By Any Other Name

by Spider Robinson

  She flinched, but said nothing. She was studying his face.

  “You say you’ve read all his books,” he went on. “Do you recall reading in any of them a definition of ‘love’? As opposed to lust or affection or need or any of a dozen other cousins?”

  “No, I don’t think he’s ever defined it, in so many words.”

  “You’re right. But there is a single, concise definition that runs through every thing he ever wrote. He never wrote it down because it had already been done, by another writer, about whom Mr. Rose feels much the same way you feel about him.”

  “The old man in free fall? The science fiction writer?”

  “That’s right. You have done your homework. He defined love as ‘that condition in which the welfare and happiness of another are essential to your own.’”

  She thought that over. “Make your point.”

  “Is that what you claim motivated you?”

  Her eyes closed. Her expression smoothed over. She was looking deep inside for the answer. After twenty seconds she half opened her eyes. “Yes, partly,” she said slowly. “More than half. I wanted to be personally sure he was happy and well—to make him happy myself, to be there and know that it was so.”

  “By giving him something he doesn’t want.”

  “Damn it, he needs it—he must!”

  “Ah, the old standby of the teenage male: ‘Continence is unhealthy.’ Anne, in your experience, do priests and monks tend to die young?”

  “But why would he want to be celibate?”

  “Did it ever occur to you that he might not have any choice? Let me tell you a story that is none of your—”

  She shook her head. “Now you’re doing what you said a moment ago—lying, giving me a plausible excuse. Some story about a war wound, or a tragic accident, or a wasting disease. Save it, please. Philip Rose’s work could not have been produced by any kind of a eunuch. Furthermore, I know better. He had to be very rude to get rid of me. I got close enough to be sure that all his equipment was in place and functioning.” She smiled bitterly. “I don’t care much for puns, but I assure you: Philip rose.”

  So did his eyebrows. “My respect for you has jumped another notch. I’m impressed. And, frankly intrigued. And mildly annoyed at the low respect in which you seem to hold me. I have not lied to you yet, and I wasn’t going to start. The story I was—”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you want to hear this story or not?”

  His volume made her start. She must have spent a lot of time on the road; the small involuntary movements of her feet, brake, clutch, accelerator, made the chair pivot back and forth spasmodically, so that as her head nodded yes, her body said no.

  Neither of them could help giggling at that; it broke some of the tension, leaving both with half smiles. She waited in silence, determined not to interrupt again, while he chose his words.

  This took him longer than it should have. He found that he was staring at her eyelashes. They were so long and perfectly formed that he had assumed them false. Now he saw that they were real. He tore his gaze from them, fixed it on his own hands, whereupon he discovered that they were fidgeting, caressing each other. He forced them to be still—and his foot started tapping on the floor.

  “You are certainly under twenty-five,” he said, “so you cannot have been born earlier than 1970. Which does not,” he added, “mean that you’re ignorant of prior times. I know you are something of a historian. But you’re not likely to have an intuitive feel for an era you haven’t lived through.”

  He saw the ever-so-slight tightening of those muscles used to keep the mouth shut. Her mouth was as distracting as her eyes.

  “Philip Rose,” he went on doggedly, “was born in 1934. He didn’t marry until he was twenty-five—that made it 1959. Marriage then was something different from marriage today. Which actually may not be all that relevant—Mr. Rose has never been a slave to convention. He has always, I think, made his own rules.

  “Maybe that’s the point I’m trying to make. If you are the kind of man who makes his own rules, in 1959, you keep the rules you make for yourself. That’s the dilemma that Situational Ethics blundered into—if you can change them situationally, they’re not rules; if you can’t they’re a straitjacket. What I mean is, Mr. Rose might change his own personal rules—but once he’s made a promise, he’ll keep it. No matter how much he might—or might not—regret making it.

  “So in 1959 he married Regina Walton. There were several unconventional things about the marriage, and one very conventional thing.

  “The first unconventional thing was the age difference. She was nearly ten years older than he, already well established in her field. The second unconventional thing—for the time—was that she kept her own last name. At his urging. A Rose by any other name, and so forth. The final unconventional thing was that they wrote their own wedding vows—and that was the thing that hurt.

  “Can you see that? How that would make a difference to him? The conventional marriage ceremony of that time was an utterly standardized legal contract with ritual trappings. Everyone took the same vows, with minor variation, and as you took them you knew they could be dissolved in thirty days in Reno. If you must mouth a certain formula in order to cohabit legally, then, if you should ever change your mind, you can rationalize that it wasn’t a ‘real’ promise. But the two of them wrote their own vows, thinking them through very carefully first—so they left themselves no loopholes at all.

  “Which is a shame, because of the one conventional part I mentioned. Their contract is quite specific: lifetime sexual fidelity is spelled out. Old fashioned death-do-us-part monogamy.

  “Conventional for the time: even though divorce was common then, term marriage was emphatically not. Oh, people got married knowing that ‘forever’ might translate, ‘until we change our minds’—but they didn’t get married at all unless they at least hoped for forever.

  “But Philip and Regina meant it. They were practical romantics: they did not want a deal they could quit when the going got tough. They left themselves no escape clauses.”

  Involuntarily, she interrupted for the first time. “Foolish.”

  “Shut your stupid mouth,” he said quietly. “It is not for you to criticize them.”

  She bit her lip.

  “I read just the other week, the average term marriage runs three years, and the average ‘lifetime’ marriage now last about nine or ten years. The Rose-Walton union has lasted forty years so far.”

  He might just as well have kicked her in the belly. Her breath left her explosively, her hands and feet flew up from their resting places, snapped back. She drew air convulsively in through both nose and mouth, slumped down again in her chair and cried, “No!” She jumped up and began pacing around the room, turning to face him as she paced. “No. It’s not possible! I would have heard, something—and there was no trace of a woman’s hand in that apartment, I’m certain of that, damn it, the first thing I thought of was someone else.” As she convinced herself, she began to get mad at him. “You lying son of a—”

  “You don’t listen very well,” he said, enough edge on his voice to get through to her. “I said they were practical romantics. I said they thought it through. Her profession sometimes made long trips necessary, and his work-habits made him a homebody. They agreed to be faithful forever—but they did not promise to live together always.”

  She stopped pacing. She blinked those marvelous eyelashes so rapidly that he fancied he could feel the breeze. Then she shut her eyes and frowned.

  “For more than twenty-five years,” he continued, “all went well and more than well and better than that. I don’t know why they never had children—I never will unless he chooses to tell me—but they don’t seem to have suffered from the lack of children. They were never apart for more than three or four months at a time, and when they were together they were more together than most people ever get to be. He says that they supplied each other’s missing parts,
that between them they made up one good and sane human being. You said yourself he’s a telepath. Anyone may have a taste of telepathy, but it takes a really good marriage to develop it to anything like his level.”

  He paused, and was silent in thought for a time, and she waited patiently.

  “Then the hammer fell on them.

  “Her field was immunology, and she was one of its leaders. It was a natural interest for her—she was loaded with serious allergies herself, the kind that have to be wrestled with permanently and can kill you if you get careless. When the European Space Station went up, it was a natural for her. What better place could there be to do medical research than a totally and permanently sterile environment? So she bullied and squeezed her way into a tour as the ESS’s first resident physician. She and her husband thought it would be a pleasant vacation from her own allergies. I assume you know what happened to most of the first-year ESS personnel.”

  She was gaping, perhaps for the first time in her life. “You are telling me that ‘Dr. R.V. Walton’ is Regina Wal…is Philip Roses’s wife?”

  “Trapped in space by free-fall adaptation—one of the unlucky fourteen pioneers. She can never come home again.”

  “Oh my God.” Her eyes were open so wide that the lashes now appeared normal size. She swayed where she stood, and her hands made little seeking gestures for something to clutch. They settled on the robe she wore, and if he needed any further proof of the extent of the impact on her, he had it, for as she clenched at the pockets of the robe it parted, baring her up to the belt, and she failed to notice. “Oh filthy God,” she cried. “Oh, couldn’t he—”

  “Not unless the fucking Space Taxi ever gets off the drawing boards,” he said bitterly. “Ten years overdue already. The Shuttles are space trucks, big rough brutes. All his life Philip Rose has had a bad heart valve. He’s in great shape for a man of sixty-five. He’ll probably live another ten or fifteen years, here on Earth. But there’s never been a day in his life when he could have survived a Shuttle blastoff.”

  She looked up at the ceiling. She looked down at the floor, and absently pulled the robe closed. She looked from side to side. She sat on the floor and stuck out her lower lip and burst into tears.

  He went on his knees beside her, holding her in one strong arm and stroking her hair. She cried thoroughly and easily and for a long time, and when she was done she stopped. “And they still…how could…?”

  “You know,” he told her, “you did him a hell of a big favor, helping him get famous. The money came along just in time, Anne—his phone bill was getting to be a bonecrusher.”

  “You mean—”

  “Every night they spend at least an hour on the phone together, talking, sharing their respective days, sometimes just looking at each other. With a three-quarter-second time lag.” He shook her gently. “Anne, listen to me: It’s sad, but it’s not that sad. They live. They work. They have time together every day, more than some doctors’ spouses—or writers’ spouses—get by on. They just can’t touch. They are, incredible as it may seem to you and me, both quite happy. In all the years I have known them, I’ve never heard either of them complain about the situation, not ever. Maybe there aren’t many people who could maintain and enjoy a relationship like that. But they were already each other’s other leg when she first went up into orbit. When one of them dies, the other will go within a month—but meanwhile what they have is enough for them.”

  She sat with her head bowed. Slowly, stiffly she got to her feet. He helped her and stood himself. He began gathering up dirty cups and dishes.

  “Where’s your laundry?”

  “Down the hall there,” he said, “just past the coat closet. Your clothes will be ready to wear by now. I’ll call you a cab.”

  She was back, dressed and face repaired, by the time the cab showed on the door-screen. “Paul,” she said formally, heading for the door, “I want to thank—”

  He held up his hand. “Wait just one minute, please.”

  She paused, clearly already gone in her mind but trying to be politely attentive.

  “Back when I first met Mr. Rose, before I knew his situation, I made my own pass. Tentatively, because I knew he was old-fashioned in some ways. But I made it clear that as his personal secretary and his fan I would do anything he wanted. He was flattered. Turned me down, of course, but it has made for a kind of intimacy between us, that we might never have shared otherwise. So I’m in a position to tell you something you have no business knowing. He won’t mind, and I think I know you well enough now to believe that it may be a comfort of a kind to you. Do you know what he is doing now? Seventy percent certainty?”

  She shook her head.

  “He’s on the phone with Regina. It’s that time of night. He’s telling her about your encounter, embellishing in spots, perhaps, and they are masturbating together.”

  She stood stock still, expressionless, for perhaps ten seconds. And then she smiled. “Thank you, Paul. It is a comfort.”

  And she left. He watched the door monitor until he was certain she had entered the cab safely.

  A week later his phone blinked. He looked over the caller—and accepted at once. “Anne! Hello!”

  “One question,” she said briskly. “When the robe came open, you didn’t look. Not even a glance. Are you gay-only?”

  He caught the robe reference at once; the question took him a second. “Eh? Oh…I see. Emphatically no. It’s just that I only look at skin that’s being shown to me.”

  She nodded. “Thought so. Wanted to be sure.” She smiled. “I know why you didn’t lie to me. I’m going to be very busy for a long time. Be patient.”

  And the screen went dark, leaving him mystified.

  Two years later he was talking to one of the dozens of reporters who crammed the pressroom at Edwards Air Force Base.

  “—takes off just like a conventional plane,” he was saying, “no more takeoff stress than a 797—so Mr. Rose should have no trouble at all. I think it’s going to add twenty years to his life.”

  “What I can’t figure,” the reporter said, “is how incredibly fast the thing got pushed through. Two years from a standing start, wham, the damned thing is out of R & D, into production, and up in the air.” He turned his head to watch the big monitor screen which showed the new Space Taxi climbing, endlessly climbing. “Two years ago it was too expensive and impractical. Now it’s halfway to ESS and your boss has a firm reservation for the fourth flight in a couple of months. Somebody in congress made a big muscle…but why wouldn’t he cash in on the PR? I go back to the Shuttle days, Mr. Curry, and that was like pulling teeth. This went so quick it almost scares me.”

  Paul nodded. “Yep, it’s a wonder, all right,” he said, and then he said, “Excuse me, Phil,” very abruptly, and seemed to teleport across the crowded pressroom.

  She was waiting for him, exquisite in white and blue.

  “Hello, Paul.”

  “Hello, Anne.”

  “Two years is a long time.”

  “Yes.” He gestured at the huge monitor. “Short time for a project like that, though. You did a good job.”

  She smiled. “Today, for the first time in two years, my father is off the hook.”

  He smiled back. “I pity your enemies.”

  “You didn’t lie to me, two years ago, because you were in love with me.” The way she said it was somewhere between a question and an accusation.

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you sexually or romantically encumbered now?”

  “No.”

  “Then there is some skin I’d like to show you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Should we have dinner before or after, do you think?”

  An observer might have said she read her answer on his face, but it was really nothing of the sort.

  COMMON SENSE

  The blind man was watching a videotape when the phone chirped. Bemused, he put the tape deck on pause and hold, fed the phone circuit to
the screen. He frowned at what he saw.

  “Good day, Captain,” he began formally. “What can I—”

  “Ranny will you come to the bridge?” the caller interrupted.

  The blind man closed his eyes, but nothing went away. He stiffened in his chair, and then slumped.

  “That hurt, Jax,” he said at last.

  “Damn it, would I ask if I didn’t need to?”

  Ran’s face changed. “I suppose not. Milk and sugar in mine.” He shut off phone and deck and left, handling himself economically in free-fall.

  Ran Mushomi concentrated on the people; the bridge itself hurt too much to look at. He already knew Captain Jaxwen Kartr and Executive Officer Thorm Exton. But he was startled to see another passenger on the bridge, and profoundly startled to recognize him: Old Man Groombridge himself, president and owner of Intersystem Transport Incorporated. Ran’s hackles rose.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “It’s my starship,” Groombridge said.

  “Traveling to Koerner’s world,” the Captain said, “like you and two hundred other people, Ranny.”

  “And a damned good thing, too,” Groombridge added.

  “All right, what’s this all about?”

  “We need your help,” the Captain said, tossing him a bulb of coffee with milk and sugar.

  Ran laughed. It was an ugly sound.

  Groombridge snorted. “I told you it was a waste of time.”

  “Ranny, listen,” Captain Kartr said, her voice urgent. “This is important, damn it.”

  “To a groundhog?” he asked bitterly.

  “Look.” She activated a screen. It showed a…thing, apparently at rest in space.

  “Looks like a lumpy testicle.”

  “Ran—”

  “Or a planet with pimples. Wow, they move. How big is it?”