Time Enough for Love (59 page)

Lazarus said, “I need not belabor the point. With babies you breast-feed them and nibble their toes and talk to them and blow in their bellybuttons and make them laugh. Computers don’t have bellybuttons, but attention works just as well on them. Justin, Minerva tells me that she left nothing of herself in the computer under the palace.”

“That is correct. I left it intact as a computer and programmed for all its duties…but I dared not leave any personal memory, any part of the
me,
could not let it remember that it had once been Minerva; that wouldn’t have been fair to it. Lazarus warned me, and I was most careful, checking all the billions of bits and wiping where necessary.”

Justin Foote said, “I missed a turn somehow. You did this in New Rome…but you’ve been awake here only three years?”

“Three wonderful years! You see—”

“Let me interrupt, dear; I’ll tell him the hanky-panky. But first—Justin, have you dealt with the executive computer in New Rome since we migrated? Of course you have—but have you been in the office of Madam Chairman Pro Tem when she was using it?”

“Why, yes, several times. Just yesterday—no, I mean the yesterday before I left; I keep forgetting that I missed transit time.”

“What name does she use in speaking with it?”

“I don’t think she uses a name. I’m fairly certain she does not.”

“Oh, the poor thing!”

“No, Minerva,” Lazarus said quietly. “You left it in good health; it simply won’t wake up until it has a mistress, or master, who appreciates it. Which might not be long,” he added grimly.

Justin Foote said, “Might be any time. Lazarus, that old, uh—cancel that. Arabelle loves the spotlight. Appears at public meetings, shows up in the Colosseum. Stands up and waves her scarf. Seems odd, after the quiet way Ira ran things.”

“I see. A sitting duck. Seven to two she’s assassinated in the next five years.”

“No bet. I’m a statistician, Lazarus.”

“So you are. All right—Hanky-panky. Lots of it. Ishtar set up an auxiliary Howard Clinic in the Palace. Her excuse: Me, the Senior. But a cover-up for a much more extensive bio facility. Minerva picked her parents; Ishtar stole the tissues and faked some records. Meanwhile, our skinny friend my daughter Minerva—”

“She is not! She’s just right for her height and body type and bio age!”

“—and deliciously curved!”

“—had twinned her computer self in a hold of my yacht ‘Dora,’ placing the contract in my name and charging it to me, and nobody dared inquire why the Senior—some advantages to age, especially among Howards—wanted a huge computer in a yacht that already had one of the fanciest computers in the sky. While back in my borrowed penthouse where
nobody
was allowed to go—other than a short list all as dishonest as I am—a clone was growing in a facility installed in a room I didn’t need.

“Comes time to migrate, a very large case containing what was then a very small clone, goes to the skyport marked as part of my personal baggage—this baggage between us, of course—and is loaded into the ‘Dora’ without inspection, such being a prerogative of being Chairman…for as you may recall I didn’t hand the gavel back to Arabelle until our transports had lifted and I was about to raise ship myself, with Ira and the rest of my personal party aboard.

“While I’m taking the clone aboard, Minerva withdraws herself from the executive computer and is safe and snug in a hold of the ‘Dora’…with her gizzards packed with every bit of data in the Grand Library and the entire records of the Howard Clinic including secret and confidential stuff. A most satisfying caper, Justin, the most good, clean, illegal fun I’ve had since we stole the ‘New Frontiers.’ But I’m telling you this not to boast—or not much—but to ask if we were as slick as we thought we were. Any rumors? Did you suspect anything amiss? How about Arabelle?”

“I feel sure that Arabelle does not suspect. Nor have I heard of Nelly Hildegarde bursting any blood vessels. Mmm,
I
suspected something.”

“Really. Where did we slip?”

“Hardly the word, Lazarus. Minerva, when I had occasion to consult you, while Ira was Chairman Pro Tem, how did we talk?”

“Why, you were always most friendly, Justin. You always told me
why
you wanted something instead of just telling me to dig it out. You would chat, too; you were never too much in a hurry to be pleasant. That’s why I remember you so warmly.”

“And that, Lazarus, is why I sniffed something dead behind the arras. You and your party had been gone about a week when I wanted something from the executive computer. When you have an old friend with a pleasant voice—your voice is unchanged, Minerva; I should have recognized it—but I was bedazzled by your appearance—when you call this old friend and are answered by a flat, mechanical voice…and any deviation from programming language is answered by: ‘NULL PROGRAM—REPEAT—WAITING FOR PROGRAM’—then you know that an old friend is dead.” He smiled at the girl between them. “So I can’t tell you how delighted I am to learn that my old friend was reborn as a lovely young girl.”

Minerva squeezed his hand, blushed slightly, and said nothing.

“Hmm—Justin, did you compare notes with anyone?”

“Ancestor, do you think I’m a fool? I mind my own business.”

“Apology, about grade two. No, you’re not a fool, unless you go back and work for the old harridan.”

“When will the next wave of migrants head this way? I hate to waste the work I’ve done on your life, and I would hate to abandon my personal library.”

“Well, sir, no tellin’ when a streetcar will be by this time o’ night. Discuss it later.” Lazarus added, “That’s our house ahead.”

Justin Foote looked, saw a building partly visible through trees, turned back to speak to Minerva. “Something you said earlier, Cousin, I did not understand. You said ‘I owe you so much.’ If I was pleasant to you—at New Rome, I mean—you were at least as pleasant to me. More likely the debt is the other way; you were always most helpful.”

Instead of answering, she looked at Lazarus. He said, “Your business, my dear.”

Minerva took a deep breath, then said, “I plan to name twenty-three of my children for my twenty-three parents.”

“So? That seems most warmly appropriate.”

“You’re not my cousin, Justin—you’re my father. One of them.”

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

Bacchanalia

After the track through the gormtrees at the northern edge of Boondock swings right, one has a view of the home of Lazarus Long, but I hardly noticed it when I first saw it; I was much bemused by a statement by Minerva Long. Me her father?
Me?

The Senior said, “Close your mouth, Son; you’re making a draft. Dear, you startled him.”

“Oh, dear!”

“Now quit looking like a frightened fawn, or I’ll be forced to hold your nose and administer two ounces of eighty-proof ethanol disguised as fruit juice. You’ve done nothing wrong. Justin, does disguised ethanol interest you?”

“Yes,” I agreed fervently. “I recall a time in my youth when that and one other subject were all I was interested in.”

“If the other subject wasn’t women, we’ll find a monastic cubbyhole where you can drink alone. But it was—I know more about you than you think. All right, we’ll have a libation or six. Not those two, they’re potential, alcoholics.”

“Slanderous—”

“—though regrettably true—”

“—but we did it only once—”

“—and won’t do it again!”

“Don’t commit yourself too far, kids; a brannigan might sneak up on you. Better to know your resistance than to be tripped through ignorance. Grow up, put on some mass, and you’ll be able to cope with it. Or Ishtar mixed up your genes, which she didn’t. Now about this other matter, Justin. Yes, you’re one of Minerva’s parents…and that’s a very high compliment, because those twenty-three chromosome pairs were picked from tissues of thousands of superior people, using fearsome mathematics to handle the multiplicity of variables, plus Ishtar’s knowledge of genetics, and some unnecessary advice from me, before this little darling got the precise mix she wanted to be.”

I started to set up the type problem in my head—yes, that would be some problem, extremely more difficult than the ordinary genetics problem of advising one male and one female—then dropped it, as I had its delightful answer by her left hand. Lazarus was still speaking:

“Minerva could have been male, two meters tall, massing a hundred kilos, built like Joe Colossus, and hung like a stallion mule. Instead she elected to be what she is: slender, female, shy—I’m not sure she selected for that last. Did you, dear?”

“No, Lazarus; no one knows which genes control that. I think I get it from Hamadryad.”

“I think you got it from a computer I used to know—and took along all of it as Athene certainly is not shy. Never mind. Some of Minerva’s donor-parents are dead; some are alive but unaware that a bit of tissue from a clone in stasis or from the live-tissue bank was borrowed—as in your case. Some know that they are donor-parents—me, for example, and you heard Hamadryad mentioned. You’ll meet others, some being on Tertius, where it’s no secret. But consanguinity is not close for anyone. One twenty-third? The genetic advisers wouldn’t run that through a computer; it’s an acceptable risk. Plus the fact that none of us donor-parents of Minerva have any known skeletons hanging on our family trees. You could safely have progeny by her; so could I.”

“But you refused me!” Minerva startled me with the vehemence with which she accused Lazarus of this. For a moment she was not shy; her eyes flashed.

“Now, now, dear. You were only a year out of vitro and not fully grown even though Ishtar forced you past menarche still in vitro. Ask me on another occasion; I might startle you.”

“‘Startle’ me, or surprise me?”

“Never mind that old joke. Justin, I simply wanted to make clear that your relationship to Minerva, while close enough that it makes Minerva feel sentimental, is in fact so small that you barely qualify as a ‘kissing cousin.’”

“I feel very sentimental about it,” I told the Senior. “Most pleased and deeply honored—although I can’t guess why I was picked.”

“If you want to know which chromosome pair was swiped from you, and why, you had best ask Ishtar and get her to consult Athene; I doubt if Minerva still knows.”

“But I
do
know; I saved those memories. Justin, I wanted to retain some ability in mathematics. It was a choice between you and Libby Professor Owens—so I chose you; you are my friend.”

(Well! I respect Jake Hardy-Owens; I’m merely an applied mathematician, he is a brilliant theoretician.) “Whatever your reasons, dear kissing cousin, I am delighted that you chose me as one of your donor-fathers.”

“Grounded, Commodore!” announced one of the duplicate redheads—Lapis Lazuli—as the little nullboat clumped to a stop. (It appeared to be a Corson Farmsled and I was surprised to see it in a new Colony.) Lazarus answered, “Thank you, Captain.”

The twins bounced out; the Senior and I handed Minerva out—unnecessary help that she accepted with gracious dignity, that being another aspect of colonial life that surprised me, New Rome being rather short on such archaic ceremony. (Over and again I found the Boondockers to be both more formally polite, and more casually relaxed about it, than are Secundians. I suppose my notions of frontier life had been fed on too many romances: rough, bearded men fighting off dangerous animals, mules hauling covered wagons toward distant horizons.)

“Captain” Lazuli said, “Humpty Dumpty—
go to bed!
” The nullboat waddled away; the little girls joined us, one taking my free hand, the other taking the Senior’s free hand, with Minerva between us. These freckled flametops would have had my whole attention had not Minerva been there. I am not compulsively fond of children; some youngsters seem to me rather poisonous, especially precocious ones. But in their case I found their solemn precocity charming rather than irritating…and to see the Senior’s features, rugged rather than handsome and with that too-large nose, unmistakably reproduced but transformed into piquant girlish features—well, had I been alone, I would have chuckled with delight.

*

I said “Just a moment,” and held onto Lorelei’s hand and thereby caused all to pause while I took a second look. “Lazarus, who is the architect?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Dead more than four thousand years. The original belonged to the political boss of Pompeii, a city destroyed about that long ago. I saw a model of it, restored, in a museum in a place called Denver, and took pictures; it pleased me. Those pictures are long gone, but it turned out that, when I tried to describe it to Athene, she had a solly in the historical section of her gizzards of the ruins of that same house—and from that and my description, she designed this version. Some minor mods, nothing that changed its sweet proportions. Then Athene built it, using extensionals and radio links. It’s practical for this climate; the weather here is much like that of Pompeii—and I prefer a house that looks inward, on a court. Safer, even in a place as safe as this one.”

“By the way, where
is
Athene? The main computer itself, I mean.”

“Here. She was still in the ‘Dora’ when she built this; now she’s under the house—she built her underground home first, then built our house on top of it.”

Minerva said simply, “A computer prefers to feel safe, and close to her own people. Lazarus—forgive me, dear, but you have reversed a time sequence; that was more than three years ago.”

“Oh, so I have. Minerva, when you have lived as long as I have—and you will—you’ll find yourself inverting time sequences endlessly, a flesh-and-blood shortcoming you had to accept when you took the plunge. Correction, Justin—‘Minerva,’ not ‘Athene.’”

“Yet it
is
Athene who built it—now,” Minerva added, “since engineering and the details of this construction and others are things I left behind in Athene, where they belong, and abstracted only a simplified memory of having built it—I wanted to remember that much.”

I said, “Whoever built it, it’s beautiful.” I was suddenly upset. It is one thing to accept intellectually the startling idea that a young woman has had a former life as a computer—and even to accept that one had worked with that computer years back and light-years away. But this discussion suddenly brought home to me emotional belief that this lovely girl with her arm warm in mine had in sober fact been a computer so short a time ago that she had built this new house—while a computer. It shook me—even though I am a historiographer, old, and my sense of wonder was dulled even before my first rejuvenation.