The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Sally and Joe were going over to see a legislator whom they thought might sponsor our bill, so they dropped me off at the capitol. I wanted to listen to some of the debate.

  It gave me a warm feeling to climb up the big, wide steps of the statehouse. The old, ugly mass of masonry seemed to represent something tough in the character of the American people, the determination of free men to manage their own affairs. Our own current problem seemed a little smaller, not quite so overpoweringly important—still worth working on, but simply one example in a long history of the general problem of self-government.

  I noticed something else as I was approaching the great bronze doors; the contractor for the outer construction of the building must have made his pile; the mix for the mortar was not richer than one to six!

  I decided on the Assembly rather than the Senate because Sally said they generally put on a livelier show. When I entered the hall they were discussing a resolution to investigate the tarring and feathering the previous month of three agricultural-worker organizers up near the town of Six Points. Sally had remarked that it was on the calendar for the day, but that it would not take long because the proponents of the resolution did not really want it. However, the Central Labor Council had passed a resolution demanding it, and the labor-supported members were stuck with it.

  The reason why they could only go through the motions of asking for an investigation was that the organizers were not really human beings at all, but mandrakes, a fact that the state council had not been aware of when they asked for an investigation. Since the making of mandrakes is the blackest kind of black magic, and highly illegal, they needed some way to drop it quietly. The use of mandrakes has always been opposed by organized labor, because it displaces real men—men with families to support. For the same reasons they oppose synthetic facsimiles and homunculi. But it is well known that the unions are not above using mandrakes, or mandragoras, as well as facsimiles, when it suits their purpose, such as for pickets, pressure groups, and the like. I suppose they feel justified in fighting fire with fire. Homunculi they can’t use on account of their size, since they are too small to be passed off as men.

  If Sally had not primed me, I would not have understood what took place. Each of the labor members got up and demanded in forthright terms a resolution to investigate. When they were all through, someone proposed that the matter be tabled until the grand jury of the county concerned held its next meeting. This motion was voted on without debate and without a roll call; although practically no members were present except those who had spoken in favor of the original resolution, the motion passed easily.

  There was the usual crop of oil-industry bills on the agenda, such as you read about in the newspapers every time the legislature is in session. One of them was the next item on the day’s calendar—a bill which proposed that the governor negotiate a treaty with the gnomes, under which the gnomes would aid the petroleum engineers in prospecting and, in addition, would advise humans in drilling methods so as to maintain the natural gas pressure underground needed to raise the oil to the surface. I think that is the idea, but I am no petroleum engineer.

  The proponent spoke first. “Mr. Speaker,” he said, “I ask for a ‘Yes’ vote on this bill, AB 79. Its purpose is quite simple and the advantages obvious. A very large part of the overhead cost of recovering crude oil from the ground lies in the uncertainties of prospecting and drilling. With the aid of the Little People this item can be reduced to an estimated 7 per cent of its present dollar cost, and the price of gasoline and other petroleum products to the people can be greatly lessened.

  “The matter of underground gas pressure is a little more technical, but suffice it to say that it takes, in round numbers, a thousand cubic feet of natural gas to raise one barrel of oil to the surface. If we can get intelligent supervision of drilling operations far underground, where no human being can go, we can make the most economical use of this precious gas pressure.

  “The only rational objection to this bill lies in whether or not we can deal with the gnomes on favorable terms. I believe that we can, for the Administration has some excellent connections in the Half World. The gnomes are willing to negotiate in order to put a stop to the present condition of chaos in which human engineers drill blindly, sometimes wrecking their homes and not infrequently violating their sacred places. They not unreasonably claim everything under the surface as their kingdom, but are willing to make any reasonable concession to abate what is to them an intolerable nuisance.

  “If this treaty works out well, as it will, we can expect to arrange other treaties which will enable us to exploit all of the metal and mineral resources of this state under conditions highly advantageous to us and not hurtful to the gnomes. Imagine, if you please, having a gnome with his X-ray eyes peer into a mountainside and locate a rich vein of gold for you!”

  It seemed very reasonable, except that, having once seen the king of the gnomes, I would not trust him very far, unless Mrs. Jennings did the negotiating.

  As soon as the proponent sat down, another member jumped up and just as vigorously denounced it. He was older than most of the members, and I judged him to be a country lawyer. His accent placed him in the northern part of the state, well away from the oil country. “Mr. Speaker,” he bellowed, “I ask for a vote of ‘No’! Who would dream that an American legislature would stoop to such degrading nonsense? Have any of you ever seen a gnome? Have you any reason to believe that gnomes exist? This is just a cheap piece of political chicanery to do the public out of its proper share of the natural resources of our great state—”

  He was interrupted by a question. “Does the honorable member from Lincoln County mean to imply that he has no belief in magic? Perhaps he does not believe in the radio or the telephone either.”

  “Not at all. If the Chair will permit, I will state my position so clearly that even my respected colleagues on the other side of the house will understand it. There are certain remarkable developments in human knowledge in general use which are commonly referred to by the laity as magic. These principles are well understood and are taught, I am happy to say, in our great publicly owned institutions for higher learning. I have every respect for the legitimate practitioners thereof. But, as I understand it, although I am not myself a practitioner of the great science, there is nothing in it that requires a belief in the Little People.

  “But let us stipulate, for the sake of argument, that the Little People do exist. Is that any reason to pay them blackmail? Should the citizens of this commonwealth pay cumshaw to the denizens of the underworld—” He waited for his pun to be appreciated. It wasn’t. “—for that which is legally and rightfully ours? If this ridiculous principle is pushed to its logical conclusion, the farmer and dairymen I am proud to number among my constituents will be required to pay toll to the elves before they can milk their cows!”

  Someone slid into the seat beside me. I glanced around, saw that it was Jedson, and questioned him with my eyes. “Nothing doing now,” he whispered. “We’ve got some time to kill and might as well do it here”—and he turned to the debate.

  Somebody had gotten up to reply to the old duck with the Daniel Webster complex. “Mr. Speaker, if the honored member is quite through with his speech—I did not quite catch what office he is running for!—I would like to invite the attention of this body to the precedented standing in jurisprudence of elements of every nature, not only in Mosaic law, Roman law, the English common law, but also in the appellate court of our neighboring state to the south. I am confident that anyone possessing even an elementary knowledge of the law will recognize the case I have in mind without citation, but for the benefit of—”

  “Mr. Speaker! I move to amend by striking out the last word.”

  “A stratagem to gain the floor,” Joe whispered.

  “Is it the purpose of the honorable member who preceded me to imply—”

  It went on and on. I turned to Jedson and asked, “I can’t figure out this chap who
is speaking; a while ago he was hollering about cows. What’s he afraid of, religious prejudices?”

  “Partly that; he’s from a very conservative district. But he’s lined up with the independent oilmen. They don’t want the state setting the terms; they think they can do better dealing with the gnomes directly.”

  “But what interest has he got in oil? There’s no oil in his district.”

  “No. But there is outdoor advertising. The same holding company that controls the so-called independent oilmen holds a voting trust in the Countryside Advertising Corporation. And that can be awful important to him around election time.”

  The Speaker looked our way, and an assistant sergeant at arms threaded his way toward us. We shut up. Someone moved the order of the day, and the oil bill was put aside for one of the magic bills that had already come out of committee. This was a bill to outlaw every sort of magic, witchcraft, thaumaturgy.

  No one spoke for it but the proponent, who launched into a diatribe that was more scholarly than logical. He quoted extensively from Blackstone’s Commentaries and the records of the Massachusetts trials, and finished up with his head thrown back, one finger waving wildly to heaven and shouting. “‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’”

  No one bothered to speak against it; it was voted on immediately without roll call, and, to my complete bewilderment, passed without a single nay! I turned to Jedson and found him smiling at the expression on my face.

  “It doesn’t mean a thing, Archie,” he said quietly.

  “Huh?”

  “He’s a party wheel horse who had to introduce that bill to please a certain bloc of his constituents.”

  “You mean he doesn’t believe in the bill himself?”

  “Oh no, he believes in it all right, but he also knows it is hopeless. It has evidently been agreed to let him pass it over here in the Assembly this session so that he would have something to take home to his people. Now it will go to the senate committee and die there; nobody will ever hear of it again.”

  I guess my voice carries too well, for my reply got us a really dirty look from the Speaker. We got up hastily and left.

  Once outside I asked what had happened that he was back so soon. “He would not touch it,” he told me. “Said that he couldn’t afford to antagonize the association.”

  “Does that finish us?”

  “Not at all. Sally and I are going to see another member right after lunch. He’s tied up in a committee meeting at the moment.”

  We stopped in a restaurant where Jedson had arranged to meet Sally Logan. Jedson ordered lunch, and I had a couple of cans of devitalized beer, insisting on their bringing it to the booth in the unopened containers. I don’t like to get even a little bit tipsy, although I like to drink. On another occasion I had paid for the wizard-processed liquor and had received intoxicating liquor instead. Hence the unopened containers.

  I sat there, staring into my glass and thinking about what I had heard that morning, especially about the bill to outlaw all magic. The more I thought about it the better the notion seemed. The country had gotten along all right in the old days before magic had become popular and commercially widespread. It was unquestionably a headache in many ways, even leaving out our present troubles with racketeers and monopolists. Finally I expressed my opinion to Jedson.

  But he disagreed. According to him prohibition never does work in any field. He said that anything which can be supplied and which people want will be supplied—law or no law. To prohibit magic would simply be to turn over the field to the crooks and the black magicians.

  “I see the drawbacks of magic as well as you do,” he went on, “but it is like firearms. Certainly guns made it possible for almost anyone to commit murder and get away with it. But once they were invented the damage was done. All you can do is to try to cope with it. Things like the Sullivan Act—they didn’t keep the crooks from carrying guns and using them; they simply took guns out of the hands of honest people.

  “It’s the same with magic. If you prohibit it, you take from decent people the enormous boons to be derived from a knowledge of the great arcane laws, while the nasty, harmful secrets hidden away in black grimoires and red grimoires will still be bootlegged to anyone who will pay the price and has no respect for law.

  “Personally, I don’t believe there was any less black magic practiced between, say, 1750 and 1950 than there is now, or was before then. Take a look at Pennsylvania and the hex country. Take a look at the Deep South. But since that time we have begun to have the advantages of white magic too.”

  Sally came in, spotted us, and slid into one side of the booth. “My,” she said with a sigh of relaxation, “I’ve just fought my way across the lobby of the Constitution. The ‘third house’ is certainly out in full force this trip. I’ve never seen ’em so thick, especially the women.”

  “Third house?” I said.

  “She means lobbyists, Archie,” Jedson explained. “Yes, I noticed them. I’d like to make a small bet that two thirds of them are synthetic.”

  “I thought I didn’t recognize many of them,” Sally commented. “Are you sure, Joe?”

  “Not entirely. But Bodie agrees with me. He says that the women are almost all mandrakes, or androids of some sort. Real women are never quite so perfectly beautiful—nor so tractable. I’ve got him checking on them now.”

  “In what way?”

  “He says he can spot the work of most of the magicians capable of that high-powered stuff. If possible we want to prove that all these androids were made by Magic, Incorporated—though I’m not sure just what use we can make of the fact.

  “Bodie has even located some zombies,” he added.

  “Not really!” exclaimed Sally. She wrinkled her nose and looked disgusted. “Some people have odd tastes.”

  They started discussing aspects of politics that I know nothing about, while Sally put away a very sizable lunch topped off by a fudge ice-cream cake slice. But I noticed that she ordered from the left-hand side of the menu—all vanishing items, like the alcohol in my beer.

  I found out more about the situation as they talked. When a bill is submitted to the legislature, it is first referred to a committee for hearings. Ditworth’s bill, AB 22, had been referred to the Committee on Professional Standards. Over in the Senate an identical bill had turned up and had been referred by the lieutenant governor, who presides in the Senate, to the Committee on Industrial Practices.

  Our immediate object was to find a sponsor for our bill; if possible, one for each house, and preferably sponsors who were members, in their respective houses, of the committees concerned. All of this needed to be done before Ditworth’s bills came up for hearing.

  I went with them to see their second-choice sponsor for the Assembly. He was not on the Professional Standards Committee, but he was on the Ways and Means Committee, which meant that he carried a lot of weight in any committee.

  He was a pleasant chap named Spence—Luther B. Spence—and I could see that he was quite anxious to please Sally—for past favors, I suppose. But they had no more luck with him than with their first-choice man. He said that he did not have time to fight for our bill, as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee was sick and he was chairman pro tem.

  Sally put it to him flatly. “Look here, Luther, when you have needed a hand in the past, you’ve gotten it from me. I hate to remind a man of obligations, but you will recall that matter of the vacancy last year on the Fish and Game Commission. Now I want action on this matter, and not excuses!”

  Spence was plainly embarrassed. “Now, Sally, please don’t feel like that. You’re getting your feathers up over nothing. You know I’ll always do anything I can for you, but you don’t really need this, and it would necessitate my neglecting things that I can’t afford to neglect.”

  “What do you mean, I don’t need it?”

  “I mean you should not worry about AB 22. It’s a cinch bill.”

  Jedson explained that term to me
later. A cinch bill, he said, was a bill introduced for tactical reasons. The sponsors never intended to try to get it enacted into law, but simply used it as a bargaining point. It’s like an “asking price” in a business deal.

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Why, yes, I think so. The word has been passed around that there is another bill coming up that won’t have the bugs in it that this bill has.”

  After we left Spence’s office, Jedson said, “Sally, I hope Spence is right, but I don’t trust Ditworth’s intentions. He’s out to get a strangle-hold on the industry. I know it!”

  “Luther usually has the correct information, Joe.”

  “Yes, that is no doubt true, but this is a little out of his line. Anyhow, thanks, kid. You did your best.”

  “Call on me if there is anything else, Joe. And come out to dinner before you go; you haven’t seen Bill or the kids yet.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  Jedson finally gave up as impractical trying to submit our bill, and concentrated on the committees handling Ditworth’s bills. I did not see much of him. He would go out at four in the afternoon to a cocktail party and get back to the hotel at three in the morning, bleary-eyed, with progress to report.

  He woke me up the fourth night and announced jubilantly, “It’s in the bag, Archie!”

  “You killed those bills?”

  “Not quite. I couldn’t manage that. But they will be reported out of committee so amended that we won’t care if they do pass. Furthermore, the amendments are different in each committee.”

  “Well, what of that?”

  “That means that even if they do pass their respective houses they will have to go to conference committee to have their differences ironed out, then back for final passage in each house. The chances of that this late in a short session are negligible. Those bills are dead.”

  Jedson’s predictions were justified. The bills came out of committee with a “do pass” recommendation late Saturday evening. That was the actual time; the statehouse clock had been stopped forty-eight hours before to permit first and second readings of an administration “must” bill. Therefore it was officially Thursday. I know that sounds cock-eyed, and it is, but I am told that every legislature in the country does it toward the end of a crowded session.