Glory Road
Authors: Robert A Heinlein
TeaserE. C. “Scar” Gordon was on the French Riviera recovering from a tour of combat in Southeast Asia, but he hadn’t given up his habit of scanning the Personals in the newspaper. One ad in particular leapt out at him:
ARE YOU A COWARD?
This is not for you. We badly need a brave man. He must be 23 to 25 years old, in perfect health, at least six feet tall, weigh about 190 pounds, fluent English, with some French, proficient in all weapons, some knowledge of engineering and mathematics essential, willing to travel, no family or emotional ties, indomitably courageous and handsome of face and figure. Permanent employment, very high pay, glorious adventure, great danger.
You must apply in person
, rue Dante, Nice, 2me étage, appt. D.
How could you not answer an ad like that, especially when it seemed to describe you perfectly? Well, except maybe for the “handsome” part, but that was in the eye of the beholder anyway. So he went to that apartment and was greeted by the most beautiful woman he had ever met. She seemed to have many names, but agreed he could call her "Star." A pretty appropriate name, as it turned out, for the empress of twenty universes.
Robert A. Heinlein’s one true fantasy novel,
Glory Road
is as much fun today as when he wrote it after
Stranger in a Strange Land
. Heinlein proves himself as adept with sword and sorcery as with rockets and slide rules, and the result is exciting, satirical, fast-paced, funny, and tremendously readable—a favorite of all who have read it.
Glory Road
is a masterpiece of escapist entertainment with a typically Heinleinian sting in its tail. Tor is proud to return this all-time classic to hardcover to be discovered by a new generation of readers.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
(1907-1988) is widely acknowledged to have been the single most important and influential author of science fiction.
By Robert A. Heinlein from Tor Books
The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein
Glory Road
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Requiem
CopyrightThis is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
GLORY ROAD
Copyright © 1963 by Robert A. Heinlein
Copyright © 1991 by Virginia Heinlein
Copyright © 2003 by the Robert A. Heinlein and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust
Afterword copyright © 1979, 1984 by Samuel R. Delany
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heinlein, Robert A. (Robert Anson)
Glory road / Robert A. Heinlein.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-765-31221-2 (alk. paper)
EAN 978-0765-31221-1
1. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975—Veterans-Fiction. 2. Interplanetary voyages—Fiction. 3. Quests (Expeditions)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3515.E288G55 2004
813'.54-dc22
2004048014
First Tor Edition: October 2004
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For
George H. Scithers
and
the regular patrons
of the
Terminus, Owlswick, and Ft. Mudge
Electrick Street Railway
ContentsBRITANNUS
(shocked):
Caesar, this is not proper.THEODOTUS
(outraged):
How?CAESAR
(recovering his self-possession):
Pardon him Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.Caesar and Cleopatra
,
ACT II
—George Bernard Shaw
Chapter 1
| ONE |  |
I know a place where there is no smog and no parking problem and no population explosion…no Cold War and no H-bombs and no television commercials…no Summit Conferences, no Foreign Aid, no hidden taxes—no income tax. The climate is the sort that Florida and California claim (and neither has), the land is lovely, the people are friendly and hospitable to strangers, the women are beautiful and amazingly anxious to please—
I could go back. I could—
It was an election year with the customary theme of anything you can do I can do better, to a background of beeping sputniks. I was twenty-one but couldn’t figure out which party to vote against.
Instead I phoned my draft board and told them to send me that notice.
I object to conscription the way a lobster objects to boiling water: it may be his finest hour but it’s not his choice. Nevertheless I love my country. Yes, I do, despite propaganda all through school about how patriotism is obsolete. One of my great-grandfathers died at Gettysburg and my father made that long walk back from Chosen Reservoir, so I didn’t buy this new idea. I argued against it in class—until it got me a “D,” in Social Studies, then I shut up and passed the course.
But I didn’t change my opinions to match those of a teacher who didn’t know Little Round Top from Seminary Ridge.
Are you of my generation? If not, do you know
why
we turned out so wrongheaded? Or did you just write us off as “juvenile delinquents?”
I could write a book. Brother! But I’ll note one key fact: After you’ve spent years and years trying to knock the patriotism out of a boy, don’t expect him to cheer when he gets a notice reading: G
REETINGS
:
You are hereby ordered for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States
—
Talk about a “Lost Generation!” I’ve read that post-World War One jazz—Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and so on—and it strikes me that all they had to worry about was wood alcohol in bootleg liquor. They had the world by the tail—so why were they crying?
Sure, they had Hitler and the Depression ahead of them. But they didn’t know that.
We
had Khrushchev and the H-bomb and we certainly did know.
But we were not a “Lost Generation.” We were worse; we were the “Safe Generation.” Not beatniks. The Beats were never more than a few hundred out of millions. Oh, we talked beatnik jive and dug cool sounds in stereo and disagreed with
Playboy
’s poll of jazz musicians just as earnestly as if it mattered. We read Salinger and Kerouac and used language that shocked our parents and dressed (sometimes) in beatnik fashion. But we didn’t think that bongo drums and a beard compared with money in the bank. We weren’t rebels. We were as conformist as army worms. “Security” was our unspoken watchword.
Most of our watchwords were unspoken but we followed them as compulsively as a baby duck takes to water. “Don’t fight City Hall.” “Get it while the getting is good.” “Don’t get caught.” High goals, these, great moral values, and they all mean “Security.” “Going steady” (my generation’s contribution to the American Dream) was based on security; it insured that Saturday night could never be the loneliest night for the weak. If you went steady, competition was eliminated.
But we had ambitions. Yes, sir! Stall off your draft board and get through college. Get married and get her pregnant, with both families helping you to stay on as a draft-immune student. Line up a job well thought of by draft boards, say with some missile firm. Better yet, take postgraduate work if your folks (or hers) could afford it and have another kid and get safely beyond the draft—besides, a doctor’s degree was a union card, for promotion and pay and retirement.
Short of a pregnant wife with well-to-do parents the greatest security lay in being 4-F. Punctured eardrums were good but an allergy was best. One of my neighbors had a terrible asthma that lasted till his twenty-sixth birthday. No fake—he was allergic to draft boards. Another escape was to convince an army psychiatrist that your interests were more suited to the State Department than to the Army. More than half of my generation were “unfit for military service.”
I don’t find this surprising. There is an old picture of a people traveling by sleigh through deep woods—pursued by wolves. Every now and then they grab one of their number and toss him to the wolves. That’s conscription even if you call it “selective service” and pretty it up with USOs and “veterans’ benefits”—it’s tossing a minority to the wolves while the rest go on with that single-minded pursuit of the three-car garage, the swimming pool, and the safe and secure retirement benefits.
I am not being holier-than-thou; I was after that same three-car garage myself.
However, my folks could not put me through college. My stepfather was an air force warrant officer with all he could handle to buy shoes for his own lads. When he was transferred to Germany just before my high school senior year and I was invited to move in with my father’s sister and her husband, both of us were relieved.
I was no better off financially as my uncle-in-law was supporting a first wife—under California law much like being an Alabama field hand before the Civil War. But I had $35 a month as a “surviving dependent of a deceased veteran.” (Not “war orphan,” which is another deal that pays more.) My mother was certain that Dad’s death had resulted from wounds but the Veterans Administration thought differently, so I was just a “surviving dependent.”
