Time Enough for Love (70 page)

“Dora, we don’t
want
that sort of help. Laz and I agreed on that.”

“So you did. But you didn’t ask
me
to vote on it. And I’m no lady and never was. Buddy Ol’ Boy, you know it makes no difference to me who does what to whom; I couldn’t care less—except that it’s so funny to hear ’em squeal and grunt. But you’re being
mean
to my sisters. Lor and Laz talked over the fact that you can’t make this trip without their help…and they rejected that gambit as being beneath their dignity or some such twaddle. But
I
don’t have any dignity. Without
my
help
nobody
makes a time trip. Shucks, if I go on strike,
you can’t even get back to Tertius.
Now can you?”

Lazarus looked wryly surprised, then grinned. “Mutiny again. Dorable, I concede your point; you can keep us out here—wherever ‘here’ is—until we starve. I suspected centuries back that a flesh-and-blood might someday find himself in just such a helpless position. But, dear, I won’t let your threats affect my decision. You can keep me from time-tripping—but I doubt if you will let Lor and Laz starve. You’ll take them home.”

“Oh, hell, Pappy—you’re being mean again. You’re a real whirling son of bitch! Do you know it?”

“Guilty on both counts, Dora,” Lazarus admitted.

“And Lor and Laz are being stupidly bullheaded. Lor, he politely offered you a chance to speak your piece…and you turned him down. Stubborn bitch.”

“Dora, behave yourself.”

“Whuffor? When you three don’t. Blow your noses and sit down and give Buddy the straight tell. He’s entitled to it.”

“Perhaps you had better,” Lazarus said gently. “Sit down, girls, and talk with me. Dora? Keep her steady between the hawsepipes, baby girl—and we’ll get her into port yet.”

“Aye, aye, Commodore! But you get those two silly bitches straightened out. Huh?

“I’ll try. Who’s the spokesman this time? Laz?”

“It doesn’t matter,” answered Lapis Lazuli. “I’ll talk for us. Don’t worry about Dora. When she realizes that we are content to accept your decision, she’ll stop being difficult.”

“Oh, you think so, do you? Shape up, Laz—or we’ll be back in Boondock faster than you can say ‘Libby pseudoinfinities.’”

“Please, Dora, let me tell Brother.”

“Just be sure you tell him
everything…
or I’ll tell him about things that went on in here a full year before he said you were old enough.”

Lazarus blinked and looked interested. “Well, well! Did you kids steal a march on me?”

“Well, Mama Ishtar told us we were old enough. You were the one being stuffy about it.”

“Mmm…stipulated. Someday I must tell you about something that happened to me at an early age in a church belfry.”

“I’m sure we’d like to hear it, Brother—but do you want to hear us now?”

“Yes. Dora and I will keep quiet.”

“Let me say in preface that we are not going to ask Ishtar to thwart your wishes by using the sperm bank. But there are other possibilities to which you can hardly object. Consider how we were born. I could easily bear an implanted clone from my own tissue, and so could Lor—although we might swap clones…for reasons purely sentimental since we have identical genes. Do you see anything wrong with that? Genetically, or emotionally? Or otherwise?”

“Mmm…no. Unusual—but your business.”

“Just as easy—since Ishtar still has living tissue of yours in vitro—is to clone
you…
and Lorelei and I would bear identical twins—both of them ‘Lazarus Long’ in every gene…lacking only your long experience. Would you find that offensive?”

“Eh? Now wait a minute! Let me think.”

“Let me add that we regard this as a last resort…if you are dead. If you don’t come back.”

“Don’t start sniffling again! Uh, if I’m dead, I don’t have much vote in it, do I?”

“No, because if
we
did not do it, then Ishtar would plant your clone in one of the others—or in herself, with Galahad’s help. But if Lorelei Lee and I do it…we would
much
rather do it with your blessing.”

“Mm…stipulated that I’m dead—well, okay, okay, it’s with my blessing. Just one thing—”

“What, Brother?”

“Crack down on the little beast. Or ‘beasts.’ I was a mean one. You two were handful enough for six—but I was
ornery.
If you don’t establish who’s boss right from the cradle—he—they—
I
, damn it—‘I’ will give you so much grief your lives won’t be worth living.”

“We’ll try to cope with…‘you,’ Lazarus—and we have the advantage of knowing what a, uh, ‘real whirling son of bitch’ you can be.”

“Ouch! Am I bleeding?”

“You led with your chin, Brother. The truth is, you spoiled us…and we may find it hard not to spoil
you
. But we’ll bear in mind your advice. But we want to say this before we leave the subject of genetics. You’ve had how many children?”

“Uh…too many, maybe.”

“You know exactly how many and so do we…and it’s a number large enough to be inspected as a statistical universe. How many were defectives?”

“Uh…none that I know of.”

“Exactly none. Ishtar made it her business to know, and Justin confirms it from his study of the Archives. Brother, I don’t know how uncommon this may have been in the twentieth Gregorian century…but you have a clean gene chart—and so of course do we.”

“Now wait a minute! I’m not really up to date in genetics, but—”

“—but Ishtar is. Do you want to argue it with her? We accept her assurances; Lor and I aren’t geneticists—as yet. But we have, recorded in Dora, Ishtar’s formal report on your gene chart. If you want it. Not that we think it makes any difference; you are rejecting us for reasons having nothing to do with genetics.”

“Now slow down! I am
not
rejecting you.”

“That’s the way it feels to us. We are artificial constructs, and the soi-disant ‘incest’ mores of another time and utterly different circumstances don’t apply to us and you know it; that’s just an excuse to avoid something you don’t
want
to do. Coupling with us might be masturbation, but it
can’t
be incest because we
aren
’
t
your sisters. We aren’t your kin in
any
normal sense; we’re
you
. Every gene of us comes from
you
. If we love you—and we do—and if you love us—and you do, some, in your own chinchy and cautious fashion—it’s Narcissus loving himself. But this time, if you could only see it, that Narcissist love could be consummated.” She stopped, and gulped. “That’s all. Come on, Lor; let’s go to bed.”

“Hold it, girls! Laz, Ishtar says this is safe?”

“You heard me say so. But you don’t want to do it—so the
hell
with it!”

“I never at any time said that I did not
want
to. Why do you think I quit cuddling you two lively little monkeys when you started being grown up?”

“Oh,
Buddy!
”

“Because I must be Narcissus himself…because I think my two identicals are the prettiest, sexiest—and bitchiest—broads I’ve ever seen.”

“Do you? Do you
really
?”

“You heard me. Quit quivering your goddamn chins! So when you started getting broad, I started keeping my hands off you. But—if Ishtar says it’s all right—”

“She does!”

“I suppose—this once—I could manage a couple of minutes for each of you.”

Lorelei gasped. “Did you hear that, Laz?”

“I heard it. ‘Two minutes.’”

“Rude, crude, and vulgar.”

“Insulting.”

“Infuriating.”

“But we accept—”

“—right
now!
”

The Green Hills

The Star Yacht
Dora
hovered two meters over the pasture, the lower hatch irised open. Lazarus gave Lazi and Lori a last quick squeeze and dropped to the ground—rolled with the impact, rolled to his feet, hurriedly got clear of the ship’s field. He waved, and the ship lifted, straight up, a round black cloud against the stars. Then it was gone.

He looked quickly around him—Dipper… North Star…okay, fence that way, road beyond, and—Caesar’s Ghost!—a
bull!
”

He cleared the fence with inches to spare, a few feet ahead of the bull.

Lazarus was moving so fast that his speed made necessary another rolling landing. He wound up in the middle of a rutted dirt road while reflecting that many more of that sort would not improve his appearance. He patted his pockets, especially an extra pocket concealed by the bib of his overalls, and decided that nothing was missing. He missed the comfort of a blaster on his hip—but knew that any sort of gun would be a mistake, for this time and place. A facsimile jackknife was all he carried.

His hat—The ditch? No. Ten feet inside the fence…which might as well be ten miles; the bull was keeping an eye on him. A hat was not necessary, and if anyone found it and noticed that it was not quite right—well, there was nothing to connect it with him. Forget it.

North Star again—That town should be about five miles down this road, straight as the turtle flies. He set out.

*

Lazarus stood in front of the printshop of the Dade County
Democrat,
looking at sheets posted inside the glass, but not reading. He was thinking. He had just had a shock, and the pretense of continuing to read posted newspapers let him do so in quiet. He had read a date and now needed to reconstruct some ancient history. August first, nineteen-sixteen—nineteen-six
teen
?

He saw reflected in the glass a figure coming down the sidewalk—heavyset, middle-aged, wearing a gun belt almost concealed by belly overflowing it, a bolstered hogleg on his right thigh, star on his left breast, otherwise dressed much as Lazarus was dressed. Lazarus continued to stare at a posted front page of the Kansas City
Journal
.

“Morning.”

Lazarus turned. “Good morning… Chief.”

“Just the constable, Son. Stranger hereabouts?”

“Yes.”

“Passing through? Or staying with someone?”

“Passing through. Unless I find work.”

“That’s a good answer. What trade do you follow?”

“I was raised on a farm. But I’m an all-around mechanic. Or anything, for an honest dollar.”

“Well, I tell you. Not many farmers taking on hands right now. As for anything else, things are slow in the summertime. Mmm, you wouldn’t be one of them IWW’s, would you?”

“‘IW’ what?”

“A Wobbly, son—don’t you read the papers? This is a friendly community, always glad to have visitors. But not that sort.” The local law raised one hand to wipe away sweat and gave a lodge recognition sign. Lazarus knew how to answer it—and decided not to. Where was his home lodge?—that’s a good question, Officer, so let’s not let it come up.

The constable went on, “Well, since you’re not one, you’re welcome to ask around and see if somebody needs help.” He looked at the front page Lazarus had been pretending to read. “Terrible what those U-boats are doing, isn’t it?”

Lazarus agreed that it was.

“Still,” the officer added, “if people stayed home and minded their own business, it wouldn’t happen. Live and let live, I always say. What church do you attend?”

“Well, my folks are Presbyterians.”

“So? Meaning you haven’t attended lately. Well, sometimes I miss myself, when the fish are biting. But—See that church up the street? The belfry through the elms. If you
do
find work, why, come Sunday, ten o’clock, let me extend you the right hand of fellowship there. Methodist Episcopal, but there ain’t all that much difference. This is a tolerant community.”

“Thank you, sir; I’ll be there.”

“Good. Very tolerant. Mostly Methodists and Baptists—but a few Jack Mormons on farms around here. Good neighbors, they always pay their bills. A few Cath-a-licks and nobody holds it against them. Why, we’ve even got a Jew.”

“Sounds like a good town.”

“It is. Local option and clean living. Just one thing—If you don’t find work—About half a mile beyond the church you’ll find a city-limits sign. If you’re unemployed and have no local address, it’s best to be on the other side of it come sundown.”

“I see.”

“Or I would have to run you in. No hard feelings; that’s just the way it is. No tramps or niggers after sundown. I don’t make the rules, Son; I just enforce them—and that’s how Judge Marstellar defines a tramp. Some of our good ladies have been pushing him—things stolen off clotheslines and the like. So its ten dollars or ten days…which isn’t too bad, as the lockup is right in my house. The food’s not fancy as I’m allowed only forty cents a day to board a prisoner—though for fifty cents more you can eat what we do. No intention of making things hard, you understand—it’s just that the Judge and the Mayor aim to keep this a quiet, law-abiding place.”

“I understand. Certainly no hard feelings…because you won’t have occasion to lock me up.”

“Glad to hear it. Any way I can help you, Son, just let me know.”

“Thank you. Perhaps you can right now. Do you know of an outhouse a stranger might use? Or had I better try to hold it until I’m out of town and can find some bushes?”

The officer smiled. “Oh, I think we can be that hospitable. The courthouse has a real city-type flush toilet—but it’s not working. Let me think. Blacksmith down this way sometimes accommodates automobilists passing through. I’ll walk down with you.”

“That’s mighty kind of you.”

“Glad to. Better tell me your name.”

“Ted Bronson.”

*

The blacksmith was trimming a hoof on a young gelding. He looked up. “Hi, Deacon.”

“Howdy, Tom. This young friend of mine, Ted Bronson, has a case of Kansas quickstep. Could he use your privy?”

The blacksmith looked Lazarus over. “Help yourself, Ted. Try not to go clear back to the harness section.”

“Thank you, sir.“

Lazarus followed the path behind the shop, was pleased to find that the privy had a door with no cracks and could be hooked from the inside. He got at the extra pocket hidden by the bib of his overalls, took out money.

Paper banknotes convincing in every detail; they were restored replications of originals in the Museum of Ancient History in New Rome—“counterfeit” by definition but the restorations were so perfect that Lazarus would not hesitate to utter them in any bank—except for one thing: What
dates
did they carry?