Robert A Heinlein - Time For The Stars

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Time For The Stars
Robert A. Heinlein
1956
I THE LONG RANGE FOUNDATION
According to their biographies, Destiny's favored children usually had their
lives planned out from scratch. Napoleon was figuring on how to rule France
when he was a barefoot boy in Corsica, Alexander the Great much the same, and
Einstein was muttering equations in his cradle.
Maybe so. Me, I just muddled along.
In an old book that belonged to my great grandfather Lucas I once saw a
cartoon of a man in evening clothes, going over a ski jump. With an expression
of shocked unbelief he is saying: "How did I get up here?"
I know how he felt. How did I get way up here?
I was not even planned on. The untaxed quota for our family was three
children, then my brother Pat and I came along in one giant economy package.
We were a surprise to everyone, especially to my parents, my three sisters,
and the tax adjusters. I don't recall being surprised myself but my earliest
recollection is a vague feeling of not being quite welcome, even though Dad
and Mum, and Faith, Hope, and Charity treated us okay.
Maybe Dad did not handle the emergency right. Many families get an extra
child quota on an exchange basis with another family, or something, especially
when the tax-free limit has already been filled with all boys or all girls.
But Dad was stubborn, maintaining that the law was unconstitutional, unjust,
discriminatory, against public morals, and contrary to the will of God. He
could reel off a list of important people who were youngest children of large
families, from Benjamin Franklin to the first governor Of Pluto, then he would
demand to know where the human race would have been without them? -- after
which Mother would speak soothingly.
Dad was probably accurate as he was a student of almost everything, even his
trade, which was micromechanics-but especially of history. He wanted to name
us for his two heroes in American history, whereas Mother wanted to name us
for her favorite artists: This is how I ended up as Thomas Paine Leonardo da
Vinci Bartlett and my twin became Patrick Henry Michelangelo Bartlett. Dad
called us Tom and Pat and Mother called us Leo and Michel and our sisters
called us Useless and Double-Useless. Dad won by being stubborn.
Dad was stubborn. He could have paid the annual head tax on us
supernumeraries, applied for a seven-person flat, and relaxed to the
inevitable. Then he could have asked for reclassification. Instead be claimed
exemption for us twins each year, always ended by paying our head tax with his
check stamped "Paid under Protest!" and we seven lived in a five-person flat.
When Pat and I were little we slept in homemade cribs in the bathroom which
could not have been convenient for anybody, then when we were bigger we slept
on the living-room couch, which was inconvenient for everybody, especially our
sisters, who found it cramping to their social life.
Dad could have solved all this by putting in for family emigration to Mars or
Venus, or the Jovian moons, and he used to bring up the subject. But this was
the one thing that would make Mum more stubborn than he was. I don't know
which part of making the High Jump scared her, because she would just settle
her mouth and not answer. Dad would point out that big families got preferred
treatment for emigration and that the head tax was earmarked to subsidize
colonies off Earth and why shouldn't we benefit by the money we were being
robbed of? To say nothing of letting our children grow up with freedom and
elbow room, out where there wasn't a bureaucrat standing behind every
productive worker dreaming up more rules and restrictions? Answer me that?
Mother never answered and we never emigrated,
We were always short of money. Two extra mouths, extra taxes, and no family
assistance for the two extras make the stabilized family income law as poor a
fit as the clothes Mum cut down for us from Dad's old ones. It was darn'
seldom that we could afford to dial for dinner like other people and Dad even
used to bring home any of his lunch that he didn't eat. Mum went back to work
as soon as we twins were in kindergarten, but the only household robot we had
was an obsolete model "Morris Garage" Mother's Helper which was always burning
out valves and took almost as long to program as the job would have taken. Pat
and I got acquainted with dish water and detergents-at least I did; Pat
usually insisted on doing the sterilizing or had a sore thumb or something.
Dad used to talk about the intangible benefits of being poor-learning to
stand on your own feet, building character, and all that. By the time I was
old enough to understand I was old enough to wish they weren't so intangible,
but, thinking back, maybe he had a point. We did have fun. Pat and I raised
hamsters in the service unit and Mum never objected. When we turned the bath
into a chem lab the girls did make unfriendly comments but when Dad put his
foot down, they sweet-talked him into picking it up again and after that they
hung their laundry somewhere else, and later Mum stood between us and the
house manager when we poured acid down the drain and did the plumbing no good.
The only time I can remember when Mum put her foot down was when her brother,
Uncle Steve, came back from Mars and gave us some canal worms which we planned
to raise and sell at a profit. But when Dad stepped on one in the shower (we
had not discussed our plans with him) she made us give them to the zoo, except
the one Dad had stepped on, which was useless. Shortly after that we ran away
from home to join the High Marines-Uncle Steve was a ballistics sergeant-and
when lying about our age did not work and they fetched us back, Mum not only
did not scold us but had fed our snakes and our silkworms while we were gone.
Oh, I guess we were happy. It is hard to tell at the time. Pat and I were
very close and did everything together but I want to get one thing straight:
being a twin is not the Damon-and-Pythias dream that throb writers would have
you think. It makes you close to another person to be born with him, share a
room with him, eat with him, play with him, work with him, and hardly ever do
anything without him as far back as you can remember, and farther according to
witnesses. It makes you close; it makes you almost indispensable to each
other-but it does not necessarily make you love him.
I want to get this straight because there has been a lot of nonsense talked
about it since twins got to be suddenly important. I'm me; I'm not my brother
Pat. I could always tell us apart, even if other people couldn't. He is the
right-handed one; I'm the left-handed one. And from my point of view I'm the
one who almost always got the small piece of cake.
I can remember times when he got both pieces through a fast shuffle. I'm not
speaking in general; I'm thinking of a certain white cake with chocolate icing
and how he confused things so that he got my piece, too, Mum and Dad thinking
he was both of us, despite my protests. Dessert can be the high point of the
day when you are eight, which was what we were then.
I am not complaining about these things...even though I feel a dull lump of
anger even now, after all the years and miles, at the recollection of being
punished because Dad and Mum thought I was the one who was trying to wangle
two desserts. But I'm just trying to tell the truth. Doctor Devereaux said to
write it all down and where I have to start is how it feels to be a twin. You
aren't a twin, are you? Maybe you are but the chances are forty-four to one
that you aren't-not even a fraternal, whereas Pat and I are identicals which
is four times as unlikely.
They say that one twin is always retarded-I don't think so. Pat and I were
always as near alike as two shoes of a pair. The few times we showed any
difference I was a quarter inch taller or a pound heavier, then we would even
out. We got equally good marks in school; we cut our teeth together. What he
did have was more grab than I had, something the psychologists call "pecking
order." But it was so subtle you could not define it and other people could
not see it. So far as I know, it started from nothing and grew into .a pattern
that neither of us could break even if we wanted to.
Maybe if the nurse had picked me up first when we were born I would have been
the one who got the bigger piece of cake. Or maybe she did-I don't know how it
started.
But don't think that being a twin is all bad even if you are on the short
end; it is mostly good. You go into a crowd of strangers and you are scared
and shy-and there is your twin a couple of feet away and you aren't alone any
more. Or somebody punches you in the mouth and while you are groggy your twin
has punched him and the fight goes your way. You flunk a quiz and your twin
has flunked just as badly and you aren't alone.
But do not think that being twins is like having a very close and loyal
friend. It isn't like that at all and it is a great deal closer.
Pat and I had our first contact with the Long Range Foundation when this Mr.
Geeking showed up at our home. I did not warm to him. Dad didn't like him
either and wanted to hustle him out, but he was already seated with coffee at
his elbow for Mother's notions of hospitality were firm.
So this Geeking item was allowed to state his business. He was, he said, a
field representative of "Genetics Investigations."
"What's that?" Dad said sharply.
'Genetics Investigations' is a scientific agency, Mr. Bartlett. This present
project is one of gathering data concerning twins. It is in the public
interest and we hope that you will cooperate."
Dad took a deep breath and hauled out the imaginary soapbox he always had
ready. "More government meddling! I'm a decent citizen; I pay my bills and
support my family. My boys are just like other boys and I'm sick and tired of
the government's attitude about them. I'm not going to have them poked and
prodded and investigated to satisfy some bureaucrat. All we ask is to be left
alone-and that the government admit the obvious fact that my boys have as much
right to breathe air and occupy space as anyone else!"
Dad wasn't stupid; it was just that he had a reaction pattern where Pat and I
were concerned as automatic as the snarl of a dog who has been kicked too
often. Mr. Geeking tried to soothe him but Dad can't be interrupted when he
has started that tape. "You tell the Department of Population Control that I'm
not having their 'genetics investigations.' What do they want to find out? How
to keep people from having twins, probably. What's wrong with twins? Where
would Rome have been without Romulus and Remus? -- answer me that! Mister, do
you know how many -- "
"Please, Mr. Bartlett, I'm not from the government."
"Eh? Well, why didn't you say so? Who are you from?"
"Genetics Investigations is an agency of the Long Range Foundation." I felt
Pat's sudden interest. Everybody has heard of the Long Range Foundation, but
it happened that Pat and I had just done a term paper on non-profit
corporations and had used the Long Range Foundation as a type example.
We got interested in the purposes of the Long Range Foundation. Its coat of
arms reads: "Bread Cast Upon the Waters," and its charter is headed:
"Dedicated to the Welfare of Our Descendants." The charter goes on with a lot
of lawyers' fog but the way the directors have interpreted it has been to
spend money only on things that no government and no other corporation would
touch. It wasn't enough for a proposed project to be interesting to science or
socially desirable; it also had to be so horribly expensive that no one else
would touch it and the prospective results had to lie so far in the future
that it could not be justified to taxpayers or shareholders. To make the LRF
directors light up with enthusiasm you had to suggest something that cost a
billion or more and probably wouldn't show results for ten generations, if
ever...something like how to control the weather (they're working on that) or
where does your lap go when you stand up.
The funny thing is that bread cast upon waters does come back seven hundred
fold; the most preposterous projects made the LRF embarrassing amounts of
money -- "embarrassing" to a non-profit corporation that is. Take space
travel: it seemed tailor-made, back a couple of hundred years ago, for LRF,
since it was fantastically expensive and offered no probable results
comparable with the investment: There was a time when governments did some
work on it for military reasons, but the Concord of Bayreuth in 1980 put a
stop even to that.
So the Long Range Foundation stepped in and happily began wasting money. It
came at a time when the corporation unfortunately had made a few billions on
the Thompson mass-converter when they had expected to spend at least a century
on pure research; since they could not declare a dividend (no stockholders),
they had to get rid of the money somehow and space travel looked like a rat
hole to pour it down.
Even the kids know what happened to that: Ortega's torch made space travel
inside the solar system cheap, fast, and easy, and the one-way energy screen
made colonization practical and profitable; the LRF could not unload fast
enough to keep from making lots more money.
I did not think all this that evening; LRF was just something that Pat and I
happened to know more about than most high school seniors...more than Dad
knew, apparently, for he snorted and answered, "The Long Range Foundation, eh?
I'd almost rather you were from the government. If boondoggles like that were
properly taxed, the government wouldn't be squeezing head taxes out of its
citizens."
This was not a fair statement, not a "flat-curve relationship," as they call
it in Beginning Mathematical Empiricism. Mr. McKeefe had told us to estimate
the influence, if any, of LRF on the technology "yeast-form" growth curve;
either I should have flunked the course or LRF had kept the curve from
leveling off early in the 21st century-I mean to say, the "cultural
inheritance," the accumulation of knowledge and wealth that keeps us from
being savages, had increased greatly as a result of the tax-free status of
such non-profit research corporations. I didn't dream up that opinion; there
are figures to prove it. What would have happened if the tribal elders had
forced Ugh to hunt with the rest of the tribe instead of staying home and
whittling out the first wheel while the idea was bright in his mind?
Mr. Geeking answered, "I can't debate the merits of such matters, Mr.
Bartlett. I'm merely an employee.
"And I'm paying your salary, indirectly and unwillingly, but paying it
nevertheless."
I wanted to get into the argument but I could feel Pat holding back. It did
not matter; Mr. Geeking shrugged and said, "If so, I thank you. But all I came
here for was to ask your twin boys to take a few tests and answer some
questions. The tests are harmless and the results will be kept confidential."
"What are you trying to find out?"
I think Mr. Geeking was telling the truth when he answered, "I don't know.
I'm merely a field agent; I'm not in charge of the project."
Pat cut in. "I don't see why not, Dad. Do you have the tests in your
briefcase, Mr. Geeking?"
"Now, Patrick -- "
"It's all right, Dad. Let's see the tests, Mr. Geeking."
"Uh, that's not what we had in mind. The Project has set up local offices in
the TransLunar Building. The tests take about half a day."
"All the way downtown, huh, and a half day's 'time...what do you pay?"
"Eh? The subjects are asked to contribute their time in the interests of
science."
Pat shook his head. "Sorry, Mr. Geeking. This is exam week...and my brother
and I have part-time school jobs, too."
I kept quiet. Our exams were over, except Analysis of History, which is a
snap course involving no math but statistics and pseudospatial calculus, and
the school chem lab we worked in was closed for examinations. I was sure Dad
did not know these things, or he would have butted in; Dad can shift from
prejudice to being a Roman judge at the drop of a hint.
Pat stood up, so I stood up. Mr. Geeking sat tight. "Arrangements can be
made," he said evenly.
Pat stuck him as much as we made for a month of washing bottles in the lab,
just for one afternoon's work-then upped the ante when it was made clear that
we would be obliged to take the tests together (as if we would have done it
any other way!). Mr. Geeking paid without a quiver, in cash, in advance.
II THE NATURAL LOGARITHM OF TWO
I never in my life saw so many twins as were waiting on the fortieth floor of
the TransLunar Building the following Wednesday afternoon. I don't like to be
around twins, they make me think I'm seeing double. Don't tell me I'm
inconsistent; I never saw the twins I am part of-I just saw Pat.
Pat felt the same way; we had never been chummy with other twins. He looked
around and whistled. "Tom, did you over see such a mess of spare parts?"
"Never."
"If I were in charge, I'd shoot half of them." He hadn't spoken loud enough
to offend anyone; Pat and I used a prison-yard whisper that no one else could
hear although we never had trouble understanding it. "Depressing, isn't it?"
Then he whistled softly and I looked where he was looking. Twins of course,
but this was a case of when once is good, twice is better. They were red-
headed sisters, younger than we were but not too young-sixteen, maybe-and cute
as Persian kittens.
Those sisters had the effect on us that a light has on a moth. Pat whispered,
"Tom, we owe it to them to grant them a little of our time," and headed toward
them, with me in step. They were dressed in fake Scottish outfits, green plaid
which made their hair flame like bonfires and to us they looked as pretty as a
new fall of snow.
And just as chilly. Pat got halfway through his opening speech when he
trailed off and shut up; they were staring through him. I was blushing and the
only thing that kept it from being a major embarrassing incident was a
loudspeaker that commenced to bray:
"Attention, please! You are requested to report to the door marked with your
surname initial." So we went to door A -- to-D and the red-headed sisters
headed toward the other end of the alphabet without ever having seen us at
all. As we queued up Pat muttered, "Is there egg on my chin? Or have they
taken a vow to be old maids?"
"Probably both," I answered. "Anyhow, I prefer blondes." This was true, since
Maudie was a blonde. Pat and I had been dating Maudie Kauric for about a year-
going steady you could call it, though in my case it usually meant that I was
stuck with Maudie's chum Hedda Staley, whose notion of dazzling conversation
was to ask me if I didn't think Maudie was the cutest thing ever? Since this
was true and unanswerable, our talk did not sparkle.
"Well, so do I," Pat agreed, without saying which blonde-Maudie was the only
subject on which we were reticent with each other. "But I have never had a
closed mind." He shrugged and added cheerfully, "Anyhow, there are other
possibilities."
There certainly were, for of the hundreds of twins present maybe a third were
near enough our age not to be out of the question and half of them, as near as
I could tell without counting, were of the sex that turns a mere crowd into a
social event. However, none came up to the high standards of the redheads, so
I began looking over the crowd as a whole.
The oldest pair I saw, two grown men, seemed to be not older than the early
thirties and I saw one set of little girls about twelve-they had their mother
in tow. But most of them were within a loud shout of twenty. I had concluded
that "Genetics Investigations" was picking its samples by age groups when I
found that we were at the head of the line and a clerk was saying, "Names,
please?"
For the next two hours we were passed from one data collector to another,
being fingerprinted, giving blood samples, checking "yes" or "no" to hundreds
of silly questions that can't be answered "yes" or "no." The physical
examination was thorough and involved the usual carefully planned nonsense of
keeping a person standing in bare feet on a cold floor in a room five degrees
too chilly for naked human skin while prodding the victim and asking him rude
personal questions.
I was thoroughly bored and was not even amused when Pat whispered that we
should strip the clothes off the doctor now and prod him in the belly and get
the nurse to record how he liked it? My only pleasant thought was that Pat had
stuck them plenty for their fun. Then they let us get dressed and ushered us
into a room where a rather pretty woman sat behind a desk. She had a
transparency viewer on her desk and was looking at two personality profiles
superimposed on it. They almost matched and I tried to sneak a look to see
where they did not. But I could not tell Pat's from my own and anyhow I'm not
a mathematical psychologist.
She smiled and said, "Sit down, boys. I'm Doctor Arnault." She held up the
profiles and a bunch of punched cards and added, "Perfect mirror twins, even
to dextrocardia. This should be interesting."
Pat tried to look at the papers. "What's our I.Q. this time, Doctor?"
"Never mind." She put the papers down and covered them, then picked up a deck
of cards. "Have you ever used these?"
Of course we had, for they were the classic Rhine test cards, wiggles and
stars and so forth. Every high school psychology class has a set and a high
score almost always means that some bright boy has figure out a way to cold-
deck the teacher. In fact Pat had worked out a simple way to cheat when our
teacher, with a tired lack of anger, split us up and made us run tests only
with other people-whereupon our scores dropped to the limits of standard
error. So I was already certain that Pat and I weren't ESP freaks and the
Rhine cards were just another boring test.
But I could feel Pat become attentive. "Keep your ears open, kid," I heard
him whisper, "and we'll make this interesting." Dr. Arnault did not hear him,
of course.
I wasn't sure we ought to but I knew if he could manage to signal to me I
would not be able to refrain from fudging the results. But I need not have
worried; Dr. Arnault took Pat out and returned without him. She was hooked by
microphone to the other test room but there was no chance to whisper through
it; it was hot only when she switched it on.
She started right in. "First test run in twenty seconds, Mabel," she said
into the mike and switched it off, then turned to me. "Look at the cards as I
turn them," she said.
"Don't try, don't strain. Just look at them."
So I looked at the cards. This went on with variations for maybe an hour.
Sometimes I was supposed to be receiving, sometimes sending. As far as I was
concerned nothing happened, for they never told us our scores.
Finally Dr. Arnault looked at a score sheet and said, "Tom, I want to give
you a mild injection. It won't hurt you and it'll wear off before you go home.
Okay?"
"What sort?" I said suspiciously.
"Don't fret; it is harmless. I don't want to tell you or you might
unconsciously show the reaction you expected."
"Uh, what does my brother say? Does he get one, too?"
"Never mind, please. I'm asking you."
I still hesitated. Dad did not favor injections and such unless necessary; he
had made a fuss over our taking part in the encephalitis program. "Are you an
M.D.?" I asked.
"No, my degree is in science. Why?"
"Then how do you know it's harmless?"
She bit her lip, then answered, "I'11 send for a doctor of medicine, if you
prefer."
"Uh, no, I guess that won't be necessary." I was remembering something that
Dad had said about the sleeping sickness shots and I added, "Does the Long
Range Foundation carry liability insurance for this?"
"What? Why, I think so. Yes, I'm sure they do." She looked at me and added,
"Tom, how does a boy your age get to be so suspicions?"
"Huh? Why ask me? You're the psychologist, ma'am. Anyhow," I added, "if you
had sat on as many tacks as I have, you'd be suspicions too."
"Mmm...never mind. I've been studying for years and I still don't know what
the younger generation is coming to. Well, are you going to take the
injection?"
"Uh, I'll take it-since the LRF carries insurance. Just write out what it is
you are giving me and sign it."
She got two bright pink spots in her cheeks. But she took out stationery,
wrote on it, folded it into an envelope and sealed it. "Put it in your
pocket," she said briskly. "Don't look at it until the experiments are over.
Now bare your left forearm."
As she gave me the shot she said sweetly, "This is going to sting a
little...I hope." It did.
She turned out all the lights except the light in the transparency viewer.
"Are you comfortable?"
"Sure."
"I'm sorry if I seemed vexed. I want you to relax and be comfortable." She
came over and did something to the chair I was in; it opened out gently until
I was practically lying in a hammock. "Relax and don't fight it. If you find
yourself getting sleepy, that is to be expected." She sat down and all I could
see was her face, illuminated by the viewer. She was awfully pretty, I
decided, even though she was too old for it to matter...at least thirty, maybe
older. And she was nice, too. She spoke for a few minutes in her gentle voice
but I don't remember exactly what she said.
I must have gone to sleep, for next it was pitch dark and Pat was right there
by me, although I hadn't noticed the light go out nor the door being opened. I
started to speak when I heard him whisper:
"Tom, did you ever see such nonsensical rigamarole?"
I whispered back, "Reminds me of the time we were initiated into the Congo
Cannibals."
"Keep your voice down; they'll catch on."
"You're the one who is talking too loud: Anyhow, who cares? Let's give 'em
the Cannibal war whoop and scare 'em out of their shoes."
"Later, later. Right now my girl friend Mabel wants me to give you a string
of numbers. So we'll let them have their fun first. After all, they're paying
for it."
"Okay."
"Point six nine three one."
"That's the natural logarithm of two."
"What did you think it was? Mabel's telephone number? Shut up and listen.
Just repeat the numbers back. Three point one four one five nine..."
It went on quite a while. Some were familiar numbers like the first two; the
rest may have been random or even Mabel's phone number, for all of me. I got
bored and was beginning to think about sticking in a war whoop on my own when
Dr. Arnault said quietly, "End of test run. Both of you please keep quiet and
relax for a few minutes. Mabel, I'll meet you in the data comparison room." I
heard her go out, so I dropped the war whoop notion and relaxed. Repeating all
those numbers in the dark had made me dopey anyhow-and as Uncle Steve says,
when you get a chance to rest, do so; you may not get another chance soon.
Presently I heard the door open again, then I was blinking at bright lights.
Dr. Arnault said, "That's all today, Tom...and thank you very much. We want to
see you and your brother at the same time tomorrow."
I blinked again and looked around. "Where's Pat? What does he say?"
"You'll find him in the outer lobby. He told me that you could come tomorrow.
You can, can't you?"
"Uh, I suppose so, if it's all right with him." I was feeling sheepish about
the trick we had pulled, so I added, "Dr. Arnault? I'm sorry I annoyed you."
She patted my hand and smiled. "That's all right, You were right to be
cautious and you were a good subject. You should see the wild ones we
sometimes draw. See you tomorrow."
Pat was waiting in the big room where we had seen the redheads. He fell into
step and we headed for the drop.
"I raised the fee for tomorrow," he whispered smugly.
"You did? Pat, do you think we should do this? I mean, fun is fun, but if
they ever twig that we are faking, they'll be sore. They might even make us
pay back what they've already paid us."
"How can they? We've been paid to show up and take tests. We've done that.
It's up to them to rig tests that can't be beaten. I could, if I were doing
it."
"Pat, you're dishonest and crooked, both." I thought about Dr. Arnault...she
was a nice lady. "I think I'll stay home tomorrow."
I said this just as Pat stepped off the drop. He was ten feet below me all
the way down and had forty stories in which to consider his answer. As I
landed beside him he answered by changing the subject. "They gave you a
hypodermic?"
"Yes."
"Did you think to make them sign an admission of liability, or did you goof?"
"Well, sort of." I felt in my pocket for the envelope; I'd forgotten about
it. "I made Dr. Arnault write down what she was giving us."
Pat reached for the envelope. "My apologies, maestro. With my brains and your
luck we've got them where we want them." He started to open the envelope. "I
bet it was neopentothal-or one of the barbiturates."
I snatched it back. "That's mine."
"Well, open it," he answered, "and don't obstruct traffic. I want to see what
dream drug they gave us."
We had come out into the pedestrian level and his advice did have merit.
Before opening it I led us across the change strips onto the fast-west strip
and stepped behind a wind break. As I unfolded the paper Pat read over my
shoulder:
"'Long Range Fumbling, and so forth-injections given to subjects 7L435 & -- 6
T. P. Bartlett & P. H. Bartlett (iden-twins) -- each one-tenth c.c. distilled
water raised to normal salinity,' signed 'Doris Arnault, Sc.D., for the
Foundation.' Tom, we've been hoaxed!"
I stared at it, trying to fit what I had experienced with what the paper
said. Pat added hopefully, "Or is this the hoax? Were we injected with
something else and they didn't want to admit it?"
"No," I said slowly. I was sure Dr. Arnault wouldn't write down "water" and
actually give us one of the sleeping drugs-she wasn't that sort of person.
"Pat, we weren't drugged...we were hypnotized."
He shook his head. "Impossible. Granting that I could be hypnotized, you
couldn't be. Nothing there to hypnotize. And I wasn't hypnotized, comrade. No
spinning lights, no passes with the hands-why, my girl Mabel didn't even stare
in my eyes. She just gave me the shot and told me to take it easy and let it
take effect."
"Don't be juvenile, Pat. Spinning lights and such is for suckers. I don't
care whether you call it hypnotism or salesmanship. They gave us hypos and
suggested that we would be sleepy-so we fell asleep."
"So I was sleepy! Anyhow that wasn't quite what Mabel did. She told me not to
go to sleep, or if I did, to wake up when she called me. Then when they
brought you in, she -- "
"Wait a minute. You mean when they moved you back into the room I was in -- "
"No, I don't mean anything of the sort. After they brought you in, Mabel gave
me this list of numbers and I read them to you and -- "
"Wait a minute," I said. "Pat, you're mixed up. How could you read them in
pitch darkness? She must have read them to you. I mean -- " I stopped, for I
was getting mixed up myself. Well, she could have read to him from another
room. "Were you wearing headphones?"
"What's that got to do with it? Anyhow, it wasn't pitch dark, not after they
brought you in. She held up the numbers on a board that was rigged with a
light of its own, enough to let me see the numbers and her hands."
"Pat, I wish you wouldn't keep repeating nonsense. Hypnotized or not, I was
never so dopey that I couldn't notice anything that happened. I was never
moved anywhere; they probably wheeled you in without disturbing you. And the
room we were in was pitch dark, not a glimmer."
Pat did not answer right away, which wasn't like him. At last he said, "Tom,
are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure!"
He sighed. "I hate to say this, because I know what you will say. But what
are you supposed to do when none of your theories fits?"
"Huh? Is this a quiz? You throw 'em away and try a new one. Basic
methodology, freshman year."
"Okay, just slip this on for size, don't mind the pattern: Tom, my boy, brace
yourself-we're mind readers."
I tried it and did not like it. "Pat, just because you can't explain
everything is no reason to talk like the fat old women who go to fortune
tellers. We're muddled, I admit, whether it was drugs or hypnosis. But we
couldn't have been reading each other's minds or we would have been doing it
years ago. We would have noticed."
"Not necessarily. There's never anything much going on in your mind, so why
should I notice?"
"But it stands to reason -- "
"What's the natural log of two?"
"'Point six nine three one' is what you said, though I've got very little use
for four-place tables. What's that got to do with it?"
"I used four-place because she gave it to me that way. Do you remember what
she said just before I gave you that number?"
"Huh? Who?"
"Mabel. Dr. Mabel Lichtenstein. What did she say?"
"Nobody said anything."
"Tom, my senile symbiote, she told me what to do, to wit, read the numbers to
you. She told me this in a clear, penetrating soprano. You didn't hear her?"
"No."
"Then you weren't in the same room. You weren't within earshot, even though I
was prepared to swear that they had shoved you in right by me. I knew you were
there. But you weren't. So it was telepathy."
I was confused. I didn't feel telepathic; I merely felt hungry.
"Me, too, on both counts," Pat agreed. "So let's stop at Berkeley Station end
get a sandwich."
I followed him off the strips, feeling not quite as hungry and even more
confused. Pat had answered a remark I had not made.
III PROJECT LEBENSRAUM
Even though I was told to take my time and tell everything, it can't be done.
I haven't had time to add to this for days, but even if I didn't have to work
I still could not "tell all," because it takes more than a day to write down
what happens in one day. The harder you try the farther behind you get. So I'm
going to quit trying and just hit the high spots.
Anyhow everybody knows the general outline of Project Lebensraum.
We did not say anything to Mum and Dad about that first day. You can't expose
parents to that sort of thing; they get jittery and start issuing edicts. We
just told them the tests would run a second day and that nobody had told us
what the results were.
Dr. Arnault seemed unsurprised when we told her we knew the score, even when
I blurted out that we thought we had been faking but apparently weren't. She
just nodded and said that it had been necessary to encourage us to think that
everything was commonplace, even if there had to be a little fibbing on both
sides. "I had the advantage of having your personality analyses to guide me,"
she added. "Sometimes in psychology you have to go roundabout to arrive at the
truth.
"We'll try a more direct way today," she went on. "We'll put you two back to
back but close enough together that you unquestionably can hear each other.
But I am going to use a sound screen to cut you off partly or completely from
time to time without your knowing it."
It was a lot harder the second time. Naturally we tried and naturally we
flubbed. But Dr. Arnault was patient and so was Dr. Lichtenstein-Pat's "Dr.
Mabel." She preferred to be called Dr. Mabel; she was short and pudgy and
younger than Dr. Arnault and about as cute as a female can be and still look
like a sofa pillow. It wasn't until later that we found out she was boss of
the research team and world famous. "Giggly little fat girl" was an act she
used to put ordinary people, meaning Pat and myself, at their ease.
I guess this proves you should ignore the package and read the fine print.
So she giggled and Dr. Arnault looked serious and we could not tell whether
we were reading minds or not. I could hear Tom's whispers-they told us to go
ahead and whisper-and he could hear mine and sometimes they would fade. I was
sure we weren't getting anything, not telepathy I mean, for it was just the
way Pat and I used to whisper answers back and forth in school without getting
caught.
Finally Dr. Mabel giggled sheepishly and said, "I guess that's enough for
today. Don't you think so, Doctor?"
Dr. Arnault agreed and Pat and I sat up and faced each other. I said, "I
suppose yesterday was a fluke. I guess we disappointed you."
Dr. Mabel looked like a startled kitten. Dr. Arnault answered soberly, "I
don't know what you expected, Tom, but for the past hour you and your brother
have been cut off from hearing each other during every test run."
"But I did hear him."
"You certainly did. But not with your ears. We've been recording each side of
摘要：

TimeForTheStarsRobertA.Heinlein1956ITHELONGRANGEFOUNDATIONAccordingtotheirbiographies,Destiny'sfavoredchildrenusuallyhadtheirlivesplannedoutfromscratch.NapoleonwasfiguringonhowtoruleFrancewhenhewasabarefootboyinCorsica,AlexandertheGreatmuchthesame,andEinsteinwasmutteringequationsinhiscradle.Maybeso....

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