ and why I told Hamadryad it must be experienced, not defined in words…and why I
know
that you know what love is, because you have experienced it. But Dora’s story is not for Ira, just for you. No, you can let Ira have it…after I’m gone. Uh, call it ‘The Tale of the Adopted Daughter’; then place a hold on it and let him have it later. But I won’t tell it now; I’m not strong enough tonight—ask me when you know I’m feeling up to it.”

“I shall. I’m sorry, Lazarus.”

“‘Sorry’? Minerva, my very dear, there is
never
anything to feel sorry about with love.
Never
. Would you rather not love me? Or Dora? Or never have learned of love through loving Ira?”

“No. No, not that! But would that I knew ‘Eros,’ too.”

“Count your blessings, dear. ‘Eros’ can hurt.”

“Lazarus, I do not fear being hurt. But while I know much about male-female reproduction, far more than any single human flesh-and-blood knows—”

“You do? Or think you do?”

“I do know, Lazarus. In preparation for migrating I added extra additional memory storage—filling much of hold number-two—so that I could transcribe for Ishtar into my new me all the research files and library and restricted records of the Howard Rejuvenation Clinic—”

“Whew! I think Ishtar took a chance. The Clinic seems pretty cagey about what they release and don’t release.”

“Ishtar is not afraid to take chances. But she did ask me to hurry, so I placed it in temporary here, until I could set up the necessary capacity—large—in Dora’s hold. But I asked Ishtar’s permission to study it, and she said it was all right for me to do so, as long as I did not release anything keyed as confidential or secret without consulting her.

“I found it fascinating, Lazarus. I now know all about sex…in the sense that a man who has always been blind can be taught the physics of a rainbow. I am even a gene surgeon now, in theory, and would not hesitate to be one in practice once I had time to construct the ultramicrominiature waldoes needed for such fine work. I am equally expert as obstetrician and gynecologist and rejuvenator. Erectile reflexes and mechanics of orgasm and the processes of spermogenesis and impregnation are no mystery to me, nor any aspect of gestation and birth.

“‘Eros’ alone I cannot know…and know at last that I am blind.”

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

The Tale of the Twins Who Weren’t

(Omitted)

—but sky merchant was then my usual occupation, Minerva. That caper in which I moved from slave to high priest was forced on me. I had to be meek a long time, which ain’t my style. Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth—but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three.

But the only route from field hand to freedom lay through the church and required meekness all the way, so that’s what I gave ’em. Those priests had weird habits—

(9,300 words omitted)

—which got me off their damned planet and I never expected to go back.

—did go back a couple of centuries later—freshly rejuvenated and not looking anything like that high priest whose ship had been lost in space.

I was a sky merchant again, which suits me; it lets you travel and see things. I went back to Blessed for money, not revenge. I’ve never wasted skull sweat on revenge; The Comte-de-Monte-Cristo syndrome is too much work and not enough fun. If I tangle with a man and he lives through it, I don’t come back later gunning for him. Instead, I outlive him—which balances the books just as well. I figured that two centuries was enough for my enemies on Blessed to be dead, since I had left most of them sort of dead earlier.

Blessed would not have been on my route other than for business reasons. Interstellar trade is economics stripped to basics. You can’t make money by making money because money isn’t money other than on its planet of issue. Most money is fiat; a ship’s cargo of the stuff is wastepaper elsewhere. Bank credit is worth even less; Galactic distances are too great. Even money that jingles must be thought of as
trade goods
—not money—or you’ll kid yourself into starvation.

This gives the sky merchant a grasp of economics rarely achieved by bankers or professors. He is engaged in barter and no nonsense. He pays taxes he can’t evade and doesn’t care whether they are called “excise” or “king’s pence” or “squeeze” or straight-out bribes. It is the other kid’s bat and ball and backyard, so you play by his rules—nothing to get in a sweat about. Respect for laws is a pragmatic matter. Women know this instinctively; that’s why they are all smugglers. Men often believe—or pretend—that the “Law” is something sacred, or at least a science—an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments.

I’ve done little smuggling; it’s risky, and you can wind up with money you don’t dare spend where it’s legal tender. I simply tried to avoid places where the squeeze was too high.

By the Law of Supply and Demand a thing has value from
where
it is as much as from
what
it is—and that’s what a merchant does; he moves things from where they are cheap to where they are worth more. A smelly nuisance in a stable is valuable fertilizer if you move it to the south forty. Pebbles on one planet can be precious gems on another. The art in selecting cargo lies in knowing where things will be worth more, and the merchant who can guess right can reap the wealth of Midas in one trip. Or guess wrong and go broke.

I was on Blessed because I had been on Landfall and wanted to go to Valhalla in order to go back to Landfall, as I was thinking of marrying and raising another family. But I wanted to be rich enough to be landed gentry when I settled down—which I was not, at the time. All I had was the scout ship Libby and I had used
¹²
and a modicum of local money.

So it was time to trade.

The trade routes for a two-way swap show minimum profit; they fill up too quickly. But a triangular trade—or higher numbers—can show high profits. Like this: Landfall had something—call it cheese—which was a luxury on Blessed—while Blessed produced—call it chalk—much in demand on Valhalla…whereas Valhalla manufactured doohickeys that Landfall needed.