Time Enough for Love (91 page)

“I’m trying to find out, Dora. Be ready with the tank; I may freeze him.”

“Ready now, Ish. Laz-Lor, I told you we should pick him up sooner. I
told
you.”

“Pipe down, Dora. We
told
him he’d get his ass shot off. But he was having more fun than kittens—”

“—and wouldn’t have thanked us—”

“—and wouldn’t have come—”

“—you know how stubborn he is.”

“Tamara,” said Ishtar, “cuddle his head and talk to him. Keep him alive. I don’t want to freeze him—if at all—until I’ve made temporary repairs. Hamadryad, clamp there! Mm

Galahad, one slug hit the Finder. That’s how his intestines got so chopped up.”

“Clone-trans?”

“Perhaps. The way he regenerates, repair and support may be enough. Justin, you were right; the dates on his letters did prove that he didn’t last through it; losing the Finder’s signal pinpointed when and where. Galahad, are you finding more fragments? I want to close him. Tamara, rouse him, make him talk! I
don’t
want to have to freeze him. The rest of you shut up and get
out!
Go help Minerva with the children.”

“Glad to,” Justin said hoarsely. “I’m about to throw up.”

“
Maureen?
” Lazarus murmured.

“I’m here, darling,” Tamara answered, cradling his head against her breasts.

“Bad…dream. Thought… I was…dead.”

“Just a dream, Beloved. You cannot die.”

1

Gregorian Terran dates are used throughout, as no other calendar, not even Standard Galactic, is certain to be known to scholars of every planet. Translators should add local dates for clarification.

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2

When the Howard Families seized the Starship
New Frontiers
only a few were more than a century and a quarter old; all of that few—save the Senior—are dead, at times and places on record. (I except the strange and possibly mythical case of life-in-death of Elder Mary Sperling.) Despite genetic advantage and access to the longevity therapies known collectively as “the immortality option,” the last died in 3003 Gregorian. By the records it would seem that most of them died through refusing further rejuvenation—that being still the second commonest cause of death today.

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3

(1) Ira Johnson was less than eighty at the time the Senior claims (elsewhere) to have left home. Ira Johnson was himself a Doctor of Medicine. How long he practiced, and whether or not he ever let another Doctor of Medicine attend him, are not known.

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(2)
Ira
Howard—
Ira
Johnson—This appears to be a chance coincidence of given names at a time when Biblical names were common. Families’ genealogists have been unable to trace any consanguinity.

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4

Ira Johnson was seventy when Lazarus Long was ten.

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5

This anecdote is too obscure to be elaborated here. See
Howard Encyclopaedia:
Ancient weapons, chemical-explosives firearms.

6

While this passage bears inner contradictions, the idioms are authentic for North America of the twentieth century. They name certain types of financial dishonesty. See “Swindles” under “Fraud” in Krishnamurti’s
New Golden Bough,
Academe Press, New Rome.

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7

This doggerel is attributed to the twentieth century. See appendix for semantic analysis.

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8

There is no record that the Senior ever attended a school for militaro-naval officers, or any military school. On the other hand, there is no proof that he did not. This story may be autobiographical to whatever extent it is true; “David Lamb” may be one more of the many names used by Woodrow Wilson Smith.

The details are consistent with Old Home’s history so far as we know it. The Senior’s first century coincides with that century of continuous war which preceded the Great Collapse—a century of much scientific progress paralleled by retrogression in social matters. Waterborne and airborne ships were used for fighting throughout this century. See appendix for idioms and technicalities.

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9

From the noun “chaperon.” This word has two meanings: (1) A person charged with preventing sexual contacts between males and females not licensed for such contacts; (2) a person superficially performing such disservice while in fact acting as a benign lookout. It appears that the Senior uses the word here in its first meaning rather than in its antithetical second meaning. See appendix.

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10

Context implies second meaning.

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11

The Gatling gun (Richard J. Gatling, 1818-1903) was obsolete by the time Lazarus Long was born. This allegation is barely possible if one stipulates that an obsolete weapon might be used in some small, out-of-the-way insurrection.

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12

Sequence of events cannot be reconciled. Perhaps a similar ship?

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13

Purists will see that the Senior gave this jingle a poor translation. But one wonders why he did not continue in the same vein with the cheerfully bawdy triple pun available in the last line by substituting “liberos” for “libros”? That he could have missed it seems out of character. Our Ancestor’s capric disposition is everywhere evident; his occasional professions of asceticism have at best a hollow ring.

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14

Correction: Hedrick Family. This woman Laura (one of the ancestors of the undersigned) did carry the surname “Foote” under the archaic patrilineal tradition—a source of confusion in old records, as the more logical matrilineal system has always been used in the Families in assigning clan membership. But the genealogies were not revised to show this until Gregorian Year 3307. This misnomer offers a means of dating this memoir…were it not that other records show that reindeer were not introduced onto Valhalla until approximately a century and a half
after
the date that the Senior—beyond question—did marry Laura Foote-Hedrick.

But more interesting is the Senior’s allegation that he used a pseudogravity field
in that year
to facilitate childbirth. Was he the first tocologist to use this (now standard) method? Nowhere does he assert this, and the technique is usually associated with Dr. Virginius Briggs of Secundus Howard Clinic and a much later date.

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15

And descended from the Senior as well (through Edmund Hardy 2099-2259) although the Senior may not have been aware of it.

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16

Fifth. James Matthew Libby was her fourth.

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