Heinlein Robert Anson - The Counterfeit Heinlein

THERE WAS ONCE something called science-fiction. (I know, I know, there is now, but its not the samethis was preSpace.) It began more than a hundred years before the Clean Slate War, and for a while it concentrated on what it kept calling exciting stories of sciencelook at all the wonders todays mad scientists are going to bring us any decade now, that sort of thing. There was a Julius Verne, for instancesome of his things have survived, but not 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , which irritates me; Ive always wondered how many of those Leagues were red-headed, like the one in Sherlock Holmes. And there was The Foot of the Gods by Herbert Wells, which also hasnt survived (although War of the Worlds did, and is actually fairly exciting, if you can get hold of a copy somewhere).

But science-fiction started to change; things do. It began to concentrate more on people and on ideas (it was a commonplace of the time to say that science-fiction was a literature of ideas, though I am damned if I can imagine anything else for a literature to be of), while the detailed science surrendered the steering wheel and slowly slid into the back seat.

Just a little while after that, science-fiction began to deal in matters that were scientific only by the most haphazard of definitionseverything from parapsychology (not just telepathy; telepathy exists, but this was something else again), a charming superstition a few especially wishful ancients thought of as psychology, and eventually such things as witchcraft, numerology and the Great Beyond.

And then ... well, you get the idea. After the Clean Slate War, when enough pieces had been picked up and shoved back together, there began to be science-fiction again, but it had very little to do with scienceany more than a great many comic-books or comic-tapes have to do with comedy.

Now, there are people who know all this in great detail, or in as great detail as the surviving, and often confusing, records allow. (Was there really an author named Spider Callahan? Alfred Blishter?) I know it in fits and starts, because I did have a scrappy sort of Classical education once upon a time, and some of it has stuck. More, I took the quick course, so to speak, when Ping first mentioned his job to me; I collected all the information I could get at, and three or four sorts I hadnt really thought I could get at until I tried.

That, after all, is what a Survivor doesthats what it says on my business cards: Gerald Knave, Survivor in spite of what youre used to seeing on your 3V. Up there, a Survivor is a grim, wordless sort of hero with a hot beamer in each hand and a great willingness to kill off half the cast on no very special provocation.

A Survivor, and Im sorry to shatter such illusions as you may be harboring, is essentially an information collector. You never know, in my trade, just which bit of information you are going to need in the Hell of a hurry, but you do know that, when the red signal lights up, you are not going to have the time to find it. Therefore, you gather in everything available, as long beforehand as you can manage, and you keep gathering in more information, more or less all the time.

This particular jobPings job, for which I read up on my preSpace sf, as it was calledactually began rather suddenly, and pre-Ping, with someone taking a shot at me.

There I was, sitting quietly in a leased apartment on Ravenalwhere I had gone to hobnob with some of the friends I have in high placesdrinking coffee out of a china cup, watching my rented Totum direct two rented Robbies in the fine points of apartment-cleaning, and trying to decide which of several interesting restaurants I was going to invite Jamie Arthur to, later that evening. The coffee was Sumatra Mandheling, which Ravenal imports for a few discerning Nobels and suchlike. The time was fifteen-eleven, City Two local time; Ravenal has a twenty-four hour day, almost exactly, and even a twelve-month year. I take my coffee with cream and sugar, not in excessive amounts.

Well, how did I know which fact might be the important one? It was a coolish late-Spring day, and I had my window open, and just at fifteen-eleven (which I am always going to think of as three-eleven P. M., since I do not have the Scientific Mind) something went whizz-crash-tinkle , and my lap was full of hot coffee. I was holding the cups handle; the rest of the china had left it, to complicate the apartment-cleaning situation.

I sprang up with many an eager curse, dropping the handle and dabbing at my pants with both hands. In something under a full second, sanity returned, and I dropped to the floor, where I lay with my face in the luxurious carpet for ten full minutes. The Totum directed the Robbies to clean around me, not over me; Ravenals rental machines, as one would expect, are fairly bright.

Any sensible marksman, I kept telling myself angrily, having missed the first shot by a reasonably thick hair, would have potted me in that endless second before I dropped. I kept muttering that into the damn carpet while I waited. For ten solid minutes. Of course its not especially helpful to set time limits on a marksmans patience when you have no idea who the Hell he is, but ten minutes seemed about right as a wild guess, even adding in a safety factor.

So I struggled upward, let my machines get on with their work, and didnt get shot at again.

And nothing else of vital importance happened that day or that night. Jamie and I had a pleasant dinner and a pleasant few hours of chat (Id finally chosen an old-fashioned British pub with surprisingly good food, if all too predictable atmospherethe name had at the least a definitely ancient feel: the Rose & Corona).

I did not, just by the way, spend my time waiting nervously to get shot at again. My hopeful assassin had had his one shot, and he hadnt taken any more. It seemed unlikely that hed be bucketing around all over City Two (thats Ravenal for you: extraordinarily bright and accomplished people, with no literary imagination whatevernot even Twin City or Doubleville) angling for another try.

No, I relaxed and enjoyed myself, and Jamie seemed to enjoy himself, and I went to bed in a calm and fairly peaceful mood.

I did make quite certain to shut and lock all the nice, unbreakable-glassex windows.

And the next day at ten-thirtysomebody had asked round about me, and discovered that I keep civilized hoursthe telephone rang, and it was Ping, whom Id never so much as heard of before, offering me a job.

* * * *

HIS NAME WAS Ping Boom, and I am not making that upmy God, who would? It is amazing, if not downright sickening, what some parents will do to saddle their offspring with lifelong jeers and scars. Admittedly Boom is a surname that does cry out for ridicule, but would Abraham Boom, or Callian Boom, get quite the reaction I gave Ping Boom when he told me who he was? I doubt it.

But when I was persuaded that he wasnt trying to spoof me somehow, he turned out to be a very businesslike fellow. I agreed to meet him after Id treated myself to a lovely, hand-crafted small breakfast, and, nicely cleaned up, was in his office by noon, or noon-thirty. We want you to do a very specific job for us, Knave, he said. He was a short, thin fellow with sparse whitish hair, large, ancient-looking eyeglasses, and a mouth that was better than halfway toward Pursed Disapproval.