“I know.” The doctor removed his mask. “I need a cigarette. Who’s got one?” His hands shook a little as he accepted it from Viken.
“But how could he—decide—anything?” choked the physicist. “He’s been unconscious ever since Jan pulled him away from that . . . that thing.”
“It was decided before then,” said Cornelius. “As a matter of fact, that hulk in there on the operating table no longer has a mind. I know. I was there.” He shuddered a little. A stiff shot of tranquilizer was all that held nightmare away from him. Later he would have to have that memory exorcised.
The doctor took a long drag of smoke, held it in his lungs a moment, and exhaled gustily. “I guess this winds up the project,” he said. “We’ll never get another esman.”
“I’ll say we won’t.” Viken’s tone sounded rusty. “I’m going to smash that devil’s engine myself.”
“Hold on a minute,” exclaimed Cornelius. “Don’t you understand? This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning!”
“I’d better get back,” said the doctor. He stubbed out his cigarette and went through the door. It closed behind him with a deathlike quietness.
“What do you mean?” Viken said it as if erecting a barrier.
“Won’t you understand?” roared Cornelius. “Joe has all Anglesey’s habits, thoughts, memories, prejudices, interests . . . oh, yes, the different body and the different environment, they do cause some changes—but no more than any man might undergo on Earth. If you were suddenly cured of a wasting disease, wouldn’t you maybe get a little boisterous and rough? There is nothing abnormal in it. Nor is it abnormal to want to stay healthy—no? Do you see?”
Viken sat down. He spent a while without speaking.
Then, enormously slow and carefuclass="underline" “Do you mean Joe is Ed?”
“Or Ed is Joe. Whatever you like. He calls himself Joe now, I think—as a symbol of freedom—but he is still himself. What is the ego but continuity of existence?
“He himself did not fully understand this. He only knew—he told me, and I should have believed him—that on Jupiter he was strong and happy. Why did the K-tube oscillate? An hysterical symptom? Anglesey’s subconscious was not afraid to stay on Jupiter—it was afraid to come back!
“And then, today, I listened in. By now, his whole self was focused on Joe. That is, the primary source of libido was Joe’s virile body, not Anglesey’s sick one. This meant a different pattern of impulses—not too alien to pass the filters, but alien enough to set up interference. So he felt my presence. And he saw the truth, just as I did—
“Do you know the last emotion I felt, as Joe threw me out of his mind? Not anger anymore. He plays rough, him, but all he had room to feel was joy.
“I knew how strong a personality Anglesey has! Whatever made me think an overgrown child-brain like Joe’s could override it? In there, the doctors—bah! They’re trying to salvage a hulk which has been shed because it is useless!”
Cornelius stopped. His throat was quite raw from talking. He paced the floor, rolled cigar smoke around his mouth but did not draw it any farther in.
When a few minutes had passed, Viken said cautiously: “All right. You should know—as you said, you were there. But what do we do now? How do we get in touch with Ed? Will he even be interested in contacting us?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Cornelius. “He is still himself, remember. Now that he has none of the cripple’s frustrations, he should be more amiable. When the novelty of his new friends wears off, he will want someone who can talk to him as an equal.”
“And precisely who will operate another pseudo?” asked Viken sarcastically. “I’m quite happy with this skinny frame of mine, thank you!”
“Was Anglesey the only hopeless cripple on Earth?” asked Cornelius quietly.
Viken gaped at him.
“And there are aging men, too,” went on the psionicist, half to himself. “Someday, my friend, when you and I feel the years close in, and so much we would like to learn—maybe we, too, would enjoy an extra lifetime in a Jovian body.” He nodded at his cigar. “A hard, lusty, stormy kind of life, granted—dangerous, brawling, violent—but life as no human, perhaps, has lived it since the days of Elizabeth the First. Oh, yes, there will be small trouble finding Jovians.”
He turned his head as the surgeon came out again.
“Well!” croaked Viken.
The doctor sat down. “It’s finished,” he said.
They waited for a moment, awkwardly.
“Odd,” said the doctor. He groped after a cigarette he didn’t have. Silently, Viken offered him one. “Odd. I’ve seen these cases before. People who simply resign from life. This is the first one I ever saw that went out smiling—smiling all the time.”
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
“All You Zombies—”
One of the titans of science fiction’s Golden Age, Robert Heinlein began writing science fiction in 1939 after a brief military career and soon became a prolific contributor to science fiction magazines, notably Astounding Science Fiction, which published most of the best of his early writing. His fiction was notable for its sense of a “lived-in” future. In stories such as “The Roads Must Roll,” “We Also Walks Dogs,” “Blowups Happen,” and others, Heinlein showed how pervasively future developments in science and technology would impact culture and civilization at every level. Most of the stories Heinlein collected in The Man Who Sold the Moon, The Green Hills of Earth, and Revolt in 2100 fit the scheme of Heinlein’s future-history series, which along with the novel was collected definitively in The Past through Tomorrow. Heinlein’s fiction is also renowned for its explorations of social and political themes and for its depiction in science fictional settings of societies where private and group interests are often at variance. Beyond This Horizon concerns a future world where eugenics has created the perfect society. Methuselah’s Children concerns a group of immortals, the product of selective breeding, who face annihilation at the hands of those not similarly gifted. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress vividly depicts the revolt of a colony on the Moon attempting to break free of control by the government on Earth. The Puppet Masters is his most famous study of the individual and collective consciousness, about Earth’s efforts to fight off invasion by aliens intent on absorbing humanity into its group mind. In the years immediately after World War II, Heinlein wrote influential science fiction novels for young adult readers, including Space Cadet, The Star Beast, Have Space Suit—Will Travel, and Starship Troopers, a controversial novel about a militaristic future where freedom and citizenship are predicated on training for the armed services. Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein’s 1962 novel about a messianic human raised on Mars who exposes the corruption and hypocrisy of civilization on Earth, was the first science fiction novel to reach the national bestseller list. Heinlein also wrote a number of groundbreaking modern fantasies, including Magic, Inc. and the stories collected in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.
2217 TIME ZONE V (EST) 7 Nov 1970 NYC—“Pop’s Place”: I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time—10:17 p.m. zone five, or eastern time, November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time & date; we must.
The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty-five years old, no taller than I am, childish features and a touchy temper. I didn’t like his looks—I never had—but he was a lad I was here to recruit, he was my boy. I gave him my best barkeep’s smile.