Robert Heinlein: For Us, The Living

"Tell me, is Reno still a divorce mill?"

"A divorce mill? Oh, no, Reno is not, as you call it, a divorce mill. There are no such things as divorces anymore."

"There aren't? What do a man and his wife do if they can't get along together?"

"They don't live together."

"Rather awkward in case one of them should fall in love again, isn't it?"

"No, you see—Good heavens, Perry, what a lot there is to teach you. I don't know where to start. However, I'll just plunge in and try to answer your questions. In the first place, there isn't any legal contract to be broken, not in your sense of the word. There are domestic contracts but they don't involve marriage in the religious or sexual aspects. And any of these contracts can be dealt with like any other secular contract."

"But doesn't that make a rather confusing situation, homes broken up, children around loose—what about children? Who supports them?"

"Why they support themselves on their heritage."

"On their heritage? They can't all be heirs."

"But they are—Oh, it's too confusing. I'll have to get some histories for you and a code of customs. These things are all bound up in major changes in the economic and social structure. Let me ask you a question. In your day what was marriage?"

"Well, it was a civil contract between a man and a woman usually sealed by a religious ceremony."

"And what did this contract stipulate?"

"It stipulated a lot of things not specifically mentioned, but under it the two lived together, she worked for him, more or less, and he supported her financially. They slept together and neither one was supposed to have love affairs with anybody else. If they had children they supported them until they were grown up."

"And what were the objects of this arrangement?"

"Well, principally for the benefit of the children, I guess. The children were protected and given a name. Also women were protected and supported and looked out for when they were bearing children."

"And what did the man get out of it."

"He got—well—a family and home life, and someone to do his cooking, and a thousand other little services, and if you will pardon me mentioning it, he had a woman to sleep with any time he needed one."

"Let's take the last first; was she necessarily the woman he wanted to 'sleep' with as you so quaintly put it?"

"Yes, I suppose so, else he probably wouldn't have asked her to marry him. No, by God, I know that is not true. It may be true when they first marry, but I know damn well that most married men see women every day that they would rather have than their own wives. I've watched 'em in every port."

"How about yourself. Perry?"

"Me? I'm not—I wasn't married."

"Didn't you ever see a woman you wanted to enjoy physically?"

"Of course. Many of them."

"Then why didn't you marry?"

"Oh, I don't know. I guess I didn't want to be tied down."

"If a man didn't have children to support and a wife to support would he be tied down by marriage?"

"Why yes, in a way. She would expect him to do everything with her and would raise Cain if he stepped out with other women and would expect him to entertain her sisters and her cousins and her aunts, and would be sore if he had to work on their anniversary."

"Good Lord! What a picture you paint. I don't understand all of your expressions but it sounds unbearable."

"Of course not all women are like that, some of them are good sports—man to man, but you can't tell when you marry them."

"It sounds from your description as if men had nothing to gain by marriage but an available mistress. And tell me, weren't there women for hire then at a lower cost than supporting one woman for life?"

"Oh yes, certainly. But they weren't satisfactory to most men. You see, a man doesn't like to feel that a woman goes to bed with him just for the money in his pocket."

"But you just said that women married to be supported."

"That's not quite what I meant. Or that's not all—at least not usually. Anyhow it's different. Besides men don't always play the game. You see a man marries partially to have exclusive right to a woman's attention, especially her body. But lots of them carry it to extremes. Marriage is no excuse for a man to slap his wife's face for dancing twice with another man—as I've seen happen."

"But why should a man want to have exclusive possession of a woman?"

"Well, he just naturally does. It's in his nature. Besides a man wants to be sure his children aren't bastards."

"We are no longer so sure, Perry, that such traits are 'nature' as you call them. And bastard is an obsolete term."

At this moment an amber light flashed at the other end of the room. Diana arose and returned shortly with a roll of papers. "They have arrived. Here, look." She unrolled them and spread them on the shelf-table. Perry saw that they were photostatic copies of pages of the Los Angeles Times, Harold-Express, and Daily News for July 13,1939. She pointed to a headline:

NAVAL FLIER KILLED IN CAR CRASH

Torrey Fines, Calif., July 12.

Lieutenant Perry V. Nelson, Navy pilot of Coronado, was killed today when he lost control of the car he was driving and plunged over the palisade here to his death on the rock below. Lieut. Nelson jumped or was thrown clear of the car but landed head first in a pile of loose rock at the foot of the cliff, splitting his skull. Death was instantaneous. Miss Diana Burwood of Pasadena was bathing on the beach below and narrowly escaped injury. She attempted to give first aid, then scaled the bluff and reported the accident with aid of a passing motorist.

There were similar stories in the other papers. The Daily News included a column cut of Perry in uniform. Diana examined this with interest. "The story checks perfectly, Perry. This is just a fair likeness of you, however." Perry glanced at it.

"I should say that it wasn't bad, considering the limitations of a half-tone reproduction."

"The surprising thing is that it looks like you at all."

"Why do you say that, Diana? Don't you believe me?" His hurt showed plainly in his face.

"Oh, no, no. I believe that you are telling the literal truth—insofar as you know it. But think, Perry. The head that was photographed to take this picture has—if this newspaper account is true—been dust for more than a century."

Perry stared at her and a look of horror crept into his eyes. He closed his eyes and clasped his head between his palms. He remained thus, face averted and body tensed for several minutes until he felt a gentle touch on his hair. Diana bent over him, pity and compassion in her eyes. "Perry, please. Listen to me. I didn't mean to distress you. I wouldn't hurt you intentionally. I want to be your friend if you will let me."

Gently she removed his hands from his temples. "It is a strange and marvelous thing that has happened to you, Perry, and I don't understand it at all. In some ways it is horrible and certainly terrifying. But it could be much worse—much worse. This is not a bad world in which you have landed. I think it is a rather kindly world. I like it and I am sure it must be better than being crushed and broken at the foot of the palisades. Please, Perry, I'd like to help you."

He patted her hand. "You're a good kid, Dian', I'll be all right. It's the shock more than anything. The realization that all that world I know is dead and gone. I knew it of course when you told me what year it was, but I didn't realize it until you pointed out to me that I'm dead, too—or at least that my body died." He jumped to his feet. "But say!—if my body is dead, where in God's name did I get this!"—and he slapped his side.

"I don't know, Perry, but I have an idea."

"What is it?"

"Not just yet. But we can start a little action toward finding out. Come with me." She opened out the drawer containing the communication instrument, and pushed one button. A pretty red-headed girl appeared on the screen and smiled. Diana spoke. "Reno, please relay Washington, Bureau of records, Identification Sector."