Time Enough for Love (56 page)

“But feel free to look over the joint, count noses, examine any records, do as you like. Welcome to Tertius, the biggest little colony this side of Galactic Center. Make yourself at home, son.”

“Thank you. Lazarus, I would be staying—colonizing—but I want to remain Chief Archivist until I finish editing your memoirs.”

Lazarus said, “Oh,
that
junk—burn it up! Gather ye rosebuds, man!”

Ira said, “Lazarus, don’t talk that way. I put up with your whims for years to get it on record.”

“Piffle. I paid you back when I grabbed the gavel and kept the Ugly Duchess from banishing you to Felicity. You got what you want—why do you care about my memoirs?”

“I care.”

“Well—Maybe Justin can edit them here. Athene! Pallas Athene, are you there, honey?”

“Listening, Lazarus,” came a sweet soprano voice from a speaker over Ira’s desk.

“Your memories include my memoirs, do they not?”

“Certainly, Lazarus. Every word you’ve spoken since Ira rescued you—”

“Not ‘rescued,’ dear. Kidnapped.”

“Revision.—since Ira kidnapped you from that flophouse, and all your earlier memoirs.”

“Thanks, dear. You see, Justin? If you
must
do button-sorting, do it here. Unless you have unfinished business on Secundus? Family, or such?”

“No family. Grown children but no wife. My deputy is doing my job, and I’ve nominated her as my successor—subject to approval by the Trustees. But I find myself startled. Uh…how about my ship?”

“
My
ship, you mean. I don’t mean my yacht ‘Dora’ but that one-man autopacket you arrived in. The ‘Homing Pigeon.’ Belongs to a corporation owned by another corporation of which I am major stockholder. I’ll accept delivery and that saves Arabelle half the lease time.”

“So? Madam Chairman Pro Tem did not lease that autopacket, Lazarus; she requisitioned it for public service.”

“Well, well!” Lazarus grinned. “Maybe I’ll sue her. Justin, there is nothing in the Articles of Contract under which Secundus was colonized that permits requisition of private property by the state. Correct, Ira?”

“Technically correct, Lazarus. Although there is long precedent for eminent domain in land.”

“Ira, I’d argue even that. But have you ever heard of it being applied to spaceships?”

“Never. Unless you count the ‘New Frontiers.’”

“
Ouch!
Ira, I didn’t requisition the ‘New Frontiers’; I stole it to save our skins.”

“I was thinking of Slayton Ford’s part in it, not yours. Constructive requisitioning, perhaps?”

“Mmm—It’s pretty small of you to bring it up a couple of thousand years after his death. Furthermore, had Slayton not done what he did, I wouldn’t be here and
you
wouldn’t be here. Nor any of us. Damn you, Ira.”

“Get your feathers down, Grandfather. I was just pointing out that a head of state sometimes has to do things he would never do as a private individual. But if Arabelle can requisition the ‘Homing Pigeon’ when it sits on Secundus, then you can do the same on Tertius. You are each head of state of an autonomous planet. Teach her a lesson.”

“Uh… Ira, don’t tempt me. It happened to
me
once. If it got to be a habit, it would put a stop to interstellar travel. I won’t touch that bucket under any such flimsy legality. But I
do
own it, indirectly, and if Justin wants to stay, he can turn it over to me, and I’ll return it to Transport Enterprises. Let’s get back to that list. See what the old bat wants? The times and places she wants me to report on?”

“Looks like an interesting itinerary.”

“It does, eh? Then
you
do it. ‘Battle of Hastings—First, Third, and Fourth Crusades—Battle of Orléans—Fall of Constantinople—French Revolution—Battle of Waterloo.’ Thermopylae and nineteen other encounters between rough strangers. I’m surprised she didn’t ask me to referee the bout between David and Goliath. I’m
chicken
, Ira. I fight when I can’t run—how does she
think
I managed to live so long? Bloodshed is not a spectator sport. If history says that a battle took place at a given location on a particular day, then I’ll be somewhere—or somewhen—far away, sitting in a tavern, drinking beer and pinching the barmaids. Not dodging mortar fire to feed Arabelle’s ghoulish curiosity.”

“I tried to suggest that,” said Justin. “But she said that this was an official Families’ project.”

“The hell it is. I told her about it simply to be sure of the Delay Mail setup. I’m a coward by trade…and
not
working for her. I’ll go where and when I please, see what I want to—and try not to antagonize local yokels. Especially those fighting each other; it makes ’em trigger-happy.”

“Lazarus,” said Ira Weatheral, “you never have said what you do plan to see.”

“Well—No battles. Battles are well enough reported for my taste. But there are lots of interesting things in Terran history—peaceful things not well reported because they
were
peaceful. I want to see the Parthenon at the peak of its glory. Cruise down the Mississippi with Sam Clemens as pilot. Go to Palestine in the first three decades of the Christian Era and try to locate a certain carpenter turned rabbi—settle whether there ever was such a man.”

Justin Foote looked surprised. “You mean the Christian Messiah? Admittedly many stories about him are myths, but—”

“How do you
know
they are myths? But that he ever lived is the point that has never been established. Take Socrates, four centuries earlier—
his
historicity is as firmly established as that of Napoleon. Not so with the Carpenter of Nazareth. Despite the care with which the Romans kept records and the equal care with which the Jews kept theirs,
none
of the events that
should
be on record can be found in contemporary records.

“But if I devoted thirty years to it, I could find out. I know Latin and Greek of that time and I’m almost as conversant with classic Hebrew; all I would have to add is Aramaic. If I found him, I could follow him around. Take down his words with a microrecorder, see if they match what he is alleged to have said.

“But I won’t take any bets. The historicity of Jesus is the slipperiest question in all history because for centuries the question couldn’t be raised. They would hang you for asking—or burn you at the stake.”

“I’m amazed,” said Ira. “My knowledge of Earth’s history isn’t as thorough as I thought it was. However, I concentrated on the period from Ira Howard’s death to the founding of New Rome.”

“Son, you didn’t even sample it. But aside from this one weird story—‘weird’ because most major religious leaders are heavily documented whereas this one remains as elusive as the King Arthur legends—I’m not going after great events. I’d rather meet Galileo, get a look at Michelangelo at work, attend a first performance of one of old Bill’s plays at the Globe Theater, things like that. I’d particularly like to go back to my own childhood, see if things look as I recall them.”

Ira blinked. “Run a chance of running into
yourself
?”

“Why not?”

“Well…there are paradoxes, are there not?”

“How? If I’m going to, then I
did
. That old cliché about shooting your grandfather before he sires your father, then going
fuff!
like a soap bubble—and all descendants, too, meaning both of you among others—is nonsense. The fact that I’m here and you’re here means that I
didn’t
do it—or won’t do it; the tenses of grammar aren’t built for time travel—but it does
not
mean that I never went back and poked around. I haven’t any yen to look at
myself
when I was a snot-nose; it’s the era that interests me. If I ran across myself as a young kid, he—I—wouldn’t recognize me; I would be a stranger to that brat. He wouldn’t give me a passing glance; I know, I
was
he.”

“Lazarus,” put in Justin Foote, “if you intend to visit that era, I’d like to invite your attention to one thing Madam Chairman Pro Tem is interested in—because
I
am interested. A recording of exactly what was said and done at the Families’ Meeting in 2012
A.D.
”

“Impossible.”

“Just a moment, Justin,” Ira put in. “Lazarus, you have refused to talk about that meeting on the grounds that the others who were there can’t dispute your version. But a recording would be fair to everyone.”

“Ira, I didn’t say that I
would
not; I said it was
impossible.
”

“I don’t follow you.”

“I can’t make a recording of that meeting because I was not there.”

“You lost me again. All the records—and your own statements—show that you
were
there.”

“Again we don’t have language adequate for time travel. Surely, I was there as Woodrow Wilson Smith. I was there and made a hairy nuisance of myself and offended a lot of people. But I did
not
have a recorder on me. Let’s say that Dora and the twins drop me back there—
me
, Lazarus Long, not that younger fellow—and that Ishtar has equipped me with a recorder implanted behind my right kidney, with its minimike surfacing inside my right ear. Okay, let’s assume that with such equipment I won’t be noticed making a record.

“But, Ira, what you don’t understand, despite having chaired many Families’ Meetings, is that I would not get inside the hall. In those days an executive meeting of the Families was harder to get into than an esbat of witches. The guards were armed and eager; it was a rough period. What identity could I use? Not Woodrow Wilson Smith; he was there. Lazarus Long? There was no ‘Lazarus Long’ on the Families’ rolls. Try to fake it as someone eligible but not able to attend? Impossible. There were only a few thousand of us then, and every member was known to a large percentage of the rest; a man who couldn’t be vouched for ran a nasty chance of being buried in the basement. No unidentified person
ever did
get in; we had too much at stake. Hi, Minerva! Come in, honey.”

“Hi, Lazarus. Ira, am I intruding?”

“Not at all, dear.”

“Thank you. Hello, Athene.”

“Hello, my sister.”

Minerva waited to be introduced. Ira said, “Minerva, you remember Justin Foote, Chief Archivist.”

“Certainly, I’ve worked with him many times. Welcome to Tertius, Mr. Foote.”

“Thank you, Miss Minerva.” Justin Foote liked what he saw—a tall, slender young woman with an erect carriage, a small, firm bust, long chestnut hair worn in a part and brushed straight down, a sober, intelligent face, handsome rather than pretty, but which blossomed into beauty each time she gave one of her quick smiles. “But, Ira, I must hurry back to Secundus and apply for rejuvenation. This young lady has worked with me ‘many times’—yet I’ve grown so senile I can’t place the occasions. Forgive me, dear lady.”

Minerva flashed him another of her smiles, then instantly was sober. “My fault, sir; I should have explained at once. When I worked with you, I was a computer. Executive computer of Secundus, serving Mr. Weatheral, then Chairman Pro Tem. But now I’m a flesh-and-blood, and have been for the past three years.”

Justin Foote blinked. “I see. I hope I do.”

“I am a proscribed construct, sir, not born of woman. A composite clone of twenty-three donor-parents, forced to maturity in vitro. But the ‘I’ that is me, my ego, was the computer who used to work with you when the Archives computers needed assistance from the executive computer. Have I made it clear?”

“Uh…all I can say, Miss Minerva, is that I am delighted to meet you in the flesh. Your servant, Miss.”

“Oh, don’t call me ‘Miss,’ call me ‘Minerva.’ I shouldn’t be called ‘Miss’ anyhow; isn’t that honorific reserved for virgins among flesh-and-bloods? Ishtar—one of my mothers and my chief designer—deflowered me surgically before she woke me.”

“And that ain’t all!” came the voice from the ceiling.

“Athene,” Minerva said reprovingly. “Sister, you’re embarrassing our guest.”

“I’m not, but maybe you are, sister mine.”

“Am I, Mr. Foote? I hope not. But I’m still learning to be a human being. Will you kiss me? I’d like to kiss you; we’ve known each other almost a century and I’ve always liked you. Will you?”

“Now who’s embarrassing him, sister?”

“Minerva,” said Ira.

She suddenly sobered. “I shouldn’t have said that?”

Lazarus cut in. “Pay no attention to Ira, Justin; he’s an old stick-in-the-mud. Minerva is a ‘kissin cousin’ to most of the colony; she’s making up for lost time. Furthermore, she is some sort of cousin to practically all of us through her twenty-three parents. And she’s learned
how
—kissing her is a treat. Athene, let your sis be while she adds on another kissing cousin.”

“Yes, Lazarus. Ol’ Buddy Boy!”

“Teena, if I could reach through that string of wires, I’d spank you.” Lazarus added, “Go ahead, Justin.”

“Uh… Minerva, I haven’t kissed a girl in many years. Out of practice.”

“Mr. Foote, I do not mean to embarrass you. I am simply delighted to see you again. You need not kiss me. Or if you are willing to kiss me in private, you are most welcome.”

“Don’t risk it, Justin,” advised the computer. “I’m your friend.”

“Athene!”

“I was about to add,” said the Chief Archivist, “that I probably need practice in ‘learning to be a human being’ more than you do. If you’ll put up with my rustiness, Cousin, I accept your sweet offer. Brace yourself.”

Minerva smiled quickly, went into his arms, flowed up against him like a cat, closed her eyes, and opened her mouth. Ira studied a paper on his desk. Lazarus did not even pretend not to watch. He noted that Justin Foote put his heart into the matter—the old buzzard might be out of practice, but he hadn’t forgotten the basics.

When they broke, the computer gave a respectful whistle. “Wheeee…ooooo! Justin, welcome to the Club.”

“Yes,” Ira said dryly, “a person can’t be said to be officially on Tertius until he or she has been welcomed with a kiss from Minerva. Now that protocol is satisfied, sit down. Minerva, my dear, you came for some purpose?”

“Yes, sir.” She settled down by Justin Foote on a couch facing Ira and Lazarus—took Justin’s hand. “I was in the ‘Dora’ with the twins, and Dora was drilling them in astrogation, when the packet showed up in our sky and—”