Robert Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls

"They couldn't risk waiting even a few more seconds; some killer bugs might get into the city's air ducts. They had projected the effect that would have on Operation Adam Selene: disaster! So they moved. But the Time Corps doesn't go chasing through the universes saving individual lives, or even the lives of whole cities. Richard, they could save Herculaneum and Pompeii today if they wanted to... or San Francisco, or Paris. They

don't. They won't."

"Sweetheart," I said slowly, "are you telling me that this 'Time Corps' could prevent the Blotting of Paris in 2002 even though that happened two centuries in the past? Please!"

Hazel sighed. Ezra said, "Friend Richard, attend me carefully. Don't reject what I am about to say."

"Eh? Okay. Shoot."

"The destruction of Paris is more than two thousand years in the past, not just two centuries ago."

"But that is clearly-"

"By groundhog reckoning today is Gregorian year A.D. 4400 or the year 8160 by the Jewish calendar, a fact I found quite disturbing but had to accept. Besides that, here and now we are over seven thousand light-years from Earth."

Both Hazel and Minerva were looking soberly at me, apparently awaiting my reaction. I started to speak, then reviewed my thoughts. At last I said, "I have only one more question. Teena?"

"No, you can't have any more waffles."

"Not waffles, dear. My question is this: May I have another cup of coffee? This time with cream? Please?"

"Here-catch!" My request appeared on my lap table.

Hazel blurted, "Richard, it's true! All of it."

I sipped the fresh coffee. "Thank you, Teena; it's just right. Hazel my love, I didn't argue. It would be silly of me to argue something I don't understand. So let's move to a simpler subject. Despite these terrible diseases you tell me I had, I feel brisk enough to leap out of bed and lash the serfs. Minerva, can you tell me how much longer I must have this paralysis? You are my physician, are you not?"

"No, Richard, I am not. I-"

"Sister is in charge of your happiness," Teena interrupted. "That's more important."

"Athene is more or less right-"

"I'm always right!"

"-but she sometimes phrases things oddly. Tamara is chief of morale for both Ira Johnson Hospital and the Howard Clinic ... and Tamara was here when you needed her most, she held you in her arms. But she has many assistants, because Director General Ishtar considers morale-well, happiness-central to both therapy and rejuvenation. So I help, and so does Maureen, and Maggie whom you have not yet met. There are others who pitch in when we have too many with happiness problems- Ubby and Deety, and even Laz and Lor who are superb at it when they are needed... not surprising, as they are sisters of Lazarus and daughters of Maureen. And there's Hilda, of course."

"Hold it, please. I'm getting confused by names of people I've never met. This hospital has a staff that dishes out happiness; I understand that much. All of these angels of happiness are women. Right?"

"How else?" Teena demanded scornfully. "Where do you expect to find happiness?"

"Now, Teena," Minerva said reprovingly. "Richard, we female operatives take care of the morale of males... and Tamara has skilled male operatives on watch or on call for female clients and patients. Opposite polarity isn't absolutely essential to morale nursing but it makes it much easier. We don't need as many male morale operatives to take care of our female patients since women are less likely to be ill. Rejuvenation clients are about evenly divided, male and female, but women almost never become depressed while being made young again-"

"Hear, hear!" Hazel put in. "Just makes me homy." She patted my hand, then added a private signal I ignored, others being present.

"-while males usually suffer at least one crisis of spirit during rejuvenation. But you asked about your spinal block. Teena."

"I've called him."

"Just a moment," said Hazel. "Ezra, have you shown Richard your new legs?"

"Not yet."

"Will you? Please? Do you mind?"

"I'm delighted to show them off." Ezra stood up, moved back from the table, turned around, lifted his canes and stood without assistance. I had not stared at his legs as he entered the room (I don't like to be stared at); then, when he sat down at the refection table that had followed him in, I could not see his legs. In the one glimpse I had had of his legs, I had gathered an impression that he was wearing walking shorts with calf-length brown stockings that matched his shorts-bony white knees showing between stockings and shorts.

Now he scuffed off shoes, stood on bare feet-and I revised my notions abruptly; those "brown stockings" were brown skin of legs and feet that had been grafted onto his stumps.

He explained at length: "-three ways. A new limb or a new anything can be budded. That's a lengthy job and requires great skill, I'm told. Or an organ or limb can be grafted from one's own clone, which is kept here in stasis and with an intentionally undeveloped brain. They tell me that way is as easy as putting a patch on a pair of pants-no possibility of rejection.

"But I have no clone here-or not yet-so they found me something in the spare parts inventory-"

"The meat market."

"Yes, Teena. Lots and lots of body parts on hand, inventory computerized-"

"By me."

"Yes, Teena. For heterologous grafts Teena selects spare parts for closest tissue match... matching blood, of course, but matching in other ways, too. And matching in size but that's the easiest part. Teena checks everything and digs out a spare part that your own body will mistake for its own. Or almost."

"Ezra," the computer said, "you can wear those legs for ten years, at least; I really did a job on you. By then your clone will be available. If you need it."

"You did indeed and thank you, Teena. My benefactor's name is Azrael Nkruma, Richard; we are twins, aside from an irrelevant matter of melanin." Ezra grinned.

I said, "Doesn't he miss his feet?"

Ezra suddenly sobered. "He's dead, Richard... dead from the commonest cause of death here: accident. Mountain climbing. Landed on his head and crushed his skull; even Ishtar's skill could not have saved him. And she certainly would have tried her best; Dr. Nkruma was a surgeon on her staff. But these are not the feet Dr. Nkruma wore; these are from his clone... that he never needed."

"Richard-"

"Yes, dear? I wanted to ask Ezra-"

"Richard, I did something without consulting you."

"So? Am I going to have to beat you again?"

"You may decide to. I wanted you to see Ezra's legs... because, without your permission, I had them put a new foot on you." She looked scared.

There ought to be some rule limiting the number of emotional shocks a person can legally be subjected to in one day. I've had all the standard military training for slowing heart beat and lowering blood pressure and so forth in a crunch. But usually the crunch won't wait and the damned drills aren't all that effective anyway.

This time I simply waited while consciously slowing my breathing. Presently I was able to say, without my voice breaking, "On the whole, I don't think that calls for a beating." I tried to wiggle my foot on that side-I've always been able to feel a foot there, even though it has been gone for years. "Did you have them put it on front way to?"

"Huh? What do you mean, Richard?"

"I like to have my feet face forward. Not like a Bombay beggar." (Was that a wiggle?) "Uh, Minerva, am I allowed to look at what was done? This sheet seems to be fastened down tight."

Teena."

"Just arriving."

That unsolid wall blinked out again and in came the most offensively handsome young man I have ever laid eyes on... and his offense was not reduced by the fact that he showed up in my room starkers. Not a stitch. The oaf was not even wearing shoes. He looked around and grinned. "Hi, everybody! Did someone send for me? I was sunbathing-"