Robert Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls

Add a Finnish sauna.

And how about bathing Japanese style?

Do you enjoy a hot tub? With or without an agitator?

Was the ice-cream soda fountain a part of your youth?

Do you like company when you bathe?

Let's put a well-stocked snack bar (hot or cold) in easy reach.

Do you enjoy music? Three-dee? Feelies? Books and magazines and tapes?

Exercise? Massage? Sun lamps? Scented breezes?

Soft, warm places to curl up and nap, alone or in company?

Take all of the above, mix well, and install in a large, beautiful, well-lighted room. That list still does not describe the social refresher off Lazarus Long's cabin, as it omits the most important feature: Dora.

If there was any whim that ship's computer could not satisfy, I was not there long enough to discover it.

I did not sample at once any of these luxuries; I had a duty to a cat. I sat down at a medium-size round table, the sort four friends might use for a drink, placed the kitten's saucer thereon, reached for the kitten. Instead Jane Ell sat down and placed Pixel at the food. Burroughs joined us.

The kitten sniffed at the food he had been greedily eating minutes earlier, then gave an inspired bit of acting showing Jane Ell that he was horrified at her action in offering him something unfit for cats. Jane Ell said, "Dora, I think he's thirsty."

"Name it. But bear in mind that the management does not permit me to serve alcoholic beverages to minors other than for purposes of seduction."

"Quit showing off, Dora; Colonel Campbell might believe you. Let's offer the baby both water and whole milk, separately. And at blood temperature, which for kittens is-"

"Thirty-eight point eight degrees. Coming up pronto."

Hilda called out from a plunge-no, a lounging tub, I guess-a few meters away, "Jay Ell! Come soak, dear. Deety has some swell gossip."

"Uh-" The girl seemed torn. "Colonel Campbell, will you take care of Pixel now? He likes to lick it off your finger. It's the only way to get him to drink enough."

"I'll do it your way." The kitten did like to drink that way ... although it seemed possible that I would die of old age before I got as much as ten milliliters down him. But the kitten was in no hurry. Hazel got out of the lounging tub and joined us, dripping. I kissed her cautiously and said, "You're getting that chair soaking wet." "Won't hurt the chair. What's this about Lazarus acting up again?"

"That mother!" "In his case that's merely descriptive. What happened?"

"Uh- Maybe I reacted too strongly. Better ask Dr. Burroughs."

"Jacob?" "No, Richard did not overreact. Lazarus went out of his way to be offensively difficult with all four of us. In the first place, Lazarus has no business trying to supervise the mathematics section; he is not a mathematician in any professional sense and is not qualified to supervise. In the second place each of us in the section knows the quirks of the others; we never interfere with each other's work. But Lazarus kicked me out, and Deety, and Jane Libby, for daring to talk a few moments about something not on his agenda... totally unaware, or at least uncaring, that I and both my daughters use a two-level mode of meditation. Hazel, I kept my temper. Truly I did, dear. You would have been proud of me."

"I'm always proud of you, Jacob. I would not have kept my temper. In dealing with Lazarus you should take a tip from Sir Winston Churchill and step on his toes until he apologizes. Lazarus doesn't appreciate good manners. But what did he do to Richard?"

"Told him not to feed his cat at the conference table. Ridiculous! As if it could possibly harm his fancy table if this kitten happened to pee on it."

Hazel shook her head and looked grim, which doesn't fit her face. "Lazarus has always been a rough cob but, ever since this campaign-Overlord, I mean-started, he has been growing increasingly difficult. Jacob, has your section been handing him gloomy predictions?"

"Some. But the real difficulty is that our long-range projections are so vague. That can be maddening, I know, because when a city is destroyed, the tragedy is not vague; it's sharp and sickening. If we change history, we aren't truly unde-stroying that city, we are simply starting a new time line. We need projections that will let us change history before that city is destroyed." He looked at me. "That's why rescuing Adam Selene is so important."

I looked stupid-my best role. 'To make Lazarus better tempered?"

"Indirectly, yes. We need a supervising computer that can direct and program and monitor other large computers in creating multi verse projections. The biggest supervising computer we know of is the one on this planet, Athene or Teena, and her twin on Secundus. But this sort of projection is a much bigger job. Public functions on Tertius are mostly automated fail-safe and Teena steps in only as a trouble-shooter. But the Holmes IV-Adam Selene or Mike-through a set of odd circumstances, grew and grew and grew with apparently no one trying to keep his size down to optimum... then his self-programming increased enormously through a unique challenge: running the Lunar Revolution. Colonel, I don't think any human brain or brains could possibly have written the programs that Holmes IV self-programmed to let him handle all the details of that revolution. My older daughter, Deety, is a top specialist in programming; she says a human brain could not do it and that, in her opinion, an artificial intelligence could swing it only the way Holmes IV did it-by being faced with the necessity, a case of 'Root, Hog, or Die.' So we need Adam Selene-or his essence, those programs he wrote in creating himself. Because we don't know how to do it."

Hazel glanced at the pool. "I'll bet Deety could do it. If she had to."

"Thank you, dear, on behalf of my daughter. But she is not given to false modesty. If Deety could do it, or thought she had even a slim chance, she would be hacking away at it now. As it is, she's doing what she can; she is working hard at tying together the computer bank we have."

"Jacob, I hate to say this-" Hazel hesitated. "Maybe I shouldn't."

"Then don't." "I need to get it off my chest. Papa Mannie isn't optimistic over the results even if we are totally successful in retrieving all the memory banks and programs that constitute the essential Adam Selene-or 'Mike' as Papa Mannie calls him. He thinks his old friend was hurt so badly in the last attack-I remember it to this day; it was dreadful-Mike was hurt so badly that he withdrew into a computer catatonia and will never wake up. For years Papa tried to wake him, after the Revolution when Papa had free access to the Warden's Complex. He doesn't see how bringing those memories and programs here will do it. Oh, he wants to try, he's eager to, he loves Mike. But he's not hopeful."

"When you see Manuel, tell him to cheer up; Deety has thought of an answer." "Really? Oh, I hope so!" "Deety is going to provide Teena with lots more unused capacity, both for memory and for symbol manipulation, thought-and then she'll shove Mike into bed with Teena. If that does not bring Mike back to life, nothing will."

My love looked startled, then giggled. "Yes, that ought to do it."

She then went back to the pool and I learned from Jacob Burroughs why his daughter Deety spoke so emotionally about the Father of the Atom Bomb: She had seen-they had seen, all four of them, their own home wiped out by an atom bomb- a fission bomb, I inferred, but Jake did not say.

"Colonel, it is one thing to read a headline or hear a news report; it is something else entirely when it's your own home that has the mushroom cloud covering it.

"We are dispossessed, we can never go home. Eventually we were wiped completely off the slate. In our time line there is nothing to show that we four-myself, Hilda, Deety, Zeb- ever existed. The houses we once lived in are gone, never were; the earth has closed over them with no scars." He looked as lonely as Odysseus, then went on: "LAzarus sent a Time Corps field operative back- Dora? May I speak to Elizabeth?"