Time Enough for Love (73 page)

There is no possible way for me to look up that date—but I find one bright clue in my memory: a phrase “The Guns of August.” That phrase has a sharp association in my memory with this war—and it fits, for I remember that it was warm, summery weather (August is summer here) when Gramp (your maternal grandfather, dears) took me out into the backyard and explained to me what “war” is and why we must win.

I don’t think he made me understand it—but I remember the occasion, I remember his serious manner, I remember the weather (warm), and the time of day (just before supper).

Very well, I’ll expect this country to declare war next August; I’ll duck for cover in July—for I have no interest in this war. I know which side won (the side this country will be on) but I know also that “The War to End All Wars” (it was called that!) was a disastrous defeat both for “victors” and “vanquished”—it led inevitably to the Great Collapse and caused me to get off this planet. Nothing I can do will change any of that; there are no paradoxes.

So I will hole up till it’s over. Almost every nation on Terra eventually picked sides—but many did no fighting, and the war did not get close to them, especially nations south of here, Central and South America, so that is probably where I will go.

But I have almost a year to plan it. It is easy here to be anything you claim to be—no identification cards, no computer codes, no thumbprints, no tax numbers. Mind you, this planet now has as many people as Secundus has (will have—your “now”)—yet births are not even registered in much of this country (mine was not, other than with the Families), and a man is whoever he says he is! There are no formalities about leaving this country. It is slightly more difficult to get back in, but I have endless time to cope with that.

But I should, through ordinary prudence, go away for the duration of this war. Why? Conscription. I’m durned if I’ll try to explain that term to girls who just barely know what a war is, but it means “slave armies”—and it means to
me
that I should have asked Ishtar to make me look at least twice the apparent age I look now. If I hang around here too long, I risk becoming an involuntary “hero” in a war that was over before I was old enough to go to school.

This strikes me as ridiculous.

So I’ll concentrate on accumulating money to carry me a couple of years—convert that into gold (about eight kilos, not too heavy)—then the first of next July, move south. A mild problem then, as this country is conducting a small-scale border war with the one just south of it. (Going north is out of the question; that country is already in the big war.) The ocean to the east has underwater warships in it; these tend to shoot at anything that floats. But the ocean on the other side is free of such vermin. If I take a ship going south from a seaport on the west side of this country, I’ll wind up outside the fighting zones. In the meantime I must improve my Spanish—much like Galacta but prettier. I’ll find a tutor—no, Laz,
not
a horizontal one. Don’t you ever think about anything else?

(Come to think of it, dear, what else is worth thinking about? Money?)

Yes, money, at the moment, and I have plans for that. The country is about to elect a chief of government—and I am the
only
man on Terra who
knows
who will be elected. Why did it stick in my memory? Take a look at my registered Families’ name.

So my pressing problem is to lay hands on money to bet on that election. What I win I’ll use to gamble in the bourse—except that it won’t be gambling, as this country is already in a war economy and
I
know it will continue.

I wish I could accept bets on the election instead of placing them—but that is too risky to my skin; I don’t have the right political connections.

You see—No, I had better explain how this city is organized.

Kansas City is a pleasant place. It has tree-shaded streets, lovely residential neighborhoods, a boulevard and park system known throughout the planet. Its excellent paving encourages the automobile carriages that are beginning to be popular. Most of this country is still deep in mud; Kansas City’s well-paved streets have more of these autopropelled vehicles than horse-drawn ones.

The city is prosperous, being the second largest market and transportation center of the most productive agricultural area on Terra—grain, beef, pork. The unsightly aspects of this trade are down in river bottoms while the citizens live in beautiful wooded hills. On a damp morning when the wind sets from that quarter one sometimes catches a whiff of stockyards; otherwise the air is clear and clean and beautiful.

It is a quiet city. Traffic is never dense, and the clop-clop of horses’ hooves or the warning gong of an electrically propelled street-railroad car is just enough to accent the silence—the sounds of children at play are louder.

Galahad is more interested in how a culture uses its leisure than in its economics—and so am I, as scratching a living is controlled by circumstances. But not play. By play I do not mean sex. Sex can’t take up too much time of humans matured beyond adolescence (except a few oddies like the fabled Casanova—and Galahad of course—‘Me ’at’s off to the Dyuke!’).

In 1916 (nothing I say necessarily applies ten years later and certainly not one hundred years later; this is the very end of an era)—at this time the typical Kansas Citian makes his own play; his social events are associated with churches, or with relatives by blood and marriage, or both—dining, picnicking, playing games (not gambling), or simply visiting and talking. Most of this costs little or nothing except the expense of supporting their churches—which are social clubs as much as they are temples of religious faith.

The major commercial entertainment is called “moving pictures”—dramatic shows presented as silent black-and-white shadow pictures flickering against a blank wall. These are quite new, very popular, and very cheap—they are called “nickel shows” after the minor coin charged as a fee. Each neighborhood (defined as walking distance) has at least one such theater. This form of entertainment, and its technological derivatives, eventually had (will have) as much to do with the destruction of this social pattern as the automobile carriages (get Galahad’s opinions on this), but—in 1916—neither has as yet disturbed what appears to be a stable and rather Utopian pattern.

Anomie has not yet set in, the norms are strong, customs are binding, and no one here-&-now would believe that the occasional rumble is Cheyne-Stokes breathing of a culture about to die. Literacy is at the highest level this culture will ever attain—my dears, the people of 1916 simply would not
believe
2016. They won’t even believe that they are about to be enmeshed in the first of the Final Wars; that is why the man for whom I am named is about to be reelected. “We Are Neutral.” “Too Proud to Fight.” “He Kept Us Out of War.” Under these slogans they are marching over the precipice, not knowing it is there.

(I’m depressing myself—hindsight is a vice…especially when it is foresight.)

Now let’s look at the underside of this lovely city:

The city is a nominal democracy. In fact it is nothing of the sort. It is governed by one politician who holds no office. Elections are solemn rituals—and the outcomes are what he ordains. The streets are beautifully paved because his companies pave them—to his profit. The schools are excellent, and they actually
teach
—because this monarch wants it that way. He is pragmatically benign and does not overreach. “Crime” (which means anything illegal and includes both prostitution and gambling) is franchised through his lieutenants; he never touches it himself.

Much of this crime-by-definition is handled by an organization sometimes called “The Black Hand”—but in 1916 it usually has no name and is never seen. But it is why I don’t dare accept election bets; I would be encroaching on a monopoly of one of this politician’s lieutenants—which would be
very
dangerous to my health.

Instead, I’ll bet by the local rules and keep my mouth shut.

The “respectable” citizen, with his pleasant home and garden and church and happy children, sees none of this and (I think) suspects little of it and thinks about it less. The city is divided into zones with firm though unmarked bounds. The descendants of former slaves live in a zone that forms a buffer between the “nice” part of town and the area dominated by and lived in by the franchised monopolists of such things as gambling and prostitution. At night the zones mix only under unspoken conventions. In the daytime there is nothing to notice. The boss maintains tight discipline but keeps it simple. I’ve heard that he has only three unbreakable rules: Keep the streets well paved. Don’t touch the schools. Don’t kill anyone south of a certain street.

In 1916 it works just fine—but not much longer.

I must stop; I have an appointment at K.C. Photo Supply Company to use a lab—in private. Then I must get back to the grift: separating people from dollars painlessly and fairly legally.

Love forever and all the way back,

L.

P.S. You should see me in a derby hat!

DA CAPO

Maureen

Mr. Theodore Bronson né Woodrow Wilson Smith aka Lazarus Long left his apartment on Armour Boulevard and drove his car, a Ford landaulet, to a corner on Thirty-first, Street, where he parked it in a shed behind a pawnshop—as he took a dim view of leaving an automobile on the street at night. Not that the car had cost Lazarus much; he had acquired it as a result of the belief of an optimist from Denver that aces back to back plus a pair showing could certainly beat a pair of jacks—Mr. “Jenkins” must be bluffing. But Mr. “Jenkins” had a jack in the hole.

It had been a profitable winter, and Lazarus expected a still more prosperous spring. His guess about a war market on certain stocks and commodities had usually been correct, and his spread of investments was wide enough that a wrong guess did not hurt him much as most of his guesses were right—they could hardly be wrong since he had anticipated stepped-up submarine warfare, knowing what would eventually bring this country into the war in Europe.

Watching the market left him time for other “investments” in other people’s optimism, sometimes at pool, sometimes at cards. He enjoyed pool more, found cards more rewarding. All winter he had played both, and his plain and rather friendly face, when decorated with his best stupid look, marked him as a natural sucker—a look he enhanced by dressing as a hayseed come to town.

Lazarus did not mind other pool-hall hustlers, or “mechanics” in card games, or “reader” cards; he simply kept quiet and accepted any buildup winnings offered him, then “lost his nerve” and dropped out before the kill. He enjoyed these crooked games; it was easier—and pleasanter—to take money from a thief than it was to play an honest game to win, and it did not cost as much sleep; he always dropped out of a crooked game early, even when he was behind. But his timing was rarely that bad.

Winnings he reinvested in the market.

All winter he had stayed “‘Red’ Jenkins,” living at the Y.M.C.A. and spending almost nothing. When the weather was very bad, he stayed in and read, avoiding the steep and icy streets. He had forgotten how harsh a Kansas City winter could be. Once he saw a team of big horses trying gallantly to haul a heavy truck up the steep pitch of Tenth Street above Grand Avenue. The off horse slipped on the ice and broke a leg—Lazarus heard the cannon bone pop. It made him feel sick, and he wanted to horsewhip the teamster—why hadn’t the fool taken the long way around?

Such days were best spent in his room or in the Main Public Library near the Y.M.C.A.—hundreds of thousands of
real
books,
bound
books he could hold in his hands. They tempted him almost into neglecting his pursuit of money. During that cruel winter he spent every spare hour there, getting reacquainted with his oldest friends—Mark Twain with Dan Beard’s illustrations, Dr. Conan Doyle, the Marvelous Land of Oz as described by the Royal Historian and portrayed in color by John R. Neil, Rudyard Kipling, Herbert George Wells, Jules Verne—

Lazarus felt that he could easily spend all the coming ten years in that wonderful building.

But when false spring arrived, he started thinking about moving out of the business district and again changing his
persona
. It was becoming difficult to get picked as a sucker either at pool or at poker; his investment program was complete; he had enough cash in Fidelity Savings & Trust Bank to allow him to give up the austerity of the Y.M.C.A., find a better address, and show a more prosperous face to the world—essential to his final purpose in this city: remeeting his first family—and not much time left before his July deadline.

Acquiring a presentable motorcar crystallized his plans. He spent the next day becoming “Theodore Bronson”: moved his bank account one street over to the Missouri Savings Bank, and held out ample cash; visited a barber and had his hair and mustache restyled; went to Browning, King & Co., and bought clothing suitable to a conservative young businessman. Then he drove south and cruised Linwood Boulevard, watching for “Vacancy” signs. His requirements were simple: a furnished apartment with a respectable address and facade, its own kitchen and bathroom—and in walking distance of a pool hall on Thirty-first Street.

He did not plan to hustle in that pool hall; it was one of two places where he hoped to meet a member of his first family.

Lazarus found what he needed, but on Armour Boulevard rather than Linwood and rather far from that pool hall. This caused him to rent two garaging spaces—difficult, as Kansas City was not yet accustomed to supplying housing for automobiles. But two dollars a month got him space in a barn close to his apartment; three dollars a month got him a shed behind the pawnshop next to the Idle Hour Billiard Parlour.

He started a routine: Spend each evening from eight to ten at the pool hall, attend the church on Linwood Boulevard that his family had attended (did attend), go downtown mornings when business required—by streetcar; Lazarus considered an automobile a nuisance in downtown Kansas City, and he enjoyed riding streetcars. He began profit-taking on his investments, converting the proceeds into gold double eagles and saving them in a lockbox in a third bank, the Commonwealth. He expected to complete liquidation, with enough gold to carry him through November 11, 1918, well before his July departure date.