Robert Heinlein - Time Enough For Love

"But revolutions can be fun. Did I tell you how I worked my way through college? Operating a Gatling gun for five dollars a day and loot. Never got higher than corporal because each time I had enough money for another semester, I deserted-and, being a mercenary, I was never tempted to become a dead hero. But adventure and change of scene are appealing to a young man...and I was very young.* (* The Gatling gun (Richard J. Gatling, 1818-1903) was obsolete by the time Lazarus Long was born. This allegation is barely possible if one stipulates that an obsolete might be used in some small, out-of-the-way insurrection. J.F.45th)

"But dirt, and missing meals, and the wheet of bullets past your ears stop being glamorous as you grow up; the next time I was in the military-not entirely my idea-I chose Navy instead. Wet Navy, although I was space Navy at later times and under other names.

"I've sold almost everything-except slaves-and worked as a mind-reader in a traveling show, and was a king once- a much overrated profession, the hours are too long-and designed women's styles under a phony French name and accent and with my hair long. Almost the only time I've worn long hair, Ira; not only does long hair need a lot of timewasting care, it gives your opponent something to grab in close combat and can obscure your view at a critical moment-either one can be fatal. But I don't favor a billiard-ball cut because a thick mat of hair-not so long as to fall over your eyes-can save you a nasty scalp wound."

Lazarus appeared to stop to think. "Ira, I don't see how I can list all the things I've done to support myself and my wives and kids, even if I could remember them. The longest I ever stuck to one job was about half a century-very special circumstances-and the shortest was from after breakfast to just before lunch-again, special circumstance. But no matter where or what, there are makers, takers, and fakers. I prefer the first category but I haven't spurned the other two. Whenever I was a family man-usually, that is-I haven't let compunctions stop me from keeping food on the table. I won't steal another child's food to feed my own-but there is always some way not too sickeningly fake to garner valuta if a man isn't too picky-which I never was whenever I had family obligations.

"You can sell things which have no intrinsic value, such as stories or songs-I've worked every branch of the entertainment profession...including a time in the capital of Fatima when I squatted in the marketplace with a brass bowl in front of me, telling a story longer than this one, and waiting at cliff-hangers for the clink of a coin.

"I was reduced to that because my ship had been confiscated and foreigners weren't permitted to work without a permit-a high squeeze on the theory that jobs should be reserved for local citizens, there being a depression. Telling stories without a fee wasn't classed as work, nor was it begging-which required a license-and cops let me alone as long as I volunteered the customary daily gift to the Police Benevolent Fund.

"It was either get by with some such dodge or be reduced to stealing-difficult in a culture in which one is not sophisticated in the local customs. Still, I would have risked it save that I had a wife and three small children~. That hobbled me, Ira; a family man should not take risks that a bachelor finds acceptable.

"So I sat there till my tailbone wore through the cobblestones, recounting everything from Grimm's fairy tales to, Shakespeare's plays, and not letting my wife spend money on anything but food until we saved enough to buy that work permit plus the customary cumshaw. Then I clobbered 'em, Ira."

"How, Lazarus?"

"Slowly but thoroughly. Those months in the marketplace had given me a degree of sophistication in the 'Who's-Whom' of that society and what its sacred cows were. Then I stayed on for years-no choice. But first I was baptised into the local religion, gaining a more acceptable name in the process, and memorized the Qur'an. Not quite the same Qur'an I had known some centuries earlier, but it was worth the effort.

"I'll skip over how I got into the Tinkers' Guild and got my first job repairing television receivers-had my pay docked to cover my contribution to the guild, that is, with a private arrangement to the Grand Master Tinker, not too expensive. This society was retarded in technology; its customs didn't encourage progress, and they had slipped behind what they had fetched from Earth about five centuries earlier. That made me a wizard, Ira, and could have got me hanged bad I not been careful to be a faithful-and openhanded-son of the church. So once I got into position for it, I peddled fresh electronics and stale astrology-using knowledge they didn't have for one and a free imagination for the other.

"Eventually I was chief stooge to the very official who had confiscated my ship and trade goods years earlier, and I was helping him get richer while getting rich myself. If he recognized me, he never said so-a beard changes my looks quite a lot. Unfortunately he fell into disfavor and I wound up with his job."

"How did you work that, Lazarus? Without being caught, I mean?"

"Now, now, Ira! He was my benefactor. It said so in my contract and I always addressed him as such. Allah's ways are mysterious. I cast a horoscope for him, warning him that his stars were in bad shape. And so they were. That system is one of the few I know of with two usable planets around the same star, both colonized and with trade between them. Artifacts and slaves-"

"'Slaves,' Lazarus? While I am aware of such a practice on Supreme, I didn't think that vice was very common. Not economic."

The old man closed his eyes, kept them closed so long I thought he had fallen asleep (he often did during the early days of these talks). Then he opened them and spoke very grimly:

"Ira, this vice is far more common than historians usually mention. Uneconomic, yes-a slave society can't compete with a free one. But with the Galaxy as wide as it is, there is usually no such competition. Slavery can and does exist many times and places, whenever the Laws are rigged to permit it.

"I said that I would do almost anything to support my wives and kids-and I have; I have shoveled human excrement for a pittance, standing in it up to my knees, rather than let a child go hungry. But this I will not touch. Nor is it because I was once a slave myself; I have always felt this way. Call it a 'belief' or dignify it as a deep moral conviction. Whatever it is, for me it is beyond argument. If the human animal has any value at all, he is too valuable to be property. If he has any inner dignity, he is much too proud to own other, men. I don't give a damn how scrubbed and perfumed he may be, a slaveowner is subhuman.

"But this does not mean that I'll cut my throat when I run into it, or I would not have lived through my first century. For there is another bad thing about slavery, Ira; it is impossible to free slaves, they have to free themselves."

Lazarus scowled. "You've got me preaching again and about matters I can't possibly prove. Once I got my hands on my ship, I had it fumigated and checked it over myself and had it loaded with items I thought I could sell and had food and water taken on for the human cargo it had been refitted for, and sent the captain and crew on a week's leave, and notified the Protector of Servants-the state slave factor, that is-that we would load as soon as the skipper and purser were back.

"Then I took my family on a holiday inspection of the ship. Somehow the Protector of Servants was suspicious; he insisted on touring the ship with us. So we had to take him along when we took off from there, very suddenly, shortly after my family was aboard. Right out of that system and never went back. But before we put down on a civilized planet, me and. my boys-two almost grown by then-removed any sign that she had ever been a slaver, even though it mean jettisoning stuff I could have sold."