Robert Heinlein - To Sail Beyond The Sunset

He did so. ‘"Two scientists, Douglas and Martin, will develop conversion of sunlight into electricity at high efficiency. Douglas-Martin Sunpower Screens will revolutionise public power and strongly affect everything else for the rest of the twentieth century." Maureen, I just can't see how such an inefficient source -‘

‘George, George! How. did I know, in 1947, about these sunpower gadgets disclosed just this year? How did I get the names right? Douglas. Martin.'

‘I don't know.'

‘I told you and now I'll repeat it. I am a prophet. Envelope number three tells Harriman Industries how to cash in on the Douglas-Martin Sunpower Screens. The next three envelopes concern power, public power, big power - and the changes coming that you won't believe. But you will have to believe when we open those envelopes one by one. The question is: will we open them after the fact, as with these two - and then all I could say is "I told you so" - or do we open each one long enough before the fact that my prophecy is useful to you?'

‘I'm getting chilly. Shall I get dressed, or come back to bed?'

‘Oh, dear! I've talked business too long. Come to bed, George, and let me try to make it up to you.'

He did and we cuddled, but the essential miracle did not take place. At last I said, ‘Shall I apply a little direct magic? Or would you rather rest?'

‘Maureen, what is it you want from Harriman Industries? You have not dope this just to perplex me.'

‘Of course not, George. I want to be elected a director of Harriman Industries, the holding company. Later on you will need me on the board of some of the corporations being held by it. However I will continue to decide how to time prophecies... as timing is everything.'

‘A director. There are no women on the board.'

‘There will be when you nominate me and I am elected.'

‘Maureen, please! All directors are major stockholders.'

‘How much stock does it take to be eligible?'

‘One share complies with the roles. But company policy calls for major ownership. In the holding company or any of its subsidiaries.'

‘How much? Shares. No, dollar value by the market; the various corporate shares are not all the same value per share. Not any, I should say.'

‘Uh, Mr Harriman and I think a director should own, or acquire soon after election, at least half a million in market value of shares. It fixes his attention on what he is voting on.'

‘George, on Monday at the close of market my summed up position in all of your companies was $872.039.81 - I can bring that up to an even million in a few days if it would help to smooth the way.'

George's eyebrows went way up. ‘Maureen, I didn't know that you owned any of our stock. I should have spotted your name in connection with any large block.'

‘I use dummies. Some in Zurich, some in Canada, some in New York. I can get it all into my own name if there is any reason to.'

‘We'll need some intelligences filed with us, at least. Maureen, am I free to tell Mr Harriman about your envelopes? Your prophecies?'

‘How would he feel about them?'

‘I'm not sure. He and I have been in business together since the twenties... but I don't know him. He's a plunger... I'm a plough horse.'

‘Well, let's keep it a bedroom secret for now. Perhaps you will want to open the next envelope in his presence. Or perhaps not. George, if the public, particularly the Street, got hold of the idea that you were making business decisions on the advice of a soothsayer, it might damage Harriman Industries, might it not?'

‘I think you're right. All right, bedroom secret.' He suddenly smiled. ‘But if I said that I consulted an astrologer, half of those knot-heads would consider it "scientific":

‘And now let's. drop it, and let me see if I can get our plough horse interested in ploughing me. George, do all the men in your family have oversize penises?'

‘Not that I know of and I think you are trying to flatter me.'

‘Well, it seems big to me. Hey! It's getting bigger!'

My problems for the next ten years were Princess Polly, Priscilla, Donald, George Strong... and a curious metaphysical problem I still don't know how to resolve - or how I should have resolved it, although I have talked it over in depth with my husband and friend Dr Jubal Harshaw and with some of the finest mathematico-manipulative cosmologists in any universe, starting with Elizabeth ‘Slipstick Libby' Long. It involves the age-old pseudo-paradox of free will and predestination.

Free will is a fact, while you are living it. And predestination is a fact, when you look at any sequence from outside.

But in World-as-Myth neither free will nor predestination have meaning. Each is semantically null. If we are simply patterns of fictions put together by fabulists, then one may as well speak of free will for pieces in a chess game. After the game is history and the chessmen have been placed back in the box, does the Black Queen lose sleep moaning, ‘Oh, I should never have taken that pawn!'

Ridiculous.

I am not an assemblage of fictions. I was not created by a fabulist. I am a human woman, daughter of human parents, and mother of seventeen boys and girls in my first life and mother of still more in my first rejuvenation. If I am controlled by destiny, then that destiny lies in my genes... not in the broodings of some near-sighted introvert hunched over a roboscriber.

Mie trouble was that there came a time as we neared the end of the decade that I realised that Theodore had told me about a tragedy that could possibly be prevented. Or could it? Could I use my free will to break the golden chains of predestination? Could I use my foreknowledge that something was going to happen to cause it not to happen?

Let's turn it upside down - If I keep something from happening, how could I have foreknowledge of something that never happened?

Don't try to sort that out; you'll bite your own tail.

Is it ever possible to avoid an appointment in Samarra?

I knew that the power satellite was going to blow up, killing everybody aboard. But in 1952 no one else knew that there would ever be a power satellite. In 1952 it was not even a blueprint.

What was my duty?

On Friday Dr Rumsey told me that Priscilla was not pregnant and that she was physically old enough to be bred and that he was willing to support a delayed birth certificate, if I wanted her to have one, showing an age anywhere from thirteen to nineteen... but that in his opinion she was childish in her attitudes.

I agreed. ‘But I may have to phoney an age of at least sixteen.'

‘I see. Her brother is screwing her, isn't he?'

I answered, ‘Is this room soundproofed?'

‘Yes. And so is my nurse. We've heard everything, dear, much of it a lot worse than a little brother sister incest. We had a case last week - not Howards, thank God - of "His brother is screwing him". Be glad your kids are normal. With brother-sister games all that is usually needed is to see to it that she doesn't get pregnant and that they get over it in time to marry somebody else. Which they almost always do. Haven't you run into this before?'

‘Yes. Before you took over your father's practice. Didn't he tell you?'

‘Are you kidding? Pop treats the Hippocratic Oath as handed down from on high. How did it work out?'

‘Okay in the long run, although it worried me at the time. Older sister taught younger brother and then younger brother taught still younger sister. I walked on eggs for a while, wondering whether to catch them or just to keep an eye out for trouble. But they never let it get intense; they just enjoyed it. My kids are a horny lot, all of them.'

‘And you aren't?'

‘Shall I take off my panties? Or shall we finish this discussion?'