Robert Heinlein - Door Into Summer

"You get back in that bed!"

"Where are my clothes?"

"Get back in that bed. Now!"

I answered reasonably, "Look, nurse, I'm a free citizen, over twenty-one, and not a criminal. I don't have to get back into that bed and I'm not going to. Now are you going to show me where my clothes are or shall I go out the way I am and start looking?"

She looked at me, then turned suddenly and went out; the door ducked out of her way.

But it would not duck out of my way. I was still trying to study out the gimmick, being fairly sure that if one engineer could dream it up, another could figure it out, when it opened again and a man came in.

"Good morning," he said. "I'm Dr. Albrecht."

His clothes looked like a cross between a Harlem Sunday and a picnic to me, but his brisk manner and his tired eyes were convincingly professional; I believed him. "Good morning, Doctor. I'd like to have my clothes."

He stepped just far enough inside to let the door slide into place behind him, then reached inside his clothes and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He got one out, waved it briskly in the air, placed it in his mouth and puffed on it; it was lighted. He offered me the pack. "Have one?"

"Uh, no, thanks."

"Go ahead. It won't hurt you."

I shook my head. I had always worked with a cigarette smoldering beside me; the progress of a job could be judged by the overflowing ash trays and the bums on the drafting board. Now I felt a little faint at the sight of smoke and wondered if I had dropped the nicotine habit somewhere in the slept-away years. "Thanks just the same."

"Okay. Mr. Davis, I've been here six years. I'm a specialist in hypnology, resuscitation, and like subjects. Here and elsewhere I've helped eight thousand and seventy-three patients make the comeback from hypothermia to normal life-you're number eight thousand and seventy-four. I've seen them do all sorts of odd things when they came out-odd to laymen; not to me. Some of them want to go right back to sleep again and scream at me when I try to keep them awake. Some of them do go back to sleep and we have to ship them off to another sort of institution. Some of them start weeping endlessly when they realize that it is a one-way ticket and it's too late to go home to whatever year they started from. And some of them, like you, demand their clothes and want to run out into the street."

"Well? Why not? Am I a prisoner?"

"No. You can have your clothes. I imagine you'll find them out of style, but that is your problem. However, while I send for them, would you mind telling me what it is that is so terribly urgent that you must attend to it right this minute... after it has waited thirty years? That's how long you've been at subtemperature-thirty years. Is it really urgent? Or would later today do as well? Or even tomorrow?"

I started to blurt out that it damn well was urgent, then stopped and looked sheepish. "Maybe not that urgent."

"Then as a favor to me, will you get back into bed, let me check you over, have your breakfast, and perhaps talk with me before you go galloping off in all directions? I might even be able to tell you which way to gallop."

"Oh, okay, Doctor. Sorry to have caused trouble." I climbed into bed. It felt good-I was suddenly tired and shaky.

"No trouble. You should see some that we get. We have to pull them down off the ceiling." He straightened the covers around my shoulders, then leaned over the table built into the bed. "Dr. Albrecht in Seventeen. Send a room orderly with breakfast, uh... menu four-minus."

He turned to me and said, "Roll over and pull up your jacket; I want to get at your ribs. While I'm checking you, you can ask questions. If you want to."

I tried to think while he prodded my ribs. I suppose it was a stethoscope he used although it looked like a miniaturized hearing aid. But they had not improved one thing about it; the pickup he pushed against me was as cold and hard as ever.

What do you ask after thirty years? Have they reached the stars yet? Who's cooking up "The War to End War" this time? Do babies come out of test tubes? "Doc, do they still have popcorn machines in the lobbies of movie theaters?"

"They did the last time I looked. I don't get much time for such things. By the way, the word is `grabbie' now, not `movie.'"

"So? Why?"

"Try one. You'll find out. But be sure to fasten your seat belt; they null the whole theater on some shots. See here, Mr. Davis, we're faced with this same problem every day and we've got it down to routine. We've got adjustment vocabularies for each entrance year, and historical and cultural summaries. It's quite necessary, for malorientation can be extreme no matter how much we lackweight the shock."

"Uh, I suppose so."

"Decidedly. Especially in an extreme lapse like yours. Thirty years."

"Is thirty years the maximum?"

"Yes and no. Thirty-five years is the very longest we've had experience with, since the first commercial client was placed in subtemperature in December 1965. You are the longest Sleeper I have revived. But we have clients in here now with contract times up to a century and a half. They should never have accepted you for as long as thirty years; they didn't know enough then. They were taking a great chance with your life. You were lucky."

"Really?"

"Really. Turn over." He went on examining me and added, "But with what we've learned now I'd be willing to prepare a man for a thousand-year jump if there were any way to finance it... hold him at the temperature you were at for a year just to check, then crash him to minus two hundred in a millisecond. He'd live. I think. Let's try your reflexes."

That "crash" business didn't sound good to me. Dr. Albrecht went on: "Sit up and cross your knees. You won't find the language problem difficult. Of course I've been careful to talk in 1970 vocabulary-I rather pride myself on being able to talk selectively in the entrance speech of any of my patients; I've made a hypnostudy of it. But you'll be speaking contemporary idiom perfectly in a week; it's really just added vocabulary."

I thought of telling him that at least four times he had used words not used in 1970, or at least not that way, but I decided it wouldn't be polite. "That's all for now," he said presently. "By the way, Mrs. Schultz has been trying to reach you."

"Huh?"

"Don't you know her? She insisted that she was an old friend of yours."

"`Schultz,'" I repeated. "I suppose I've known several `Mrs. Schultzes' at one time and another, but the only one I can place was my fourth-grade teacher. But she'd be dead by now."

"Maybe she took the Sleep. Well, you can accept the message when you feel like it. I'm going to sign a release on you. But if you're smart, you'll stay here for a few days and soak up reorientation. I'll look in on you later. So `twenty-three, skiddoo' as they used to say in your day. Here comes the orderly with your breakfast."

I decided that he was a better doctor than a linguist. But I stopped thinking about it when I saw the orderly. It rolled in, carefully avoiding Dr. Albrecht, who walked straight out, paying no attention to it and making no effort himself to avoid it.

It came over, adjusted the built-in bed table, swung it over me, opened it out, and arranged my breakfast on it. "Shall I pour your coffee?"

"Yes, please." I did not really want it poured, as I would rather have it stay hot until I'd finished everything else. But I wanted to see it poured.

For I was in a delighted daze... it was Flexible Frank!

Not the jackleg, bread-boarded, jury-rigged first model Miles and Belle had stolen from me, of course not. This one resembled the first Frank the way a turbospeedster resembles the first horseless carriages. But a man knows his own work. I had set the basic pattern and this was the necessary evolution... Frank's great-grandson, improved, slicked up, made more efficient-but the same bloodline.