Time Enough for Love (20 page)

“Advertising copywriter, actor—but I was
very
broke that time—acolyte, construction engineer and several other sorts, and even more sorts of mechanic, for I’ve always believed that an intelligent man can turn his hand to
anything
if he will take time to learn how it works. Not that I insisted on skilled work when my next meal was at stake; I’ve often pushed an idiot stick—”

“Idiom?”

“An old gandy-dancer expression, Son, a stick with a shovel blade on one end and an idiot on the other. I was never that for more than a few days, just long enough to sort out the local setup. Political manager—I was even a reform politician once…but
only
once: Reform politicians not only tend to be dishonest but
stupidly
dishonest—whereas the business politician is honest.”

“I don’t see that Lazarus. History seems to show—”

“Use your head, Ira. I don’t mean that a business politician won’t steal; stealing is his business. But
all
politicians are nonproductive. The only commodity any politician has to offer is jawbone. His personal integrity—meaning, if he gives his word, can you rely on it? A successful business politician knows this and guards his reputation for sticking by his commitments—because he wants to stay in business—go on stealing, that is—not only this week but next year and years after that. So if he’s smart enough to be successful at this very exacting trade, he can have the morals of a snapping turtle, but he performs in such a way as not to jeopardize the only thing he has to sell, his reputation for keeping promises.

“But a reform politician has no such lodestone. His devotion is to the welfare of all the people—an abstraction of very high order and therefore capable of endless definitions. If indeed it can be defined in meaningful terms. In consequence your utterly sincere and incorruptible reform politician is capable of breaking his word three times before breakfast—not from personal dishonesty, as he sincerely regrets the necessity and will tell you so—but from unswerving devotion to his ideal.

“All it takes to get him to break his word is for someone to get his ear and convince him that it is necessary for the greater good of
all
the peepul. He’ll geek.

“After he gets hardened to this, he’s capable of cheating at solitaire. Fortunately he rarely stays in office long—except during the decay and fall of a culture.”

I said, “I must take your word for it, Lazarus. Since I have spent most of my life on Secundus, I know little of politics other than theoretically. You set it up that way.”

The Senior fixed me with a stare of cold scorn. “I did no such thing.”

“But—”

“Oh, hush. You are a politician yourself—a ‘business’ politician, I hope—but that stunt of transporting your dissidents gives me doubts. Minerva! ‘Notebook,’ dear. My intention in deeding Secundus to the Foundation was to set up a cheap and simple government—a constitutional tyranny. One in which the government was forbidden to do most things…and the dear people, bless their black flabby little hearts, were given no voice at all.

“I didn’t have much hope for it. Man is a political animal, Ira. You can no more keep him from politicking than you can keep him from copulating—and probably shouldn’t try. But I was young then, and hopeful. I hoped to keep politicking in the private sphere, keep it out of government. I thought the setup might last a century or so; I’m amazed that it has lasted as long as it has. Not good. This planet is overripe for revolution—and if Minerva doesn’t find me something better to do, I might show up under another name, with my hair dyed and my nose bobbed, and start one. So be warned, Ira.”

I shrugged. “You forget I’m migrating.”

“Ah, yes. Though the prospect of suppressing a revolution might change your mind. Or perhaps you would like to be my chief of staff—then displace me with a coup d’état after the shooting is over and send me to the guillotine. That would be something new—I’ve never tended to lose my head over politics. Doesn’t leave much for an encore, does it? ‘A tisket, a tasket, a head in a basket—it cannot reply to questions you ask it.’ Final curtain, no bows.

“But revolutions can be fun. Did I tell you how I worked my way through college? Operating a Gatling gun
¹¹
for five dollars a day and loot. Never got higher than corporal because each time I had enough money for another semester, I deserted—and, being a mercenary, I was never tempted to become a dead hero. But adventure and change of scene are appealing to a young man…and I was very young.

“But dirt, and missing meals, and the
wheet
of bullets past your ears stop being glamorous as you grow up; the next time I was in the military—not entirely my idea—I chose Navy instead. Wet Navy, although I was space Navy at later times and under other names.

“I’ve sold almost everything—except slaves—and worked as a mind-reader in a traveling show, and was a king once—a much overrated profession, the hours are too long—and designed women’s styles under a phony French name and accent and with my hair long. Almost the only time I’ve worn long hair, Ira; not only does long hair need a lot of time-wasting care, it gives your opponent something to grab in close combat and can obscure your view at a critical moment—either one can be fatal. But I don’t favor a billiard-ball cut because a thick mat of hair—not so long as to fall over your eyes—can save you a nasty scalp wound.”

Lazarus appeared to stop to think. “Ira, I don’t see how I can list all the things I’ve done to support myself and my wives and kids, even if I could remember them. The longest I ever stuck to one job was about half a century—very special circumstances—and the shortest was from after breakfast to just before lunch—again, special circumstance. But no matter where or what, there are makers, takers, and fakers. I prefer the first category but I haven’t spurned the other two. Whenever I was a family man—usually, that is—I haven’t let compunctions stop me from keeping food on the table. I won’t steal another child’s food to feed my own—but there is always some way not too sickeningly fake to garner valuta if a man isn’t too picky—which I never was whenever I had family obligations.

“You can sell things which have no intrinsic value, such as stories or songs—I’ve worked every branch of the entertainment profession…including a time in the capital of Fatima when I squatted in the marketplace with a brass bowl in front of me, telling a story longer than this one, and waiting at cliff-hangers for the clink of a coin.

“I was reduced to that because my ship had been confiscated and foreigners weren’t permitted to work without a permit—a high squeeze on the theory that jobs should be reserved for local citizens, there being a depression. Telling stories without a fee wasn’t classed as work, nor was it begging—which required a license—and cops let me alone as long as I volunteered the customary daily gift to the Police Benevolent Fund.

“It was either get by with some such dodge or be reduced to stealing—difficult in a culture in which one is not sophisticated in the local customs. Still, I would have risked it save that I had a wife and three small children. That hobbled me, Ira; a family man should not take risks that a bachelor finds acceptable.

“So I sat there till my tailbone wore through the cobblestones, recounting everything from Grimm’s fairy tales to Shakespeare’s plays, and not letting my wife spend money on anything but food until we saved enough to buy that work permit plus the customary cumshaw. Then I clobbered ’em, Ira.”

“How, Lazarus?”

“Slowly but thoroughly. Those months in the marketplace had given me a degree of sophistication in the ‘Who: Whom’ of that society and what its sacred cows were. Then I stayed on for years—no choice. But first I was baptised into the local religion, gaining a more acceptable name in the process, and memorized the Qur’an. Not quite the same Qur’an I had known some centuries earlier, but it was worth the effort.

“I’ll skip over how I got into the Tinkers’ Guild and got my first job repairing television receivers—had my pay docked to cover my contribution to the guild, that is, with a private arrangement to the Grand Master Tinker, not too expensive. This society was retarded in technology; its customs didn’t encourage progress, and they had slipped behind what they had fetched from Earth about five centuries earlier. That made me a wizard, Ira, and could have got me hanged had I not been careful to be a faithful—and openhanded—son of the church. So once I got into position for it, I peddled fresh electronics and stale astrology—using knowledge they didn’t have for one and a free imagination for the other.

“Eventually I was chief stooge to the very official who had confiscated my ship and trade goods years earlier, and I was helping him get richer while getting rich myself. If he recognized me, he never said so—a beard changes my looks quite a lot. Unfortunately he fell into disfavor and I wound up with his job.”

“How did you work that, Lazarus? Without being caught, I mean?”

“Now, now, Ira! He was my benefactor. It said so in my contract and I always addressed him as such. Allah’s ways are mysterious. I cast a horoscope for him, warning him that his stars were in bad shape. And so they were. That system is one of the few I know of with two usable planets around the same star, both colonized and with trade between them. Artifacts and slaves—”

“‘Slaves,’ Lazarus? While I am aware of such a practice on Supreme, I didn’t think that vice was very common. Not economic.”

The old man closed his eyes, kept them closed so long I thought he had fallen asleep (he often did during the early days of these talks). Then he opened them and spoke very grimly:

“Ira, this vice is far more common than historians usually mention. Uneconomic, yes—a slave society can’t compete with a free one. But with the Galaxy as wide as it is, there is usually no such competition. Slavery can and
does
exist many times and places, whenever the laws are rigged to permit it.

“I said that I would do almost anything to support my wives and kids—and I have; I have shoveled human excrement for a pittance, standing in it up to my knees, rather than let a child go hungry. But this I will not touch. Nor is it because I was once a slave myself; I have
always
felt this way. Call it a ‘belief’ or dignify it as a deep moral conviction. Whatever it is, for me it is beyond argument. If the human animal has any value at all, he is too valuable to be property. If he has any inner dignity, he is much too proud to own other men. I don’t give a damn how scrubbed and perfumed he may be, a slaveowner is subhuman.

“But this does not mean that I’ll cut my throat when I run into it, or I would not have lived through my first century. For there is another bad thing about slavery, Ira; it is impossible to free slaves, they have to free themselves.”

Lazarus scowled. “You’ve got me preaching again and about matters I can’t possibly prove. Once I got my hands on my ship, I had it fumigated and checked it over myself and had it loaded with items I thought I could sell and had food and water taken on for the human cargo it had been refitted for, and sent the captain and crew on a week’s leave, and notified the Protector of Servants—the state slave factor, that is—that we would load as soon as the skipper and purser were back.

“Then I took my family on a holiday inspection of the ship. Somehow the Protector of Servants was suspicious; he insisted on touring the ship with us. So we had to take him along when we took off from there, very suddenly, shortly after my family was aboard. Right out of that system and never went back. But before we put down on a civilized planet, me and my boys—two almost grown by then—removed any sign that she had ever been a slaver, even though it mean jettisoning stuff I could have sold.”

“What about the Protector of Servants?” I asked. “Wasn’t he some trouble to you?”

“Wondered if you would notice that. I
spaced
the bastard! Alive. He went thataway, eyes popped out and peeing blood. What did you expect me to do? Kiss him?”

Once they reached the privacy of a transport Galahad said to Ishtar, “Were you serious in your proposal to the Senior? To have progeny by him?”

“How could I be joking?—in the presence of two witnesses, one of them the Chairman Pro Tem himself.”

“I didn’t see how you could be. But
why
, Ishtar?”

“Because I’m a sentimental atavist!”

“Do you have to snap at me?”

She put an arm around his shoulders, took his hand with her free hand. “I’m sorry, dear. It has been a long day…and not much sleep last night, sweet as it was. I’m worried about several things—and the subject you brought up is not one I can be unemotional about.”

“I should not have asked. An invasion of privacy—I don’t know what’s got into me. Shall we wipe the matter? Please?”

“Dear, dear! I do know what got into me…and that’s part of why I am so unprofessionally emotional. Let me put it this way: If you were female, wouldn’t you jump at a chance to make such a proposal? To
him?
”

“I’m not female.”

“I know you’re not, you’re delightfully male. But try for a moment to be as logical as a female.
Try!
”

“Males are not necessarily illogical; that’s a female myth.”

“Sorry. I must take a tranquilizer the minute we are home—something I haven’t needed in years. But do try to think about it
as if
you were female. Please? Twenty seconds.”

“I don’t need twenty seconds.” He lifted her hand, kissed it. “If I were female, I would jump at the chance, too. The best proved genetic pattern one can offer a child? Of course.”

“Not that at all!”

He blinked. “Perhaps I
don’t
know what you mean by logic.”

“Uh…does it matter? Since we arrived at the same answer?” The car swerved and stopped in a loading pocket; she stood up. “So let’s wipe it. We’re home, dear.”

“You are. I’m not. I think—”

“Men don’t think.”

“I think you need a night’s rest, Ishtar.”

“You sealed this onto me; now you’ll have to undress me.”

“So? Then you’ll insist on feeding me and you won’t get that long night of sleep after all. Besides, you can peel it over your head, just the way I did it for you at decontam.”