“Yeah, well, that’s enough of that. I mean, is there anything in English? Anything I could understand?”
“No, Man Forrester. Faint carbonization marks are visible where the envelope has been creased. There are several minor discolorations, which may represent latent human skinprints. At some time a mild corrosive liquid was spilled—”
“Say, joymaker,” said Forrester, “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t I open it up? Where’d you say it was?”
Retrieved from his receiving chute, the envelope turned out to be a letter from his wife.
He stared at it and felt something tingling in the corners of his eyes. The handwriting was very strange to him. The signature was “Still with affection, Dorothy” . . . but the hand that had formed those letters scrawled and shook. She had even abandoned her little finishing-school affectations of penmanship, the open-circle dots over the i ’s, the flowing crosses on the t ’s. He could read it only with difficulty.
Dear Charles,
This is, I think, the tenth or eleventh time I have written this letter to you. I seem to do it every time there is a death or bad news, as though the only gossip I have that is worth the effort to pass on for what may be another century—or more!—is that which has to do with troubles. Not your troubles, of course. Not any more. Usually the troubles are mine.
Although I must say that really my life has not been a burden to me. I remember that you made me happy, Charles. I must tell you that I missed you terribly. But I must also tell you that I got over it.
To begin with: You will want to know what you died of, I know, and perhaps the people who bring you back to life will not be able to tell you. (I am assuming that you will be brought back to life. I didn’t believe it at the time—but since then I’ve seen it happen.)
You were burned to death in a house fire on Christie Street on October 16th, 1969. Dr. Ten Eyck, who was with the first aid squad, pronounced you dead and, with some difficulty, persuaded them to use their death-reversal equipment to freeze you. There was some trouble about lacking glycerol for perfusion, but the whole fire company, you will be glad to know, dug into their liquor closets and came up with several bottles of bourbon . . .and it was that which was used as a buffer. (If you woke up with a hangover, you now know why!)
There was some question as to whether too much time had elapsed, too. They thought you might have spoiled during the discussion, you see. But as it was cold weather for October they decided to take a chance, and you were ultimately consigned to a freeze-dormer at liquid helium temperatures. Where, as I write this, you now lie. . .and where, or in one like it, I expect to be myself before long.
I should tell you that I didn’t pay for any of this. Your fire company insurance, it turned out, was adequate to cover all the costs and was in fact earmarked for that purpose. If it had been up to me I don’t think I would have gone to the expense, Charles, because after all there were the children to bring up.
What can I tell you about them? They missed you very much.
Vance, in particular, played truant from school for the best part of a month, forging notes to his teacher, persuading some adult— I suspected our cleaning woman at the time—to phone the principal to explain his absence, before I found out about it. But then he joined a Boy Scout troop and, as they say, developed other interests.
David didn’t say much. But I don’t think he ever got over it. At least not during his lifetime. He joined the Peace Corps four years later and was executed by insurgents during the Huk uprising in VTGD. Since his body was mutilated before being found he could not be frozen. So he, at least, we will never see again.
Vance is now married, and is in fact a grandfather. It was his second marriage; the first was annulled. His present wife was a schoolteacher before their marriage. . .and they have been happy. And I really can think of nothing else to tell you about your son Vance that does not involve attempting to explain what broke up his first marriage and why his second wife could not stay in the United States. I suppose you may meet him some day. You can ask him yourself.
Billy, you will be astonished to learn, is now a Great Man.
Let me see. He was two when you died. Now he’s our senator from Hawaii, and they say he will be President one day. But you will find out more about him in the history books than I can tell you, I think. Let me only say, what I know will interest you, that his first campaign was on a platform of free freezing for everyone, paid for out of Social Security funds, and you were mentioned in every speech. He won easily.
And I . . . am seventy-nine years old.
Since you died forty years ago I cannot now remember you well enough, my Charles, to know if you will mind what I have to say next. Three years after your death I remarried. My husband—my other husband—was a doctor. Still is, though he is out of practice now. We have been very happy, too. We had two other children. Both girls. You never met him, but he is a good man, barring the fact that at one time he drank too much. He gave it up. He looks a little like you. . . .
If I remember correctly, he does.
And I am now in brittle health and I think this is the last time I will write you this letter. Perhaps we will meet again. I wonder what it will be like.
Still with affection,
Dorothy
Forrester put down the letter and cried, “Joymaker! Was there ever a President named Forrester?”
“President of what, Man Forrester?”
“President of the United States!”
“Which United States is that, Man Forrester?”
“Oh, for God’s sakes! The United States of America. Wait a minute. First off, do you know the Presidents of the United States of America?”
“Yes, Man Forrester. Washington, George. Adams, John. Jefferson, Thomas—”
“Later on! starting with the middle of the twentieth century.”
“Yes, Man Forrester. Truman, Harry S. Eisenhower, Dwight D. Kennedy—”
“Move it up! Start with around 1990.”
“Yes, Man Forrester. Williams, Harrison E. Knapp, Leonard Stanchion, Karen P. Forrester, Wilton N. Tschirky, Leon—”
“Well, my God,” said Forrester softly, and sat marveling while the joymaker droned on to the end of the twenty-first century and stopped.
Little two-year-old Willy. Baby Bill. A senator . . . and President. It was an unsettling idea.
The joymaker said, “Man Forrester! Notice of physical visit. Adne Bensen is to see you, purpose unstated, time of arrival less than one minute.”
“Oh,” said Forrester, “good. Let her right in.” And he rehearsed what he would tell her, but not to any effect. Genealogy was not what was on her mind. She was angry.
“You,” she cried, “what the sweat do you think you’re doing to my kids?”
“Why, nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Dog sweat!” The door crashed closed behind her. “Twitching kamikaze!” She flung her cape against the wall; it dropped to a chair and arranged itself in neat square folds. “Pervert creep, you get a kick out of this, don’t you? Want to make my kids like you! Want to change them into chatter-toothed, hand-working, dog-sweaty, cowardly—”
Forrester guided her to a chair. “Honey,” he said, attempting to get her a drink, “shut up a minute.”
“Oh, sweat! Give me that—” She quickly produced drinks for them, without a pause in her talking. “My kids! You want to ruin them? You hid from a challenge!”
“Look, I’m sorry, but I didn’t mean to get them in a dangerous—”
“Dangerous! Go crawl! I’m not talking about danger.”
“I didn’t let them get hurt—”
“Sweat!”
“Well, it isn’t my fault if some crazy Martian—”
“Dogsweat!” She was wearing a skintight coverall that seemed to be made of parallel strands of fabric running top to bottom, held together God knew how; with every movement as she turned, as her breast rose and fell, tiny slivers of skin showed disturbingly. “You’re not even a man! What do you know about—”