Spider Robinson: Orphans of Eden

Illustration by Alan M. Clark

Well, what would you have done?

Begin at the front part, Spider:

It was just after two in the morning. I was right here in my office (as we call the dining room in this family), about to write a science fiction story called “Orphans of Eden” on this loyal senescent Macintosh, when he appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, right next to my Lava Lamp. I don’t mean “came through the doorway and stopped”; I mean he appeared, in the doorway. He sort of shimmered into existence, like a Star Trek transportee, or the ballplayers disappearing into the corn in Field of Dreams in reverse. He was my height and age, but of normal weight. His clothing was crazier than a basketball bat. I never did get the hang of the fashion assumptions behind it. I’d like to say the first thing I noticed about it was the ingenious method of fastening, but actually that was the second thing; first I observed that his clothing pointedly avoided covering either genitals or armpits. I kind of liked that. If you lived in a nice world, why would you want to hide your smell? He stood with his hands slightly out from his sides, palms displayed, an expectant look on his extraordinarily beautiful face. He didn’t look afraid of me, so I wasn’t afraid of him. I hit command-S to save my changes (title and a handful of sentences) and forgot that story completely. Forever, now that I think about it.

“When are you from?” I asked him. “Originally, I mean.”

I’m not going too fast for you, am I? If a guy materializes in front of you, and you’re sober, he might be the genius who just invented the transporter beam… but if he’s dressed funny, he’s a time traveler, right? Gotta be. Thank God the kitchen door was open had been my very first thought.

He smiled, the kind of pleased but almost rueful smile you make when a friend comes through a practical joke better than you thought he would. “Very good,” he told me.

“It was OK, but that’s not a responsive answer.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I can’t say I think a lot of the question itself. Still, if it really matters to you, I was born in the year 2146… though we didn’t call it that at the time, naturally. Feel better, now?”

He was right: it hadn’t been much of a question. Just the only one I could come up with on the spur of the moment. But I thought it small of him to point it out. I mean, what a spur—what a moment! And the information was mildly interesting, if useless. “You don’t go around pulling this on civilians, do you?” I asked irritably. “You could give somebody a trauma.”

“Good Lord, no,” he said. “Why, half the other science fiction writers alive now would lose sphincter control if I materialized in their workplace like this.”

It was some comfort to think that my work might survive at least another 155 years. Unless, of course, he had run across one of my books in the middle of next week. “That’s because they think wonder is just another tool, like sex or violence or a sympathetic protagonist.”

“Whereas you know it is a religion, a Grail, the Divine Carrot that is the only thing that makes it possible for human beings to ever get anywhere without a stick across their ass, yes, it shows in your work. You understand that only by putting his faith in wonder can a man be a moral being. So you’re not afraid of me, or compelled to disbelieve in me, and you probably hadn’t even gotten around to trying to figure out a way to exploit me until I just mentioned it: you’re too busy wondering.”

I thought about it. “Well, I’m sorry to say I’ve been wasting a good deal of time and energy on trying not to look stupid in retrospect—but yes, most of my attention has been on wonder. Before we get to the question and answer section, though, what’s your name?”

“Why?” he asked. “There’s only one of me.”

“Suppose I want to swear at you.”

He gave a smaller version of that faintly annoying smile. “Good point. My name is Daniel.”

My wife’s ex-husband is named Daniel. Also amazing, also faintly annoying at times. “Would you mind if I went and woke up my wife? She’d be sore if I let her sleep through this.” Jeanne enjoys looking at very beautiful men. Obviously. Our teenager, on the other hand, would doubtless find a two-hundred-year-old grownup five times more boring than me—and enough music to wake her (the only thing that will do the trick) would probably also wake the tenants downstairs in the basement suite. “And would you care for some coffee?”

He shuddered slightly—then saw my expression. “Sorry. That was for the coffee, not your wife. Imagine I brought you back to a Cro-Magnon’s cave, and he offered you refreshments.”

My turn to apologize. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“As to Jeanne... please don’t misunderstand. I would be honored to meet her under other circumstances, another time. Your collaborations with her are even better than your solo work.” I nodded strong agreement. “But if I correctly decipher her input therein, she is a Soto Zen Buddhist and a sentimentalist.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I demanded.

“Nothing at all. But I seek advice on a practical matter of morality… and you understand how omelets are made.”

I frowned. “Do you mind if the Cro-Magnon has a little cup of jaguar blood to help him think?”

“This is your house,” he said simply.

Well, actually it isn’t—I’m a writer; I rent—but I knew what he meant, and agreed with it. I thought about that while I turned another cup of water into dark Tanzanian magic and spooned in sugar and whipped cream. By the time I tipped the Old Bushmill’s into the coffee my Irish was up. “Before we start,” I said.

“Yes?” He was watching my preparations with the same gravity I’d like to think I could bring to watching an autopsy.

“You have managed to be sufficiently interesting that I will forgive you this once,” I said. “But if you ever again drop in without phoning ahead first like that, I’ll set the cat on you.”

He did not quite look wildly around. “Do you have a cat?”

I winced. Smokey was killed a month ago, by some asshole motorist in a hurry. One of the best masters I ever served. “I’ll get one if necessary. And I don’t want to hear any guff when you reach my answering machine, either. It’s always on. People should be grateful I let ’em leave messages.”

“Understood and agreed,” he said. “And I apologize. But in my defense: what would you have done if I had left a phone message?”

I nodded. “That’s why I forgive you this once.” I made one last try at hospitality. “I can offer you charcoal-filtered water.”

“Thank you, no.”

I pointed to a kitchen chair, and took the one across the table from it for myself. He sat beautifully, like a dancer, or one of Jeanne ’s Alexander Technique students.

I took a long appreciative sip of my Irish coffee. “I’m listening, Daniel,” I said.

“Before we start.”

“Yeah?”

“When will you begin to get excited?”

“About a minute after you leave, I hope. By then I can afford to.”

He nodded. We both knew I was lying; the cup was trembling. He really was trying to be polite.

Why was he trying so hard to be polite?

“You spoke of wanting my advice on a practical matter of morality,” I went on. “Is this an ends-justifying-means kind of deal?”