"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?"
"Start talking." "Lib love? Place that rosette Pete wanted-or was it Archie? Spike the earliest date of surveillance. Go back three years. Evacuate."
"Paradox, Jacob."
"Yes. Place those three years in a loop, squeeze them off, throw them away. Check it."
"I check you, dear. More?"
"No. Off now."
Burroughs continued, "-sent a field operative to our time line to try to find us, anywhere in the fifty-year bracket from my birth to the night we ran for our lives. We are not there at all. We were never born. Both Zeb and I had military careers as well as academic ones; we are not in military records, we are not in campus records. There is a record of my parents... but they never had me. Colonel, in all the dozens, hundreds, of ways that citizens were recorded in the twentieth century in the United States of North America not one trace could be found that showed that we had ever been there."
Burroughs sighed. "The Gay Deceiver not only saved our lives that night; she saved our very existence. She took evasive action so fast that the Beast lost track- What is it, dear?"
Jane Libby was standing by us, dripping, and looking round-eyed. "Papa?"
"Say it, love."
"We need those sneakies Pythagoras wanted but they should go back much farther, oh, ten years or more. Then, when they spot the tick at which the Overlord or whoever started watching THQ, back off some and evacuate. Loop and patch, and they'll never suspect that we outflanked them. I told Deety; she thinks it could work. What do you think?"
"I think it will. Let me get your mother on line and we'll introduce it. Dora, let me have Elizabeth again, please." Nothing in his face or manner suggested that he had just spoken to Libby Long, proposing what was (so far as I could see) the same plan.
"Elizabeth? A message from our table tennis champ. Jane Libby says to place that rosette at minus ten years, spike first surveillance, then go back-oh, say, three years-evacuate, squeeze off a loop and patch in. Both Deety and I think it will work. Please submit it to the panel, credited to Jane Ell, with Deety's vote and mine noted."
"And my vote."
"You have smart children, mistress mine."
"Comes of picking smart fathers, sir. And good ones. Good to his offspring, good to his wives. Off?"
"Off." Burroughs added, to the girl waiting, "Your parents are proud of you, Janie. I predict that the maths section will produce a unanimous report in the next few minutes. You have answered the objection Lazarus raised-his quite legitimate objection-by producing a solution under which it does not matter who did this to us; we can repair it safely without knowing who did it. But did you notice that your method may also tie down who did it? With a little bit of luck."
Jane Libby looked as if she had just received a Nobel Prize. "I noticed. But the problem simply called for safe evacuation; the rest is serendipitous."
"'Serendipitous' is another way of spelling 'smart.' Ready for some supper? Or do you want to get back in the bowl? Or both? Why don't you throw Colonel Campbell in with his clothes on? Deety and Hilda will help you, I'm certain, and I think Hazel might."
"Now wait a minute!" I protested.
"Sissy!" "Colonel, we won't do that to you! Pop is joking."
"I am like hell joking." "Throw your pop in first, for drill. If it doesn't hurt him, then I'll submit quietly." "Blert!" "You just keep out of this!"
"Janie baby."
"Yes, Pop?" "Find out how many orders there are for strawberry malted milks and hot dogs, or unreasonable facsimiles. While you are doing that, I will hang my clothes in the dry cabinet-and if the colonel is smart, he will, too; Colonel, this is a rowdy bunch, especially in this exact combination-Hilda, Deety, Hazel, and Janie. Explosive. Who takes care of the kitten?" An hour later Dora (a little blue light) led us to our stateroom;
Hazel carried the kitten and one saucer, I carried our clothes, the other saucer, my cane, and her handbag. I was pleasantly tired and looking forward to going to bed with my bride. For too long she had not been in my bed. From my viewpoint we had missed two nights... not long for old married couples, much too long for a honeymoon. And the moral of that is:
Don't get yourself mugged on your honeymoon.
From her standpoint it had been... a month? "Best of girls, how long has it been? That Lethe field has left me with my time sense fouled up."
Hazel hesitated. "It has been thirty-seven Tertian days here. But to you it should feel like overnight. Well, two nights... because, by the time I came to bed last night, you were snoring. I'm sorry. Hate me some but not too much. Here's our wee bunty ben."
("Wee bunty ben" indeed! It was larger than my luxury suite in Golden Rule and more lavish... with a bigger and better bed.) "Bride, we bathed in Lazarus's Taj Mahal playroom. I no longer have to remove my cork leg and I took care of everything else in that Taj Mahal. If you have anything to do, do it. But be quick about it! I'm eager."
"Nothing. But must take care of Pixel."
"We'll put his saucers in the 'fresher, shut him in, let him out later."
So we did, and went to bed, and it was wonderful, and the details are none of your business.
Sometime later Hazel said, "We've been joined."
"We still are."
"I mean, 'We have company.'"
"So I noticed. He climbed on my shoulder blades way back when, but I was busy and he weighs almost nothing, so I didn't mention it. Can you grab him and keep him from being rolled on and crushed while I get us untangled?"
"Yes. No hurry about it. Richard, you're a good boy. Pixel and I have decided to keep you."
"Just try to get rid of me! You can't. Love, you phrased something oddly. You said it was 'thirty-seven Tertian days here.'"