For Us, the Living

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “OK, testing.” Lights sprang out from the near end of the room. Diana walked to the center of the room, turned around twice, and walked back and forth and up and down, then returned to the communicator.

  “OK, Larry?”

  “There’s a halo in the lower left and it’s not in my side, I don’t believe.”

  “I’ll take a look.” She returned with the tube that had contained the Gordon dossier in her hand. “Gone now, Larry?”

  “Yeah, what was it?”

  “This.” She held up the tube.

  “Just like a female. Can’t integrate. Sloppy minds, unable to—”

  “Larry, one more crack out of you and I’ll report you for atavism—probably Neanderthal.”

  “Cool down, small one. You have a super-magnificent brain. I love you for your intellect. Time’s running short. Want some music?”

  “Give it a blast.—Okay, turn it off.”

  “What are you giving the mob tonight, Dian’?”

  “Highbrow stuff. Watch it—you might get an idea.”

  He glanced down at his controls. “Take your place, kid. I’m clearing.”

  Diana went quickly to the middle of the room and the lights went out. The larger screen facing Perry came suddenly to life. Facing him in stereo and color was a brisk young man, who bowed and smiled and commenced to speak: “Friends, we are again in the studios of the Magic Carpet in the tower of the Edison Memorial overlooking Lake Michigan. We bring you tonight your favorite interpreter of the modern theme in dance, lovely Diana, who will present another stanza in the Poem of Life.”

  The colors on the screen melted together, then faded to a light blue and a single high clear crystal note impinged on Perry’s ears. The note trembled, then pursued a minor melody. Perry felt a mood of sadness and nostalgia creep over him. Gradually the orchestra picked up the theme and embroidered it while on the screen the colors shifted, blended, and ranged in patterns. Finally the colors faded and the screen went dark as the harmony wafted out of the music leaving a violin alone carrying the theme in the darkness. A dim finger of light appeared and picked out a small figure far back. The figure was prone, limp, helpless. The music conveyed a feeling of pain and despair and overpowering fatigue. But another theme encouraged, called for effort, and the figure stirred gently. Perry glanced over his shoulder and had to exert self control to refrain from going to the poor forlorn creature’s assistance. Diana needed help, his heart told him, go to her! But he sat quietly and watched and listened. Perry knew little about dancing and nothing about it as a high art. Ballroom dancing for himself and tap dancing to watch were about his level. He watched with intent appreciation the graceful, apparently effortless movements of the girl, without any realization of the training, study and genius that had gone before. But gradually he realized that he was being told a story of the human spirit, a story of courage, and hope, and love overcoming despair and physical hurt. He came to with a start when the dance ended leaving Diana with arms flung out, face to the sky, eyes shining, and smiling in joy as a single bright warm light poured over her face and breast. He felt happier than he had since his arrival—happy and relieved.

  The screen went dark, then the ubiquitous young man re-appeared. Diana cut him off before he spoke, switched on the room lights and turned to Perry. He was surprised to see that she appeared shy and fussed.

  “Did you like it, Perry?”

  “Like it? Diana, you were glorious, incredible. I—I can’t express it.”

  “I’m glad.

  “And now I’m going to eat and we can visit some more.”

  “But you just had dinner.”

  “You didn’t watch me closely. I don’t eat much before dancing. But now watch—I’ll probably get it down on the floor and worry it like an animal. Are you hungry?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Could you drink a cup of chocolate?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  A few minutes later they were seated on the couch, Diana with her legs curled up under her, a cup of chocolate in one hand, an enormous sandwich in the other. She ate busily and greedily. Perry was amused to think that this hungry little girl was that unearthly glorious creature of a few minutes before. She finished, hiccoughed, looked surprised and murmured, “Excuse me,” then wiped up with one finger a blob of mayonnaise which had dropped on her tummy and transferred it to her mouth. “Now, Perry, let’s take stock. Where are we?”

  “Damned if I know. I know where I am and when I am and you tell me that I know who I am. Gordon zip zip zip and six zeros, but I might as well be a day old baby as for knowing what to do about it.”

  “Not so bad as that, Perry. In addition to an identity you have acquired a nice credit account, not large but adequate and your heritage check will keep you going, too.”

  “What is this heritage check business?”

  “Let’s not go into that now. When you study the economic system you’ll understand. Right now it means a hundred and fifty dollars, more or less, every month. You could live comfortably on two-thirds of that, if you wanted to. What I wanted to talk about was the ‘what to do about it’ aspect.”

  “Where do we start?”

  “I can’t decide what you are to do about anything, but it seems to me that the very first thing to do is to bring you up to date so that you will fit in twenty-eighty-six. It is a rather different world. You must learn a lot of new customs and a century-and-a-half of history and a number of new techniques and so forth. When you are up to date, you can decide for yourself what you want to do—and then you can do anything you want.”

  “It sounds to me as if I’d be too old to want to do anything by that time.”

  “No, I don’t think so. You can start right away. I’ve got a number of ideas. In the first place, while I haven’t very many useful books in this house, I do have a pretty fair history of the United States and a short world history. Yes, and a dictionary and a fairly recent encyclopedia. Oh and I nearly forgot, an abridged code of customs that I had when I was a kid. Then I am going to call Berkeley and ask for a group of records on a number of subjects that you can play on the televue whenever you like. That will really be your most beneficial and easiest way to learn in a hurry.”

  “How does it work?”

  “It’s very simple. You saw my act in the televue tonight. Well, it’s just as easy to put a record on it and see and hear anything that you want to that has ever been recorded. If you wanted to, you could see President Berzowski open Congress in 2001 January. Or if you like, you could see any of my dances from records.”

  “I’ll do that first. To hell with history!”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort. You will study until you are oriented. If you want to see me dance, I’ll dance for you.”

  “OK, right now.”

  She stuck out her tongue at him. “Be serious. Besides the records, I’ll think over who among my friends can help and I’ll get them to come talk with you and explain the things that I can’t.”

  “Why do you take all this trouble about me, Dian’?”

  “Why, anybody would, Perry. You were sick and cold and needed help.”

  “Yes, but now you undertake to educate me and set me on my feet.”

  “Well, I want to do it. Won’t you let me?”

  “Well, maybe. But look here, oughtn’t I to get out of your house and find some other place to stay?”

  “Why, Perry? You’re welcome here. Aren’t you comfortable?”

  “Oh, of course. But how about your reputation? What will people say?”

  “I don’t see how it could affect my reputation; you don’t dance. And what does it matter what people think—all they could think is that we were companions, if they bothered to think about it at all. Besides very few people except my friends will know. It is strictly in the private sphere of action. The custom is quite clear.”

  “What custom?”

  “Why, the custom which says that what people do out of public service or
private employment is private as long as it doesn’t violate the other customs. Where people go, what they eat, or drink, or wear, or how they entertain themselves, or who they love, or how they play are strictly in the private sphere. So one must not print anything about it or broadcast it, or speak about it in a public place, without specific permission.”

  “Paging Walter Winchell! What in the world is in your newspapers?”

  “Lots of things. Political news and ships’ movements and public events and announcements of amusements and most anything about public officials—though their private sphere is much narrower. It’s an exception in the custom. And new creations in clothing and architecture and food and new scientific discoveries and lists of new televue records and broadcasts, and new commercial projects. Who’s Walter Winchell?”

  “Walter Winchell, why he was a—Dian’, I don’t think you will believe it but he made a lot of money talking almost entirely about things in what you call the private sphere of action.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “How disgusting!”

  “People ate it up. But look, how about your friends? Won’t they think it strange?”

  “Why should they? It isn’t strange. I’ve entertained lots of them.”

  “But we aren’t chaperoned.”

  “What’s ‘chaperoned’? Is it something like married?”

  “Oh Lord, I give up. Listen, Dian’, just pretend like we never said anything about it. I’ll be most happy to stay if you want me to.”

  “Didn’t I say I did?”

  They were interrupted by the appearance of a large grey cat who walked out to the middle of the floor, calmly took possession, sat down, curled his tail carefully around him, and mewed loudly. He had only one ear and looked like a hard case. Diana gave him a stern look.

  “Where have you been? Do you think this is any time to come home?”

  The cat mewed again.

  “Oh, so you’ll be fed now? So this is just the place where they keep the fish?”

  The cat walked over, jumped on the couch, and commenced bumping his head against Diana’s side while buzzing loudly.

  “All right. All right. Come along. Show me where it is.” He jumped down and trotted quickly over toward Demeter, tail straight as a smoke column on a calm day, then sat and looked up expectantly. He mewed again.

  “Don’t be impatient.” Diana held a dish of sardines in the air. “Show me where to put it.” The cat trotted over in front of the fire. “All right. Now are you satisfied?” The cat did not answer, being already busy with the fish.

  Diana returned to the couch and reached for a cigarette. “That’s Captain Kidd. He’s an old pirate with no manners and no morals. He owns this place.”

  “So I gathered. How did he get in?”

  “He let himself in. He has a little door of his own that opens up when he mews.”

  “For Heaven’s sakes! Is that standard equipment for cats these days?”

  “Oh no. It’s just a toy. He can’t let himself in my door. It opens only to my voice. But I made a record of the mew he used to let me know he wanted to come in the house and sent it to be analyzed and a lock set to it. Now that lock opens his own little door. I suppose that doors that open to a voice are somewhat marvelous to you, Perry?”

  “Well, yes and no. We had such things but they weren’t commercially in use. I’ve seen them work. In fact I believe that I could design one if I had to.”

  Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Really? I had no idea that technical advance was so marked in your day.”

  “We had a fairly involved technical culture, but unfortunately most of it wasn’t used. People couldn’t afford to pay for the things that the engineers could build, especially luxuries like automatic doors and television and such.”

  “Television isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. How else could one keep in touch? Why I would be helpless without it.”

  “Yes, no doubt you feel that way about it. People were beginning to say that about the telephone in my day. But the fact remains while we knew how to accomplish pretty fair television we didn’t because there was no market. People couldn’t afford it.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “I don’t know how to tell you. Perhaps I don’t see either, except in some way I can’t explain. But we did have a lot of unused or only partially used mechanical and technical knowledge. The application of any advance in invention or art was limited by whether or not there were people willing and able to pay for it. I served for a couple of years in one of the big aircraft carriers. There were boys in her—enlisted men—who used the most amazing technical devices—mechanical brains that could solve the most involved ballistic problems, problems in calculus using a round dozen variables, problems that would have taken an experienced mathematician days to solve. The machine solved them in a split second and applied the solutions, yet more than half of those boys came from homes that didn’t have bathtubs or central heating.”

  “How awful! How in the world could they stay clean and healthy in such houses?”

  “They couldn’t. I don’t suppose that I can make you realize just what the conditions were in which a lot of people lived. A classmate of mine at the Naval Academy joined the navy because he got tired of walking behind a mule and plowing. So he walked fifteen miles to town barefooted and slept on the doorstep of the post office. When the postmaster arrived in the morning he enlisted. He was selected for the Naval Academy and became one of the most brilliant young officers in the fleet and expert in the use and design of equipment that makes your automatic door seem simple. But his father and mother and brothers and sisters were still living in a one room dirt-floored cabin, dirty and sick from hookworm, anemia, and malnutrition.”

  “Why in the world would the government spend all that effort on machinery for an aircraft carrier when its citizens were living in such abominable squalor?”

  “Well, I guess we had something like your private and public spheres of actions, Dian’. The lives of these people were in the private sphere of action, but national defense is public.”

  “But it’s obviously the same thing. Any government official would know that it is dangerous to everybody to let people be hungry and sick. Why, from the most selfish standpoint possible, if people are sick, they can be the center of epidemic, and anybody knows that a hungry man is not responsible for his actions and may do something dangerous.”

  “I don’t know how to answer you, Diana. We knew it in the navy of course, and we kept them clean and healthy and well fed, but to say that any government official would naturally know that—well, either men have grown very much wiser in a hundred and fifty years or something has happened to change the point of view.”

  “I don’t believe that we are any smarter than people were in your day. I don’t think such a thing is possible in four or five generations. But I don’t see how anyone could be so short-sighted.”

  “Even if an official did have your viewpoint and wanted to do something, he would be bound to ask ‘where is the money to come from?’. And no one could answer him. Cost of government was already too high.”

  “Where is the money to come from, Perry? Why, I never heard such silly talk. Where does any money come from? When the government sees a need for exchange, it creates it, of course. Why you had that in your day, Perry. It says right there in the original constitution, ‘Congress shall have the sole right to coin money and regulate the value thereof.’”

  “Yes, I remember that phrase. But that isn’t the way it worked out in my day. Money was created by the banks, most of it at least—the important part anyhow. If the government needed money and couldn’t raise it via taxes in time, it borrowed from the banks.”

  “But I don’t understand—the banks are a part of the government.”

  “Not in my day. They were private institutions. It might be proper to say that the banks were the government. In some ways they were stronger than the government.”

  “But that would b
e sheer blind anarchy!”

  “It was—pretty much.”

  “But see here, Perry. All this doesn’t check. You came from 1939 when Franklin Roosevelt was president. I don’t know a whole lot about history, but I do know that he is regarded as the first man in the new economic era. Why, there is a statue of him in Washington, showing him feeding the hungry.”

  “Yes, Mr. Roosevelt knew that all right. But he got very little cooperation, even from those he was trying to help. But it’s my turn to ask questions: Tell me, is there no longer anyone hungry?”

  “Of course not. Not in the United States at least.”

  “I meant the United States. Are there any sick?”

  “Oh yes. Not many of course.”

  “What happens to them?”

  “They are treated and taken care of to make them well. What else could you do?”

  “Never mind. Is anyone out of work?”

  “Out of work? Do you mean not working for money? Of course. At any one time I don’t suppose you will find more than half the population working to make money.”

  “Don’t those that work object to working while the others are idle?”

  “Why should they? Everybody can’t work all the time or nobody would have time to use what he has produced—no time to spend his credit. Everybody works whenever he feels the need of replenishing his credit—or if he has an occupation that he likes whether he needs more credit or not.”

  “Does everybody work part time?”

  “No. Most professional people work regularly because they like to. Take a surgeon for example. He will work forty weeks every year. If he is famous and loves his work, his vacation will be as busy as his credit work. Take me for example, I work every week now and have for quite a long time, a broadcast like tonight every week, not to mention recordings for stories and songs.”

  “Is that one broadcast all the work you do?”

  “I have to rehearse a lot and I’m expected to invent a new dance each week.”

  “How about people that aren’t professional people, the various kinds of skilled or semi-skilled labor, and tradesmen and so forth.”

  “Some work full time and some part time. Quite a number of people work for several years and then quit. Some people don’t work at all—not for money at least. They have simple tastes and are content to live on their heritage, philosophers and mathematicians and poets and such. There aren’t many like that however. Most people work at least part of the time.”