Robert Heinlein - Time For The Stars

Then they brought Pat home on a shutter.

It was actually an ambulance craft, specially chartered. The idiot had sneaked off and tried skiing, which he knew as much about as I know about pearl diving. He did not have much of a tumble; he practically fell over his own feet. But there he was, being carried into our flat on a stretcher, numb from the waist down and his legs useless. He should have been taken to a hospital, but he wanted to come home and Mum wanted him to come home, so Dad insisted on it. He wound up in the room Faith had vacated and I went back to sleeping on the couch.

The household was all upset, worse than it had been when Pat went away. Dad almost threw Frank Dubois out of the house when Frank said that now that this space travel nonsense was disposed of, he was still prepared to give Pat a job if he would study bookkeeping, since a bookkeeper could work from a wheelchair. I don't know; maybe Frank had good intentions, but I sometimes think "good intentions" should be declared a capital crime.

But the thing that made me downright queasy was the way Mother took it. She was full of tears and sympathy and she could not do enough for Pat—she spent hours rubbing his legs, until she was ready to collapse. But I could see, even if Dad couldn't, that she was indecently happy—she had her "baby" back. Oh, the tears weren't fake... but females seem able to cry and be happy at the same time.

We all knew that the "space travel nonsense" was washed up, but we did not discuss it, not even Pat and I; while he was flat on his back and helpless and no doubt feeling even worse than I did was no time to blame him for hogging things and then wasting our chance. Maybe I was bitter but it was no time to let him know. I was uneasily aware that the fat LRF cheeks would stop soon and the family would be short of money again when we needed it most and I regretted that expensive watch and the money I had blown in taking Maudie to places we had never been able to afford, but I avoided thinking about even that; it was spilt milk. But I did wonder what kind of a job I could get instead of starting college.

I was taken off guard when Mr. Howard showed up—I had halfway expected that LRF would carry us on the payroll until after Pat was operated on, even though the accident was not their fault and was the result of Pat's not obeying their regulations. But with the heaps of money they had I thought they might be generous.

But Mr. Howard did not even raise the question of the Foundation paying for, or not paying for, Pat's disability; he simply wanted to know how soon I would be ready to report to the training center?

I was confused and Mother was hysterical and Dad was angry and Mr. Howard was bland. To listen to him you would have thought that nothing had happened, certainly nothing which involved the slightest idea of letting us out of our contract. The parties of the second part and of the third part were interchangeable; since Pat could not go, naturally I would. Nothing had happened which interfered with our efficiency as a communication team. To be sure, they had let us have a few days to quiet down in view of the sad accident—but could I report at once? Time was short.

Dad got purple and almost incoherent. Hadn't they done enough to his family? Didn't they have any decency? Any consideration?

In the middle of it, while I was trying to adjust to the new situation and wandering what I should say, Pat called me silently. "Tom! Come here!"

I excused myself and hurried to him. Pat and I had hardly telepathed at all since he had been hurt. A few times he had called me in the night to fetch him a drink of water or something like that, but we had never really talked, either out loud or in our minds. Them was just this black, moody silence that shut me out. I didn't know how to cope with it; it was the first time either of us had ever been ill without the other one.

But when he called I hurried in. "Shut the door."

I did so. He looked at me grimly. "I caught you before you promised anything, didn't I?"

"Yeah."

"Go out there and tell Dad I want to see him right away. Tell Mum I asked her to please quit crying, because she is getting me upset." He smiled sardonically. "Tell Mr. Howard to let me speak to my parents alone. Then you beat it."

"Huh?"

"Get out, don't stop to say good-by and don't say where you are going. When I want you, I'll tell you. If you hang around, Mother will work on you and get you to promise things." He looked at me bleakly. "You never did have any will power."

I let the dig slide off; he was ill. "Look, Pat, you're up against a combination this time. Mother is going to get her own way no matter what and Dad is so stirred up that I'm surprised he hasn't taken a poke at Mr. Howard."

"I'll handle Mother, and Dad, too. Howard should have stayed away. Get going. Split 'em up, then get lost."

"All right," I said uneasily. "Uh... look, Pat, I appreciate He looked at me and his lip curled. "Think I'm doing this for you?"

"Why, I thought—"

"You never think . , . and I've been doing nothing else for days. If I'm going to be a cripple, do you fancy I'm going to spend my life in a public ward? Or here, with Mother drooling over me and Dad pinching pennies and the girls getting sick of the sight of me? Not Patrick! If I have to be like this, I'm going to have the best of everything... nurses to jump when I lift a finger and dancing girls to entertain me—and you are going to see that the LRF pays for it. We can keep our contract and we're going to. Oh, I know you don't want to go, but now you've got to."

"Me? You're all mixed up. You crowded me out. You—"

"Okay, forget it. You're rarin' to go." He reached, up and punched me in the ribs, then grinned. "So we'll both go—for you'll take me along every step of the way. Now get out there and break that up."

I left two days later. When Pat handed Mum his reverse-twist whammie. she did not even fight. If getting the money to let her sick baby have proper care and everything else he wanted meant that I had to space, well, it was too bad but that was how it was. She told me how much it hurt to have me go but I knew she was not too upset. But I was, rather... I wondered what the score would have been if it had been I who was in Pat's fix? Would she have let Pat go just as easily simply to get me anything I wanted? But I decided to stop thinking about it; parents probably don't know that they are playing favorites even when they are doing it.

Dad got me alone for a man-to-man talk just before I left. He hemmed and hawed and stuck in apologies about how he should have talked things over with me before this and seemed even more embarrassed than I was, which was plenty. When he was floundering I let him know that one of our high school courses had covered most of what he was trying to say. (I didn't let him know that the course had been an anti-climax.) He brightened up and said, "Well, son, your mother and I have tried to teach you right from wrong. Just remember that you are a Bartlett and you won't make too many mistakes. On that other matter, well, if you will always ask yourself whether a girl is the sort you would be proud to bring home to meet your mother, I'll be satisfied."

I promised—it occurred to me that I wasn't going to have much chance to fall into bad company, not with psychologists practically dissecting everybody in Project Lebensraum. The bad apples were never going into the barrel

When I see how naive parents are I wonder how the human race keeps on being born. Just the same it was touching and I appreciate the ordeal he put himself through to get me squared away—Dad was always a decent guy and meant well.

I had a last date with Maudie but it wasn't much; we spent it sitting around Pat's bed, She did kiss me good-by—Pat told her to. Oh, well!