Tramp Royale (2 page)

All of Heinlein’s heroines, like his heroes (although his male characters never seems to be an issue with Heinlein gender critics), are entertaining and desirable because of
who
they are rather than
what
they are. This applies even more so outside the juvies. Take
Methuselah’s Children
, where Mary Sperling’s stark choice has nothing and everything to do with being a woman. As her genetically-extended extra days of life run out, she has to decide between the true love she’s finally found and a version of immortality that may destroy her as an individual.

The closest Heinlein comes to portraying a total naïf and objectifier of women is John Lyle in
Revolt in 2100,
a collection of interconnected novellas first published in
Astounding.
These were the stories that made Heinlein’s name. Yet even though quixotic, unrealistic romantic passion triggers Lyle’s revolt against his fundamentalist masters, as he comes to maturity in the trenches such notions give way to longing for a lasting relationship with a battle-tested soul mate who is as strong-willed and individualistic as he is.

In company with Heinlein’s political critics, the gender critics always seem to make the categorical mistake of taking this or that character’s pronouncement
inside
a Heinlein tale for Heinlein’s own attitude. It’s all nonsense. One look at Heinlein’s relationship with his wife Virginia in
Grumbles from the Grave
and
Tramp Royale,
and it becomes obvious that Heinlein’s career was a joint venture and a shared journey with someone he considered just as smart and driven as himself−and most definitely somebody he knew from experience was a better linguist, mathematician and life-organizer.

As Damon Knight describes her in his introduction to Heinlein’s
The Past Through Tomorrow,
Virginia Heinlein “is a chemist, biochemist, aviation test engineer, experimental horticulturalist; she earned varsity letters at N.Y.U. in swimming, diving, basketball and field hockey, and became a competitive figure skater after graduation; she speaks seven languages so far, and is starting on an eighth.”

There
is
one book in which Virginia and Heinlein himself are the main characters, and that is his travelogue of a year spent traveling around the world,
Tramp Royale.
One begins the book expecting to enjoy a few wacky and now retro descriptions of foreign locales and some ironic nostalgia for the past. What one receives instead is wave after wave of
frission
of recognition. Apart from the prices, the world hasn’t changed much. And after encountering a few of Heinlein’s excellent recreation of conversations with foreigners and his observations of them, it all becomes eerily familiar. The anti-Americanism he encounters is ludicrous and based upon as much ignorance as it is today.

In one telling passage, Heinlein describes how he spent a great deal of time explaining that Senator Joseph McCarthy, then in the news, was not about to take over the reins of power in America and start a nuclear war with Russia. Neither was America spinning into totalitarianism anytime soon. And since none of this was true, why wasn’t McCarthy taken out by the government and shot? Heinlein, who had been fairly left-leaning in his younger days and had campaigned for Sinclair Lewis’s run for the governorship of California, was as annoyed at McCarthy’s idiocy as anyone, but knew he was in no danger from it.

“I am not a constituent or admirer of the senator, but I found myself repeatedly in the odd position of trying to explain what he was doing, why it was legal in a free country for him to do it, and how it was impossible in a free country for a congressional investigation to cause a ‘reign of terror’ in 160,000,000 people…In the communist half of the world a man such as McCarthy would
really
have power. He would be a ‘people’s judge’ and his victims would never live to complain.”

Heinlein’s own observation of the vast array of countries he and Virginia visited is exquisite. This is travel writing at its best, and was years ahead of its time in judgment and outlook. As with many things Heinlein, this is one that has come back around into fashion and seems utterly contemporary. Furthermore, Heinlein’s advice on travel etiquette is timeless and useful and, at times, highly amusing.

Finally,
Grumbles from the Grave
is a kind of writer’s autobiography in letters. Collected and edited by Virginia Heinlein after Heinlein’s death, these are largely Heinlein’s letters first to John W. Campbell and then to his agent and long-time friend, Lurton Blassingame. If you were ever searching for the lost book Heinlein ought to have produced on the art of writing, you’ll find it here. Wonderful discussions of methods, overcoming blocks, writing on spec and to order can be found throughout, as well as expert (and still pertinent) commentary on the business of writing.

The letters also make for a most excellent “director’s commentary” while reading the stories and novels, and will provide insights and provoke second and third readings to find the good stuff that you may have missed the first go round.

So what follows in this collection is a passage through the Golden Age of science fiction that is, not coincidentally, the First Golden Age of Robert A. Heinlein. If it wasn’t for the juveniles and adult novels where Heinlein first laid down the themes and methods that defined a Heinlein tale, the mighty philosophical fiction triumvirate of
Starship Troopers
,
Stranger in a Strange Land
and
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
might well have become lost in the ether. Furthermore, an American literary masterwork,
Have Space Suit−Will Travel
, would never have existed at all.

Preface

Tramp Royale
has spent almost forty years in the obscurity of the files.

It was written immediately after our return from a trip around the world in 1953 and '54, and sent on the rounds of publishing companies. But, at that time, there was a slump in the publishing business, and no one could see any possibility of publishing it. It was then put in the files and sent to the library at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and forgotten.

In 1989, an editor asked me whether Robert had any unpublished books. I recalled this one. So the library made a copy of the manuscript, and I sent it to that editor.

Now here it is.

It might strike you as odd that an out-of-date travel book should be resurrected and published. But there must be something interesting in it, aside from the dated prices and old hotels which might now be torn down to make room for more modern ones.

Homesickness is ever-present when one travels away from home. It might well have flavored some of this book. I hope that our friends from some of the places mentioned in this book will not take offense at what has been said. Robert wrote his observations of their hotels and cultures without pulling his punches. We both know from later observation that Australian hotels have changed for the better.

On looking back, I find the prices of those days laughable. Where could one get a suite for $22 U.S. these days? I'm sure that Singapore prices are far higher now. And $35 for an alligator bag! If you could find one now, I'm sure it would cost ten times that much.

The title of this book comes from a Kipling poem-"Sestina of the Tramp-Royal"-which you will find at the end of this book. The Britannica says of the sestina form: "A most elaborate form of verse . . . The scheme was the invention of the troubadour, Arnault Daniel, who wrote many sestinas . . . The sestina, in its pure medieval form, consists of six stanzas of six lines each of blank verse; hence the name. The final words of the first stanza appear in varied order in all the others, the order laid down by the Provencals being: abcdef, faebdc, cfdabe, ecbfad, deacfb, bdfeca. On these stanzas a tornada, or envoi, of three lines, in which all the key words were repeated in the following order:-b-e, d-c, f-a."

Such rigidity in form is probably not suited to beautiful poetry, and the Kipling verses are not his best, but the poem might have been influential in the writing of this book.

Enjoy this book as a period piece. It does not represent today's world at all. We enjoyed even the horrid parts of the trip in retrospect, but especially the homecoming. Being away from home for an extended period makes one appreciate one's home country.

Virginia Heinlein
Atlantic Beach, Florida

I
Ten Suitcases

My wife Ticky is an anarchist-individualist. I sometimes suspect that all females are anarchists in their hearts, with no innate respect for law and order . . . but on her it shows more. She is the sort of person who looks the wrong way at tennis matches. When she was in the Navy during the early 'forties she showed up one morning in proper uniform but with her red hair held down by a simple navy-blue band-a hair ribbon. It was neat (Ticky is always neat) and it suited the rest of her outfit esthetically, but it was undeniably a hair ribbon and her division officer had fits.

"If you can show me," Ticky answered with simple dignity, "where it says one word in the Navy Uniform Regulations on the subject of hair ribbons, I'll take it off. Otherwise not."

See what I mean? She doesn't have the right attitude.

I should have known better than to propose a trip around the world to her. Little-did-I-dream that I would spend the next forty thousand miles shaking in my boots for fear that she would wind up in some foreign calaboose while I tried to find the American consul.

The junket came about because we found ourselves last year with a drawerful of old, dirty money and no special use for it. I do not like to keep money around too long; the stuff shrinks like Colorado snow in a chinook-inflation, or they pass a new tax, or an operation, or something. Or someone comes along who can sweet-talk me out of it. It never lasts long.

We had been talking more or less about building another house with it, renting it, and becoming fat and nasty as landlords. But building involves time as well as money; it becomes a demanding vice. The fascinating details of septic tanks and clerestories and insulation move in like Bermuda grass and take over the mind and imagination. For a fiction-writer such as myself this is a road to bankruptcy.

But it was necessary to do something before a distinguished stranger came along and persuaded me to invest in a Wyoming oil lease.

Ticky was out weeding on the terrace when I found the solution. I hurried out to tell her, approaching the matter with the finesse of a sailor on a four-hour pass. "Look," I said, "we're going to make a trip around the world."

I had placed myself to catch her if she fainted, or to join in the dance if her ecstatic response required exercise to work it off. She was able to control her enthusiasm. For about thirty unusually long seconds she continued to fiddle with a johnny-jump-up, then she said bleakly, "Why?"

"Huh? Don't you
want
to go around the world?"

"I like it here."

"Well, so do I. But we can't spend our whole lives in one spot. We grow roots. We vegetate. People will start searching us for sun scorch and scale bugs. Travel is-"

"Speaking of roots, I'm worried about those lilacs. I think I'll have to-"

I approached her gently and took a trowel out of her hand. "Ticky," I said gently, "listen to me. Forget gardening for a moment. We're going around the world. I mean it."

She sighed and let me keep the trowel. "Why? What has Timbuctu got that we haven't got more of right here? Except fleas, maybe?"

"That's not the point. I grant you that Colorado Springs is almost certainly a nicer spot than Timbuctu, but-"

"Then why go there?"

"Why? Because I like to travel. I thought you did, too."

"I do. We went to Sun Valley less than a year ago. It was fun." She thought about it. "If you want to go abroad, let's go to Lake Louise. I've always wanted to go there."

"Huh? Canada is not 'abroad'-it's not a foreign country."

"Ask a Canadian."

"Sure, sure. But it's really just a part of home that happens not to pay taxes to Washington. Pretty clever of them, too, come to think about it. But take Timbuctu, since you mentioned it."

"You take it. Let's go to Lake Louise and watch the glaciers glashe."

"All right, all right! We'll go to Lake Louise. We'll have dinner there tonight. It'll only take about three hours, not counting the hour to drive to the airport. We can discuss the trip around the world and make plans and tomorrow morning we'll come back and start arrangements."

"Mmm . . . no. Your tux is at the cleaner's and I haven't a dinner dress that is fit to wear." She took the trowel back from my limp fingers. "About next Wednesday, maybe. I'll have to buy some clothes and Sweet Chariot ought to be put in the shop for a day, just to be safe."

"What do you want to put the car in the shop for? It runs; if it will get us from here to the airport that's all I ask of it."

"Because we are going to drive to Lake Louise. No airplanes for me."

"What? Now wait a minute, slow up. We are
not
going to drive to Lake Louise. Since when this silly aversion to airplanes?"

"Since all these crashes in the papers. Airplanes are dangerous."

"Look who's talking! Leadfoot Lulu, the gal who thinks she is parked if she's doing less than ninety."

"I have excellent reflexes," Ticky answered with dignity, "but my reflexes are useless if a plane I'm a passenger in runs into a mountain. Which they've been doing."

"Which they do darned seldom. It's-"

"Once is enough. Once is too many."

"It's well known that modern airlines are the safest form of travel. Insurance companies no longer make any distinction between air travel and any other normal hazard. If there is anything as certain as death itself it is that insurance companies don't take risks; they operate on the same simple, straightforward statistical principles as the gambling houses in Las Vegas-the odds are picked so that the house always wins. It's the same with air travel; if these spectacular crashes were frequent enough to shift the odds, the insurance companies would change the rules in a hurry."