“Stow it, Justin.” Lazarus stood up. “Son, you’re suffering from big-city attitudes. You’re welcome for a week or a century. You’re not only my lineal descendant—through Harriet Foote, I think—but you’re a kissin’ cousin of Minerva’s. Let’s take him home, Minerva. What did you do with my hellions?”
“They’re outside.”
“Trust you staked ’em down.”
“No, but they were somewhat miffed.”
“Good for their metabolism. Ira, declare a holiday.”
“I will—as soon as I’ve gone over the ore converter plans with Athene.”
“Meaning you’re going to find out from her what’s she’s decided.”
“You can say that again!” said the computer.
“Teena,” Lazarus said mildly, “you’ve been associating with Dora too much. When Minerva had your job, she was sweet, gentle, respectful, and humble.”
“Any complaints about my work, Grandpappy?”
“Just your manners, dear. In the presence of a guest.”
“Justin isn’t a guest; he’s family. He’s my sister’s kissing cousin, so he’s mine, too. Logical? Q.E.D.”
“I disdain to argue. Watch out for Teena, Justin; she’ll trap you.”
“I find Athene’s reasoning not only logical but warmly pleasing. Thank you, my kissing cousin.”
“I like you, Justin; you were sweet to my sister. Don’t worry about me trapping you; I don’t plan to accept a clone for at least a hundred years—first I’ve got to get this planet organized. So don’t wait up; you’ll see me in about a century. You’ll recognize me; I’ll look exactly like Minerva.”
“But noisier.”
“Lazarus, you say the sweetest things. Kiss him for me, twin sister.”
“Let’s go, Minerva; Teena’s got me mixed up again.”
“Just a moment, Lazarus, please. Ira? I made other arrangements through Ishtar but only tentatively . . not being sure of Justin’s wishes.”
“Oh. I don’t know them either. Do you want me to ask him?”
“Uh . . yes.”
“On your behalf?”
Minerva looked startled. Justin Foote looked puzzled. Athene said, “Let’s cut through the fog. Justin, Minerva was asking Ira whether or not you want her to find you a guest wife. Ira says he doesn’t know but will find out—then asked her if she was volunteering for the privilege. All clear? Justin, my sister is so new at being a flesh-and-blood that she sometimes isn’t sure of herself.”
Lazarus reflected that he had not seen a girl blush—for that reason—for three centuries or more. Nor did the two men look at ease. He said reprovingly, “Teena, you are an excellent engineer . . and a lousy diplomat.”
“What? Oh, nonsense. I saved them billions of nanoseconds.”
“Shut up, dear; your circuits are scrambled. Justin, Minerva is almost certainly the only girl on this planet who could be fussed by Teena’s unhelpful help . . because she is probably the only one who shows any tendency to stick to one man.”
The computer giggled.
“I told you to keep still,” Lazarus said sternly.
Ira said quietly, “Minerva is a free agent, Lazarus.”
“Who said she wasn’t? And you keep quiet, too, until the Senior—that’s me, son—finishes speaking. Justin, Minerva will find you a dinner partner—has found one, I think. After that you are on your own. If you and your dinner partner don’t hit it off, no doubt you’ll be able to work out something else. Teena, I’m going to switch you off at the house tonight; I am uninviting you to dinner. You haven’t learned how to behave in company.”
“Aw, Lazarus, I didn’t mean to steal your pig.”
“Well—” Lazarus looked around. Ira’s face was impassive, Minerva looked unhappy. Justin Foote spoke up:
“Senior, I’m sure Athene did not mean any harm. I do appreciate her declaring me her ‘kissing cousin’; I found it warmly friendly. I hope you will reconsider and let her join us at dinner.”
“Very well, Teena; Justin has intervened for you. But between you and Dora and the twins I am beginning to need a gnarooth to ride herd on you kids. Justin. Minerva. Let’s go. Ira, Teena—see you at the house. Don’t waste time on that converter, Ira; Teena did a perfect job.”
Outside the colonial headquarters Justin Foote found a nullboat waiting—not the one that had fetched him from the skyfield; this one had a pair of redheaded twins in it . . uh, girls, although they looked as if they had just recently made up their minds. Twelve, perhaps thirteen. Both were wearing gun belts on skinny hips, with what (he hoped) were toy guns. One was wearing captain’s insignia on bare shoulders. Each wore eleven thousand, three hundred, and two freckles as near as he could estimate.
Both jumped out of the boat, waited. One set of freckles said, “About time.” The other said, “Discrimination.”
Lazarus said, “Pipe down and be polite. Justin, these are my twin daughters—Lapis Lazuli, and that one’s Lorelei Lee. Mr. Justin Foote, dears, Chief Archivist for the Trustees.”
The girls glanced at each other, then curtsied deeply in perfect unison. “Welcome to Tertius, Chief Archivist Foote!” they said in chorus.
“Charming!”
“Yes, girls, that was nice. Who taught you?”
“Mama Hamadryad taught us—”
“—and Mama Ishtar said this would be a good time to do it.”
“But I’m Lori; she’s Lazi.”
“You’re both lazy,” said Lazarus.
“I’m Captain Lapis Lazuli Long, commanding Starship ‘Dora’ and she’s my crew. Even-numbered day.”
“Till tomorrow. Odd-numbered day.”
“Lazarus can’t tell us apart—”
“—and he’s not our father; we never had one.”
“He’s our brother, no real authority—”
“—he just dominates us by brute strength—”
“—but someday that will change.”
“Into the boat, you mutinous hellions,” Lazarus said cheerfully, “before I bust you back to apprentice spacemen.”
They jumped into the boat, sat forward, facing aft. “Threats—”
“—with abusive language—”
“—and without due process.”
Lazarus did not seem to hear them. He and Justin handed Minerva into the boat, seated her aft and facing forward; they took seats cornering her. “Captain Lazuli.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Will you please tell the boat to take us home?”
“Aye aye, sir. Humpty Dumpty—homer!”
The little craft started up, hit a steady ten knots, waddling to changing contours of the ground. Lazarus said, “And now, Captain, having confused our guest, please straighten him out.”
“Yes, sir. We’re not twins, we don’t even have the same mother—”
“—and Ol’ Buddy Boy is not our father; he’s our brother.”
“Even-numbered day!”
“Then make it march.”
“Correction,” said Lazarus. “I’m your father because I adopted you, with written consent of your mothers.”
“Irrelevant—”
“—and illegal; it was not with our consent—”
“—and immaterial in any case, as we three, Lazarus, Lorelei and I, are identical triplets and therefore enjoy the same rights under any rational jurisdiction . . which unfortunately this is not. So he beats us. Illegally and brutally.”
“Captain, remind me to get a bigger club.”
“Aye aye, sir. But we’re fond of Buddy Boy anyhow, despite his masochosadistic behavior. Because he’s really us. You see?”
“Miss—Captain, I mean—I’m not sure I do. I think I slid through a space warp on the way here and failed to come out.”
The even-numbered-day captain shook her head. “Sorry, sir, but that’s not possible. I must ask you to take my word for it . . unless you can handle imperial numbers and Libby field-physics. Can you?”
“No. Can you?
”
“Oh, certainly—”
“—we’re geniuses.”
“Quit trying to snow him, kids, and belay that order. I’ll explain it myself.”
“I wish you would, Lazarus. I wasn’t aware that you had any minor children. Or sisters, which I find even more confusing. Are they registered? While I can’t see everything that goes into the files, for many years there has been an automatic relay to my attention on anything concerning the Senior.”
“Which I knew and that’s why you didn’t see it. Registered, yes, but by their mothers’ names—host-mothers, actually, but not so reported. But I left a Delay-Mail sealed registration of the actual genealogy involved, to be opened by you or your successor on my death or in year 2070 of the Diaspora, whichever comes first, to insure that they will receive certain knickknacks, such as my second-best bed—”
“And the ‘Dora’!”
“Pipe down. Keep butting in and your sister gets the ‘Dora’ and you won’t be captain even on alternate days. I picked that date, Justin, because I expect them to be adults by then; they really are geniuses. I will not attempt time travel until then, as they are captain and crew of my yacht—only while groundside now but in space by then. As to how they are my sisters—and they are—an illegal—proscribed, rather, by Secundus Clinic—a clandestine surgical procedure was used to clone them from me. Somewhat like Minerva’s case, but simpler.”
“Much simpler,” agreed Minerva. “I operated for me, when I was still a computer—and failed seventeen times before I achieved a perfect clone. I couldn’t do it now, although Athene would be able to. But our girls were cloned by a flesh-and-blood surgeon—replication of the X chromosome was all that was necessary—and did it in both cases in one try; Laz and Lor were born the same day.”
“Mmm—Yes, I think that Madam Director Doctor Hildegarde would take a sour view of such things. With no reflections on the lady’s professional competence—high, I assume —I find her a bit, uh, conservative.”
“Murderess.”
“Primitive totalitarian.”
“Three times over—”
“—for what right has she to say that we can’t exist—”
“—or Minerva. Crypto-criminal mind!”
“That’s enough, girls; you’ve made your point, you don’t like her.”
“She would have murdered you, too, Ol’ Buddy Boy.”
“Lori, I said that was enough. Stipulated that, if Nelly Hildegarde’s policies had been carried out, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, Laz wouldn’t be here, nor would Minerva. But she’s not a ‘murderess,’ as all four of us are here.”
“And I am delighted,” Justin Foote commented. “To have three charming young ladies added to our Families through breaking rules proves something I have long suspected: Rules serve best when broken.”
“A wise man—”
“—and with dimples, too. Mr. Foote, would you like to marry me and my sister?”
“Say ‘Yes’! She can cook, but I’m cuddly.”
Minerva said, “Stop it, girls.”
“Why? Have you got him staked out already? Was that why we couldn’t come in? Mr. Foote, Minerva is Mama Pro Tern to us by edict—”
“—which is patently unfair—”
“—as she is actually years and years younger than we are—”
“—and it gives us three mothers to dodge instead of the regulation one.”
“Belay that,” Lazarus ordered. “Both of you can cook, but neither of you is very cuddly.”
“Then why do you cuddle us, Buddy Boy?”
“—suppressed incestuous yearning perhaps?”
“Merde. Because you both are immature, insecure, and frightened.”
The redheads looked at each other. “Lori?”
“I heard it. Unless I’m hallucinating.”
“No, I heard it, too.”
“Is it time to cry?”
“We’d better save it. Mr. Foote wouldn’t want to see how our Buddy Boy goes all to pieces when we cry.”
“We’ll save it. That makes two cries and a chin quivering he’s got coming. Unless Mr. Foote would like to see it.”
“Would you, Mr. Foote?”
“Justin, I’ll sell either one of them cheap. Still better price on a package deal.”
“Uh . . thank you, Lazarus, but I’m afraid that they might cry at me—then I would go all to pieces. Can we change the subject? How did you manage to put over this triple, uh, irregularity? May one ask? Doctor Hildegarde runs a very taut organization.”
“Well, in the case of those two little angels over there—”
“Sarcasm now—”
“—and not clever.”
“—I was flummoxed quite as much as Nelly Hildegarde. At the time, Ishtar Hardy, that one’s mother—”
“No, her mother.”
“You two are interchangeable parts, and besides, you were mixed up the week you were born, and nobody knows which you are; you don’t know yourself.”
“Oh, yes, I do! Sometimes she goes away, but I’m always right here.”
Lazarus paused in midflight, looked thoughtful. “That may be the most succinct statement of the solipsist thesis I’ve ever heard. Write it down.”
“If I did, you’d take credit for it.”
“I simply want to save it for posterity . . a notion incompatible with the thesis itself. Minerva, you preserve it for me.”
“Recorded, Lazarus.”
“Minerva has almost as exact a memory as she had when she was a computer. I was saying: Ishtar was temporarily Clinic boss, Nelly having gone on leave, so access to my tissue was no problem. I was then in a state of acute anhedonia, and their mothers cooked up this notion for restoring my interest in life. The only problem was to do gene surgery not permitted by the rules of Secundus Clinic. How and who—I was told firmly not to inquire. You can ask Minerva; she was in on the swindle.”
“Lazarus, that was a memory I did not bring along when I was selecting what to fit into this skull.”
“You see, Justin? I’m allowed to know only what they think is good for me. As may be, this heroic treatment worked; I have not been bored since. Other descriptives might apply—but not that one.”
“Lori, do you sense a double entendre?”
“No, merely a thinly veiled innuendo. Ignore it with dignity.”
“But at first I didn’t know my odd relationship to this pair. Oh, I couldn’t help knowing that Ishtar, and Hamadryad—one of Ira’s daughters; you’ve met her?”
“Years back. A lovely girl.”
“Quite. Both of their mothers are lovely. I couldn’t help knowing that both were pregnant; they were spending most of their time with me. But although they were swelling up like poisoned pups, they ignored it, so I didn’t inquire.”
Justine nodded. “Privacy.”
“Naw, just hard-nosed. I’ve never let the privacy custom keep me from snooping when it suited me. I was miffed, that’s all. Here two girls are with me every day and like daughters to me and obviously as knocked up as Pharaoh’s Daughter—and they tell me nit. So I got stubborn and outsat them. Till one day Galahad—he’s their husband—well, not exactly; you’ll see—Galahad invites me downstairs, and here they have, one each, the two prettiest little redheads I ever saw.”
“Shall we let him off one cry?”
“You got over it; you both look like me now.”
“Or do we add a third cry for that?”
“I still don’t smell a mouse; I’m simply pleased. As well as amazed that they had produced babies that looked like identical twins—”
“Which we are, except that we’re triplets.”
“But some weeks of playing with these babies causes my natural genius and suspicious mind to infer that the girls have pulled a whizzer. I was not then in the sperm bank so far as I knew, but I am well aware of tricks that can be played on a helpless client undergoing antigeria, so with unerring logic I reach the wrong answer:
These babies are my daughters by artificial insemination unmentioned to me. So I accuse them of it. And they deny it. And I explain that I am not angry, but quite the contrary I hope these little cherubs are mine.”
“ ‘Cherubs.’ ”
“Ignore it. He’s simply trying to con Mr. Foote.”
“Cherubs at that time, I mean, aside from a tendency to bite. That I want them to be mine and share my name and fortunes. So they confer with their fellow conspirators—Minerva and Galahad—Minerva was in it up to her overload safeties.”
“Lazarus, you needed a family.”
“Quite right, dear. I’m always better off with a family; it keeps me harmlessly occupied and unbored. Justin, did I mention that Minerva allowed me to adopt her?”
“We weren’t asked!”
“Look, kids, under the loose rules of this termite hill I can unadapt you this minute, if such be your wish. Cut the tie. Be just your genetic brother through circumstances I had no more part in than you had. Renounce all authority over you two. Let me know.”
The two girls looked at each other briefly. Then one said, “Lazarus—”
“Yes, Lorelei?”
“Lapis Lazuli and I have discussed it, and we both think that you are just exactly the father we want.”
“Thank you, my dears.”
“And to confirm it, we are canceling two cries and a chin quiver.”
“That’s most pleasing.”
“And besides that, we want to be cuddled . . because we are feeling very immature, insecure, and frightened.”
Lazarus blinked. “I don’t want you to feel that way, ever. But—Well, can the cuddling wait?”
“Oh, certainly—Father. We know we have a guest. But perhaps you and Mr. Foote would join us in bathing? Before dinner?”
“Well, Justin? Bathing with my hellions is squirmy but fun. I don’t do it often because they turn it into a social event and waste time. Suit yourself; don’t let your arm be twisted.”
“A bath I certainly need. I was clean when I was sealed into that pod—but how long was I in it? I really don’t know. And a bath should always be a social event if there is time . . and good company. Thank you, ladies; I accept.”
“And I accept, too,” put in Minerva. “I’m inviting myself. Justin, Tertius is primitive compared with Secundus, but our family refresher is nice and quite large enough for sociability. ‘Decadent,’ as Lazarus calls it.”
Time Enough for Love Page 45