Robert Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls

I was sitting near Lazarus, having remained seated after that silly foot examination. I had my head down, ostensibly to play with the kitten, but in fact to avoid looking at Lazarus-or at anyone-as I was finding Hazel's insistence on airing everything quite disturbing. Embarrassing.

In consequence I was looking down at my own feet and at his. Did I mention that Lazarus was barefooted? I had paid it no mind because one thing one becomes used to at once on Terdus is the absence of compelling dress customs. I don't mean absence of dress (Boondock sells more clothes than any groundhog city of similar size-about a million people-in part because garments are usually worn once, then recycled).

I do mean that neither bare feet nor bare bodies are startling for more than five minutes. Lazarus was wearing a wrap-around, a lava-lava or it may have been a kilt; his feet I did not notice undl I stared at them.

Hazel went on, "Lazarus took such cruel advantage of Richard's weak point-his compulsive hatred of being in debt- that Richard demanded that his new foot be amputated. In desperate need to cleanse his honor he said to Lazarus, 'Cut it off; put it back in stock'!"

Lazarus said, "Oh, come now! He did not mean that seriously, and I did not take it seriously. A figure of speech. To show that he was annoyed with me. As well he might be. I made a mistake; I admit it."

"You did indeed make a mistake!" I interrupted. "A grave mistake. Your grave perhaps, or mine. For it was not a figure of speech. I want that foot amputated. I demand that you take back your foot. Your foot, sir! Look here, all of you, and then look there! At my right foot, then his right foot."

Anyone who bothered to look could not fail to see what I meant. Four masculine feet- Three were clearly from the same genes: Lazarus's two feet and my new foot. The fourth was the foot I was born with; it matched the other three only in size, not in skin color, texture, hairiness, or any detail.

When Lazarus had dunned me for the cost of that transplant, it had offended me. But this new discovery, that Lazarus himself was the anonymous donor, that I had been made the unwitting recipient of his charity for the foot itself, the very meat and bone of it, was intolerable.

I glared at Lazarus. "Doctor, behind my back and utterly without my consent you placed me under unbearable obligation. / will not tolerate it!" I was shaking with anger.

"Richard, Richard! Please!" Hazel seemed about to cry.

And I, too. That red-haired older lady hurried to me, bent over me and gathered my head to her motherly breasts, cuddled me and said, "No, Richard, no! You must not feel this way."

We left later that day. But we stayed for dinner; we did not run away angry.

Hazel and Maureen (the darling older lady who had comforted me) between them managed to convince me that hospital and surgery charges need not fret me because Hazel had plenty of the needful on deposit in a local bank-which Teena confirmed-and Hazel could and would cover my bills if it became appropriate to change the charge under which I was hospitalized. (I thought about asking my darling to reassign the charges right then, through Teena. But I decided not to crowd her about it. Damn it, "tanstaafl" is a basic truth, but "beggars can't be choosers" is true, too-and at that moment I was a beggar. (Never a good bargaining position.)

As for the foot itself, by invariant local custom "spare parts" (hands and feet and hearts and kidneys, etc.) were not bought or sold; there was only a service and handling charge billed with the cost of surgery.

Galahad confirmed this. "We do it that way to avoid a black market. I could show you planets where there is indeed a black market, where a matching liver might mean a matching murder-but not here. Lazarus himself set up this rule, more than a century ago. We buy and sell everything else... but we don't traffic in human beings or pieces of human beings."

Galahad grinned at me. "But there is another reason why you should not fret. You had no say in the matter when a team of us hemstitched that foot to your stump; everybody knows that. But also everybody knows you can't get rid of it... unless you want to tackle it with your own jackknife. Because I won't cut it off. You won't find a surgeon anywhere on Tertius who will. Union rules, you know, and professional courtesy."

He added, "But if you do decide to hack it off yourself, do please invite me; I want to watch." He said that with a straight face and Maureen scolded him for it. I'm not certain that he was joking.

Nevertheless detente involved a major change in Hazel's plans. Lazarus was correct in saying that all he had been trying to do was to implement a previously agreed-on plan. But it had been further agreed that Hazel (not Lazarus) was to implement the plan.

Hazel could have managed it, but Lazarus could not. Lazarus could never sell it to me because I thought the whole thing was ridiculous. On the other hand, if Hazel really wants something from me, I stand about as much chance of holding out as-well, as Jinx Henderson has of refusing a request from his daughter Gretchen.

But Lazarus couldn't see that.

I think Lazarus suffers from a compulsion to be the biggest frog in any pond. He expects to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral... while pretending that he has no ambitions-just a barefoot country boy with straw in his hair and manure between his toes.

If you think that I am not overly fond of Lazarus Long, I won't argue.

That plan was pretty much as Lazarus had described it. Hazel had expected that I would join her in the Time Corps, and had planned for me to be rejuvenated-systemic rejuvenation to biological age eighteen; cosmetic rejuvenation, my choice. While this was going on I was to be taught Galacta, study multiverse history at least for several time lines, and, after rejuvenation, again take military training of several sorts until I became a walking angel of death, armed or unarmed.

When she judged that I was ready, she planned for us to carry out Task Adam Selene of Operation Galactic Overlord.

If we lived through it, we could retire from the Time Corps, live out our days on an ample pension on the planet of our choice-fat and happy.

Or we could stay in the Corps together just by my reenlisting for a hitch of fifty years-then rejuvenations each hitch and a chance for us eventually to become Time bosses ourselves. That was supposed to be the grand prize-more fun than baby kittens, more exciting than roller coasters, more satisfying than being seventeen and in love.

Live or die, we would do it together-until at last one of us waited for the other at the end of that tunnel.

But this program aborted because Lazarus butted in and tried to twist my arm (my foot?) to accept it.

My darling had planned a pianissimo approach: Live for a time on Tertius (a heavenly place), get me hooked on multiverse history and time travel theory, et cetera. Not crowd me about signing up, but depend on the fact that she and Gretchen and Ezra and others (Uncle Jock, e.g.) were in the Corps... until I asked to be allowed to be sworn in.

The cost of my new foot would not have bothered me: a) if Hazel had had time to convince me that the cost would be charged off to my increased efficiency in helping her with "Adam Selene" and the foot would thereby pay for itself (the simple truth!-and Lazarus knew it); b) if Lazarus had not dunned me about it, used it to pressure me; c) if Lazarus had stayed away from me (as he was supposed to) and thereby had never offered me any chance of spotting that he was my anonymous donor-bare feet or no bare feet.

I suppose you could say that none of it would have happened if Hazel had not tried to manipulate me (and had, and did, and would) ... but a wife's unique right, fixed by tradition, to manipulate her own husband runs unbroken and invariant at least back to Eve and the Apple. I will not criticize a sacred tradition.