“My, you are hungry,” she said brightly, and repeated the order out over the table. “I am afraid that it won’t be true Valpolicella but so nearly that it is unlikely that you’ll tell the difference. The vintners among us, conscious of wine-making as an art, make a hobby of duplicating practically every vintage known.”
Ronny said in exasperation, “Wait a minute. Do you mean to tell me you have automated kitchens that contain every known recipe on any Earthling settled world?”
That seemed to puzzzle her. “Don’t you on Earth?”
Ronny said, “Possibly every cookbook ever published can be found in the United Planets Interplanetary Data Banks on Earth. But they’re most certainly not hooked up to every automated kitchen in the world.”
“Why not?”
The two men both blinked again.
“It would seem to be quite a project,” Horsten demurred. “Besides, some of the raw materials wouldn’t be available on Earth.”
She sighed. “Yes, that can be a problem. When it arises our chefs must improvise. I have a friend who has been working for years on duplicating Menelaus white fish, certainly one of the most delicate sea foods found in the galaxy.”
She spoke again out over the table, this time in a language neither of her guests understood. Then she leaned back into her chair.
She said, “On Einstein, we consider cuisine to be one of the gentler arts, and make every effort to develop it. We, too, have every cook book ever published, in our data banks.” She smiled mischievously. “We secured most of them, indirectly, from your Earth-side data banks. Some time ago, we made a trade with the planet Catalina, technological information, developed here on Einstein, for the complete United Planets Data Banks. Of course, we have also developed recipes of our own.”
Dorn Horsten was fascinated. He said, “Suppose I invented a new dish. How would I go about getting it into the automated restaurants’ recipe banks? Who would decide?”
She frowned, again puzzled, and said, “No one. You’d just put it in, it would be crossfiled, and anybody who wanted to try it could.”
Ronny said, grimly, “Suppose it was chocolate covered dill pickles with anchovy sauce.”
She laughed at him. “Then I doubt if anybody would ever order it.”
The table top sank down to return in moments with their dishes. She had evidently ordered largely salad for herself. Ronny’s Peking Duck came garnished with various other Chinese dishes. He wished that he had ordered some hot sake, while he was at it.
Dorn looked down in despair at the great pile of food he had summoned, but set to. He said, “To get back to that servants thing. You said there were none on Einstein. How about the wealthy?”
“What wealthy?”
He took her in, before saying, “I can see where people of ordinary means would utilize your high rate of automation to free themselves of the drudgery of housekeeping and the preparation of meals. But those with larger estates. Don’t they maintain staffs of servants?”
“Oh,” she said, frowning lightly as though wondering how to put this. “But, you see, there are no wealthy on Einstein. When our people first came here it must have been one of the best funded colonizations that Earthlings have ever embarked upon. They quickly built the most modern automated and computerized industries, the most efficient possible and ever since we’ve been upgrading it. There are no poor and no wealthy on Einstein. There is absolute abundance for everyone.”
“Utopia!” Ronny blurted, in disbelief.
She shook her head and her frown deepened. She said, “No, certainly not. There is no such thing as Utopia. It means perfection, which is a goal that can never be achieved. As you approach, it recedes, and you have new achievements to strive toward.”
Her eyes went back to Dorn Horsten. “We have no personal servants, but, often, an outstanding scientist may have assistants, or an outstanding artist might have one or more apprentices. An outstanding writer might have someone to help him with his research. But none of these are really servants.”
Dinner over, Rosemary murmured something out over the table in her unknown language and the table center sank in, taking the soiled dishes away.
They headed back for the living room.
Dorn Horsten said, “What is that language you speak? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it before.”
“I would imagine not, Doctor. I doubt if it is spoken anywhere except on Einstein. It’s a scientific language, largely a combination of Esperanto and Interlingua, though our own experts made deletions, or additions, of their own.”
Ronny said, “Look, let’s put this on a more informal basis. I can’t keep calling you nothing but Rosemary, while you call me Citizen Bronston, and Dorn, Doctor Horsten. What is your last name, by the way?”
“I have none. My name’s just Rosemary.”
Again the two men looked at her blankly.
Ronny said, “I meant your family name.”
“Yes, I know. But I have no family. My name’s Rosemary and my identification number is F-123-B-1495. That, of course, is for the data banks.”
“But you’ve got to have a family. Do you mean that you are an orphan?”
“There are no, well, orphans, on Einstein. Either that, or I suppose that you could say we’re all orphans. But there are no families.”
Ronny said plaintively, “You’ve got to have families. There’s always been the family.”
“No there hasn’t,” she told him. “Certainly not in the sense in which you’re speaking. I would imagine that for ninety percent of the history of the human race, the pairing family, such as you still know it on Earth and elsewhere in United Planets, was unknown. That is a man, a woman and their children, the children taking the man’s name upon birth. The extended family applied for most of man’s history.
Dorn Horsten said gently, “We seem to have drifted away from the fascinating point. You said that you have no families on Einstein any longer.”
Rosemary turned her impossibly blue eyes to him. “There’s no need for them. Property is no longer an issue. There is none. Parents are no longer involved in having their possessions descend to their offspring.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Ronny said. “I’ve been losing things all along in this conversation, that really took a wheel off however. What do you mean, there is no property? You were telling us a little while ago that everybody had it made on Einstein. That there was an abundance for everybody.”
“Of course,” she told him, nodding her head. “But there is no private property.”
Dorn Horsten said, thinking he got it, “You mean that you have established communism on Einstein?”
She sent her eyes over to the doctor and frowned her absolutely beautiful frown at him. “It’s an elastic term… Dorn,” she said. “If you mean the so-called communism first established by Lenin on Earth, and later extended to such planets as Stalin, then no.”
Ronny said, his voice irritated and demanding, “Then what do you mean no private ownership? You told us earlier that this was your house.”
“You misunderstood,” she told him. “It is mine in the sense that I occupy it. But it isn’t mine. Or anybody else’s. Who in the name of the Holy Ultimate would want to be tied down to a house?” She stated it as though that was the most reasonable position possible. But then she added, “Of course I own, I suppose you could say, my personal things; my toothbrush, my art objects, my favorite articles of clothing—the ones I don’t send down the disposal chutes every day. So does everybody else.”