Robert A Heinlein - Beyond This Horizon

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ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

BEYOND THIS HORIZON

For

Cal

Mickey and

Both

J's

CHAPTER ONE

"All of them should have been very happy -- "

THEIR problems were solved: the poor they no longer had with them; the sick,

the lame, the halt, and the blind were historic memories; the ancient causes

of war no longer obtained; they had more freedom than Man has ever enjoyed.

All of them should have been happy --

Hamilton Felix let himself off at the thirteenth level of the Department of

Finance, mounted a slideway to the left, and stepped off the strip at a door

marked:

BUREAU OF ECONOMIC STATISTICS

Office of Analysis and Prediction

Director

PRIVATE

He punched the door with a code combination, and awaited face check. It came

promptly; the door dilated, and a voice inside said, "Come in, Felix."

He stepped inside, glanced at his host and remarked, "You make ninety-eight."

"Ninety-eight what?"

"Ninety-eight sourpusses in the last twenty minutes. It's a game. I just made

it up."

Monroe-Alpha Clifford looked baffled, an expression not uncommon in his

dealings with his friend Felix. "But what is the point? Surely you counted the

opposites, too?"

"Of course. Ninety-eight mugs who'd lost their last friends, seven who looked

happy. But," he added, "to make it seven I had to count one dog."

Monroe-Alpha gave Hamilton a quick look in an effort to determine whether or

not he was joking. But he could not be sure-he rarely could be sure.

Hamilton's remarks often did not appear serious, frequently even seemed

technically sense-free. Nor did they appear to follow the six principles of

humor-Monroe-Alpha prided himself on his sense of humor, had been known to

pontificate to his subordinates on the necessity of maintaining a sense of

humor. But Hamilton's mind seemed to follow some weird illogic of its own,

self consistent perhaps, but apparently unrelated to the existent world.

"But what is the purpose of your survey?" he asked.

"Does it need a purpose? I tell you, I just made it up."

"But your numbers are too few to be significant. You can't fair a curve with

so little data. Besides, your conditions are uncontrolled. Your results don't

mean anything."

Hamilton rolled his eyes up. "Elder Brother, hear me," he said softly. "Living

Spirit of Reason attend Thy servant. In Your greatest and most prosperous city

I find vinegar phizzes to grins in a ratio of fourteen to one-and he says it's

not significant!"

Monroe-Alpha looked annoyed. "Don't be irreverent, " he advised. "And the

proper ratio is sixteen and a third to one; you should not have counted the

dog."

"Oh, forget it!" his friend answered. "How goes the tail chasing?" He wandered

around the room, picking things up and putting them down under Monroe-Alpha's

watchful eye, and finally stopped in front of the huge integrating

accumulator. "It's about time for your quarterly prediction, isn't it?"

"Not 'about time' -- it is time. I had just completed the first inclusive run

when you arrived. Want to see it?" He stepped to the machine, pressed a stud.

A photostat popped out. Monroe Alpha undipped it and handed it to Hamilton

without looking at it. He had no need to-the proper data had been fed into the

computer; he knew with quiet certainty that the correct answer would come out.

Tomorrow he would work the problem again, using a different procedure. If the

two answers did not then agree within the limits of error of the machine, he

would become interested in the figures themselves. But, of course, that would

not happen. The figures would interest his superiors; the procedure alone was

of interest to him.

Hamilton eyed the answer from a nonprofessional viewpoint. He appreciated, in

part at least, the huge mass of detail which had gone into this simple answer.

Up and down two continents human beings had gone about their lawful occasions-

buying, selling, making, consuming, saving, spending, giving receiving. A

group of men in Altoona, Pennsylvania, had issued unsecured aspirant stock to

subsidize further research into a new method of recovering iron from low grade

ores. The issue had been well received down in New Bolivar where there was a

superabundance of credit because of the extreme success of the tropical garden

cities along the Orinoco ("Buy a Slice of Paradise"). Perhaps that was the

canny Dutch influence in the mixed culture of that region. It might have been

the Latin influence which caused an unprecedented tourist travel away from the

Orinoco during the same period-to Lake Louise, and Patagonia, and Sitka.

No matter. All of the complex of transactions appeared in the answer in

Hamilton's hand. A child in Walla Walla broke its piggy bank (secretly, with

one eye on the door), gathered up the slowly accumulated slugs and bought a

perfectly delightful gadget, which not only did things, but made the

appropriate noises as well. Some place down in the innards of the auto-clerk

which handled the sale for the Gadget Shoppe four holes were punched in a

continuous roll of paper; the item appeared in the owner's cost accounting,

and was reflected in the accounting of the endless chain of middle

distributors, transporters, processors, original producers, service companies,

doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs-world without end.

The child (a bad-tempered little blond brat, bound to prove a disappointment

to his planners and developers) had a few slugs left over which he exchanged

for a diet-negative confection ("Father Christmas' Psuedo-Sweets-Not a tummy

ache in a tankful"); the sale was lumped with many others like it in the

accounts of the Seattle Vending Machine Corporation.

The broken piggy bank and its concatenations appeared in the figures in

Hamilton's hand, as a sliver of a fragment of a super-microscopic datum,

invisible even in the fifth decimal place. Monroe-Alpha had not heard of this

particular piggy bank when he set up the problem-nor would he, ever-but there

are tens of thousands of piggy banks, a large but countable number of

entrepreneurs, lucky, and unlucky, shrewd and stupid, millions of producers,

millions of consumers, each with his draft book, each with printed symbols in

his pouch, potent symbols-the stuff, the ready, the you-know-what, jack, kale,

rocket juice, wampum, the shekels, the sugar, the dough.

All of these symbols, the kind that jingle and the kind that fold and, most

certainly, the kind that are only abstractions from the signed promise of an

honest man, all of these symbols, or more correctly, their reflected shadows,

passed through the bottle neck formed by Monroe-Alpha's computer, and appeared

there in terms of angular speeds, settings of three-dimensional cams,

electronic flow, voltage biases, et complex cetera. The manifold constituted a

dynamic abstracted structural picture of the economic flow of a hemisphere.

Hamilton examined the photostat. The reinvestment of accumulated capital

called for an increase in the subsidy on retail transfers of consumption goods

of three point one percent and an increase in monthly citizens' allowance of

twelve credits-unless the Council of Policy decided on another means of

distributing the social increment.

"'Day by day, in every way, I'm getting richer and richer, '" Hamilton said.

"Say, Cliff, this money machine of yours is a wonderful little gadget. It's

the goose that lays the golden egg."

"I understand your classical allusion, " Monroe-Alpha conceded, "but the

accumulator is in no sense a production machine. It is merely an accounting

machine, combined with an integrating predictor."

"I know that, " Hamilton answered absently. "Look, Cliff -- what would happen

if I took an ax and just beat the bejasus out of your little toy?"

"You would be examined for motive."

"Don't be obtuse. What about the economic system?"

"I suppose, " Monroe-Alpha told him, "that you want me to assume that no other

machine was available for replacement. Any of the regional accumulators could

-- "

"Sure. Bust the hell out of all of them."

"Then we would have to use tedious methods of actuarial computation. A few

weeks delay would result, with accumulated errors which would have to be

smoothed out in the next prediction. No important result."

"Not that. What I want to know is this. If nobody computed the amount of new

credit necessary to make the production-consumption cycle come out even-what

would happen?"

"Your hypothetical question is too far-fetched to be very meaningful," Monroe-

Alpha stated, "but it would result in a series of panics and booms of the

post-nineteenth century type. Carried to extreme, it could even result in

warfare. But of course it would not be-the structural nature of finance is too

deeply imbedded in our culture for pseudo-capitalism to return. Any child

understands the fundamentals of production accounting before he leaves his

primary development center."

"I didn't."

Monroe-Alpha smiled tolerantly. "I find that difficult to believe. You know

the Law of Stable Money."

"'In a stable economy, debt-free new currency must be equated to the net re-

investment,'" Hamilton quoted.

"Correct enough. But that is Reiser's formulation. Reiser was sound enough,

but he had a positive talent for stating simple things obscurely. There is a

much simpler way to look at it. The processes of economic system are so

multitudinous in detail and involve so many promises to be performed at later

dates that it is a psychological impossibility for human beings to deal with

the processes without the use of a symbol system. We call the system 'finance'

and the symbols 'money. ' The symbolic structure should bear a one-to-one

relationship to the physical structure of production and consumption. It's my

business to keep track of the actual growth of the physical processes and

recommend to the. policy board changes in the symbol structure to match those

in the physical structure."

"I'm damned if you've made it any simpler, " Hamilton complained. "Never mind-

I didn't say I didn't understand it; I said I didn't understand it as a kid.

But honestly-wouldn't it be simpler to set up a collective system and be done

with it?"

Monroe-Alpha shook his head. "Finance structure is a general theory and

applies equally to any type of state. A complete socialism would have as much

need for structural appropriateness in its cost accounting as do free

entrepreneurs. The degree of public ownership as compared with the degree of

free enterprise is a cultural matter. For example, food is, of course, free,

but -- "

"Freeze it, pal. You've just reminded me of one of the two reasons I had for

looking in on you. Busy for dinner tonight?"

"Not precisely. I've a tentative date with my orthowife for twenty-one

hundred, but I'm free until then."

"Good. I've located a new pay-restaurant in Meridian Tower that will be a

surprise to your gastro tract. Guaranteed to give you indigestion, or you have

to fight the chef."

Monroe-Alpha looked dubious. He had had previous experience with Hamilton's

gastronomic adventures. "Let's go to the refectory here. Why pay out hard cash

for bad food when good food is included in your basic dividend?"

"Because one more balanced ration would unbalance me. Come on."

Monroe-Alpha shook his head. "I don't want to contend with the crowds.

Honestly, I don't."

"You don't really like people, do you?"

"I don't dislike them-not individually."

"But you don't like 'em. Me, I like 'em. People are funnier than anybody.

Bless their silly little hearts. They do the craziest things."

Monroe-Alpha looked morose. "I suppose you are the only sane one in the lot."

"Me? Shucks, no. I'm one long joke on myself. Remind me to tell you about it

sometime. But look-the other thing I came to see you about. Notice my new

sidearm?"

Monroe-Alpha glanced at Hamilton's holster. In fact, he had not noticed that

his friend was bearing anything new in the way of weapons-had he arrived

unarmed Monroe-Alpha would have noticed it, naturally, but he was not

particularly observant about such matters, and could easily have spent two

hours with a man and never noticed whether he was wearing a Stokes coagulator

or a common needlebeam.

But, now that his attention was directed to the matter, he saw at once that

Hamilton was armed with something novel...and deucedly odd and uncouth. "What

is it?" he asked.

"Ah!" Hamilton drew the sidearm clear and handed it to his host. "Woops! Wait

a moment. You don't know how to handle it-you'll blow your head off. " He

pressed a stud on the side of the grip, and let a long flat container slide

out into his palm. "There-I've pulled its teeth. Ever see anything like it?"

Monroe-Alpha examined the machine. "Why, yes, I believe so. It's a museum

piece, isn't it? An explosive-type hand weapon?"

"Right and wrong. It's mill new, but it's a facsimile of one in the

Smithsonian Institution collection. It's called a point forty-five Colt

automatic pistol."

"Point forty-five what?"

"Inches."

"Inches...let me see, what is that in centimeters?"

"Huh? Let's see-three inches make a yard and a yard is about one meter. No,

that can't be right. Never mind, it means the size of the slug it throws.

Here...look at one." He slid one free of the clip. "Damn near as big as my

thumb, isn't it?"

"Explodes on impact, I suppose."

"No. It just drills its way in."

"That doesn't sound very efficient."

"Brother, you'd be amazed. It'll blast a hole in a man big enough to throw a

dog through."

Monroe-Alpha handed it back. "And in the meantime your opponent has ended your

troubles with a beam that acts a thousand times as fast. Chemical processes

are slow, Felix."

"Not that slow. The real loss of time is in the operator. Half the gunfighters

running around loose chop into their target with the beam already hot. They

haven't the skill to make a fast sight. You can stop 'em with this, if you've

a fast wrist. I'll show you. Got something around here we can shoot at?"

"Mmm...this is hardly the place for target practice."

"Relax. I want something I can knock out of the way with the slug, while you

try to burn it. How about this?" Hamilton picked up a large ornamental plastic

paperweight from Monroe-Alpha's desk.

"Well...I guess so."

"Fine." Hamilton took it, removed a vase of flowers from a stand on the far

side of the room, and set the target in its place. "We'll face it, standing

about the same distance away. I'll watch for you to start to draw, as if we

really meant action. Then I'll try to knock it off the stand before you can

burn it."

Monroe-Alpha took his place with lively interest. He fancied himself as a

gunman, although he realized that his friend was faster. This might be, he

thought, the split second advantage he needed. "I'm ready."

"Okay."

Monroe-Alpha started his draw.

There followed a single CRACK! so violent that it could be felt through the

skin and in the nostrils, as well as heard. Piled on top of it came the

burbling Sring-aw-ow! as the bullet ricocheted around the room, and then a

ringing silence.

"Hell and breakfast, " remarked Hamilton. "Sorry, Cliff-I never fired it

indoors before." He stepped forward to where the target had been. "Let's see

how we made out. "

The plastic was all over the room. It was difficult to find a shard large

enough to show the outer polish. "It's going to be hard to tell whether you

burned it, or not."

"I didn't."

"Huh?"

"That noise-it startled me. I never fired."

"Really? Say, that's great. I see I hadn't half realized the advantages of

this gadget. It's a psychological weapon, Cliff."

"It's noisy."

"It's more than that. It's a terror weapon. You wouldn't even have to hit with

your first shot. Your man would be so startled you'd have time to get him with

the second shot. And that isn't all. Think...the braves around town are used

to putting a man to sleep with a bolt that doesn't even muss his hair. This

thing's bloody. You saw what happened to that piece of vitrolith. Think what a

man's face will look like after it stops one of those slugs. Why a

necrocosmetician would have to use a stereosculp to produce a reasonable

facsimile for his friends to admire. Who wants to stand up to that kind of

fire?"

"Maybe you're right. I still say it's noisy. Let's go to dinner."

"Good idea. Say-you've got a new nail tint. I like it."

Monroe-Alpha spread his fingers. "It is smart, isn't it? Mauve Iridescent it's

called. Care to try some?"

"No, thank you. I'm too dark for it, I'm afraid. But it goes well with your

skin."

They ate in the pay-restaurant Hamilton had discovered. Monroe-Alpha

automatically asked for a private room when they entered; Hamilton, at the

same moment, demanded a table in the ring. They compromised on a balcony

booth, semi-private, from which Hamilton could amuse himself by staring down

at the crowd in the ring.

Hamilton had ordered the meal earlier in the day, which was the point which

had caused his friend to consent to venture out. It was served promptly. "What

is it?" Monroe-Alpha demanded suspiciously.

"Bouillabaisse. It's halfway between a soup and a stew. More than a dozen

kinds of fish, white wine, and the Great Egg alone knows how many sorts of

herbs and spices. All natural foods."

"It must be terribly expensive."

"It's a creative art and it's a pleasure to pay for it. Don't worry about it.

You know I can't help making money." "Yes, I know. I never could understand

why you take so much interest in games. Of course, it pays well."

"You don't understand me. I'm not interested in games. Have you ever seen me

waste a slug or a credit on one of my own gadgets-or any other? I haven't

played a game since I was a boy. For me, it is already well established that

one horse can run faster than mother, that the ball falls either on red or on

black, and that three of a kind beats two pair. It's that I can't see the

silly toys that people play with without thinking of one a little more

complicated and mysterious. If I am bored with nothing better to do, I may

sketch one and dispatch it to my agent. Presently in comes some more money."

He shrugged.

"What are you interested in?" "People. Eat your soup."

Monroe-Alpha tasted the mess cautiously, looked surprised, and really went to

work on it. Hamilton looked pleased, and undertook to catch up. "Felix -- "

"Yes, Cliff."

"Why did you group me in the ninety-eight?"

"The ninety-eight? Oh, you mean the sourpuss survey. Shucks, pal, you rated

it. If you are gay and merry-merry be-behind that death mask, you conceal it

well."

"I've nothing to be unhappy about." "No, not to my knowledge. But you don't

look happy." They ate in silence for a few minutes more. Monroe-Alpha spoke

again. 'It's true, you know. I'm not."

"Not what?"

"Not happy."

"So? Mmmm...why not?"

"I don't know. If I did I could do something about it. My family psychiatrist

doesn't seem to be able to find the reason."

"You're on the wrong frequency. A psychiatrist is the last man to see about a

thing like that. They know everything about a man, except what he is and what

makes him tick. Besides, did you ever see a worry-doctor that was sane

himself? There aren't two in the country who can count their own fingers and

get the same answer twice running."

"It's true that he hasn't been able to help me much."

"Of course not. Why? Because he will start with the assumption that there is

something wrong with you. He can't find it, so he's stuck. It doesn't occur to

him that there might be nothing wrong with you and that might be what was

wrong."

The other man looked weary. "I don't understand you. But he does claim to be

following a clue."

"What sort?"

"Well...I'm a deviant, you know."

"Yes, I know, " Hamilton answered shortly. He was reasonably familiar with his

friend's genetic background, but disliked to hear him mention it. Some

contrary strain in Hamilton rebelled against the idea that a man was

necessarily and irrevocably the gene pattern handed to him by his genetic

planners. Furthermore he was not convinced that Monroe-Alpha should be

considered a deviant.

"Deviant" is a question-begging term. When the human zygote resulting from the

combination of two carefully selected gametes is different from what the

geneticists had predicted but not so different as to be classified with

certainty as a mutation that zygote is termed a deviant. It is not, as is

generally believed, a specific term for a recognized phenomenon, but a catch-

all to cover a lack of complete knowledge.

Monroe-Alpha (this particular Monroe-Alpha-Clifford, 32-847-106 B62) had been

an attempt to converge two lines of the original Monroe-Alpha to recapture and

reinforce the mathematical genius of his famous ancestor. But mathematical

genius is not one gene, nor does it appear to be anything as simple as a

particular group of genes. Rather, it is thought to be a complex of genes

arranged in a particular order.

Unfortunately this gene complex appears to be close-linked in the Monroe-Alpha

line to a neurotic contrasurvival characteristic, exact nature undetermined

and not assigned to any set of genes. That it is not necessarily so linked

appears to be established, and the genetic technicians who had selected the

particular gametes which were to produce Monroe-Alpha Clifford believed that

they had eliminated the undesired strain.

Monroe-Alpha Clifford did not think so.

Hamilton fixed him with a finger. "The trouble with you, my fine foolish

friend, is that you are bothering your head with things you don't understand.

Your planners told you that they had done their level best to eliminate from

you the thing which caused your great grandfather Whiffenpoof to raise garter

snakes in his hat. There is a long chance that they failed, but why assume

that they did?"

"My great grandfathers did nothing of the sort. A slight strain of anhedonism,

a tendency to -- "

"Then why act like they had to be walked on a leash? You make me tired. You've

got a cleaner pedigree than ninety-nine out of a hundred, and a chromosome

chart that's as neat and orderly as a checker board. Yet you're yiping about

it. How would you like to be a control natural? How would you like to have to

wear lenses against your eyeballs? How would you like to be subject to a dozen

filthy diseases? Or have your teeth fall out, and have to chew your meals with

false choppers?"

"Of course, nobody would want to be a control natural, " Monroe-Alpha said

reflectively, 'but the ones I've known seemed to be happy enough."

"All the more reason for you to snap out of your funk. What do you know of

pain and sickness? You can't appreciate it any more than a fish appreciates

water. You have three times the income you can spend, a respected position,

and work of your own choosing. What more do you want out of life?"

"I don't know, Felix. I don't know, but I know I'm not getting it. Don't ride

me about it."

"Sorry. Eat your dinner."

The fish stew contained several large crab legs; Hamilton ladled one into his

guest's trencher. Monroe-Alpha stared at it uneasily. "Don't be so suspicious,

" Hamilton advised. "Go ahead. Eat it."

"How?"

"Pick it up in your fingers, and crack the shell." Monroe-Alpha attempted to

comply, somewhat clumsily, but the greasy, hard surface skidded between his

fingers. He attempted to recover and knocked it over the edge of the balcony

rail at his elbow.

He started to rise; Hamilton put a hand on his forearm. "My fault, " he said.

"I will repair it." He stood up and looked down at the table directly beneath

their booth.

He did not see the stray bit of seafood at once, but he had no difficulty in

telling approximately where it had landed. Seated at the table was a party of

eight. Two of them were elderly men who wore the brassards-of-peace. Four

women alternated with the males around the table. One of them, quite young and

pretty, was dabbing at something which seemed to have stained her gown. The

wayward crab leg was floating in a crystal bell of purple liquid directly in

front of her; cause and effect were easy to infer.

The two remaining men were both armed, both standing, and staring up at the

balcony. The younger, a slender youth in bright scarlet promenade dress,

resting his right hand on the grip of his sidearm, seemed about to speak. The

older man turned coldly dangerous eyes from Hamilton to his youthful

companion. "My privilege, Cyril, " he said quietly, "if you please."

The young brave was clearly annoyed and reluctant to comply; nevertheless he

bowed stiffly and sat down. His elder returned the bow punctiliously and

turned back to Hamilton. The lace of his cuff brushed his holster, but he had

not touched his weapon-as yet.

Hamilton leaned over the balcony, both his hands spread and plainly visible on

the rail. "Sir, my clumsiness has disturbed the pleasure of your meal and

invaded your privacy. I am deeply sorry."

"I have your assurance that it was accidental, sir?" The man's eyes were still

frosty, but he made no move to draw. But he did not sit down.

"You have indeed, sir, and with it my humble apology. Will you graciously

permit me to make reparation?"

The other glanced down, not at the youth, but at the girl whose gown had been

splashed. She shrugged. He answered Hamilton, "The thought is taken for the

deed, sir."

"Sir, you leave me indebted."

"Not at all, sir."

They were exchanging bows and were about to resume their seats, when a shouted

remark from the balcony booth directly opposite interrupted them. "Where's

your brassard?"

They both looked toward the source of the disturbance; one of a party of men-

armed citizens all apparently, for no brassards were to be seen-was leaning

out of the booth and staring with deliberate rudeness. Hamilton spoke to the

man at the table below. "My privilege, is it not, sir?"

"Your privilege. I wish you well." He sat down and turned his attention back

to his guests.

"You spoke to me?" asked Hamilton of the man across the ring.

"I did. You were let off lightly. You should eat at home -- if you have a

home. Not in the presence of gentlefolk."

Monroe-Alpha touched Hamilton's arm. "He's drunk, " he whispered. "Take it

easy."

"I know, " his friend answered in a barely audible aside, "but he gives me no

choice."

"Perhaps his friends will take care of him."

"We'll see."

Indeed his friends were attempting to. One of them placed a restraining hand

on his weapon arm, but he shook him off. He was playing to a gallery-the

entire restaurant was quiet now, the diners ostentatiously paying no

attention, a pose contrary to fact. "Answer me!" he demanded.

"I will, " Hamilton stated quietly. "You have been drinking and are not

responsible. Your friends should disarm you and place a brassard on you. Else

some short-tempered gentleman may fail to note that your manners were poured

from a bottle."

There was a stir and a whispered consultation in the party behind the other

man, as if some agreed with Hamilton's estimate of the situation. One of them

spoke urgently to the belligerent one, but he ignored it.

"What's that about my manners, you misplanned mistake?"

"Your manners, " Hamilton stated, "are as thick as your tongue. You are a

disgrace to the gun you wear."

The other man drew too fast, but he drew high, apparently with the intention

of chopping down.

The terrific explosion of the Colt forty-five brought every armed man in the

place to his feet, sidearm clear, eyes wary, ready for action. But the action

was all over. A woman laughed, shortly and shrilly. The sound broke the

tension for everyone. Men relaxed, weapons went back to belts, seats were

resumed with apologetic shrugs. The diners went back to their own affairs with

the careful indifference to other people's business of the urbane

sophisticate.

Hamilton's antagonist was half supported by the arms of his friends. He seemed

utterly surprised and completely sobered. There was a hole in his chemise near

his right shoulder from which a wet dark stain was spreading. One of the men

holding him up waved to Hamilton with his free arm, palm out. Hamilton

acknowledged the capitulation with the same gesture. Someone drew the curtains

of the booth opposite.

Hamilton sank back into the cushions with a relieved sigh. "We lose more crabs

that way, " he observed. "Have some more, Cliff?"

"Thanks, no, " Monroe-Alpha answered. "I'll stick to spoon foods. I hate

interruptions at meals. He might have cooled you."

"And left you to pay the check. Such slug pinching ill becomes you, Cliff."

Monroe-Alpha looked annoyed. "You know it's not that. I have few enough

friends not to wish to lose them in casual brawls. You should have taken a

private room, as I requested." He touched a stud under the railing; the

curtains waved across the arch, shutting them off from the public room.

Hamilton laughed. "A little excitement peps up the appetite."

In the booth opposite the man who had waved capitulation spoke savagely to the

one who had been wounded. "You fool! You clumsy fool! You muffed it."

"I couldn't help it," the injured man protested. "After he waived privilege,

there was nothing to do but play drunk and pretend I meant the other one." He

dabbed futilely at his freely bleeding shoulder, "In the Name of the Egg, what

did he burn me with?"

"No matter."

"Maybe not to you, but it is to me. I'll look him up."

"You will not. One mistake is too many."

"But I thought he was one of us. I thought it was part of the set-up."

"Hummph! Had it been, you would have been told."

After Monroe-Alpha left to keep his date, Hamilton found himself at loose

ends. The night life of the capital offered plenty of opportunity for a man to

divest himself of surplus credit, but it was not new to him. He tried, in a

desultory fashion, to find professional entertainment, then gave up and let

the city itself amuse him. The corridors were thronged as always, the lifts

packed; the Great Square under the port surged with people. Where were they

all going? What was the hurry? What did they expect to find when they got

there?

The presence of some types held obvious explanations. The occasional man with

a brassard was almost certainly out at this hour because his business required

him to be. The same rule applied without exception to the few armed men who

also wore brassards-proclaiming thereby their unique status as police

monitors, armed but immune to attack.

But the others, the armed and richly costumed men and their almost as gaudy

women-why did they stir about so? Why not remain quietly at home with their

wenches? He realized, consciously and sardonically, that he himself was part

of the throng, present because it amused him. He knew he had no reason to feel

that his own sense of detached amusement was unique. Perhaps they all came to

keep from being bored with themselves, to observe their mutual folly and to

laugh.

He found himself, later, the last customer in a small bar. The collection of

empty cups at his elbow was impressive. "Herbert, " he said at last, to the

owner back of the bar, "why do you run this joint?"

Herbert paused in his tidying up. "To make money."

"That's a good answer, Herbert. Money and children -- what other objectives

are there? I've too much of one and none of the other. Set 'em up, Herbert.

Let's drink to your kids."

Herbert set out two cups, but shook his head. "Make it something else. I've no

kids."

"Sorry-none of my business. We'll drink to the kids I haven't got instead."

Herbert poured the drinks, from separate bottles.

"What's that private stock of yours, Herbert? Let me try it."

"You wouldn't like it."

"Why not?"

"Well, to tell the truth, it's flavored water."

"You'd drink a toast in that? Why, Herbert!"

"You don't understand. My kidneys..."

Hamilton looked at him in sharp surprise. His host looked pleased. "You

wouldn't guess, would you? Yes, I'm a natural. But it's my own hair I'm

wearing. And my own teeth...mostly. Keep myself fit. Good a man as the next."

He dumped the liquid from his own cup, and refilled it from the bottle he had

used for Hamilton's drink. "Shucks! One won't hurt me." He raised his drink.

"Long life!"

"And children, " Hamilton added mechanically.

They tossed them down. Herbert filled them up again. "Take children, " he

began. "Any man wants to see his kids do better than he did. Now I've been

married for twenty-five years to the same woman. My wife and I are both First

Truthers and we don't hold with these modern arrangements. But children...we

settled that a long time ago. 'Martha, ' I said to her, 'it don't matter what

the brethren think. What's right is right. Our kids are going to have every

advantage that other kids have. ' And after a while she came around to my way

of thinking. So we went to the Eugenics Board -- "

Hamilton tried to think of a way to stop his confidences.

"I must say that they were very kind and polite. First they told us to think

it over. 'If you practice gene selection, ' they said, 'your children won't

receive the control benefit. ' As if we didn't know that: Money wasn't the

object. We wanted our kids to grow up fine and strong and smarter than we

were. So we insisted and they made a chromosome chart on each of us.

"It was two, three weeks before they called us back. 'Well, Doc, ' I said,

soon as we were inside, "what's the answer? What had we better select for?'

'Are you sure you want to do this?' he says. 'You're both good sound types and

the state needs controls like you. I'm willing to recommend an increase in

benefit, if you'll drop it. ' 'No, ' I said, 'I know my rights. Any citizen,

even a control natural, can practice gene selection if he wants to. ' Then he

let me have it, full charge."

"Well?"

"There wasn't anything to select for in either of us."

"Huh?"

"'S truth. Little things, maybe. We could have arranged to leave out my wife's

hay fever, but that was about all. But as for planning a child that could

compete on even terms with the general run of planned children, it just wasn't

in the cards. The material wasn't there. They had made up an ideal chart of

the best that could be combined from my genes and my wife's and it still

wasn't good enough. It showed a maximum of a little over four percent over me

and my wife in the general rating scale. 'Furthermore, ' he told us, 'you

couldn't plan on that score. We might search your germ plasm throughout your

entire fertile period and never come across two gametes that could be combined

in this combination. ' 'How about mutations?' I asked him. He just shrugged it

off. 'In the first place, ' he said, 'it's damned hard to pick out a mutation

in the gene pattern of a gamete itself. You generally have to wait for the new

characteristic to show up in the adult zygote, then try to locate the

variation in the gene pattern. And you need at least thirty mutations, all at

once, to get the child you want. It's not mathematically possible. '"

"So you gave up the idea of planned children?"

"So we gave up the idea of children period. Martha offered to be host-mother

to any child I could get, but I said 'No, if it ain't for us, it ain't for us.

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ROBERTA.HEINLEINBEYONDTHISHORIZONForCalMickeyandBothJ'sCHAPTERONE"Allofthemshouldhavebeenveryhappy--"THEIRproblemsweresolved:thepoortheynolongerhadwiththem;thesick,thelame,thehalt,andtheblindwerehistoricmemories;theancientcausesofwarnolongerobtained;theyhadmorefreedomthanManhaseverenjoyed.Allofthems...

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Robert A Heinlein - Beyond This Horizon

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