"A complete logic capable of the work required," says the screen, "is now in ordinary family use in—"
And it gives me the Korlanovitch address and do I go over there! Do I go over there fast! I pull up the Maintenance car in front of the place, and I take the extra logic outta the back, and I stagger up the Korlanovitch fiat and I ring the bell. A kid answers the door.
"I'm from Logics Maintenance," I tell the kid. "An inspection record has shown that your logic is apt to break down any minute. I come to put in a new one before it does."
The kid says "O.K.!" real bright and runs back to the livin'-room where Joe—I got the habit of callin' him Joe later, through just meditatin' about him—is runnin' somethin' the kids wanna look at. I hook in the other logic an' turn it on, conscientious making sure it works. Then I say:
"Now kiddies, you punch this one for what you want. I'm gonna take the old one away before it breaks down."
And I glance at the screen. The kiddies have apparently said they wanna look at some real cannibals. So the screen is presenting a anthropological expedition scientific record film of the fertility dance of the Huba-Jouba tribe of West Africa. It is supposed to be restricted to anthropological professors an' post-graduate medical students. But there ain't any censor blocks workin' any more and it's on. The kids are much interested. Me, bein' a old married man, I blush.
I disconnect Joe. Careful. I turn to the other logic and punch keys for Maintenance. I do not get a services flash. I get Maintenance. I feel very good. I report that I am goin' home because I fell down a flight of steps an' hurt my leg. I add, inspired:
"An' say, I was carryin' the logic I replaced an' it's all busted. I left it for the dustman to pick up."
"If you don't turn 'em in," says Stock, "you gotta pay for 'em."
"Cheap at the price," I say.
I go home. Laurine ain't called. I put Joe down in the cellar, careful. If I turned him in, he'd be inspected an' his parts salvaged even if I busted somethin' on him. Whatever part was off-normal might be used again and everything start all over. I can't risk it. I pay for him and leave him be.
That's what happened. You might say I saved civilization an' not be far wrong. I know I ain't goin' to take a chance on havin' Joe in action again. Not while Laurine is livin'. An' there are other reasons. With all the nuts who wanna change the world to their own line o' thinkin', an' the ones that wanna bump people off, an' generally solve their problems— Yeah! Problems are bad, but I figure I better let sleepin' problems lie.
But on the other hand, if Joe could be tamed, somehow, and got to work just reasonable— He could make me a coupla million dollars, easy. But even if I got sense enough not to get rich, an' if I get retired and just loaf around fishin' an' lyin' to other old duffers about what a great guy I used to be— Maybe I'll like it, but maybe I won't. And after all, if I get fed up with bein' old and confined strictly to thinking—why I could hook Joe in long enough to ask: "How can a old guy not stay old?" Joe'll be able to find out. An' he'll tell me.
That couldn't be allowed out general, of course. You gotta make room for kids to grow up. But it's a pretty good world, now Joe's turned off. Maybe I'll turn him on long enough to learn how to stay in it. But on the other hand, maybe—
Dear Charles
To: CHARLES FABIUS GRANVER,
Sector 233, Zone 3, Home 1254, Radli.
The Thirty-Fourth Century, a.d.
My dear great-great-great-etc.-grandson Charles:
Your friend Hari Vans will discover this letter printed as a fiction story in an ancient, tattered book of still more ancient fiction stories in the rare-books stacks of the University Library. He will be astonished to see your name and still more astonished to read his own. He will be astounded to find your correct address in a volume printed when neither you nor your address existed. So he will show this letter to you, and in this way I can write you a very important message. The ordinary postal service could hardly be expected to deliver a letter after fourteen centuries, and I feel I must tell you about urgent family matters.
I need to arrange, through you, to meet and woo (and of course to win, despite your unfilial objections) your great-great-etc.-grandmother. When this letter is delivered, she will happen to be engaged to you, so I do not really count on your co-operation. The most I expect is a frantic effort on your part to prove that the whole business is pure lunacy. But that effort will be all I need, Charles, and I think that for the family's sake you should make it. It really is a family matter. As nearly as I can compute it on a basis of four generations to the century, you are my great-great-etc.-grandson some fifty-two times removed. This relationship exists because of a somewhat unusual series of events, and you need to know what to do to bring them about.
To make it clear . . . I imagine that in your day they still talk of time-travel as impossible because, so the argument runs, if one went back in time a hundred years, landed on his grandfather, and happened to kill him, he would make it impossible for himself to have been born. But of course if he wasn't born his grandfather wouldn't be killed. So he would be born. So he would kill his grandfather. So he wouldn't be born. Ad infinitum. I am sure you know this proof that time-travel is impossible.
However, I am your great-great-etc.-grandfather because of just the reverse of this classical paradox. It happens that when you read this, you are about to discover me as a visitor come forward from my time to yours. And in your time, with your extremely reluctant assistance, I shall woo and win your current girl friend and bring her contentedly back to my century to become your fifty-two-times-removed-grandmother.
I hardly expect you to approve the notion, Charles. You are inclined to be selfish. You will resist my great-grandparental authority, not caring about the consequences to the family. But I think you will flub it. After all, if you did manage to keep me from wooing and winning Ginny, you would not be born to stop me. So I would woo and win her, in which case you would be born to stop me. If you did such a thing, you would not be born. In short, I think I am going to marry Ginny. In fact, I already have, and now I want to arrange for it.
Let me clarify the situation a little. In my senior year at Collins University, my physics professor was Prof. Knut Hadley, Ph.D., M.A. etc., etc. He was a person with a sort of monorail mind, capable of following an idea tenaciously over dizzy heights of improbability and through fastnesses of opposing facts. In the previous semester he'd tracked an idea down. It was a dilly. As class-work, he had five of us seniors help him put together an incredibly complicated electronic gadget that he said would provide experimental proof of the verity of the Lorenz-Fitzgerald equation. His theory was—
No. I spare you that, Charles. Let's keep this simple. You just remember that if you manage to keep me from winning Ginny you won't be born to keep me from winning Ginny, so I will win her and you will be born to try and stop me—you see? Just bear that in mind if you get confused. It may help.
In any case, Professor Hadley's apparatus took a splendid if incomprehensible form. We built it with elaborate care. And some two weeks before graduation it was finished. Professor Hadley was jubilant. Standing before us, he adjusted this and checked over that. He made sure of voltages and he measured micro-ohms of resistance. And then he got ready to turn it on.
For obvious reasons, I am not going to give you any clues to how it was made. As it turned out, this was the device by which I traveled to your century, and I wouldn't want you to make another and come back to kill your fifty-two-times-removed-grandfather. You will want to, Charles, but it would be most improper. All the intervening generations, of which I am the revered sire, would never exist. Out of consideration for them I can't allow it. My regards to your father, by the way, Charles. And your great-etc.-grandmother insists that I give you a message. She remembers you with an affection I cannot match, and hopes that you meet some nice girl and marry her and live happily ever after. I'm afraid I retain too much of my old antagonism toward Ginny's first suitor to wish you well.