The Past Through Tomorrow

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Wingate was assigned to the community radio when it was discovered that he had appropriate technical knowledge. The previous operator had been lost in the bush. His opposite number was a pleasant old codger, known as Doc, who could listen for signals but who knew nothing of upkeep and repair.

  Wingate threw himself into the job of overhauling the antiquated installation. The problems presented by lack of equipment, the necessity for “making do,” gave him a degree of happiness he had not known since he was a boy, but he was not aware of it.

  He was intrigued by the problem of safety in radio communication. An idea, derived from some account of the pioneer days in radio, gave him a lead. His installation, like all others, communicated by frequency modulation. Somewhere he had seen a diagram for a totally obsolete type of transmitter, an amplitude modulator. He did not have much to go on, but he worked out a circuit which he believed would oscillate in that fashion and which could be hooked up from the gear at hand.

  He asked the Governor for permission to attempt to build it. “Why not? Why not?” the Governor roared at him. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about, son, but if you think you can build a radio that the company can’t detect, go right ahead. You don’t have to ask me; it’s your pigeon.”

  “I’ll have to put the station out of commission for sending.”

  “Why not?”

  The problem had more knots in it than he had thought. But he labored at it with the clumsy but willing assistance of Doc. His first hookup failed; his forty-third attempt five weeks later worked. Doc, stationed some miles out in the bush, reported himself able to hear the broadcast via a small receiver constructed for the purpose, whereas Wingate picked up nothing whatsoever on the conventional receiver located in the same room with the experimental transmitter.

  In the meantime he worked on his book.

  Why he was writing a book he could not have told you. Back on Earth it could have been termed a political pamphlet against the colonial system. Here there was no one to convince of his thesis, nor had he any expectation of ever being able to present it to a reading public. Venus was his home. He knew that there was no chance for him ever to return; the only way lay through Adonis, and there, waiting for him, were warrants for half the crimes in the calendar, contract-jumping, theft, kidnapping, criminal abandonment, conspiracy, subverting government. If the company police ever laid hands on him, they would jail him and lose the key.

  No, the book arose, not from any expectation of publication, but from a half-subconscious need to arrange his thoughts. He had suffered a complete upsetting of all the evaluations by which he had lived; for his mental health it was necessary that he formulate new ones. It was natural to his orderly, if somewhat unimaginative, mind that he set his reasons and conclusions forth in writing.

  Somewhat diffidently he offered the manuscript to Doc. He had learned that the nickname title had derived from the man’s former occupation on Earth; he had been a professor of economics and philosophy in one of the smaller universities. Doc had even offered a partial explanation of his presence on Venus. “A little matter involving one of my women students,” he confided. “My wife took an unsympathetic view of the matter and so did the board of regents. The board had long considered my opinions a little too radical.”

  “Were they?”

  “Heavens, no! I was a rockbound conservative. But I had an unfortunate tendency to express conservative principles in realistic rather than allegorical language.”

  “I suppose you’re a radical now.”

  Doc’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Not at all. Radical and conservative are terms for emotional attitudes, not sociological opinions.”

  Doc accepted the manuscript, read it through, and returned it without comment. But Wingate pressed him for an opinion. “Well, my boy, if you insist—”

  “I do.”

  “—I would say that you have fallen into the commonest fallacy of all in dealing with social and economic subjects—the ‘devil theory.’”

  “Huh?”

  “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity. Colonial slavery is nothing new; it is the inevitable result of imperial expansion, the automatic result of an antiquated financial structure—”

  “I pointed out the part the banks played in my book.”

  “No, no, no! You think bankers are scoundrels. They are not. Nor are company officials, nor patrons, nor the governing classes back on Earth. Men are constrained by necessity and build up rationalizations to account for their acts. It is not even cupidity. Slavery is economically unsound, nonproductive, but men drift into it whenever the circumstances compel it. A different financial system—but that’s another story.”

  “I still think it’s rooted in human cussedness,” Wingate said stubbornly.

  “Not cussedness—simply stupidity. I can’t prove it to you, but you will learn.”

  The success of the “silent radio” caused the Governor to send Wingate on a long swing around the other camps of the free federation to help them rig new equipment and to teach them how to use it. He spent four hardworking and soul-satisfying weeks, and finished with the warm knowledge that he had done more to consolidate the position of the free men against their enemies than could be done by winning a pitched battle.

  When he returned to his home community, he found Sam Houston Jones waiting there.

  Wingate broke into a run. “Sam!” he shouted. “Sam! Sam!” He grabbed his hand, pounded him on the back, and yelled at him the affectionate insults that sentimental men use in attempting to cover up their weakness. “Sam, you old scoundrel! When did you get here? How did you escape? And how the devil did you manage to come all the way from South Pole? Were you transferred before you escaped?”

  “Howdy, Hump,” said Sam. “Now one at a time, and not so fast.”

  But Wingate bubbled on. “My, but it’s good to see your ugly face, fellow. And am I glad you came here—this is a great place. We’ve got the most up-and-coming little state in the whole federation. You’ll like it. They’re a great bunch—”

  “What are you?” Jones asked, eyeing him. “President of the local chamber of commerce?”

  Wingate looked at him, and then laughed. “I get it. But seriously, you will like it. Of course, it’s a lot different from what you were used to back on Earth—but that’s all past and done with. No use crying over spilt milk, eh?”

  “Wait a minute. You are under a misapprehension, Hump. Listen. I’m not an escaped slave. I’m here to take you back.”

  Wingate opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “But Sam,” he said, “that’s impossible. You don’t know.”

  “I think I do.”

  “But you don’t. There’s no going back for me. If I did, I’d have to face trial, and they’ve got me dead to rights. Even if I threw myself on the mercy of the court and managed to get off with a light sentence, it would be twenty years before I’d be a free man. No, Sam, it’s impossible. You don’t know the things I’m charged with.”

  “I don’t, eh? It’s cost me a nice piece of change to clear them up.”

  “Huh?”

  “I know how you escaped. I know you stole a crock and kidnapped your patron and got two other clients to run with you. It took my best blarney and plenty of folding money to fix it. So help me, Hump—why didn’t you pull something mild, like murder, or rape, or robbing a post office?”

  “Well, now, Sam—I didn’t do any of those things to cause you trouble. I had counted you out of my calculations. I was on my own. I’m sorry about the money.”

  “Forget it. Money isn’t an item with me. I’m filthy with the stuff. You know that. It comes from exercising care in the choice of parents. I was just pulling your leg and it came off in my hand.”

  “Okay. Sorry.” Wingate’s grin was a little forced. Nobody likes charity. “But tell me what happened. I’m still in the dark.”

  “Right.” Jones had been as much surpris
ed and distressed at being separated from Wingate on grounding as Wingate had been. But there had been nothing for him to do about it until he received assistance from Earth. He had spent long weeks as a metal worker at South Pole, waiting and wondering why his sister did not answer his call for help. He had written letters to her to supplement his first radiogram, that being the only type of communication he could afford, but the days crept past with no answer.

  When a message did arrive from her the mystery was cleared up. She had not received his radio to Earth promptly, because she too, was aboard the Evening Star—in the first class cabin, traveling, as was her custom, in a stateroom listed under her maid’s name. “It was the family habit of avoiding publicity that stymied us,” Jones explained. “If I hadn’t sent the radio to her rather than to the family lawyers, or if she had been known by name to the purser, we would have gotten together the first day.”

  The message had not been relayed to her on Venus because the bright planet had by that time crawled to superior opposition on the far side of the sun from the Earth. For a matter of sixty earth days there was no communication, Earth to Venus. The message had rested, recorded but still scrambled, in the hands of the family firm, until she could be reached.

  When she received it, she started a small tornado. Jones had been released, the liens against his contract paid, and ample credit posted to his name on Venus, in less than twenty-four hours. “So that was that,” concluded Jones, “except that I’ve got to explain to big sister when I get home just how I got into this mess. She’ll burn my ears.”

  Jones had chartered a rocket for North Pole and had gotten on Wingate’s trail at once. “If you had held on one more day, I would have picked you up. We retrieved your ex-patron about a mile from his gates.”

  “So the old villain made it. I’m glad of that.”

  “And a good job, too. If he hadn’t I might never have been able to square you. He was pretty well done in, and his heart was kicking up plenty. Do you know that abandonment is a capital offense on this planet—with a mandatory death sentence if the victim dies?”

  Wingate nodded. “Yeah, I know. Not that I ever heard of a patron being gassed for it, if the corpse was a client. But that’s beside the point. Go ahead.”

  “Well, he was plenty sore. I don’t blame him, though I don’t blame you, either. Nobody wants to be sold South, and I gather that was what you expected. Well, I paid him for his crock, and I paid him for your contract—take a look at me, I’m your new owner!—and I paid for the contracts of your two friends as well. Still he wasn’t satisfied. I finally had to throw in a first-class passage for his daughter back to Earth, and promise to find her a job. She’s a big dumb ox, but I guess the family can stand another retainer. Anyhow, old son, you’re a free man. The only remaining question is whether or not the Governor will let us leave here. It seems it’s not done.”

  “No, that’s a point. Which reminds me—how did you locate the place?”

  “A spot of detective work too long to go into now. That’s what took me so long. Slaves don’t like to talk. Anyhow, we’ve a date to talk to the Governor tomorrow.”

  Wingate took a long time to get to sleep. After his first burst of jubilation he began to wonder. Did he want to go back? To return to the law, to citing technicalities in the interest of whichever side employed him, to meaningless social engagements, to the empty, sterile, bunkum-fed life of the fat and prosperous class he had moved among and served—did he want that, he, who had fought and worked with men? It seemed to him that his anachronistic little “invention” in radio had been of more worth than all he had ever done on Earth.

  Then he recalled his book.

  Perhaps he could get it published. Perhaps he could expose this disgraceful, inhuman system which sold men into legal slavery. He was really wide awake now. There was a thing to do! That was his job—to go back to Earth and plead the cause of the colonists. Maybe there was destiny that shapes men’s lives after all. He was just the man to do it, the right social background, the proper training. He could make himself heard.

  He fell asleep, and dreamt of cool, dry breezes, of clear blue sky. Of moonlight…

  Satchel and Jimmie decided to stay, even though Jones had been able to fix it up with the Governor. “It’s like this,” said Satchel. “There’s nothing for us back on Earth, or we wouldn’t have shipped in the first place. And you can’t undertake to support a couple of deadheads. And this isn’t such a bad place. It’s going to be something someday. We’ll stay and grow up with it.”

  They handled the crock which carried Jones and Wingate to Adonis. There was no hazard in it, as Jones was now officially their patron. What the authorities did not know they could not act on. The crock returned to the refugee community loaded with a cargo which Jones insisted on calling their ransom. As a matter of fact, the opportunity to send an agent to obtain badly needed supplies—one who could do so safely and without arousing the suspicions of the company authorities—had been the determining factor in the Governor’s unprecedented decision to risk compromising the secrets of his constituency. He had been frankly not interested in Wingate’s plans to agitate for the abolishment of the slave trade.

  Saying goodbye to Satchel and Jimmie was something Wingate found embarrassing and unexpectedly depressing.

  For the first two weeks after grounding on Earth both Wingate and Jones were too busy to see much of each other. Wingate had gotten his manuscript in shape on the return trip and had spent the time getting acquainted with the waiting rooms of publishers. Only one had shown any interest beyond a form letter of rejection.

  “I’m sorry, old man,” that one had told him. “I’d like to publish your book, in spite of its controversial nature, if it stood any chance at all of success. But it doesn’t. Frankly, it has no literary merit whatsoever. I would as soon read a brief.”

  “I think I understand,” Wingate answered sullenly. “A big publishing house can’t afford to print anything which might offend the powers-that-be.”

  The publisher took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the younger man before replying. “I suppose I should resent that,” he said quietly, “but I won’t. That’s a popular misconception. The powers-that-be, as you call them, do not resort to suppression in this country. We publish what the public will buy. We’re in business for that purpose.

  “I was about to suggest, if you will listen, a means of making your book saleable. You need a collaborator, somebody that knows the writing game and can put some guts in it.”

  Jones called the day that Wingate got his revised manuscript back from his ghost writer. “Listen to this, Sam,” he pleaded. “Look, what the dirty so-and-so has done to my book. Look. ‘—I heard again the crack of the overseer’s whip. The frail body of my mate shook under the lash. He gave one cough and slid slowly under the waist-deep water, dragged down by his chains.’ Honest, Sam, did you ever see such drivel? And look at the new title: ‘I Was a Slave on Venus.’ It sounds like a confession magazine.”

  Jones nodded without replying. “And listen to this,” Wingate went on, “‘—crowded like cattle in the enclosure, their naked bodies gleaming with sweat, the women slaves shrank from the—’ Oh, hell, I can’t go on!”

  “Well, they did wear nothing but harnesses.”

  “Yes, yes—but that has nothing to do with the case. Venus costume is a necessary concomitant of the weather. There’s no excuse to leer about it.

  He’s turned my book into a damned sex show. And he had the nerve to defend his actions. He claimed that social pamphleteering is dependent on extravagant language.”

  “Well, maybe he’s got something. Gulliver’s Travels certainly has some racy passages, and the whipping scenes in Uncle Tom’s Cabin aren’t anything to hand a kid to read. Not to mention Grapes of Wrath.”

  “Well, I’m damned if I’ll resort to that kind of cheap sensationalism. I’ve got a perfectly straightforward case that any one can understand.”

  “Have you
now?” Jones took his pipe out of his mouth. “I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to get your eyes opened. What is your case? It’s nothing new; it happened in the Old South, it happened again in California, in Mexico, in Australia, in South Africa. Why? Because in any expanding free-enterprise economy which does not have a money system designed to fit its requirements the use of mother-country capital to develop the colony inevitably results in subsistence-level wages at home and slave labor in the colonies. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and all the good will in the world on the part of the so-called ruling classes won’t change it, because the basic problem is one requiring scientific analysis and a mathematical mind. Do you think you can explain those issues to the general public?”

  “I can try.”

  “How far did I get when I tried to explain them to you—before you had seen the results? And you are a smart hombre. No, Hump, these things are too difficult to explain to people and too abstract to interest them. You spoke before a women’s club the other day, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you make out?”

  “Well… the chairwoman called me up beforehand and asked me to hold my talk down to ten minutes, as their national president was to be there and they would be crowded for time.”

  “Hmm… you see where your great social message rates in competition. But never mind. Ten minutes is long enough to explain the issue to a person if they have the capacity to understand it. Did you sell anybody?”

  “Well… I’m not sure.”

  “You’re darp tootin‘ you’re not sure. Maybe they clapped for you but how many of them came up afterwards and wanted to sign checks? No, Hump, sweet reasonableness won’t get you anywhere in this racket. To make yourself heard you have to be a demagogue, or a rabble-rousing political preacher like this fellow Nehemiah Scudder. We’re going merrily to hell and it won’t stop until it winds up in a crash.”