Robert Heinlein - Time Enough For Love

The first clansman was impressed by this because having the Navy win, at any time and for any purpose and in anything, took precedence by Sacred Law over anything else, even the righteous pleasure of beating a "smart ass" plebe. He answered, ""Tell you what, mister. Report to my room after supper on Sunday. If you lose tomorrow, you get a double dose of the medicine you've got coming to you. But if you win, we'll cancel it."

David won all three of his matches.

Fencing got him through his perilous plebe year with his precious skin unmarked save for scars on his bottom. He was safe now, with three easy years ahead of him, for only a plebe was subject to physical punishment, only a plebe could be ordered to take part in organized mayhem....

(Omitted)

One body-contact sport David loved, one of ancient popularity, which he had learned back in those hills he had fled from. But it was played with girls and was not officially recognized at this school. There were harsh rules against it, and .a cadet caught practicing it was kicked out without mercy.

But David, like all true geniuses, paid only pragmatic attention to rules made by other people-he obeyed the Eleventh Commandment and never got caught. While other cadets sought the empty prestige of sneaking girls into the barracks or went over the wall at night in search of girls, David kept his activities quiet. Only those who knew him well knew how industriously he pursued this one body-contact sport. And no one knew him well.

Eh? Female cadets? Didn't I make that plain, Ira? Not only were there no girl cadets, there was not one girl in that Navy-except a few nurses. Most particularly there were no girls at that school; there were guards night and day to keep them away from the cadets.

Don't ask me why. It was Navy policy and therefore did not have a reason. In truth there was no job in that entire Navy which could not have been performed by either sex or even by eunuchs-but by long tradition that Navy was exclusively male.

Come to think about it, a few years later that tradition was questioned-a little at first, then by the end of that century, shortly before the Collapse, that Navy had females at all levels. I am not suggesting that this change was a cause of the Collapse. There were obvious causes of the Collapse, causes I won't go into now. This change either was a null factor or possibly postponed the inevitable by a minor amount.

Either way, it doesn't figure into the Tale of the Lazy Man. When David was in school, cadets were supposed to encounter females but seldom, and only under highly stylized circumstances, rigidly bound protocol, and heavily chaperoned.* (* From the noun "chaperon." This word 'has two meanings,: (1) A person charged with preventing sexual contacts' between males and females not licensed for such contacts; (2) a person superficially performing such disservice while, in fact acting as a benign lookout. It appears that the Senior uses the word here in its first meaning rather than in its antithetical second méaaning. See appendix. J.F.45th)

Instead of fighting the rules, David looked for loopholes and made use of them-he was never caught.

Every impossible rule has its loopholes; every general prohibition creates its bootleggers. The Navy as a whole created its impossible rules; the Navy as individuals violated them, especially its curious rules about sex-a publicly monastic life on duty, a slightly veiled life of unlimited voluptuousness off duty. At sea, even harmless reliefs from sexual tension were treated most harshly when detected-although such technical violations of the mores were expected and condoned less than a century earlier. But this Navy was only a little more hypocritical in its sexual behavior than was the social matrix in which it was imbedded, more excessive in its outlets only to the degree that its public rules were more sternly impossible than those of that society as a whole. The public sexual code of that time was unbelievable, Ira; the violations of it simply mirrored in reverse its fantastic requirements. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction-if you'll excuse the obvious.

I did not intend to discuss this other than to say that David found ways to get along with the school's regulations about sex without going completely off his nut, as too many of his classmates did. I'll add only this-and this is merely rumor: Through a mischance all too easy then although unheard of today, a young woman became pregnant, presumably by David. In those days-believe me!-this was a major disaster.

Why? Just stipulate that it was a disaster; it would take forever to explain' that society and no civilized human would believe it. Cadets were forbidden to marry, the young woman had to get married under the rules current then, intervention to correct this mischance was almost unobtainable and physically very dangerous for her.

What David did about it illustrates his whole approach to life. When faced with a choice of evils, accept the least hazardous and cope with it, unblinkingly. He married her.

How he managed to do this and not get caught, I do not know. I can think of a number of ways, some simple and fairly foolproof, some complex and thereby subject to breakdown; I assume that David selected the simplest.

It changed the situation from impossible to manageable. It converted the girl's father from an enemy, all too likely to go to the Commandant of the school with the story and thereby force David to resign when he had but a few months more to reach his goal, into an ally and fellow conspirator anxious to keep the marriage secret so that his son-in-law could graduate and take his wayward daughter off his hands.

As a side benefit David no longer needed to give planning to the pursuit of his favorite sport. He spent his time off in unworried domesticity, with perfect chaperonage.* (* Context implies second meaning. J.F.45th)

As for the rest of David's career in school, one may assume that a lad who could substitute six weeks of unsupervised reading for four years of formal schooling could also stand first in his class academically. This would pay off in money and rank as a young officer's place on the promotion list was determined by his standing at graduation.

But the competition for first place is sharp indeed, and- worse-makes the cadet who achieves it conspicuous. David became aware of this when he was a fresh-caught plebe. "Mister, are you a savoir?" that is to say: "academically brainy"-was another trick question; a plebe was damned whether he answered Yes or No.

But standing second-or even tenth-was practically as useful as first place. David noticed something else: The fourth year counted four times as much as the first, the next to the last year three times as much, and so on down-that is, a plebe's marks did not affect his final standing much-only one part in ten.

David decided to maintain a "low profile"-always the smart decision when one is likely to be shot at.

He finished the first half of his plebe year a little above midway in his class-safe, respectable, inconspicuous. He ended his plebe year in' the upper quarter-but by that time the first classmen were thinking only of graduation and paid no attention to his status. His second year he moved to the upper 10 percent; his third year he improved that by a few numbers-and his last year, when it counted most, he went all out and finished with a final standing for four years of sixth-but effectively second, for of those higher in ranking two elected to leave the line of command for specialization, one was not commissioned because he had damaged his eyes by studying too hard, and one resigned after he graduated.

But the care with which David managed his class standing does not show his true talent for laziness-after all, sitting down and reading was his second, favorite pastime, and anything which merely called for excellent memory and logical reasoning was 'no effort to him.