Robert Heinlein: For Us, The Living

"Check, Diana." The red head faded out.

"Does she know you?"

"Probably recognized me. You will understand."

Shortly another face appeared, that of an iron grey studious man. Diana spoke. "Identification requested."

"Which one of you?"

"Him."

"Check. Take position." The face turned away and a camera-like apparatus appeared.

"Put up your right hand, Perry," whispered Diana. Perry did so. The grey haired man re-appeared.

"Listen, how can I analyze if you don't hold position? Haven't you ever used a phone before?"

"I—I guess not." Perry looked confused.

The slight irritation vanished from the man's voice. "What's the trouble, friend? Lost your continuity?"

"I guess you'd call it that."

"That's different. I'll fix you up in no time. Then you'll probably have no trouble to orient. Now do just as I tell you. Right hand, palm toward me about twenty centimeters from the screen. Down a little. Now just a hair closer. Your palm is tilted. Get it parallel to the screen. There. Hold it steady." A soft shirring and a click. "That's all. Do you want a full dossier or just name and number?"

Diana cut in. "Brief of dossier, please, with last entry in full.

Televuestat Reno station, tube delivery G610L-400-48, expedited rate."

"Charge to him when I get his number?"

"No, to me, Diana, 160-398-400-48A."

"Oooh! I thought I recognized you."

"This is private action." Diana's voice was cool and crisp.

The man looked indignant, then his face became impassive. "Madam, I am an official clerk of the Bureau of Records. I thoroughly understand the spheres of public and private action, and my oath and charge."

Diana melted at once. "I'm sorry. I truly am. Please forgive me."

He relaxed and smiled. "Of course, Miss Diana. You probably have to insist on the spheres. But, if you will permit, it would be an honor to provide this service for you."

"No, please, make the routine charge. But may I do you some service?" She inclined her head. The clerk bowed in return. "A picture perhaps?"

"If madam permits."

"My latest stereo. Face or full?"

He bowed without speaking.

"I'll send both. They shall cross your brief in the tubes."

"You are very kind."

"Thank you. Clearing." The screen went blank. "Well, Perry, we'll know soon. But I must get the poor chap his pictures. I didn't mean to offend him, but he was too touchy." She returned in a moment with two thin sheets and started to roll them up. Noticing Perry's interest, she paused. "Would you care to see them?"

"Yes, of course." The first picture was Diana's face in natural colors with a half smile warming it. But Perry was startled almost into dropping it. For the portrait was completely stereoscopic. It was as if he were looking through a window of cellophane at Diana herself posed stationary three feet back of the frame.

"How in the world are these done?"

"I'm neither an optics student nor a photographer, but I know the picture really does have some depth to it. It's a colloid about a half centimeter thick. It is done with two cameras, so it works only on one axis. Turn it around sideways." He did so. The picture went perfectly flat although remaining a fine photograph. "Now tilt it about forty-five degrees." He did so and had the upsetting sensation of watching Diana's beautiful features melt and run until no picture was visible, but just an iridescense like oil on water. "You have to look at it along the right axis and within a narrow view angle, but when you do the two images blend in the stereo illusion. The brain interprets the confused double image given by two separated eyes as depth and by duplicating that confusion, they achieve the illusion."

Perry stared at the picture a moment more and tilted and twisted it. Diana watched with interest and sympathetic amusement. "May I see the other picture?"

"Here it is." Perry glanced at it, then swallowed. He had grown accustomed to Diana's nudity, more or less, and had been too much occupied mentally to think much about it, but nevertheless he had been aware of it in one corner of his mind all the time. Still, he was startled to discover that the second picture portrayed all of Diana in her own sweet simplicity, nothing more, and that it was as amazingly lifelike as the first, real enough to pinch. He swallowed again.

"You intend to send this, er—uh, these pictures to a man you've just met on the phone."

"Oh, yes, he wants them and I can afford it. And I was a bit rude. Of course some people would think it a bit brash for me to give him anything as intimate as a facial portrait but I don't mind."

"But,—uh—"

"Yes, Perry?"

"Oh, well, nothing I guess. Never mind."

Later while Diana monkeyed with the gadgets in the Demeter niche, the green light and gong note announced a tube delivery. "Get it, will you, Perry?" she called. "I've got both hands full." Perry puzzled with the controls, then found a small lever that opened the receptacle. He brought over the roll to Diana. "Read it aloud, Perry, while I finish dinner." He unrolled it and first noticed a picture of a young man who resembled his own memory of himself. He commenced to read. "Gordon 932-016-755-82A, Genes class JM, born 2057 July 7. Qualified and matriculated Arlington Health School 2075, transferred (approved) Adler Memorial Institute of Psychology 2077. Selected for research when Extra-sensory station was established by Master Fifield in 2080. Author of AStudy of Deviant Data in Extra-Sensory Perception. Co-author (with Pandit Kalimohan Chandra Roy) of Proteus: a History of the Ego. Address Sanctuary (F-2), California. Unofficially reported in voluntary corporal abdication in 2083 August and transferred at the request of Sanctuary Council to inactive status 2085 August, body to remain in Sanctuary. Credit account on transfer to inactive $11,018.32 less depreciation $9,803.09, credit account re-entered with service deduction $9802.09 less $500 credit convenience book $9,302.09 (enclosed)."

Attached to the end of the roll was a small wallet or notebook. Inside Perry found that the leaves were money, conventional money, differing only slightly in size and design from money in 1939. In the back of the book was a pad of blank credit drafts, a check book.

"What do I do with this stuff, Diana?"

"Do with it? Anything you like, use it, spend it, live on it."

"But it doesn't belong to me. It belongs to this fellow Gordon something-or-other."

"You are Gordon 755-82."

"Me? The hell I am."

"You are, though. The Bureau of Records has already acknowledged it and has your account re-entered. You have the body listed as 932-016-755-82A. You can use any name you like, Perry, or Gordon, or George Washington, and the Bureau will gladly note the change in the record, but that number goes with that body and that credit account and they won't change it. Of course you don't have to spend it but if you don't, nobody will, and it will just get bigger."

"Can't I give it away?"

"Certainly—but not to Gordon."

Perry scratched his head. "No, I guess not. Say, what is this voluntary abdication stuff?"

"I'm not able to give a scientific account of it, but so far as anyone else is concerned it amounts to suicide by willing not to live."

"Then Gordon is dead?"

"No. Not according to the ideas of the people who monkey with these things. He simply was not interested in living here and chose to live elsewhere."

"How come his body is here okay?"

"According to this report Gordon's body—this body—" She pinched his cheeks. "—has been lying quietly in a state of arrested animation in the Sanctuary on the other side of this mountain. And so the mystery is partially cleared up."