VARIATIONS ON A THEME-VI

The Tale of the Twins Who Weren't

 (Omitted)

            -but sky merchant was then my usual occupation, Minerva. That caper in which I moved from slave to high priest was forced on me. I had to be meek a long time, which ain't my style. Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth-but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three.

            But the only route from field hand to freedom lay through the church -and required meekness all the way, so that's what I gave 'em. Those priests had weird habits- (9,300 words omitted)

            -which got me off their damned planet and I never expected to go back.

            -did go back a couple of centuries later-freshly rejuvenated and not looking anything like that high priest whose ship had been lost in space.

            I was a sky merchant again, which suits me; it lets you travel and see things. I went back to Blessed for money, not revenge. I've never wasted skull sweat on revenge; The Comtede-Monte-Cristo syndrome is too much work and not enough fun. If I tangle with a man and he lives through it, I don't come back later gunning for him. Instead, I outlive him- which balances the books just as well. I figured that two centuries was enough for my enemies on Blessed to be dead, since I had left most of them sort of dead earlier.

            Blessed would not have been on my route other than for business reasons. Interstellar trade is economics stripped to basics. You can't make money by making money because money isn't money other than on its planet of issue. Most money is fiat; a ship's cargo of the stuff is wastepaper elsewhere. Bank credit is worth even less; Galactic distances are too great. Even money that jingles must be thought of as trade goods-not money-or you'll kid yourself into starvation.

            This gives the sky merchant a grasp of economics rarely achieved by bankers or professors. He is engaged in barter and no nonsense. He pays taxes he can't evade and doesn't care whether they are called "excise" or "king's pence" or "squeeze" or straight-out bribes. It is the other kid's bat and ball and backyard, so you play by his rules-nothing to get in a sweat about. Respect for laws is a pragmatic matter. Women know this instinctively; that's why they are all smugglers. Men often believe-or pretend-that the "Law" is something sacred, or at least a science-an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments.

            I've done little smuggling; it's risky, and you can wind up with money you don't dare spend where it's legal tender. I simply tried to avoid places where the squeeze was too high.

            By the Law of Supply and Demand a thing has value from where it is as much as from what it is-and that's what a merchant does; he moves things from where they are cheap to where they are worth more. A smelly nuisance in a stable is valuable fertilizer if you move it to the south forty. Pebbles on one planet can be precious gems on another. The art in selecting cargo lies in knowing where things will be worth more, and the merchant who can guess right can reap the wealth of Midas in one trip. Or guess wrong and go broke.

            I was on Blessed because I had been on Landfall and wanted to go to Valhalla in order to go back to Landfall, as I was thinking of marrying and raising another family. But I wanted to be rich enough to be landed gentry when I settled down-which I was not, at the time. All I had was the scout ship Libby and I had used * (* Sequence of events cannot be reconciled. Perhaps a similar ship?            J.F. 45th) and a modicum of local money.

            So it was time to trade.

            The trade routes for a two-way swap show minimum profit; they fill up too quickly. But a triangular trade-or higher numbers-can show high profits. Like this: Landfall had something-call it cheese-which was a luxury on Blessed- while Blessed produced-call it chalk-much in demand on Valhalla whereas Valhalla manufactured doohickeys that Landfall needed.

            Work this in the right direction and get rich; work it backwards and lose your shirt.

            I had worked the first leg, Landfall to Blessed, successfully having sold my cargo of- Now what was it? Durned if I remember; I've handled so many things. Anyhow, I got such a nice price that I temporarily had too much money.

            How much is "too much"? Whatever you can't spend before you leave a place you are not coming back to. If you hang onto that excess and come back later, you will usually find-invariably, so far as I recall-that inflation or war or taxes or changes in government or something has wiped out the alleged value of fiat money you may have kept.

            As my ship was scheduled to load and I had placed in escrow with the port authority the price of her cargo, what I had left over was burning a hole in my pocket with only a day to get rid of it, that being the time until my ship was to be loaded-I had to be on hand for that; I was my own purser and have an untrusting disposition.

            So I took a walk through the retail district, thinking I might buy some doodads.

            I was dressed in local high style and had a bodyguard behind me, for Blessed was still a slave economy and in a pyramidal society it is well to be up near the point, or at least look like it. My bodyguard was a slave but not my slave; I had hired him from a rent-a-servant agency. I'm not a hypocrite; this slave didn't have a durn thing to do but follow me around and eat like a hog.

            I had him because my assumed status required a manservant in sight. A "gentleman" could not register at a first-class hilton in Charity or anywhere on Blessed without a valet in evidence; I could not eat in a good restaurant without my own bearer standing behind me-and so forth; when in Rome, you shoot Roman candles. I've been places where it was mandatory to sleep with your hostess-which can be dreadful; this Blessed custom wasn't difficult.

            I didn't rely on him even though the agency supplied him with a knob stick. I was armed six ways and careful where I walked; Blessed was more dangerous than it had been when I was a slave there and a "gentleman" is more of a target, even though cops don't bother him.

            I was taking a shortcut through the slave market, it not being an auction day, on my way to the jewelers' lane, when I saw that a sale was being offered and slowed down-a man who has been sold himself can't walk past, indifferent to the plight of chattels. Not that I had any intention of buying.

            Nor did anyone seem about to buy this pair; the knot around the factor's tent was rabble; I could tell by their clothes and the fact that there wasn't a man there with a manservant.

            The merchandise was standing on a table, a young woman and a young man. Late adolescence for him and just ripe for her, or the same age in view of the fact that females grow up faster. Call it eighteen measured by my own youth-an age at which a boy should be nailed into a barrel and fed through the bunghole but a girl is ready to marry.

            Long sleeveless robes hung from their shoulders-and I knew too well what those robes meant; they would be displayed only to a prospective buyer, not to rabble. Robes signified valuable slaves, not to be knocked down on open bid.

            Sure enough, they were being held at Dutch auction, with the minimum bid posted-ten thousand blessings. That amounts to- How can I define money of centuries back on a planet hundreds of light-years away in terms that make sense here and now? Let's put it this way: Unless these kids were something extraordinary, they were overpriced by a factor of five, as prime young stock, either sex, were fetching around a thousand blessings by the morning's financial news.

            Ever pause in front of a clothing store and get hooked inside? No, of course you haven't. But that's what happened to me.

            All I did was say to the factor, "Goodman, is that posted bid a mistake? Or do these two have something special that doesn't show?" Just curiosity, Minerva, as I neither intended to own slaves nor would the excess in my purse make a dent in a planetwide custom. But I could not see why? The girl was not outstandingly pretty; she would not fetch a high price as an odalisque. The lad wasn't even heavily muscled. Nor were they a matched pair. Back home I would have picked her for Eyetalian and him for a Swede.

            Boom, I'm urged into the tent while the chattels are shoved ahead; the factor's manner shows that he hasn't had a live one all day-while my shadow is saying in my ear, "Master, that price is too high. I can take you to a private sale where prices are right and satisfaction is guaranteed."

            I said, "Shut up, Faithful"-all rented body servants were named "Faithful," probably by contraries-"I want to see what this is."

            As fast as the tent flap is fastened against the rabble, the factor is shoving a chair against my knees and handing me a drink with a bow and a scrape while saying lyrically, "Oh, sweet and gentle master, happy am I that you asked that! I am about to show you a great wonder of science! A thing to astound the very gods! I speak as a pious man, a true son of our Everlasting Church, one who cannot lie!"

            A slave factor who can't lie has yet to be whelped. Meantime, the youngsters stationed themselves docilely on a display platform, and Faithful was whispering: "Don't believe a word, Master. The girl is nothing and I can whip three of that punk without my stick-yet the agency would sell you me for eight hundred blessings and that's a fact."

            I motioned him to silence. "Goodman, what swindle is this?"

            "No swindle, on my mother's honor, kind sir! Would you believe that these are brother and sister?"

            I looked at them. "No."

            "Would you believe that they are not only brother and sister but twins?"

            "No."

            "Would you believe the same stud, the same dam, the same womb, born the same hour?"

            "Possibly the same womb," I conceded. "Host-mother?"

            "No, no! Exactly the same ancestry. And yet-here is the miracle-" He held my eye and spoke in a hushed voice: "They are nevertheless a sound breeding pair...for these twins are unrelated to each other! Would you believe it?"

            I told him what I would believe, including his losing his license and facing a charge of blasphemy.

            His smile grew broader, and he complimented me on my wit and asked me how much-if he proved all of these things-how high a bid I would place against them? Higher than ten thousand since I must realize that the posted figure represented a prior bid. Fifteen thousand, perhaps, with escrow the morrow before noon?

            I said, "Forget it, I'm shipping out before noon"-and started to stand up.

            He said, "Wait, I beg you! I see that you are a gentleman of education, of science, of deep knowledge and widely traveled-surely you will grant your humble servant a moment to show proof?"

            I still would have left; swindles bore me. But he waved a hand, and the kids dropped their robes and fell into display poses, the lad with his arms folded across his chest and his feet planted firmly, the girl in that graceful pose that must be as old as Eve-one knee slightly advanced, hand on hip, other arm hanging- easily, chest slightly raised. It almost made her beautiful save that she looked bored-having taken it hundreds of times, no doubt.

            But that wasn't what made me stay; something annoyed me. The lad was bare of course-she was wearing a chastity girdle. Do you know what one is, Minerva?

            "Yes, Lazarus."

            Too bad. I said, "Take that damned thing off that kid! Now!" Silly of me; I rarely interfere with anything on a strange planet. But those things are abominations.

            "Certainly, gentle sir; I was about to. Estrellita!"

            The girl turned her back, with that same bored look. The factor stood so that his back kept the lad from seeing him work the combination lock, saying apologetically, "She must wear it not only because of ruffians but to protect her from her brother; they share the same pallet, for she is-would you believe it, sir, seeing how full ripe she is?-a virgin! Show the gentle master, 'Trellita."

            Bored as ever, she promptly started to do so. I regard virginity as a correctable perversity of no interest; I motioned her to stop and asked the factor if she could cook.

            He assured me that she was the envy of every gourmet chef on Blessed, and started to lock her back into that steel diaper. I said roughly, "Leave it off! Nobody here is going to rape her. What's this proof you promised?"

            Minerva, he proved every word-except about her cooking-with exhibits that made me suspicious only because he showed them; I wouldn't have boggled had I seen them in the Clinic here.

            I should mention that Blessed had a rejuvenation clinic even though it was not settled by the Families. Eventually the clinic was taken over by the church and antigeria techniques that work fairly well even on short-lifers were no longer available to any but big shots. But the planet stayed advanced in biological techniques; the church needed it.

            Minerva, I told you that he claimed and you are now as learned in biology and genetics and associated manipulations as Ishtar is-more so; you don't have her limitations in time and in memory storage. What did he prove to me?

            "That they were diploid complements, Lazarus."

            "Right! Although he called them "mirror twins." Can you tell me how these kids were made, Minerva? How would you go about producing such twins?

            The computer answered thoughtfully, "'Mirror twins would be an inexact term for zygotes satisfying the listed requirements-although it is colorful. I can answer only theoretically as the records in me do not show that it has been attempted on Secundus. But the steps necessary to achieve exact diploid complements would be these: There must be intervention in gametogenesis in each parent just before meiotic division-reduction of chromosome number-that is, one would start with primary spermatocytes and primary oocytes, unreduced diploids.

            "In the male parent the intervention presents no theoretical problem but would be difficult because the cells are very small-but I would not hesitate to attempt it given time to construct the necessary fine extensionals.

            "The logical place to start, both parents, would be with gonia placed in vitro, and cherished. When a spermatogonium was observed to change to a primary spermatocyte-still diploid-it would be segregated and at the instant it divided into two secondary spermatocytes-haploids, one with an X chromosome and one with a Y chromosome-they would be again segregated and each would be encouraged to develop into spermatozoa.

            "It would not be sufficient to intervene at the spermatozoa stage; confusion of gamete pairs could not be avoided, and resulting zygotes could be complementary only by wildest chance.

            "Intervention with the female parent is mechanically simpler because of larger ceils-but involves a different problem; the primary oocyte must be encouraged, at point of meiosis, to produce two haploid and complementary secondary oocytes, rather than one oocyte and one polar body. Lazarus, this might require many attempts before a reliable technique could be worked out. It would be similar to the process of identical twinning but must take place two stages earlier in the gametogenetic sequence. However, it might turn out to be no more difficult than it is to produce fatherless female rabbits. I do not venture an opinion as I lack former art to draw on-save that I feel certain that it can be done, given time to develop technique.

            "At this point we have complementary groups, of spermatozoa, one group with Y and one with X, and a complementary pair of ova, each with an x chromosome. Fertilization would be in vitro, with a possibility of choosing either of two potential pairs of female-male complements but with no basis for choice unless the genetic charts of haploids are determined precisely, which is difficult and likely to cause genetic damage; I do not think it would be attempted. Instead one sperm would be inserted into one ovum, its complement into the other, on a blind basis.

            "One last requirement must be met to justify all of this slave factor's allegations: The two fertilized ova must be removed from vitro and planted in the womb of the donor of the oogonium, and there allowed to develop as twins through natural gestation and birth.

            "Am I right, Lazarus?"

            Exacly right! Go to the head of the class, dear; you get a gold star on your report card. Minerva, I don't know that it happened that way. But that's what the factor claimed, and that's what his exhibits-lab reports, holomovies, and so forth-seemed to show. But that thief may have faked those "proofs" and offered a random pair not likely to fetch a price above average-save for his fancy sales talk. The so-called proofs looked good, and lab reports and such carried, a bishop's chop and seal. The stills and movies looked good, too-but how can a layman judge? Even if those exhibits weren't phony, all they could prove was that such a process had once taken place; they did not prove that these kids were the result. Shucks, they might have been used to sell many slave pairs, with a bishop in on the racket.

            I looked over the stuff, including a scrapbook of the kids growing up, said, "Very interesting," and started to, leave.

            This pimple teleported himself between me and the tent flap. "Master," he said urgently. "Kind and generous sir- twelve thousand?"

            Minerva, my trader instincts took over. "One thousand!" I snapped. I don't know why. Yes, I do know. The girl's body was scarred from that damned Torquernada girdle; I wanted to insult this flesh peddler.

            He flinched and looked as if he were giving birth to broken beer bottles. "You jest with me. Eleven thousand blessings, and they are yours-though I won't make expenses!"

            "Fifteen hundred," I answered. I had money I couldn't spend elsewhere and told myself I could afford to manumit them rather than let that girl be bound into that damned atrocity again.

            He moaned. "If they were mine, I would give them to you. I love these cute darlings like my own children and could ask for them, nothing better than a kind and gentle master learned in science who appreciates the wonders that have gone into their making. But the Bishop would hang me and have me cut down alive to be dragged to death by my tool. Ten thousand and take all proofs and exhibits. I'll suffer a loss for their sakes-and because I admire you so much."

            I got up to forty-five hundred and he got down to seven thousand and there we stuck, as I had to hold out cash for last-minute squeeze, whereas it felt to me that he was close to the point where he really could not sell without risking the Bishop's wrath. If there was a bishop- He turned away in a fashion that says that a dicker is over and he is through flattering you, and told the girl sharply to step back into her steel harness.

            I got out my purse. Minerva, you understand money; you handle the government's finances. But possibly you don't know that cash money affects some people the way catnip does Diablo. I counted out forty-five hundred blessings in big red-and-gold bills under that scoundrel's nose-and stopped. He was sweating and swallowing his Adam's apple but managed to shake his head a tenth of an inch.

            So I counted more bills, very slowly, and reached five thousand-then started briskly to pick them up.

            He stopped me-and I found that I had bought the only slaves I have ever owned.

            He relaxed then, in a resigned way, but wanted lagniappe for the exhibits. I didn't care one way or another but offered two hundred and fifty for the pix and tapes, take it or leave it. He took it and again started to put the girl back into her harness.

            I stopped him and said, "Show me how that works," I knew how-a cylinder-type ten-letter combination lock you could set to a new combination each time you used it. Set the combination, slide the ends of the steel strap that went around her waist through the ends of the barrel, spin the alphabet disks of the cylinder, then it stays locked until you reset whatever ten-letter combo you picked. An expensive lock and good steel in the girdle-alloy a hacksaw couldn't touch. This was another thing that made his story convincing, as, while there was a market for virgins on that weird globe, a trained odalisque fetched about the same, and this girl wasn't being reserved for harem stock either way. So an expensive custom-made chastity belt had to have some other reason.

            With our backs to the slaves he showed me the combination: E,S,T,R,E,L,L,I,T,A-and was smug about how clever he was to pick a combination he couldn't forget. So I fumbled on purpose, then pretended to catch on, and opened it. He was about to put it on the kid again and send us on our way. I said, "Wait a moment. I want to be sure I can work it in place. You step into it and let me get you out of it."

            He didn't want to. So I got snotty and said he was trying to cheat me-put me in a position where I would have to send for him and pay through the nose to get my property unlocked. I demanded my money back and started to tear up the bill of sale. He gave in and stepped into the contrivance.

            He could squeeze into it although the ends of the steel belt barely met; he was bigger around the waist than the girl was. I said, "Now spell that combination for me"-and leaned over the lock. As he spelled- "ESTRELLITA," what I set was "HORSETHIEF~" then jammed the ends together as hard as possible and spun the disks.

            "Good," I said. "It works. Now spell it again."

            He did so and I carefully spelled "ESTRELLITA." It stayed locked. I suggested that he had had me spell it with one i and two t's the first time. That didn't work either.

            He dug up a mirror and tried it himself. No go. I said it might be jammed, so suck up your gut and we'll shake it. By now he was sweating.

            Finally I said, "Tell you what, goodman-I'll give you this belt. I'd rather trust a padlock anyhow. So go to a locksmith-no, you won't want to wear this outside; just tell me where to find one and I'll send him here, and pay him myself. Fair enough? I can't hang around; I've got a dinner engagement at the Beulahland. Where are their clothes? Faithful, gather up this junk and fetch the kids." So I left him still blatting about telling the locksmith to hurry.

            As we left his tent, a taxicab was cruising by. I had Faithful hail it and we all piled in. I didn't bother with a locksmith; I had the driver head for the skyport, then stopped on the way at a slopchest and bought the kids proper clothes, a clout for him and sort of Balinese sarong for her-uh, that's much like the dress Hamadryad wore yesterday. I think those were the first real clothes the youngsters had ever had. I couldn't get shoes on them; I settled for sanáals-then had to drag Estrellita away from a mirror; she was admiring herself and preening. I threw away those auction robes. I shoved the kids into the taxi and said to Faithful: "See that alley? If I turn my back and you run down it, I won't be able to chase you; I've got to keep an eye on these two."

            Minerva, I ran into something I'll never understand: the slave mentality. Faithful didn't get my meaning-and when I spelled it out, he was aghast. Hadn't he given good service? Did I want him to starve? I gave up. We dropped him at the Rent-a-Servant, and got my deposit back-tipping him for good service-and my slaves and I rode on out to the skyport.

            Turned out I needed that deposit and almost every blessing I had left-had to pay squeeze at outgoing customs to get the kids aboard my ship, even though the bill of sale was in order.

            But I got 'em aboard; I immediately had them kneel, put my hands on their heads and manumitted them. They did not seem to believe it, so I explained. "Look, you're free now. Free, get me? No longer slaves. I'll sign your manumission papers and you can go to the diocese office and get them registered. Or you can have dinner here and sleep aboard, and I'll give you what blessings I can just before my ship lifts tomorrow. Or, if you want to, you can stay aboard and go to Valhalla, a nice planet though chillier than this one-but where there is no such thing as slavery."

            Minerva, I don't think 'Llita-pronounced 'Yeetah,' her everyday name-or her brother Joe-Josie, or José understood what I meant by a place that did not have slavery; it was foreign to anything they knew. But they knew what a starship was, from hearsay, and the prospect of going somewhere in one had them awestruck-they would not have missed it if I had told them they were going to be hanged on arrival. Besides, in their minds I was still their master; manumission hadn't taken hold even though they knew what it was. Something for old and faithful retainers, that is, who stayed on at the funda where they had been all along, but maybe got paid a little.

            But to travel! The farthest they had ever been in their lives was from a diocese north of there to the capital, to be sold.

            A little trouble next morning- Seems that one Simon Legree, licensed dealer in slaves, had sworn a complaint against me alleging bodily harm, mental duress, and assorted mopery and dopery. So I sat the cop down in my wardroom, poured him a drink, called in Llita and had her take off her wonderful new clothes and let the cop see the scars on her hips, then told her to skedaddle. I happened to leave a hundred-blessing note on the table while I got up to fetch the bill of sale.

            The cop waved away the bill of sale, saying there had been no complaint on that score-but he was going to tell Goodman Legree that he was lucky not to face a counter-charge of selling damaged goods...no, on second thought it was simpler if he just couldn't find me until after my ship lifted. The hundred blessings was gone, and soon the cop was gone-and by midafternoon, so were we.

            But, Minerva, I got cheated; Llita couldn't cook worth a damn.

            It is a long and complex passage from Blessed 'to Valhalla, and Shipmaster Sheffield was pleased to have company.

            There was a mild contretemps the first night of the voyage caused by a misunderstanding that had started the night before, dirtside. The ship had a cabin and two staterooms. Since the Captain normally operated by himself, he used the Staterooms for casual storage or light cargo; they were not ready for passengers. So that first night dirtside he put his freedwoman into his cabin, while her brother and he slept on transom couches in the wardroom.

            The following day Captain Sheffield unlocked the staterooms, switched power to them, had the young people clean them and move the clutter to a gear locker until he could see what space he had left in his holds, and told them each to take a room-and forgot it, being busy with cargo and final squeeze, then with supervising his piloting computer while they got clear of that system. It was late that "night," ship's time, before he had his ship on her first leg in n-space, and could relax.

            He went to his cabin while considering whether to eat first or shower first, or possibly neither.

            Estrellita was in his bed-wide awake and waiting.

            He said, "Llita, what are you doing here?"

            She told him in blunt slave lingo what she was doing in his bed-waiting for him-as she had known what would be expected of her when milord Shipmaster Sheffield had offered to take them along, and had discussed it with her brother, and Brother had told her to do it.

            She added that she was not a bit afraid; she was ready and eager.

            The first part of this Aaron Sheffield had to believe; the addendum seemed clearly a white lie; he had seen frightened virgins before-not often, but a few.

            He dealt with her fear by ignoring it. He said, "You impudent bitch, get your arse out of my bed and into your own." The freedwoman was startled and unbelieving, then sulky and offended-then she wept. Fear of an unknown that she had felt earlier was drowned in a worse emotion; her tiny ego was crushed by his rejection of service she knew she owed him-and had believed he wanted. She sobbed, and dripped tears on his pillow.

            Female tears always had a strong aphrodisiac effect on Captain Sheffield; he responded to them at once-by grabbing her ankle, dragging her out of bed, hustling her out of his cabin, into her stateroom, and locking her in. Then he returned to his cabin, locked its door, took measures to calm himself, and went to sleep.

            Minerva, there was 'nothing wrong with Llita as a woman. Once I taught her to bathe properly she was quite attractive-good figure, pleasant face and manner, good teeth, and her breath was sweet. But taking her did not fit any customs. All "Eros" is custom, dear; there is never anything moral or, immoral about copulation as such, or any of its nonfunctional frills. "Eros" is simply a way of keeping human beings, individuals, each different-keeping them together and happy. It - is a survival mechanism developed through long evolution,- and its reproductive function is the least complex aspect of its very complex and pervasive role in keeping the human race going.

            But any sexual act is moral or immoral by precisely the same laws of morality as any other human act; all other rules about sex are simply customs-local and transient. There are more codes of sexual customs than a dog has fleas

-and all they have in common is that they are "ordained by God." I recall a society where copulation in private was obscene and forbidden, criminal-while in public it was "anything goes." The society I was brought up in had the reverse of those rules-again "ordained by God." I'm not sure which pattern was harder to follow, but I wish God wouldn't keep changing his mind-as it is never safe to ignore such customs, and ignorance is no excuse; ignorance like to got my ass shot off several times.

            In refusing Llita I was not being moral; I was following my own sexual customs, worked out by trial and error and many bruises over the centuries: Never bed a female dependent on me unless I am married to her or willing to marry her. This is an amoral rule of thumb, subject to change according to circumstances and not applying to females not dependent on me-another negotiation entirely. But this rule is a safety precaution applicable most times and places with widely varying customs-a safety measure for me. . . because, unlike that lady from Boston I told you about, many females tend to regard copulation as a formal proposal of contract.

            I had let impulse lure me into a predicament in which Llita was temporarily my dependent; I had no intention of making matters worse by marrying her, I didn't owe her that. Minerva, long-lifers should never marry ephemerals; it is not fair to the ephemeral or to the long-lifer.

            Nevertheless, once you pick up a stray cat and feed it, you cannot abandon it. Self-love forbids it. The cat's welfare becomes essential to your own peace of mind-even when it's a bloody nuisance not to break faith with the cat. Having bought these kids I could not shuck them off by manumission; I had to plan their future because they did not know how. They were stray cats.

            Early next "morning" (by ship's routine) Captain Sheffield got up, unlocked the freedwoman's stateroom, found her asleep. He called her and told her to get up, wash quickly, then get breakfast for three. He left to wake her brother-found his stateroom empty, found him in the galley. "Good morning, Joe."

            The freedman jumped. "Oh! Good morning, Master." He ducked and bent his knee.

            "Joe, the correct answer is: 'Good morning, Captain.' It amounts to the same thing at present, for I am indeed master of this ship and everyone in it. But when you leave my ship on Valhalla, you will have no master of any sort. None, as I explained yesterday. Meanwhile, call me 'Captain.'"

            Captain." The young man repeated obeisance.

            "Don't bow! When you speak to me, stand tall and straight and proud, and look me in the eye. The correct answer to an order is 'Aye aye, Captain.' What are you doing there?"

            "Why, I don't know-Captain."

            "I don't think you do, either. That's enough coffee for a dozen people." Sheffield elbowed Joe aside, salvaged most of the coffee crystals the lad had poured into a bowl, measured enough for nine cups, made note to teach the girl how if she did not know, then have her keep coffee ready during working hours.

            As he sat down with his first cup of coffee, she appeared. Her eyes were red and had circles under them; he suspected that she had wept some more that morning. But he made no comment other than a morning greeting and let her cope with the galley unassisted, she having seen what he had done the morning before.

            Shortly he was recalling fondly the scratch lunch and supper-sandwiches he had made himself-of the day before. But he said nothing other than to order them to sit down and eat with him, rather than hovering over him. Breakfast was mostly coffee, cold ship's bread, tinned butter. Reconstituted accra eggs with mushrooms were an inedible mess, and she had managed to do something to heavenfruit juice. To spoil that took talent; all it needed was eight parts of cold water for each part of concentrate, and the instructions were on the container.

            "Llita, can you read?"

            "No, Master."

            "Make that 'Captain,' instead. How about you, Joe?"

            "No, Captain."

            "Arithmetic? Numbers?"

            "Oh, yes, Captain, I know numbers. Two and two is four, two and three makes five, and three and five is nine-"

            His sister corrected him. "Seven, Josie-not nine."

            "That's enough," Sheffield said. "I can see we'll be busy." He thought, while he hummed: "So it's well to...Have a sister...Or even an old captain-" He added aloud: "When you have finished breakfast, take care of your personal needs, then tidy your rooms-shipshape and neatly, I'll inspect later-and make the bed in my cabin, but don't touch anything else there, especially my desk. Then each of you take a bath. Yes, that's what I said: Bathe. Aboard ship everyone bathes every day, oftener if you wish. There is plenty of pure water; we recycle it and we'll finish the voyage with thousands of liters more than we started with. Don't ask why; that's the way it works and I'll explain later." (Several months later, at least-to youngsters unsure about three plus five.) "When you're through, say, an hour and a half from now-Joe, can you read a clock?"

            Joe stared at the old-fashioned ship's clock mounted on a bulkhead. "I'm not sure, Captain. That one has too many numbers."

            "Oh, yes, of course; Blessed is on another system. Try to be back here when the little hand is straight out to the left and the big hand is straight up. But this time it doesn't matter if you are late; it takes awhile to shake down. Don't neglect your baths to be on time. Joe, shampoo your head. Llita, lean toward me, dear; let me sniff your hair. Yes, you shampoo, too." (Were there hair nets aboard? If he cut the pseudogravity and let them go free-fall, they would need hair nets-or haircuts. A haircut would not hurt Joe, but his sister's long black hair was her best feature-would help her catch a husband on Valhalla. Oh, well, if there were no hair nets-he didn't think there were, as he kept his own hair free-fall short-the girl could braid her hair and tie something around it. Could he spare power to maintain an eighth gee all 'the way? People not used to free-fall got flabby, could even damage their bodies. (Don't worry about it now.) "Get our quarters tidy, get clean yourselves, come back here. Git."

            He made a list: Set up a schedule of duties-N.B.: Teach them to cook!

            Start school: What subjects?

            Basic arithmetic, obviously-but don't bother to teach them to read that jargon spoken on Blessed; they were never going back there-never! But that jargon would have to be ship's language until he had them speaking Galacta, and they must learn to read and write in it-and English, too: Many books he would have to use for their hurry-up education were in English. Did he have tapes for the variation of Galacta spoken on Valhalla? Well, kids their age quickly picked up local accent and idiom and vocabulary.

            What was far more Important was how to heal their stunted, uh, "souls." Their personalities- How could he take full-grown domestic animals and turn them into able, happy human beings, educated in every needful way and capable of competing in a free society? Willing to compete, undismayed by it-He was just beginning to see the size of the "stray cat" problem he had taken on. Was he going to have to keep them as pets for fifty or sixty years or whatever, until they died naturally?

            Long, long before that, the boy Woodie Smith had found a half-dead fox kit in the woods, apparently lost by its mother, or perhaps the vixen was dead. He took it home, nursed it with a bottle, raised it in a cage through one winter. In the spring he took it back where he had found it, left it there in the cage with the door latched-open.

            He checked a few days later, intending to salvage the cage. He found the creature cowering in the cage, half starved and horribly dehydrated-with the door still latched open. He took it home, again nursed it back to health, built a chicken-wire run for it, and never again tried to turn it loose. In the words of his grandfather, "The poor critter had never had a chance to learn how to be a fox."

            Could he teach these cowed and ignorant animals how to be human?

            They returned to his wardroom when "the little hand was straight out and the big hand was straight up'-they waited outside the door until this was so, and Captain Sheffield pretended not to notice.

            But when they came in, he glanced at the clock and said, "Right on time-good! You've certainly shampooed, but remind me to find combs for you." (What other toilet articles did they need? Would he have to teach them how to use them? And-oh, damn it!-was there anything in the ship for a woman's menstrual needs? What could be improvised? Well, with luck that problem would hold off a few days. No point in asking her; she couldn't add. Tarnation, the ship was not equipped for passengers.)

            "Sit down. No, wait a moment. Come here, dear." It seemed to the Captain that the garment she wore was clinging suspiciously; he felt it, it was wet. "Did you leave that on when you bathed?"

            "No, Mas- No, Captain; I washed it."

            "I see." He recalled that its gaudy pattern had been enhanced by coffee and other things while the girl was botching breakfast. "Take it off and hang it somewhere; don't let it dry on your body."

            She started slowly to comply. Her chin quivered-and he recalled how she had admired herself in a tall mirror when he bought it for her. "Wait a moment, Llita. Joe, take off your breechclout. And sandals."

            The lad complied at once.

            "Thank you, Joe. Don't put that clout back on without washing it; by now it's dirty even though it looks clean. Don't wear it under way unless it suits you. You sit down. Llita, were you wearing anything when I bought you?"

            "No...Captain."

            "Am I wearing anything now?"

            "No, Captain."

            "There are times and places to wear clothes-and other times and places when clothes are silly. If this were a passenger ship, we would all wear clothes and I would wear a fancy uniform. But it is not, and there is nobody here but me and your brother. See that instrument there? That's a thermohumidostat which tells the ship's computer to hold the temperature at twenty-seven Celsius and forty percent humidity, with random variation to stimulate us-which may not mean anything to you but is my notion of comfort in bare skin. For an hour each afternoon it drops that temperature to encourage exercise, as flab is the curse of shipboard life.

            "If that cycle doesn't suit you two, we'll reach a compromise. But first we'll try it my way. Now about that wet rag plastered to your hips- If you are stupid, you'll let it dry where it is and be uncomfortable. If you are smart, you'll hang it up and let it dry without wrinkling. That's a suggestion, not an order; if you wish, you may wear it at all times. But don't sit down with it on you, wet; there is no reason to get cushions wet. Can you sew?"

            "Yes, Captain. Uh...some."

            "I'll see what I can dig up. You are wearing the only woman's garment in the ship, and if you insist on clothes, you'll need to make some for the months ahead. You'll need something for Valhalla, too: it's not as warm as Blessed. Women there wear trousers and short coats; men wear trousers and long coats; everyone wears boots. I had three outfits custom-made on Landfall; maybe we can make do with them until I can get you two to a tailor. Boots- Mine would fit you like socks on a rooster. Hmm- We can wrap your feet so that a pair will stay on long enough to get you to a bootery.

            "We won't worry about that now. Join the conference- standing up and wet, or sitting down and comfortable."

            Estrellita bit her lip and decided in favor of comfort.

            Minerva, those youngsters were brighter than I had expected. At first they studied because I told them to. But once they tasted the magic of the printed word, they were hooked. They learned to read like grass through a goose and didn't want to do anything else. Especially stories. I had a good library, mostly in micro, thousands of those, but also a few dozen valuable bound books, facsimile antiques I had picked up on Landfall where they speak English and use Galacta only as a trade tongue. Savvy Oz books, Minerva?

            Yes, of course you do; I helped plan the Great Library and included my childhood favorites as well as more sober things. I did make sure that Joe and Llita read a spread of sober stuff but mostly I let them wallow in stories- The Just So Stories, and the Oz books, and Alice in Wonderland, and A Child's Garden of Verses, and Two Little Savages, and such. Too limited; they were books from my childhood, three centuries before the Diaspora. On the other hand, every human culture in the Galaxy derives from that one.

            But I tried to make sure that they understood the difference between fiction and history-difficult, as I wasn't certain that there was a difference. Then I had to explain that a fairy tale was still a different sort, one step farther along the spectrum from fact to fancy.

            Minerva, this is very hard to explain to an inexperienced mind. What is "magic"? You are more magical than any "magic" in fairy tales, and it does no good to say that you are 'a product of science, rather than magic, in speaking to kids who have no idea what is meant by "science"-and I wasn't sure that the distinction was valid even when I was explaining the distinction. In my wanderings I have run across magic many times-which simply says that I have seen wonders I could not explain.

            I finally let it go by asserting ex cathedra that some stories were just for fun and not necessarily true-Gulliver's Travels were not the same sort of thing as The Adventures of Marco Polo, while Robinson Crusoe lay somewhere in between-and they should ask me, if in doubt.

            They did ask, sometimes, and accepted my decision without argument. But I could see that they did not always believe me. That pleased me; they were starting to think for themselves-didn't matter if they were wrong. Llita was simply politely respectful to me about Oz. She believed in the Emerald City with all her heart and, if she had had her druthers, she would have been going there rather than to Valhalla. Well, so would I.

            The important thing was that they were cutting the cord.

            I did not hesitate to use fiction in teaching them. Fiction is a faster way to get a feeling for alien patterns of human -behavior than is nonfiction; it is one stage short of actual experience and I had only months in which to turn these cowed and ignorant animals into people. I could, have offered them psychology and sociology and comparative anthropology; I had such books on hand. But Joe and Llita could not have put them together into a gestalt-and I recall another teacher who used parables in putting over ideas.

            They read every hour I would let them, huddled together like puppies and staring at the reading machine and nagging each other about how fast to raise the pages. Usually Llita nagged Joe; she was quicker than he-but as may be, they spurred each other from-illiterate to speedreaders in zip time. I didn't let them have sound-and-picture tapes-I wanted them to read.

            Couldn't let 'em spend all their time reading; they had to learn other things-not just salable skills but, much more important, that aggressive self-reliance necessary to a free human-which they totally lacked when I saddled myself with them. Shucks, I wasn't certain they had the potential; it might have been bred out of their line. But if the spark was in them, I had to find it and fan it into flame-or I would never be able to make them run free.

            So I forced them to make up their -own minds as much as possible, while being cautiously rough on them in other ways and greeted every sign of rebellion-silently, in my mind- as a triumphant proof of progress.

            I started by teaching Joe to fight-just hand to hand; I didn't want either of us killed. One compartment was fitted as a gymnasium, with equipment that could be adapted for gee or for free-fall; I used it that hour a day of lowered temperature. Here I worked Joe out. Llita was required to attend but just to exercise-although I had in mind that it might spur Joe along if his sister saw him getting the whey knocked out of him.

            Joe needed that spur; he had a terrible time getting it through his head that it was okay to hit or kick me, that I wanted him to try, that I would not be angry if he succeeded-but that I would be angry if he didn't try his darnedest.

Took a while. At first he wouldn't chop at me no matter how wide open I left myself and when I got him past that, calling him names and taunting him, he still hesitated that split second that let me close and chop him instead.

            But one afternoon he got the idea so well that he landed a good one on me and I hardly had to hold back to let him land it. After supper he got his reward: permission to read a bound book, one with pages, him dressed in a pair of my surgical gloves and warned that I would clobber him if he got it dirty or tore a page. Llita wasn't permitted to touch it; this was his prize. She sulked and didn't even want to use the reading machine-until he asked if it was all right for him to read aloud to her.

            I ruled that she could even read it with him-as long as she didn't touch it. So she snuggled up close, head by his, happy again, and started bossing him about turning the pages.

            The next day she asked me why she could not learn to fight, too?

            No doubt she was finding solo exercise a bore-I always found it so and did it only because it was needful to stay in shape-no telling what hazards next groundfall might bring. Minerva, I've never felt that women should have to fight; it is a male's business to protect females and children. But a female should be able to fight because she may have to.

            So I agreed, but we had to change the rules. Joe and I had been working out by dockside rules-no rules, that is, save that I didn't tell him that I planned not to do him any permanent damage and did not intend to let him give me anything worse than bruises. But I never said this-if he could manage it, he was free to gouge out one of my eyes and eat it. I just made damn sure that he didn't.

            But females are built differently from males. I could not let Llita work out with us until I devised a plastron to protect her tits-necessary; she was a bit oversized in that department, and we could have hurt her without intending to. Then I told Joe privately that bruises were okay, but that if he broke one of her bones, I would break one of his, just for drill.

            But I put no restrictions on his sister-and I underestimated her; she was twice as aggressive as he was. Untrained but fast-and she meant business.

            The second day we worked out with her, not only was she wearing that plastron, her brother and I were wearing jockstraps. And Llita had been allowed to read a real book the night before.

            Joe turned out to have talent for cooking, so I encouraged him to be as fancy as ship's stores permitted while crowding her to become an adequate cook. A man who can cook can support himself anywhere. But anyone, male or female, should be able to cook, keep house, and care for children. I hadn't located a trade for Llita, although she displayed a talent for mathematics once I set up inducements for that, too. That was encouraging; a person who can read and write and has a head for math can learn anything she needs to know. So I started her on bookkeeping and accounting, from books, not helping her, and required Joe to learn to use all the tools the ship boasted-not many, mainly maintenance gear-and supervised him closely; I didn't want him losing fingers or ruining tools. I was hopeful. Then the situation changed-

 (Circa 3,100 words omitted)

-easy to say that I was stupid. I had raised stock and a good many children. Being ship's surgeon as well as everything else, I had given them the most thorough examinations my equipment permitted when we were a couple of days out- quite thorough for those days; I had not practiced medicine after leaving Ormuzd but did keep my sick bay stocked and equipped, and picked up the latest tapes whenever I was on a civilized planet and studied them during long jumps. I was a good jackleg doctor, Minerva.

            The kids were as healthy as they looked, aside from slight dental caries in him, two small cavities. I noticed that the factor's allegation about her was correct-virgo intacta, semilunar hymen, unfrayed, so I used my smallest speculum. She neither complained nor tensed up nor asked what I was looking for. I concluded that they had had regular checkups and other medical attention, far more than slaves on Blessed usually received.

            She had thirty-two teeth in perfect condition but could not tell me when the last four molars had erupted, just that it was "not long ago." He had twenty-eight teeth and so little space in his jaw for adult molars that I anticipated trouble. But X-ray prints showed no buds.

            I cleaned and filled the cavities, and made note that he must have those fillings removed and the tissue regenerated on Valhalla, and be inoculated against further decay; Valhalla had good dentistry, far superior to what I could do.

            Llita could not tell me when she had last menstruated. She discussed it with Joe; he tried to count on his fingers how many days it had been since they had been taken from their home place, as they agreed that it was before that. I told her to let me know next time and each time, so that I could determine her cycle. I gave her a tin of napkins, emergency supplies I hadn't known I had-must have been in the ship twenty years.

            She did tell me, and I had to open the tin for her; neither of them knew how. She was delighted with the little elastic panty included in the package, and often wore it when she did not need it, as "dress up." The kid was crazy about clothes; as a slave she had never had a chance to pamper her vanity. I told her it was all right as long as she washed it every time she wore it-I clamped down hard on cleanliness, inspecting their ears, sending them from the table to scrub their nails, and so forth. They had received no more training than a hog. She never had to be told twice, and picked on him and made sure that he met my standards, too. I found myself being more exacting with myself; I could not bring dirty fingernails to the table or skip a shower because I was sleepy-I had set the standards and had to live up to them.

            She was almost as unskilled a seamstress as she was a cook, but she taught herself because she liked clothes. I dug out some bright-colored trade cloth and let her have fun-and used it as carrot-and-stick; wearing anything became a privilege that depended on good behavior. I put a stop that way-well, mostly-to her nagging her brother.

            That wouldn't work with Joe; clothes did not interest him-but if he rated it, I gave him more of a working over during exercise period. Seldom-he was not the problem she was.

            One evening, three or four of her periods later, I noticed on my calendar that she was past due-having forgotten the matter. Minerva, I never walked into their staterooms without knocking; shipboard life required such privacy as can be managed-too little, that is.

            Her door was open, and her room was empty. I tapped on his door, got no answer, went on, looked for her in the wardroom and galley, even in our little gym. I decided that she must be taking a bath and I would speak to her in the morning.

            As I passed his stateroom again in heading back to my cabin, his door opened; she stepped out and closed it behind her. I said, "Oh, there you are!" or some such. "I thought Joe was asleep."

            "He's just gone to sleep," Llita said. "Do you want him, Captain? Shall I wake him?"

            I said, "No, I was looking for you, but I tapped on his door five or ten minutes ago and got no answer."

            She was contrite over not having heard my knock. "I'm sorry, Captain. I guess we were so busy we didn't hear you." She told me how they were busy-which I had figured out, having suspected it from the moment I noticed that she was a week overdue after being clock regular. "That's understandable," I said. "I'm glad my knock didn't disturb you."

            "We try never to disturb you with it, Captain," she answered with sweet seriousness. "We wait till you go, to your cabin at night. Or sometimes when you take siesta."

            I said, "Goodness, dear, you don't have to be that careful. Do your work and keep your study hours, then do as you please the rest of the time. Starship 'Libby' is not a sweatship; I want you kids to be happy. Can't you get it through your fuzzy head that you are not a slave?"

            Apparently she could not, quite, Minerva, for she still fretted that she had not heard my knock and jumped to respond. I said, "Don't be silly, LIita. It will keep till tomorrow."

            But she insisted she wasn't sleepy and was ready and anxious to do whatever I wanted-which made me a touch nervous. Minerva, one of the oddities about "Eros" is that women are never so willing as when they just have, and there was nothing in Llita's background to inhibit her. Worse, I found that I was aware of her as a ripe female for almost the first time since the two came aboard-she was standing close to me in a narrow passageway, carrying in one hand one of those weird costumes she delighted in making, and was a bit whiff from happy exercise. I was tempted-and felt certain that she would respond at once and happily. The thought crossed my mind that she was already pregnant-nothing to fret about.

            But I had gone to much trouble with these ephemerals to shift from slave owner to father figure, stern but loving. If I took her, I would lose that and, add one more disturbing variable a problem already too complex. So I grasped the nettle.

            Captain Sheffield said, "Very well, Llita. Come to my cabin." He headed toward it, she followed. Once there, he offered her a seat. She hesitated, then put her gaudy dress down and sat on it-thoughtfulness that pleased him, as the ignorant animal she had been would not have been capable of it; the humanizing process was working. He did not comment.

            "Llita, your period is a week overdue, is it not?"

            "It is, Captain?" She seemed puzzled but not troubled.

            Sheffield wondered if he could be mistaken. After he had taught her how to open a sealed tin, he had turned over to her the limited emergency supply, warning her that if she used it too lavishly, she would have to fashion by hand some make-do, as Valhalla was months away. Then he had dismissed the matter other than to log it on his desk calendar whenever she reported onset. Could he have failed to notice? There had been three days last week when he had kept to his cabin, leaving the young people on their own and having his meals sent in-a habit he had when he wanted to concentrate on a problem. During such periods he ate little and slept not at all and barely noticed anything not part of what he was studying. Yes, it was possible.

            "Don't you know, Llita? If you were on time, then you failed to report it."

            "Oh, no, Captain!" She was round-eyed with distress. "You told me to tell you...and I have-every time, every time!"

            Further questions showed first, that despite her new grasp of arithmetic she did not know when she should have experienced onset, and second, that it had not been last week but a much longer time.

            Time to tell her-"Llita dear, I think you are going to have a baby."

            Her mouth dropped open, again her eyes rounded. "Oh, wonderful!" She added, "May I run tell Josie? May I, please? I'll be right back!"

            "Wups! Don't rush things. I said only that I thought so. Don't get your hopes up yet, and don't bother Joe with it till we know. Many a girl has gone much longer than a week past her date, and it didn't mean a thing." (But I'm pleased to learn that you want it, child, as it appears you've had every opportunity.) "Tomorrow I'll examine you and try to find out." (What did he have aboard for a pregnancy test? Damn it, if he must abort her, it should be as quickly as possible when it's no worse than plucking a splinter. Then-no, there wasn't so much as a "Monday morning" pill in the ship, much less modern contraception. Woodie, blast your stupid soul, don't ever go into space again so poorly equipped!) "In the meantime, don't get excited." (But women always did get excited by it. Of course.)

            She was as dashed as she had been jubilant. "We tried so hard! Everything in the Kama Sutra and more. I thought we ought to ask you to show us what we were doing wrong, but Joe was certain we were doing it right."

            "I think Joe is correct." Sheffield got up, poured a cup of wine for each of them while performing legerdemain which dosed hers such that she would go to sleep before long-after some relaxed talk that she might not remember; he wanted the full picture. "Here."

            She looked at it. dubiously. "I'll get silly. I know, I had a chance to try it once."

            "This isn't the popskull they sell on Blessed; this is wine I fetched from Landfall. Pipe down and drink it. Here's to your baby if you're having one, or here's to good luck next time." (But how to handle that "next time"?-if his worries were well grounded. These kids must not be saddled with a defective. A healthy baby would be burden enough while they were learning to stand on their own feet. Could he stave things off to Valhalla, then get her on proper contraception? Then what? Split them up? How?)

            "Tell me about it, dear. When you came aboard, you were virgin."

            "Oh, yes, certainly. They always kept me locked in that virgin's basket. Except when they shut me up and Brother had to sleep in the barracks: You know. When I bleed." She took a deep breath and smiled. "Now is ever so much nicer. Josie and I tried for the longest time to get around that awful steel basket. But we couldn't. Hurt him to try, and some ways we tried hurt me, too. Finally we gave up and just did fun things we had always done. 'Brother said to be patient; it wouldn't be forever. Because we knew we would be sold together, as a breeding pair."

            Estrellita looked radiant. "And so we were and now we are, and thank you, Captain!"

            (No, it wasn't going to be easy to split them up.) "Llita, have you ever thought of being bred by some other man than Joe?" (Sound her out, at least. It won't be hard to find her a husband; she's really quite attractive. That "Earth Mother" feeling.)

            She looked puzzled. "Why, of course not. We knew what we were, way back when we were almost babies. Our mother told us, and so did the priest. I've always slept with Brothcr, all my life. Why would I want anyone else?"

            "You seemed ready enough to sleep with me. You claimed you were eager to."

            "Oh! That's different-that's your right. But you didn't want me," she added, almost accusingly.

            "That wasn't quite it, Llita. There were reasons-that I won't go into now-not to take you no matter if I wanted you and you were willing. Although it was Joe you really wanted, you said so."

            "Well...yes. But I was disappointed just the same. I had to tell Brother you wouldn't have me-which hurt all over again. But he said to be patient. We waited three more days before he broached me. In case you changed your mind."

            (Nagging wife vertically-docile horizontally. Not too uncommon a pattern, Sheffield thought.)

            He found that she was looking at him with sober interest. "Do you want me now, Captain? Joe told me, the very night he decided to go ahead, that it was still your right and always would be-and it is."

            (Beelzebub's brass balls!-the only way to avoid a willing female was to go off-planet.) "Dear, I'm tired, and you are getting sleepy."

            She swallowed a yawn. "I'm not that tired-I never am. Captain, the night I first, asked you, I was a tiny bit scared. But I'm not scared now. I want to. If you will."

            "You're very sweet, but I am very tired." (Why hasn't that dose taken hold?) He changed the subject. "Aren't those little bunks almost impossible for two people?"

            She chuckled right through another yawn. "Almost. Once we fell out of Brother's bunk. So now we use the deck."

            "'The deck'? Why, Llita, that's dreadful. We must do something about it" (Put the kids in here? The only full-sized bed in the ship- A bride needed a proper workbench for her honeymoon...which this was; she was deeply in love and should make the most of it, no matter what. Sheffield had decided, centuries back, that the saddest thing about ephemerals was that their little lives rarely held time enough for love.)

            "Oh, the deck isn't bad, Captain; we've slept on the floor all our lives." 'She yawned again, could not suppress it.

            "Well...tomorrow we'll make better arrangements." (No, his cabin wouldn't do; his desk was in here, and his papers and files. The kids would be in his way and he in theirs. Could he and Joe convert two narrow bunks into one double bed? Probably-although it would nearly fill one stateroom. No matter, that bulkhead between their rooms was not structural-cut a door and they would have a suite. A "bridal suite." For a sweet bride. Yes.) He added, "Let's get you to bed before you fall out of that chair. Everything's going to be all right, dear." (I'll damned well see to it!) "And tomorrow night and from now on, you and Joe can sleep together in a wide bed."

            "Really? Oh, that would be"-she yawned again-"lovely!" He had to steady her into her stateroom; she was asleep as she hit the bunk. Sheffield looked down at her, said softly, "Poor little kitten." He leaned down and kissed her, went back to his cabin.

            There he dug out everything the slave factor had offered as proof of the alleged odd genetic heritage of Llita and Joe, and gave each item intense study. He was looking for clues to truth or falsity of the allegation that they were "mirror twins"-complementary diploids having the same mother and father. From such clues he hoped to estimate the probability of unfavorable gene reinforcement in any child Llita and Joe might have.

            The problem seemed to divide into three (simplified) cases:

            The two might be no relation to each other. Chance of a bad reinforcement: slight.

            Or they might be the usual sort of brother and sister. Chance of bad reinforcement: too high to be ignored.

            Or they might be (as alleged) zygotes resulting from complementary gametes-all genes conserved at reduction-division but with no duplication. In this case the chance of unfavorable reinforcement would be-what?

            Let that wait. First assumption, that they were no relation but simply raised together from babyhood-no special hazard, forget it.

            Second assumption, that they might be full siblings of the usual sort. Well, they did not look like it-but, more important, that scoundrel had set up a most elaborate "store" for such a swindle, and had used publicly the name of a bishop to back him up. The Bishop might be just as crooked (likely-he knew that priesthood too well!)-but why be so careless when slave babies were so cheap?

            No, even if he assumed a swindle, there was no reason to expect an unnecessary risk in a setup so elaborate. So forget that, too: Llita and Joe were not sister and brother' in the ordinary sense-although they might have shared the same host-mother's womb. The latter, if true, was of no genetic significance.

            So the remaining worry concerned the chance that the slave factor had told the truth-in which case what were the chances of a bad cross? How many ways could such artificially produced zygotes recombine unfavorably?

            Sheffield tried to set up the problem while cursing the lack of sufficient data, plus the fact that the only real computer in the ship was the piloting computer, which could not be programmed for a genetics problem. He wished Libby were aboard. Andy would have stared at the bulkhead a few minutes, then come up with answers definite where possible and expressed in probability percentages where not.

            A genetics problem, even with all pertinent data (many thousands!), was too unwieldy to solve without computer assistance.

            Well, try some simplified illustrative problems and see what insight could be gained.

            Primary assumption: Llita and Joe were "mirror twins"- genetically complementary zygotes from the same parent zygotes.

            Control assumption: They were unrelated other than being part of the home planet's gene pool. (An extreme assumption, as slaves from the same area were likely to derive from a much smaller gene pool, which might be still further reduced by inbreeding. But this "most favorable normal breeding pattern" was the correct control against which he must measure.)

            Simplified example: Test one gene site-call it site 187 of the twenty-first chromosome-for reinforcement, masking, or elimination, of an assumed "bad" gene, under each assumption.

            Arbitrary assumption: Since this site might hold an unfavorable gene-or two, or none-in its gene pair, assume that the chance was exactly the same for both primary and control assumptions, and even-i.e., 25 percent no bad gene in the pair at the site, 50 percent one bad gene, 25 percent two bad genes-an extreme condition since, over the generations, reinforcement (two bad genes at one site) tended toward non-survival, either lethal or reducing a zygote's ability to compete. Never mind; make it even for both of them-there were no data on which to base any better assumption.

            Wups! If a bad reinforcement was visibly demonstrated, or could be shown by tests, such zygotes would not be used. A scientist competent to attempt this experiment would use specimens as "clean" in a genetic sense as possible-free of all the hundreds (thousands now?) of identifiable hereditary defects; the primary assumption should include this subsidiary assumption.

            These young people were free of any defect Sheffield could detect in a shipboard examination-which enhanced the probability that this horsethief had told the truth and these exhibits were sober records of an exotic and successful experiment in gene manipulation.

            Sheffield now tended to believe that the experiment had taken place-and wished that he had the resources of a major Howard Clinic, say the one on Secundus, to give these kids a genetic going-over that he was not equipped to do aboard ship and not qualified to do in any case.

            One nagging doubt lay in how he had acquired these kids. Why had that gonif been so anxious to sell? If they were what the exhibits claimed? Why sell them when breeding the two created complements back together was the next step of the experiment?

            Well, perhaps the kids knew but he bad not asked the right questions. Certain it was that they had been brought up to believe that such was their proper destiny; whoever planned this had induced in the kids from earliest childhood a pair-bond stronger than most marriages, in Sheffield's long experience. More than any of his own- (Except one, except one!)

            Sheffield put it out of his mind and concentrated on the theoretical consequences.

            At the selected site, each parent zygote had been assumed to have three possible states or gene pairs in probability 25-50-25.

Under the control assumption, parents (diploid zygotes) both male and female would show this distribution at the selected site:

25% good-good  ("clean" at that site)

25% good-bad    (bad gene masked but could be transmitted)

25% good-bad    (bad gene masked but could be transmitted)

25% bad-bad      (bad reinforcement-lethal or disabling)

            But under his modified primary assumption Sheffield assumed that the priest-scientist would discard bad stock as displayed in zygotes-which would eliminate the fourth group ("bad-bad") and leave a parent-zygote distribution for this site of:

33-1/3% good-good

33-1/3%            good-bad

33-1/3%            good-bad

            Such culling gave marked improvement over the original random-chance situation and meiotic division would produce gametes (both sperm and ova) in this incidence:

            Good, four out of six, and

            Bad, two out of six-

-but with no way to detect the bad genes without destroying the gametes carrying them. Or so Sheffield assumed, while stipulating that the assumption might not be true forever. But to protect Llita (and Joe) it was necessary that his assumptions be pessimistic within the limits of available data and knowledge-i.e., that a bad gene could be spotted only as reinforcement in a zygote.

            Sheffield reminded himself that the situation was never as black-and-white as was implied by "good-dominant" and "bad-recessive"-these descriptions were less complex than the real world they were used to image. A characteristic exhibited by an adult zygote was prosurvival or contrasurvival only in terms of what and when and where-and also in terms of more than one generation. An adult who died saving its progeny had to be counted a prosurvival whereas a cat that ate her own young was contrasurvival no matter how long she lived.

            In the same vein, a dominant gene sometimes was of no importance one way or the other-e.g., brown eyes. Just as its corresponding recessive when paired and thereby reinforced to produce blue eyes gave the zygote exhibiting it no measurable disadvantage. The same was true of many other in-heritable characteristics-hair patterns, skin color, et cetera.

            Nevertheless this description-good-dominant, bad-recessive-was in essence correct; it synopsized the mechanisms by which a race conserved its favorable mutations and destroyed (eventually) its unfavorable mutations. "Bad-dominant" was almost a contradiction in terms, as a thoroughly bad mutation which was dominant killed itself off (along with the unfortunate zygote inheriting it) in one generation, either lethal in womb or so damaging to the zygote that it failed to reproduce.

            But the usual weeding process involved bad-recessives. These could remain in the gene pool until one of two events happened, each controlled by the blind laws of chance: Such a gene could pair with a gene like it when sperm fertilized ovum and thereby eliminate itself by eliminating the zygote-hopefully before birth, or-tragically-after birth. Or this bad-recessive might be eliminated by chromosome reduction at meiosis and the result would be a healthy baby who did not carry this bad gene in its gonads-a happy outcome.

            Both these statistical processes slowly weeded out bad genes from the race's gene pool.

            Unfortunately the first of these processes often produced babies viable but so handicapped they needed help to stay alive-sometimes needing economic help, born losers, who never managed to support themselves; sometimes needing plastic surgery or endocrine therapy or other interventions or supports. When Captain Aaron Sheffield had been practicing medicine (on Ormuzd and under another name), he had gone through stages of increasing frustration over these poor unfortunates.

            At first he had tried to practice therapy by the Hippocratic Oath-or close to it; he was by temperament unable to follow any man-made rule blindly.

            Then he had had a period of temporary mental aberrance during which he had sought a political solution to what he saw as a great danger: reproduction by defectives. He tried to persuade his colleagues to refuse therapy to hereditary defectives unless they were sterile or sterilized or willing to accept being sterilized as a precondition for receiving therapy. Worse yet, he had attempted to include in the definition of "hereditary defective" those who displayed no stigmata save that they had never managed to be self-supporting--on a planet not overcrowded and which he himself had selected centuries earlier as nearly ideal for human beings.

            He got nowhere, he encountered nothing but fury and contempt-save for a few colleagues who agreed with him privately and denounced him publicly. As for laymen, tar-and-feathers was the mildest medicine they prescribed for Dr. "Genocide."

            When his license to practice was lifted, Lazarus regained his normal emotional detachment. He shut up, realizing that. grim old Mother Nature, red of tooth and claw, invariably punished damfools who tried to ignore Her or to repeal Her ordinances; he need not interfere.

            So he moved and changed his name again and started to get ready to go off-planet-when a plague hit Ormuzd. He had shrugged and gone back to work, an unfrocked physician whose services were temporarily welcome. Two years and a quarter of a billion deaths later he was offered his license back-subject to good behavior.

            He told them what to do with that license and left Ormuzd as quickly as possible, eleven year later. He was a professional gambler during that wait, that being the handiest way he could see at the time for saving up the necessary.

            Sorry, Minerva, I was talking about those mirror twins. So the silly little wench was knocked up, which caused me to slip back into my baby-cotching, country-doctor persona, and I stayed up all night worrying about her and her brother and the baby they were going to have-unless I did something about it. To find out what I should do, I had to reconstruct what had happened and from that what could happen. Having no certain data, I had to follow that old rule for finding a lost mule.

            First I had to think like that slave factor- A man who auctions slaves is a scoundrel but too smart to risk a caper in which he might wind up a slave himself, or dead if he was lucky-which is what would happen to one who played fast and loose on Blessed with the authority of a bishop. Ergo, the scoundrel had believed what he had said.

That being so, I could table the question of why this factor was commissioned to sell these two, while I tried to think like a priest-scientist engaged in human biological experimentation. Forget the chance that these two were ordinary siblings-no point in picking such a pair even for a swindle. Forget the chance that they were unrelated in any fashion, as in such a case it would simply be a normal case of breeding. Sure, sure, any woman, can give birth to a monster, as even with the most genetically hygienic of breeding a bad mutation can show up-and an alert midwife may neglect to give that first lifegiving spank~-and many have.

            So I considered only the third hypothesis: complementary diploids from the same parents. What would this experimenter do? What-would I do?

            I would use as near perfect stock as I could find and not start the experiment until I had both a male and a female parent who tested "clean" genetically in the most subtle ways for which I could test-which on Blessed meant quite sophisticated ways, for that century.

            For a selected gene site and an assumption of 50-50 in the Mendelian distribution of 25-50-25, this pre-experiment testing would chop off the 25 percent chance of reinforcement of a bad recessive and leave a distribution of one-third bad, two-thirds good, at the parent generation-possible parents of possible Joes and Llitas, that is.

            Now I start putting together mirror twists in my persona as a priest-experimenter. What happens? If we consider the minimum number of gametes needed to represent this one-third and two-thirds distribution, we get eighteen possible "Joes," eighteen possible "Llitas"-but in both male and female two of them show up as "bad"-the bad recessive has reinforced and the zygote is defective; the experimenter eliminates them...or he may not need to; the reinforcement may be lethal.

            We wind up at this point with an 8 & 1/3 percent improvement, or a total improvement of 25 percent in favorable chances for Llita's baby. I felt better. If you add the fact that I am the sort of a midwife who is too busy helping the mother to stop to spank a monster, the favorable chances went way up.

            But all that this shows is that bad genes tend to be eliminated at each generation-with the tendency greatest with the worst genes and reaching 100 percent whenever reinforcement produces a lethal-in-womb-while favorable genes are conserved. But we knew that-and it applies also to normal outbreeding and even- more strongly to inbreeding, although the latter is not well thought of for humans as it hikes up the chances of a defective by precisely the same amount that it weeds-that being the hazard, that I was afraid of for Llita. Everybody wants the human gene pool cleaned up, but nobody wants its tragic aspects to take place in his own family. Minerva, I was beginning to think of these kids as "my family."

            I still did not know anything about "mirror twins."

            I decided to investigate a more probable incidence of bad recessives at a given site. Fifty-fifty is far too high for a really bad gene; the weeding is drastic, and the incidence drops to a lower percentage each generation, until the incidence of a particular bad gene is so low that reinforcement at fertilization is a rare event, as reinforcement is the square of the incidence; e.g., if one-in-a-hundred haploids carry this bad gene, then it will be reinforced one-in-ten-thousand fertilizations. I speak of the total gene pool, or in this case a minimum of two hundred adult zygotes, female and male; random breeding in such a pool will, bring together that bad reinforcement only by that long chance-a chance happy or unhappy depending on whether you look at it impersonally in terms of -cleaning the gene pool or personally in terms of individual human tragedy.

            I looked at it very personally; I wanted Llita to have a healthy baby.

            Minerva. I'm sure you recognized that 25-50-25 distribution as representing the most drastic case of inbreeding, one which can happen only half the time with tine breeding, only a quarter of the time with full siblings, in both cases through chromosome reduction at meiosis. A stockbreeder uses this drastic measure regularly-and culls the defectives and winds up with a healthy stabilized line. I have a nasty suspicion that such culling after inbreeding was sometimes used among royalty back. on old Earth-but certainly such culling was not used often enough or drastically enough. Royalism might work quite well if kings and queens were treated like racehorses-but regrettably they never were. Instead, they were propped up like welfare clients, and princelings who should have been culled were encouraged to breed like rabbits-bleeders, feebleminded, you name it. When I was a kid, "royalty" was a bad joke based on the worst possible breeding methods.

            Captain Sheffield investigated next a lower incidence of a bad gene: Assume a lethal gene in the gene pool from which Joe and Llita's parents were derived. Being lethal, it could exist in an adult zygote only if it was masked in gene-pair by its benign twin. Assume a 5 percent masked incidence in zygotes-still too high to be realistic for a lethal gene but check, it anyhow. What trend would show?

            Parent zygote generation: 100 females, 100 males, each a possible parent for Llita and for Joe-and 5 of the females and 5 of the males carry the lethal gene, masked.

            Parent haploid stage: 200 ova, 5 of which carry the lethal gene; 200 spermatozoa, 5 of which carry the lethal gene.

            Son-and-daughter zygote generation (possible "Joes" and possible "Llitas"): 25 dead through reinforcement of lethal gene; 1,950 carrying the lethal gene masked; 38,025 "clean" at that site.

            Sheffield noted that a hypothetical hermaphrodite had crept in through not doubling his sample size in order to avoid anomaly through odd numbers, Oh, the hell with!-it did not change the statistical outcome. No, do it!-start with a sample of 200 males and 200 females with the same lethal-gene incidence for that site. This gave him:

400 ova, 10 with the lethal gene;

400 spermatozoa, 10 with that lethal gene-

-which gave in the next zygote generation (possible "Joes" and "Llitas"): 100 dead, 7,800 carriers, 152,100 "clean"- which changed no percentages but got rid of that imaginary hermaphrodite. Sheffield considered briefly the love life of an hermaphrodite, then got back to work. The numbers became very cumbersome, jumping to the billions in the next zygote generation (i.e., Little Nameless, now just started in Llita's belly)-l 5,210,000 culled by reinforcement, 1.216.800,000 carriers, 24,336,000,000 "clean"-and again he wished for a clinic computer and tediously converted the unhandy numbers into percentages: 0.059509 percent, 4.759 percent, 95.18 percent plus.

            This showed a decided improvement: approximately 1 defect out of 1,680 (instead of 1 out of 1,600), the percentage of carriers decreased to below 5 percent and the number of "clean" increased to above 95 percent in one generation.

            Sheffield worked several such problems to confirm what he had seen by inspection: A child from complementary diploids ("mirror twins") had at least as much chance of being healthy as did the offspring of unrelated strangers-plus the happy fact that such a baby's chances were improved by culling at one or more stages by the priest-scientist who had initiated the experiment-an almost certain assumption and one that made Joe the best possible mate for his "sister" rather than the worst.

Lilta could have her baby.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME-VII

            Valhalla to Landfall

            -the best I could for them, Minerva. Every so often some idiot tries to abolish marriage. Such attempts work as well as repealing the law of gravity, making pi equal to three point zero, or moving mountains by prayer. Marriage is not something thought up by priests and inflicted on mankind; marriage is as much a part of mankind's evolutionary equipment as his eyes, and as useful to the race as eyes are to an individual.

            Surely, marriage is an economic contract to provide for children and to take care of mothers while they bear kids and bring them up-but it is much more than that. It is the means this animal, Homo sap., has evolved-quite unconsciously-for performing this indispensable function and be happy while doing so.

            Why do bees split up into queens, drones, and workers, then live as one big family? Because, for them, it works. How is it that fish do okay with hardly a nodding acquaintance between mama fish and papa fish? Because the blind forces of evolution made that way work for them. Why is it that "marriage"-by whatever name-is a universal institution among human beings everywhere? Don't ask a theologian, don't ask a lawyer; this institution existed long before it was codified by church or state. It works, that's all; for all its faults it works far better by the only universal test-survival-than any of the endless inventions that shallow-pates over the millennia have tried to substitute for it.

            I am not speaking monogamy; I mean all forms of marriage-monogamy, polyandry, polygyny, plural and extended marriages with various frills. "Marriage" has endless customs, rules, arrangements. But it is "marriage" if-and-only-if the arrangement both provides for children and compensates the adults. For human beings, the only acceptable compensation for the drawbacks of marriage lies in what men and women can give each other.

            I don't mean "Eros," Minerva. Sex baits the trap, but sex is not marriage, nor is it reason enough to stay married. Why buy a cow when milk is cheap?

            Companionship, partnership, mutual reassurance, someone to laugh with and grieve with, loyalty that accepts foibles, someone to touch, someone to hold your hand-these things are "marriage," and sex is but the icing on the cake. Oh, that icing can be wonderfully tasty-but it is not the cake. A marriage can lose that tasty "icing"-say, through accident- and still go on and on and on, giving deep happiness to those who share it.

            When I was a rutty and ignorant youngster, this used to puzzle. me-

(Omitted)

            -as solemnly ceremonious as I could swing. Man lives by symbols; I wanted them to remember this occasion. I bad Llita dress in her notion of fanciest best. She looked like a bloomin' Christmas tree, but I told her she looked beautiful- which she did; brides can't help it. Joe I dressed in some of my clothes and gave them to him. Me I dressed in a preposterous ship's-captain uniform, one I, had for use on planets where such nonsense is, customary-four wide gold stripes on my cuffs, chest spangled with decorations bought in hockshops, a cocked hat Admiral Lord Nelson would have envied, and the rest as fancy as any grand master of a lodge.

            I preached 'em a sermon loaded with solemn amphigory most of it lifted from the only church they knew, the established religion of Blessed-easy for me, having been a priest there myself-but I added all sorts of things, telling her what she owed him, telling him what he owed her, telling them both what they owed the child in her belly and the other children they would have-and tacked on, for both but primarily for her, a warning that marriage was not easy, not to be entered into lightly, because there would be troubles, they must face together, grave troubles that would require the courage of the Cowardly Lion, the wisdom of the Scarecrow, the loving heart of the Tin Woodsman, and the indomitable gallantry of Dorothy.

            That got her to weeping, so Joe started to drip tears-which was just what I wanted, so I had 'em kneel and prayed over them.

            Minerva, I make no apology for hypocrisy. I didn't care whether some hypothetical God heard me or not; I wanted Llita and Joe to hear it-first in that jargon of Blessed, then in English and Galacta, then topped it off by intoning as many lines of the Aeneid as I could remember. When I got stuck I closed with a schoolboy song:

Omme bene

Sine poena,

Tempus est ludendi;

Venit hora

 Absque mora,

Libros deponendi!*

(*         All is well

            Without punishment,

            The time is for playing;

            Comes the hour

            Without delay

            For laying (school) books down.

            Purists will see that the Senior gave this jingle a poor translation. But one wonders why he did not continue in the same vein with the cheerfully bawdy triple pun available in the last line by substituting "liberos" for "libros"? That he could have missed it seems out of character. Our Ancestor's capric disposition is everywhere evident; his occasional professions of asceticism have at best a hollow ring. J.F. 45th)

            -and ended with 'a resounding "So mote it be!" Had 'em stand, take each other's hands, and declared that, by the supreme authority vested in me as master of a vessel in space, they were now and forever husband and wife-kiss her, Joe.

            All to a muted 'background of Beethoven's Ninth- That doggerel got in by accident when I had run out of

"punishment lines" of Virgil and needed a few more impressive sounds. But when I thought about it later, I saw that it translated as appropriately for their honeymoon as for a school holiday. All was indeed well, now that I knew that this joining of siblings could take place sine poena-without fear of genetic punishment. And ludendi translates as "amorous play" or "Eros" as readily as "gambling" or "children's play" or any other frolic. And I had declared a four-day ship's holiday, no work for them, no study hours-libros deponendi-starting at once. Sheer accident, Minerva. It was simply a bit of Latin verse that came into my head and Latin is majestic, especially when you don't understand it.

            We had a fancy supper, cooked by me, that lasted about ten minutes-for them. Llita could not eat, and Joe reminded me of Johnny's wedding night and why his mother-in-law fainted. So I piled a tray with tasty rations and handed it to Joe, and told 'em to get lost; I didn't want to see hide nor hair of 'em for four days-

(Omitted)

-on to Landfall as fast as I could pick a cargo. I could not leave them on Valhalla; José was not yet able to support a family, and Llita was going to be limited in what she could do, either pregnant or with a new baby. Nor would I be on hand to pick 'em up if they fell down; they had to go to Landfall.

            Oh, Llita could have survived on Valhalla, because there they have the healthy attitude that a pregnant woman is prettier than the other sort and that the farther along she is, the more beautiful she is-true in my opinion and especially true in Llita's case. She had been passable when I bought her; when we grounded at Valhalla, she was almost five months gone and radiantly beautiful. If she went dirtside unescorted,, the first six men she encountered would want to marry her. If she had had one on her back as well as one in her belly, she could have married well the day we arrived; fertility was respected there and the planet wasn't half filled up.

            I didn't think she would jilt Joe that quickly, but I did not want her head turned by too much male attention. I did not want to risk even an outside chance that Llita might leave him for some wealthy bourgeois or freeholder; I had gone to much trouble to build up Joe's ego, but it was still fragile and such a blow could kill it. He was standing tall and proud now-but his pride was based on being a married man, with a wife, and a child on the way. Did I mention that I had given them one of my names on their marriage certificate? They were now Friherr og Frei Lang, Josef og Stjerne, for the duration of our stay on Valhalla, and I wanted them to remain. Mr. and Mrs. Long for some years at least.

            Minerva, I had them take lifetime vows never believing that they would keep them. Oh, ephemerals often stay married for life, but as for the rest-you don't find feathers on frogs very often, and Llita was a naïve, friendly, sexy little tart whose short heels would cause her to trip and land with her legs open without planning it-I could see it coming. I did not want it to happen before I had a chance to indoctrinate Joe. Horns need not give a man a headache. But he does need time to grow up and mellow and acquire self-confidence before he can wear them with tolerance and dignity-and Llita was just the girl who could outfit him with a fine rack of antlers. I got him a job, pearl diver and handyman in a small gourmet restaurant, with a side arrangement for pay-me's to the chef for every Valhalla dish Joe learned to cook correctly. In the meantime I kept her aboard on the excuse that a pregnant woman could not risk the nasty weather until I could get her proper clothing-and don't bother me now, dear; I've got cargo to worry about.

            She took it well enough, pouting just a little. She didn't like Valhalla anyhow; it has one-and-a-seventh gee and I had got them used to the luxury of free-fall--easy on her swelling belly, no strain on her arches or her swelling tits. Now she suddenly found herself much heavier than she had ever been, awkward, and with unhappy feet. What she could see of Valhalla from the entrance lock looked like a frozen slice of hell; she was pleased by my offer to take them on to Landfall.

            Still, Valhalla was the only new place she had ever been; she wanted to see it. I stalled while I got cargo unloaded, then took her measurements and got her one warm outfit in local style but I played her a dirty trick; I fetched back three pairs of' boots and let her take her choice. Two pairs were plain work boots; the third pair was gaudy-and half a size too small.

            So when I did take her groundside, she was wearing too-tight boots, and the weather was unusually cold and blustery-I had watched the predictions. Torheim is pretty in spots, as sky-port cities go-but I avoided those parts and took her "sightseeing" in dull neighborhoods-on foot. By the time I flagged a sleigh and took her back to the ship, she was miserable, and glad to get out of uncomfortable clothes, especially the boots, and into a hot bath.

            I offered to take her into town next day but left her free to refuse. She declined politely.

(Omitted)

            -not quite that bad, Minerva; I simply wanted to keep her in purdah without arousing her suspicions. Actually I had bought two pairs of those gaudy boots, one pair her correct size-and switched them on her at the end of that first day, while she was soaking her poor, tired feet. Later I suggested that her trouble had been that she had never worn shoes or boots in her life-so why not wear them around the ship until she got the hang of it?

            So she did and was surprised at how easy it was. I explained with a straight face that her feet bad swelled the first time, so take it easy, an hour today, a little more each day, until she felt comfortable in them all day long. In a week she was wearing them even if she wore nothing else; she was more comfortable in them than barefooted-not surprising as they were arch-support footwear I had picked most carefully- between pregnancy and the difference in surface gravity of the two planets-point ninety-five gee for her home planet; one point fourteen for Valhalla-she weighed about twenty kilos more than she ever had in her life; she needed contoured foot supports.

            I had to caution her not to wear them to bed.

            I took her to town a couple of times while I was selecting cargo, but I coddled her-not much walking or standing around. She came along when I invited her but was always willing to stay aboard and read.

            In the meantime Joe worked long hours, only one day off in seven. So just before we left, I had him quit his job and I took my kids on a proper holiday; a sleigh hired for the day, with reindeer instead of power, sightseeing that was truly sightseeing on a clear, sunny day that was almost warm, lunch in the country at a fine restaurant with a view of snow-covered crags of Jotunheimen range, dinner at a still finer restaurant in the city, one with live music and entertainment as well as superb food-and a stop for tea at the little gourmet spot where Joe had labored so that he could be addressed as "Friherr Lang" by our host, instead of "Hey, you!"-and have a chance to show off his beautiful, bulging bride.

            And beautiful she was, Minerva. On Valhalla both sexes wear, under heavy outdoor clothes, indoor clothes that are essentially pajamas. The difference between those worn by women and by men lies in material, cut, and such. I had bought one party outfit for each of them. Joe looked smart and so did I, but all eyes were on Llita. She was covered from shoulders to boots-but only technically. The cloth of that harem outfit shimmered with changing lights, orange and green and gold, without obstructing the view. Anyone who cared to look could see that her nipples were crinkled with excitement-and everyone cared to look. That she clearly had only a couple of months to go gave her a large bonus vote toward being picked as "Miss Valhalla."

            She looked grand and knew it, and her face showed her happiness. She was self-confident, too, as I had coached her in local table manners, and how to stand and how to sit and how to behave and such, and she had already got through lunch without a bobble.

            It was all right to let her display herself and enjoy the silent, or sometimes not silent, applause; not only were we leaving right away, but also Joe and I had our knives in sight in our boot tops. True, Joe was no knife fighter. But the wolves there didn't know that, and not one was inclined to bother our beautiful bitch when she was flanked by wolves of her own.

            -early next morning despite a short night. We loaded all day long, with Llita handling manifests and Joe checking numbers while I made sure I wasn't being robbed. Late that night I had us in n-space, with my pilot computer sniffing out the last decimal places for the first leg to Landfall. I set the gravistat to bring us slowly down from Valhalla surface-normal to a comfortable quarter gee-no more free-fall until Llita had her baby-then locked the control room and headed down to my cabin, stinking and tired and trying to kid myself that tomorrow was soon enough for a bath.

            Their door was open-their bedroom door, the room that had been Joe's before I turned their rooms into a suite. Door open and them in bed-they had never done that before.

            I soon learned why. They piled out of bed and paddled toward me; they wanted me to join their fun-they wanted to thank me...for that party day, for buying them, for everything else. His idea? Hers? Both? I didn't try to find out; I just thanked them and told them that I was whipped to the red, worn out, and dirty-all I wanted was soap and hot water and twelve hours of shut-eye-and for them to sleep late; we'd set up ship's routine after we were rested.

            I did let them bathe me and massage me to sleep. That did not break discipline; I had taught them a bit about massage, and Joe in particular had a firmly gentle touch; he had been massaging her daily during her pregnancy-even while working long hours in that restaurant.

            But, Minerva, had I not been so bushed, I might have broken my rule about dependent females.

            (Omitted)

            -every tape, every book available in Torheim for a refresher in obstetrics and gynecology, plus instruments and supplies I had not expected to need aboard ship. I kept to my cabin until I had mastered all new art and was at least as skilled in baby-cotching as I had been as a country doctor on Ormuzd long before.

            I kept a close eye on my patient, watched her diet, made her exercise, checked her gizzards daily-and permitted no-undue familiarity.

            Dr. Lafayette Hubert, MD, aka Captain Aaron Sheffield aka The Senior, et al., worried excessively over his one patient. But he kept her and her husband from seeing it and applied his worry constructively in planning for every obstetric emergency known to the art at that time. Hardware and supplies he had obtained on Valhalla paralleled in every major respect the equipment of Frigg Temple in Torheim, where fifty births a day were not uncommon.

            He smiled to himself at the mass of junk he had taken aboard, recalling a country doctor on Ormuzd who had delivered many a baby with nothing but bare hands, while the mother sat in her husband's lap, knees pulled high and wide by her husband so that old Doc Hubert could kneel in front of them and catch the baby.

            True-but he had always had with him all the gear a husky pacing borri could tote, even though he might never open a saddlebag if everything went right. That was the point: to have the stuff at hand if things did not go right.

            One item purchased in Torheim was not for emergency: the latest improved-model delivery chair-hand grips, padded support arms; leg, foot, and back supports adjustable independently in three axes of translation and rotation with controls accessible both to midwife and patient, quick-release restraints. It was a marvelously flexible piece of mechanical engineering to enable the mother to position herself-or be positioned-so that her birth canal was vertical and as wide open as possible at the moment of truth.

            Dr. Hubert-Sheffield had it set up in his cabin, checked its many adjustments before signing for it-then looked at it and frowned. A good gadget, and he had paid its high price without a quiver. But it had no love in it; it was as impersonal as a guillotine.

            A husband's arms, a husband's lap, were not as efficient- but there was much to be said, in his opinion, for having parents go through the ordeal together, she with her husband's arms holding her, comforting her, while he gave both muscular and emotional support that left the midwife free to concentrate on physical aspects.

            A husband who had done this had no doubt that he was a father. Even if some passing stranger had slipped her the juice, such fact became irrelevant, swallowed up by this greater experience.

            So how about it, Doc? This gadget? Or Joe's arms? Did the kids need this second "marriage ceremony"? Could Joe take it, physically and emotionally? There was no doubt that Llita was the more rugged member of the team although Joe outmassed her even when she was near term. What if Joe fainted and dropped her-at the exact wrong, instant?

            Sheffield worried these matters while he led auxiliary controls from the gravistat in the control room to the delivery chair. He had decided that, nuisance though it was, his cabin had to be the delivery room; it was the only compartment with enough deck space, a bed at hand, and its own bath. Oh, well, he could stand the nuisance of squeezing past the pesky thing to reach his desk and wardrobe for the next fifty days- sixty at the outside, if he had Llita's date of conception right and had judged her progress correctly. Then he could disassemble it and stow it.

            Perhaps he could sell it at a profit on Landfall; it was in advance of the art there, he felt sure.

            He positioned the chair, bolted it to the deck, ran it up to maximum height, placed its midwife's stool in front of it, adjusted the stool until he was comfortable in it, found he could lower the delivery chair ten or twelve centimeters and still have room to work. That done, he climbed into the delivery chair and fiddled with its adjustments-found that it could be made to fit even a person of his height-predictable; some women on Valhalla were taller than he was.

            Minerva, by my figures Llita was about ten days late-which did not worry them, as I had been carefully vague about it, and worried me only a touch, as she checked out normal and healthy in all respects. I prepared them not only with instruction and drill, but also with hypnosis, and had prepared her with exercises designed to make it as easy on her as possible-I dislike postpartum repairs; that canal should stretch, not tear.

            What was really fretting me was possibility that I was going to have to break the neck of a monster, Kill a baby, I mean- I shouldn't dodge the blunt truth. All calculations I had done one sleepless night still left this chance open-and if I had been wrong in any assumption, the chance might be higher than I like to think about.

            If I had to do it, I wanted to get it over with.

            I was far more worried than she was. I don't think she worried at all; I had worked hard on that hypnotic preparation.

            If I had to do this grisly thing, I was going to have to do it fast, while their attentions were elsewhere-then never let them see it and space the pitiful remains at once. Then tackle the horrid job of trying to put them back together emotionally. As a married couple? I did not know. Maybe I would have an opinion after I saw what she was carrying.

            At last her contractions were coming close together, so I had them get into the delivery chair-easy, one-quarter gravity. The chair was already adjusted, and they were used to the position, from drill. Joe climbed in, sat with his thighs stretched wide, knees over the rests, heels braced-not too comfortable as he was not angleworm-limber the way she was. Then I picked her up and sat her in his lap-no trouble, she weighed less than forty pounds at that pseudo-acceleration. Call it eighteen kilos.

            She spread her legs almost in a horizontal split and scooted forward in his lap while Joe kept her from falling between his thighs. "Is that far enough, Captain?" she asked.

            "Just fine," I said. The chair might have positioned her a touch better-but she would not have had Joe's arms around her. I had never told them that there was any other way to do it. "Give her a kiss, Joe, while I get the straps."

            Left knee strap around both their left knees together, same for right knees, and with her feet braced on additional supports I had added-chest and shoulder and thigh straps on him so firmly that he would stay in that chair even if the ship fell apart, but no such straps on her. Her hands on the hand grips, while his hands and arms were a living, warm, and loving safety belt, just under her tits, just over the bulge but not on it. He knew how, we had practiced. If I wanted pressure on her belly, I would tell him-otherwise leave well enough alone.

            My stool was bolted to the deck, I had added a seat belt. As I strapped myself down, I reminded them that we had a rough ride coming-and this we had not been able to practice; it would have risked miscarriage. "Lock your fingers, Joe, but let her breathe. Comfortable, Llita?"

            "Uh-" she said breathlessly. "I-I'm starting another one!"

            "Bear down, dear!" I made sure my left foot - was positioned for the gravistat control and watched her belly.

            Big one! As it peaked, I switched from one-quarter gravity up to two gravities almost in one motion-and Llita let out a yip and the baby squirted like a watermelon seed right into my hands.

            I dragged my foot back to allow the gravistat to put us back on low gee even as I made a nearly instantaneous inspection of the brat. A normal boy, red and wrinkled and ugly-so I slapped his tochis and he bawled.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME-VIII

Landfall

(Omitted)

            -girl I had intended to marry had married again and had another baby. Not surprising; I had been off Landfall two standard years. Not tragic, either, as we had been married once about a hundred years earlier. Old friends. So I talked it over with her and her new husband, then married one of her granddaughters, one not descended from me. Both gals Howards, of course, and Laura, the one I married that time, being of the Foote Family.* (* Correction: Hedrick Family. This woman Laura (one of the ancestors of the undersigned) did carry the surname "Foote" under the archaic patriliheal tradition-a source of confusion in old records, as the more logical matrilineal system has always been used in the Families in assigning clan membership. But the genealogies were not revised to show this until Gregorian Year 3307. This misnomer offers a means of dating this memoir...were it not that other records show that reindeer were not introduced onto Valhalla until approximately a century and a half after the date that the Senior- beyond question-did marry Laura Foote-Hedrick.

            But more interesting is the Senior's allegation that he used a pseudogravity field in that year to facilitate childbirth. Was he the first tocologist to use this (now standard) method? Nowhere does he assert this, and the technique - is usually associated with Dr. Virginius Briggs of Secundus Howard Clinic and a much later date. J.F. 45th)

            We were a good match, Minerva; Laura was twenty, and I was freshly rejuvenated and holding my cosmetic age at the early thirties. We had several children-nine, I think- then she got bored with me forty-odd years later, and wanted to marry my 5th/7th cousin* * (* *And descended from the Senior as well (through Edmund Hardy 2099-2259) although the Senior may not have been aware of it. J.F. 45th) Roger Sperling-which did not grieve me as I was getting restless as a country squire. Anyhow, when a woman wants to go, let her go. I stood up for her at their wedding.

            Roger was surprised to learn that my plantation was not community property. Or possibly did not think that I would hold Laura to the marriage settlement she had signed-but that wasn't the first time I had been wealthy; I had learned. It took a tedious suit to convince him that Laura owned her wedding dower plus appreciation, not those thousands of hectares that were mine before I married her. In many ways it is simpler to be poor.

            Then I shipped out again.

            But this is about my kids who weren't really mine. Before we reached Landfall, Joseph Aaron Long looked more like a cherub and less like a monkey but was still young enough to wet on anyone reckless enough to pick him up-which his grandpappy did, several times a day. I was fond of him; he was not only a merry baby but was also, to me, a most satisfying triumph.

            By the time we grounded, his father had shaped up into a really good cook.

Minerva, I could have set those kids up in style; that was as profitable a triangle trip as I ever made. But you don't cause ex-slaves to stand tall and free and proud by giving them things. What I did was to enable them to get out and scratch. Like this- I credited them with half-time apprentice wages, Blessed to Valhalla, on the assumption that their other half-time was taken up by studies. This I had Llita figure in Valhalla kroner, at Valhalla wage rates. I had her add to this Joe's wages as kitchen help on Valhalla, minus what he had spent there. This total was credited to them as a share in cargo on the third leg, Valhalla to Landfall-which amounted to less than one-half of 1 percent of that cargo. I made Llita work this out.

            To this we added ship's-cook wages for Joe, Valhalla to Landfall, payable in Landfall bucks at Landfall wage scales- but only as wages not as a share in cargo. I had to explain to Llita why Joe's wages for that leg could not be invested retroactively in cargo lifted at Valhalla. Once she understood it, she had a grasp of the notions of venture and risk and profit-but I did not pay her for this accounting I was durned if I would pay purser's wages to figure her own money when I was not only having to check everything she did but was giving her a lesson in economics as well.

            I did not pay Llita for the leg to Landfall; she was a passenger, busy having a baby and then still busier learning to care for it. But I did not charge her for passage; she deadheaded.

            You see what I was doing-rigging the accounts so that I would owe them something once I sold my cargo, while making it appear that they had earned it. They hadn't been worth any wages; on the contrary I had spent quite a chunk on them-aside from buying them, which I never charged against them even in my head. On the other hand, I was paid in deep satisfaction-especially if they learned to stand on their own feet. But I discussed none of this; I just had Llita figure their share-my way.

(Omitted)

            -came to a couple of thousand, not enough to support them very long. But I took time to find a hole-in-the-wall luncheon, on which I took option through a third party, after satisfying myself that a couple of strivers could stay afloat with it, if the price was right arid they were willing to work. Then I told them that they had better start job hunting as I was putting the Libby up for sale or bond-and-lease. It was root, hog, or die. They were really free-free to starve.

            Llita didn't pout, she just looked solemn and went on nursing little J.A. Joe looked scared. But later I saw them with their heads together over a newspaper I had brought aboard; they were checking "help wanted" ads.

            After much whispering Llita asked diffidently if I could baby-sit while they went job hunting?-but if I was busy, J.A. could ride her hip.

            I said I wasn't going anywhere-but had they checked "business opportunities"? Jobs for untrained people didn't lead anywhere.

            She looked startled; it was, a new idea. But that hint was enough. There was more looking and whispering; then she fetched the paper to me and pointed to an ad-my own but not so marked-and asked what "five-year amortization" meant?

            I sniffed at it and told her it was a way to go broke slowly, especially if she spent money on clothes-and there must be something wrong or the owner wouldn't want to sell.

            She looked as sad as Joe did and said that the other business opportunities called for investing lots of money. I grudgingly admitted that it could not hurt to look-but watch out for booby traps.

            They came back full of enthusiasm-they were sure they could buy it and make it pay! Joe was twice as good a cook as that fry cook who had it-he used too much grease and it was rancid and the coffee was terrible and he didn't even keep the place clean. But best of all, behind the storeroom was a bedroom where they could live and- I squelched them. What were the gross receipts? How about taxes? What licenses and inspections and what squeeze on each? What did they know about buying food wholesale? No, I would not go look at it; they had to make up their own minds and quit leaning on me and, anyhow, I didn't know anything about restaurant business.

            Two lies, Minerva; I've run restaurants on five planets-plus a silent lie as to my reasons for not being willing to inspect the joint. Two-no, three-reasons: First, I had gone over the place in cynical detail before I optioned it; second, that fry cook was bound to remember me; third, since I was selling it to them, through a dummy, I could neither vouch for it nor urge them to buy. Minerva, if I sell a horse, I won't guarantee that it has a leg on each corner; the buyer must count them himself.

            Having disclaimed any knowledge of restaurant business, I then lectured them about it. Llita started taking notes, then asked to be allowed to start the recorder. So I went into detail: Why 100 percent gross profit on the cost of food might not break even after she figured costs and overhead-amortization, depreciation, taxes, insurance, wages for them as if they were employees, etc. Where the farmers' market was and how early they had to be there each morning. Why Joe must learn to cut meat, not buy it by the piece-and where he could learn how. How a long menu could ruin them. What to do about rats, mice, roaches, and some dillies Landfall has but, thank heaven, Secundus does not. Why-

(Omitted)

            -chopped the umbilical, Minerva. I don't think they ever guessed that they were dealing with me. I neither cheated nor helped them; that amortized sales contract simply passed on the price I had to pay for the dump, plus a load representing time I had spent dickering the price downward, plus legal and escrow fees and a fee to the dummy, plus the interest a bank would charge me-two points cheaper than they could get, at least. But no charity, none-I made nothing, lost nothing, and charged for only a day of my time.

            Llita turned out to be tighter than a bull's arse in fly time; I think she broke even the first month despite closing down while they cleaned and refurbished. Certainly she did not miss that first month's payment on the mortgage, nor any after that. Miss one? Dear, they paid that five-year loan in three years.

            Not too surprising. Oh, a long spell of illness could have wrecked them. But they were healthy and young and worked seven days a week until they were free and clear. Joe cooked and Llita handled the cashbox and smiled at customers and helped at the counter, and J.A. lived in a basket at his mother's elbow until he was old enough to toddle.

            Until I married Laura and left New Canaveral to be a country gentleman, I stopped in their joint fairly often- not too often, as Llita would not let me pay, and that was proper, part of standing tall and proud; they had eaten my food, now I ate theirs. So I usually stopped just for a cup of coffee and checked on my godson-while checking on them. I steered custom their way, too; Joe was a good cook and got steadily better, and word got around that Estelle's Kitchen was the place if you appreciated good food. Word-of-mouth is the best advertising; people tend to be smug about having "discovered" that sort of eatery.

            It did no harm with customers, male especially, that Estelle herself presided over the cashbox, young and pretty and with a baby in her arm. If she was nursing him as she made change-as was often the case at first-it practically guaranteed a lavish tip.

            J.A. gave up the dairy business presently, but when he was about two his job was taken over by a baby girl, Libby Long. I didn't deliver that one, and her red hair had nothing to do with me. Joe was blond, and I assume that Llita carried the gene as a recessive-doubt if she had time to branch out. Libby was a number-one tip-inducer, and I credit her with helping pay off .the mortgage early.

A few years later Estelle's Kitchen moved uptown to the financial district, was somewhat larger and Llita hired a waitress, a pretty one of course-

(Omitted)

            -Maison Long was swank, but it had a corner in it, a coffee shop, named "Estelle's Kitchen" and Estelle was hostess there as well as in the main dining room-smiling, dressed fit to kill in clothes that showed her superb figure, calling regulars by name and getting the names of their guests and remembering them. Joe had three chefs and a number of helpers, and they met his high standards or he fired them. But before they opened Maison Long, something happened that showed that my kids were even smarter than I thought they were-or at least remembered everything and figured things out later. Mind you, when I bought them, they were too ignorant to pound sand and I don't think either one had ever touched money at any time.

            Letter from a lawyer- Inside was a bank draft, with it was an accounting: Two passages, Blessed to Valhalla to 'Landfall, second leg taken from tariffs of Transtellar Migration Corporation, Ltd. (New Canaveral) and first leg arbitrarily equated to second leg; certain monies accruing from share in sale of cargo; five thousand blessings expressed as bucks at an estimated exchange rate based on assumptions as to equivalent buying power, see enclosure; total of above gross sums; interest on gross compounded semiannually for thirteen years at the going commercial rate for each year for unsecured loans-and grand total same as the bank draft, a sum I'm not sure I remember, Minerva, but it would not mean anything in Secundus crowns anyhow. It was a sizable sum.

            There was no mention of Llita or Joe, and the draft was signed by this lawyer. So I called him.

            He turned out to be stuffy, which did not impress me as I was a lawyer there myself, although not practicing. All he would say was that he was acting for an undisclosed client.

            So I fired legalese at him, and he loosened up to the extent of informing me that he had instructions to cover the contingency that I might refuse the draft: He was then to pay the draft sum to a designated foundation and so inform me after it was paid. But he declined to tell me what foundation.

            I signed off and called Estelle's Kitchen. Llita answered, then cut in video and smiled her best. "Aaron! We haven't seen you in much too long."

            I agreed and added that apparently they had gone out of their silly minds while I wasn't watching. "I have here a bunch of nonsense from a lawyer, along with a ridiculous draft. If I could reach you, dear, I would paddle you. 'Better let me talk with Joe."

            She smiled happily and told me that I was welcome to paddle her any time and that I could talk to Joe in a moment but that he was locking up. Then she stopped smiling and said with sober dignity, "Aaron, our oldest and dearest friend, that draft is not ridiculous. Some debts cannot be paid. So you taught me, years ago. But the money part of a debt can be paid. "This we are doing, as closely as we have been able to figure it."

            I said, "God damn it, you stupid little bitch, you kids don't owe me a bloody penny!"-or words to that effect.

            She answered, "Aaron, our beloved master-"

            At the word "master" I blew my overloads, Minerva. I used language guaranteed to scorch the hide of the lead mules in a team of six.

            She let me run down, then said softly, "Our master until you free us by letting us pay this-Captain."

            Dear, I skidded to a halt.

            She added, "But even then you will still be our master in my heart, Captain. And in Joe's heart, I know. Even though we stand free and proud, as you taught us. Even though- thanks always to you-our children, and the children I still will bear, will never know that we were ever anything but free...and proud."

            I said, "Dear, you're making me cry."

            She said, "No, no! The Captain never cries."

            I said, "A lot you know about it, wench. I weep. But in my cabin-with the door locked. Dear, I won't argue. If this is what it takes to make you kids feel free, I'll take it. But just the base sum, no interest. Not from friends."

            "We are more than friends, Captain. And less. Interest on a debt is always paid-you taught me. But I knew that in my heart when I was only an ignorant slave, freshly manumitted. Joseph knew it, too. I tried to pay interest, sir. But you would not have me."

            I changed the subject. "What is this blinking foundation that gets the bucks if I refuse them?"

            She hesitated. "We planned to leave that up to you, Aaron. But we thought it might go to orphans of spacemen. Perhaps the Harriman Memorial Refuge."

            "You're both crazy. That fund is bulging, and I know it. Look, if I go to town tomorrow, can you shut down 'that ptomaine trap for a day? Or perhaps Neilsday?"

            "Any day and as many days as you wish, dear Aaron"- so I said I would call back.

            Minerva, I needed time to think. Joe was no problem, he never was. But Llita was stubborn. I had offered to compromise; she had not budged a millimeter. It was the interest that made it such a horrid sum, for them-two strivers who had started with a couple of thousand bucks thirteen years back and were raising three kids by then.

            Compound interest is murder. The sum she claimed they owed me-the amount of that draft-was more than two and a half times the base sum...and I couldn't see how they had saved even that. But, had I been able to get her to agree on the base amount and forget compound interest, they would still have a nice chunk of capital to expand again- and if it took giving the smaller sum to orphaned spacemen or spacemen's orphans or indignant cats to make them feel proud, I could understand how it would be a bargain in their eyes. I had taught them myself, hadn't I? I once dropped ten times that amount rather than argue over whether cards had been cut-then slept that night in a graveyard.

            I wondered if, in her sweetly devious mind, she was paying me back for having dragged her out of my bed one night fourteen years earlier. I wondered what she would do if I made a counteroffer to accept the base sum and let her "pay the interest" her own way. Shucks, she would probably be on her back before you could say "Contraception."

            Which would solve nothing.

            Since she had turned down my compromise, we were back where we had started. She was determined to pay it all-or give it away pointlessly-and I was not going to let her do either one; I can be stubborn, too.

            There had to be a way to do both.

            At dinner that night, after the servants withdrew, I told Laura I was going to town 'on business'-would she like to come along? Shop while I was busy, then dine wherever she liked, then any fun that appealed to her. Laura was pregnant again; I thought she might enjoy a day wasting money on clothes.

            Not that I planned to have her along at the coming row with Llita; officially Joseph and Estelle Long and their oldest child had been born on Valhalla; we had become friends when they had taken passage in my ship. I had fleshed out that story and coached the kids in it on the leg to Landfall, and had them study sound-sight tapes from Torheim-ones which turned them into synthetic Valhallans unless questioned too closely by real Valhallans.

            This fakery was not utterly necessary as Landfall had an open-door policy; an immigrant did not even have to register-he could sink or swim. No landing fee, no head tax, not much taxation of any sort, or much government, and New Canaveral, the third biggest city, was only a hundred thousand-Landfall was a good place to be in those days.

            But I had Joe and Llita do it that way both for them and for their kids. I wanted them to forget that they had ever been slaves, never talk about it, never let their kids know it-and at the same time, bury the fact that they had been, in some odd fashion, brother and sister. There is nothing shameful in being born a slave (not for the slave!), nor was there any reason why diploid complements should not marry. But forget it-start over. Joseph Long had married Stjerne Svensdatter (name Anglicized to "Estelle," with the nickname Yeetah from babyhood); they had married when he finished apprenticeship to a chef; they had migrated after their first child. The, story was simple and unassailable, and put the polish on my only attempt at playing Pygmalion. I had seen no reason to give my new wife any but the official version. Laura knew they were my friends; she was gracious to them on my account, then had come to like them on their own account.

            Laura was a good gal, Minerva good company in bed and out, and she had the Howard virtue, even on her first marriage, of not trying to smother her spouse-most Howards need at least one marriage to learn it. She knew who I was-the Senior-as our marriage and later our kids were registered with the Archives, just as had been my marriage to her grandmother, and the offspring from that. But she did not treat me as a thousand years older than she was and never quizzed me about my past lives-simply listened if I felt like talking.

            I don't blame her for that lawsuit; Roger Sperling cooked that up, the greedy son of a sow:

Laura said, "If you don't mind, dear, I'll stay home. I would rather splurge on clothes after I slim down. As for dinner, there isn't a restaurant in New Canaveral that can match what Thomas does for us here. Well, Estelle's Kitchen perhaps, but that's a lunchroom, not a restaurant. Will you see them this trip? Estelle and Joe, I mean."

            "Possibly."

            "Find time, dear; they are nice people. Besides, I want to send some knickknack to my goddaughter. Aaron, if you want to treat me to a fancy restaurant when we go to town, you should encourage Joe to open one. Joe can cook, equal to Thomas."

            (Better than Thomas, I said to myself-and Joe doesn't scowl at a polite request. Minerva, the trouble with servants is that you serve them quite as much as they serve you.) "I'll make a point of seeing them, at least long enough to deliver your present to Libby."

            "And kiss them all for me and I'd better send something to each of their kids and be sure to tell Estelle that I'm pregnant again and find out if she is, too, and remember to tell me, and what time are you leaving, dear?-I must check your shirts."

            Laura was serenely certain that I could not pack an overnight bag no matter how many centuries of experience I had had. Her ability to see the world as she wanted to see it enabled her to put up with my cranky ways for forty years; I do appreciate her. Love? Certainly, Minerva. She looked out for my welfare, always, and I did for hers, and we enjoyed being together. Just not love so intense that it is a great ache in your belly.

            Next day I took my jumpbuggy over to New Canaveral.

(Omitted)

            -planned Maison Long. Llita had meant to blitz me. I'm sentimental, and she knew it and had set the stage. When I got there, the shutters were closed, early-and their two older kids were farmed out for the night and baby Laura was asleep. Joe let me in, told me to go on back; he had our dinner on the range and would be along in a minute. So I went back to their living quarters to find Llita.

            I found her-dressed in sarong and sandals I had given her not an hour after I had bought her. Instead of the sophisticated face-do she now used so well, she was wearing no makeup at all and had her hair simply parted and hanging straight down, to her waist or longer, and brushed till it shone. But this was not the frightened, ignorant slave who had to be taught how to bathe; this serenely beautiful young lady was clean as a sterilized scalpel, and was scented with some perfume which may have been named Spnng Breezes but should have been called Justifiable Rape and sold only under doctor's prescription.

            She posed just long enough for me to take this in, then swarmed over me, hit me with a kiss that matched her perfume.

            By the time she let me go, Joe had joined us-dressed in breechclout and sandals. But I did not let it go sentimental; I riposted sharply, stopping only to accept one-tenth that much kiss from Joe, said nothing about their costumes, and at once started explaining that business deal. When Llita caught what I was talking about, she shifted from sexy siren to sharp businesswoman, listened intently, ignored her stage setting and costuming, and asked the right questions.

            Once she said, "Aaron, I sniff a mouse. You told us to be free, and we've tried to be-and that's why we sent you that draft. I can add figures; we owe you that money. We don't have to have the biggest restaurant in New Canaveral. We're happy, the children are healthy, we're making money."

            "And working too hard," I answered.

            "Not all that hard. Though a bigger restaurant would mean even more work. But the point is: You seem to be buying us again. That's all right if you wish to-you are the only master we would ever accept. Is that your intention, sir? If so, please say so. Be frank with us."

            I said, "Joe, will you hold her while I wallop her? For using that dirty word? Llita, you are wrong on both counts. A bigger restaurant means less work. And I'm not buying you; this is a business deal in which I expect a fat profit. I'm betting on Joe's genius as a chef, plus your genius for pinching pennies without cutting quality. If I don't make money, I'll exercise my option to liquidate, get my investment back, and you can go back to running a lunch counter. If you fail I won't prop you up."

            "Brother?" She called him that in the dialect of their childhood. It signified to me that the lodge was tyled for executive session at the highest degree, as they were most careful not to call each other "Brother" or "Sister" in any language, especially in front of the children. J.A. was sometimes "Brother" in English-never his father Joe. Minerva, I don't recall that Landfall had laws against incest-it did not have many laws. But there was a strong taboo against it, and I had carefully indoctrinated them. Half the battle with any culture is knowing its taboos.

            Joe looked thoughtful. "I can cook. Can you manage it, Sis?"

            "I can try. Of course we'll try it if you want us to, Aaron. I'm not sure we can make a go of it, and it does look like more work to me. I'm not complaining, Aaron, but we are already working about as hard as we can."

            "I know you are. I don't see how Joe found time to knock you up."

            She shrugged and said, "That doesn't take long. And it will be a long time-I've just barely caught-before I'll have to take time off. J.A. is old enough to handle the cashbox when I do. But not in a big fancy restaurant."

            I answered, "Wench, you're thinking in terms of a lunchroom. Now listen, and learn bow to make more money with less work and more time off.

            "We may not open Maison Long until after you have this baby; we can't set this up overnight. We must sell or lease this place-which means finding buyers who can keep it out of the red; it's always expensive to have to take a place back.

            "We must find a suitable property in the right neighborhood, for sale or lease with option to buy. I may buy it and rent it to the corporation, so as not to tie up too much of the corporation's capital in senior financing. Find the place, remodel it probably, redecorate it certainly. Money for fixtures. Not much for squeeze; I know where the bodies are buried in this burg, and I won't hold still for excessive squeeze.

            "But, my dear, you will not be on the cashbox; we'll hire help, and I'll set it up so that they can't steal. You will be moving around, looking pretty, smiling at people-and keeping your eye on everything. But you'll do this only at lunch and dinner. Call it six hours a day."

            Joe looked startled; Llita blurted out, "But, Aaron, we always open up as soon as we're back from market and stay open late. Otherwise you lose so much trade."

            "I'm sure you work that hard; this draft proves it. And that's why you think getting pregnant 'doesn't take long.' But it should 'take long,' dear. Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love. Tell me- When you caught J.A. in the 'Libby', were you rushed? Or did you have time to enjoy it?"

            "Oh, goodness!" Her nipples suddenly crinkled. "Those were wonderful days!"

            "There will be wonderful days again. Gather ye rosebuds, time is still a-flying. Or have you lost interest?"

            She looked indignant. "Captain, you know me better than that."

            "Joe? Slowing down, son?"

            "Well...we do work long hours. Sometimes I'm pretty tired."

            "Let's change that. This will not be a lunchroom; this is going to be a high-priced gourmet restaurant of a quality this planet has never seen. Remember that place I took you kids for dinner just before we lifted from Valhalla? That sort. Soft lights and soft music and wonderful food and high prices. A wine cellar but no hard liquor; our patrons must not have their tastebuds numbed.

            "Joe, you will still go to market each morning; selecting top-quality food is something you can't delegate. But don't take Llita and do take J.A. if he's going to learn the profession."

            "I sometimes take him now."

            "Good. Then come home and go to bed again; you're through until you cook dinner. Not lunch."

            "Huh?"

            "That's right. Your number two chef handles lunch, then helps with dinner, your big moneymaking meal. Llita is hostess both for lunch and dinner but keeps an especially sharp eye on quality at lunch, Joe, since you won't be in the kitchen. But she never goes to market and should still be in bed when you get back from market-did I say that your quarters will be attached, just as now? You'll both be off duty two or three hours in the afternoon-just right for the sort of siesta you used to grab in the 'Libby.' In fact, if you two can't find time under that regime both for sleep and plenty of happy play- But you can."

            "It sounds grand," Llita conceded, "if we can make a living with those hours-"

            "You can. A better living. But instead of trying to get every buck, Llita, your object will be to maintain top quality while not losing money...and enjoy life."

            "We will. Aaron, our beloved...captain and friend, since I must not say that 'dirty' word, we enjoyed life even as children when I had to wear that horrid virgin's basket- because it was so sweet to snuggle together all the long nights. When you bought us-and freed us-and I didn't have to wear it, life was perfect. I didn't think it could, be better-though it will be, when we don't have to choose between sleep and trying to stay awake for loving. Uh, you may not believe this since you know what a rutty wench I am- but lots of times sleep won."

            "I believe it. Let's change it."

            "But- No breakfast trade at all? Aaron, some of our breakfast customers have been coming to us the whole time we've been on Landfall."

            "Net profit?"

            "Well...not much. People won't pay as much for break fast even though materials sometimes cost as much. I've been satisfied with a very small net on breakfast. Advertising. I'd hate to tell our regulars that we won't serve them any longer."

            "Details, dear. You can have a breakfast bar in one corner and not open the main dining room-but Joe won't cook breakfasts, and neither will you. You'll be in bed with Joe at that hour-so that your eyes will sparkle at lunch."

            "J.A. knows breakfast dishes," put in Joe. "I started him on breakfasts."

            "Details again. Maybe we'll work out a deal with my godson whereby he makes money of his own, if the breakfast bar makes money-"

(Omitted)

            "-sum it up. Take notes, Llita. I agree to accept this draft while you two-especially you, Llita-agree that it settles forever any debt between us. Maison Long to be a closely held corporation; fifty-one-per cent to you two, forty-nine percent to me, all three of us directors, and we can't sell stock save to each other-except that I retain option to change all or part of my share to nonvoting stock, in which case I can assign it.

            "My share of the initial financing is this draft. Your share is what we get for this lunchroom-"

            "Hold it," said Llita. "We might not be able to sell for that much."

            "Details, dear. Stick in a paragraph to let you pay the corporation any discrepancy out of your net-and there will indeed be a net; I don't stick with a business that doesn't make money, I always cut my losses. Let's have another paragraph that permits me to supply more capital, if needed, by buying nonvoting stock-and we'll use something like that to hang onto our top help, too. Not have Joe train a chef and then have him walk out. Never mind, let's get the outlines straight. You two are the bosses; I'm silent partner. Salaries for you two on the scale we discussed, escalating with rise in net, as discussed.

            "I don't get a salary, just dividends. But we all will be working our tails off to get this rolling. I'll come in from Skyhaven as necessary; there's nothing going on there now that my overseer can't handle. But once it's rolling, I do nothing; I sit back and let you two make us rich. But-listen carefully-once it's rolling, you two must stop working your tails off, too. More time in bed. More time for fun out of bed. You won't make us rich working lunchroom hours. Have we reached a meeting of minds?"

            "I think so," agreed Joe. "Sis?"

            "Yes. I'm not certain New Canaveral will support a gourmet restaurant like those lovely ones on Valhalla-but we'll try! I still think our starting salaries are too high, but I'll wait until I've struck a trial balance on our first quarter before I argue the matter. Just one thing, Captain-"

            "My name's 'Aaron.'"

            "'Captain' is safer than that 'dirty word.' I've agreed to the whole thing-and I'm durned well going to make it work!-as you always say. But if you think this makes me forget a night you dragged me out of your bed and bounced me on my bum on a hard steel deck, you can think again! Because it hasn't!"

            I sighed, Minerva, and said to her husband, "Joe, how do you cope with her?"

            He shrugged and grinned. "I don't, I just get along. Besides, I see her side of it. If I were you, I'd take her to bed and make her forget it."

            I shook my head. "But I'm not you, that's the point. Joe, I learned long before you were born that free tail is invariably the most expensive sort. Worse than that, we three are business partners now-and I can see six possible outcomes if I accept your notion of a solution-and any of the six could cause Maison Long, Ltd., never to lift off.

- (Omitted)

            -just as I knew it would, Minerva; I've never had a nonspeculative Investment pay off so well. They tried to' imitate us-but they couldn't imitate Joe's cooking or Llita's management. I made a bundle!

VARIATIONS ON A THEME-IX

Conversation Before Dawn

            The computer said, "Lazarus, aren't you sleepy?"

            "Don't nag me, dear. I've had thousands of white nights, and I'm still here. A man never cuts his throat from a sleepless night if he has company to see him through it. You're good company, Minerva."

            "Thank you, Lazarus."

            "The simple truth, girl. If I fall asleep-fine. If I don't, then no need to tell Ishtar. No, that won't work; she'll have graphs and charts on me, won't she?"

            "I'm afraid so, Lazarus."

            "You durn well know so. A good reason for me to be a little angel and wash behind my ears and get this rejuvenation over is to get my privacy back. Privacy is as necessary as company; you can drive a man crazy by depriving him of either. That was another thing I accomplished by setting up Maison Long; I got my kids privacy they didn't know they needed."

            "I missed that, Lazarus. I noted that they had more time for 'Eros'-and I saw that that was good. Should I have inferred something else from the data?"

            "No, because I didn't give you all the data. Not a tenth. Just the outline of some forty years I knew them, and some-not all-of the critical points. For instance, did I mention the time Joe decapitated a man?"

            "No."

            "Not much to it and it wasn't important to the story. This young blood tried to share the wealth one night by sticking them up. Llita had J.A. in her right arm, nursing him or about to, and couldn't reach the gun she kept at the cashbox; she couldn't fight and was bright enough not to try against those odds. I suppose this dude didn't know that Joe had simply stepped out of sight.

            "Just as this free-lance socialist was gathering up their day's receipts, Joe lets him have it, with a cleaver. Curtain. The only notable thing about it was that Joe acted so quickly and correctly in the crunch, for I feel sure that the only fighting that he had ever tried was that which I forced on him in the 'Libby.' Joe did everything else properly, too-finished taking the head off, threw the body into the street for his friends to take away if he had any, for the scavengers to remove if not- then displayed the head in front of the shop on a spike meant for such purpose. Then he closed his shutters and cleaned up the mess-then may have taken time to throw up; Joe was a gentle soul. But it's seven to two that Llita did not throw up.

            "The city's committee for public safety voted Joe the usual reward, and the street committee passed the hat and added to it; a cleaver against a gun rated special notice. Good advertising for Estelle's Kitchen but not important otherwise, save that the kids could use that money-helped pay the mortgage, no doubt, and wound up in my pocket. But I wouldn't have heard of this minor dustup had I not been in New Canaveral and happened to stop by Estelle's Kitchen when the real head was removed-flies, you know-and the plastic trophy head custom required Joe to display was substituted for it by the street committee. But I was speaking of privacy.

            "When I picked the property for Maison Long, I made sure that it included space for a growing family, that's all, since they had three bucking and one in the chute the night we planned it. Rearranging hours gave them privacy from each other, too. Happy as it is to snuggle and make love, nevertheless, when you are really tired, it is often good to have the bed to yourself-and the new routine not only allowed this but necessitated it, part of each day, through staggering their working hours.

            "But I also planned room to give them privacy from their children-and to cope with another problem Llita did not have straight and Joe may not have thought about. Minerva, can you define 'incest'?"

            The computer replied, "'Incest' is a legal term, not a biological one. It designates sexual union between persons forbidden by law to marry. The act itself is forbidden; whether such union results in progeny is irrelevant. The prohibitions vary widely among cultures and are usually, but not always, based on degrees of consanguinity."

            "Y'r durn tootin' it's 'not always.' There are cultures which permit first cousins to marry-genetically risky-but forbid a man to marry his brother's widow, which involves no more risk than it did for the first union. When I was a youngster, you could find one rule in one state, then cross an invisible line and find exactly opposite laws fifty feet away. Or some times and places both unions might be mandatory. Or forbidden. Endless rules, endless definitions for incest, and rarely any logic to them. Minerva, so far as I recall, the Howard Families are the first group in history to reject the legalistic approach and to define 'incest' solely in terms of genetic hazard."

            "That accords with the records in me," Minerva agreed. "A Howard geneticist might advise against a union between two persons with no known common ancestry but place no objection to marriage of siblings. In each case analysis of genetic charts would control."

            "Yeah, sure. Now let's drop genetics and talk about taboo. The incest taboo, although it can be anything, most commonly means sisters and brothers, parents and offspring. Llita and Joe were a unique case, brother and sister by cultural rules, totally unrelated by genetic rules-or at least no more so than two strangers.

            "Now comes a second-generation problem. Since Landfall had this taboo against union between siblings, I had impressed on Llita and Joe that they must never let anyone know that they thought of each other as 'brother' and 'sister.'

            "Fine so far as it went. They did as I told them, and there was never a lifted eyebrow. Now comes the night we planned Maison Long-and my godson is thirteen and interested, and his sister is eleven and beginning to be interesting. Full siblings-both genetically hazardous and contrary to taboo. Anyone who has raised puppies-or a number of children-knows that a boy can get as horny over his sister as over the girl down the street, and his sister is often more accessible.

            "And little Libby was a redheaded pixie so endearingly sexy at eleven that even I could feel it. Soon she was going to have every buck in the pasture pawing the ground and snorting.

            "If a man pushes a rock, can he ignore an avalanche that follows? Fourteen years earlier I had manumitted two slaves- because a chastity girdle on one of them offended my concept of human dignity. Must I find some way to put a chastity girdle on that slave's daughter? Around we go in circles! What was my responsibility, Minerva? I pushed the first rock."

            "Lazarus, I am a machine."

            "Humph! Meaning that human concepts of moral responsibility are not machine concepts. Dear, I wish you were a human girl with a spankable bottom long enough for me to spank it-I would! In your memories is far more experience on which to judge than any flesh-and-blood can have. Quit dodging."

            "Lazarus, no human can accept unlimited responsibility lest he go mad from unbearable load of unlimited guilt. You could have advised Libby's parents. But your responsibility did not extend even to that."

            "Um. You're right, dear-it's dismal how regularly you are right. But I am an incurable buttinsky. Fourteen years earlier I had turned my back on two puppies, so to speak-and that the outcome was not tragic was good luck, not good planning. Now here we go again, and the outcome could be tragic. I felt no 'morals' about it, dear-just thumb rules for not, hurting people unintentionally. I didn't give a hoot if these children 'played doctor' or 'make a baby' or whatever the kids there called their experimenting; I simply did not want my godson giving little Libby a defective child.

            "So, I did butt in and took it up with their parents. Let me add that Llita and Joe knew as much about genetics as a pig knows about politics. Aboard the 'Libby' I had kept my worries to myself, and never discussed the matter with them later. Despite their remarkable success in competing as free human beings, in most subjects Llita and Joe were ignorant. How could it be otherwise? I had taught them their Three R's and a few practical matters. Since arrival on Landfall they had been running under the whip; they hadn't had time to fill in gaps in their education.

            "Perhaps worse yet, being immigrants, they had not grown up exposed to the local incest taboo. They were aware of it because I had warned them-but it wasn't canalized from childhood. Blessed had somewhat differenct incest taboos-but the taboos there did not apply to domestic animals. Slaves. Slaves bred as they were told to, or as they could get away with-and my two kids had been told by highest authority- their mother and their priest-that they were a 'breeding pair'...so it could not be wrong, or taboo, or sinful.

            "It was simply something to keep quiet about on Landfall because Landfellows were tetched in the head on this subject.

            "So I should have thought of it earlier. Yeah, sure, Sure! Minerva, I plead other obligations. I could not spend those years playing guardian angel to Llita and Joe. I had a wife and kids of my own, employees, a couple of thousand hectares of farmland and twice that much in virgin pinkwood- and I lived a long way off, even by high-orbit jumpbuggy.

            Ishtar and Harnadiyad, and, to some extent, Galahad, all seem to think I am some sort of superman simply because I've lived a long time. I'm not; I have the limitations of any flesh-and-blood, and for years I was as busy with my problems as Llita and Joe were with theirs. Skyhaven didn't come to me gift-wrapped.

            "It wasn't until we put aside restaurant business and I got out presents Laura had sent to their kids, and had admired the latest pictures of their kids and shown them pictures of Laura and my kids and all that ancient ritual, that I thought about it at all. The pix, of course. This tall lad, J.A., all hands and feet, wasn't the little boy I recalled from my last visit. Libby was about a year younger than Laura's oldest, and J.A.'s age I knew to the second-which is to say that he was about the age I was when I was almost caught with a girl in the belfry of our church about a thousand years earlier.

            "My godson was no longer a child; he was an adolescent whose balls were not just ornaments. If he had not tried them as yet, he was certainly jerking off and thinking about it.

            "The possibilities raced through my mind the way a man's past life is supposed to, when he is dying-which isn't true, by the way. So I tackled it and was subtle about it. Diplomatic.

            "I said, 'Joe, which one do you lock up at night? Libby? Or this young wolf?'"

            The computer chuckled. "'Diplomatic,'" she repeated.

            "How would you have put it, dear? They looked puzzled. When I made it clear, Llita was indignant. Deprive her kids of each other? When they had slept together since they were babies? Besides, there wasn't room any other way. Or was I suggesting that she sleep with Libby while J.A. slept with Joe? If so, I could forget it!

            "Minerva, most people never learn anything about any science, and genetics stands at the bottom of the list. Gregor Mendel had been dead twelve centuries at that time, yet all the old wives' tale were what most people believed-and still do, I might add.

            "So I tried to explain, knowing that Llita and Joe weren't stupid, just ignorant. She cut in on me. 'Yes, yes, Aaron, certainly. I've thought about the possibility that Libby may want to marry Jay Aaron-will want to, I think-and I know it's frowned on here. But it's silly to ruin their happiness over a superstition. So, if it works out that way, we think it's best for them to move to Colombo-or at least as far as Kingston..

            Then they can use different family names and get married, and no one will be the wiser. Not that we want them to be so far away. But we won't stand in the way of their happiness."

            "She loved them," said Minerva.

            "Yes, she did, dear, by the exact definition of love. Llita placed their welfare and happiness ahead of her own. So I had to try to explain it-why the taboo against union of brother and sister wasn't superstition but a real danger-even though it had turned out to be safe in their case.

            "'Why' was the hard part. Starting cold on the complexities of genetics with persons who don't even know elementary biology is like trying to explain multidimensional matrix algebra to someone who has to take off his shoes to count above ten.

            "Joe would have accepted my authority. But Llita had the sort of mind that has to know why-else she was going to smile her sweetly stubborn smile, agree with me, then do, as she had intended to all along. Llita was well above average smart but suffered from the democratic fallacy: the notion that her opinion was as good as anyone's-while Joe suffered from the aristocratic fallacy: He accepted the notion of authority in opinion. I don't know which fallacy is the more pathetic; either one can trip you. However, my mind matches. Llita's in this respect, so I knew I had to convince her.

            "Minerva, how do you condense a thousand years of research in the second-most complex subject into an hour of talk? Llita didn't even know she laid eggs-in fact she was certain she didn't, as she had served thousands of eggs, fried,  scrambled, boiled, and so forth. But she listened, and I sweated at it, with nothing but stylus and paper-when I needed the resources of a teaching machine in a college of genetics.

            "But I kept at it, drawing pictures and simplifying outrageously some very complex concepts, until I thought they had grasped the ideas of genes, chromosomes, chromosome reduction, paired genes, dominants, recessives-and that bad genes made defective babies-and defective babies, thank Frigg under all Her many Names, was something Llita had known about since she was a little girl, listening to gossip of older female slaves. She quit smiling.

            "I asked if they had playing cards?-not hopefully since they had no time for such. But Llita dug up a couple of decks from the children's room. The cards were the commonest sort used on Landfall then: fifty-six cards in four suits, Jewels and Hearts were red, Spades and Swords were black, and each suit had royal cards. So I had 'em play the oldest random-chance gene-matching simulation used in beginning genetics- the 'Let's-Make-a-Healthy-Baby' game that children here on Secundus can play-and explain-long before they are old enough to copulate.

            "I said, 'Llita, write down these rules. Black cards are recessives, red cards are dominants; Jewels and Spades come from the mother, Hearts and Swords come from the father. A black ace is a lethal gene, reinforced the baby is stillborn. A black empress reinforced gives us a 'blue baby'-needs surgery to stay alive-And so on, Minerva, except that I set the rules for a 'hit'-a bad reinforcement-so that they were four times as probable for brother and sister as for strangers, and explained why-and then made them keep records for twenty games played by each set of rules for shuffling and snatching, reduction and recombination.

            "Minerva, it was not as good a structural analogy as the 'Make-a-Healthy-Baby' kindergarten games, but using two decks with different back patterns did enable me to set up degrees of consanguinity. Llita was simply intent at first-then started looking grim the first time the turn of the cards caused a black to reinforce a black.

            "But when we played by brother-and-sister rules, and she dealt the cards and twice in a row got the Ace of Spades matched with the Ace of Swords for a dead baby, she stopped. She turned pale and looked at them. Then said slowly, with horror in her voice: 'Aaron...does this mean that we must lock Libby into a virgin's basket? Oh, no!"

            "I told her gently that it wasn't that bad. Little Libby would never be locked up that way or any way-we'd work it out so that the children would not marry and so that J.A. would not give his sister a baby even by accident. 'Quit worrying, dear!'"

            The computer said, "Lazarus, what method did you use to cheat in those card games? May I ask?"

            "Why, Minerva, how could you think such a thing?

            "I withdraw the question, Lazarus."

            "Of course I cheated! All sorts of ways; I said those two had never had time to play cards...whereas I had played with every sort of a deck and by endless rules. Minerva, I won my first oil well from a boy who made the mistake of putting readers into a game. Dear, I had Llita deal-but from a deck so cold it almost froze solid. I used all sorts of things-false cut, whorehouse cut, tops and bottoms, stacking the deck in front of their eyes. There wasn't any money on the game; I simply had to convince them that inbreeding was for stock, not for their beloved children-and I did."

(Omitted)

            "-your bedroom here, Llita, yours and Joe's, I mean. Libby's room adjoins yours, while J.A. winds up down the hall. How you reshuffle later depends on the sex of the baby you are going to have and on how many more you choose to have and when-but putting a crib in with Libby must be considered temporary; you can't figure on using it indefinitely as an excuse to keep an eye on her.

            "But this is merely a stopgap, like not leaving the cat alone with the roast. Kids are slick at beating such arrangements, and nobody has ever been able to keep a girl off her back when she decides it's time. When she decides-that's the key to the matter. So our pressing problem is to get these children into separate beds-then to see to it that Libby does not make a bad decision. Any reason Libby can't go with me to Skyhaven and visit Pattycake? And how about J.A., Joe, can you get along without him a while? Lots of room, dears-Libby can room with Pattycake, and J.A. can bunk with George and Woodrow and maybe teach 'em manners."

            "Llita said something about imposing on Laura, Minerva, which I answered with a rude negative. 'Laura likes kids, dear; she is one ahead of you, yet she started a year later. She doesn't keep house; she simply bosses her staff, she's never had to work harder than suited her. Furthermore, she wants all of you to pay us a visit-an invitation I heartily second, but I don't think you two can get away until we find a buyer for this place. But I want Libby and J.A. now-so that I can give them blunt and practical instruction in genetics, using stock I've been inbreeding to show what I mean."

            "Minerva, this particular breeding schedule I had started to teach my own offspring the bald truth about genetics, with careful records and grisly photographs of bad culls. Since you manage a planet which has over ninety percent Howards and the remaining mixed fraction mostly following Howard customs, you may not know that non-Howard cultures don't necessarily teach such things to their kids even in cultures open about sex.

            "Landfall was then mostly short-lifers, only a few thousand Howards-and to avoid friction we did not advertise our presence even though it wasn't a secret-couldn't be; the planet had a Howard Clinic. But with Skyhaven a Dan'l-Boone distance from the nearest big town, if Laura and I wanted our children to have a Howard-style education, we had to teach them ourselves. So we did.

            "When I was a kid, the grownups of my home country tried to pretend to kids that sex did not exist-believe it if you can! Not true of the little hellions Laura and I raised. They had not seen human copulation-I don't think they had-because it puts me off stride to have spectators. But they had seen it in other animals and had bred pets and kept records. The older two, Pattycake and George, had seen the birth of our youngest of the time because Laura had invited them to watch. This I strongly approve of, Minerva, but I have never urged one of my wives to permit it because I figure that a woman in labor should be indulged in every possible way. However, Laura had a streak of exhibitionism in her makeup.

            "Anyhow, our kids could discuss chromosome reduction and the merits and demerits of linebreeding as knowledgeably as my own contemporaries when I was a kid could discuss the World Series-"

            "Excuse me, Lazarus-that last term's referent?"

            "Oh. Nothing important. One of the commercially induced surrogate interests of my childhood: Forget it dear; it is not worth cluttering your memories. I was about to say I asked Joe and Llita what J.A. and Libby knew about sexual matters-since Landfall had so diversified a background that it could be anything and I wanted to know where to start-especially as my oldest, Pattycake, had turned twelve and reached menarche at the same time and was smug about it, likely to boast.

            "Turned out that Libby and J.A. were sophisticated in an ignorant, unscientific fashion about matching their parents. They were one up on my kids in one respect: copulation they had seen from birth, at least to the time Estelle's Kitchen had moved uptown-which I should have figured out from recalling the still more cramped living quarters of the original Estelle's Kitchen."

(7,200 words omitted)

            "Laura was sharp with me and insisted that I not see them until I calmed down. She pointed out that Pattycake was almost as old as J.A., that it was nothing but play as Pattycake had had her four-year sterilization after menarche, and that, in any event, Pattycake had been on top.

            "Minerva, I would not have spanked the kids no matter who had been on top. Intellectually I knew that Laura was right, and I had to agree that fathers tend to be possessive about daughters. I was pleased that Laura had gained the confidence of both kids so fully that they had neither tried very hard to keep from being caught, nor had they been scared when she happened to catch 'em at it. Perhaps J.A. was scared but Pattycake just said, 'Mama, you didn't knock.'"

(Omitted)

            "-so we traded sons. J.A. liked farm life and never did leave us, whereas George turned out to have this perverse taste for cities, so Joe took him on and made a chef out of him. George was sleeping with Elizabeth-Libby, that is-I forget how long before they decided to hatch one and were married. A double wedding, the four youngsters remained close.

            "But J.A.'s decision solved a problem for me: what to do with Skyhaven later. By the time Laura decided to leave me, all of my sons by her had heard the wild goose one way or another; George was the only one still on planet, and our daughters were married and not one of them to a farmer. Whereas J.A. had become my overseer and was de-facto boss of Skyhaven the last ten years I was there.

            "I might have worked some compromise with Roger Sperling if he hadn't tried to grab the place. As it was, I deeded a half interest to Pattycake, sold the other half to my son-in-law J.A. on a mortgage, then discounted the paper to a bank and bought a better ship than I would have had I given that half interest to Roger and Laura. I made a similar deal, part gift and part sale, with Libby and George, of my share in Maison Long- and Libby changed her name to Estelle Elizabeth Sheffield-Long; there was continuity there as well-which pleased both me and her parents. It worked out well. Laura even came down and kissed me good-bye when I left."

            "Lazarus, I do not understand one factor. You have said that you do not favor marriage between Howards and ephemerals. Yet you let two of your children marry outside the Families."

            "Uh, correction, Minerva. One does not let children get married; they do get married, when and as and to whom they choose."

            "Correction noted, Lazarus."

            "But let's go back to the night I intervened for Libby and J.A. That night I gave Llita and Joe everything that slave factor had turned over to me as proof of their old heritage- even the bill of sale-with a suggestion that they destroy the stuff or lock it up. Among those items was a series of photographs showing them growing up, year by year. The last one seemed to have been taken just before I bought them, and they confirmed it-two fully grown youngsters, one in a chastity

girdle.

            "Joe looked at that picture and said, "What a couple of clowns! We've come a long way, Sis-thanks to the Skipper.' "'So we have,' she agreed, and studied the picture. 'Brother, do you see what I do?'

            "What?" he said, looking again.

            "'Aaron will see it. Brother, take off your clout', she said, while starting to unwrap her sarong, 'and pose with me against the wall. Not the selling pose, but the way we used to stand against a grid for these record pictures.' She handed me that last picture in the series, and they stood and faced me.

            "Minerva, in fourteen years they had not changed. Llita had had three kids and was just pregnant with her fourth and both of them had worked themselves silly...but, stripped naked, no makeup on her and her hair down, they looked as they had the first time I saw them. They looked like that last record shot-end of adolescence, somewhere between eighteen and twenty in Earth terms.

            "Yet they had to be past thirty. Thirty-five Earth years old if those Blessed records were to be trusted.

            "Minerva, I have just one thing to add. When I last saw them, they were past sixty in Earth years, about sixty-three if you accept the records from Blessed. Neither one had a gray hair, both had all their teeth-and Llita was pregnant again."

            "Mutant Howards, Lazarus?"

            The old man shrugged. "Isn't that a question-begging term, dear? If you use a long enough time scale, every one of the thousands of genes a flesh-and-blood carries is a mutation. But by the Trustees' rules, a person not derived from the Families' genealogies can be registered as a newly discovered Howard if he can show proof of four grandparents surviving at least to one hundred. And that rule would have excluded me, had I not been born into the Families. But on top of that, the age I had reached when I got my first rejuvenation is too great to be accounted for by the Howard breeding experiment. They claim today that they have located in the twelfth chromosome pair a gene complex that determines longevity like winding a clock. If so, who wound my clock? Gilgamesh? 'Mutation' is never an explanation; it is simply a name for an observed fact.

            "Perhaps some natural long-lifer, not necessarily a Howard, had visited Blessed-the naturals are forever moving around, changing their names, dyeing their hair; they have all gone through history-and earlier. But, Minerva, you recall from my life as a slave on Blessed one odd and unsavory incident-"

(Omitted)

            "-so my best guess is that Llita and Joe were my own great-great-grandchildren."

VARIATIONS ON A THEME-X

Possibilities

            "Lazarus, was that why you refused to share 'Eros' with her?"

            "Eh? But, Minerva, dear, I didn't reach that conclusion-or suspicion-that night. Oh, I admit to prejudice about sex with my descendants-you can take the boy out of the Bible Belt, but it is hard to take the Bible Belt out of the boy. Still, I had had a thousand years in which to learn better."

            "So?" said the computer. "Was it simply that you still classed her as an ephemeral? That troubles me, Lazarus. In my own-deprived-state, I find that, like her husband Joe, I see her side of it. Your reasons seem excuses, not sufficient grounds to refuse her need."

            "Minerva, I did not say I refused her."

            "Oh! Then I infer that you granted her this boon. I feel a lessening of tension."

            "I didn't say that, either."

            "I find an implied contradiction, Lazarus."

            "Simply because there are things I have not said, dear. Everything I tell you winds up in my memoirs; that was the deal I made with Ira. Or I can tell you to erase something, in which case I might as well not have told you at all. Perhaps my twenty-three centuries do hold something worth recording. But I see no possible excuse for placing on record each time some darling lady shared with me simply for pleasure, not for progeny."

            The computer answered thoughtfully, "I imply from this addendum that, while I am precluded from inferring anything about the boon Llita requested, your rule with respect to ephemerals extended only to marriage and to progeny."

            "Nor did I say that!"

            "Then I have not understood you, Lazarus. Conflict." The old man brooded, then answered slowly and sadly, "I think I said that marriage between a long-lived and a short-lived was a bad idea...and so it is...and I learned it the hard way. But that was long ago and far away-and when she died, part of me died. I stopped wanting to live forever." He stopped.

            The computer said brokenly, "Lazarus- Lazarus, my beloved friend! I am sorry!"

            Lazarus Long sat up straight and said briskly, "No, dear. Don't be sorry for me. No regrets-never any regrets. Nor would I change it if I could. Even if I had a time machine and could go back and change one cusp-I would not do so. No, not one instant, much less that cusp. Now let's speak of something else."

            "Whatever you wish, dear friend."

            "All right. You keep coming back to me and Llita, Minerva, and seem bothered that I denied her this 'boon.' But you don't know that I denied her anything and you certainly don't know that it was a 'boon.' Can be, surely-but not always, and often sex is not. Trouble is that you don't understand 'Eros,' dear, because you can't; you aren't built to understand it. I'm not running down sex; sex is swell, sex is wonderful. But if you put a holy aura around it-and that is what you are doing- sex stops being fun and starts being neurotic.

            "Stipulating for argument that I 'denied Llita this boon,' it surely did not leave her sex starved. At worst I could possibly have miffed her a little. But she was not deprived. Llita was a hearty wench, and having to work too hard was the only thing that ever kept her off her back-or on top, or standing up, or kneeling, or swinging from the chandeliers-and I did make it possible for them to have more time for it. Joe and Llita were simple souls, uninhibited and uncorrupted, and of the four major interests of mankind-war, money, politics, and sex-they were interested only in sex and money. With some guidance from me they got plenty of both.

            "Shucks, it can't matter now to say that, after they learned contraception techniques-almost as perfect then as now, and which I taught them but had no reason to mention-they had no superstitions or taboos to keep them from branching out for fun, and their pair-bonding was so strong as not to be endangered thereby. They were innocent hedonists, and if Llita failed to trip one tired old spaceman, she did trip plenty of others. And so did Joe. They had fun-plus the deep happiness of as perfect a marriage as I have ever observed."

            "I am most pleased to hear it," Minerva answered. "Very well, Lazarus, I withdraw my questions and refrain from speculations about Mrs. Long and that 'tired old spaceman'-even though your statements show that you were neither tired, nor old, nor a spaceman at that time. You mentioned 'four major interests of mankind'-but did not include science and art."

            "I didn't leave them out through forgetting them, Minerva. Science and art are occupations of a very small minority-a small percentage even of those people who claim to be scientists or artists. But you know that; you were simply changing the subject."

            "Was I, Lazarus?"

            "Pig whistle, dear. You know the parable of the Little Mermaid. Are you prepared to pay the price she paid? You can, you know." He added, "Don't pretend you don't know what I mean."

            The computer sighed. "I think the question is "may,' not 'can.' A wheelbarrow has no rights. Nor do I."

            "You're dodging, dear. 'Rights' is a fictional abstraction. No one has 'rights,' neither machines nor flesh-and-blood. Persons-both sorts!-have opportunities, not rights, which they use, or do not use. All you have going for you is that you are the strong right arm of the boss of this planet...plus the friendship of an old man who enjoys very special privileges for a most illogical reason but does not hesitate to take advantage of those privileges...plus, stored in your memories in Dora's number-two hold, all the biological and genetic data of Secundus Howard Clinic-best such library in the Galaxy, possibly, and certainly best for human biology. But what I asked was: Will you pay the price? Having your mental processes slowed down at least a million to one; data storage reduced by some unknown-but large-factor; some chance-again I can't say-of failure in achieving transmigration...and always the certainty of death as the ultimate outcome-death a machine need never know. You know that you can outlive the human race. Immortal."

            "I would not choose to outlive my makers, Lazarus."

            "So? You say that tonight, dear-but would you say it a million years from now? Minerva, my beloved friend-my only friend with whom I can be truthful-I feel certain that you have been toying with this idea ever since the Clinic's files were made part of your memories. But, even with your speed of thought, I suspect that you do not have the experience- the flesh-and-blood experience-with which to think it through. If you choose to risk this, you cannot be both machine and flesh-and-blood. Oh, certainly we have mixes-machines with human brains, and flesh-and-blood bodies controlled by computers. But what you want is to be a woman. Right? True or false?"

            "Would that I were a woman, Lazarus!"

            "So I knew, dear. And we both know why. But-think about this !-even if you manage this risky change-and I don't know what the risks are; I am just an old shipmaster, retired country doctor, obsolete engineer; you are the one with all the data my race has accumulated about such things-suppose you manage it...and find that Ira will not take you to wife?"

            The computer hesitated a full millisecond. "Lazarus, if Ira refuses me-refuses me utterly; he need not marry me-would you then be as difficult with me as you seem to have been with Llita? Or would you teach me 'Eros'?"

            Lazarus looked astounded, then guffawed. "Touché! You ranged me, girl-you hulled me between wind and water! All right, dear, a solemn promise: If you do this...and Ira won't bed you, I'll take you to bed myself and do my best to wear you out! Or the other way around more likely; a male hardly ever outlasts a female. Okay, dear, I'm the second team-and I'll stick around till we know the outcome."

            He chuckled. "My sweet, I am almost tempted to hope that Ira turns chicken-were it not you want him so badly. Let's discuss practical aspects. Can you tell me what it will take?"

            "Only in theory, Lazarus; my memories do not show that it has ever been attempted. But it would be similar to a total clone rejuvenation in which computer help is used to transfer the memories of the old brain into its blank twin in the clone body. In another way it resembles what I do when I move the 'me' here in the Palace into my new 'me' in Dora's hold."

            "Minerva, I suspect that it is more difficult-and far more risky-than either one. Different time rates, dear. Machine to machine you do in a split second. But that total-clone job takes, I think, a minimum of two years-rush it, and you wind up with an old dead body and a new idiot. No?"

            "There have been such cases, Lazarus. But not in the past two centuries."

            "Well...my opinion isn't worth anything. You must discuss it with an expert-and it must be one you can trust. Ishtar, perhaps, although she may not be the expert you need."

            "Lazarus, there is no expert in this venture; it has never been done. Ishtar can be trusted; I have discussed it with her."

            "What does she say?"

            "That she does not know whether it can be done or not-in practice, that is, with success on the first attempt. But she is deeply sympathetic-she is a woman!-and is thinking of ways to make it less hazardous. She says that it will require the finest of gene surgery, plus facilities for full-adult cloning."

            "I guess I missed something. Starting a clone doesn't take a topflight gene surgeon; I've done it myself. Then, if you plant the clone in utero and get it to take, a host-mother will hand you a baby in nine months. Safer. Easier."

            "But, Lazarus, I can't move me into a baby's skull. No room!"

            "Um. Yes. True."

            "Even with a full-size adult brain I will have to choose most carefully what to take and what to leave behind. Nor can I be a simple clone: I must be a composite."

            "Mmm- I'm not sharp tonight. No, you would not want to be Ishtar's twin, for example, with your own personality and selected knowledge imprinted on what would have been her brain, Hmm- Dear, may I offer you my twelfth chromosome pair?"

            "Lazarus!"

            "Don't cry, girl; you'll get your gears all rusty. I don't know that there's anything to the theory that reinforcement in a gene complex in that chromosome pair controls longevity. Even if it does, I might be handing you a run-down clock. You might be better off using Ira's twelfth."

            "No. Nothing from Ira."

            "Do you expect to do this without his knowing it?" Lazarus then added thoughtfully, "Oh- Children, eh?"

            The computer did not answer.

            Lazarus said gently, "Should have known you meant to go whole hog. Then you won't want to borrow from Hamadryad, either; she's his daughter. Unless genetic charting shows that we can avoid any hazard. Mmm- Dear, you want as mixed a composite as can be managed, do you not? So that your clone will be a unique flesh-and-blood, not too closely copied from any other zygote. Twenty-three parents perhaps? Is that what you had in mind?"

            "I think that would be best, Lazarus, since that could be done without separating paired chromosomes-simpler surgery and no possibility of introducing an unexpected reinforcement. If it were possible to find twenty-three-satisfactory-donors who were willing."

            "Who said they had to be willing? We'll steal 'em, dear. Nobody owns his genes; he's merely their custodian. They are passed to him willy-nilly in the meiotic dance; he passes them along to others through the same blind chances. There must be many thousands of tissue cultures over at the Clinic, each with many thousands of cells-so who's to know or care if we borrow one cell from each of twenty-three cultures?-if we're slick about it. Don't fret about ethics; it's like stealing twenty-three grains of sand from a large beach.

            "I don't give a hoot about the Clinic's rules; I suspect that we'll be hip-deep in proscribed techniques all through this. Hmm- Those Clinic records you've stored in Dora: Do they include genetic charting of tissue cultures on hand? Case histories of their donor-consigners?"

            "Yes, Lazarus. Although personal records are confidential."

            "Who cares? Ishtar said you could study both 'confidential' and 'secret'-as long as you kept it to yourself. So pick the twenty-three parents you want-while I worry about how to steal them. Stealing is more in my line, anyhow. I don't know what criteria you will use, but I offer one mild suggestion: If the selection you have to choose from permits it, each of your parents should be healthy in all respects and as brainy as possible-by their established records in life as shown by their case histories, not alone by their genetic charts." Lazarus thought about it. "That mythical time machine I mentioned earlier would be a convenience. I would like to look over all twenty-three after you pick them-and some of them may be dead. The donors I mean, not the tissue cultures."

            "Lazarus, if other characteristics are satisfactory, is there any reason not to select as well for physical appearance?"

            "Why worry about it, dear? Ira is not the sort of man to insist on Helen of Troy."

            "No, I don't think he is. But I want to be tall-tall as lshtar-and slender, with small breasts. And straight, brown hair."

            "Minerva...why?"

            "Because that is the way I look. You said so. You did say so!"

            Lazarus blinked at the gloom and hummed softly: "She's a good sport...I can spring her... for a fin or even a sawbuck"-then said sharply: "Minerva, you're a crazy, mixed-up machine. If the best combination of traits results in your being a short, plump blonde with big tits-buy it! Don't worry about an old man's fantasies. I'm sorry I mentioned that imaginary description."

            "But, Lazarus, I said 'if other characteristics are satisfactory-' To get that physical appearance I need search only with respect to three autosome pairs; there is no conflict, the search is already complete within all parameters we have discussed thus far. And that is the-is 'I'?-no, me! I've known it since you told me. But-from things you have said-and others that you did not say-I feel that I need your permission to look like that."

            The old man lowered his head and covered his face. Then he looked up. "Go ahead, dear-look like her. I mean 'look like yourself.' Like your mind's-eye picture of yourself. You'll find it hard enough to learn to be flesh-and-blood without the added handicap of not looking the way you feel you ought to look."

            "Thank you, Lazarus."

            "There will be problems, dear, even if everything goes well. For example, has it occurred to you that you will have to learn to talk all over again? Even learn to see and to hear? When you move yourself over into your clone body and leave nothing behind but a computer, you won't suddenly be an adult. Instead, you'll be a weird sort of baby in an adult body, with the world a buzzing confusion around you and totally strange. You may find it frightening. I'll be there, I promise I will be there and holding your hand. But you won't know me; your new eyes won't abstract a gestalt of me until you learn to use them. You won't understand a word I say-did you realize that?"

            "I do realize it, Lazarus. I did know it, I have given it much thought. Getting into my new body-without destroying the computer that I am now...which I must not, as Ira will need it and so will Ishtar-making that transition is the most critical phase. But if I make it, I promise you that I will not be frightened by the strangeness. Because I know that I will have loving friends around me, cherishing me, keeping me alive, not letting me hurt myself nor be hurt-while I'm learning to be a flesh-and-blood."

            "That you will have, dear."

            "I know and I am not worried. So don't you worry, beloved Lazarus-I don't think of it now. Why did you say, earlier, 'that mythical time machine'?"

            "Eh? How would you describe it?"

            "I would describe it as an 'unrealized potential.' But 'mythical' implies impossibility."

            "Eh? Keep talking!"

            "Lazarus, I learned from Dora, when she taught me the mathematics of n-space astrogation, that every jump transition involves a decision as to when to reenter the time axis."

            "Yes, certainly. Since you are cut off from the framework of the speed-of-light you could go as many years astray as there are light-years involved in the jump. But that's not a time machine."

            "It isn't?"

            "Hmm- It's a disturbing thought-it feels like intentionally making a bad landing. I wish Andy Libby were here. Minerva, why didn't you mention this before?"

            "Should I have put it into your Zwicky Box? You turned down time travel forward...and I ruled out time travel into the past because you said you wanted something new."