Robert Heinlein - Variable Star

We came to a large door that looked like a polished slab of real wood. It lacked the customary ID scanner, but at about the same location it had an antique fitting I guessed at once must be the fabled doorknob: a flattened toroid like a brass onion, sticking out from the door on a short horizontal stalk. I wasn’t quite quick enough to catch the procedure Rennick used to operate it. It was hard to follow: some sort of small probe, a quick torquing motion, and a small clack sound. Cued by the sound, I was not too surprised when the door swung inward away from us instead of dilating: it actually was a polished slab of real wood, a good fifteen centimeters thick. I followed him through the doorway, and had to step out of the way so he could swing it shut behind us. I was sure we had reached the Holy of Holies, at last.

Wrong again.

It certainly looked very like what I had been expecting to see: the serious working office of a major CEO or senior politician, tastefully decorated and lavishly equipped. It had every imaginable sort of monitor screen, display, input device, peripheral or other gadget, but the utilitarian effect was softened by a carefully chaotic profusion of exotic and lovely plant life. Dominating the room was a huge piece of furniture as obsolete as the doorknob, for some reason called a desk even though it had no graphic interface or surface icons—not even a trash can. It was basically an elaborate table intended to provide a stable flat work surface plus storage drawers. In films, such a desk is usually covered with items: a primitive telephone, a keypad and monitor, family flat photos, styli, and so on. This one was as austerely, majestically bare as I would have expected from a man of great power.

Two things immediately spoiled the picture, though. First, the absence of any men in the room. And then, the presence of a woman behind the desk. Her apparent age was five years higher than my own, and the fake was very impressive, but there were at least seventy years of skepticism in those eyes and the set of her mouth.

“Morning, Dorothy,” Rennick said. “This is Joel Johnston. Joel, Dorothy Robb.”

“Good morning, Alex,” she greeted him. “Relax: you’re early. And good morning to you, too, Mr. Johnston.” She offered me her hand. Her voice was wonderfully husky, like a great jazz singer near the end of her career; I wondered if she sang.

In my social circle, my move would now have been to shake her hand firmly and release. I had no idea what was done at this altitude—even if I’d had a clue what our relative status was. Deep breath. What would Dad do? “Good morning, Ms. Robb,” I said, did my second-best bow, and kissed her hand.

She removed it quickly and said, “Dorothy!” sharply, but I knew she was not offended because almost at once she softened it by adding, “‘Ms. Robb’ sounds too much like—”

I nodded. “A Victor Hugo novel. In that case, I’m Joel.”

Those cynical eyes opened a bit wider. “You read!”

“My parents infected me before I knew any better. There was no bedtime, as long as I was reading a book.”

“What splendid parents.”

Suddenly I felt myself blush. My multitrack mind was still playing with our pun, and it had suddenly realized that the full title of the book we were discussing would have been Lay Ms. Robb. Her sharp eyes caught me blushing, and twinkled. I realized I’d made no response to her compliment, and was too flustered to formulate one.

She saved me. “Do you know the story of the American farm wife who wrote a letter to Victor Hugo, Joel?”

“No, I don’t,” I said gratefully.

“She wrote, ‘Dear Vic—’” I couldn’t help smiling; her accent and deadpan delivery were good. “‘We shore liked that book you wrote there, Less Miserables’”—I began to grin broadly, and Rennick did, too—“‘but we wanted to ask you one thing we cain’t figger out: which one o’ them characters was Les?’” I broke up, turned to Rennick, and saw that he was chuckling, too—and had absolutely no idea why. Oops. Oh, well—no reason his education should include period French literature. No reason anyone’s should, really.

“What a glorious story,” I said to Dorothy. “Is it apocryphal?”

“Oh, I hope so. Imagine the poor man trying to compose a response.”

I decided to take the bull by the horns. “May I ask your job title, Dorothy?”

She snorted. “Professional bureaucratic-gibberish composers have wept with frustration over that one. There doesn’t seem to be an adequate descriptive that any of them liked. For accounting purposes we finally settled on Enabler, which they simply hate.”

“Like a personal secretary, sort of?”

She did not smile. “Mr. Conrad has seven personal secretaries. One executive secretary, two research secretaries, a social secretary, a scheduling secretary, a record-keeping secretary, and a personal private secretary. Plus assorted personal executive assistants and chiefs of staff and first facilitators and chief counselors and senior advisors and legal counsels and a personal physiotherapist and several personal physicians and psychiatrists—a clinic, really—plus an incredibly complex impossibly sprawling extended personal family. And then of course there is the empire itself, with its hundreds of CEOs, comptrollers, and so on. And finally there are the various executives, and executive, legislative, and judicial branches, of a great many governments. I am one of two people through whom he accesses all those people. And vice versa. I have the 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. shift—or 1:00 P.M. to 1:00 A.M. Greenwich.”

I blinked. “And you have time to tell me Victor Hugo jokes?”

“No. That’s why I enjoyed it so much. You looked like you needed relaxing.”

“I still do! How much time do I have?”

“None,” she said. A previously unsuspected door occurred behind her. “Good luck, Joel.”

Rennick stepped forward and entered. I didn’t. The powers of motion and speech had deserted me.

“You’ll be fine,” she murmured. “The suit looks terrific on you.”

When you’re too scared to move, there’s a simple fix. I’m not saying easy —but simple. Just lean forward. That’s all you need to do. Keep it up long enough and you’ll fall on your face—but your body won’t let you. It will automatically put a foot out… and now you’re moving forward. Repeat as needed. Remember to alternate feet.

Before I knew it I was passing through the doorway, lurching only slightly.

The room was not small, but smaller than I had expected, and further surprised me by being furnished more like a den or a study than an office. At the far end of the room was a conversational grouping of four chairs. Rennick was just reaching the leftmost of the two that faced away from me. The two facing toward me were already occupied. In each sat a man who appeared to be approximately Rennick’s age. The fourth chair, its back to me, was obviously the hot seat.

My feet wanted to stop in their tracks again. But I managed to keep leaning forward. As I headed for the death chair, I invoked my very sharpest self-criticism. You have not thought this through .

Myself replied with some asperity, And how the hell was I supposed to do that, chum? Using what data?

Social customs on Ganymede are considerably simpler and more direct than those on Earth: a frontier society is just too busy for indirection, innuendo, and ceremony. Nevertheless, I had, under Jinny’s tutelage, gradually managed to soak up enough Terran manners to get by, in the sorts of social situations in which I found myself. It had been some time since I’d heard anyone mutter, “Hayseed!” under their breath after a conversation with me.