Time Enough for Love (68 page)

“You are not that, Lazarus, you have never been that.”

“Oh, yes, I have! It took me endless years to learn.”

Again she let time pass before she spoke. “Lazarus… I have often wondered about Llita.”

“‘About Llita’?
Huh?
”

“And about
her
, even more than about Llita. Do I really look like
her?
”

He stopped and stared at her. They were near the top of the hill now, out of sight of the house. “I don’t know. How can I know? A thousand years—Memories fade and blend. I think you look like her. Yes, you do.”

“Is that why you can’t love me? Did I make a terrible mistake in
wanting
to look like her?”

“But darling… I
do
love you.”

“You do? Lazarus, you have never shared this boon with me.” Suddenly she unwrapped the little skirt, dropped it on the grass. “Look at me, Lazarus. I am
not
she. For your sake I wish I could be she. But I am not…and I made—I—I was a computer then and didn’t know any better. I did not mean to hurt you, I did not
mean
to raise ghosts in your mind! Can you forgive me this?”

“Minerva! Stop, darling! There is nothing to forgive.”

“Time is short, you are leaving. Can you truly forgive me? Will you put your child into me before you go?” Her eyes were welling tears, but she stared at him steadily. “I want your child, Lazarus. I will not ask twice…but I could not let you leave without asking. In my ignorance I made myself look like her—because you loved her—
but you could close your eyes!
”

“Beloved—”

“Yes, Lazarus?”

“Does Ira close his eyes? Refuse to see you?”

“No.”

“Does Justin? Or Galahad? If you can stand my homely face, I surely can stand your lovely one—and, with any luck, she’ll look more like you than me. Let’s go back to the house.”

Her face lit up. “What’s wrong with this little stand of trees?”

“Mmm. Yes. Now.”

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

Narcissus

“Let’s run over it again, girls,” said Lazarus. “Both the time markers and the rendezvous landmarks. Dora, can you see the globe?”

“I can if you’ll keep your hands out of the way, Ol’ Buddy Boy.”

“Sorry, dear. Call me Lazarus; I’m not your brother.”

“When Lazi and Lori made me their adopted sister, you got in free. Logical? Logical. Don’t fight it, Buddy; you like it.”

“Okay, I like it, Sister Dora,” agreed Lazarus. “Now shut up and let me talk.”

“Aye, aye, Commodore,” the pilot computer answered. “But I’ve got it all on tell-me-three-times. Not that I need those clumsy time markers—I’m calibrated, Buddy, calibrated.”

“Dora, assume that something happens to that calibration.”

“Can’t. One bank goes out of whack, I fall back on tell-me-twice while I wipe that bank and restore it.”

“So? You’ve been euphoric ever since the twins adopted you. I taught you to be a pessimist, Dora. A pilot who is not a pessimist isn’t worth a hoot.”

“I’m sorry, Commodore. I’ll shut up.”

“Speak up if you have anything to say. But not to disparage safety precautions. It’s my own precious skin I’m trying to protect, Dora, so please help me. I can think of a dozen ways your gizzards could be damaged, either by error or by natural catastrophe—and so can you but there is no point in worrying. But there
is
point in trying to anticipate what can be done about it.

“Take a case in which you are working perfectly but the twins can’t use you. By schedule, after you drop me, you all go back to base-time framework and to New Rome and the twins inquire for Delay Mail at the Archives. Who knows?—there may be some waiting there right now.”

“Brother,” put in Lorelei, “‘now’ doesn’t mean anything. We’ve been in irrelevant phase ever since we lifted off.”

“Don’t quibble, dear. The ‘now’ I mean is 2072 Diaspora, or 4291 Gregorian, your adulthood year. If it is.”

“Laz, did you hear that?”

“You asked for it, Lor. Pipe down and let Brother talk.”

“The trouble is with the words themselves, Lorelei. You gals—you three gals—might spend part of the reach to Earth in inventing new language and appropriate syntax for space-time travel. But this imaginary case—You ground on Secundus, go to the Archives, and ask if any Delay Mail has been unsealed that has your name on it. Or Justin’s, or Ira’s. Or even addressed to
me
, as Lazarus Long, or as Woodrow Wilson Smith. I may try several ways, as I’ll be attempting it from a ‘now’ some centuries before Delay Mail became a routine way to preserve papers.

“So you pick up whatever there is and go back to the ‘Dora’—and find her lock sealed and a sheriff guarding it. Confiscated.”

“
What!
”

“Dora, please don’t yell in my ear. This is a hypothetical case.”

“That sheriff had better be able to shoot straight,” Lapis Lazuli said grimly.

Her brother answered, “Lazi, you’ve heard me say nine thousand and nineteen times that we do
not
carry weapons to give us Dutch courage. If a gun makes you feel three meters tall and invulnerable, you had better go unarmed and let your sister do any shooting that’s necessary. Now tell me why you don’t shoot at the sheriff.”

“Yes!” said Dora. “I want to be rescued!”

“Quiet, Dora. Laz?”

“Uh…we don’t shoot cops. Ever.”

“Not quite. We don’t shoot cops if there is any way to avoid it. Safer to kiss a rattlesnake. In two thousand years and some I’ve always found a way to avoid it—although I did shoot kind o’ close to one once, to divert his attention. Unique circumstances. But in this hypothetical case shooting one cop is worse than useless; the Chairman Pro Tem has confiscated your ship.”

“Help,” Dora whispered.

“Why, Madam Barstow would
never
do anything that nasty!”

“I didn’t say it was Susan Barstow. But Arabelle, had she lasted, would have enjoyed pulling that sort of stunt on the Longs. Let’s say Susan has dropped dead and the new CPT is as bad as Arabelle. No ship and no assets—what do you
do
? Remember, I’m depending on you—or I’m stuck back in the Dark Ages. What do you do?”

“‘When in danger or doubt… Run in circles, scream and shout,’” recited Dora.

“Oh, stop it, Dora,” said Lapis Lazuli. “We don’t panic, that’s certain. We have ten years in which to figure out a—Hey! Wait a moment; I’m using the wrong framework. We could take a hundred years if necessary. Or longer.”

“A hundred years is plenty,” said Lorelei. “In less time than that we can steal another ship.”

“Thank
big
,” advised Lazarus. “Steal the Pleiades. Far better not to steal anything, Lor.”

“You stole a starship once.”

“Because there was no time to do anything else. But with plenty of time at your disposal, it’s better to be reasonably honest—not break rules you can get caught breaking. Money is the universal weapon; to acquire it merely takes time and ingenuity, and sometimes work. Raise enough money and you might be able to buy the ‘Dora’ back. If that’s impossible, with much less money you could get to Tertius, where Ira and the family could find some way to lay hands on a starship. Then you could program it with the stuff Dora left in Athene—and come get me.”

“Isn’t
anybody
going to come rescue
me?
”

“Dora dear, this hasn’t happened, and it’s extremely unlikely to happen. But if it did and the twins weren’t able to rescue you—say that your new owner has you halfway across the Galaxy—”

“I’ll crash him the first time he tries to land!”

“Dora, stop being a nitwit. If we ever did lose you—most unlikely—and the twins could not rescue you but
could
rescue me—then if you’ve taken care of yourself, no crash landing or any other foolishness—we’ll find you, we’ll get you back. All three of us. No matter how many years it takes. Laz? Lori?”

“You bet! ‘One for all, all for one!’ And it’s not just us four, Dora; it’s the whole family—all the adults, all nine kids—might be more by then—and Athene. Brother, when Ira moved that we
all
take the last name of ‘Long,’ I liked it so much I couldn’t cry hard enough. Sis, you’re ‘Dora Long’—and the Longs don’t let each other down!”

“I feel better,” the computer admitted, with a sniffle.

“You never had anything to feel bad about, Dora,” Lazarus continued. “You started this by insisting that my precautions were unnecessary. So I dreamed up a situation in which they would
be
necessary…especially so if the twins could not get at the programs you left with Athene—in which case they might have to fall back on time markers and recalibrate. So I had ’em stuck on another planet and flat broke…so the first problem is to lay hands on money. Think you could do it, girls? In a hundred years? Without being caught in something that would put you in still more of a jam?”

The twins glanced at each other. “Lor?”

“Of course, Laz. Brother, that’s when we open our hook shop over a pool hall. Or somewhere.”

Lazarus said, “I don’t think you two have the true vocation. And your noses are regrettably like mine. Homely, that is.”

“Our noses are an asset—”

“—because they
do
make us look like you—”

“—so what is common gossip by now but unbelievable—”

“—becomes quite believable once a client gets a look at us—”

“—and aside from noses, we look pretty good—”

“—‘built like brick outhouses,’ you told us—”

“—and natural redheads, which Tammy says is cash in the bank—”

“—and looking just alike but we can give ’em variety—”

“—just by one of us not using a depilatory—”

“—which will make us a
great
sister act at very high prices; Maggie said so—”

“—and if you think being horny isn’t enough true vocation—”

“—which may be true and we concede that we’ll never be the great artist Tammy is, nevertheless—”

“—New Rome is going to be
amazed
at how
intense
our vocation is—”

“—when our brother’s safety is at stake!”

Lazarus took a deep breath. “Thank you, darlings. While you’ll probably take a fling at it someday, I hope that you won’t need to do it to rescue me. I’m counting more on your mathematical ability and your skill as shiphandlers than I am on your undeniable physical and spiritual beauty.”

“Did you hear that, Lor? That time he added ‘spiritual.’”

“I think he meant it.”

“I hope so. It’s even nicer than being told we have tits as pretty as Minerva’s. Which we don’t, quite.”

“Yes, you do,” their brother said absently. “Let’s get back to landmarks and such.”

“I think you ought to kiss them,” said Dora.

“Later. Now look, kids, prime rendezvous, exactly ten T-years after you drop me—although you drop Andy’s body first. How? Laz or Lor—not Dora. Of course you know all this, Dora; this review is for flesh-and-bloods. Fallible. Laz?”

“Have Dora unfreeze him and bring his body up almost to cremation temperature and put him into atmosphere on a long slant just under orbital speed so that it will burn up, or almost, before it hits…and figure the ballistic to hit the mountains in case he’s not quite burned up—because we don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“What mountains and how do you find them? Lor?”

“These right here. Prime landmark, this big river that drains the central valley. Where this other big river comes in from the west is our north landmark, the gulf they wind up in is the south landmark—no landmark on the west. Arkansas is about the middle of that bracket. The Ozark Mountains are the only mountains in the bracket—but shoot for the south side of the mountains, this escarpment; the north side is not Arkansas. Brother, why does that matter?”

“Sentiment, Lorelei. As far as Andy traveled and as little time as he spent on Earth, he was always homesick for his boning place. The only song he knew was one with a refrain of ‘Arkansaw, Arkansaw, I adore thee!’ I used to get sick of it. But I promised him I would take his body back to Arkansas and it seemed to comfort him when he died—so we’ll do it. Who knows? Maybe the sweet little guy will know it…and it’s worth the trouble to carry out his last wishes. Prime rendezvous landmarks?”

“This big canyon,” answered Lapis Lazuli. “Follow it to the east and drop south—this round black dot. A meteor impact crater. No dependable landmarks visible from orbit and good any century but this canyon—biggest on Earth. So we memorize the spatial relationship between canyon and crater so that we can spot it from any angle. If the light is right.”

Dora said, “I’m sure I can see it in pitch-darkness.”

“Dora honey, this drill is based on the pessimistic assumption that Ellandell might have to find it
without
your help. I want them to know the geography of Terra so well that they won’t have to ground and look for a road sign. No close approaches to the ground
at a//—
except to put me down and pick me up. I don’t want to start a flying-saucer scare; I don’t want to attract
any
attention—some yokel might take a shot at me. It’s unfortunate that this ship
is
shaped such that ‘flying saucer’ isn’t too bad a description.”

“What’s the matter with the way I look?” demanded Dora. “I look pretty damn good!”

“Dear, you’re built like a brick outhouse—for a starship. You’re beautiful. It’s simply that unidentified flying objects—oofohs—were also called ‘flying saucers.’ I don’t believe in paradoxes…but I don’t want any attention.”

“Brother, maybe we
are
one of those oofohs you told us about.”

“Huh? Could be, I suppose. If so, let’s not get shot at. I want a quiet trip. If everything goes well, we can talk about letting one of you get on the ground with me next trip…though durned if I don’t think a stacked redhead is more conspicuous than an unidentified flying object. Okay, the crater. I intend to be there, before sundown and after sunrise, from minus ten days to plus ten days at plus ten years. If I’m not there, what do you do?”

Lapis Lazuli answered, “Look for you half a T-year later on top of the biggest pyramid at Gizeh—that’s
here
—at midnight…only this time we scan for you minus thirty days through plus thirty because you aren’t certain when you can get there and may be able to manage it only once—bribes and things. Brother, do we go out half a light-year and reenter the time axis? Or stay in orbit and wait?”