Robert Heinlein - Variable Star

“The family name.”

“The family name my left foot! The family genes . Stinky, I’m a female human animal; my number one job is to get married and make babies. And because I’m who I am, a member of a powerful dynasty, it makes all the difference in the world what baby I have—and who its father is.” She let go of my hands and sat up straight. “You’re it. This is not a snap decision.”

It began to dawn on me that I was not merely being offered acceptance into the fringes of the Conrad family. I was being asked to father its heirs.

On Ganymede I’d grown up seeing stud bulls brought in and put to work. They were always treated with great care and respect, very well fed, and certainly got all the healthy exercise a male animal could possibly want. Their DNA was vastly more successful than that of most other bulls, and their own lives vastly longer. Nobody made jokes about them in their hearing.

But I couldn’t recall one who had looked very happy about the business.

“Don’t look so worried, Stinky. It’s going to work out fine. You do want to marry me, we settled that, right?”

I opened my mouth—realized I was harpooned, and closed it again. I had stated that only money prevented me from proposing; I didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Nevertheless I found myself on my feet and being embraced. I had to admit it was a very nice embrace, warm and close and fragrant. “Then it’s all really very simple. All you need is a nice long chat with Gran’ther Richard. You’ll love him, really. And I know he’ll love you.”

I stiffened in her arms, and fought with the impulse to faint. Good old Grandpa Richard. Known to the rest of the Solar System as Conrad of Conrad. The patriarch. The Chairman. I’d heard he had broken premiers. But perhaps the most awesome thing about his wealth was that, when I thought about it, I didn’t actually know a single fact about him, save his name and exalted position. I’d never read an article about him, or viewed a bio, or even seen a picture of his face. For all I knew he had taken my cloak when I arrived. Harun el-Hatchek.

She released me and stepped back. “You’ll see him first thing tomorrow. He’ll explain things. And then afterward you and I will have breakfast together and start to make some plans. Good night, Stinky.”

We parted without a kiss. She didn’t offer, and I didn’t try. I was starting to feel resentment at having been played for so long—and also I flatly did not believe there were no cameras on us.

After she was gone, I thought about firing up that Universal Access Rennick/Smithers had mentioned, and researching the size and scope of the Conrad empire. But I knew if I did so here, now, on this computer system, Gran’ther Richard would know about it. It just smelled ripe to me. Milady brings home a handsome hick, and the first thing he does is start pricing the furniture. The thought made my cheeks burn.

Instead I used that UA to google around until I had figured out the “Smithers” gag. It turned out to be just as well Rennick didn’t know the reference—if in fact he really didn’t. Jinny was comparing him to an ancient cartoon character who was a cringing bootlicker, a toady, a completely repressed monosexual, and an unrequited lover. I wondered how much of that was accurate and how much libel. And just how far the analogy was meant to go: Smithers’s employer in the cartoon, a Mr. Burns, was vastly rich, impossibly old, and in every imaginable way a monster. Did he represent Jinny’s grandfather? Or father?

Well, I would find out in the morning. Or maybe I would get lucky and be struck by a meteorite first.

The bed turned out to be just like mine back at the dorm, except the mattress was better, the sheets were infinitely softer and lighter, and the pillow was gooshier. Was I hallucinating, or did the pillowcase really smell faintly of Jinny’s shampoo? It certainly did put a different perspective on things. It might be nice to smell that on my pillow every night from now on. And every morning. If in fact I was really smelling it now. While I was wondering, I fell asleep.

“Joel. It’s time to wake up, dear.”

Yes, that was definitely her hair I smelled.

I had heard Jinny say just those words, in much that low throaty tone of voice, at the start of more than one pleasant dream. It was a novel experience to hear them at the end of one. Now if only everything else would continue to unfold as it usually did in the dream….

I opened my eyes and she was not there. The scent was either vestigial or imagined. Drat .

“You really need to wake up now, Joel,” she murmured insistently from somewhere nearby.

“Okay,” I said.

“Wake up, Joel. It’s time t—”

I sat up, and she chopped off in midword. She wasn’t there. Anywhere.

I wake up hard . I had to sit there, blinking, for a few seconds before I had it worked out. The speaker was not Jinny but Leo the AI server, perfectly imitating her voice while acting as an alarm clock. Doing the job well, too: I could fool my own alarm at the dorm by simply telling it I was getting up. Leo was programmed to accept nothing less than verticality as proof of compliance.

Why did I need to get up now? I could tell I had not had eight hours’ sleep. I had graduated, for Pete’s sake—what was so urgent?

It all came back to me at once. Oh, yes. That’s right. Today I was going to have a personal interview with one of the most powerful men in the Solar System. Had I supposed it would be scheduled for my convenience? A man like Conrad of Conrad would doubtless want to dispose of matters as trivial as meeting his grandchild’s fiancé as early as possible in the business day.

“How soon am I expected?” I asked.

“In half an hour, Mr. Joel,” Leo said in his own voice.

“How do I get breakfast?”

“I can take your order, sir.”

I started to say scrambled on toast, bucket of black coffee, liter of OJ. Then I thought to myself, this morning you are going to have a personal interview with one of the most powerful men in the Solar System. “Eggs Benedict, home fries, Tanzanian coffee—French Press, please, two sugars and eighteen percent cream, keep it coming—and squeeze a dozen oranges.”

Leo returned the serve. “Very good, Mr. Joel. Do you prefer peaberry or the normal bean?”

“The peaberry, I think,” I managed.

There was a scratching sound at the door. It opened, and a servant entered, pushing a tray ahead of him at shoulder height with two fingers. He was easily as old and as ugly as the servants I’d seen the night before, but nowhere near as surly. Maybe day shift was better.

“What’s that?” I asked.

He steered the tray to a table near the bed, and somehow persuaded it to sit down. “Eggs Benedict, potatoes, coffee, fresh orange juice, and this morning’s news, sir,” he said, pointing to each item as he named it. Nothing in his manner suggested that only an idiot would need these things named.

I promised myself that just as soon as I had the time, I would wonder, very hard, about how any of those items could have been produced instantly, much less all of them at once. But meanwhile, there was no sense pretending they had not caught me by surprise. “If I’d known how fast the service is here, I’d have asked them to wait ten minutes, while I used the ’fresher,” I said with a rueful grin.

He turned to the tray, made some sort of mystic gesture. The food became obscured by a hemisphere of… well, it looked like shimmery air. “Take as long as you like, sir. Everything will be the same temperature and consistency when you get back out.”

Oh. Of course. I wondered how the hell I would get the air to stop shimmering, but I was determined not to ask. I’d figure it out somehow.