Jenny answered, "Danny, you're working too hard. A weekend in the country will do you good." "I can't help it, Jenny. I have to. I'm sorry." John got on the other phone and said, "What's all this nonsense?" "I've got to work, John. I've simply got to. Say hello to the folks for me." I went back upstairs, burned some toast, vulcanized some eggs, sat back down at Drafting Dan. An hour later they banged on my door. None of us went to the mountains that weekend. Instead I demonstrated both devices. Jenny was not much impressed by Drafting Dan (it isn't a woman's gismo, unless she herself is an engineer), but she was wide-eyed over Protean Pete. She kept house with a Mark II Hired Girl and could see how much more this machine could do. But John could see the importance of Drafting Dan. When I showed him how I could write my signature, recognizably my own, just by punching keys-I admit I had practiced-his eyebrows stayed up. "Chum, you're going to throw draftsmen out of work by the thousand." "No, I won't. The shortage of engineering talent in this country gets worse every year; this gadget will just help to fill the gap. In a generation you are going to see this tool in every engineering and architectural office in the nation. They'll be as lost without it as a modern mechanic would be without power tools." "You talk as if you knew." "I do know." He looked over at Protean Pete-I had set him to tidying my workbench-and back at Drafting Dan. "Danny ... sometimes I think maybe you were telling me the truth, you know, the thy we met you." I shrugged. "Call it second sight . . . but I do know. I'm certain. Does it matter?" "I guess not. What are your plans for these things?" I frowned. "That's the hitch, John. I'm a good engineer and a fair jackleg mechanic when I have to be. But I'm no businessman; I've proved that. You've never fooled with patent law?" "I told you that before. It's a job for a specialist." "Do you know an honest one? Who's smart as a whip besides? It's reached the point where I've got to have one. I've got to set up a corporation, too, to handle it. And work out the financing. But I haven't got much time; I'm terribly pressed for time." "Why?" "I'm going back where I came from." He sat and said nothing for quite a while. At last he said, "How much time?" "Uh, about nine weeks. Nine weeks from this coming Thursday to be exact." He looked at the two machines, looked back at me. "Better revise your schedule. I'd say that you had more like nine months' work cut out for you. You won't be in production even then-just lined up to start moving, with luck." "John, I can't." "I'll say you can't." "I mean I can't change my schedule. That's beyond my control now." I put my face in my hands. I was dead with fatigue, having had less than five hours' sleep and having averaged not much better for days. The shape I was in, I was willing to believe that there was something, after all, to this "fate" business-a man could struggle against it but never beat it. I looked up. "Will you handle it?" "Eh? What part of it?" "Everything. I've done all I know how to do." "That's a big order, Dan. I could rob you blind. You know that, don't you? And this may be a gold mine." "It will be. I know." "Then why trust me? You had better just keep me as your attorney, advice for a fee." I tried to think while my head ached. I had taken a partner once before-but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open. There wasn't any way to be safe; just being alive was deadly dangerous . . . fatal. In the end. "Cripes, John, you know the answer to that. You trusted me. Now I need your help again. Will you help me?" "Of course he will," Jenny put in gently, "though I haven't heard what you two were talking about. Danny? Can it wash dishes? Every dish you have is dirty." "What, Jenny? Why, I suppose he can. Yes, of course he can." "Then tell him to, please. I want to see it." "Oh. I've never programmed him for it. I will if you want me to. But it will take several hours to do it right. Of course after that he'll always be able to do it. But the first time. . . well, you see, dishwashing involves a lot of alternate choices. It' s a `judgment' job, not a comparatively simple routine like laying bricks or driving a truck." "Goodness! I'm certainly glad to find that at least one man understands housework. Did you hear what he said, dear? But don't stop to teach him now, Danny. I'll do them myself." She looked around. "Danny, you've been living like a pig, to put it gently." To tell the simple truth, it had missed me entirely that Protean Pete could work for me. I had been engrossed in planning how he could work for other people in commercial jobs, and teaching him to do them, while I myself had simply been sweeping dirt into the corner or ignoring it. Now I began teaching him all the household tasks that Flexible Frank had learned; he had the capacity, as I had installed three times as many Thorsen tubes in him as Frank had had. I had time to do it, for John took over. Jenny typed descriptions for us; John retained a patent attorney to help with the claims. I don't know whether John paid him cash or cut him in on the cake; I never asked. I left the whole thing up to him, including what our shares should be; not only did it leave me free for my proper work, but I figured that if he decided such things he could never be tempted the way Miles had been. And I honestly did not care; money as such is not important. Either John and Jenny were what I thought they were or I might as well find that cave and be a hermit. I insisted on just two things. "John, I think we ought to call the firm `The Aladdin Autoengineering Corporation.'" "Sounds pretty fancy. What's wrong with `Davis & Sutton'?" "That's how it's got to be, John." "So? Is your second sight telling you this?" "Could be, could be. We'll use a picture of Aladdin rubbing his lamp as a trade-mark, with the genie funning above him. I'll make a rough sketch. And one thing: the home office had better be in Los Angeles." "What? Now you've gone too far. That is, if you expect me to run it. What's wrong with Denver?" "Nothing is wrong with Denver, it's a nice town. But it is not the place to set up the factory. Pick a good site here and some bright morning you wake up and find that the federal enclave has washed over it and you are out of business until you get re-established on a new one. Besides that, labor is scarce, raw materials come overland, building materials are all gray-market. Whereas Los Angeles has an unlimited supply of skilled workmen and more pouring in every thy, Los Angeles is a seaport, Los Angeles is-" "How about the smog? It's not worth it." "They'll lick the smog before long. Believe me. And haven't you noticed that Denver is working up smog of its own?" "Now wait a minute, Dan. You've already made it clear that I will have to run this while you go kiyoodling off on some business of your own. Okay, I agreed. But I ought to have some choice in working conditions." "It's necessary, John." "Dan, nobody in his right mind who lives in Colorado would move to California. I was stationed out there during the war; I know. Take Jenny here; she's a native Californian, that's her secret shame. You couldn't hire her to go back. Here you've got winters, changing seasons, brisk mountain air, magnificent-" Jenny looked up. "Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd never go back." "What's that, dear?" Jenny had been quietly knitting; she never talked unless she really had something to say. Now she put down her knitting, a clear sign. "If we did move there, dear, we could join the Oakdale Club; they have outdoor swimming all year round. I was thinking of that just this last weekend when I saw ice on the pool at Boulder." I stayed until the evening of 2 December, 1970, the last possible minute. I was forced to borrow three thousand dollars from John-the prices I had paid for components had been scandalous-but I offered him a stock mortgage to secure it. He let me sign it, then tore it up and dropped it in a wastebasket. "Pay me when you get around to it." "It will be thirty years, John." "As long as that?" I pondered it. He had never invited me to tell my whole story since the afternoon, six months earlier, when he had told me frankly that he did not believe the essential part-but was going to vouch for me to their club anyhow. I told him I thought it was time to tell him. "Shall we wake up Jenny? She's entitled to hear it too." "Mmm. . . no. Let her nap until just before you have to leave. Jenny is a very uncomplicated person, Dan. She doesn't care who you are or where you came from as long as she likes you. If it seems a good idea, I can pass it on to her later." "As you will." He let me tell it all, stopping only to fill our glasses-mine with ginger ale; I had a reason not to touch alcohol. When I had brought it up to the point where I landed on a mountainside outside Boulder, I stopped. "That's it," I said. "Though I was mixed up on one point. I've looked at the contour since and I don't think my fall was more than two feet. If they had-I mean `if they were going to'-bulldoze that laboratory site any deeper, I would have been buried alive. Probably would have killed both of you too-if it didn't blow up the whole county. I don't know just what happens when a fiat wave form changes back into a mass where another mass already is." John went on smoking. "Well?" I said. "What do you think?" "Danny, you've told me a lot of things about what Los Angeles-I mean `Great Los Angeles'-is going to be like. I'll let you know when I see you just how accurate you've been." "It's accurate. Subject to minor slips of memory." "Mmm . . . you certainly make it sound logical. But in the meantime I think you are the most agreeable lunatic I've ever met. Not that it handicaps you as an engineer. . . or as a friend. I like you, boy. I'm going to buy you a new strait jacket for Christmas." "Have it your own way." "I have to have it this way. The alternative is that I myself am stark staring mad. . . and that would make quite a problem for Jenny." He glanced at the clock. "We'd better wake her. She'd scalp me if I let you leave without saying good-by to her." "I wouldn't think of it." They drove me to Denver International Port and Jenny kissed me good-by at the gate. I caught the eleven o'clock shuttle for Los Angeles.

CHAPTER 11


The following evening, 3 December, 1970, I had a cabdriver drop me a block from Miles's house comfortably early, as I did not know exactly what time I had arrived there the first time. It was already dark as I approached his house, but I saw only his car at the curb, so I backed off a hundred yards to a spot where I could watch that stretch of curb and waited. Two cigarettes later I saw another car pull up there, stop, and its lights go out. I waited a couple of minutes longer, then hurried toward it. It was my own car. I did not have a key but that was no hurdle; I was always getting ears-deep in an engineering problem and forgetting my keys; I had long ago formed the habit of keeping a spare ditched in the trunk. I got it now and climbed into the ear. I had parked on a slight grade heading downhill, so, without turning on lights or starting the engine, I let it drift to the corner and turned there, then switched on the engine but not the lights, and parked again in the alley back of Miles's house and on which his garage faced. The garage was locked. I peered through dirty glass and saw a shape with a sheet over it. By its contours I knew it was my old friend Flexible Frank. Garage doors are not built to resist a man armed with a tire iron and determination-not in southern California in 1970. It took seconds. Carving Frank into pieces I could carry and stuff into my car took much longer. But first I checked to see that the notes and drawings were where I suspected they were-they were indeed, so I hauled them out and dumped them on the floor of the car, then tackled Frank himself. Nobody knew as well as I did how he was put together, and it speeded up things enormously that I did not care how much damage I did; nevertheless, I was as busy as a one-man band for nearly an hour. I had just stowed the last piece, the wheel-chair chassis, in the car trunk and had lowered the turtleback down on it as far as it would go when I heard Pete start to wail. Swearing to myself at the time it had taken to tear Frank apart I hurried around the garage and into their back yard. Then the commotion started. I had promised myself that I would relish every second of Pete's triumph. But I couldn't see it. The back door was open and light was streaming out the screen door, but while I could hear sounds of running, crashes, Pete's blood-chilling war cry, and screams from Belle, they never accommodated me by coming into my theater of vision. So I crept up to the screen door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the carnage. The damned thing was hooked! It was the only thing that had failed to follow the schedule. So I frantically dug into my pocket, broke a nail getting my knife open-and jabbed through and unhooked it just in time to jump out of the way as Pete hit the screen like a stunt motorcyclist hitting a fence. I fell over a rosebush. I don't know whether Miles and Belle even tried to follow him outside. I doubt it; I would not have risked it in their spot. But I was too busy getting myself untangled to notice.

Once I was on my feet I stayed behind bushes and moved around to the side of the house; I wanted to get away from that open door and the light pouring out of it. Then it was just a case of waiting until Pete quieted down. I would not touch him then, certainly not try to pick him up. I know cats. But every time he passed me, prowling for an entrance and sounding his deep challenge, I called out to him softly. "Pete. Come here, Pete. Easy, boy, it's all right." He knew I was there and twice he looked at me, but otherwise ignored me. With cats it is one thing at a time; he had urgent business right now and no time to head-bump with Papa. But I knew he would come to me when his emotions had eased off. While I squatted, waiting, I heard water running in their bathrooms and guessed that they had gone to clean up, leaving me in the living room. I had a horrid thought then: what would happen if I sneaked in and cut the throat of my own helpless body? But I suppressed it; I wasn't that curious and suicide is such a final experiment, even if the circumstances are mathematically intriguing. But I never have figured it out. Besides, I didn't want to go inside for any purpose. I might run into Miles-and I didn't want any truck with a dead man. Pete finally stopped in front of me about three feet out of reach. "Mrrrowrr?" he said-meaning, "Let's go back and clean out the joint. You hit `em high, I'll hit `em low." "No, boy. The show is over." "Aw, c'mahnnn!" "Time to go home, Pete. Come to Danny." He sat down and started to wash himself. When he looked up, I put my arms out and he jumped into them. "Kwleert?" ("Where the hell were you when the riot started?") I carried him back to the car and dumped him in the driver's space, which was all there was left. He sniffed the hardware on his accustomed place and looked around reproachfully. "You'll have to sit in my lap," I said. "Quit being fussy." I switched on the car's lights as we hit the street. Then I turned east and headed for Big Bear and the Girl Scout camp. I chucked away enough of Frank in the first ten minutes to permit Pete to resume his rightful place, which suited us both better. When I had the floor clear, several miles later, I stopped and shoved the notes and drawings down a storm drain. The wheel-chair chassis I did not get rid of until we were actually in the mountains, then it went down a deep arroyo, making a nice sound effect. About three in the morning I pulled into a motor court across the road and down a bit from the turnoff into the Girl Scout camp, and paid too much for a cabin-Pete almost queered it by sticking his head up and making a comment when the owner came out. "What time," I asked him, "does the morning mail from Los Angeles get up here?" "Helicopter comes in at seven-thirteen, right on the dot." "Fine. Give me a call at seven, will you?" "Mister, if you can sleep as late as seven around here you're better than I am. But I'll put you in the book." By eight o'clock Pete and I had eaten breakfast and I had showered and shaved. I looked Pete over in daylight and concluded that he had come through the battle undamaged except for possibly a bruise or two. We checked out and I drove into the private road for the camp. Uncle Sam's truck turned in just ahead of me; I decided that it was my day. I never saw so many little girls in my life. They skittered like kittens and they all looked alike in their green uniforms. Those I passed wanted to look at Pete, though most of them just stared shyly and did not approach. I went to a cabin marked "Headquarters," where I spoke to another uniformed scout who was decidedly no longer a girl. She was properly suspicious of me; strange men who want to be allowed to visit little girls just turning into big girls should always be suspected. I explained that I was the child's uncle, Daniel B. Davis by name, and that I had a message for the child concerning her family. She countered with the statement that visitors other than parents were permitted only when accompanied by a parent and, in any case, visiting hours were not until four o'clock. "I don't want to visit with Frederica, but I must give her this message. It's an emergency." "In that case you can write it out and I will give it to her as soon as she is through with rhythm games." I looked upset (and was) and said, "I don't want to do that. It would be much kinder to tell the child in person." "Death in the family?" "Not quite. Family trouble, yes. I'm sorry, ma'am, but I am not free to tell anyone else. It concerns my niece's mother." She was weakening but still undecided. Then Pete joined the discussion. I had been carrying him with his bottom in the crook of my left arm and his chest supported with my right hand; I had not wanted to leave him in the car and I knew Ricky would want to see him. He'll put up with being carried that way quite a while but now he was getting bored. "Krrwarr?" She looked at him and said, "He's a fine boy, that one. I have a tabby at home who could have come from the same litter." I said solemnly, "He's Frederica's cat. I had to bring him along because . . . well, it was necessary. No one to take care of him." "Oh, the poor little fellow!" She scratched him under the chin, doing it properly, thank goodness, and Pete accepted it, thank goodness again, stretching his neck and closing his eyes and looking indecently pleased. He is capable of taking a very stiff line with strangers if he does not fancy their overtures. The guardian of youth told me to sit down at a table under the trees outside the headquarters. It was far enough away to permit a private visit but still under her careful eye. I thanked her and waited. I didn't see Ricky come up. I heard a shout, "Uncle Danny!" and another one as I turned, "And you brought Pete! Oh, this is wonderful!" Pete gave a long bubbling bleerrrt and leaped from my arms to hers. She caught him neatly, rearranged him in the support position he likes best, and they ignored me for a few seconds while exchanging cat protocols. Then she looked up and said soberly, "Uncle Danny, I'm awful glad you're here." I didn't kiss her; I did not touch her at all. I've never been one to paw children and Ricky was the sort of little girl who only put up with it when she could not avoid it. Our original relationship, back when she was six, had been founded on mutual decent respect for the other's individualism and personal dignity. But I did look at her. Knobby knees, stringy, shooting up fast, not yet filled out, she was not as pretty as she had been as a baby girl. The shorts and T-shirt she was wearing, combined with peeling sunburn, scratches, bruises, and an understandable amount of dirt, did not add up to feminine glamour. She was a matchstick sketch of the woman she would become, her coltish gawkiness relieved only by her enormous solemn eyes and the pixie beauty of her thin smudged features. She looked adorable. I said, "And I'm awful glad to be here, Ricky." Trying awkwardly to manage Pete with one arm, she reached with her other hand for a bulging pocket in her shorts. "I'm surprised too. I just this minute got a letter from you-they dragged me away from mail call; I haven't even had a chance to open it. Does it say that you're coming today?" She got it out, creased and mussed from being crammed into a pocket too small. "No, it doesn't, Ricky. It says I'm going away. But after I mailed it, I decided I just had to come say good-by in person." She looked bleak and dropped her eyes. "You're going away?" "Yes. I'll explain, Ricky, but it's rather long. Let's sit down and I'll tell you about it." So we sat on opposite sides of the picnic table under the ponderosas and I talked. Pete lay on the table between us, making a library lion of himself with his forepaws on the creased letter, and sang a low song like bees buzzing in deep clover, while he narrowed his eyes in contentment. I was much relieved to find that she already knew that Miles had married Belle-I hadn't relished having to break that to her. She glanced up, dropped her eyes at once, and said with no expression at all, "Yes, I know. Daddy wrote me about it." "Oh. I see." She suddenly looked grim and not at all a child. "I'm not going back there, Danny. I won't go back there." "But-Look here, Rikki-tikki-tavi, I know how you feel. I certainly don't want you to go back there-I'd take you away myself if I could. But how can you help going back? He's your daddy and you are only eleven." "I don't have to go back. He's not my real daddy. My grandmother is coming to get me." "What? When's she coming?" "Tomorrow. She has to drive up from Brawley. I wrote her about it and asked her if I could come live with her because I wouldn't live with Daddy any more with her there." She managed to put more contempt into one pronoun than an adult could have squeezed out of profanity. "Grandma wrote back and said that I didn't have to live there if I didn't want to because he had never adopted me and she was my `guardian of record.'" She looked up anxiously. "That's right, isn't it? They can't make me?" I felt an overpowering flood of relief. The one thing I had not been able to figure out, a problem that had worried me for months, was how to keep Ricky from being subjected to the poisonous influence of Belle for-well, two years; it had seemed certain that it would be about two years. "If he never adopted you, Ricky, I'm certain that your grandmother can make it stick if you are both firm about it." Then I frowned and chewed my lip. "But you may have some trouble tomorrow. They may object to letting you go with her." "How can they stop me? I'll just get in the car and go." "It's not that simple, Ricky. These people who run the camp, they have to follow rules. Your daddy-Miles, I mean-Miles turned you over to them; they won't be willing to turn you back over to anyone but him." She stuck out her lower lip. "I won't go. I'm going with Grandma." "Yes. But maybe I can tell you how to make it easy. If I were you, I wouldn't tell them that I'm leaving camp; I'd just tell them that your grandmother wants to take you for a ride-then don't come back." Some of her tension relaxed. "All right." "Uh. . . don't pack a bag or anything or they may guess what you're doing. Don't try to take any clothes but those you are wearing at the time. Put any money or anything you really want to save into your pockets. You don't have much here that you would really mind losing, I suppose?" "I guess not." But she looked wistful. "I've got a brand-new swim suit." How do you explain to a child that there are times when you just must abandon your baggage? You can't-they'll go back into a burning building to save a doll or a toy elephant. "Mmm. . . Ricky, have your grandmother tell them that she is taking you over to Arrowhead to have a swim with her. . . and that she may take you to dinner at the hotel there, but that she will have you back before taps. Then you can carry your swimming suit and a towel. But nothing else. Er, will your grandmother tell that fib for you?" "I guess so. Yes, I'm sure she will. She says people have to tell little white fibs or else people couldn't stand each other. But she says fibs were meant to be used, not abused." "She sounds like a sensible person. You'll do it that way?" "I'll do it just that way, Danny." `Good." I picked up the battered envelope. "Picky, I told you I had to go away. I have to go away for a very long time." "How long?" "Thirty years." Her eyes grew wider if possible. At eleven, thirty years is not a long time; it's forever. I added, "I'm sorry, Ricky. But I have to." "Why?" I could not answer that one. The true answer was unbelievable and a lie would not do. "Picky, it's much too hard to explain. But I have to. I can't help it." I hesitated, then added, "I'm going to take the Long Sleep. The cold sleep-you know what I mean." She knew. Children get used to new ideas faster than adults do; cold sleep was a favorite comic-book theme. She looked horrified and protested, "But, Danny, I'll never see you again~" "Yes, you will. It's a long time but I'll see you again. And so will Pete. Because Pete is going with me; he's going to cold-sleep too." She glanced at Pete and looked more woebegone than ever. "But-Danny, why don't you and Pete just come down to Brawley and live with us? That would be ever so much better. Grandma will like Pete. She'll like you too-she says there's nothing like having a man around the house." "Ricky. . . dear Ricky. . . I have to. Please don't tease me." I started to tear open the envelope. She looked angry and her chin started to quiver. "I think she has something to do with this!" "What? If you mean Belle, she doesn't. Not exactly, anyway." "She's not going to cold-sleep with you?" I think I shuddered. "Good heavens, not I'd run miles to avoid her." Picky seemed slightly mollified. "You know, I was so mad at you about her. I had an awful outrage." "I'm sorry, Ricky. I'm truly sorry. You were right and I was wrong. But she hasn't anything to do with this. I'm through with her, forever and forever and cross my heart. Now about this." I held up the certificate for all that I owned in Hired Girl, Inc. "Do you know what it is?"

I explained it to her. "I'm giving this to you, Picky. Because I'm going to be gone so long I want you to have it." I took the paper on which I had written an assignment to her, tore it up, and put the pieces in my pocket; I could not risk doing it that way-it would be too easy for Belle to tear up a separate sheet and we were not yet out of the woods. I turned the certificate over and studied the standard assignment form on the back, trying to plan how to work it in the Bank of America in trust for- "Ricky, what is your full name?" "Frederica Virginia. Frederica Virginia Gentry. You know." "Is it `Gentry'? I thought you said Miles had never adopted you?" "Oh! I've been Ricky Gentry as long as I can remember. But you mean my real name. It's the same as Grandma's ... the same as my real daddy's. Heinicke. But nobody ever calls me that." "They will now." I wrote "Frederica Virginia Heinicke" and added "and to be reassigned to her on her twenty-first birthday" while prickles ran down my spine-my original assignment might have been defective in any case. I started to sign and then noticed our watchdog sticking her head out of the office. I glanced at my wrist, saw that we had been talking an hour; I was running out of minutes. But I wanted it nailed down tight. "Ma'am!" "Yes?" "By any chance, is there a notary public around here? Or must I find one in the village?" "I am a notary. What do you wish?" "Oh, good! Wonderful! Do you have your seal?" "I never go anywhere without it." So I signed my name under her eye and she even stretched a point (on Ricky's assurance that she knew me and Pete's silent testimony to my respectability as a fellow member of the fraternity of cat people) and used the long form: "-known to me personally as being said Daniel B. Davis--" When she embossed her seal through my signature and her own I sighed with relief. Just let Belle try to find a way to twist that one! She glanced at it curiously but said nothing. I said solemnly, "Tragedies cannot be undone but this will help. The kid's education, you know." She refused a fee and went back into the office. I turned back to Picky and said, "Give this to your grandmother. Tell her to take it to a branch of the Bank of America in Brawley. They'll do everything else." I laid it in front of her. She did not touch it. "That's worth a lot of money, isn't it?" "Quite a bit. It will be worth more." "I don't want it." "But, Ricky, I want you to have it." "I don't want it. I won't take it." Her eyes filled with tears and her voice got unsteady. "You're going away forever and. . . and you don't care about me any more." She sniffed. "Just like when you got engaged to her. When you could just as easily bring Pete and come live with Grandma and me. I don't want your money!" "Picky. Listen to me, Picky. It's too late. I couldn't take it back now if I wanted to. It's already yours." "I don't care. I won't ever touch it." She reached out and stroked Pete. "Pete wouldn't go away and leave me . . . only you're going to make him. Now I won't even have Pete." I answered unsteadily, "Picky? Rikki-tikki-tavi? You want to see Pete. . . and me again?" I could hardly hear her. "Of course I do. But I won't." "But you can." "Huh? How? You said you were going to take the Long Sleep thirty years, you said." "And I am. I have to. But, Picky, here is what you can do. Be a good girl, go live with your grandmama, go to school-and just let this money pile up. When you are twenty-one-if you still want to see us-you'll have enough money to take the Long Sleep yourself. When you wake up I'll be there waiting for you. Pete and I will both be waiting for you. That's a solemn promise." Her expression changed but she did not smile. She thought about it quite a long time, then said, "You'll really be there?" "Yes. But we'll have to make a date. If you do it, Ricky, do it just the way I tell you. You arrange it with the Cosmopolitan Insurance Company and you make sure that you take your Sleep in the Riverside Sanctuary in Riverside. . . and you make very sure that they have orders to wake you up on the first day of May, 2001, exactly. I'll be there that day, waiting for you. If you want me to be there when you first open your eyes, you'll have to leave word for that, too, or they won't let me farther than the waiting room-I know that sanctuary; they're very fussy." I took out an envelope which I had prepared before I left Denver. "You don't have to remember this; I've got it all written out for you. Just save it, and on your twenty-first birthday you can make up your mind. But you can be sure that Pete and I will be there waiting for you, whether you show up or not." I laid the prepared instructions on the stock certificate. I thought that I had her convinced but she did not touch either of them. She stared at them, then presently said, "Danny?" "Yes, Ricky?" She would not look up and her voice was so low that I could barely hear her. But I did hear her. "If I do . . . will you marry me?" My ears roared and the lights flickered. But I answered steadily and much louder than she had spoken. "Yes, Ricky. That's what I want. That's why I'm doing this."

I had just one more thing to leave with her: a prepared envelope marked "To Be Opened in the Event of the Death of Miles Gentry." I did not explain it to her; I just told her to keep it. It contained proof of Belle's varied career, matrimonial and otherwise. In the hands of a lawyer it should make a court fight over his will no contest at all. Then I gave her my class ring from Tech (it was all I had) and told her it was hers; we were engaged. "It's too big for you but you can keep it. I'll have another one for you when you wake up." She held it tight in her fist. "I won't want another one." "All right. Now better tell Pete good-by, Ricky. I've got to go. I can't wait a minute longer." She hugged Pete, then handed him back to me, looked me steadily in the eye even though tears were running down her nose and leaving clean streaks. "Good-by, Danny." "Not `good-by,' Ricky. Just `so long.' We'll be waiting for you."

It was a quarter of ten when I got back to the village. I found that a helicopter bus was due to leave for the center of the city in twenty-five minutes, so I sought out the only used-car lot and made one of the fastest deals in history, letting my car go for half what it was worth for cash in hand at once. It left me just time to sneak Pete into the bus (they are fussy about airsick cats) and we reached Powell's office just after eleven o'clock. Powell was much annoyed that I had canceled my arrangements for Mutual to handle my estate and was especially inclined to lecture me over having lost my papers. "I can't very well ask the same judge to pass on your committal twice in the same twenty-four hours. It's most irregular." I waved money at him, cash money with convincing figures on it. "Never mind eating me out about it, Sergeant. Do you want my business or don't you? If not, say so, and I'll beat it on up to Central Valley. Because I'm going today." He still fumed but he gave in. Then he grumbled about adding six months to the cold-sleep period and did not want to guarantee an exact date of awakening. "The contracts ordinarily read `plus or minus' one month to allow for administrative hazards." "This one doesn't. This one reads 27 April, 2001. But I don't care whether it says `Mutual' at the top or `Central Valley.' Mr. Powell, I'm buying and you're selling. If you don't sell what I want to buy I'll go where they do sell it." He changed the contract and we both initialed it. At twelve straight up I was back in for my final check with their medical examiner. He looked at me. "Did you stay sober?" "Sober as a judge." "That's no recommendation. We'll see." He went over me almost as carefully as he had "yesterday." At last he put down his rubber hammer and said, "I'm surprised. You're in much better shape than you were yesterday. Amazingly so." "Doc, you don't know the half of it." I held Pete and soothed him while they gave him the first sedative. Then I lay back myself and let them work on me. I suppose I could have waited another day, or even longer, just as well as not-but the truth was that I was frantically anxious to get back to 2001. About four in the afternoon, with Pete's flat head resting on my chest, I went happily to sleep again.

CHAPTER 12


My dreams were pleasanter this time. The only bad one I remember was not too bad, but simply endless frustration. It was a cold dream in which I wandered shivering through branching corridors, trying every door I came to, thinking that the next one would surely be the Door into Summer, with Ricky waiting on the other side. I was hampered by Pete, "following me ahead of me," that exasperating habit cats have of scalloping back and forth between the legs of persons trusted not to step on them or kick them. At each new door he would duck between my feet, look out it, find it still winter outside, and reverse himself, almost tripping me. But neither one of us gave up his conviction that the next door would be the right one. I woke up easily this time, with no disorientation-in fact the F doctor was somewhat irked that all I wanted was some breakfast, the Great Los Angeles Times, and no chitchat. I didn't think it was worth while to explain to him that this was my second time around; he would not have believed me. There was a note waiting for me, dated a week earlier, from John:

Dear Dan, All right, I give up. How did you do it? I'm complying with your request not to be met, against Jenny's wishes. She sends her love and hopes that you won't be too long in looking us up-I've tried to explain to her that you expect to be busy for a while. We are both fine although I tend to walk where I used to run. Jenny is even more beautiful than she used to be. Hasta la vista, amigo, John

P.S. If the enclosure is not enough, just phone-there is plenty more where it came from. We've done pretty well, I think.

I considered calling John, both to say hello and to tell him about a colossal new idea I had had while asleep-a gadget to change bathing from a chore to a sybaritic delight. But I decided not to; I had other things on my mind. So I made notes while the notion was fresh and then got some sleep, with Pete's head tucked into my armpit. I wish I could cure him of that. It's flattering but a nuisance. On Monday, the thirtieth of April, I checked out and went over to Riverside, where I got a room in the old Mission Inn. They made the predictable fuss about taking a cat into a room and an autobellhop is not responsive to bribes-hardly an improvement. But the assistant manager had more flexibility in his synapses; he listened to reason as long as it was crisp and rustled. I did not sleep well; I was too excited. I presented myself to the director of the Riverside Sanctuary at ten o'clock the next morning. "Dr. Rumsey, my name is Daniel B. Davis. You have a committed client here named Frederica Heinicke?" "I suppose you can identify yourself?" I showed him a 1970 driver's license issued in Denver, and my withdrawal certificate from Forest Lawn Sanctuary. He looked them over and me, and handed them back. I said anxiously, "I think she's scheduled for withdrawal today. By any chance, are there any instructions to permit me to be present? I don't mean the processing routines; I mean at the last minute, when she's ready for the final restimulant and consciousness." He shoved his 11ps out and looked judicial. "Our instructions for this client do not read to wake her today." "No?" I felt disappointed and hurt. "No. Her exact wishes are as follows: instead of necessarily being waked today, she wished not to be waked at all until you showed up." He looked me over and smiled. "You must have a heart of gold. I can't account for it on your beauty." I sighed. "Thanks, Doctor." "You can wait in the lobby or come back. We won't need you for a couple of hours." I went back to the lobby, got Pete, and took him for a walk. I had parked him there in his new travel bag and he was none too pleased with it, even though I had bought one as much like his old one as possible and had installed a one-way window in it the night before. It probably didn't smell right as yet. We passed the "real nice place," but I was not hungry even though I hadn't been able to eat much breakfast-Pete had eaten my eggs and had turned up his nose at yeast strips. At eleven-thirty I was back at the sanctuary. Finally they let me in to see her. All I could see was her face; her body was covered. But it was my Ricky, grown woman size and looking like a slumbering angel. "She's under posthypnotic instruction," Dr. Rumsey said softly. "If you will stand just there, I'll bring her up. Uh, I think you had better put that cat outside." "No, Doctor." He started to speak, shrugged, turned back to his patient. "Wake up, Frederica. Wake up. You must wake up now." Her eyelids fluttered, she opened her eyes. They wandered for an instant, then she caught sight of us and smiled sleepily. "Danny and Pete." She raised both arms-and I saw that she was wearing my Tech class ring on her left thumb. Pete chirrlupped and jumped on the bed, started doing shoulder dives against her in an ecstasy of welcome.

Dr. Rumsey wanted her to stay overnight, but Ricky would have none of it. So I had a cab brought to the door and we jumped to Brawley. Her grandmother had died in 1980 and her social links there had gone by attrition, but she had left things in storage there-books mostly. I ordered them shipped to Aladdin, care of John Sutton. Ricky was a little dazzled by the changes in her old home town and never let go my arm, but she never succumbed to that terrible homesickness which is the great hazard of the Sleep. She merely wanted to get out of Brawley as quickly as possible. So I hired another cab and we jumped to Yuma. There I signed the county clerk's book in a fine round hand, using my full name "Daniel Boone Davis," so that there could be no possible doubt as to which D. B. Davis had designed this magnum opus. A few minutes later I was standing with her little hand in mine and choking over, "I, Daniel, take thee, Frederica - . . till death us do part." Pete was my best man. The witnesses we scraped up in the courthouse.

We got out of Yuma at once and jumped to a guest ranch near Tucson, where we had a cabin away from the main lodge and equipped with our own Eager Beaver to fetch and carry so that we did not need to see anyone. Pete fought a monumental battle with the tom who until then had been boss of the ranch, whereupon we had to keep Pete in or watch him. This was the only shortcoming I can think of. Ricky took to being married as if she had invented it, and me-well, I had Ricky.

There isn't much more to be said. Voting Ricky's Hired Girl stock-it was still the largest single block-I had McBee eased upstairs to "Research Engineer Emeritus" and put Chuck in as chief engineer. John is boss of Aladdin but keeps threatening to retire-an idle threat. He and I and Jenny control the company, since he was careful to issue preferred stock and to float bonds rather than surrender control. I'm not on the board of either corporation; I don't run them and they compete. Competition is a good idea-Darwin thought well of it. Me, I'm just the "Davis Engineering Company"-a drafting room, a small shop, and an old machinist who thinks I'm crazy but follows my drawings to exact tolerance. When we finish something I put it out for license. I had my notes on Twitchell recovered. Then I wrote and told him I had made it and returned via cold sleep . . . and apologized abjectly for having "doubted" him. I asked if he wanted to see the manuscript when I finished. He never answered so I guess he is still sore at me. But I am writing it and I'll put it in all major libraries even if I have to publish at my own expense. I owe him that much. I owe him much more; I owe him for Ricky. And for Pete. I'm going to title it Unsung Genius. Jenny and John look as if they would last forever. Thanks to geriatrics, fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and a mind that never worries, Jenny is prettier than ever at ... well, sixty-three is my guess. John thinks that I am "merely" clairvoyant and does not want to look at the evidence. Well, how did I do it? I tried to explain it to Ricky, but she got upset when I told her that while we were on our honeymoon I was actually and no foolin' also up at Boulder, and that while I was visiting her at the Girl Scout camp I was also lying in a drugged stupor in San Fernando Valley. She turned white. So I said, "Let's put it hypothetically. It's all logical when you look at it mathematically. Suppose we take a guinea pig-white with brown splotches. We put him in the time cage and kick him back a week. But a week earlier we had already found him there, so at that time we had put him in a pen with himself. Now we've got two guinea pigs. . . although actually it's just one guinea pig, one being the other one a week older. So when you took one of them and kicked him back a week and-" "Wait a minute! Which one?" "Which one? Why, there never was but one. You took the one a week younger, of course, because-" "You said there was just one. Then you said there were two. Then you said the two was just one. But you were going to take one of the two. . . when there was just one-" "I'm trying to explain how two can be just one. If you take the younger-" "How can you tell which guinea pig is younger when they look just alike?" "Well, you could cut off the tail of the one you are sending back. Then when it came back you would--" "Why, Danny, how cruel! Besides, guinea pigs don't have tails." She seemed to think that proved something. I should never have tried to explain. But Ricky is not one to fret over things that aren't important. Seeing that I was upset, she said softly, "Come here, dear." She rumpled what hair I have left and kissed me. "One of you is all I want, dearest. Two might be more than I could manage. Tell me one thing-are you glad you waited for me to grow up?" I did my darnedest to convince her that I was. But the explanation I tried to give does not explain everything. I missed a point even though I was riding the merry-go-round myself and counting the revolutions. Why didn't I see the notice of my own withdrawal? I mean the second one, in April 2001, not the one in December 2000. 1 should have; I was there and I used to check those lists. I was awakened (second time) on Friday, 27 April, 2001; it should have been in next morning's Times. But I did not see it. I've looked it up since and there it is: "D. B. Davis," in the Times for Saturday, 28 April, 2001. Philosophically, just one line of ink can make a different universe as surely as having the continent of Europe missing. Is the old "branching time streams" and "multiple universes" notion correct? Did I bounce into a different universe, different because I had monkeyed with the setup? Even though I found Ricky and Pete in it? Is there another universe somewhere (or somewhen) in which Pete yowled until he despaired, then wandered off to fend for himself, deserted? And in which Ricky never managed to flee with her grandmother but had to suffer the vindictive wrath of Belle? One line of fine print isn't enough. I probably felt asleep that night and missed reading my own name, then stuffed the paper down the chute next morning, thinking I had finished with it. I am absent-minded, particularly when I'm thinking about a job. But what would I have done if I had seen it? Gone there, met myself-and gone stark mad? No, for if I had seen it, I wouldn't have done the things I did afterward-"afterward" for me-which led up to it. Therefore it could never have happened that way. The control is a negative feedback type, with a built-in "fail safe," because the very existence of that line of print depended on my not seeing it; the apparent possibility that I might have seen it is one of the excluded "not possibles" of the basic circuit design. "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Free will and predestination in one sentence and both true. There is only one real world, with one past and one future. "As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen." Just one . . . but big enough and complicated enough to include free will and time travel and everything else in its linkages and feedbacks and guard circuits. You're allowed to do anything inside the rules . . . but you come back to your own door. I'm not the only person who has time-traveled. Fort listed too many cases not explainable otherwise and so did Ambrose Bierce. And there were those two ladies in the gardens of the Trianon. I have a hunch, too, that old Doc Twitchell closed that switch oftener than he admitted . . . to say nothing of others who may have learned how in the past or future. But I doubt if much ever comes of it. In my case only three people know and two don't believe me. You can't do much if you do time-travel. As Fort said, you railroad only when it comes time to railroad. But I can't get Leonard Vincent out of my mind. Was he Leonardo da Vinci? Did he beat his way across the continent and go back with Columbus? The encyclopedia says that his life was such-and-such-but he might have revised the record. I know how that is; I've had to do a little of it. They didn't have social-security numbers, ID cards, nor fingerprints in fifteenth-century Italy; he could have swung it. But think of him, marooned from everything he was used to, aware of flight, of power, of a million things, trying desperately to picture them so that they could be made-but doomed to frustration because you simply can't do the things we do today without centuries of former art to build on. Tantalus had it easier. I've thought about what could be done with time travel commercially if it were declassified-making short jumps, setting up machinery to get back, taking along components. But someday you'd make one jump too many and not be able to set up for your return because it's not time to "railroad." Something simple, like a special alloy, could whip you. And there is that truly awful hazard of not knowing which way you are going. Imagine winding up at the court of Henry VIII with a load of subflexive fasartas intended for the twenty-fifth century. Being becalmed in the horse latitudes would be better. No, you should never market a gadget until the bugs are out of it. But I'm not worried about "paradoxes" or "causing anachronisms"-if a thirtieth-century engineer does smooth out the bugs and then sets up transfer stations and trade, it will be because the Builder designed the universe that way. He gave us eyes, two hands, a brain; anything we do with them can't be a paradox. He doesn't need busybodies to "enforce" His laws; they enforce themselves. There are no miracles and the word "anachronism" is a semantic blank. But I don't worry about philosophy any more than Pete does. Whatever the truth about this world, I like it. I've found my Door into Summer and I would not time-travel again for fear of getting off at the wrong station. Maybe my son will, but if he does I will urge him to go forward, not back. "Back" is for emergencies; the future is better than the past. Despite the crapehangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands . . - with tools . . . with horse sense and science and engineering. Most of these long-haired belittlers can't drive a nail nor use a slide rule, I'd like to invite them into Dr. Twitchell's cage and ship them back to the twelfth century-then let them enjoy it. But I am not mad at anybody and I like now. Except that Pete is getting older, a little fatter, and not as inclined to choose a younger opponent; all too soon he must take the very Long Sleep. I hope with all my heart that his gallant little soul may find its Door into Summer, where catnip fields abound and tabbies are complacent, and robot opponents are programmed to fight fiercely -but always lose-and people have friendly laps and legs to strop against, but never a foot that kicks. Ricky is getting fat, too, but for a temporary, happier reason. It has just made her more beautiful and her sweet eternal Yea! is unchanged, but it isn't comfortable for her. I'm working on gadgets to make things easier. It just isn't very convenient to be a woman; something ought to be done and I'm convinced that some things can be done. There's that matter of leaning over, and also the backaches-I'm working on those, and I've built her a hydraulic bed that I think I will patent. It ought to be easier to get in and out of a bathtub than it is too. I haven't solved that yet. For old Pete I've built a "cat bathroom" to use in bad weather-automatic, self-replenishing, sanitary, and odorless. However, Pete, being a proper cat, prefers to go outdoors, and he has never given up his conviction that if you just try all the doors one of them is bound to be the Door into Summer. You know, I think he is right.