Robert A Heinlein - Time Enough for Love

Robert A.

Heinlein

Time Enough For Love -- Robert A. Heinlein -- (1973)

The Lives of Lazarus Long

For Bill and Lucy

TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE

The Lives of the Senior Member of the Howard Families (Woodrow Wilson

Smith; Ernest Gibbons; Captain Aaron Sheffield; Lazarus Long; "Happy" Daze;

His Serenity Seraphin the Younger, Supreme High Priest of the One God in All

His Aspects and Arbiter Below and Above; Proscribed Prisoner No. 83M2742; Mr.

Justice Lenox; Corporal Ted Bronson; Dr. Lafe Hubert; and others), Oldest

Member of the Human Race. This Account is based principally on the Senior's

Own Words as recorded at many times and places and especially at the Howard

Rejuvenation Clinic and at the Executive Palace in New Rome on Secundus in

Year 2053 After the Great Diaspora (Gregorian Year 4272 of Old Home Terra) --

and supplemented by letters and by eyewitness accounts, the whole then

arranged, collated, condensed, and (where possible) reconciled with official

records and contemporary histories, as directed by the Howard Foundation

Trustees and executed by the Howard Archivist Emeritus. The result is of

unique historical importance despite the Archivist's decision to leave in

blatant falsehoods, self-serving allegations, and many amoral anecdotes not

suitable for young persons.

INTRODUCTION

On the Writing of History

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion-i.e., none to

speak of.

-L.L.

The Great Diaspora of the Human Race which started more than two

millennia ago when the Libby-Sheffield Drive was disclosed, and which

continues to this day and shows no sign of slowing, made the writing of

history as a single narrative-or even many compatible narratives-impossible.

By the twenty-first century (Gregorian)* (*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. J.F. 45th) on Old Home Terra our Race was capable of doubling

its numbers three times each century-given space and raw materials.

The Star Drive gave both. H. sapiens spread through this sector of our

Galaxy at many times the speed of light and multiplied like yeast. If doubling

had occurred at the twenty-first-century potential, our numbers would now be

of the order of 7 x 10^9 x 2^68 -- a number so large as to defy emotional

grasp; it is suited only to computers:

7 x 10^9 x 2^68 = 2,066,035,336,255,469,780,992,000,000,000.

-- or more than two thousand million billion trillion people

-- or a mass of protein twenty-five million times as great as the entire mass

of our race's native planet Sol III, Old Home.

Preposterous.

Let us say that it would be preposterous had not the Great Diaspora

taken place, for our race, having reached the potential to double three times

each century, had also reached a crisis under which it could not double even

once-that knee of the curve in the yeast-growth law in which a population can

maintain a precarious stability of zero growth only by killing off its own

members fast enough, lest it drown in its own poisons, commit suicide by total

war, or stumble into some other form of the Malthusian Final Solution.

But the Human Race has not (we think) increased to that monstrous figure

because the base figure for the Diaspora must not be thought of as seven

billion but rather as a few million at the opening of the Era, plus the

unnumbered, small-but-still-growing hundreds of millions since, who have

migrated from Earth and from its colony planets to still more distant places

over the last two millennia.

But we are no longer able to make a reasoned guess at the numbers of the

Human Race, nor do we have even an approximate count of the colonized planets.

The most we can say is that there must be in excess of two thousand colonized

planets, in excess of five hundred billion people. The colonized planets may

be twice that number, the Human Race could be four times that numerous. Or

more.

So even the demographic aspects of historiography have become

impossible; data are out of date when we receive them and always incomplete-

yet so numerous and so varied in reliability that several hundred

humans/computers on my staff keep busy trying to analyze, collate, interpolate

and extrapolate, and to weigh them against other data before incorporating

them into the records. We attempt to maintain standards of 95 percent in

probability of corrected data, 85 percent in pessimistic reliability; our

achievement is closer to 89 per cent and 81 percent-and getting worse.

Pioneers care little about sending records to the home office; they are

busy staying alive, making babies, and killing off anything in their way. A

colony is usually into its fourth generation before any data reach this

office.

(Nor can it be otherwise. A colonist too interested in statistics

becomes a statistic himself-as a corpse. I intend to migrate; once I have done

so, I won't care whether this office keeps track of me or not. I have stuck to

this essentially useless work for almost a century partly through inducements

and partly through genetic disposition-I am a direct-and-reinforced descendant

of Andrew Jackson Slipstick Libby himself. But I am descended also from the

Senior and have-I think-some of his restless nature. I want to follow the wild

geese and see what is happening out there-get married again; leave a dozen

descendants on a fresh uncrowded planet, then-possibly-move on. Once I have

the Senior's memoirs collated, the Trustees can, in the Senior's ancient

idiom, take this job and shove it.)

What sort of man is our Senior, my ancestor and probably yours, and

certainly the oldest living human being, the only man who has taken part in

the entire pageant of the crisis of the Human Race and its surmounting of

crisis through Diaspora?

For surmount it we have. Our race could now lose fifty planets, close

ranks, and move on. Our gallant women could replace the casualties in a single

generation. Not that it appears likely that this will happen; thus far we have

encountered not one race as mean, as nasty, as deadly as our own. A

conservative extrapolation indicates that we will reach in numbers that

preposterous figure given earlier in a few more generations-and move on out of

this Galaxy into others before we finish settling this one. Indeed, reports

from farther out indicate that Human intergalactic colony ships are already

headed out into the Endless Deeps. These reports are not verified-but the most

virile colonies are always a long way from the most populous centers. One may

hope.

At best, history is hard to grasp; at worst, it is a lifeless collection

of questionable records. It is most alive through the words of

eyewitnesses...and we have but one witness whose life spans the twenty-three

centuries of crisis and Diaspora. The next oldest human being whose age this

office has been able to verify is only a little over a thousand years old.

Probability theory makes it possible that there is somewhere a person half

again that age-but it is both mathematically and historically certain that

there is no other human alive today who was born in the twentieth century.* (*

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. JF.45th)

Some may question whether this "Senior" is the member of the Howard

Families born in 1912 and also the "Lazarus Long" who led the Families in

their escape from Old Home in 2136, etc. -- pointing out that all the ancient

methods of identification (fingerprints, retinal patterns, etc.) can now be

beaten. True, but those methods were adequate for their time and the Howard

Families Foundation had special reason to use them with care; the "Woodrow

Wilson Smith" whose birth was registered with the Foundation in 1912 is

certainly the "Lazarus Long" of 2136 and 2210. Before those tests ceased to be

reliable, they were supplemented by modern unbeatable tests based first on

clone transplants and, more lately, on absolute identification of genetic

patterns. (It is interesting to note that an impostor showed up about three

centuries ago, here on Secundus, and was given a new heart from a cloned

pseudobody of the Senior. It killed him.) The Senior whose words are quoted

herein has a genetic pattern identical with that of a bit of muscle tissue

removed from "Lazarus Long" by Dr. Gordon Hardy in the Starship New Frontiers

about 2145, and cultured by him for longevity research. Q.E.D

But what sort of man is he? You must judge for yourself. In condensing

this memoir to manageable length I have omitted many verified historical

incidents (the raw data are available to scholars at the Archives) -- but I

have left in lies and unlikely stories on the assumption that the lies a man

tells tell more truth about him-when analyzed-than does "truth."

It is clear that this man is, by standards usual in civilized societies,

a barbarian and a rogue.

But it is not for children to judge their parents. The qualities that

make him what he is are precisely those needed to stay alive in a jungle-or on

a raw frontier. Do not forget your debt to him both genetic and historic.

To understand our historic debt to him it is necessary to review some

ancient history-part tradition or myth, and part fact as firmly established as

the assassination of Julius Caesar. The Howard Families Foundation was

established by the will of Ira Howard, who died in 1873. His will instructed

the trustees of the foundation to use his money to "prolong human life." This

is fact.

Tradition says that he willed this in anger at his own fate, for he

found himself dying of old age in his forties-dead at forty-eight, a bachelor

without progeny. So none of us carries his genes; his immortality lies only in

a name, and in an idea-that death could be thwarted.

At that time death at forty-eight was not unusual. Believe it or not, in

those days the average age at death was about thirty-five! But not from

senility. Disease, starvation, accident, murder, war, childbirth, and other

violences cut down most humans long before senility set in. But a human who

passed all these hurdles still could expect death from old age sometime

between seventy-five and one hundred. Very few reached one hundred;

nevertheless every population group had its tiny minority of "centenarians."

There is a legend about "Old Toni Parr" who is supposed to have died in 1635

aged one hundred and fifty-two years. Whether or not the legend is true,

probability analysis of demographic data of that era shows that some

individuals must have lived a century and a half. But they were few indeed.

The Foundation started its work as a prescientific breeding experiment,

as nothing was then known of genetics: Adults of long-lived stock were

encouraged to mate with others like them, money being the inducement.

Unsurprisingly the inducement worked. Equally unsurprisingly this

experiment worked, as it was an empirical method used by stockbreeders for

centuries before the science of genetics came into being: Breed to reinforce

one characteristic, then eliminate the culls.

The Families' Archives do not show how the earliest culls were

eliminated; they simply show that some were eliminated from the Families-root

and branch, all descendants-for the unforgivable sin of dying of old age too

young.

By the Crisis of 2136 all members of the Howard Families had life

expectancies in excess of one hundred and fifty years, and some had exceeded

that age. The cause of that crisis seems unbelievable-yet all records both

from inside and from outside the Families agree on it. The Howard Families

were in extreme danger from all other humans simply because they lived so

"long." Why this was true is a matter for group psychologists, not for a

record-keeper. But it was true.

They were seized and concentrated in a prison camp, and were about to be

tortured to death in an attempt to wrest from them their "secret" of "eternal

youth." Fact-not myth.

Here the Senior comes into the story. Through audacity, a talent for

lying convincingly, and what would seem to most people today a childish

delight in adventure and intrigue for its own sake, the Senior brought off the

greatest jailbreak of all time, stealing a primitive starship and escaping

right out of the Solar System with all of the Howard Families (then numbering

about 100,000 men, women, and children).

If this seems impossible-so many people and just one ship-remember that

the first starships were enormously bigger than the ones we now use. They were

self-sustaining artificial planetoids intended to remain in space for many

years at speeds below that of light; they had to be huge.

The Senior was not the only hero of that Exodus. But in all the varied

and sometimes conflicting accounts that have come down to us, he was always

the driving force. He was our Moses who led his people out of bondage.

He brought them home again three-quarters of a century later (2210) --

but not into bondage. For that date, Year One of the Standard Galactic

calendar, marks the opening of the Great Diaspora...caused by extreme

population pressure on Old Home Terra, and made possible by two new factors:

the Libby-Sheffield Para-Drive as it was known then (not a "drive" in any true

sense, but a means of manipulating n-dimensional spaces), and the first (and

simplest) of effective longevity techniques: new blood grown in vitro.

The Howard Families caused this to happen simply by escaping. The short-

lived humans back on Terra, still convinced that the long-lived families

possessed a "secret," set about trying to find it by wide and systematic

research, and, as always, research paid off serendipitously, not with the

nonexistent "secret" but with something almost as good: a therapy, and

eventually a sheaf of therapies, for postponing old age, and for extending

vigor, virility, and fertility.

The Great Diaspora was then both necessary and possible.

The Senior's great talent (aside from his ability to lie

extemporaneously and convincingly) seems always to have been a rare gift for

extrapolating the possibilities of any situation-then twisting it to suit his

own purposes. (He calls it: "You have to have a feeling for what makes the

frog jump." Psychometrists who have studied him say that he has an extremely

high psi talent expressed as "forerunners" and "luck" -- but what the Senior

has to say about them is less polite. As a record-keeper, I refrain from

opinion.)

The Senior saw at once that this benison of extended youth, although

promised to everyone, would in fact be limited to the powerful and their

nepots. The billions of helots could not be allowed to live beyond their

normal pan; there was no room for them-unless they migrated to the stars, in

which case there would be room for each human to live as long as he could

manage. How the Senior exploited this is not always clear; he seems to have

used several names and many fronts. His key corporations wound up in the hands

of this Foundation, then were liquidated to move the Foundation and the Howard

Families to Secundus-at his behest, he having saved "the best real estate" for

his relatives and descendants. Sixty-eight percent of those then living

accepted the challenge of new frontiers.

Our genetic debt to him is both indirect and direct. The indirect debt

lies in the fact that migration is a sorting device, a forced Darwinian

selection, under which superior stock goes to the stars while culls stay home

and die. This is true even for those forcibly transported (as in the twenty-

fourth and twenty-fifth centuries), save that the sorting then takes place on

the new planet. In a raw frontier weaklings and misfits die; strong stock

survives. Even those who migrate voluntarily still go through this second

drastic special selection. The Howard Families have been culled in this

fashion at least three times.

Our genetic "debt" to the Senior is even easier to prove. Part of it

needs only simple arithmetic. If you live anywhere but on Old Home Terra-and

you almost certainly do if you read this, in view of the present miserable

state of "The Fair Green Hills of Earth" -- and can claim even one member of

the Howard Families among your ancestors-and most of you can-then you are most

probably descended from the Senior.

By the official Families' genealogies this probability is 87.3 percent.

You are descended from many other twentieth century members of the Howard

Families, too, if you are descended from any of them, but I speak here only of

Woodrow Wilson Smith, the Senior. By the Crisis Year 2136 nearly one-tenth of

the youngest generation of the Howard Families were descended from the Senior

"legitimately" -- by which I mean that each linking birth was so recorded in

the Families' records and ancestry confirmed by such tests as were available

at the time. (Even blood typing was not known when the breeding experiment

started, but the culling process made it strongly to a female's advantage not

to stray, at least not outside the Families.)

By now the cumulative probability is, as I have said, 87.3 percent if

you have any Howard ancestor-but if you have a Howard ancestor from a recent

generation, your probability climbs toward an effective 100 percent.

But, as a statistician, I have reason to believe (backed by computer

analyses of blood types, hair types, eye color, tooth count, enzyme types, and

other characteristics responsive to genetic analysis) -- strong reason to

believe that the Senior has many descendants not recorded in genealogies, both

inside and outside the Howard Families.

To put it mildly, he is a shameless old goat whose seed is scattered all

through this part of our Galaxy.

Take the years of the Exodus, after he stole the New Frontiers. He was

not married even once during those years, and ship's records and legends based

on memoirs of that time suggest that he was, in an early idiom, a "woman

hater," a misogynist.

Perhaps. Biostatistical records (rather than genealogies), when

analyzed, suggest that he was not that unapproachable. The computer that

analyzed it offered to bet me even money on more than one hundred offspring

fathered by him during those years. (I refused the bet; that computer beats me

at chess even though I insist on a one-rook advantage.)

I do not find this surprising, in view of the almost pathological

emphasis placed on longevity among the Families at that time. The oldest male,

if still virile-and he certainty was-would have been subjected to endless

temptation, endless opportunity, by females anxious to have offspring of his

demonstrated superiority -- "superiority" by the only criterion the Howard

Families respected. We can assume that marital status would not matter much;

all Howard Families marriages were marriages of convenience-Ira Howard's will

insured that-and they were rarely for life. The only surprising aspect is that

so few fertile females managed to trip him when unquestionably so many

thousands were willing. But he was always fast on his feet.

As may be-If today I see a man with sandy red hair, a big nose, an easy

disarming grin, and a slightly feral look in his gray-green eyes, I always

wonder how recently the Senior has passed through that part of the Galaxy. If

such a stranger comes close to me, I put my hand on my purse: If he speaks to

me, I resolve not to make wagers or promises.

But how did the Senior, himself only a third-generation member of Ira

Howard's breeding experiment, manage to live and stay young his first three

hundred years without artificial rejuvenation?

A mutation, of course-which simply says that we don't know. But in the

course of his several rejuvenations we have learned a little about his

physical makeup. He has an unusually large heart that beats very slowly. He

has only twenty-eight teeth, no caries, and seems to be immune to infection.

He has never had surgery other than for wounds or for rejuvenation procedures.

His reflexes are extremely fast-but appear always to be reasoned, so one may

question the correctness of the term "reflex." His eyes have never needed

correction either for distance or close work; his hearing range is abnormally

high, abnormally low, and is unusually acute throughout his range. His color

vision includes indigo. He was born without prepuce, without vermiform

appendix-and apparently without a conscience.

I am pleased that he is my ancestor.

Justin Foote the 45th

Chief Archivist, Howard Foundation

PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION

In this abridged popular edition the technical appendix has been

published separately in order to make room for an account of the Senior's

actions after he left Secundus until his disappearance. An apocryphal and

obviously impossible tale of the last events in his life has been included at

the insistence of the editor of the original memoir, but it cannot be taken

seriously.

Carolyn Briggs

Chief Archivist

Note: My lovely and learned successor in office does not know what she

is talking about. With the Senior, the most fantastic is always the most

probable.

Justin Foote the 45th

Chief Archivist Emeritus

PRELUDE

I

As the door of the suite dilated, the man seated staring glumly out the window

looked around. "Who the hell are you?"

"I am Ira Weatheral of the Johnson Family, Ancestor, Chairman Pro Tem of

the Families."

"Took you long enough. Don't call me 'Ancestor.' And why just the

Chairman Pro Tem?" the man in the chair growled. "Is the Chairman too damn

busy to see me? Don't I rate even that?" He made no move to stand, nor did he

invite his visitor to sit down.

"Your pardon, Sire. I am chief executive for the Families. But it has

been customary for some time now-several centuries-for the chief executive to

hold the title. 'Chairman Pro Tem' -- against the possibility that you might

show up and take the gavel."

"Eh? Ridiculous. I haven't presided at a meeting of the Trustees for a

thousand years. And 'Sire' is as bad as 'Ancestor' -- call me by name. It's

been two days since I sent for you. Did you come by the scenic route? Or has

the rule that entitles me to the ear of the Chairman been revoked?"

"I am not aware of that rule, Senior; it was probably long before my

time-but it is my honor and duty-and pleasure-to wait on you at any time. I

will be pleased and honored to call you by name if you will tell me what your

name is now. As for the delay-thirty-seven hours since I received your

summons-I have spent it studying Ancient English, as I was told that you were

not answering to any other language."

The Senior looked slightly sheepish. "It's true I'm not handy with the

jabber they speak here-my memory has been playing tricks on me lately. I guess

I've been sulky about answering even when I understood. Names-I forget what

name I checked in by when I grounded here. Mmm, 'Woodrow Wilson Smith' was my

boyhood name. Never used it much. I suppose 'Lazarus Long' is the name I've

used oftenest-call me 'Lazarus.'"

"Thank you, Lazarus."

"For what? Don't be so damned formal. You're not a kid, or you wouldn't

be Chairman-how old are you? Did you really take the trouble to learn my milk

language just to call on me? And in less than two days? Was that from scratch?

It takes me at least a week to tack on a new language, another week to smooth

out accent."

"I am three hundred and seventy-two standard years old, Lazarus-just

under four hundred Earth years. I learned Classic English when I took this

job-but as a dead language, to enable me to read old records of the Families

in the original. What I did since your summons was to learn to speak and

understand it in North American twentieth-century idiom-your 'milk language'

as you said-as that is what the linguistic analyzer computed that you were

speaking."

"Pretty smart machine. Maybe I am speaking it the way I did as a

youngster; they claim that's the one language a brain never forgets. Then I

must be talking in a Cornbelt rasp like a rusty saw whereas you're speaking a

sort of Texas drawl with an Oxford British overlay. Odd. I suppose the machine

picks the version out of its permanents closest to the sample fed into it."

"I believe so, Lazarus, although the techniques involved are not my

field. Do you have trouble understanding my accent?'

"Oh, none at all. Your accent is okay; it's closer to educated General

American of that time than is the accent I learned as a kid. But I can follow

anything from Bluegum to Yorkshire; accent is no problem. It was mighty kind

of you to bother. Warming."

"My pleasure. I have a talent for languages; it was not much trouble. I

try to be able to speak to each of the Trustees in his native language; I'm

used to swotting up a new one quickly."

"So? Nonetheless a courteous thing to do-I've felt like an animal in a

zoo with no one to talk to. Those dummies" -- Lazarus inclined his head at two

rejuvenation technicians, dressed in isolation gear and one-way helmets, and

waiting as far from the conversation as the room permitted -- "don't know

English; I can't talk with them. Oh, the taller one understands a little but

not enough for gossip." Lazarus whistled, pointed at the taller. "Hey, you! A

chair for the Chairman-chop chop!" His gestures made his meaning clear. The

taller technician touched the controls of a chair nearby; it rolled away,

wheeled around, and stopped at a comfortable tête -- à -- tete distance from

Lazarus.

Ira Weatheral said thank you-to Lazarus, not to the tech-sat down, then

sighed as the chair felt him out and cuddled him. Lazarus said, "Comfortable?"

"Quite."

"Anything to eat or drink? Or smoke? You may have to interpret for me."

"Nothing, thank you. But may I order for you?"

"Not now. They keep me stuffed like a goose-once they force-fed me, damn

them. Since we're comfortable, let's get on with the powwow." He suddenly

roared, "WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING IN THIS JAIL?"

Weatheral answered quietly, "Not 'jail,' Lazarus. The VIP suite of the

Howard Rejuvenation Clinic. New Rome."

"'Jail,' I said. All it lacks is cockroaches. This window-you couldn't

break it with a crowbar. That door-it opens to any voice except mine. If I go

to the john, one of those dummies is at my elbow. Apparently afraid I'll drown

myself in the pot. Hell, I don't even know whether that nurse is a man or a

woman-and don't like it either way. I don't need somebody to hold my hand

while I go pee-pee! I resent it."

"I'll see what can be worked out, Lazarus. But the technicians are

understandably jumpy. A person can get hurt quite easily in any bathroom-and

they all know that, if you are hurt, no matter by what mischance, the

technician in charge at the time will suffer cruel and unusual punishment.

They are volunteers and are drawing high bonuses. But they're jumpy."

"So I figured out. 'Jail.' If this is a rejuvenation suite WHERE'S MY

SUICIDE SWITCH?"

"Lazarus -- 'Death is every man's privilege.'"

"That's what I said! That switch belongs right there; you can see where

it has been dismounted. So I'm in jail without trial, with my most basic right

taken from me. Why? I'm furious, man. Do you realize what danger you are in?

Never tease an old dog; he might have one bite left. Old as I am, I could

break your arms before those dummies could reach us."

"You are welcome to break my arms if it pleases you."

"Huh?" Lazarus Long looked baffled. "No, it's not worth the sweat. They

would have you patched up good as new in thirty minutes." He suddenly grinned.

"But I could snap your neck, then crush your skull, about as fast. That's one

injury beyond the power of rejuvenators."

Weatheral did not stir, did not tense. "I feel sure you could," he said

quietly. "But I do not think that you would kill one of your descendants

without giving him a chance to parley for his life. You are my remote

grandfather, sir, by seven different tracks."

Lazarus chewed his lip and looked unhappy. "Son, I have so many

descendants that consanguinity doesn't matter. But you're essentially right.

In all my life I have never killed a man unnecessarily. I think." Then he

grinned. "But if I don't get my suicide switch back, I could make an exception

in your case."

"Lazarus, if you wish, I will have that switch remounted at once. But --

'Ten Words'?"

"Uh -- " Lazarus looked ungracious. "Okay. 'Ten Words.' Not eleven."

Weatheral hesitated a split second, then counted on his fingers: "I

learned your language to explain why we need you."

"Ten by the Rule," Lazarus admitted. "But meaning that you need fifty.

Or five hundred. Or five thousand."

"Or none," Weatheral amended. "You can have your switch without giving

me any chance to explain. I promised."

"Humph!" said Lazarus. "Ira, you old scoundrel, you have me convinced

that you really are my kin. You figured that I would not suicide without

hearing what you have on your mind-once I knew you had bothered to learn a

dead language just to make palaver. All right, talk. You can start by telling

me what I'm doing here. I know-I know-that I didn't apply for rejuvenation.

But I woke up here with the job already half over. So I screamed for the

Chairman. Okay, why am I here?"

"May we start further back? You tell me what you were doing in a

flophouse in the worst part of Old Town."

"What was I doing? I was dying. Quietly and decently, like a worn-out

horse. That is, I was, until your busybodies grabbed me. Can you think of a

better place than a flophouse for a man who doesn't want to be disturbed while

he's busy with it? If his cot is paid for in advance, they leave a man be. Oh,

they stole what little I had, even my shoes. But I expected that-would have

done the same myself under the same circumstances. And the sort of people who

live in flophouses are almost always kind to those worse off than they are-any

of 'em will fetch a drink of water to a sick man. That was the most I wanted-

that and to be left alone to close out my account in my own way. Until your

busies showed up. Tell me, bow did they find me?'

"How we found you is not the surprising part, Lazarus, but the fact that

SecFor-the cops? -- Yes, 'cops' -- that my cops took so long to identify you,

then find you, and pick you up. A section chief lost his job over that. I

don't tolerate inefficiency."

"So you busted him. Your business. But why? I reached Secundus from Out-

Far, and I didn't think I had left any back trail. Different everything since

the last time I was in touch with the Families...as I bought my last

rejuvenation on Supreme. Are the Families swapping data with Supreme these

days?"

"Heavens, no, Lazarus, we won't even give them a polite word. There is a

strong minority among the Trustees who favor rubbing out Supreme, instead of

simply maintaining embargo."

"Well...if a nova bomb hit Supreme, I wouldn't mourn more than thirty

seconds. But I did have a reason for having the job done there, even though I

had to pay high for forced cloning. But that's another story. Son, how did you

pick me up?"

"Sir, for the past seventy years there has been a general order out to

try to find you, not just here but on every planet where the Families maintain

offices. As to how-do you recall a forced inoculation for Reiber's fever at

Immigration?"

"Yes. I was annoyed, but it didn't seem worthwhile to make a fuss; I

knew I was headed for that flophouse. Ira, I've known that I was dying for

quite some time. That was okay; I was ready for it. But I didn't want to do it

alone, out in space. Wanted human voices around me, and body odors. Childish

of me. But I was pretty far gone by the time I grounded."

"Lazarus, there is no such thing as Reiber's fever. When a man grounds

on Secundus and all routine identifications show null, 'Reiber's fever' or

some other nonexistent plague is used as an excuse to get a little tissue from

him while injecting him with sterile neutral saline. You should never have

been allowed to leave the skyport until your genetic pattern was identified."

"So? What do you do when ten thousand immigrants arrive in one ship?"

"Herd them into detention barracks until we've checked them out. But

that doesn't happen often today with Old Home Terra in the sorry state it's

in. But you, Lazarus, arriving alone in a private yacht worth fifteen to

twenty million crowns -- "

"Make that 'thirty.'"

" -- worth thirty million crowns. How many men in the Galaxy can do

that? Of those who can afford it, how many would choose to travel alone? The

pattern should have set alarm bells ringing in the minds of all of them.

Instead they took your tissue and accepted your statement that you would be

staying at the Romulus Hilton and let you go-and no doubt you had another

identity before dark."

"No doubt at all," Lazarus agreed. "But your cops have run up the price

on a good phony set of ID's. If I hadn't been too tired to bother, I would

have forged my own. Safer. Was that how I was caught? Did you squeeze it out

of the paper merchant?"

"No, we never found him. By the way, you might let me know who he is, so

that -- "

"And I might not," Lazarus said sharply. "Not ratting on him was

implicit in the bargain. It's nothing to me how many of your rules he breaks.

And-who knows? -- I might need him again. Certainly someone will need his

services, somebody just as anxious to avoid your busies as I was. Ira, no

doubt you mean well but I don't like setups where IDs are necessary. I told

myself centuries back to stay away from places crowded enough to require them,

and mostly I've followed that rule. Should have followed it this time. But I

didn't expect to need any identification very long. Confoundit, two more days

and I would have been dead. I think. How did you catch me?"

"The hard way. Once I knew you were on planet I stirred things up; that

section chief wasn't the only unhappy one. But you disappeared in so simple a

fashion that you baffled the entire force. My security chief expressed the

opinion that you had been killed and your body disposed of. I told him if that

were the case, he had better start thinking about offplanet migration."

"Make it march! I want to know how I goofed."

"I would not say that you goofed. Lazarus, since you managed to stay

hidden with every cop and stoolie on this globe looking for you. But I felt

certain that you had not been killed. Oh, we do have murders on Secundus,

especially here in New Rome. But most are the commonplace husband-wife sort:

We don't have many for gain since I instituted a policy of making the

punishment fit the crime and holding executions in -- the Colosseum. In any

case I felt certain that a man who had survived more than two millennia would

not let himself be killed in some dark alley.

"So I assumed that you were alive, then asked myself, 'If I were Lazarus

Long, how would I go about hiding?' I went into deep meditation and thought

about it. Then I tried to retrace your steps, so far as we knew them. By the

way -- "

The Chairman Pro Tem threw back his shoulder cloak, took out a large

sealed envelope, handed it to Lazarus. "Here is the item you left in a lockbox

at Harriman Trust."

Lazarus accepted it. "It's been opened."

"By me. Prematurely, I admit-but you addressed it to me. I have read it

but no one else has. And now I will forget it. Except to say this: I am

unsurprised that you left your wealth to the Families but I was touched that

Robert A Heinlein - Time Enough for Love

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