Robert Heinlein - Farnham's Freehold

"I don't believe, sir, that I wish to play cards."

"Putting me in my place, eh?"

"I didn't say that, sir."

"You didn't have to. Joe, I was offering an olive branch. One rubber, only. We've had a hard day."

"Thank you. I'd rather not."

"Damn it, Joe, we can't afford to be sulky. Last night Duke had a much rougher time. He was about to be shoved out into a radioactive hell-not just to frolic with some fun-loving bears. Did he sulk?"

Joe dropped his eyes, scratched Dr. Livingstone's skull- suddenly looked up and grinned. "One rubber. And I'm going to beat you hollow!"

"In a pig's eye. Barbie? Make a fourth?"

"Delighted!"

The cut paired Joe with Karen and gave him the deal. He riffled the cards. "Now to stack a Mississippi Heart Hand!"

"Watch him, Barbie."

"Want a side bet, Daddy?"

"What have you to offer?"

"Well- My fair young body?"

"Flabby."

"Why, you utterly utter! I'm not flabby, I'm just deliciously padded. Well, how about my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor?"

"Against what?"

"A diamond bracelet?"

Barbara was surprised to see how badly Hugh played, miscounting and even revoking. She realized that he was groggy with fatigue-why, the poor darling! Somebody was going to have to clamp down on him, too. Or he would kill himself trying to carry the whole load.

Forty minutes later Hugh wrote an I.O.U. for one diamond bracelet, then they got ready for bed. Hugh was pleased to see that Joe undressed completely and got into the lower bunk, as he had been told to. Duke stretched out on the floor, bare. The room was hot; the mass cooled slowly and air no longer circulated with the manhole cover in place, despite the vents in the tank room. Hugh made a note that he must devise a bear proof-and cat proof-grille in place of the cover. Later, later- He took the camp lamp into the tank room.

Someone had put the books back on shelves but some were open to dry; he fluffed these, hoped for the best. The last books in the world- so it seemed.

He felt sudden grief that abstract knowledge of deaths of millions had not given him. Somehow, the burning of millions of books felt more brutally obscene than the killing of people. All men must die, it was their single common heritage. But a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man. Book burners-to rape a defenseless friendly book.

Books had always been his best friends. In a hundred public libraries they had taught him. From a thousand newsstands they had warmed his loneliness. He suddenly felt that if he had not been able to save some books, it would hardly be worthwhile to live.

Most of his collection was functional: The Encyclopaedia Britannica-Grace had thought the space should be used for a television receiver "because they might be hard to buy afterwards." He had grudged its bulkiness, too, but it was the most compact assemblage of knowledge on the market. "Che" Guevera's War of the Guerillas-thank God he wasn't going to need that! Nor those next to it: "Yank" Leivy's manual on resistance fighting, Griffith's Translation of Mao Tse-tung's On Guerilla Warfare, Tom Wintringham's New Ways of War, the new TR on special operations-forget 'em! Ain't a-gonna study war no more!

The Boy Scout Handbook, Eshbach's Mechanical Engineering, The Radio Repairman's Guide, Outdoor Life's Hunting and Fishing, Edible Fungi and How to Know Them, Home Life in the Colonial Days, Your Log Cabin, Chimneys and Fireplaces, The Hobo's Cook Book, Medicine Without a Doctor, Five Acres and Independence, Russian Self-Taught and English-Russian and Russian-English dictionaries, The Complete Herbalist, the survival manuals of the Navy Bureau of Weapons, The Air Force's Survival Techniques, The Practical Carpenter-all sound books, of the brown and useful sort. The Oxford Book of English Verse, A Treasury of American Poetry, Hoyle's Book of Games, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, a different Burton's Thousand Nights and a Night, the good old Odyssey with the Wyeth illustrations, Kipling's Collected Verse, and his Just So Stories, a one-volume Shakespeare, the Book of Common Prayer, the Bible, Mathematical Recreations and Essays, Thus Spake Zarathustra, T. S. Eliot's The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Robert Frost's Verse, Men Against the Sea- He wished that he had found time to stock the list of fiction he had started. He wished that he had fetched down his works of Mark Twain regardless of space. He wished- Too late, too late. This was it. All that was left of a mighty civilization. "The cloud-capped towers-"

He jerked awake and found that he had fallen asleep standing up. Why had he come in here? Something important. Oh, yes! Tanning leather- Leather? Barbara was barefooted, Barbara must have moccasins. Better try the Britannica. Or that Colonial Days volume.

No, thank God, you didn't have to use salt! Find some oak trees. Better yet, have Barbara find them; it would make her feel useful. Find something that only Joe could do, too; make the poor little bastard feel appreciated. Loved. Remember to- He stumbled back into the main room, looked at the upper bunk and knew that he couldn't make it. He lay down on the blanket they had played cards on and fell instantly asleep.

Grace did not get up for breakfast. The girls quietly fed them, then stayed in to clean up. Duke went hunting, carrying a forty-five and a hunting bow. It was his choice; arrows could be recovered or replaced, bullets were gone forever. Duke tried a few flights and decided that his shoulder was okay.

He checked watches and set out, with an understanding that a smoky fire would be built to home on if he was not back by three.

Hugh told the girls to take outdoors any book not bone-dry, then broke out pick and shovel and started leveling their house. Joe tried to join him; Hugh vetoed it.

"Look, Joe, there are a thousand things to do. Do them. But no heavy work."

"Such as what, Hugh?"

"Uh, correct the inventories. Give Duke a hand by starring everything that can't be replaced. In the course of that you'll think of things; write them down. Look up how to make soap and candles. Check both dosimeters. Strap on a gun and keep your eyes open-and see that those girls don't go outside without guns. Hell, figure out a way to get plumbing and running water, with no pipe and no lead and no water closets and no Portland cement."

"How in the world could you do that?"

"Somebody did it the first time. And tell this bushy-tailed sidewalk superintendent that I need no help."

"Okay. Come here, Doc! Come, come, come!"

"And Joe. Speaking of bathrooms, you might offer to stand guard for the girls while they bathe. You don't have to look."

"All right, I'll offer. But I'll tell them you suggested it. I don't want them to think-"

"Look, Joe. They are a couple of clean, wholesome, evil-minded American girls. Say what you please, they will still believe you are sneaking a peek. It's part of their credo that they are so fatally irresistible that a man just has to. So don't be too convincing; you'll hurt their feelings."

"I get it. I guess." Joe went away, Hugh started digging, while reflecting that he had never missed a chance, given opportunity without loss of face-but that incorrigible Sunday school lad probably would not sneak a peek at Lady Godiva. A good lad-no imagination but utterly dependable. Shame to have been so rough on him last night- Very quickly Hugh knew what his worst oversight had been: no wheelbarrow.

He had dug only a little before reaching this new appreciation. Digging by muscle power was bad but carrying it away in buckets was an affront to good sense. So he carried and thought about how to build a wheel- with no metal, no heating tools, no machine shop, no foundry, no- Now wait! He had steel bottles. There was strap iron in the bunks and soft iron in the periscope housing. Charcoal he could make and a bellows was simply an animal skin and some branches. Whittle a nozzle. Any damfool who couldn't own a wheel with all that at his disposal deserved to lift and carry.