Time Enough For Love

VARIATIONS ON A THEME-XIV

Bacchanalia

After the track through the gormtrees at the northern edge of Boondock swings right, one has a view of the home of Lazarus Long, but I hardly noticed it when I first saw it; I was much bemused by a statement by Minerva Long. Me her father? Me?

The Senior said, "Close your mouth, Son; you're making a draft. Dear, you startled him."

"Oh, dear!"

"Now quit looking like a frightened fawn, or I'll be forced to hold your nose and administer two ounces of eighty-proof ethanol disguised as fruit juice; You've done nothing wrong. Justin, does disguised ethanol interest you?"

"Yes," I agreed fervently. "I recall a time in my youth when that and one other subject were all I was interested in."

"If the other subject wasn't women, we'll find a monastic cubbyhole where you can drink alone. But it was-I know more about you than you think. All right, we'll have a libation or six. Not those two, they're potential alcoholics."

"Slanderous-"

"-though regrettably true-"

"-but we did it only once-"

"-and won't do it again!"

"Don't commit yourself too far, kids; a brannigan might sneak up on you. Better to know your resistance than to be tripped through ignorance. Grow up, put on some mass, and you'll be able to cope with it. Or Ishtar mixed up your genes, which she didn't. Now about this other matter, Justin~ Yes, you're one of Minerva's parents...and that's a very high compliment, because those twenty-three chromosome pairs were picked from tissues of thousands of superior people, using fearsome mathematics to handle the multiplicity of variables, plus Ishtar's knowledge of genetics, and some unnecessary advice from me, before this little darling got the precise mix she wanted to be."

I started to set up the type problem in my head-yes, that would be some problem, extremely more difficult than the ordinary genetics problem of advising one male and one female-then dropped it, as I had its delightful answer by her left hand. Lazarus was still speaking:

"Minerva could have been male, two meters tall, massing a hundred kilos, built like Joe Colossus, and hung like a stallion mule. Instead she elected to be what she is: slender, female, shy- I'm not sure she selected for that last. Did you, dear?"

"No, Lazarus; no one knows which genes control that. I think I get it from Hamadryad."

"I think you got it from a computer I used to know-and took along all of it as Athene certainly is not shy. Never mind. Some of Minerva's donor-parents are dead; some are alive but unaware that a bit of tissue from a clone in stasis or from the live-tissue bank was borrowed-as in your case. Some know that they are donor-parents-me, for example, and you heard Hamadryad mentioned. You'll meet others, some being on Tertius, where it's no secret. But consanguinity is not close for anyone. One twenty-third? The genetic advisers wouldn't run that through a computer; it's an acceptable risk. Plus the fact that none of us donor-parents of Minerva have any known skeletons hanging on our family trees. You could safely have progeny by her; so could I."

"But you refused me!" Minerva startled me with the vehemence with which she accused Lazarus of this. For a moment she was not shy; her eyes flashed.

"Now, now, dear. You were only a year out of vitro and not fully grown even though Ishtar forced you past menarche still in vitro. Ask me on another occasion; I might startle you."

"'Startle' me, or surprise me?"

"Never mind that old joke. Justin, I simply wanted to make clear that your relationship to Minerva, while close enough that it makes Minerva feel sentimental, is in fact so small that you barely qualify as a 'kissing cousin.'"

"I feel very sentimental about it," I told the Senior. "Most pleased and deeply honored-although I can't guess why I was picked."

"If you want to know which chromosome pair was swiped from you, and why, you had best ask Ishtar and get her to consult Athene; I doubt if Minerva still knows."

"But I do know; I saved those memories. Justin, I wanted to retain some ability in mathematics. It was a choice between you and Libby Professor Owens-so I chose you; you are my friend."

(Well! I respect Jake Hardy-Owens; I'm merely an applied mathematician, he is a brilliant theoretician.) "Whatever your reasons, dear kissing cousin, I am delighted that you chose me as one of your donor-fathers."

"Grounded, Commodore!" announced one of the duplicate redheads-Lapis Lazuli-as the little nullboat clumped to a stop. (It appeared to be a Corson Farmsled and I was surprised to see it in a new Colony.) Lazarus answered, "Thank you, Captain."

The twins bounced out; the Senior and I handed Minerva out-unnecessary help that she accepted with gracious dignity, that being another aspect of colonial life that surprised me, New Rome being rather short on such archaic ceremony. (Over and again I found the Boondockers to be both more formally polite, and more casually relaxed about it, than are Secundians. I suppost my notions of frontier life had been fed on too many romances: rough, bearded men fighting off dangerous animals, mules hauling covered wagons toward distant horizons.)

"Captain" Lazuli said, "Humpty Dumpty- go to bed!" The nullboat waddled away; the little girls joined us, one taking my free hand, the other taking the Senior's free hand, with Minerva between us. These freckled flametops would have had my whole attention had not Minerva been there. I am not compulsively fond of children; some youngsters seem to me rather poisonous, especially precocious ones. But in their case I found their solemn precocity charming rather than irritating...and to see the Senior's features, rugged rather than handsome and with that too-large nose, unmistakably reproduced but transformed into piquant girlish features-well, had I been alone, I would have chuckled with delight.

I said "Just a moment," and held onto Lorelei's hand and thereby caused, all to pause while I took a second look. "Lazarus, who is the architect?"

"I don't know," he said. "Dead more than four thousand years. The original belonged to the political boss of Pompeii, a city destroyed about that long ago. I saw a model of it, restored, in a museum in a place called Denver, and took pictures; it pleased me. Those pictures are long gone, but it turned out that, when I tried to describe it to Athene, she had a solly in the historical section of her gizzards of the ruins of that same house-and from that and my description, she designed this version. Some minor mods, nothing that changed its sweet proportions. Then Athene built it, using extensionals and radio links. It's practical for this climate; the weather here is much like that of Pompeii-and I prefer a house that looks inward, on a court. Safer, even in a place as safe as this one."

"By the way, where is Athene? The main computer itself, I mean."

"Here. She was still in the 'Dora' when she built this; now she's under the house-she built her underground home first, then built our house on top of it."

Minerva said simply, "A computer prefers to feel safe, and close to her own people. Lazarus-forgive me, dear, but you have reversed a time sequence; that was more than three years ago."

"Oh, so I have. Minerva, when you have lived as long as I have-and you will-you'll find yourself inverting time sequences endlessly, a flesh-and-blood shortcoming you had to accept when you took the plunge. Correction, Justin- 'Minerva,' not 'Athene.'"

"Yet it is Athene who built it-now," Minerva added, "since engineering and the details of this construction and others are things I left behind in Athene, where they belong, and abstracted only a simplified memory of having built it-I wanted to remember that much."

I said, "Whoever built it, it's beautiful." I was suddenly upset. It is one thing to accept intellectually the startling idea that a young woman has had a former life as a computer- and even to accept that one had worked with that computer years back and light-years away. But this discussion suddenly brought home to me emotional belief that this lovely girl with her arm warm in mine had in sober fact been a computer so short a time ago that she had built this new house- while a computer. It shook me-even though I am a historiographer, old, and my sense of wonder was dulled even before my first rejuvenation.

We went in, and my upset was swept away by greetings. We were kissed all around-two beautiful young women, one of whom I recognized when I heard her name, Ira's daughter Hamadryad and she looks like one, the other a statuesque blonde whose name, Ishtar, was familiar to me through talk, and a young man as beautiful as the women and who seemed familiar though I could not place him. Even the twin flametops insisted on kissing me since they had not greeted me that way earlier.

In Boondock a kiss of greeting is not the ritual peck it usually is in New Rome; even the twins bussed me in a fashion that made me certain of their sex-I've had poorer kisses from grown women whose intentions were direct and immediate. But the young man, introduced as "Galahad," startled me. He hugged me, with kisses on my cheeks followed by a kiss on my mouth worthy of a Ganymede- which surprised me, but I tried to return as good as I got.

Instead of letting me go, he pounded my back and said, "Justin, it tickles my root to see you again! Oh, this is wonderful!"

I pulled my face back to look at his. I must have looked puzzled for he blinked, then said mournfully: "Ish, I boasted too soon! Hamadear, get me a towel, I'm weeping. He's forgotten me...after all the things he said."

I said, "Obadiah Jones, what are you doing here?"

"Weeping. Being humiliated in front of my family."

I don't know how long it had been since I had seen him. It may have been more than a century since it has been that long since I left the Howard campus. Brilliant young specialist in ancient cultures he was then, with an impish sense of humor. I recalled, dredging it up out of memory, having shared a Seven Hours with him and two other savants, both female and happily so-but I could not recall their faces nor who they were; what I remembered was his playful, joyous, boisterous good company. "Obadiah," I said sternly, "why are you calling yourself 'Galahad'? Hiding from the police again? Lazarus, I'm shocked to find this, uh, macho in your house- lock up your daughters!"

"Oh, that name" he said brokenly. "Don't repeat it, Justin. They don't know it. When I reformed, I changed my name. You won't give me away? Promise me, dear!" Suddenly he grinned and said in a cheerful voice, "Come on into the atrium and let's get a skinful of rum into you. Lazi, who has the duty?"

"Lori does. Even-numbered day. But I'll help. Straight rum?"

"Better flavor it. I want to add a welcome the Borgias used on old friends."

"Sure thing, Uncle Cuddly. Who are the Borgias?"

"A family from the greatest days of Old Earth's rise and fall, sugar lump. The Howards of their time. Very suave in handling guests. I'm descended from them, and their secrets were passed down to me by word of mouth."

"Laz," said Lazarus, "ask Athene for a rundown on the Borgias before you mix a drink for Justin."

"I see; he's at it again-"

"-so we'll tickle him-

"-and blow in his ears-

"-until he cries Pax-

"-and promises Veritas-

"-he's no problem. Come on, Lazi."

I had found the village of Boondock pleasantly unimpressive, more pleasant and less impressive than I had expected. Ira and Lazarus had accepted only seven thousand for their first wave from applicants numbering more than ninety thousand; therefore the present population of Tertius could not be much over ten thousand and was in fact slightly less.

Boondock seemed to have only a few hundred people and was centered on a few small buildings for public and semipublic purposes, most colonists being scattered around the countryside. The home of Lazarus Long was by far the most impressive structure I had seen-not counting the large flat cone of the Senior's yacht and the much larger bulk of one robot space freighter on the skyfield where my packet had grounded. (The skyfield was a level place a few kilometers across; one could not call it a port. There was not one godown. It must have an autobeacon since I grounded safely; I did not see it.)

This rudimentary settlement had not prepared me for the Senior's house. Its lines and plan were simple; that long-dead Roman had picked a good designer. It was a walled garden, the house itself being its four walls. But it had two stories, and each level could have been divided, it seemed to me, into twelve to sixteen large rooms plus the usual ancillary spaces. Twenty-four or more rooms for a household of eight? The more blatantly rich in New Rome might display ego in so much space, but it seemed inappropriate in a new colony, as well as out of tune with what I had learned in my long research of the Senior's lives.

Simple- Half the building was given over to a rejuvenation clinic, a therapy clinic, an infirmary; these could be reached from the foyer without entering the private part of the house.

The number of family rooms remaining was indefinite; most interior walls were movable. The Howard Clinic and the medical facilities would be moved to a nearby site when the colony needed larger facilities, when size of the Senior's family made more home space desirable.

(I was lucky in that, when I arrived, no client was being rejuvenated, no patient was in the infirmary-or most of the adults would have been busy.)

The size of his family seemed as hazy as the number of rooms. I had thought there were eight-three men, the Senior, Ira, and Galahad; three women, Ishtar, Hamadryad, and Minerva; two youngsters, Lorelei Lee and Lapis Lazuli-but I was not aware of two girl toddlers and a small boy. Besides that, I was neither the first nor the last to be urged to move in and stay as long as one wished. Whether such stay was as a guest or as a member of the Senior's family might also be unclear to an outsider.

Relationships inside his family also were vague. Colonists are always families; a single colonist is a contradiction in terms. But all of Tertius Colony were Howards, and we Howards have used every sort of marriage, I think, except lifetime monogamy.

But Tertius has no laws about marriage; the Senior had not thought them necessary. The few laws it has are in the migration contract, written by Ira and Lazarus jointly. It contains the usual covenants about homesteading, with the colony leader absolute arbitrator until such time as he resigns. But it says not one word about marriage and family relationships. The colonists register their babies; Howards always do-in this case with the Computer Athene as surrogate for the Archives. But I found when I reviewed these records that parentage of children was expressed in genetic classification code, not by marriages and putative ancestry. This system the Families' geneticists have been urging for generations (and I agree), but it does make a genealogist work harder, especially if marriages have not been registered at all, as was sometimes the case.

I found one couple with eleven children, six his, five hers, none theirs. I understood it when I read their codes-utterly incompatible. I met them later, a fine family on a prosperous farm and no suggestion that the swarm of children were anything hut "theirs."

But the Senior's family was even more vague. Genetic ancestry in each case was a matter of record, surely-but who was married to whom?

Their bathing room was as "decadent" as had been promised; it was a lounging room, as well as a refresher, and planned for family relaxation and entertaining. It stretched all along the ground floor on the side facing the foyer across the inner garden, and its walls could be pushed back to open it to the garden in clement weather-which this was and quite warm.

It had anything a jaundiced Sybarite could ask for: a fountain in its center matching a fountain in the garden and each with comfortably wide rims to sit on while soaking tired feet and enjoying a drink; a sauna in one corner; a huge happy shower at the other end with space for several cycles to be enjoyed at once without waiting turns; a companion querafansible with sophisticated controls; a long soaking pool knee-deep at the blue end to chin-deep at the red, and flanked by two bathing pools lavish for one person and comfortable for two or three; couches for napping, for cooling, for sweating, for intimate talk and touch; a cosmetics table with a big duomirror in which one could see her back as readily as her front simply by asking Athene's help; a corner big enough for a dozen people in which floor cushioning was bed-soft and lavish with pillows large and small, firm and soft; a refreshments counter which backed onto their kitchen-and if I failed to name something, it is my omission, not that of the designers. All the more commonplace items were of course at hand.

I had thought that the lighting was random until I realized that Athene was changing it endlessly so as not to shine it in anyone's eyes while changing the light level in all parts of that big room to match what was going on-high key for makeup, subdued light for lounging, and so on-and to match personalities too; our little redheads were crowned with light no matter how they bounced around-as they did.

Soft music was there and in the garden, or on request anywhere, selected by Athene unless someone asked for something-it seemed as if she had stored in her all the music that ever was written. Or she might harmonize with the twins while continuing to take part in three different conversations in other parts of the bath lounge. A self-aware computer of her capacity-great enough to manage Secundus-can and often must talk simultaneously at many places, but I had never encountered it before in such a way as to notice it. But big computers are not often members of a family.

The rest of the house was almost unautomated-a matter of taste as Athene's capacity was largely unused. My hostesses actually cooked, with Athene helping only by seeing to it that nothing burned and watching the timing in other ways- twice on Athene's advice Hamadryad left the bath lounge, once in such a hurry that she fled bare and dripping, not stopping to grab a towel robe.

Bathing with Lazi and Lori is indeed "squirmy but fun," plus squeals, giggles, chatter in which one sentence would be chopped several times before one of them put a period on it (I hypothesized that they were telepathic with each other and had an uneasy suspicion that they sometimes read thoughts of persons in their presence but was not anxious to find out) -all charmingly blunt and childishly innocent.

First they slathered me all over with scented liquid soap and demanded the same service from me and threatened me with chin quivering when I held back a little, and said loudly that "Uncle Cuddly" (my old friend Obadiah, now Galahad) washed them better than that and everybody knows how lazy he is-or didn't I like them well enough to soapy-cuddle them and if they married me, would I go along with them in their spaceship, and while they were still virgins, though not from lack of opportunity, don't worry about that one bit as both Mama Hamadryad and Mama Ishtar were coaching them in beginning and advanced sensuality and would speed up the course if I happened to want to marry them now-won't you, Mama Hamalambie?-tell him!

Hamadryad from a meter away (she was soaping Ira) assured us that she would, if they could persuade me to marry them that quickly. I assumed that the youngsters were farcing me and that their mother-one of their mothers-was going along with the jest. I've wondered since whether I missed a diamond opportunity. Lazarus was in hearing distance; he did not tell them to stop teasing me, he simply advised me not to offer them more than a ten-year contract as their span of attention was limited-which made them indignant-and advised them that, if they intended to get married that night, they had better trim their toenails first, which made them still more indignant so they stopped bathing me to assault him from both sides.

This wound up with one of them under each of his arms and still struggling. Lazarus asked if I would accept custody or should he drop them into the deep end of the soak?

I accepted custody, and we showered each other off and went into the soak pool together-and I was standing in it up to my shoulders with my back to the garden, and supporting them a little, an arm each, as their toes did not touch bottom, when someone placed hands over my eyes.

The twins squealed, "Aunt Tammy!" and levitated out of the water while I turned to look.

Tamara Sperling- I had thought she was on Secundus, in retirement up country. Tamara the Superb, the Superlative, the Unique-in my opinion (and many others) the greatest artist of her profession. I feel sure that I am not the only man who chose when she left New Rome to remain celibate for a long time.

She had come in, seen that the family was in the bath lounge, dropped her gown in the garden, hurried in without stopping to remove her high sandals, spotted me, and blindfolded me with her lovely hands.

Why? She was my dinner partner-and (if I could rely on an exchange I had heard that afternoon) willing to be my guest wife if I were willing. Willing? Fifty years earlier I had offered her any contract she would accept every time she let me visit her and had finally shut up only after she had told me repeatedly, patiently, and gently that she did not intend to have more children and would not marry again for any other purpose.

But there she was, rejuvenated (not that it mattered), looking gloriously young and healthy-and a colonist. I wondered who the man was who had persuaded her to do this? I envied him and wondered what superhuman qualities he possessed-but whatever they were, if Tamara was willing to share a bed with me even for one night and only for old times' sake, I would take what the gods offered and not worry about him; her wealth is endlessly divisible. Tamara!-bells sound at her name.

She kissed two wet little girls, then dropped to her knees and kissed me.

Then she said softly, rubbing her mouth against mine, "You darling. When I heard you were here, I hurried. Mi laroona d' vashti meedth du?"

"Yes! And any other night you have free."

"Not so fast with English, doreeth mi; I learning it slowly-because my daughter wants her assistants in rejuvenation to speak language not known to most clients...and because our family speaks English much as Galacta."

"You are now a rejuvenator? And have a daughter here?"

"lshtar datter mi-did you not know, petsan mi-mi? Nay, I am nurse only. But studying I am and Ishtar hope-tells that I will be assistant technician in half handful of years. Good- nay?"

"Good, I suppose. But what a loss to the art!"

"Blandjor," she said happily, tousling my wet hair. "Even though rejuvenated-did you note?-here the art pays no living. Too many willing ones, sweeter and younger and prettier." The twins had stayed with us, listening and quiet for a moment. Tamara reached out both arms, hugged them to her. "Example. These my granddaughters. Eager to grow tall so they can lie down and be short." She kissed each of them. "And red curls they have. I not have."

I started to say that age and red curls did not matter, then realized that a compliment to Tamara so phrased could cause chins to quiver. But I did not need to speak; the spout had opened again:

"Aunt Tammy, we are not eager-"

"-just willing and practical-"

"-and anyhow he won't marry us-"

"-he just teases about it-"

"-and you can't be our grandmother-"

"-'cause that would make you our Buddy Boy's grandmother-"

"-which is illogical, impossible, and ridiculous-"

"-so you have to be our 'Aunt Tammy.'"

I found their logic doubly enthymematic if not a total non sequitur, but I agreed with it because the notion of Tamara being the Senior's grandmother was one I could not face. So I changed the subject:

"Tamara dear, would you let me take off your sandals and then you come join us in the soak? Or shall I get out and get dry?"

She did not have to answer:

"We gotta run get ready-"

"-cause Mama Hamadryad has finished her face and started her nipples-"

"-so if we don't hurry, we'll have to come to dinner with our hides bare naked-"

"-and for a party that would never do-"

"-and you two had better hurry too-"

"-or Buddy Boy will throw it to the pigs. Scuse!"

I climbed out and let Tamara dry me-unnecessary as there was a blowdry at hand. But if Tamara offers me anything my answer is Yes. It took a while; we "wasted" time on touch and talk. (Is there a better way to spend time?)

When I was dry and wondering if I should try the cosmetics bench (I don't use cosmetics much, just depilatories), one of the twins came rushing back with a garment for me, a blue chlamys. She said breathlessly, "Lazarus says try this or what would you like?-but that you needn't wear anything if you don't want to 'cause it's a hot night and you count as family because you're Minerva's father, one of them."

I thought I had them keyed now by freckle pattern. "Thank you, Lorelei; I'll wear it." I've always felt that a napkin was enough to wear in dining at home in a properly tempered house-or outdoors in private on a warm night. But, as guest of honor even though "family," I could not go bare when they were taking the trouble to be festively formal.

"You're welcome, but I'm Captain Lazuli, but that's all right, she's me. Scuse!" She vanished.

I put it on; we went into the garden and retrieved Tamara's gown-and it matched what I was wearing. The same shade of blue, I mean, and a Golden-Age-of-Hellas- flavor to it. Hers was about two grams of blue fog. The bodice fastened at the right shoulder and came diagonally down to her waist at the left. Its skirt was longer than mine-but that was appropriate; Greek men of their Golden Age did wear their skirts shorter than did women, instead of the reverse that is more usual on Secundus. (I did not know as yet what was customary on Tertius.) We matched, and I was pleased.

Accident? "Accidents" around the Senior are usually planned.

We ate in the garden, a couch for each couple, arranged in hexagon with the fountain as the sixth side. Athene made the water dance and danced lights in it, to match whatever she was playing. All the womenfolk but Tamara helped with the primary serving; Lori and Lazi played Hebe from then on- it was impossible to keep them nailed to their couch anyhow. As the feast started, Ira was with Minerva, Lazarus with Ishtar, Galahad with Hamadryad, and the twins together. But the women moved around like chessmen, sharing a couch, a few bites, a little cuddling, then moving on-all but Tamara, whose firm-soft, rounded bottom lay against my lap the entire feast. It was just as well that she did not move; I'm not shy but prefer not to show the gallant reflex unless I need it at once-and I was very conscious of her dear body warm against me.

But while Lazarus started the repast with Ishtar, the next time I looked his way it was Minerva who reclined against him-and next, one of the twins, which one I am not sure. And so on.

I won't describe the feast except to say that I did not expect it in a young colony and to add that I have paid high prices for poorer food in famous restaurants in New Rome.

All but Lazarus and his sisters were wearing colorful, pseudo-Grecian garments. But Lazarus was dressed as a Scottish chieftain of two and a half millennia ago-the kilt, bonnet, sporran, dirk, claymore, etc. The sword he laid aside but handy, as if expecting to need it. I can state firmly that he was never entitled to dress as a chief by the rules of those long-lost clans. There is doubt that he is entitled to wear any Scottish dress. He once said that he was "half Scotch and half soda," but on another occasion he told Ira Weatheral that he had first worn the kilt at a time (shortly before the flight of the New Frontiers) when the style was popular in his home country-found that he liked it, and thereafter wore the kilt when local custom permitted.

That night he went all out and added a fierce mustache to match his finery.

His twin sisters were dressed exactly as he was. I am still wondering whether all this was to honor me, to impress me, or to amuse me. Perhaps all three.

I would happily have spent those three hours in quiet, feeding Tamara and letting her feed me, bathed in the peace of soul that comes from touching her, but the closed happiness circle (and closed it was; Athene's voice now came from the fountain) showed that the Senior expected us to share company, talking and listening in turn, as ritually as in any protocol-bound salon in New Rome. And so we did, in shared and gentle harmony-with the twins adding unexpected grace notes but usually managing to restrain their exuberance and be "grown-up." The Senior started it, using Ira as Stimulator. "Ira, what would you say if a god came through that entranceway?"

"I'd tell him to wipe his feet. Ishtar doesn't permit gods with dirty feet in this house."

"But all gods have feet of clay."

"That wasn't what you said yesterday."

"This is not yesterday, Ira. I've seen a thousand gods and all had feet of clay. All were swindles, first"-Lazarus ticked it with his flngers-"to benefit the shamans; second, to benefit the kings; and third, always to benefit the shamans. Then I met the thousand-and-first." The Senior paused.

Ira looked at me. "At this point I am supposed to say, 'Do tell!' or some such insincerity, then the rest of you chime, 'Yes, yes, Lazarus!'-which has its merit; the rest of us would have at least twenty uninterrupted minutes for swilling and guzzling.

"But I'm going to fool him. He's leading up to how he killed the gods of the Jockaira with nothing but a toy gun and moral superiority. Since that lie is already in his memoirs in four conflicting versions, why should we be burdened with a fifth?"

"It was not a toy gun; it was a Mark Nineteen Remington Blaster at full charge, a superior weapon in its day-and after I carved them up, the stench was worse than Hormone Hall the morning after payday. And my superiority is never moral; it lies always in doing it first before he does it to me. But the point of the story Ira won't let me tell is that those globs were real gods because neither shamans nor kings were cut in on the loot; they were swindled, too. Those doggie people were property, solely for the benefit of their gods-gods in the sense that a man can be a god to a dog-which I had suspected first time around, when they drove poor Slayton Ford right out of his think tank and nearly killed him. But the second time, some eight or nine hundred years later, Andy Libby and I proved that this was so. 'How?' you ask-"

"We didn't ask."

"Thank you, Ira. Because after all that time the Jockaira had not changed in any way. Their speech, customs, buildings, you name it-were frozen. This can happen only with domesticated animals. A wild animal, such as man, changes his ways as conditions change; he adjusts. I've often thought I would like to go back and see if the doggie people managed to go feral after they lost their owners. Or did they simply lie down and die? But I wasn't too tempted; Andy and I were lucky to get off that planet still with our gonads, the way they were yapping at our heels."

"See what I mean, Justin? Version number three had the Jockaira falling into a coma the instant their masters were burned out-and Libby doesn't figure into that version at all."

"Papa Ira, you don't understand Buddy Boy-"

"- he doesn't tell-lies-"

"-he's a creative artist-"

"-speaking in parables-"

"-and he emancipated those Jabberwockies-"

"-who were cruelly oppressed."

Ira Weatheral said, "Justin, I had trouble coping with one Lazarus Long. But three of him? I surrender. Come here, Lori, and let me nibble your ear. Minerva, my lovely, let go of that, wash your pretty hands, then see if Justin needs more wine. Justin, you are the only one with news to impart. What news on the Bourse?"

"Falling steadily. If you own participations on Secundus, you had better have me carry back instructions to your broker. Lazarus, I noticed that you classed 'man' as a wild animal-"

"He is. You can kill him, but you can't tame him. The worst bloodbaths in history derive from attempting to tame him."

"I wasn't arguing it, Ancestor. I'm a mathematical historiographer; my nose is rubbed in that fact. But has news reached here of the flight of the 'Vanguard'? The original 'Vanguard,' I mean-pre-Diaspora."

Lazarus sat up so suddenly that he almost spilled Ishtar off his couch. He caught her. "Sorry, honey. Justin-keep talking."

"I didn't intend to talk about the 'Vanguard' herself-"

"I want to hear about her. I hear no objection; it is so ruled. Talk, Son!"

The protocol of a salon feast having gone to pieces, I talked, first reviewing some ancient history. Although it has almost been forgotten, the New Frontiers was not the first starship. She had an older sister, the Vanguard, that left the Solar system a few years earlier than the momentous date on which Lazarus Long commandeered the New Frontiers. She was headed for Alpha Centaun but never reached there-no signs of visitation were ever found on the one possible planet, a Terran type around Alpha Centauri A, the only G-type star in that volume.

But the ship herself was found by accident, in open orbit a long way from where she should have been by any rational assumption based on her mission-discovered nearly a century ago and this tells the difficulties of historiography when ships are the fastest means of communication; this story echoed back to Secundus via five colonial planets before it reached Archives-a few years after Lazarus left New Rome, a few years before I went to Boondock as (nominal) courier for the Chairwoman Pro Tem. Not that a century's delay matters, as the news interested only fusty specialists. To most people it was an uninteresting confirmation of an inconsequential bit of ancient history.

Everything in the Vanguard was dead while the ship herself was sleeping, her converter automatically shut down, her atmosphere almost leaked away, her records so destroyed, illegible, incomplete, or desiccated as to distress one. The Vanguard matters only to antiquarians and such-although she will remain an endless trove to deviants such as me-if we don't lose her again. Space is deep.

But the interesting thing about the find is that when the Vanguard was backtracked ballistically by computer, it showed that she had passed close to a Sol-type star seven centuries earlier. A check of that system turned up one planet Terran in type; it was found to be inhabited by H. sapiens. But not from the Diaspora. From the Vanguard.

"Lazarus, there is no possible doubt. Those few thousand savages on that planet-designated 'Pitcairn Island,' the catalog number escapes me-are descended from some who reached there, presumably by ship's boat, seven centuries before they were found. They had reverted to precivilization food-gathering stage, and had the planet rather than the ship been found first, it might have started another of those stories about a breed of humans not derived from old Terra.

"But their argot, fed into a linguistic analyzer-sysithesizer, played back as that version of English which was the 'Vanguard's' working language. Reduced vocabulary, new words, degenerate syntax-but the same language."

"Their myths, Justin, their myths!" Galahad-Obadiah demanded.

I was forced to admit that I did not have it all on tap but promised to make a full copy for him and send it via the first ship. "But, Senior, the interesting thing is that these savages, so wild and fierce that in dealing with them more scientists were killed than savages-"

"Hooray for them. Son, those savages were minding their own business on their own planet. An intruder can expect whatever he gets. Up to him to keep his guard up."

"I suppose so. Three scientists were eaten before they figured out how to deal with these pseudo-aborigines. By remotely controlled humanoid robots, that is. But the point I wanted to make was not their fierceness but their intelligence. Believe me or not, by every test that could be used, these wild men, these savages, checked superior to norm. Much superior. By the bell curve they land in the range of 'exceptionally gifted' to 'genius-plus.'"

"You expect me to be surprised? Why?"

"Well- Savages. And probably closely inbred."

"You're baiting me, Justin; you know better-although possibly Ira signed you to be Stimulator. All right, I'll take the bait. 'Savage' describes a cultural condition, not a degree of intelligence. Nor does inbreeding damage a gene pool if conditions for survival are extreme; since you describe them as cannibals, they probably ate their culls. From the shape the ship was in, it is fair to assume that their ancestors landed with little or nothing-possibly bare hands and a hatful of ignorance...in which case only the most able, the smartest, could survive. Justin, the crew of that first ship averaged far more intelligent than the Howards who escaped in the 'New Frontiers'; they were picked for intelligence-whereas the original Howard selectees were picked only for longevity, not for brainpower. Your savages were descended solely from geniuses...then passed through Allah alone knows how many ordeals that kill off the stupid and leave only the smartest to breed. What does that leave?"

I admitted that I had tossed him a baiting question to see how he would answer. The Senior nodded. "I know you're not stupid, Son; I had Athene give me a runback on your ancestry. But I have often been amazed at how the moderately bright and moderately well-informed-which describes no one in this happiness circle, so no one need pretend to modesty- how often such somewhat superior people have trouble coming to grips with the ancient silk-purse-and-sow's-ear problem. If heredity were not overwhelmingly more important than environment, you could teach calculus to a horse.

"In my early days it was an article of faith among a self-styled 'intellectual elite' that they could teach calculus to a horse...if they started early enough, spent enough money, supplied special tutoring, and were endlessly patient and always careful not to bruise his equine ego. They were so sincere that it seems downright ungrateful that the horse always persisted in being a horse. Especially as they were right, if 'starting early enough' is defined as a million years or more.

"But those savages will make it; they can't avoid winning. The problem in reverse is more horridly interesting. Justin, do you realize that we Howards killed off Old Terra?"

"Yes."

"Now, now, Son, you're not supposed to answer in such a way as to chop off conversation...thereby leaving us with nothing to do but get drunk and cuddle the girls."

"Swell!" Obadiah-Galahad shouted. "Let's!" He had Minerva with him at that moment; he grabbed her and flipped her over facing him. "Little whatever-your-name-is, do you have any last words?"

"Yes."

"'Yes' what?"

"Just 'Yes.' That's my last word."

"Galahad," said Ishtar, "if you're going to rape Minerva, drag her back of the fountain. I want to hear what Justin means by that."

"How can I rape her when she won't fight?" he complained.

"You've always been able to solve that problem. But do it quietly. Justin, I find myself shocked. It seems to me that we've been quite generous in supplying Old Home Terra with new technologies-and there's not much else we can give them. Didn't the last migrant transport come back only half loaded?"

"I'll answer it," Lazarus growled. "Justin might pretty it up. Not all the Howards. Two. Andy Libby provided the weapon; I delivered the coup de grace. Space travel killed Earth."

Ishtar looked troubled. "Grandfather, I don't understand."

"She calls me that when I've been naughty," the Senior confided to me. "It's her way of spanking me. Ish darling, you are young and sweet and have spent your life studying biology, not history. Earth was doomed in any case; space travel just hurried it along. By 2012 it wasn't fit to live on-so I spent the next century elsewhere, although the other real estate in the Solar System is far from attractive. Missed seeing Europe destroyed, missed a nasty dictatorship in my home country. Came back when things appeared to be tolerable, found that they weren't-and that's when the Howards had to run for it.

"But space travel can't ease the pressure on a planet grown too crowded, not even with today's ships and probably not with any future ships-because stupid people won't leave the slopes of their home volcano even when it starts to smoke and rumble. What space travel does do is drain off the best brains: those smart enough to see a catastrophe before it happens and with the guts to pay the price-abandon home, wealth, friends, relatives, everything-and go. That's a tiny fraction of one percent. But that's enough."

"It's the bell curve again," I said to Ishtar. "If-as Lazarus thinks, and statistics back him up-every migration comes primarily from the right-hand end of the normal-incidence curve of human ability, then this acts as a sorting device whereby the new planet will show a bell curve with a much higher intelligence norm than the population it came from...and the old planet will average almost imperceptibly stupider."

"Imperceptible except for one thing!" Lazarus objected.

"That tiny fraction that hardly shows statistically is the brain. I recall a country that lost a key war by chasing out a mere half dozen geniuses. Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion-in the long run these are the only people who count and they are the very ones who migrate when it is physically possible to do so.

"As Justin said, statistically it hardly shows. But qualitatively it makes all the difference. Chop off a chicken's head and it doesn't die at once; it flops around more energetically than ever. For a while. Then it dies.

"That's what space travel did to Earth: chopped its head off. For two thousand years its best brains have been migrating. What's left is flopping harder than ever...to no purpose and will die that much sooner. Soon, I think. I don't feel guilty about it; I see no sin in those smart enough to escape escaping if they can-and the death rattle of Earth was clear and strong back in the twentieth century, Earth reckoning, when I was a young man and space travel had barely started-not even started in interstellar terms. It took two more centuries and then some to get it rolling. Can't count the first migration of the Howards; it was involuntary, and they weren't the best brains.

"The later Howard migration to Secundus was more important; it shook out some of the dullards, left them behind. The non-Howard migrations were even more important. I've often wondered what would have happened if there had been no political restraints against migrating from China; the few Chinese who did reach the stars seem always to be winners, I suspect that the Chinese average smarter than the rest of Earth's spawn.

"Not that slant of eye or color of skin matters today, or even matters at the moment of truth. One of the early Howards was Robert C. M. Lee, of Richmond, Virginia-anybody know what his name was originally?"

"I do," I answered.

"Of course you do, Justin, so keep quiet-and that includes you, Athene. Anyone else?"

No one answered; Lazarus went on: "His birth name was Lee Choy Moo; he was born in Singapore, and his parents came from Canton in China-and of the people in the 'New Frontiers' he was a mathematician second only to Andy Libby."

"Goodness!" said Hamadryad. "Fm descended from him- but I didn't know he was a great mathematician."

"Did you know he was Chinese?'

"Lazarus, Fm not sure what 'Chinese' means; I haven't studied much terrestrial history. Isn't it a religion? Like 'Jewish'?"

"Not exactly, dear. The point is that it no longer matters. Just as few know and no one cares that the famous Zaccur Barstow, my partner in crime, was a quarter Negro. Does that word mean anything to you, Hamadarling? Not a religion."

"The word means 'black,' so I assume that one of his grandparents was from Africa."

"Which shows what comes of assuming anything on one datum. Two of Zack's grandparents, both mulatto, came from Los Angeles in my homeland. Since my line mixed with his a long time back, probably any of you can claim African ancestry. Which is statistically equivalent to claiming descent from Charlemagne. I've gone far afield, and it is time we picked a new Stimulator and a new Respondent. Space travel ruined old Earth-that's one viewpoint. The other side of the coin, happier and more important in the long run, is that it improved the breed. Probably saved it as well but 'improved' is certain. Homo sapiens is now not only far more numerous than he ever was on Earth; he is a better, smarter, more efficient animal in every measurable fashion. Further this Respondent sayeth not; somebody else grab it. Lazi, quit trying to tickle me and go bother Galahad; Minerva needs a rest."

"Lazarus," Ishtar said, "just one more responding, please. Something you said about Howards made me wonder. You seemed to place all emphasis on intelligence. Don't you consider long-life important?"

I was astonished to see the oldest human alive frowning over this, slow to answer. Surely it was a question he had settled in his mind at least a thousand years earlier. I tried to forstall the

quandary, found I could not soothly norom it.

"Ishtar, the only correct verbal answer to that is Yes and No-which merely says I lack language to define something that is crystal clear inside me and has been for centuries. But here is part of the truth: A long time ago a short-lifer proved to me that we all live the same length of time." He glanced at Minerva; she looked solemnly back. "Because we all live now. She-he-was not asserting that fallacy of Georg Cantor which distorted pre-Libby mathematics so long; uh, he

-was asserting a verifiable objective truth. Each individual lives her life in now independently of how others may measure that life in years.

"But here is another piece of truth. Life is too long when one is not enjoying now. You recall when I was not and wished to terminate it. Your skill-and trickery, my darling, and don't blush--changed that and again I savor now. But perhaps I have never told you that I approached even my first rejuvenation with misgivings, afraid that it would make my body young without making my spirit young again-and don't bother to tell me that 'spirit' is a null word; I know that it is undefinable but it means something to me.

"But here is still more of the truth and all I'll try to say about it. Although long-life can be a burden, mostly it is a blessing. It gives time enough to learn, time enough to think, time enough not to hurry, time enough for love.

"Enough of weighty matters. Galahad, pick a light subject and, Justin, you plant the barbs; I've talked enough. Ishtar, my darling, fetch your long lovely carcass over here, stretch out, and let me ply you with brandy; I want you relaxed enough for what I intend to do with you later."

She came readily to him, stopping only to kiss Ira a promise, then saying softly but clearly to our Ancestor, "Our beloved, it takes no brandy to make me utterly willing for whatever you have in mind."

"Anesthesia, Mama Ishtar. I plan to show you something Big Anna taught me which I haven't dared risk in all these years. You may not live till morning. Frightened?"

She smiled lazily, happily. "Oh, terribly frightened."

Galahad covered Lapis Lazuli's mouth with a hand; she bit him. "Stop it, Laz. Let's everybody watch this-it might be new."