Spider Robinson - Callahans legacy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book couldnt have been begun without the assistance of my ingenious brother-in-law, John Moore-who brought to my attention, and documented for me at great length, an existing force which would be considered irresistibly destructive even by people who have been within meters of an exploding nuclear weapon;

This book couldnt have been completed without the assistance of Montral fan Steve Herman-who, when I met him at ConCept 95, provided the key suggestion (actually, the way he phrased it was perilously close to being an order) that made everything else fall into place at long last; additional crucial advice, support, pity, and/or medication during the books interminable genesis were supplied by the Cultural Services Bianch of the British Columbia Ministry of Small Business, Tourism and Culture, and by Don DeBrandt, Dr. Oliver Rohinow, Guy lmmega, Bob Atkinson, and just about all the caffeine-inflamed members of the British Columbia Science Fiction Associations Alternative-FRED Society;

This book couldnt have been contemplated without the support and assistance of my wife, Jeanne, and daughter, Tern (it constitutes Jeannes 20th wedding anniversary present-here you go, spice!

But yours was better..

This book wouldnt have been as good without the help of my friends Walter and Jill of White Dwarf Books~Dead Write Mysteries; the one-stop shop for Vancouvers serious word junkies; e~r without Patrick Regan, habitu of Usenets alt.callahans, who unwittingly posted the Pat and Mike jokes just when I needed them; and finally

This book would not have reached your hands without the sagacity, skill, and professionalism of my agent, Eleanor Wood; my editor, Jim Frenkel; and the puissant sales samurai of my esteemed publisher, Shogun Tom Doherty.-sama.

Thanks to the last-named three; by the way, I am happy to report that all of the first three books of stories about Callahans Place have just been restored to print by Tot in a trade paperback omnibus edition called The Callahan Chronicals, for the enjoyment of you and anyone you know whos having a birthday soon

-Vancouver, B C

28 November 1995

1 TOO HOT TO HOOT

The immortal storyteller Alfred Bester once said that the way to tell a story is to begin with a disaster and then build to a climax. Id like to-believe me, Id like to-but this particular story happened just the other way round.

It was a good climax, at least.

Well, okay, maybe thats a silly statement. Perhaps you feel that there is no such thing as a bad climax; that some are better than others, is all. 1 could argue the point, but! wont.

Lets just agree with Woody Allen that The worst one! ever had was right on the money, stipulate that theyre all at least okay, and try to quantify the matter a bit.

On a scale of ten, then, rating the least enjoyable orgasm Ive ever had as a One, and reaching the culmination of hours of foreplay with the sexiest partner imaginable after years of celibacy as a Ten, the climax Im speaking of now was probably about a Nine-Five.

This despite the fact that every one of the ingredients Ive named for a Ten were present The foreplay had been so extensive and inventive (Groucho, leering:and the aftplay wasnt so bad either) that the sun was coming up by the time I was going in the other direction; my partner was the sexiest woman on the planet, my darling Zoey Berkowitz; and she was my first real lover (as opposed to mere sexer) in more years than I cared to think about. True, we had already been lovers for several months, by then but the honeymoon was by no means over. (In fact, it

still isnt. The way I see it, our relationship is really just a single contirniojis ongoing act of lovemaking, a dance so complex and subtle that we often disengage bodies completely for hours at a time.) My father used to say, Familiarity breeds, content, and thats always been my experience.

No, what brought the meter down as low as Nine-Five was merely a matter of mechanics Zoey-thank God-has never been a ~malI woman, not since the sixth grade, any way, and she was nine and a half months pregnant at the time all this happened, in the late fall of 1988. Indeed, if I could travel in time like Mike Callahan, and went far enough back into hominid history, I think I could prove my theory that pregnancy is responsible for the evolution of Man As Engineer. (This might-help explain why there are so few female engineers.) A man who has successfully managed the trick with a mate in the latter stages of pregnancy possesses most of the insights necessary to build a house-and a strong motivation in that direction, as well. If inventing math were as much fun, wed probably own the Galaxy by now.

But I digress

As Iwas saying, Zoey and I had solved the Riddle of the Sphinx together one more time, just as enough dawnglow was sneaking past the edges of the curtains to let us see what we already knew, and neither of us was paying attention to any damn imaginary scoring judges-we were both well content, if a little fatigued. By the time we had our breath back, the day was well and truly begun: birds had begun warbling somewhere outside, and traffic was building up to the usual weekday morning homicidal frenzy out on Route 25A (why are they all in such a hurry to get to a place they hate and do things they dont care about?), a combination of sounds that always puts me right to sleep. Thats probably just where Id have gone ifZoey hadnt poked me in a tender spot and murmured drowsily, cha snickering about?

I hadnt realized I was. In fact, I wasnt. Im not, I said. Im chuckling.

She shook her head. Unh-unh. I like Snickers bettern Chuckles.

I considered a couple of puns having to do with the physical characteristics and components of the candy named, but left them unspoken. Sexual puns are funnier before you come.

Chortling, then, I said. Definitely not a snicker.

Zoey grimaced, her eyes still glued shut. But why? Are you.,, Oh, its just this silly mental picture I get after we make love, I admitted. 1 keep seeing little Nameless floating in there, startled awake by this rhythmic earthquake then staring in fascination as all these millions of confused, exhausted, disappointed-little wigglers show up, looking everywhere for an egg. Ill bet they tickle. The little tyke must get a chuckle out of it.

Or a chortle, she agreed, chortling sleepily. I will, too fnow on. Thanks. Neat image.

She yawned hugely then, so of course I did, too, and we did the little bits of physical backing and filling necessary to move from Cuddling to Snuggling, and wed probably both have been comfortably asleep together in only another minute or two. But we had forgotten about the Invisible Machines of Murphy.

The universe is full of them, and many of them seem to be simple pressure switches. For instance, theres one underneath most toilet seats: your weight coming down on the seat somehow-causes the phone to ring. (Unless youve brought the phone in with you: in that case the switch cues a Jehovahs Witness to knock on. your door.) Theres another one built into most TV remote controls, wired into the channel select button; if you try to browse, it somehow alerts every station on the air to go to commercial. The most maddening thing about these switches is that, being of Murphy, theyre unreliable: you can!t be sure whether or just when they will function, except that it will usually turn out in retrospect to have been at the most annoying possible moment. So the tiny pair of switches under thy eyelids, sensing that I was just about to di~ off to sleep, picked now to send out the signal that causes my alarm clock to ring. Excuse me-I mean, to:BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! !!!

For the past two weeks that damned thing had been going off at just this ungodly hour-set-by mine own hand and with Zoeys foreknowledge and consent-and every single time it came as a rude and ghastly surprise. Neither of us could get used to it. I had been a professional musician for a quarter of a century until I gave it up to tend bar; Zoey still was one-or had been right up until carrying both a baby and a bass guitar got to be too much for her; it had been decades since either of us had willingly gotten up at dawn. Dawn was what you occasionally stayed up as late as.