Lazarus stared in horror. "What did you say?"
"I said," Ira Weatheral repeated, "that we need your wisdom, sir. We do."
"I thought that I was off again in one of those before-dying dreams. Son, you've come to the wrong window. Try across the hall."
Weátheral shook his head. "No, sir. Oh, it isn't necessary to use the word 'wisdom' if it offends you. But we do need to learn what you know. You are more than twice as old as the next oldest member of the Families. You mentioned that you have practiced more than fifty professions. You've been everywhere, you've seen far more than anyone else. You've certainly learned more than any of the rest of us. We aren't doing things much better now than we were two thousand years ago, when you were young. You must know why we are still making mistakes our ancestors made. It would be a great loss if you hurried your death without taking time to tell us what you have learned."
Lazarus scowled and bit his lip. "Son, one of the few things I've learned is that humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn-when they do, which isn't often-on their own, the hard way."
"That one statement is worth recording for all time."
"Hmm! No one would learn anything from it; that's what it says. Ira, age does not bring wisdom. Often it merely changes simple stupidity into arrogant conceit. Its only advantage, so far as I have been able to see, is that it spans change. A young person sees the world as a still picture, immutable. An old person has had his nose rubbed in changes and more changes and still more changes so many times that he knows it is a moving picture, forever changing. He may not like is-probably doesn't; I don't-but he knows it's so, and knowing it is the first step in coping with it."
"May I place in open record what you have just said?"
"Huh? That's not wisdom, that's a cliché. An obvious truth. Any fool will admit that, even if he doesn't live by it."
"It would carry greater weight with your name on it, Senior."
"Do as you like; it's just horse sense. But if you think I have gazed upon the naked Face of God, think again. I haven't even begun to find out how the Universe works, much less what it is for. To figure out the basic questions about this World it would be necessary to stand outside and look at it. Not inside. No, not in two thousand years, not in twenty thousand. When a man dies, he may shake loose his local perspective and see the thing as a whole."
"Then you believe in an afterlife?"
"Slow up! I don't 'believe' in anything. I know certain things-little things, not the Nine Billion Names of God-from experience. But I have no beliefs. Belief gets in the way of learning."
"That's what we want, Lazarus: what you have learned. Even though you say it's nothing but 'little things.' May I suggest that anyone who has managed to stay alive as long as you have must necessarily have learned many things, or you could not have lived so long? Most humans die violent deaths. The very fact that we live so much longer than our ancestors did makes this inevitable. Traffic accident, murder, wild animals, sports, pilot error, a slippery bit of mud-eventually something catches up with us. You haven't lived a safe, placid life-quite the contrary!-yet you have managed to outwit all hazards for twenty-three centuries. How? It can't be luck."
"Why can't it be? The most unlikely things do happen, Ira there is nothing so unlikely as a baby. But it's true that I've always watched where I put my feet...and never fought when I could duck out...and when I did have to fight, I always fought dirty. If I had to fight, I wanted him to be dead instead of me. So I tried to arrange it that way. Not luck. Or not much, anyway." Lazarus blinked thoughtfully. "I've never argued with the weather. Once a mob wanted to lynch me. I didn't try to reason with them; I just put a lot of miles between me and them as fast as I could and never went back there."
"That's not in any of your memoirs."
"Lots of things not in my memoirs. Here comes chow."
The door dilated, a dining table for two glided in, positioned itself as the chairs separated for it, and started unfolding to serve. The technicians approached quietly and offered unnecessary personal service. Weatheral said, "Smells good. Do you have any eating rituals?'
"Eh? Praying or such? No."
"Not that sort. Such as- Say one of my executives eats with me: I won't let him discuss business at the table. But if you will permit, I would like to continue this conversation."
"Certainly, why not? As long as we stick to subjects that don't rile the stomach. Did you ever hear what the priest told the old maid?"
Lazarus glanced at the technician at his elbow. "Perhaps not now. I think this shorter one is female and she just might know some English. You were saying?"
"I was saying that your memoirs are incomplete. Even if you are determined to go through with dying, won't you consider granting me and your other descendants the rest of your memoirs? Simply talk, tell us what you've seen and done. Careful analysis might teach us quite a lot. For example, what did happen at that Families Meeting of 2012? The minutes don't tell much."
"Who cares now, Ira? They're all dead. It would be my version without giving them a chance to answer back. Let sleeping dogs bury their own dead. Besides, I told you my memory was playing tricks. I've used Andy Libby's hypno- encyclopedic techniques-and they're good-and also learned tier storage for memory I didn't need every day, with keying words to let a tier cascade when I did need it, like a computer, and I have had my brain washed of useless memories several times in order to clear those file drawers for new data-and still it's no good. Half the time I can't remember where I put the book I was reading the night before, then waste a morning looking for it-before I remember that that book was one I was reading a century ago. Why won't you leave an old man in peace?"
"All you have to do is to tell me to shut up, sir. But I hope you will not. Granted that memory is imperfect, nevertheless you were eyewitness to thousands of things the rest of us are too young to have seen. Oh, I'm not asking you to reel off a formal autobiography covering all your centuries. But you might reminisce about anything you care to talk about. For example, there is no record anywhere of your earliest years. I-and millions of others-would be extremely interested in whatever you remember of your boyhood."
"What is there to remember? I spent my boyhood the way every boy does-trying to keep my elders from finding out what I was up to."
Lazarus wiped his mouth and looked thoughtful. "On the whole I was successful. The few times I was caught and clobbered taught me to be more careful next time-keep my mouth shut more and not make my lies too complicated. Lying is one of the fine arts, Ira, and it seems to be dying out."
"Really? I had not noticed any diminution."
"I mean as a fine art. There are still plenty of clumsy liars, approximately as many as there are mouths. Do you know the two most artistic ways to lie?"
"Perhaps I don't but I would like to learn. Just two?"
"So far as I know. It's not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth-but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it...but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.
"I must have been twelve, thirteen years old before I got that one down pat. Learned it from my maternal Grampaw; I take after him quite a lot. He was a mean old devil. Wouldn't go inside a church or see a doctor-claimed that neither doctors nor preachers know what they pretend to know. At eighty-five he could crack nuts with his teeth and straight-arm a seventy-pound anvil by its horn. I left home about then and never saw him again. But the Families' Records say that he was killed in the Battle of Britain during the bombing of London, which was, some years after."
"I know. He's my ancestor, too, of course, and I'm named for him, Ira Johnson."* (* (1) Ira Johnson was less than eighty at the time the Senior claims (elsewhere) to have left home. Ira Johnson was- himself a Doctor of Medicine. How long he practiced, and whether or not he ever let another Doctor of Medicine attend him,-are not known. J.F.45th
(2) Ira Howard-Ira Johnson-This appears to be a chance coincidence of given names at a time when Biblical names were common. Families' genealogists have been unable to trace any consanguinity. J.F.45th)
"Why, sure enough, that was his name. I just called him 'Gramp.'"
"Lazarus, this is exactly the sort of thing I want to get on record. Ira Johnson is not only your grandfather and my remote grandfather but also is ancestor to many million people here and elsewhere-yet save for the few words you have just told me about him, he has been only a name, a date of birth, and a date of death, nothing more. You've suddenly brought him alive again-a man, a unique human being. Colorful."
Lazarus looked thoughtful. "I never thought of him as 'colorful.' Matter of fact he was an unsavery old coot-not a 'good influence'-for a growing boy by the standards of those times. Mmm, there was something about a young school marm and him in the town my family had lived in, some scandal-'scandal' for those days, I mean-and I think that was why we moved. I never got the straight of it as the grownups wouldn't talk about it in front of me.
"But I did learn a lot from him; he had more time to talk with me-or took more time-than my parents had, Some of it stuck. 'Always cut the cards, Woodie,' he would say. 'You may lose anyhow-but not as often, nor as much. And when you do, lose, smile.' Things like that."
"Can you remember any more of what he said?"
"Huh? After all these years? Of course not. Well, maybe. He had me out south of town teaching me to shoot. I was maybe ten and he was-oh, I don't know; he always seemed ninety years older than God to me.* (* Ira Johnson was seventy when Lazarus Long was ten. J.F. 45th) He pinned up a target, put one in the black to show me it could be done, then handed me the rifle-little .22 single-shot, not good for much but targets and tin cans-'All right, it's loaded; do just what I did; get steady on it, relax and squeeze.' So I did, and all I heard was a click-it didn't fire.
"I said so, and started to open the breech. He slapped my hand away, took the rifle from me with his other hand-then clouted me a good one. 'What did I tell you about hangfires, Woodie? Are you aching to walk around with one eye the rest of your life? Or merely trying to kill yourself? If the latter, I can show you several better ways.'
"Then he said, 'Now watch closely'-and he opened the breech. Empty. So I said, 'But, Gramp, you told me it was loaded.' Shucks, Ira, I saw him load. it-I thought.
"'So I did, Woodie,' he agreed. 'And I lied to you. I went through the motions and palmed the cartridge. Now what did I tell you about loaded guns? Think hard and get it right...or I'll be forced to clout you again to shake up your brains and make 'em work better.'
"I thought fast and got it right; Gramp had a heavy hand. 'Never take anybody's word about whether a gun is loaded.'
"'Correct,' he agreed. 'Remember that all your life-and follow it!-or you won't live long.' *( This anecdote is too obscure to be elaborated here. See Howard Encyclopaedia: Ancient weapons, chemical-explosives firearms.)
"Ira. I did remember that all my life-plus its application to analogous situations after such firearms went out of style and it has indeed kept me alive several times.
"Then he had me load it myself, then said, 'Woodie, I'll bet you half a dollar-do you have half a dollar?' I had considerably more, but I had bet with him before, so I admitted to only a quarter. 'Okay,' he said, 'Make it two-bits; I never let 'a man bet on credit. Two-bits says you can't hit the target, much less stay in the black.'
"Then he pocketed my two-bits and showed me what was wrong with what I had done. By the time he was ready to knock off I had the basics of how to make a gun do what I wanted it to do, and wanted to bet him again. He laughed at me and told me to be thankful the lesson was so cheap. Pass the salt, please."
Weatheral did so. "Lazarus, if I could find a way to entice you into reminiscing about your grandfather-or about anything-I'm certain we could extract from such record endless things you have learned, important things-whether you choose to call them wisdom or not. In the last ten minutes you have stated half a dozen basic truths, or rules for living-call them what you will-apparently without trying."
"Such as?"
"Oh, for example, that most people learn only by experience-"
"Correction. Most people won't learn even by experience, Ira. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
"There's another one. And you 'made a couple of comments on the fine art of lying-three, really, as you also mentioned that a lie should never be too complicated. You said also that belief gets in the way of learning, and something about knowing a situation was the essential first step in coping with it."
"I didn't say that-although I could have said it."
"I generalized something you did say. You said also that you never 'argued with the weather...which I would generalize to mean: Don't indulge in wishful thinking. Or as 'Face up to the facts and act accordingly.' Though I prefer the way you put it; it has more flavor. And 'Always cut the cards.' I haven't played card games in many years, but I took that to mean: Never, neglect any available means of maximizing one's chances in a situation controlled by random events."
"Hmm. Gramp would have said, 'Stow the fancy talk, Sonny.'"
"So we'll put it back into his words: 'Always cut the cards...and smile when you lose.' If indeed that is not your own phrasing and simply attributed to him."
"Oh, his all right. Well, I think it is. Damn it, Ira, after a long time it is hard to tell a real memory from a memory of a memory of a memory of a real memory. That's what happens when you think about the past: You edit it and rearrange it, make it more tolerable-"
"That's another one!"
"Oh, hush up. Son, I don't want to reminisce about the past; it's a sure sign of old age. Babies and young children live in the present, the 'now.' Mature adults tend to live in the future. Only the senile live in the past...and that was the sign that made me realize that I had lived long enough, when I found I was spending more and more time thinking about the past...less of it thinking about now-and not at all about the future."
The old man sighed. "So I knew I had had it. The way to live a long time-oh, a thousand years or more-is something between the way a child does it and the way a mature man does it. Give the future enough thought to be ready for it-but don't worry about it. Live each day as if you were to die next sunrise. Then face each sunrise as a fresh creation and live for it, joyously. And never think about the past. No regrets, ever." Lazarus Long looked sad, then suddenly smiled and repeated, "'No regrets.' More wine, Ira?"
"Half a glass, thank you. Lazarus, if you are determined to die soon-your privilege, certainly!-what harm could there be in remembering the past now...and getting those memories on record for the benefit of your descendants? It would be a much greater legacy than leaving your wealth to us.
Lazarus' eyebrows shot up. "Son, you are beginning to bore me."
"Your pardon, sire. May I have permission to leave?"
"Oh, shut up and sit down. Finish your dinner. You remind me of- Well, there was this man on Novo Brasil who complied with the local custom of serial bigamy but was always careful to see that one of his wives was as utterly homely as the other was startlingly beautiful, so that-Ira, that dingus you have listening to us: Can it be keyed to pick out particular statements and arrange them as a separate memorandum?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Good. There's no point in telling how Ranch Master Silva?-yes, I think 'Silva' was his name, Dom Pedro Silva-how he coped with it when he found himself stuck with two beautiful wives at once, except to note that when a computer makes a mistake, it is even more stupidly stubborn about correcting it than a man is. But if I thought long and hard, I might be able to dig out those 'gems of wisdom' you think I have. Paste diamonds, that is. Then we wouldn't have to load up the machine with dull stories about Dom Pedro and the like. A key word?"
" 'Wisdom'?"
"Go wash out your mouth with soap."
"I will not. You stuck your chin into that one, Senior.
'Common sense'?"
"Son, that phrase is self-contradictory. 'Sense' is never 'common.' Make the keying word 'Notebook'-that's all I have in mind, just a notebook to jot down things I've noticed and which might be important enough to place on record."
"Fine! Shall I amend the programming now?"
"You can do it from here? I don't want' you to interrupt your dinner."
"It's a very flexible machine, Lazarus; the total complex is the one I use to govern this planet-to the mild extent that I do govern it."
"In that case I feel sure you can hang an auxiliary printout in here, one triggered for the keying word. I might want to revise my sparkling gems of wisdom-meaning that extemporaneous remarks sound better when they aren't extemporaneous-or why politicians have ghost writers."
"'Ghost writers'? My command of Classic English is less than perfect; I don't recognize the idiom."
"Ira, don't tell me you write your own speeches."
"But, Lazarus, I don't make speeches. Never. I just give orders, and-very seldom-make written reports to the Trustees."
"Congratulations. You can bet that there are ghost writers on Felicity. Or soon will be."
"I'll have that printout installed at once, sir. Roman alphabet and twentieth-century spelling? If you intend to use the language we've been talking?"
"Unless it would place too much strain on a poor innocent machine. If so, I can read it in phonetics. I think."
"It is a very flexible machine, sir; it taught me to speak this language-and earlier, to read it."
"Good, do it that way. But tell it not to correct my grammar. Human editors are difficult enough; I won't accept such upstart behavior from a machine."
"Yes, sir. If you will excuse me one moment-" The Chairman Pro Tem raised his voice slightly and shifted to the New Rome variant of Lingua Galacta. Then he spoke in the same language to the taller technician.
The auxiliary printout was installed before the table served them coffee.
After it was switched on, it whirred briefly. "What's it doing?" asked Lazarus. "Checking its circuits?"
"No, sir-printing. I tried an experiment. The machine has considerable judgment within the limits of its programs and memoried experience. In adding the extra program I told it also to go back, review everything you have said to me, and attempt to select all statements that sounded like aphorisms. I'm not sure it can do this, as any definition of 'aphorism' it has in its permanents is certain to be quite abstract. But I have hopes. However, I told it firmly: No editing."
"Well. 'The astounding thing about a waltzing bear is not, how gracefully it waltzes but that it waltzes at all.' Not me, some other bloke; I'm quoting. Let's see what it has."
Weatheral gestured; the shorter technician hurried to the machine, pulled a copy for each of them, fetched them back.
Lazarus looked his copy over. "Mmmm...yes. That next one isn't true-just a wisecrack. Must reword the third one little. Hey! It put a question mark after this one. What an impudent piece of junk; I checked that one out centuries before it was anything but unmined ore. Well, at least it didn't try to revise it. Don't recall saying that, 'but it's true and I durned near got killed learning it."
Lazarus looked up from the printout copy. "Okay, 'Son. If you want this stuff on record, I don't mind. As long as I am allowed to check and revise it...for I don't want my words to be taken as Gospel unless I have a chance to winnow out the casual nonsense. Which I am just as capable of voicing as the next man."
"Certainly, sir. Nothing will go into the records without your approval. Unless you choose to use that switch . . in which case any unedited remarks you have left behind I will have to try to edit myself. That's the best I can do."
"Trying to trap me, huh? Hmm- Ira, suppose I offer you a Scheherazade deal in reverse."
"I don't understand."
"Is Scheherazade lost at last? Did Sir Richard Burton live in vain?"
"Oh, no, sir! I have read The Thousand Nights and a Night in the Burton original...and her stories have come down through the centuries, changed again and again to make them understandable to new generations-but with, I think, the flavor retained. I simply do not understand what you are proposing."
"I see. You told me that talking with me is the most important thing you have to do."
"It is."
"I wonder. If you mean that, then you will be here every day to keep me company-and chat. For I'm not going to bother babbling to your machine no matter how smart it is."
"Lazarus, I will be not only honored but much pleased to be allowed to keep you company as long as you will let me."
"We'll see. 'When a man makes a sweeping statement, he often has mental reservations. I mean every day, Son, and all day. And you-not a deputy. Show up two hours after breakfast, say, and stay till I send you home. But any day you miss- Well, if it's so urgent you just have to miss, phone your excuses and send over a pretty girl to visit me. One who speaks Classic English but has sense enough to listen instead-as an old fool will often talk to a pretty girl who just bats her lashes at him and looks impressed. If she pleases me, I might let her stay. Or I might be so petulant that I would send her away and use that switch you promised to have reinstalled. But I won't suicide in the presence of a guest; that's rude. Understand me?"
"I think I do," Ira Weatheral answered slowly. "You'll be both Scheherazade and King Shabryar, and I'll be-no, that's not right; I am the one who has to keep it going for a thousand nights-I mean 'days'-and if I miss-but I won't!- you are free to-"
"Don't push an analogy too far," Lazarus advised. "I'm simply calling your bluff. If my maunderings are as all-fired important to you as you claim, then you'll show up and listen. You can skip once, or even twice, if the girl is pretty enough and knows how to tickle my vanity-of which I have plenty- just right. But if you skip too often, I'll know you're bored and the deal is off. I'm betting that your patience will' wear out long before any thousand days and a day have passed- whereas I do know how to be patient, for year after year if necessary; that's a prime reason I'm still alive. But you're still a youngster; I'm betting I can outsit you."
"I accept the bet. This girl-if I must be away some day- would you object if I sent one of my daughters? She's very pretty."
"Hunh? You sound like an Iskandrian slave factor auctioning his mother. Why your daughter? I don't want to marry her, nor even to bed her; I simply want to be amused and flattered. Who told you she was pretty? If she really is your' daughter, she probably looks like you."
"Come off it, Lazarus; you can't annoy me that easily. I admit to a father's prejudice but I've seen the effect she has on others. She is quite young, less than eighty, and has been contractually married only once. But you specified a pretty girl who speaks your milk language. Scarce. But this one of my daughters shares my talent for languages and is much excited by your presence here-wants to meet you. I can stall off emergencies long enough for her to become letter-perfect in your language."
Lazarus grinned and shrugged. "Suit yourself. Tell her not to bother with a chastity girdle; I don't have the energy. But I'll still win the bet. Probably without laying eyes on her; it won't take you long to decide that I am an unbearable old bore. Which I am and have been almost as long as the Wandering Jew-a crashing bore if I ever met one-did I tell you I had met him?"
"No. And I don't believe you have. He's a myth."
"A fat lot you know about it, Son. I have met him, he is authentic. Fought the Romans in 70 A.D. when Jerusalem was sacked. Fought in every Crusade-incited one of them. Redheaded of course; all of the natural long-lifers bear the mark of Gilgamesh. When I met him he was using the name Sandy Macdougal, that being a better handle for the time and placc for his current trade, which was the long con, with a variant on the badger game.* (* While this passage bears inner contradictions, the idioms are authentic for North America of the twentieth century. They name certain types of financial dishonesty. See "Swindles" under "Fraud" in Krishnamurti's New Golden Bough, Academe Press, New Rome. J.F. 45th) The latter involved- Look, Ira, if you don't believe my stories, why are you going to so much trouble to get them on record?"
"Lazarus, if you think you can bore me to death-correction: to your death-why are you bothering to invent fictions to entertain me? Whatever your reasons, I'll listen as carefully-and as long-as King Shabryar. As may be, my master computer is recording whatever you choose to say-without editing; I guaranteed that-but it has incorporated into it a most subtle truth analyzer quite capable of earmarking any fictions you include. Not that I care about historicity as long as you will talk ... as it is clear to me that you automatically include your evaluations-those 'gems of wisdom'-no matter what you say."
"'Gems of wisdom.' Youngster, use that expression once more and you'll stay after school and clean the blackboards. That computer of yours- Better instruct it that my most outlandish tales are the ones most likely to be true-as that is the literal truth. No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe."
"It knows that. But I will caution it again. You were telling me about Sandy Macdougal, the Wandering Jew."
"Was I? If so and if he was using that name, that must have been late in the twentieth century and in Vancouver, as I recall. Vancouver was a part of the United States where the people were so clever that they never paid taxes to Washington-Sandy should have operated in New York, which was outstanding in stupidity even then. I won't give details of his swindles; it might corrupt your machine. Let it suffice that Sandy used the oldest principle for separating a fool from his money: Pick a sucker who likes the best of it.
"That's all it takes, Ira. If a man is greedy, you can cheat him every time. Trouble was, Sandy Macdougal was even greedier than his marks, and it led him into the folly of excess, and often forced him to leave town while it was dark, sometimes leaving the boodle behind. Ira, when you skin a man, you have to let him recuperate and grow more hide-or he gets nervous. If you respect this simple rule, a real mark can be skinned over and over again, and it just keeps him healthy and productive. But Sandy was too greedy for that; he lacked patience."
"Lazarus, you sound as if you had great experience in this art."
Now Ira-a little respect please I have never swindled a man. At most I kept quiet and let him swindle himself. This does no harm, as a fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
"But I do know a lot about swindles. I think that every major variation of every possible swindle has been tried on me, one time and another.
"Some of them worked back when I was very young. Then I took Grampaw Johnson's advice and quit looking for the best of it; thereafter I could no longer be swindled. But I was not capable of benefiting from Gramp's advice until I was burned a few times. Ira, it's getting late."
The Chairman Pro Tem promptly stood up. "So it is, sir. May I ask two questions before I leave? Not for your memoirs, procedural questions only."
"Make it short and snappy."
"You'll have your termination-option switch tomorrow morning. But, you spoke of not feeling well, and there is no need for that even if you choose to terminate in the near future. Shall we resume the rejuvenation procedures?"
"Hmmm. Second question?"
"I promised to do my best to find something brand-new to interest you. I promised also to spend every day here with you. I see conflict."
Lazarus grinned. "Don't kid your old Grampaw, Son; you'll delegate that research."
"Certainly. But I must plan how to start it, then review progress at intervals, and suggest new avenues to explore."
"Mmm...if I consent to the full course, I'll be out of circulation a day or two every now and then."
"I believe current practice calls for one day of deep rest approximately each week, varied to suit the client's condition. My own experience is about a hundred years back; I understand there have been improvements. You've decided to take it, sir?"
"I'll tell you tomorrow-after that switch is installed. Ira, I don't make decisions in haste that don't call for haste. But if I consent, you'll have free time to use as you see fit. G'night, Ira."
"Good night, Lazarus. I hope you decide to accept it." Weatheral turned toward the door, stopped halfway there, and spoke to the technicians-who left the room at once. The dining table scurried after them. Once the door had shut down Weatheral turned and-faced Lazarus Long. "Grandfather," he said softly, his voice somewhat choked. "Uh-may I?"
Lazarus had let his chair sink back into a reclining couch that held him, hammocklike, as tenderly as a mother's arms. At the younger man's words he raised his head. "Huh? What? Oh! All right, all right, come here-Grandson." He reached out one arm to Weatheral.
The Chairman Pro Tem hurried to him, took Lazarus' hand, dropped to his knees and kissed it.
Lazarus snatched his hand back. "For Pete's sake! Don't kneel to me-don't ever do that. If you want to be my grandson, treat me as such. Not that way."
"Yes, Grandfather." Weatheral got to his feet, leaned over the old man, and kissed his mouth.
Lazarus patted his cheek. "You're a sentimentalist, Grandson. But a good boy. Trouble is, there never has been much demand for good boys. Now get that solemn expression off your face and go home and get a good night's rest."
"Yes, Grandfather. I will. Good night."
"Good night. Now beat it."
Weatheral left quickly. The technicians jumped aside as he came out, then went back into the suite. Weatheral continued on, ignoring people around him but with a softer, gentler expression on his face than was his wont. He went past a bank of transports to the Director's private transport; it opened to his voice, then conveyed him quickly into the bowels of the city and directly to the Executive Palace.
Lazarus looked up as his attendants came back in; he motioned the taller one to him. The technician's voice, filtered and distorted by the helmet, said carefully, "Bed...sir?'
"No, I want-" Lazarus paused, then spoke to the air, "Computer? Can you speak? If not, print it out."
"I hear you, Senior," a mellifluous, contralto voice answered. "Tell this nurse that I want whatever they are allowed to give me for pain. I have work to do."
"Yes, Senior." The disembodied voice shifted to Lingua Galacta, was answered in kind, then went on: "Master Chief Technician on duty wishes to know the nature and location of your pain, and adds that you should not work tonight."
Lazarus kept silent while he counted ten chimpanzees in his mind. Then he said softly, "Damn it, I hurt everywhere. And I don't want advice from a child. I have loose ends to tidy up before I sleep...because one never knows that one will wake up again. Forget the painkiller, it ain't all that important. Tell 'em to get out and stay out."
Lazarus tried to ignore the ensuing exchange, as it annoyed him that he almost-not-quite understood it. He opened the envelope Ira Weatheral had returned to him, then opened out his will-a long bellows-fold of computer printout-and started reading it while whistling off key.
"Senior, Master Chief technician on duty states that you have given a null order, which is a true statement by the Clinic's regulations. A general analgesic is forthcoming."
"Forget it." Lazarus went on reading, and shifted to singing softly the tune he had been whistling:
"There's a pawnshop on the corner
Where I usually keep my overcoat.
"There's a bookie
Behind the pawnshop
Who handles my investments" *
(* This doggerel is attributed to the twentieth century. See appendix for semantic analysis. J.F.45th)
The taller technician appeared at his elbow, carrying a shiny disk with attached tubing. "For...pain."
Lazarus made a brush-off gesture with his free hand. "Go 'way, I'm busy."
The shorter technician appeared on his other side. Lazarus looked that way and said, "What do you want?"
As he turned his head the taller technician moved quickly; Lazarus felt a sting in his forearm. He rubbed the spot and said, "Why, you rapscallion. Foxed me, didn't you? All right, beat it. Raus. Scat!" He dismissed the incident from his mind and returned to work. A moment later he said:
"Computer!"
"Awaiting your orders, Senior."
"Record this for printout. I, Lazarus Long, sometimes known as the Senior and listed in the Howard Families' Genealogies as Woodrow Wilson Smith, born 1912, do declare this to be my last will and testament- Computer, go back through my talk with Ira and dig out what I said I wanted to do to help him lead a migration-got it?"
"Retrieved, Senior."
"Fix up the language and tack it onto my opening statement. And-let me see-add something like this: In the event Ira Weatheral fails to qualify for inheritance, then all my worldly wealth of which I die possessed shall go to, uh, to-to found a home for indigent and superannuated pickpockets, prostitutes, panhandlers, piemen, priggers, and other unworthy poor starting with 'P'. Got it?"
"Recorded, Senior. Please be advised that this alternative has a high probability of being nullified if tested by the current rules of this planet."
Lazarus expressed a rhetorical and physiologically improbable wish. "All right, set it up for stray cats or some other useless but legally acceptable purpose. Search your permanents for such a purpose that will get by the courts. Just be certain that the Trustees can't get their hands on it. Understand?'
"There is no way to be certain of that, Senior, but it will be attempted."
"Look for a loophole. Print that out as fast as you can research it and put it together. Now stand by for a memorandum of my assets. Begin." Lazarus started to read the list, found that his eyes were blurring and would not focus. "Damnation! Those dummies slipped me a Mickey and it's taking hold. Blood! I must have a drop of my own blood to thumbprint it! Tell those dummies to help me and tell them why-and warn them that I will bite my tongue to get it if they won't help me. Now print out my will with any feasible alternative-but hurry!"
"Printout starting," the computer answered quietly, then shifted to Galacta.
The "dummies" did not argue with the computer; they moved fast, one snatching the new sheet out of the auxiliary printout the instant it stopped whirring, the other producing a sterile point out of nowhere and stabbing the ball of Lazarus' left little finger after giving Lazarus a split second to see what was being done.
Lazarus did not wait for blood to be taken by pipette. He squeezed the stabbed finger for a drop, rubbed his right thumb in it, then print-signed his will while the shorter technician held it for him.
Then he sank back. "It's done," he whispered. "Tell Ira." He was heavily asleep at once.
The chair gently transferred Lazarus to his bed while the technicians silently supervised. Then the shorter watched the readouts on respiration, heart action, brain rhythms, and other physicals while the taller placed the documents, old will and new, in an impervolope, sealed it, chopped and thumb-printed the seal, marked it "Surrender only to the Senior and/or Mr. Chairman Pro Tem," then retained it until their reliefs arrived.
The relief chief technician listened to the record of the watch, glanced over the physicals, studied the sleeping client.
"Timed," he stated.
"Neolethe. Thirty-four hours."
He whistled. "Another crisis?"
"Less severe than the last. Pseudopain with irrational irascibility. Physicals within limits for this stage."
"What's in the sealer?"
"Just sign for it and include delivery instructions in your receipt."
"Pardon me for using up oxygen!"
"Your receipt, please."
The relief wrote out a receipt, chopped and thumbed it, swapped it for the impervolope. "I relieve you," he said brusquely.
"Thank you."
The shorter technician was waiting at the door. The Master Chief Technician paused to say, "You needn't have waited. It sometimes takes me three times this long to turn over the watch. You are free to leave as soon as the relief junior watch officer arrives."
"Yes, Master Chief Technician. But this is a very special client-and I thought you might need me with Mr. Snoopy Nose."
"I can cope with him. Yes, a very special client indeed and it speaks well for you that the Skills Board assigned you to me when your predecessor opted out."
"Thank you!"
"Don't thank me, Associate Technician." The voice, although distorted by helmet and relay and filter, sounded gentle even though the words were not. "That was not a compliment but a statement of fact. If you had not done well on your first watch, there would be no second watch-as you say, 'a very special client.' You did well...aside from nervousness a client can feel even though he can't see your face. But you'll get over that."
"Uh...I hope so. I was very nervous!"
"I would rather have an assistant keyed up tight than one who knows it all and is sloppy. But you should be home now and resting. Come along; I'll drop you off. Where do you robe? The intermediate lounge? I go past it."
"Oh, don't bother about me! But I'll ride with you if I may-then take the car back."
"Relax! Once off duty, there are no ranks among us who follow the Vocation. Didn't they teach you that?" They moved past the queue at the public transports, on past the Director's own, stopped at the smaller bank for executives.
"Yes, but-I've never been assigned to anyone of your rank before."
That got a chuckle. "All the more, reason to follow that rule with me-because the higher one is, the more one needs to forget it off duty. Here's an empty car. In you go and sit down."
The shorter one went in but did not sit down until the Master Chief Technician was seated. The boss rejuvenator ignored it, set the controls, sprawled out, and sighed, as the car started to move. "I feel the strain myself. Coming off watch, I feel as old as he is."
"I know. I'm wondering if I can take it. Chief? Why won't they let him terminate? He seems so tired."
The answer was slow and not responsive. "Don't call me 'Chief.' We're off duty."
"But I don't know your name."
"Nor do you need to know it. Hmm- The situation is not quite as it appears to be; he has suicided four times already."
"What?"
"Oh, he doesn't remember it. If you think his memory is bad now, you should have seen him three months ago. Actually, it speeds up our work every time he does it. His switch-when he had it-was gimmicked; it simply made him unconscious, then we would go ahead with whatever stage was next while hypnoing more of his memory tapes into him. But we had to stop that-and remove the switch-a few days ago; he remembered who he is."
"But- That's not by the Canons! 'Death is every man's privilege.'"
The Master Chief Technician touched the emergency control; the car continued on, found a parking pocket, and stopped. "I did not say that it was covered by the Canons. But watch officers do not set policy."
"When I was accepted, I took the oath...and part of it was to 'give life freely to those who wish it...and never refuse death to those who yearn for it.'"
"Don't you think I took the same oath? The Director is so angry that she has gone on leave-she may resign; I wouldn't venture to guess. But the Chairman Pro Tem is not of our Vocation; he is not bound by our oath, and the motto up over the entrance means nothing to him. His motto is-or seems to be-'Every rule has exceptions.' Look, I knew I would have to have this talk with you and I'm pleased that you've given me an opportunity before our next watch. Now I must ask you-do you wish to opt out? It won't affect your record; I'll see to that. Don't worry about a relief; the Senior will still be asleep when I next go on watch and any assistant will do for that watch-which leaves time for the Skills Board to select your replacement."
"Uh- I want to attend him. It's a great privilege, one I never dreamed would come my way. But I'm torn. I don't think he's being treated fairly. And who is more entitled to fair treatment in this than the Senior?"
"I'm torn by it, too. I was shocked silly the first time I realized that I was being ordered to keep alive a man who had terminated voluntarily. Or who had been allowed to think that he was terminating, rather. But, my dear colleague, the choice is not up to us. This job will be done no matter what we think. Once I realized that-well, I am not lacking in professional confidence-call it conceit. I think I am the best-qualified senior watch officer on the list. I decided that, if the Families' Senior was going to have this done to him, I would not opt out and let it be done by colleagues less skilled than I am. Bonuses had nothing to do with it; I've assigned my bonuses to the Sanctuary for Defectives."
"I could do that, couldn't I?"
"Yes, but you would be a fool to do so; I draw far more than you do. But I must add this: I hope your body tolerates stimulants easily because I supervise every major procedure and expect my assistant to help, whether it falls during our regular watch or not."
"I don't need stimulants; I use autohypnosis. When needed. Seldom. He'll be asleep our next watch. Mmm-"
"Colleague, I want your answer now. So that I can notify the Skills Board if necessary."
"Uh- I'll stick! I'll stick as long as you do."
"Good. I thought you would." The Master Chief Technician again reached for the controls. "Intermediate lounge now?"
"Just a moment. I would like to know you better."
"Colleague, if you stick, you'll know me far too well. I have a sharp tongue."
"I meant socially, not professionally."
"Well!"
"You are offended? I've come to admire you without ever having seen you. Now I would like to see you. I'm not trying to curry favor."
"I believe you. Grant me the respect of believing that I studied your psych scores before I accepted the Board's choice. No, I'm not offended; I'm flattered. Dinner together sometime, perhaps?"
"Certainly. But I had more in mind. What would you say to 'Seven Hours of Ecstasy'?"
There was a short pause, which felt long. The Master Chief Technician said, "Colleague, what sex are you?"
"Does it matter?"
"I suppose not. I accept. Now?"
"If it suits you."
"It does. I was simply going to my compartment, read a while, and sleep. Shall we go there?"
"I was thinking of taking you to Elysium."
"No need to. Ecstasy is in the heart. But thank you."
"I can afford it. Uh, I'm not dependent on my salary. I can easily afford the best Elysium has to offer."
"Perhaps another time, dear colleague. But a resident's compartment here in the Clinic is quite comfortable and at least an hour closer not counting the time we would waste getting out of isolation armor and dressed to face the public. We'll go straight to my place. I find I'm eager. Goodness, I haven't chanced this sort of lark in-far too long."
Four minutes later the Master Chief Technician let them into the compartment-large, as promised, and handsome and airy-a "happy" suite. A simulacrum fire blazed merrily in a corner fireplace and cast dancing lights around the lounging room. "You'll find a guests' dressing room through that door, 'fresher beyond it. The chute for disposables is on the left, racks for helmets and isolation gear on the right. Need help?"
"No, thank you, I'm quite limber."
"Well, shout if you need anything. Meet me here in front of the fire in ten minutes, say?"
"Suits."
The Associate Tech came out in only a little over ten minutes, free at last of isolation armor and looking even shorter in bare feet and without helmet. The Master Chief Tech looked up from the hearth rug. "Oh, there you are! You're male! I'm surprised. But pleased."
"And you're female. And I am very pleased. But I don't believe for an instant that you are surprised. You've seen my records."
"No, dear," she denied. "Not your personal dossier, just the brief the Board supplies to a prospective supervisor-and they are meticulously careful to keep name and sex and other irrelevancies out of it; their computer program sees to that. I did not know, and my guess was wrong."
"I didn't try to guess. But I certainly am pleased. I don't know why I have this special liking for tall women. But I do. Stand up and let me look at you."
She squirmed lazily. "What an irrational criterion. All women are the same height-lying down. So come lie down here; it's very comfortable."
"Woman, when I say 'Stand up!' I expect action."
She giggled. "You're an atavism. But pretty." She made a long arm, got him by an ankle, snatched him off balance. He went down. "That's better. Now we're the same height."
She said. "Would you like a middle-of-the-night lunch? Sleepyhead."
He said, "I did doze off, didn't I? I had reason. Yes, I would. What am I being offered?"
"Name it, just name it. If I don't have it, I'll send for it. I'm feeling very-mellow toward you, dear."
"All right, how about ten tall sixteen-year-old redheaded virgins? Girls, I mean."
"Yes, darling. Nothing is too good for my Galahad. Although if you insist on certified virgins, it may take longer. Why this fetish, dear man? Your psych profiles didn't hint at any exotic abnormality."
"Cancel that order and make it one dish of mango ice cream."
"Yes, sir, I'll send for it at once. Or you can have fresh peach ice cream instantly. Tease. I haven't been bothered by that sort of teasing since I was sixteen myself. A long time ago."
"I'll settle for peach. A very long time ago."
"Right away, dearest man. Will you eat it with a spoon, or shall I plaster it on your face? Nor by that sort of teasing. I've had one rejuvenation just as you have had, and I keep my cosmetic age younger than yours."
"A man needs to look mature."
"And a woman prefers to look young; we always have. But I know not only your rejuvenated age, but your calendar age, Galahad-and my calendar age is less than yours. Want to know how I know, dear? I recognized you the instant I saw you. I helped rejuvenate you, darling-and I'm most pleased that I did."
"The devil you say!"
"But I am pleased, dear man. Such a nice bonus, and so unexpected. One so seldom sees a client again. Galahad, do you realize that we did not use any of the routine to insure an ecstatic holiday together? Yet I haven't missed it. I feel younger and happier than I have in years. Still do."
"Me, too. Except that I don't see any peach ice cream.
"Pig. Beast. Brute. I'm bigger than you are; I'll trip you and fall on you. How many scoops, dear?"
"Oh, just pile it in until your arm gets tired; I need to restore my strength."
He followed her into the pantry, served them both with heaping dishes of ice cream. "Just a precaution," he said, "so I won't get it plastered in my face."
"Oh, tut, now! You don't really think I would do that to my Galahad."
"You're a very erratic female, Ishtar. I have bruises to prove it."
"Nonsense! I was gentle."
"You don't know your own strength. And you are bigger than I am, as you noted. Instead of 'Ishtar' I should have named you for that-what was her name? Queen of the Amazons in Old Home mythology."
"'Hippolyta,' dear. But I can't qualify as an Amazon, for reasons you were flattering about...in an infantile way."
"Complaints, huh? Over in Surgery they could correct your disqualification in ten minutes and never leave a scar. Never mind, 'Ishtar' fits you better. But there is something unfair about this."
"How, dear? Let's take this in and eat in front of the fire."
"Suits. Like this, Ishtar. You tell me I was your client and that you recall both my ages, so by masterly logic I deduce that you know my registered name and Family, and you may even remember some of my genealogy since you must have studied it for my rejuvenation. But by the customs of 'Seven Hours' I am precluded from even trying to learn your registered name. I have to tag you in my mind as 'that tall blond Master Chief Technician who-'"
"I still have enough ice cream to plaster you!"
"-permitted me to call her "Ishtar" for the happiest seven hours of my life.' Which are almost over and I don't know that you will let me take you to Elysium someday."
"Galahad, you are the most exasperating sweetheart I've ever had. Of course you can take me to Elysium. And you don't have to go home at the end of seven hours. And my registered name is Ishtar. But if you ever mention my rank other than when necessary, on duty, you'll have real bruises to remember me by. Big ones."
"Bully. I'm scared. I do think I should leave on time, so that you can get your quota of sleep before we're due back on watch. But what's this about your name really being 'Ishtar'? Did I roll five aces when we named each other?"
"Yes and no."
"Is that an answer?"
"I had one of the standard Family names of my lineage- and never liked it. But I was delighted and flattered by the pillow name you gave me. So while you were napping, I called Archives and changed my name. I'm 'Ishtar' now."
He stared at her. "Is that true?"
"Don't look frightened, dear. I won't trap you, I won't even bruise you. I'm not domestic, not at all. You would be shocked if you knew how long it has been since a man was last in this compartment. You are free to leave whenever you wish; you committed yourself to me for only seven hours. But you need not leave. You and I are skipping tomorrow's watch."
"We are? Why...Ishtar?"
"I made another call and bucked a supernumerary team into that watch. Should have done so sooner, but you had me bemused, dear. The Senior won't need us tomorrow; he's in deep sleep and won't know that he has missed a, day. But I want to be there when he wakes, so I rearranged the watch list for the following day, too, and we may stay on watch all day; depends on the shape he's in. That is, I may. I don't insist that you do a double or triple watch."
"I can take it if you can. Ishtar? That professional rank you forbade me to mention- You're actually even higher rank than that. Aren't you?"
"If I am-I am not affirming it-I forbid you even to speculate about it. If you wish to stay assigned to this client,"
"Whew! You do have a sharp tongue. Did I deserve that?"
"Dear Galahad! I'm sorry. When you are on watch, dear, I want you to think only about our client, not about me. Off watch I am Ishtar and don't wish to be anything else. This is the most important case we will ever be on. It may go on a long time and be very tiring. So let's not be edgy with each other. I was trying to say that you-both of us-now have more than thirty hours before we must be back on duty. You are welcome here as many of those hours as you wish. Or leave as soon as you wish and I will smile and not complain."
"I don't want to leave, I said so. As long as I don't keep you from your sleep-"
"You won't."
"-and allow an hour to pick up a fresh pack of disposables, robe in, and go through decontam. I wish I had fetched a pack, but I hadn't planned on this."
"Oh. We'll make that an hour and a half. My phone had a message waiting in it. The Senior does not like the way we look in isolation gear; he wants to be able to see anyone around him. So we must plan time to go through body decontam instead, then attend him in ordinary clothes."
"Uh...Ishtar, is this wise? We might sneeze on him."
"Do you think I set this policy? Dear, this message was straight from the Palace. Besides that, females are specifically ordered to look as pretty and be as attractively dressed as possible-so I must think about what I can wear that can go through sterilization. Nudity is not acceptable; that was specified, too. But don't worry about sneezing. Have you never taken full body decontamination? When that crew gets through with you, you can't sneeze; no matter how much you need to. But don't tell the Senior that you've had decontam; the assumption is that we simply walk in off the street-no special precautions."
"How can I tell him when I don't speak his language? Does he have some fetish against nudity?"
"I don't know, I am just conveying the order, one that went out to everyone on the watch list."
He looked thoughtful. "It's probably not a fetish. All fetishes are contra-survival, that's elementary. You told me that the principal problem was to break him out of his apathy. You were pleased that he was bad-tempered, even though you said it was a hyperreaction."
"Certainly I was pleased; it showed that he was responding. Galahad, never mind that now; I don't have a thing to wear, you'll have to help me."
"I'm talking about what you should wear. I think it was the Chairman Pro Tem's idea, not the Senior's."
"Dear man, I don't try to read his mind; I just carry out his orders. I don't have any taste in clothes, never did have. Do you think a lab assistant's coverall would be suitable? It will take sterilization and never show it-and I look quite neat in one."
"I am trying to read the mind of the Chairman Pro Tem, Ishtar-guess his intentions, at least. No, I don't think a lab uniform would do; you would not look as if you had 'simply walked in off the street.' If we stipulate that a fetish syndrome is not involved, then the only advantage of clothing over nudity in this situation is to lend variety. Contrast. Change. Help shake him loose from that apathy."
She stared at him with thoughtful interest. "Galahad, up to now, based on my own experience, I've always thought that a man's only interest in a woman's clothes was to get them off her. I may have to put you in for promotion."
"I'm not ready to be promoted; I've been in the Vocation less than ten years. As I'm sure you know. Let's take a look at your wardrobe."
"What are you going to wear, dear?"
"Doesn't matter what I wear; the Senior is male and all the stories and myths about him indicate that he has remained canalized by the primitive culture he was born in. Not sensually polymorphous."
"How can you be sure? Myths, dear."
"Ishtar, all myths tell the truth if you know how to read them. I'm guessing, but it is a reasoned guess, as this is something I used to be somewhat expert in. Until I was rejuvenated-until you rejuvenated me-then I went into something more active."
"What, dear?"
"Some other time. I was simply saying that I don't think it matters what I wear. A chiton. Shorts and singlet. Kilt. Even the underwear I had on under isolation gear. Oh, I'll wear lively colors and something different each watch-but he won't look at me, he'll look at you. So let's pick out something he would like to see you in."
"How will you know, Galahad?"
"Very simple. I'll choose something I would like to see a long-legged beautiful blonde wear."
He was surprised to see how little Ishtar had in her wardrobe. In all his varied experience with women she was the only one he could remember who seemed to lack the vanity needed to buy unnecessary clothes. As he searched, mind preoccupied, he hummed and then sang a snatch of doggerel.
Ishtar said, "You speak his milk language!"
"Eh? What? Whose? The Senior's? I certainly don't. But I must learn it, I suppose."
"But you were singing in it. A little song he always sings when he's busy with something."
"You mean this? 'Therza poolyawl...Bytha paunshot-' I have a phonographic ear, that's all; I don't understand the words. What do they mean?"
"I'm not sure they mean anything. Most of them are not in the vocabulary I've learned so far. I suspect that it is just amphigoric rhythm, a self-tranquilizer. Semantically null."
"On the other hand, it might be a key to understanding him. Have you tried asking a computer?" -
"Galahad, I haven't been given access to the computer that records what goes on in his suite. But I doubt if anyone can understand him, in depth. He's a primitive, dear-a living fossil."
"I would certainly like to try to understand him. This language he uses- Is it difficult?"
"Very. Irrational, complicated syntax, and so loaded with idioms and multivalues that I trip even on words I think I know. I wish I had your recording ear."
"The Chairman Pro Tem seemed to have no difficulty."
"I think he has a special talent for languages. But if you want to try, dear, I have the instructional programs here."
"Accepted! What is this? A party dress?"
"That? That's not clothing. I bought it as a throw cover for a couch-then got it home and saw that it did not fit my lounging room."
"It's a dress. Stand there and hold still."
"Don't tickle!"
Affairs of State
Despite what I told the Senior, my ancestor Grandfather Lazarus, I work hard in governing Secundus. But only in thinking about policy and in judging the work of others. I don't do donkey work; I leave that to professional administrators. Even so, the problems of a planet with more than a billion people can keep a man busy, especially if his intention is to govern as little as possible-as that means he must keep a sharp eye out and his ear tuned for signs that subordinates are doing unnecessary governing. Half my time is used in the negative work of plucking such officious officials and ordering that they never again serve in any public capacity.
Then I usually abolish their jobs, and all jobs subordinate to them.
I have never noticed any harm from such pruning save that parasites whose jobs are eliminated must find some other way to avoid starvation. (They are welcome to starve-better if they do. But they don't.)
The important thing is to spot these malignant growths and remove them while they are small. The more skill a Chairman Pro Tem acquires in this, the more emerging ones he finds, which keeps him busier than ever. Anyone can see a forest fire; skill lies in sniffing the first smoke.
This leaves me too little time for my prime work: thinking about policy. The purpose of my government is never to do good, but simply to refrain from doing evil. This sounds simple but is not. For example, although prevention of armed revolution is obviously part of my main duty, i.e., to keep order, I began to have doubts about the wisdom of transporting potential revolutionary leaders years before Grandfather Lazarus called my attention to it. But the symptom that roused my worry was so null that it took ten years for me to notice it:
During those ten years there was not one attempt to assassinate me.
By the time Lazarus Long returned to Secundus for the purpose of dying this disturbing symptom had continued twenty years.
This was ominous, and I realized it. A population of one billion-plus so contented, so uniform, so smug that not one determined assassin shows up in a double decade is seriously ill no matter how healthy it looks. In the ten years that elapsed after I noticed this lack I worried about it every hour I could spare-and found myself asking myself over and over again: What would Lazarus Long do?
I knew in broad outline what he had done-and that was why I decided to migrate-either lead my people off planet or go alone if none would follow. (In rereading this, it sounds as if I sought to be assassinated in some mystic The King Must Die sense. Not at all! I am surrounded at all times by powerful and subtle safeguards the nature of which I will not divulge. But there is no harm in mentioning three negative precautions; my facial appearance is not known to the public, I almost never appear in public anyhow, and when I do, it is never announced. The job of ruler is dangerous-or should be-but I don't intend to die from it. The "disturbing symptom" was not that I am alive but that there are no dead assassins. No one seems to hate me enough to try. Frightening. Where have I failed them?)
When the Howard Clinic notified me that the Senior was awake (with a reminder that only one "night" had passed for him) I was not only awake but had completed necessary work and bucked the rest; I went at once to the Clinic. After they decontaminated me I found him dawdling over coffee, having just finished breakfast.
He glanced up and grinned. "Hi, Ira!"
"Good morning, Grandfather." I went to him ready to offer a respectful salutation such as he had permitted when I bade him goodnight the night "before"-but watching for signs that say Yes, or No, before the mouth speaks. Even among the Families there is wide variety in such customs-and Lazarus is, as always, a law unto himself. So I closed the last of the gap with great deliberation.
He answered me by drawing back so slightly that it would have been unnoticeable had I not been alert for it. He added a gentle warning: "Strangers present, Son."
I stopped at once. "At least I think they are strangers," he added. "I've been trying to get acquainted, but all we share is some pidgin speech plus a lot of handwaving. But it's nice to have people around instead of those zombies-we get along. Hey, dear! Come here, that's a good girl."
He motioned to one of his rejuvenation technicians-two on watch, as usual, and this morning, one was female, one was male. I was pleased to see that my order that females should "dress attractively" had been carried out. This woman was a blonde, graceful and not unattractive if one likes tallness in a female. (I don't dislike it, but there is something to be said for one small enough to fit on one's lap-not that I've had much time for that lately.)
She glided forward and waited, smiling. She was dressed in a something-women's styles don't stay the same long enough for me to keep track, and this was a period when every woman in New Rome seemed to be trying to dress differently from every other woman. Whatever it was, it was an iridescent blue that set off her eyes and fitted her closely where it covered her at all; the effect was pleasing.
"Ira, this is Ishtar-did I get your name right that time, dear?"
"Yes, Senior."
"And that young man over there is, believe it or not, 'Galahad.' Know any legends of Earth, Ira? If he knew its idiomatic meaning, he would change it-the perfect knight who never got any. But I've been trying to remember why Ishtar's face is so familiar. Dear, was I ever married to you? Ask her for me, Ira; she may not have understood."
"No, Senior. Not never. Is certain."
"She understood you," I said.
"Well, it could have been her grandmother-a lively wench, Ira. Tried to kill me, so I left her."
The Chief Master Technician spoke briefly in Galacta. I said, "Lazarus, she says that, while she has never had the honor of being married to you, contractually or informally, she is quite willing if you are."
"Well! A saucy one-it must have been her grandmother. Eight, nine hundred years back, more or less-I lose track of half centuries-and on this planet. Ask her if, uh, Arid Barstow is her grandmother."
The technician looked very pleased and broke into rapid Galacta. I listened and said, "She says that Ariel Barstow is her great-great-great-grandmother and she is joyed to hear you acknowledge the connection as that is the lineage by which she is descended from you...and that she would be supremely honored, both for herself and on behalf of her siblings and cousins, if you would converge the lineage again, with or without contract After your rejuvenation is completed, she adds-she is not trying to rush you. How about it, Lazarus? If she has used up her reproduction quota, I would be happy to grant her an exception so that she would not have to migrate."
"The hell she ain't trying to rush me. And so are you. But she put it politely, so let's give it a polite answer. Tell her that I'm honored and her name goes into the hat-but don't tell her I'm shipping out on Thursday. 'Don't call us, we'll call you' in other words-but make her happy about it; she's a nice kid."
I revised the message diplomatically; Ishtar beamed, curtsied, and backed away. Lazarus said, "Drag up a rock, Son, and sit a while." He lowered his voice and added, "Between ourselves, Ira, I'm pretty sure Ariel slipped one in on me. But with another of my descendants, so this kid is descended from me anyhow, though maybe not as directly. Not that it matters. What are you doing up so early? I said you could have two hours after breakfast to yourself."
"I'm an early riser, Lazarus. Is it true that you have decided on the full course? She seems to think so."
Lazarus looked pained. "It's probably the simplest answer-but how do I know I'll get my own balls back?"
"Gonads from your clone are your own, Lazarus; that's basic to the theory."
"Well...we'll see. Early rising is a vice, Ira; it'll stunt your growth and' shorten your days. Speaking of such-" Lazarus glanced up at the wall. "Thanks for having that switch reinstalled. I don't feel tempted by it this fine morning, but a man does like to have a choice. Galahad, coffee for the Chairman and fetch me that plastic envelope." Grandfather Lazarus supplemented his order with gestures, but I think the tech understood his words. Or was somewhat telepathic; rejuvenators are quite empathic-need to be. The man moved at once to comply.
He handed Lazarus an impervolope and poured coffee for me-which I did not want but will drink anything protocol requires. Lazarus went on, "Here's my new will, Ira. Read it and file it somewhere and tell your computer. I've already approved the way she worded it and read it back into her and told her to place it in her permanents with a 'bind' on it-it 'ud take a Philadelphia lawyer to diddle you out of your inheritance now-though no doubt one could."
He waved the male tech aside. "No more coffee, lad- thanks. Go sit down. You go sit, too, dear. Ishtar. Ira, what are these young people? Nurses? Orderlies? Servants? Or what? They hover over me like a hen with one chick. I've never cared for more service than I need. Just sociability. Human company."
I could not answer without inquiring. Not only is it unnecessary for me to know how the Rejuvenation Clinic is organized, but also it is private enterprise, not under the Trustees-and my intervention in the case of the Senior was much resented by its Director. So I interfered as little as possible-as long as my orders were carried out.
I spoke to the female tech, in Galacta: "What is your professional designation, ma'am? The Senior wants to know. He says that you have been behaving like a servant."
She answered quietly, "It is our pleasure to serve him in any way we can, sir"-then hesitated and went on: "I am Administrator Master Chief Rejuvenation Technician Ishtar Hardy, Deputy Director for Rejuvenation Procedures, and my assistant watch officer is Associate Technician Galahad Jones."
Having been rejuvenated twice and used to the idea all my life, it does not surprise me when cosmetic age does not match calendar age. But I admit to surprise at learning that this young woman was not just a technician but boss of her department- probably number three in the entire Clinic. Or possibly number two while the Director was away sulking in her tent- damn her duty-struck stiff neck. Or even Director Pro Tem with her deputy, or some department head, bucked into minding the store." "So?" I answered. "May I ask your calendar age, Madam Administrator?"
"Mr. Chairman Pro Tem may ask anything. I am only one hundred forty-seven years old-but I am qualified; this has been my only career since first maturity."
"I did not imply doubt of your qualifications, madam, but I am astonished to see you standing a watch rather than sitting at a desk. Although I confess I don't know how the Clinic is-organized."
She smiled slightly. "Sir, I could express a similar feeling at your own personal interest in this case...were it not that I think I understand it. I am here because I choose not to delegate the responsibility; he is the Senior. I have screened all watch officers assigned to him-the best we have to offer."
I should have known it. "We understand each other." I added, "I am pleased. But may I make a suggestion? Our Senior is independent by temperament and highly individualistic. He wants a minimum of personal service-only that which he must have."
"Have we been annoying him, sir? Too solicitous? I can watch and listen from outside the door and still be here instantly if he wants something."
"Possibly too solicitous. But stay in sight. He does want human companionship."
"What's all this yack-yack?" demanded Lazarus.
"I had to ask questions, Grandfather, as I don't know the organization of the Clinic. Ishtar is not a servant; she is a rejuvenator and a highly skilled one-and so is her assistant. But they are happy to supply any service you want."
"I don't need flunkies; I'm feeling pretty good today. If I want anything, I'll shout; they don't need to hang over me, hand and foot." Then he grinned. "But she's a cute little trick, in the large, economy size; it's a pleasure to have her around. Moves like a cat-no bones, just flows. She does indeed remind me of Ariel-did I tell you why Ariel tried to kill me?"
"No. I would like to hear if you want to tell me."
"Mmm- Ask me when Ishtar isn't around-I think she knows more English than she lets on. But I did promise to talk if you showed up to listen. What would you like to hear?"
"Anything, Lazarus. Scheherazade picked her own subjects."
"So she did. But I don't have one on tap."
"Well...you said as I came in that 'early rising is a vice.' Did you mean that seriously?"
"Maybe. Gramp Johnson claimed it was. He used to tell a story about a man who was condemned to be shot at sunrise- but overslept and missed it. His sentence was commuted that day, and he lived another forty, fifty years. Said it proved his point."
"Do you think that's a true story?"
"As true as any of Scheherazade's. I took it to mean 'Sleep whenever you can; you may have to stay awake a long time.' Early rising may not be a vice, Ira, but it is certainly no virtue. The old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed. I can't stand people who are smug about how early they get up."
"I didn't mean to sound smug, Grandfather. I get up early from long habit-the habit of work. But I don't say it's a virtue."
"Which? Work? Or early rising? Neither is a virtue. But getting up early does not get more work done...any more than you can make a piece of string longer by cutting off one end and tying it onto the other. You get less work done if you persist in getting up yawning and still tired. You aren't sharp and make mistakes and have to do it over. That sort of busy-busy is wasteful. As well as unpleasant. And annoying to those who would sleep late if their neighbors weren't so noisily active at some ungodly cow-milking hour. Ira, progress doesn't come from early risers-progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things."
"You make me feel that I've wasted four centuries."
"Perhaps you have, Son, if you've spent it getting up early and working hard. But it's not too late to change your ways. Don't fret about it; I've wasted most of my long life-though perhaps more pleasantly. Would you like to hear a story about a man who made 'laziness a fine art? His life exemplified the Principle of Least Effort. A true story."
"Certainly. But I don't insist on its being true."
"Oh, I won't let truth hamper me, Ira; I'm a solipsist at heart. Hear then, O Mighty King,
The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail
He was a schoolmate of mine in a school for training naval officers. Not space navy; this was before the human race had even reached Earth's one satellite. This was wet navy, ships that floated in water and attempted to sink each other, often with regrettable success. I got mixed up in this through being too young to realize emotionally that, if my ship sank, I probably would sink, too-but this is not my story, but David Lamb's.* (* There is no record that the Senior ever attended a school for militaro-naval officers, or any military school. On the other hand, there is no proof that he did not. This story may be autobiographical to whatever extent it is true; "David Lamb" may be one more of the many names used by Wood-row Wilson Smith.
The details are consistent with Old Home's history so far as we know it. The Senior's first century coincides with that century of continuous war which preceded the Great Collapse- a century of much scientific progress paralleled by retrogression in social matters. Waterborne and airborne ships were used for fighting throughout this century. See appendix for idioms and technicalities. J.F. 45th)
To explain David I must go back to his childhood. He was a hillbilly, which means he came from an area uncivilized even by the loose standards of those days-and Dave came from so far back in the hills that the hoot owls trod the chickens.
His education was in a one-room country school and ended at thirteen. He enjoyed it, for every hour in school was a hour sitting down doing nothing harder than reading. Before and after school he had to do chores on his family's farm, which he hated, as they were what was known as "honest work"-meaning hard, dirty, inefficient, and ill-paid-and also involved getting up early, which he hated even worse.
Graduation was a grim day for him; it meant that he now did "honest work" all day long instead of spending a restful six or seven hours in school. One hot day he spent fifteen hours plowing behind a mule...and the longer he stared at the south end of that mule, breathing dust it kicked up and wiping the sweat of honest toil out of his eyes, the more he hated it.
That night he left home informally, walked fifteen miles to town, slept across the door of the post office until the postmistress opened up next morning, and enlisted in the Navy. He aged two years during the night, from fifteen to seventeen, which made him old enough to enlist.
A boy often ages rapidly when he leaves home. The fact was not noticeable; birth registrations were unheard of at that time and place, and David was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, well-muscled, handsome, and mature in appearance, save for a wild look around the eyes.
The Navy suited David. They gave him shoes and new clothes, and let him ride around on the water, seeing strange and interesting places-untroubled by mules and the dust of cornfields. They did expect him to work, though not as much, or as hard, as working a hill farm-and once he figured out the political setup aboard ship he became adept at not doing much work while still being satisfactory to the local gods, namely, chief petty officers.
But it was not totally satisfactory as he still had to get up early and often had to stand night watches and sometimes scrub decks and perform other tasks unsuited to his sensitive temperament.
Then he heard about this school for officer candidates- "midshipmen" as they were known. Not that David cared what they were called; the point was that the Navy would pay him to sit down and read books-his notion of heaven-untroubled by decks to scrub and by petty officers. 0 King, am I boring you? No?
Very well- David was ill prepared for this school, never having had four to five years' additional schooling considered necessary to enter it-mathematics, what passed for science, history, languages, literature, and so forth.
Pretending to four years or so of schooling he did not have was more difficult than tacking two years on the age of an overgrown boy. But the Navy wished to encourage enlisted men to become officers, so it had established a tutoring school to aid candidates slightly deficient in academic preparation.
David construed "slightly deficient" to mean his own state; he told his chief petty officer that he had "just missed" graduating from high school-which was true in a way; he had "just missed" by half a county, that being the distance from his home to the nearest high school.
I don't know how David induced his See-Pee-Oh to recommend him; David never discussed this.
Suffice to say that, when David's ship steamed for the Mediterranean, David was dropped at Hampton Roads six weeks before the tutoring school convened. He was a supernumerary during that time.. The Personnel Officer (in fact, his clerk) assigned David to a bunk and a mess, and told him to stay out of sight during working hours in the empty classrooms where his fellow hopefuls would meet six weeks later. David did so; the classrooms had in them the books used in tutoring in academic subjects a candidate might lack-and David lacked them all. He stayed out of sight and sat down and read.
That's all it took.
When the class convened, David helped tutor in Euclidean geometry, a required subject and perhaps the most difficult. Three months later he was sworn in as a naval cadet on the beautiful banks of the Hudson River at West Point.
David did not realize that he had jumped from the frying pan into the fire; the sadism of petty officers is a mild hit-or-miss thing compared with the calculated horrors visited on new cadets-"plebes"-by cadets of the senior classes, especially by the seniormost, the first classmen, who were walking delegates of Lucifer in that organized hell.
But David had three months to find this out and to figure out what to do, that being the time upper classes were on the briny, practicing warfare. As he saw it, if he could last nine months of these hazards, all the kingdoms of the Earth would be his. So he said to himself, if a cow or a countess can sweat out nine months, so can I.
He arranged the hazards in his mind in terms of what must be endured, what could be avoided, and what he should actively seek. By the time the lords of creation returned to stomp on the plebes he had a policy for each typical situation and was prepared to cope with it under doctrine, varying doctrines only enough to meet variations in situation rather than coping hastily on an improvised basis.
Ira-"O King," I mean-this is more important to surviving in tough situations than it sounds. For example, Gramp- David's Grampaw, that is-warned him never to sit with his back to door. "Son," he said to him, "might be nine hundred and ninety-nine times you'd get away with it-no enemy of your'n would come through that door. But the thousandth time-that's the one. If my own Grampaw had always obeyed that rule, he might be alive today and still jumping out bedroom windows. He knew better, but he missed just once, through being too anxious to sit in on a poker game, and thereby took the one chair open, one with its back to a door. And it got him.
"He was up out of his chair and emptied three shots from each of his guns into his assailant before he dropped; we don't die easy. But 'twas only a moral victory; he was essentially dead, with a bullet in his heart, before he got out of that chair. All from sitting with his back to an open door."
Ira, I've never forgotten Gramp's words-and don't you forget 'em.
So David categorized the hazards and prepared his doctrines. One thing that had to be endured was endless questioning, and he learned that a plebe was never permitted to answer, "I don't know, sir," to any upper classman, especially a first classman. But the questions ordinarily fell into categories- history of the school, history of the Navy, famous naval sayings, names of team captains and star players of various athletic sports, how many seconds till graduation, what's the menu for dinner. These did not bother him; they could be memorized-save the number of seconds remaining till graduation, and he worked out shortcuts for that, ones that stood him in good stead in later years.
"What sort of shortcuts, Lazarus?"
Eh? Nothing fancy. A precalculated figure for reveille each morning, a supplementary figure for each hour thereafter, such as: five hours after six o'clock reveille subtracts eighteen thousand seconds from the base figure, and twelve minutes later than that takes off another seven hundred and twenty seconds. For example at noon formation one hundred days before graduation, say at exactly twelve-oh-one and thirteen seconds, figuring graduation at ten. A.M. which was standard, David could answer, "Eight million, six hundred and thirty-two thousand, seven hundred and twenty-seven seconds, sir!" almost as fast as his squad leader could ask him, simply from having precalculated most of it.
At any other time of day he would look at his watch and pretend to wait for the second hand to reach a mark while in fact performing subtractions in his head.
But he improved on this; he invented a decimal clock-not the one you use here on Secundus, but a variation on Earth's clumsy twenty-four-hour day, sixty-minute hour, sixty-second minute system then in vogue. He split the time for reveille to taps into intervals and subintervals of ten thousand seconds, a thousand seconds, a hundred seconds, and memorized a conversion table.
You see the advantage. For anyone but Andy Libby, God rest his innocent soul, subtracting ten thousand, or one thousand, from a long string of digits up in the millions is easier to do in your head, quickly and without error, than it is to subtract seven thousand, two hundred, and seventy-three-the figure to be subtracted in the example, I just gave. David's new method did not involve carrying auxiliary figures. in the mind while searching for the ultimate answer.
For example, ten thousand seconds after reveille is eight forty-six forty A.M. Once David worked out his conversion table and memorized it-took him less than a day; just memorizing was easy for him-once he had that down pat, he could, convert to the hundred-second interval coming up next almost instantly, then add (not subtract) two digits representing the time still to go to the last two places in his rough answer to get his exact answer. Since the last two places were always zeroes-check it yourself-he could give an answer in millions of seconds as fast as he could speak the figures, and have it right every time.
Since he didn't explain his method, he got a reputation for being a lightning calculator, an idiot-savant talent, like Libby. He was not; he was simply a country boy who used his head on a simple problem. But his squad leader got so groused at him for being a "smart ass"-meaning that the squad leader couldn't do it-that he ordered Dave to memorize the logarithm tables. This didn't faze Dave; he didn't mind anything but "honest work." He set out to do so, twenty new ones each day, that being the number this first classman thought would suffice to show up this "smart ass."
The first classman grew tired of the matter when David had completed only the first six hundred figures-but Dave kept at it another three weeks through the first thousand-which gave him the first ten thousand figures by interpolation and made him independent of log tables, a skill that was of enormous use to him from then on, computers being effectively unknown in those days.
But the unceasing barrage of questions did not bother 'David save for the possibility of starving to death at meal times- and he learned to shovel it in fast while sitting rigidly at attention and still answer all questions flung at him. Some were trick questions, such as, "Mister, are you 'a virgin?" Either way a plebe answered he was in trouble-if he gave a straight answer. In those days some importance was placed on virginity or the lack of it; I can't say why.
But trick questions called for trick answers; Dave found that an acceptable answer to that one was: "Yes, sir-in my left ear." Or possibly his belly button.
But most trick questions were intended to trap a plebe into giving a meek answer-and meekness was a mortal sin. Say a first classman said, "Mister, would you say I was handsome?"-an acceptable answer would be, "Perhaps your mother would say so, sir-but not me." Or "Sir, you are the handsomest man I ever saw who was intended to be an ape."
Such answers were chancy-they might flick a first classman on the raw-but they were safer than meek answers. But no matter how carefully a plebe tried to meet impossible standards, about once a week some first clansman would decide that he needed punishment-arbitrary punishment without trial: This could run from mild, such as exercises repeated to physical collapse-which David disliked as they reminded him of "honest work"-up to paddling on the buttocks. This may strike you as nothing much, Ira, but I'm not speaking' of paddling children sometimes receive. These beatings were delivered with the flat of a sword or with a worn-out broom that amounted to a long, heavy club. Three blows delivered by a grown man in perfect health would leave the victim's bottom a mass of purple bruises and blood blisters, accompanied by excruciating pain.
David tried hard to avoid incidents likely to result in this calculated torture, but there was no way to avoid them entirely, short of quitting, as some first classmen awarded such blows through sheer sadism. David gritted his teeth and accepted them when he had to, judging-correctly-that he would be run out of school if he defied the supreme authority of a first clansman. So he thought about the south end of that mule and endured it.
There was a much greater hazard to his personal safety and future prospects of a life free from "honest work." The mystique of military service included the idea that a prospective officer must excel in athletic sports. Do not, ask why; it was no more subject to rational explanation than is any other branch of theology.
Plebes in particular had to-no choice!-go out for "sports." Two hours each day which were nominally free David could not spend napping or dreaming in the quiet of the school's library, but must perforce spend in sweaty exercise.
Worse still, some "sports" were not only excessively energetic but also involved hazards to David's favorite skin. "Boxing"-this is a long forgotten, utterly useless, stylized mock combat in which two men batter each other for a preset period or until one is beaten unconscious. "La Crosse"-this is a mock battle taken over from the savages who had formerly inhabited that continent. In it mobs of men fought with clubs. There was a hard missile with which points were scored-but it was the prospect of being sliced open or having bones broken with these clubs that aroused our hero's distaste.
There was a thing called "water polo" in which opposing swimmers attempted to drown each other. David avoided that one by not swimming more than well enough to stay in school-a required skill. He was an excellent swimmer, having learned at the age of seven through being chucked into a creek by two older cousins-but he concealed his skill.
The sport with highest prestige was a thing called "foot ball"-and first classmen sized up each new group of victims for candidates who might be expected to excel, or learn to excel, in this organized mayhem. David had never seen it-but now he saw it and it filled his peaceful soul with horror.
As well it might. It involved two gangs of eleven men facing each other on a field and trying to move an ellipsoid bladder down the field against the opposition of the other gang. There were rituals and an esoteric terminology, but that was the idea.
It sounds harmless and rather foolish. Foolish it was, harmless it was not-as the rituals permitted the opposing gang to attack a man attempting to move the bladder in a variety of violent ways, the least of which was to grab him and cause him to hit the ground like a ton of brick. Often three or four bit him at once, and sometimes inflicted indignities and mayhems not permitted by the rituals but concealed by' the pile of bodies.
Death was not supposed to result from this activity but sometimes did. Injuries short of death were commonplace.
Unfortunately David had the ideal physique for success in this "feet ball"-height, weight, eyesight, fleetness of foot, speed of reflex. He was certain to be spotted by the first classmen on their return from mock sea battles and "volunteered" as a sacrificial victim.
It was time for evasive action.
The only possible way to avoid "foot ball" was to be acceptably occupied with some other sport. He found one.
Ira, do you know what "swordsmanship" is? Good-I can speak freely. This was a time in Earth's history when the sword had ceased to be a weapon-after having been prominent for more than four millennia. But swords still existed in fossil form and retained a shadow of their ancient prestige. A gentleman was presumed to know how to use a sword and- "Lazarus, what is a 'gentleman'?"
What? Don't interrupt, boy; you confuse me. A "gentleman" is, uh-Well, now let me see. A general definition- My, you can think up some hard ones. Some said it was an accident of birth-that being a disparaging way of saying it was a trait genetically inherited. But that doesn't say what the trait is. A gentleman was supposed to prefer being a dead lion to being a live jackal. Me, I've always preferred to be a live lion, so that puts me outside the rules. Mmm...you could say in all seriousness that the quality tagged by that name represents the slow emergence in human culture of an ethic higher than simple self-interest-damn slow in emerging in my opinion; you still can't rely on it in a crunch.
As may be, military officers were presumed to be gentlemen and wore swords. Even fliers wore swords, although Allah alone could guess why.
These cadets were not only presumed to be gentlemen; there was a national law which stated that they were gentlemen. So they were taught a bare minimum about how to handle a sword, just enough to keep them from slicing their fingers or stabbing bystanders-not enough to fight with them, just to keep them from looking too silly when protocol required them to wear swords.
But swordsmanship was a recognized sport, called "fencing." It had none of the prestige of football, or boxing, or even water polo-but it was on the list; a plebe could sign up for it.
David spotted this as a way out. Under a simple physical law, if he was up in the fencing loft,then he was not down on the football field, with sadistic gorillas in hobnailed boots jumping up and down on him. Long before the upper clansmen returned to school Plebe Cadet Lamb had established himself as a member of the fencing squad, with a record of never missing a day, and was trying hard to look like a "good prospect" for the team.
At that time and place three forms of fencing were taught: saber, dueling sword, and foil: The first two used full-sized weapons. True, edges were dulled and points were bated; nevertheless a man could get hurt with them-even fatally, though that was very rare. But the foil was a lightweight toy, a 'fake sword with a limber blade that bent at the slightest pressure. The stylized imitation swordplay that used the foil was about as dangerous as tiddlywinks. This was the "weapon" David selected.
It was made for him. The highly artificial rules of foil fencing gave great advantage to fast reflexes and a sharp brain, both of which he had. Some exertion was necessary-but not much compared with football, lacrosse, or even tennis. Best 'of all, it required no body-against-body pounding that David found so distasteful in the rough games he was avoiding. David applied himself single-mindedly to acquiring skill so that his haven would be secure.
So diligent was he in protecting his sanctuary that, before his plebe year was over, he was National Novice Foil Champion. This caused his squad leader to smile at him, an expression that hurt his face. His cadet company commander noticed him for the first time and congratulated him.
Success with the foil even got him out of some "punishment" 'beatings. One Friday evening, when he was about to be beaten for some imaginary dereliction, David said, "Sir, if it's the same to you, I'd rather have twice as many swats on Sunday-because tomorrow we're fencing the Princeton plebe team and, if you do the job I know you can do, it might slow me up tomorrow."
The first clansman was impressed by this because having the Navy win, at any time and for any purpose and in anything, took precedence by Sacred Law over anything else, even the righteous pleasure of beating a "smart ass" plebe. He answered, ""Tell you what, mister. Report to my room after supper on Sunday. If you lose tomorrow, you get a double dose of the medicine you've got coming to you. But if you win, we'll cancel it."
David won all three of his matches.
Fencing got him through his perilous plebe year with his precious skin unmarked save for scars on his bottom. He was safe now, with three easy years ahead of him, for only a plebe was subject to physical punishment, only a plebe could be ordered to take part in organized mayhem....
(Omitted)
One body-contact sport David loved, one of ancient popularity, which he had learned back in those hills he had fled from. But it was played with girls and was not officially recognized at this school. There were harsh rules against it, and .a cadet caught practicing it was kicked out without mercy.
But David, like all true geniuses, paid only pragmatic attention to rules made by other people-he obeyed the Eleventh Commandment and never got caught. While other cadets sought the empty prestige of sneaking girls into the barracks or went over the wall at night in search of girls, David kept his activities quiet. Only those who knew him well knew how industriously he pursued this one body-contact sport. And no one knew him well.
Eh? Female cadets? Didn't I make that plain, Ira? Not only were there no girl cadets, there was not one girl in that Navy-except a few nurses. Most particularly there were no girls at that school; there were guards night and day to keep them away from the cadets.
Don't ask me why. It was Navy policy and therefore did not have a reason. In truth there was no job in that entire Navy which could not have been performed by either sex or even by eunuchs-but by long tradition that Navy was exclusively male.
Come to think about it, a few years later that tradition was questioned-a little at first, then by the end of that century, shortly before the Collapse, that Navy had females at all levels. I am not suggesting that this change was a cause of the Collapse. There were obvious causes of the Collapse, causes I won't go into now. This change either was a null factor or possibly postponed the inevitable by a minor amount.
Either way, it doesn't figure into the Tale of the Lazy Man. When David was in school, cadets were supposed to encounter females but seldom, and only under highly stylized circumstances, rigidly bound protocol, and heavily chaperoned.* (* From the noun "chaperon." This word 'has two meanings,: (1) A person charged with preventing sexual contacts' between males and females not licensed for such contacts; (2) a person superficially performing such disservice while, in fact acting as a benign lookout. It appears that the Senior uses the word here in its first meaning rather than in its antithetical second méaaning. See appendix. J.F.45th)
Instead of fighting the rules, David looked for loopholes and made use of them-he was never caught.
Every impossible rule has its loopholes; every general prohibition creates its bootleggers. The Navy as a whole created its impossible rules; the Navy as individuals violated them, especially its curious rules about sex-a publicly monastic life on duty, a slightly veiled life of unlimited voluptuousness off duty. At sea, even harmless reliefs from sexual tension were treated most harshly when detected-although such technical violations of the mores were expected and condoned less than a century earlier. But this Navy was only a little more hypocritical in its sexual behavior than was the social matrix in which it was imbedded, more excessive in its outlets only to the degree that its public rules were more sternly impossible than those of that society as a whole. The public sexual code of that time was unbelievable, Ira; the violations of it simply mirrored in reverse its fantastic requirements. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction-if you'll excuse the obvious.
I did not intend to discuss this other than to say that David found ways to get along with the school's regulations about sex without going completely off his nut, as too many of his classmates did. I'll add only this-and this is merely rumor: Through a mischance all too easy then although unheard of today, a young woman became pregnant, presumably by David. In those days-believe me!-this was a major disaster.
Why? Just stipulate that it was a disaster; it would take forever to explain' that society and no civilized human would believe it. Cadets were forbidden to marry, the young woman had to get married under the rules current then, intervention to correct this mischance was almost unobtainable and physically very dangerous for her.
What David did about it illustrates his whole approach to life. When faced with a choice of evils, accept the least hazardous and cope with it, unblinkingly. He married her.
How he managed to do this and not get caught, I do not know. I can think of a number of ways, some simple and fairly foolproof, some complex and thereby subject to breakdown; I assume that David selected the simplest.
It changed the situation from impossible to manageable. It converted the girl's father from an enemy, all too likely to go to the Commandant of the school with the story and thereby force David to resign when he had but a few months more to reach his goal, into an ally and fellow conspirator anxious to keep the marriage secret so that his son-in-law could graduate and take his wayward daughter off his hands.
As a side benefit David no longer needed to give planning to the pursuit of his favorite sport. He spent his time off in unworried domesticity, with perfect chaperonage.* (* Context implies second meaning. J.F.45th)
As for the rest of David's career in school, one may assume that a lad who could substitute six weeks of unsupervised reading for four years of formal schooling could also stand first in his class academically. This would pay off in money and rank as a young officer's place on the promotion list was determined by his standing at graduation.
But the competition for first place is sharp indeed, and- worse-makes the cadet who achieves it conspicuous. David became aware of this when he was a fresh-caught plebe. "Mister, are you a savoir?" that is to say: "academically brainy"-was another trick question; a plebe was damned whether he answered Yes or No.
But standing second-or even tenth-was practically as useful as first place. David noticed something else: The fourth year counted four times as much as the first, the next to the last year three times as much, and so on down-that is, a plebe's marks did not affect his final standing much-only one part in ten.
David decided to maintain a "low profile"-always the smart decision when one is likely to be shot at.
He finished the first half of his plebe year a little above midway in his class-safe, respectable, inconspicuous. He ended his plebe year in' the upper quarter-but by that time the first classmen were thinking only of graduation and paid no attention to his status. His second year he moved to the upper 10 percent; his third year he improved that by a few numbers-and his last year, when it counted most, he went all out and finished with a final standing for four years of sixth-but effectively second, for of those higher in ranking two elected to leave the line of command for specialization, one was not commissioned because he had damaged his eyes by studying too hard, and one resigned after he graduated.
But the care with which David managed his class standing does not show his true talent for laziness-after all, sitting down and reading was his second, favorite pastime, and anything which merely called for excellent memory and logical reasoning was 'no effort to him.
During the mock-warfare cruise that opened David's last year of school a group of his classmates were discussing what cadet ranks each would receive. By then, they knew pretty well which ones would be selected as cadet officers. Jake is certain to be cadet corps commander-unless he falls overboard. Who gets his battalion? Steve? Or Stinky?
Someone suggested that Dave was in line for that battalion. Dave had been listening instead of talking, a 'standard feature of his "low profile"-and very nearly a third way to lie, Ira, and easier than its equivalent-talking while saying nothing-and also tends to give the nontalker a reputation for wisdom. Never cared for it myself-talking is the second of the three real pleasures in life and the only thing that sets us apart from the apes. Though just barely.
Now David broke-or appeared to break-his habitual reserve. "No battalion for me," he said. "No indeedy! I'm going to be regimental adjutant and stand out in front where the girls can see me."
Perhaps his remark wasn't taken seriously-regimental adjutant is lower than battalion commander. But it was certain to be repeated, and David knew it, perhaps by the prospective cadet regimental commander to commissioned officers making the selections for cadet officers.
No matter- David was chosen regimental adjutant.
In any military organization of that time, a regimental adjutant did stand out in front, all alone, where female visitors could hardly avoid seeing him. But one may doubt that this figured into Dave's plans.
The regimental adjutant attends no formations other than full regimental formations. He goes to and from classes alone, instead of marching or being marched. Other first classmen are responsible each for some unit of cadets, be it squad, platoon, company, battalion, or regiment; the regimental adjutant has no such responsibilities and only one minor administrative task; he keeps the watch list for the most senior of the cadet officers.
But he is not on that watch list himself. Instead he is supernumerary who fills in when one of them is ill.
And this was the lazy man's prize. Those cadet officers were perfect specimens and the chances that one would be too ill to take his day's duty ranged from negligible to zero.
For three years our hero had been standing watch about every tenth day. These watches weren't difficult, but they involved either getting to bed a half hour late or getting up a half hour early, and much standing on tired feet, all an affront to Dave's tender regard for his comfort.
But his last year David stood only three watches, and he "stood" those sitting down, as "Junior Officer of the Watch."
At last the Day arrived. David graduated, was commissioned-then went to the chapel and remarried his wife. If her belly bulged a little, that was not unusual in brides even in those days, and was always ignored, and condoned once a young couple married. It was widely known though rarely mentioned that an eager young bride could accomplish in seven months or less what takes nine for cow or countess.
Dave was safely past all rocks and shoals; he need never again fear going back to that mule and "honest work."
But life as a junior officer in a warship turned out to be less than perfect. It had good points-servants, a comfortable bed, easy work that rarely got David's hands dirty, and twice as much money. But he needed that and more, to support a wife, and his ship was at sea enough that he often lacked the pleasant compensations of marriage. Worst of all, he stood heel-and-toe watches on a short watch list; this meant a four-hour night watch about every other night standing up. He was sleepy much of the time and his feet hurt.
So David applied for training as an aeronaut. This Navy had recently grasped an idea called "air power" and was trying to grab as much of it as possible in order to keep it out of the wrong hands-the Army's hands, that is. They were behind as the Army had grabbed first-so volunteers for flying were welcome.
David was quickly ordered to shore duty to see if he had the makings of an aeronaut.
He had indeed! He not only had the mental and physical qualities but also was highly motivated-as his new work was done sitting down, whether in classroom or in the air, and he stood no night watches and received pay-and-a-half for sitting down and sleeping at home; flying was classed as "hazardous duty" and extra pay was awarded.
I had best say something about these aeroplanes since they resemble not at all the aerodynes you are used to. In a way they were hazardous. So is breathing. They were not as hazardous as the automotive ground vehicles then in use, and not nearly as hazardous as being a pedestrian. Accidents, fatal and otherwise, usually could be traced to a mistake on the part of the aeronaut-David never let that sort of accident happen to him. He had no wish to be the hottest pilot in the sky; he merely wanted to be the oldest.
Aeroplanes were weird monstrosities looking like nothing in the sky today, save possibly a child's kite-they were often called "kites." They had two wings, one above the other, and the aeronaut sat between them. A small baffle helped to deflect wind from his face. Don't look surprised; these flimsy structures flew very slowly, pulled through the air by a powered screw.
Wings were made of varnished cloth held rigid by struts- you can see from this alone that their speeds could never be any large fraction of the speed of sound-except on sad occasions when an overly eager pilot would dive straight down, then pull the wings off through trying too abruptly to recover a normal attitude.
Which David never did. Some people are natural fliers. The first time David examined an aeroplane he understood its strengths and weaknesses as thoroughly as he understood the milking stool he had left behind him.
He learned-to fly almost as quickly as he had learned to swim.
His instructor said, "Dave, you're a natural. I'm going to recommend you for fighter training."
Fighter pilots were the royalty of aeroplane fliers; they went up, and engaged enemy pilots in single combat. A fighter who did this successfully five times-killed the opposing pilot instead of being killed-was called an "Ace," which was a high honor, for, as you can see, the average chance of doing this is the fifth power of one-half, or one in thirty-two. Whereas the chance of getting killed instead is the complement, close to certainty.
Dave thanked his mentor while his skin crawled and his brain went whir-click as it considered ways to avoid this honor without giving up pay-and-a-half and the comfort of sitting down.
There were other disadvantages to being a fighter pilot besides the prime hazard of getting your ass shot off by some stranger. Fighter pilots flew in one-man kites and did their own navigation-without computers, homing devices, or anything that would be taken for granted today-or even later that century. The method used was called "dead reckoning," because, if you didn't reckon it correctly, you were dead-since Navy flying was done over water, from a small floating aerodrome, with a margin of safety in fuel for a fighter plane of only minutes. Add to this the fact that a fighter pilot in combat had to choose between doing navigation or giving single-minded attention to attempting to kill a stranger before that stranger killed him. If he' wanted to be an "Ace"-or even eat dinner that night-he must put first things first and worry about navigation later.
In addition to the chance of being lost at sea and drowned in a kite that was out of gas-did I say how these things were powered? The airscrew was driven by an engine powered by a chemical exothermic reaction-oxidation of a hydrocarbon fluid called "gas," which it was not. If you think this unlikely, I assure you that it was unlikely even then. The method was woefully inefficient. A flier was not only likely to run out of gas with nothing around him but ocean, but also this temperamental engine often coughed and quit. Embarrassing. Sometimes fatal.
The lesser drawbacks to being a fighter pilot were not all physical danger; they simply did not fit David's master plan. Fighter pilots were assigned to floating aerodromes, or carriers. In peacetime, which this nominally was, a flier did not work too hard nor stand many watches and spent much of his time ashore at a land aerodrome even though he was carried on the muster rolls of a carrier ship-thereby credited with sea duty, necessary for promotion and pay.
But for several weeks each year a flier assigned to a carrier ship would actually be at sea, practicing mock warfare- which involved getting up an hour before dawn to warm those cantankerous engines and stand by ready to fly at the first hint of real or simulated danger.
David hated this-he would not willingly attend Judgment Day if it was held before noon.
There was another drawback: landing on these floating aerodromes. On land, David could land on a dime and give back change. But that depended on his own skill, highly developed because his own skin was at stake. But landing on a carrier depended on another pilot's skill-and David held a dark opinion of entrusting his skin to the skill, good intentions, and alertness of someone else.
Ira, this is so unlike anything you are likely to have seen in your life that I am at loss. Consider your skyport here at New Rome: In landing, a ship is controlled from the ground- right? So it was with aeroplanes landing on carriers-but the analogy breaks down because a landing on a carrier in those days used no instruments. None. I'm not fooling.
It was done by eye alone, just as a boy in a game of catch snatches a ball out of the air-but David was the ball, and the skill used to catch him was not his own but that of a pilot standing on the carrier. David had to suppress his own skill, his own opinions, and place utter faith in the pilot on the carrier-anything less brought disaster.
David had always followed his own opinion-against the whole world if necessary. To place that much faith in another man ran counter to his deepest emotions. A carrier landing was like baring his belly to a surgeon and saying, "Go ahead and cut"-when he was not sure that surgeon was competent to slice ham. Carrier landing came closer to causing David to give up pay-and-a-half and easy hours than any other aspect of flying, so torn was he by the necessity of accepting another pilot's decision-and one not even sharing his danger, at that!
It took all his willpower to do it the first time, and it never became easy. But he learned one lesson that he never expected to learn-that is, that there were circumstances in which another man's opinion was not only better than his own, but incomparably better.
You see-no, perhaps you don't; I have not explained the circumstances. An aeroplane landed on a carrier in a controlled crash, through a hook in its tail catching a wire rope stretched across the top deck. But if the flier follows his own judgment based on experience in landing on a flying field, he is certain to crash into the stern of the ship-or, if he knows this and tries to allow for it, he will fly too high and miss the rope.
Instead of a big flat field and plenty of room for minor mistakes, he has only a tiny "window" which he must hit precisely, neither right nor left, nor up nor down, nor too fast nor too slow. But he can't see what he is doing well enough to judge these variables correctly.
(Later on, the process was made semiautomatic, then automatic, but when it was finally perfected, carriers for aeroplanes were obsolete-a capsule description of most human "progress": By the time you learn how, it's too late.)
(But it often turns out that what you have learned applies to some new problem. Or we would still be swinging from trees.)
So the flier in the aeroplane must trust a pilot on deck who can see what is going on. He was called "the landing signal officer" and used wigwag flags to signal orders to the aeroplane's pilot.
The first time David tried this unlikely stunt he chased around the sky three times for fresh approaches before, he controlled his panic, quit trying to override the judgment of the LSO, and was allowed to land.
Only then did he discover how scared he was-his bladder cut loose.
That evening he was awarded a fancy certificate: the Royal Order of the Wet Diaper-signed by the LSO, endorsed by his squadron commander, witnessed by his squadron mates. It was a low point in his life, worse than any his plebe year, and it was little consolation that the order was awarded so frequently that certificates were kept ready and waiting for each new group of still-damp fliers.
From then on he was letter-perfect in following orders of landing signal officers, obeying like a robot, emotions and judgment suppressed by a sort of autohypnosis. When it came time to qualify in night landings-much worse on the nerves as the pilot in the air couldn't see anything but lighted wands the ISO waves instead of flags-David landed perfectly on his first approach.
David kept his mouth shut about his determination not to seek glory as a fighter pilot until he completed all requirements to make permanent his flying 'status. Then he put in a request for advanced training-in multiple-engine aircraft. This was embarrassing, as his instructor who thought so well of his potential was now his squadron commander and it was necessary to submit this request through him. Once the letter started through the mill, he was called to his boss's stateroom.
"Dave, what is this?"
"Just what it says, sir. I want to learn to fly the big ones."
"Are you out of your head? You're a fighter pilot. Three months of this scouting squadron-one-quarter, so I can give you a good Fitness Report-and you do indeed leave for advanced training., As a fighter."
David didn't answer.
His squadron commander persisted. "Dave, are you fretting over that silly 'Diaper Diploma'? Half the pilots in the fleet have won it. Hell, man, I've got one myself. It didn't hurt you with your shipmates; it just made you look human when you were beginning to suffer from too tight a halo."
David still did not comment.
"Damn it, don't just stand there! Take this letter and tear it up. Then submit one for fighter training. I'll let you go now, instead of waiting three months."
Dave stood mute. His boss looked at him and turned red, then said softly, "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you don't have what it takes to be a fighter-Mister Lamb. That's all. Dismissed."
In the "big ones," the multiple-engine flying boats, David at last found his home. They were too big to fly from a carrier at sea; instead duty with them counted as sea duty, although in fact David almost always slept at home-his own bed, his own wife-save for an occasional night as duty officer when he slept at the base, and still less frequent occasions when the big boats flew at night. But they did not fly too often even in daylight and fine weather; they were expensive to fly, too expensive to risk, and the country was going through an economy wave. They flew with full crews-four or five for two-engine boats, more for four-engine boats, and often with passengers to permit people to get flying time to qualify for that extra pay. All of this suited Dave-no more nonsense of trying to navigate while doing sixteen other things, no more relying on the judgment of a landing signal officer, no more depending on just one neurotic engine, no more worries about running out of, gas. True, given a choice, he would always make every landing himself-but when he was ranked out of this by a senior pilot, he did not let his worry show and in time ceased to worry, as all big-boat pilots were careful and disposed to live a long time.
(Omitted)
-years David spent comfortably while being promoted two ranks.
Then war broke out. There were always wars that century-but not always everywhere. This one included practically every nation on Earth. David took a dim view of war; in his opinion the purpose of a navy was to appear so fierce as to make it unnecessary to fight. But he was not asked, and it was too late to worry, too late to resign, nor was there anywhere to run. So he did not worry about what he could' not help, which was good, as the war was long, bitter, and involved millions of deaths.
'"Grandfather Lazarus, what did you do during this war?" Me? I sold Liberty Bonds and made four-minute speeches and served both on a draft board and a rationing board and made other valuable contributions-until the President called me to Washington, and what I did then was hush-hush and you wouldn't believe it if I told you. None of your lip, boy; I was telling you what David did.
Ol' David was an authentic hero. He was cited for gallantry and awarded a decoration, one that figures into the rest of his story.
Dave had resigned himself to-or looked forward to, as may be-retiring at the rank of lieutenant commander, as there weren't many billets higher than that in the flying boats. But the war jumped him to lieutenant commander in a matter of weeks, then to commander a year later, and finally to captain, four wide gold stripes, without facing a selection board, taking a promotion examination, or commanding a vessel. The war was using them up fast, and anyone not killed was promoted as long as he kept his nose clean.
Dave's nose was clean. He spent part of the war patrolling his country's coasts for enemy underwater vessels-"combat duty" by definition but hardly more dangerous than peacetime practice. He also spent a tour turning clerks and salesmen into fliers. He had one assignment into a zone where actual fighting was going on, and there he won his medal. I don't know the details, but "heroism" often consists in keeping your head in an emergency and doing the best you can with what you have instead of panicking and being shot in the tail. People who fight this way win more battles than do intentional heroes; a glory hound often throws away the lives of his mates as well as his own.
But to be officially a hero requires luck, too. It is not enough to do your job under fire exceptionally well; it is necessary that someone-as senior as possible-see what you do and write it up. Dave had that bit of luck and got his medal.
He finished the war in his nation's capital, in the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics, in charge of development of patrol planes. Perhaps he did more good there than he did in combat, since he knew those multiple-engine craft as well as any man alive, and this job put him in position to cut out obsolete nonsense and push through some improvements. As may be, he finished the war at a desk, shuffling papers and sleeping at home.
Then the war ended.
Dave looked around and sized up the prospects. There were hundreds of Navy captains who, like himself, had been lieutenants only three years earlier. Since the peace was "forever," as, politicians always insist, few would ever be promoted. Dave could see that he would not be promoted; he had neither the seniority, the traditionally approved pattern of service, nor the right connections, political and social.
What he did have was almost twenty years' service, the minimum on which to retire at half pay or he could hang on until he was forced to retire through failure to be selected for admiral.
There was no need to decide at once; twenty-year retirement was a year or two off.
But he did retire almost at once-for medical reasons. The diagnosis was "psychosis situational," meaning that he went crazy on the job.
Ira, I don't know how to evaluate this. Dave impressed me as one of the few completely sane men I ever knew. But I wasn't there when he retired and "psychosis situational" was the second commonest cause for medical retirement of naval officers in those days but-how could they tell? Being crazy was no handicap to a naval officer, any more than it was to an author, a schoolteacher, a preacher, or several other esteemed occupations. As long as Dave showed up on time and signed paper work some clerk prepared and never talked back to his seniors, it would never show. I recall one naval officer who had an amazing collection of ladies' garters; he used to lock himself into his stateroom and examine them-and another one who did exactly the same with a collection of paper stickers used for postage. Which one was crazy? Or both? Or neither?
Another aspect of Dave's retirement requires knowledge of the laws of the time. Retiring on twenty years' service paid half pay-subject to income tax which was heavy. Retiring for medical disability paid three-quarters pay and was not subject to income tax.
I don't know, I just don't know. But the whole matter fits Dave's talent for maximum results with minimum effort. Let's stipulate that he was crazy-but was he crazy like a fox?
There were other features of his retirement. He judged correctly that he had no chance of being selected for admiral-but that citation for gallantry carried with it an honorary promotion on retirement-so Dave wound up the first man in his class to become admiral, without ever commanding a ship much less a fleet-one of the youngest admirals in history, by his true age. I conjecture that this amused the farm boy who hated to plow behind a mule.
For at heart he was still a farm boy. There was another law for the benefit of veterans of that war, one intended to compensate lads who had had their educations interrupted by having to leave home to fight: subsidized education, one month for every month of wartime service.
This was intended for young conscripts, but there was nothing to keep a career officer from taking advantage of it; Dave could claim it and did. With three-quarters pay not subject to taxation, with the subsidy-also not taxable-of a married veteran going to school, Dave had about the income he had had on active duty. More, really, as he no longer had to buy pretty uniforms or keep up expensive social obligations. He could loaf and read books, dress as he pleased, and not worry about appearances. Sometimes he would stay up late and prove that there were more optimists playing poker than mathematicians. Then sleep late. For he never, never got up early.
Nor did he ever again go up in an aeroplane. Dave had never trusted flying machines; they were much too high in case they stalled. They had never been anything to him but a means to avoid something worse; once they had served his purpose, he put them aside as firmly as he had put aside fencing foils-and with no regrets in either case.
Soon he had another diploma, one which stated that he was a Bachelor of Science in agronomy-a "scientific" farmer.
This certificate, with the special preference extended to veterans, could have obtained him a civil service job, telling other people how to farm. Instead, he took some of the money that had piled up in the bank while he loafed in school and went way back into those hills he had left a quarter of a century earlier-and bought a farm. That is, he made a down payment, with mortgage on the balance through a government loan at a-subsidized, of course-very low rate of interest.
Did he work the farm? Let's not be silly; Dave never took his hands out of his pockets. He made one crop with hired labor while he negotiated still another deal.
Ira, the completion of Dave's grand plan involves one factor so unbelievable that I must ask you to take it on faith-it is too much to ask any rational man to understand it.
At that pause between wars, Earth held over two billion people-at least half on the verge of starvation. Nevertheless-and here is where I must ask you to believe that I was there and would not lie to you-despite this shortage of food which never got better other than temporarily and locally in all the years that followed, and could not, for reasons we need, not go into-in spite of this disastrous shortage, the government of David's country paid farmers not to grow food.
Don't shake your head; the ways of God and government and girls are all mysterious, and it is not given to mortal man to understand them. Never mind that you yourself are a government; go home tonight and think about it-ask yourself if you know why you do what you do-and come back tomorrow and tell me.
As may be- David never made but one crop. The following year his acreage was "soil-banked," and he received a fat check for not working it, which suited him just fine. Dave loved those' hills, he had always been homesick for them; he had left them simply to avoid work. Now he was being paid not to work in them-which suited him; he had never thought that their charms were enhanced by plowing and getting them all dusty.
The "soil bank" payments took care of the 'mortgage, and his retired pay left a tidy sum over, so he hired a man to do those chores a farm requires even though it is not being worked for a crop-feed the chickens, milk a cow or two, tend a vegetable garden and' some fruit trees, repair fences- while the hired man's wife helped David's wife with the house. For himself, David bought a hammock.
But David was not a harsh employer. He suspected that cows did not want to be waked at five in the morning any more than he did-and he undertook to find out.
He learned that cows would happily change their circadian to more reasonable hours, given the chance. They had to be milked twice a day; they were bred for that. But nine o'clock, in 'the morning suited them for a first milking quite as well as five, as long as it was regular.
But it did not stay that way; Dave's hired man had the nervous habit of work. To him there was something sinful in milking a cow that late. So David let him have his way, and hired man and cows went back to their old habits.
As for Dave, he strung that hammock between two shade trees and put a table by it to hold a frosty drink. He would get up in the morning when he woke, whether it was nine or noon, eat breakfast, then walk slowly to his hammock to rest up for lunch. The hardest work he did was endorsing checks for deposit, and, once a month, balancing his wife's checkbook. He quit wearing shoes.
He did not take a newspaper or listen to radio; he figured that the Navy would let him know if another war broke out-and another did break out about the time he started this routine. But the Navy had no need for retired admirals. Dave paid little attention to that war, it was depressing. Instead, he read everything the state library had on ancient Greece and bought books about it. It was a soothing subject, one he had always wanted to know more about.
Each year, on Navy Day, he got all spruced up and dressed as an admiral, with all his medals, from the Good Conduct medal of an enlisted man to the one for bravery under fire that had made him an admiral-let his hired man drive him to the county seat and there addressed a luncheon of the Chamber of Commerce on some patriotic subject. Ira, I don't know why he did this. Perhaps it was noblesse oblige.
Or it may have been his odd sense of humor. But each year they invited him, each year he accepted. His neighbors were proud of him; he was the epitome of Local Boy Makes Good-then comes home and lives as his neighbors lived. His success brought credit to them all. They liked it that he was still just "home folks"-and if they noticed that he never did a lick of work, nobody mentioned it.
I've skipped lightly over Dave's career, Ira, had to. I haven t mentioned the automatic pilot he thought up, then had developed years later when he was in a position to get such things done. Nor the overhaul he made of the duties of the crew of a flying boat-except to say now that it was to get more done with less effort while leaving the command pilot with nothing to do save to stay alert-or to snore on his copilot's arm if the situation did not require his alertness. He made changes in instruments and controls, too, when at last he found himself in charge of development for all Navy patrol planes.
Let it go with this: I don't think Dave thought of himself, as an "efficiency expert" but every job he ever held he simplified. His successor always had less work to do than his predecessor.
That his successor usually reorganized the job again to make three times as much work-and require three times as many subordinates-says little about Dave's oddity other than by contrast. Some people are ants by nature; they have to work, even when it's useless. Few people have a talent for constructive laziness.
So ends the Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail. Let's leave him there, in his hammock under the shade trees. So far as I know, he is still there.