To Sail Beyond the Sunset

by Robert A. Heinlein

  As a by-product of Nancy’s offering Jonathan to me, Brian got Nancy’s sweet, young body—the first incest in our family, I think. Whether it happened again on later occasions I do not know and it is none of my business. Nancy and I were much alike in temperament—both of us strongly interested in sex but relaxed about it. Eager but not tense.

  Carol—For Carol I always tried to save June twenty-sixth, Carol’s Day, Carolita’s Day, Carolmas, and eventually Fiesta de Santa Carolita for millions of people who never knew her. After June twenty-sixth, 1918, she gave up her birthday entirely in order to celebrate Carol’s Day.

  During the decade that I spent mostly in Albuquerque she was star-billed several times in Reno or Vegas on Carol’s Day. She always held her luau on June twenty-sixth even if a midnight show forced her to start it at four in the morning. No matter the hour her friends flocked to attend, coming from around the globe. It became a great honor to be invited to Carolita’s annual party, something to boast about in London and Rio.

  Carol married Rod Jenkins of the Schmidt family in 1920, when he was just back from France—Rainbow Division and Rod picked up a Silver Star and a Purple Heart without losing anything. (One scar on his belly—) Rod had majored in mathematics at Illinois Tech, specializing in topology, then he had joined up between his junior and senior years, came back and shifted to theater arts. He had decided to try to shift from amateur magician to professional—stage magic, I mean. He told me once that being shot at had caused him to reassess his values and ambitions.

  So Carol started her married life handing things to her husband on stage, while dressed in so little that she constituted misdirection every time she twitched. She tried to time it so that she had babies when Rod was resting. When that was not possible, she would go on working until a theater manager called a halt…usually as a result of complaints by females not as well endowed. Carol was one of those fortunate women who got more beautiful as her belly bulged.

  She parked her children with Rod’s mother when she and Rod were on the road, but she usually had one or two with her, a privilege her youngsters all loved. Then, in ’55 (I think) Rod made a mistake in a bullet-catching illusion, and died on stage.

  Carol did his act (or a magic act of some sort with his props) the next night. One thing was certain: she was not hiding props or rabbits in her costume. When she started working Reno and Vegas and Atlantic City, she trimmed it down to a G-string. She added juggling to her act.

  Later, after coaching, she added singing and dancing. But her fans did not care what she did; they wanted Carol, not the gimmicks. Theaters in Las Vegas or Reno showed on their marquees just “CAROLITA!”—nothing more. Sometimes she would stop in the middle of juggling and say, “I’m too tired to juggle tonight and, anyhow, W. C. Fields did it better,” and she would walk out on the runway and stop, hands on her hips, dressed in a G-string and a smile, and say, “Let’s get better acquainted. You, there! Pretty little girl in a blue dress. What’s your name, dear? Will you throw me a kiss? If I throw you one, will you eat it or throw it back to me?”—or, “Who has a birthday tonight? Hold up your hands.”

  In a theater crowd at least one in fifty is having a birthday, not one in three hundred and sixty-five. She would ask them to stand, and would repeat each name loudly and clearly—then ask all the crowd to sing Happy Birthday with her, and when the doggerel reached “Happy Birthday, dear—” the band would stop and Carol would sing out each first name, pointing at the owner: “—dear Jimmy, Ariel, Bebe, Mary, John, Philip, Amy, Myrtle, Vincent, Oscar, Vera, Peggy”—hand cue and the band would hit it—“Happy Birthday to you!”

  If visitors had been allowed to vote, Carolita could have been elected mayor of Las Vegas by a landslide.

  I once asked her how she remembered all those names. She answered, “It’s not hard, Mama, when you want to remember. If I make a mistake, they forgive me—they know I’ve tried.” She added, “Mama, what they really want is to think that I am their friend—and I am.”

  During those ten years I traveled now and then to see my special darlings, but mostly I stayed home and let them come to me. The rest of the time I enjoyed being alive and enjoyed new friends, some in bed, some out, some both.

  As the decade wore on and I approached one hundred, I found that I was experiencing more frequently a slight chill of autumn—joints that were stiff in the mornings, gray hairs among the red, a little sagginess here and there—and, worst of all, a feeling that I was becoming fragile and should avoid falling down.

  I didn’t let it stop me; I just tried harder. I had one fairly faithful swain at that time, Arthur Simmons—and it tickled and pleased him when I referred to myself, in bed with him, as “Simmons’ Mattress.”

  Arthur was sixty, a widower, and a CPA, and an absolutely reliable partner in bidding contract bridge—so dependable that I gave up Italian method and went back to Goren because he played Goren. Shucks, I would have reverted to Culbertson had Arthur asked me to; an utterly honest bridge partner is that pearl of great price.

  And so is a perfect gentleman in bed. Arthur was no world-class stud—but I was no longer eighteen and I never had Carol’s beauty. But he was unfailingly considerate and did his best.

  He had one eccentricity; after our first time, in my apartment, he insisted on getting a motel room for each assignation. “Maureen,” he explained, “if you are willing to make the effort to come where I am, then I know that you really want to. And vice versa, if I go out and rent a motel room, you know that I am interested enough to make an effort. When either of us stops making an effort, it is time to kiss and part, with no tears.”

  In June 1982 that time had arrived; I think each of us was waiting for the other to suggest it. On June twentieth I was headed on foot to an assignation with Arthur and was thinking that perhaps I had best bring up the matter during that quiet time after the first one…then a second one if he wanted it and say good-bye. Or would it be kinder to announce that I was making a trip back east to see my daughter? Or simply break sharp?

  I had come to the intersection of Lomas and San Mateo boulevards. I had never liked that crossing; the timing of the traffic light was short and the boulevards were wide—and getting wider lately. And today, because of repairs in progress on the PanAmerican Highway, truck traffic had been routed around the repairs by sending it down San Mateo, then west on Central, and the reverse for northbound traffic.

  I was halfway across when the lights changed and a solid mass of traffic started at me, especially one giant truck. I froze, tried to run back, tripped and fell down.

  I caught sight of a policeman, knew that the truck would get me, wondered briefly whether Father would recommend prayer after my heathen lifetime.

  Somebody scooped me up off the pavement and I fainted.

  It seemed to me that I was taken out of an ambulance and placed on a gurney. I fainted again and woke up in bed. A pretty little dark woman with wavy hair was hovering over me. She spoke slowly and carefully in an accent that I thought was Spanish:

  “Mama Maureen… Tamara am I. For… Lazarus…and for all…your children… I bid you…welcome to Tertius!”

  I stared at her, not believing my eyes. Or ears. “You are Tamara? You really are Tamara? Wife to Captain Lazarus Long?”

  “Wife am I to Lazarus. Tamara am I. Daughter am I, to you, our Mama Maureen. Welcome, Mama. We love you.”

  I cried and she gathered me to her breast.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Rebirth in Boondock

  Let’s review the bidding.

  In 1982 on June twentieth I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on my way to a Sunday afternoon motel date for some friendly fornication…and that made me a scandal to the jaybirds as I was only days away from my hundredth birthday—while pretending to be much younger and, mostly, succeeding. My assignation was with a widowed grandfather who seemed willing to believe that I was his own age, give or take a bit.

  Part of the orthodoxy of
that time and place was that old women have no interest in sex and that old men have limp penises and no sex drive—except dirty old perverts with criminal and pathological interests in young girls. All young people were certain of these ideas through knowing their own grandparents, whom they knew to be interested only in singing hymns and in playing checkers or shuffleboard. But sex? My grandparents? Don’t be disgusting!

  (At that time and in that country, nursing homes for the elderly kept their guests chaperoned and/or physically segregated by sexes so that nothing “disgusting” could take place.)

  So this dirty old woman on evil bent got caught in heavy traffic, panicked, fell down, fainted—and woke up in Boondock on the planet Tellus Tertius.

  I had heard of Tellus Tertius. Sixty-four years earlier, when I was a modest young matron with a snow-white reputation, I had seduced a young sergeant, Theodore Bronson, who in pillow talk with me had revealed himself as a time traveler from the far future and a distant star, Captain Lazarus Long, chairman of the Howard Families in his time…and my remote descendant!

  I had looked forward to years of happy adultery after the war was over, under the tolerant, shut-eye chaperonage of my husband.

  But Sergeant Theodore went to France in the AEF and was missing in action in some of the heaviest fighting in the Great War. MIA = killed; it never meant anything else.

  When I woke up and Tamara took me into her arms, I had great trouble believing any of it…especially the idea that Theodore was alive and well. When I did believe her (one cannot disbelieve Tamara), I was crushed with the grief of too late, too late!

  Tamara tried to soothe me but we had language trouble; she is not a linguist, speaks broken English only—and I had not a word of Galacta. (Her first speech to me she had rehearsed most carefully.)

  She sent for her daughter Ishtar. Ishtar listened to me, talked to me, finally got it through my head that being a hundred years old did not matter; I was about to be rejuvenated.

  I had heard about rejuvenation from Theodore, long ago. But I had never thought of it as applying to me.

  They both told me, over and over again. Ishtar said, “Mama Maureen, I am more than twice as old as you are. My last rejuvenation was eighty years ago. Am I wrinkled? Don’t worry about your age; you will be no trouble at all. We’ll start your tests at once; you will be eighteen again in a very short time. Months, I estimate, instead of the two or three years a really difficult case can take.”

  Tamara nodded emphatically. “Is true. Ishtar true word esspeak. Four century am I. Dying was I.” She patted her belly. “Baby here now.”

  “Yes,” agreed Ishtar, “by Lazarus. A baby I gene-plotted and required Lazarus to plant before he left to rescue you. We could not be sure that he would be back—these trips of his are always chancy—and, while I have his sperm on deposit, frozen sperm can deteriorate; I want as many warm-sperm babies sired by Lazarus as possible.” She added, “And you, too, Mama Maureen. I hope you will gift us with many more babies. Our calculations show that what Lazarus has, his unique gene patterns, he got mainly from you. You need not bear babies yourself; there’ll be host mothers standing in line for the privilege of bearing a Mama Maureen baby. Unless you prefer to bear them yourself.”

  “You mean I can?”

  “Certainly. Once we have you made young again.”

  “Then I will!” I took a deep breath. “It has been…forty-four years—I think that is right. Forty-four years since last I became pregnant. Although I’ve always been willing and have not tried to avoid it.” I thought about it. “Is it possible for me to postpone seeing Theodore—Lazarus, you call him—for a while? Could I be made younger before I see him? I dread the thought of his seeing me this way. Old. Not the way he knew me.”

  “Certainly. There are always emotional factors in a rejuvenation. Whatever a client needs to be happy is the way we do it.”

  “I would rather not have him see me until I look more as I looked then.”

  “It shall be done.”

  I asked to see a picture of Theodore-Lazarus. It turned out to be a moving holo, almost frighteningly lifelike. I was aware that Theodore and I looked enough alike to be brother and sister; that was what Father had first noticed about him. But this startled me. “Why, that’s my son!” The holo looked just like my son Woodrow—my bad boy and always my favorite.

  “Yes, he’s your son.”

  “No, no! I mean that Captain Lazarus Long whom I knew as Theodore is a dead ringer—sorry, a twin-brother image—of my son Woodrow Wilson Smith. I hadn’t realized it. Of course, in the brief time I knew Captain Long, my son Woodrow Wilson was only five years old; they did not look alike then, or nothing anyone would notice. So my son Woodrow grew up to look like his remote descendant. Strange. I find I’m touched by it.”

  Ishtar looked at Tamara. They exchanged words in a language I did not know (Galacta, it was). But I could hear worry in their voices.

  Ishtar said soberly, “Mama Maureen, Lazarus Long is your son Woodrow Wilson.”

  “No, no,” I said. “I saw Woodrow just a few months ago. He was, uh, sixty-nine at the time but looked much younger. He looked just as Captain Long looks in this picture—an amazing resemblance. But Woodrow is back in the twentieth century. I know.”

  “Yes, he is, Mama Maureen. Was, I mean, although Elizabeth tells me the two tenses are equivalent. Woodrow Wilson Smith grew up in the twentieth century, spent most of the twenty-first century on Mars and on Venus, returned to Earth in the twenty-second century and—” Ishtar stopped and looked up. “Teena?”

  “Who rubbed my lamp? What’ll you have, Ish?”

  “Ask Justin for a printout in English of the memoirs he prepared on the Senior, will you, please?”

  “No need to ask Justin; I’ve got ’em in my gizzard. You want them bound or scrolled?”

  “Bound, I think. But, Teena, let Justin fetch them here; he will be delighted and honored.”

  “Who wouldn’t? Mama Maureen, are they treating you right? If they don’t, just tell me, ’cause I do all the work around here.”

  After a while a man came in who reminded me disturbingly of Arthur Simmons. But it was just a general resemblance combined with similar personality; in 1982 Justin Foote would have been a CPA, as Arthur Simmons had been. Justin Foote was carrying a briefcase. (“Plus le change, plus la même chose.”) There was a degree of awkwardness as Ishtar introduced him; he seemed about to fall over his own feet from excitement at meeting me.

  I took his hand. “My first great-great-granddaughter, Nancy Jane Hardy, married a boy named Charlie Foote. That was about 1972, I think; I went to her wedding. Is Charlie Foote any relation to you?”

  “He is my ancestor, Mother Maureen. Nancy Jane Hardy Foote gave birth to Justin Foote the First on New Millennium Eve, December thirty-first, year 2000 Gregorian.”

  “Really? Then Nancy Jane had a nice long run. She was named for her great-grandmother, my first born.”

  “So the archives show. Nancy Irene Smith Weatheral, your first born, Ancestress. And I carry the first name of Nancy’s father-in-law, Justin Weatheral.” Justin spoke excellent English with an odd accent. Bostonian?

  “Then I’m your grandma, in some degree. So kiss me, grandson, and quit being so nervously formal; we’re family.”

  He relaxed and kissed me then, a firm buss on the mouth, one I liked. If we had not had company, I might have let it develop—he did remind me of Arthur.

  He added then: “I’m descended from you and from Justin Weatheral another way, Grandma. Through Patrick Henry Smith, to whom you gave birth on July seventh, 1932.”

  I was startled. “Good heavens! So my sins follow me, even here. Oh, of course—you’re working from the Foundation’s records. I did report that case of bastardy to the Foundation. Had to keep it straight there.”

  Both Ishtar and Tamara were looking puzzled. Justin said, “Excuse me, Grandma Maureen”—and spoke to them in that other language. Then he added to me, “The conce
pt of bastardy is not known here; issue from a coupling is either genetically satisfactory or not satisfactory. The idea that a child could be proscribed by civil statute is difficult to explain.”

  Tamara had looked startled, then giggled, when Justin explained “bastardy.” Ishtar had simply looked sober. She spoke to Justin, again in Galacta.

  He listened, then turned to me. “Dr. Ishtar says that it is regrettable that only once did you accept another father for one of your children. She tells me that she hopes to get many more children from you, each by a different father. After you are rejuvenated, she means.”

  “‘After,’” I repeated. “But I’m looking forward to it. Justin, you have a book for me?”

  That book was titled The Lives of Lazarus Long, with a secondary title that started “The Lives of the Senior Member of the Howard Families (Woodrow Wilson Smith… Lazarus Long… Corporal Ted Bronson—[and a dozen other names]) Oldest Member of the Human Race—”

  I didn’t faint. Instead I teetered on the brink of orgasm. Ishtar, aware somewhat of the customs of my time and place, had hesitated to let me know that my lover of 1918 was actually my son. But she could not know that I had never felt bound by the taboos of my clan and was as untroubled by the idea of incest as a tomcat is. Indeed, the greatest disappointment of my life was my inability to get my father to accept what I had been so willing to give him, from menarche till I lost him.

  ▣

  I still haven’t been able to do anything with Lizzie Borden’s disclosure that this city I’m in is Kansas City. Or one of its permutations, that is. I don’t think I am in one of the universes patrolled by the Time Corps, although I can’t be certain. So far, all I have seen of the city is what can be seen from the balcony off the lounge of the Committee for Aesthetic Deletions.

  It’s the correct geography all right. North of here, about ten miles away, is the sharp bend in the Missouri River where it swings from southwest to northeast at the point where the Kaw River flows into it—a configuration that causes big floods in the west bottoms every five or six years.