Robert Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls

"You started it."

I tried to review the bidding. Had I started it? No, indeed, she-

Reb Ezra said to me in a prison whisper, "Give up. You can't win. I know."

"Mistress Teena, I'm sorry I started it. I should not have done so. It was naughty of me."

"Oh, that's all right." The computer sounded warmly pleased. "And you don't have to call me 'Mistress Teena'; hardly anyone uses titles around here. If you called Minerva 'Dr. Long,' she would look around to see who was standing behind her."

"All right, Teena, and please call me 'Richard.' Mistress Minerva, you have a doctor's degree? Medical doctor?"

"One of my degrees is in therapy, yes. But my sister is right; titles are not often used here. 'Mistress' one never hears... other than as a term of affection to a woman you have gifted with your carnal love. So there is no need to call me 'Mistress Minerva'... until you choose to gift me with that boon. When you do. If you do." Right across the plate! I almost failed to lay a bat on it. Minerva seemed so modest, meek, and mild that she took me by surprise.

Teena gave me time in which to regroup. "Minnie, don't try to hustle him right out from under me. He's mine."

"Better ask Hazel. Better yet, ask him."

"Dickie boy! Tell her!" "What can I tell her, Teena? You haven't settled it with

Hazel and my Uncle Jock. But in the meantime-" I contrived to bow to Minerva as well as one can from bed and handicapped by a spinal block. "Dear lady, your words do me great honor. But, as you know, I am at present physically immobilized, unable to share in such delights. In the meantime may we take the wish for the deed?"

"Don't you dare call her 'Mistress'!"

"Sister, behave yourself. Sir, you may indeed call me 'Mistress.' Or, as you say, we can treat the wish for the deed and wait until a later time. Your therapy will take time."

"Ah, yes. So it will." I glanced at the little maple, no longer quite so little. "How long have I been here? I must already have run up quite a bill."

"Don't worry about it," Minerva advised me. "I must worry about it. Bills must be paid. And I don't even have Medicare." I looked at the Rabbi. "Rabbi, how did you finance your-transplants, are they?- You're as far from home and your bank account as I am."

"Farther than you think. And it is no longer appropriate to address me as Rabbi-where we are today, the Torah is not known. I am now Private Ezra Davidson, Time Corps Irregulars. That pays my bills. I think something like it pays yours. Teena, can you-I mean, 'will you'-tell Dr. Ames the account to which his bills are charged?"

"He has to ask it himself."

"I do ask, Teena. Please tell me."

'"Campbell, Colin,' also known as 'Ames, Richard': charges, all departments, to Senior's special account, 'Galactic Overlord-Miscellaneous.' So don't fret, lover boy; you're a charity case, all bills on the house. Of course the ones on that account usually don't live long."

"Athene!"

"But, Minnie, that's the simple truth. An average of one point seven three missions, then we pay their death benefits. Unless he's ordered to some featherbed job at THQ."

(I was not listening carefully. "Galactic Overlord" indeed! Only one person could have set up that account. The playful little darling. Damn it, dear-where are you?)

That none-too-solid wall blinked away again. "Am I too late for breakfast? Oh, pshaw! Hello, darling!"

It was she!

"When in doubt, tell the truth."

MARK TWAIN 1835-1910

"Richard, I did see you the next morning. But you didn't see me."

"She certainly did see you, Dickie boy," Teena confirmed. "At great risk to her own health. Be glad you're alive. You almost weren't."

"That's true," agreed Ezra. "I was your roommate part of one night. Then they moved me and put you in tight quarantine, and inoculated me nine or ninety ways. My brother, you were sick unto death."

"Breakbone cramp, green-pus shakes, strangle fever-' Hazel was ticking them off on her fingers. "Blue death. Typhus. Minerva, what else?"

"Golden staphylococcus systemic infection, hepatic herpes Landrii. Worst of all, a loss of will to live. But Ishtar will not permit a person to die who has not asked for death while possessed of judicial capacity, and neither will Galahad. Tamara stayed with you every minute until that crisis was over."

"Why don't I remember any of this?"

"Be glad you don't," Teena advised.

"Sweetheart, if you had not been in the best hospital in all the known universes, with the most skilled therapists, I would be a widow again. And I look terrible in black."

Ezra added, "If you didn't have the constitution of an ox, you would never have made it."

Teena interrupted with: "Of a bull, Ezra. Not an ox. I know, I've seen 'em. Impressive."

I didn't know whether to thank Teena or to call off the wedding again. So I ignored it. "What I don't understand is how I got all those diseases. I took a hit, I know that. That could account for staph aureus. But those other things?"

Ezra said, "Colonel, you are a professional soldier."

"Yes." I sighed. "I never practiced that aspect of the profession; I don't feel easy with it. Biological warfare makes fusion bombs seem clean and decent. Even chemical warfare looks humane compared with bio weapons. Very well; that knife- was it a knife?-was prepared. Nastily."

"Yes," agreed Ezra, "somebody wanted you dead and was willing to kill all of Luna City as long as you died."

"That's crazy. I'm not that important."

Minerva said quietly, "Richard, you are that important."

I stared at her. "What makes you think so?"

"Lazarus told me."

"'Lazarus.' Teena used that name earlier. Who is Lazarus? Why is his opinion so weighty?"

Hazel answered, "Richard, I told you that you were important and I told you why. The rescue of Adam Selene. The same people who want him to stay unresurrected wouldn't boggle at killing Luna City to kill you."

"If you say so. I wish I knew what happened mere. Luna City is my adopted home; some mighty fine people in it. Uh, your son, Ezra, among others."

"Yes, my son. And others. Luna City was saved, Richard; the infection was stopped."

"Good!"

"At a price. A reference time tick was available from our rescue. The number of seconds it took us all to get aboard and get out of there was reconstructed through careful reenactment-by all of us who were involved in it with your part played by a skilled actor. This was compared with Gay's own memory of how long she was there, and the two were reconciled. Then a Burroughs space-time capsule was moved to the resultant coordinates plus four seconds, and a heat bomb was released. Not atomic but hot, star hot-some of those bugs are hard to kill. Obviously the hotel had to be damaged, with a high probability-no, a certainty-of loss of life. The threat to Luna City was cauterized but the price was high. Tanstaafl." Ezra looked grim.

"Your son was saved?"

"I think so. However, my son's welfare did not figure into this decision, and my opinion was not sought. This was a Time Headquarters policy decision. THQ rescues individuals only when those individuals are indispensable to an operation. Richard, as I understand it-mind you, I'm a recruit private on sick leave; I'm not privy to high policy decisions-as I understand it, permitting Luna City to suffer a killing epidemic at that time would have interfered with THQ's plans for something else. Perhaps this matter that Mistress Gwendolyn-Hazel-

hinted at. I don't know."

"It was and I do know and on Tertius you don't call me 'Mistress' unless you mean it, Ezra, but thank you anyhow. Richard, it was the widespread damage that airborne disease could do to their plans that caused Headquarters to act so radically. They cut it so fine that you and I and the rest of Gay's load came within a blink of being killed by that heat bomb as we escaped." (And at this point I barked my shins on a paradox-but Hazel was still talking:)