Tomorrow’s Heritage

by Juanita Coulson

  “I never knew you had such a villainous childhood,” Dian said, lifting one expressive eyebrow.

  “Pat never lets facts get in the way of a good yarn, especially at my expense.”

  The servants were enjoying the evening, too, despite their duties. They didn’t laugh out loud, but many were smiling, not hiding their amusement. Though some of them had been with Jael since Saunderhome was built, most were new. Todd had never comprehended why Jael wanted so many servants. They certainly weren’t necessary. Ward Saunder had automated nearly everything, even the kitchens. So many warm bodies scurrying around doing menial chores had to be a status symbol, no more. And it was getting worse.

  It had been bad enough. As Ward Saunder rode higher and higher, his inventions proving out with dizzying rapidity, the important people started seeking out the Saunders, at the lab in California, in Chicago, following them when they moved to the Caribbean. And the caliber of those important people kept rising. It had been years before Todd had understood what was happening. Jael had always been two women, able to wipe runny noses and discipline and read stories, yet not being there at crucial times, leaving them alone or under Ward’s somewhat inadequate parental guidance. Ward meant well, but he was too easily distracted, a man thinking on a whole other plane of existence; he tended to ignore the kids, while they ran wild. When Jael was there, she cracked the whip and they behaved. She had done that and made them disappear when the politicians and businessmen arrived.

  V.I.P.s came from all over the world. Many of them had looked haunted and trapped, as indeed they were, by an avalanche of events. They went away less haunted, but trapped in a different way—men who hated what they had done, but who had no choice. Jael Saunder, round-faced, soft-voiced matron, a shark feeding on bloated and floundering national leaders and their prostrate countries. How many machinations and shady deals had she pulled off in those days? Pat had started working with her when he was in his teens. He had no taste for invention but a lot of talent for Jael’s brand of business. They had left lab work to Todd. And Mari had made a profession of being reckless—reckless with her life and with the family reputation.

  It worked. Money and power switched hands, from world leaders’ hands to Jael’s small, plump ones. The graphs had shown a frightening upward line. Pat was Jael’s apprentice, as Todd had been Ward’s. After his father’s death, he had pulled the foundations together and continued to build on Ward’s work in the field he knew best, revolutionizing the world of telecommunications with his father’s inventions.

  Escaping, in his own way, as Mariette had.

  And now Mariette had found purpose for her life. No more frivolous joy-seeking. She was as fiery and dedicated as a new mysticism convert. Her religion was Goddard Colony, and it was as if her hell-raising and sleeping around and racing at the edge of death never happened.

  Boundary lines dissolved. New ones formed. Humanity reeled from blow after blow to its collective confidence. But Saunder Enterprises kept growing richer, and with riches went pomp and show. Fast fliers. Airboats. Imported foods. Rare fabrics from Goddard. A surfeit of human servants to supplement the silently efficient electronic ones.

  Jackals. Todd suddenly saw them through Dian’s point of view. Did she think that was what they were? It was an honest judgment, one he winced at. They had fed off the rotting carcasses in order to survive. By the time Jael was through, Saunder Enterprises was financially invulnerable, or nearly so. So what if that murderous competitiveness had left shattered fortunes and lives in its wake? She had gotten them the perks, the privileges, and the power.

  It was inevitable that Pat would go into politics. Then the Saunders would have it all. In one form or another, they would have a guiding hand on Earth, in the telecom satellites, and in space, even as far out as the Moon. Only the priorities had shifted. In order to enhance Pat’s power, some of Mari’s would have to be jettisoned. Maybe all of it.

  Todd looked at Pat, the idle conversation washing around him. For thirty-two years he had seen that face, a baby’s face, a boy’s face, now a man’s face. He had loved the face and the person who owned it. Odd. Pat didn’t look like the fictional benevolent dictator. He looked like Pat. But he would be a dictator if he won this election. Shear the sheep and make warm coats and sell them back to the sheep. Some of the sheep, the deserving ones, might get a coat donated. But in the end, they would all be Pat’s sheep.

  “Well, that took care of Emory, didn’t it, Mari? That whiny little kid never came west of the craters again. Saunders ruled the area. Outnumbered them.” Pat laughed as he wound up the anecdote about their childhood days in Chicago. He laid his napkin by his plate and gazed around the table. “It’s about time to adjourn to the theater, I believe. Mother?”

  This time there was no mistake. Todd saw the dangerous flicker in Jael’s eyes. Pat didn’t wait for her okay. He helped ‘Rissa and Mari, then walked around to Jael, taking charge.

  Dowager queen. But now Pat’s the king. And beginning to enjoy it. And Jael isn’t enjoying taking a back seat while he runs the show.

  As they moved back toward the comfortable chairs, Dian clung to Todd’s arm. “It’s going okay, isn’t it?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I guess so.” Todd couldn’t articulate his feelings. He was sad with a bittersweet aching, a lingering, hurtful, and slow letting go of something he had always had. The sense of impending loss was terrible.

  The servants were gone, but Roy Paige stayed to help operate the photonics. He took his traditional position behind Jael’s chair, his good hand poised over the projector panels. Hidden mechanisms glided the chairs about, forming a precisely measured arc. The arching bubble dome polarized, shutting out starlight. The room lights dimmed but left enough illumination so they could see each other.

  Anticipation gripped them. Todd leaned back, thinking that he had helped make this anniversary ritual possible. The original photonics were Ward’s. Todd and Roy and other techs had refined the system in the years since, updating the little show. Ironically, because of that fine tuning, the images would be far more realistic than when Ward was still alive.

  The acoustics were ideally balanced. There was no projector noise. Ward Saunders appeared before them. He stood equidistant from all the chairs. His feet rested on the carpet, not hovering unrealistically a few centimeters above, as was the case with too many holo-mode projections. There used to be three emulsions and all sorts of visual restrictions created by the system’s limitations. Ward had identified and corrected the problems.

  He was alive. There. No shimmer line. No distortion. Ward Saunder was alive once more—as long as the projection lasted.

  Ward covered his nervousness with a little stammer. He wasn’t used to serving as a model or performing, though he had the same stunning stage presence Pat had developed into such a gold mine. “Jael, kids . . . uh . . . a man’s birthday . . . well, only comes once a year, they say, right? I guess this is a funny way to celebrate-showing off my new toy. But it’s a pretty good way. Thought you might find it pleasing. The old tinkerer found a dime and made it into fifty dollars, hey, Jael?”

  The speech patterns were those Ward had employed when he was embarrassed yet inordinately pleased with himself. At work, busy dissecting a machine or designing a diagram or sketching an idea, he had spoken more crisply and in a heavier tone. There had been another sort of excitement in his manner then, when he was hunting for something. Now he had found it.

  He moved toward them, turning, posing coyly, using his own form as a demonstration of his latest achievement. He was grinning, mildly fuzzy with too much liquor—a pre-birthday binge.

  Eleven years ago. It didn’t seem possible. He had been dead eleven years. But the holo-mode recording held death at bay.

  Ward’s image made a corny bow in Jael’s direction. The photonics had been captured long before this room was built. But the alignment had been carefully worked out, and the chairs were arranged to duplicate the original successful sho
wing. As he had on that first night, Ward saluted his wife. “Jael, m’dear, you look beautiful. Ahh, don’t give me that little sneer, darling. You know it’s because of you, all this nonsense. Every bit of it,” he said with intense sincerity. “I’d be broke, maybe dead, if you hadn’t come into my life. It changed everything.” He added with a ribald smirk, “Made the kids, too, huh? What would they have done without you and me?” Once more he sobered. “Thank you, my love,” he said softly.

  Patrick’s and Mari’s eyes, their black hair, their sharp features. Todd resented his genes, felt cheated, as he had so often over the years. He hadn’t even received Ward’s brains in compensation. No one had. Ward Saunder had been unique. He would never be duplicated, not even if cloning had been possible and they had saved some of his tissue in hopes of that miracle.

  “Kids . . .” The arrangement of chairs allowed him to include Carissa and Dian in his address. But it was Pat, Mari, and Todd he seemed to look at. The effect of living eye contact was powerful, and unsettling. “I’ll have to stop calling you that pretty soon. Even you, Mari. You’re not my little girl any more. You’re a beautiful lady, just like your mother. Beautiful and smart. Smart women run in this family.” Laugh lines crinkled his merry face. “Smart men, too. You’ve sure got the head for business, Pat, my boy. Go to it, you and your mother. Todd, well, son, you’re a top tech with a screwball way of looking at stuff, just like me. You’ll have to find yourself a woman to keep you fed and dressed, just like I did, or you’ll forget where you left your pants last night. Don’t know about you, Mari, not yet. I’m so used to your being my baby.” An apprehensive expression chased over his lean features. “You really don’t have to fly and drive and speedboat faster than anyone, you know. You’ve got your whole life to live. Don’t rush! Plenty of time. Leave the rushing around to Dad. Reminds me, gotta make that flight to Qatar next week. Some really good stuff coming out of the Confederation Rift Labs lately . . .”

  Ward shook off business speculations and concentrated on the happy occasion. But ideas always burned in that inquisitive brain. Even in his lightest moments, he never stopped wondering, speculating. “Enjoy life, kids, that’s my recommendation. That’s what Jael and I want most for you—for you to be happy. We wanted to bring you kids through these messes. And your mother made sure you’ll never have to worry about money. My heart and my head, all in one magnificent lady.” He threw Jael a hammy kiss. Then he reached out of the holo-mode frame, grabbing at something. When his hand pulled back, he held a brimming glass, lifting it high. “To us. Many, many more happy returns to us all. Is that arrogant of me, Jael? Courting the fates? You know I don’t swallow that Spirit of Humanity junk. But, well, dammit, my birthday is my celebration for all of us. Love it! All of us here together. Let’s agree. Come back home, kids, every year. You be sure they do, Jael, honey, if I get too tangled up in some wild project and forget. Every year, now,” and he stamped his foot lightly upon the carpet. “Every year, we get together again right here. All of us.” Again he lifted the glass. “We Saunders. Watch out, world. My kids are coming to get you, and they’re damned sure coming out on top.” With that, he drained the drink and hurled the glass away. Somewhere out of frame but still captured on the sound system, the sound of the crash echoed tinnily.

  “Remember! Every year. Too many families splitting up these days. That won’t happen here.” Todd rubbed his eyes for a few seconds, his throat aching. Ward went on. “Dying, of too danmed many things. They’re finally getting it under control, and about time. Okay, they can call it Spirit of Humanity. Maybe that’ll help some of it. But as soon as we can get that Protectors of Earth bunch to give us the land down there, we’ll start on that cryogenics setup. I’ve got it all laid out. Remind me tomorrow, Jael, once I sober up.” An eager grin split his face. He was a man in a love affair with life.

  So much vitality. So much keen intelligence. Not very well organized, but incandescently brilliant. He and Jael had been a perfect team. They hadn’t always been kind to each other. Sometimes the sparks flew and the team almost came to pieces. But they had been too stubborn to give up.

  Jael was wiping her cheeks, sobbing softly, but she was smiling, too. Behind her, Roy Paige’s head rested on the projection panels. Todd suspected the man was crying, grieving for the friend and employer who had been lost.

  “Hey, Roy, let’s have us another round and show ‘em what we’ve been doing. Roy and me and Todd have cooked up another surprise for you. Sit back now . . .”

  Again Ward reached out of the image. A black hand extended from nowhere, handing him a fresh glass. Roy Paige, the living Roy Paige, not his disembodied holomode hand, slumped over the console, his shoulders heaving. He couldn’t look any more. Years ago, Todd had tried to comfort the man when this happened. Now he knew nothing but time would ease the pain that would never go away completely.

  Ward’s image stepped aside and he gestured dramatically. A three-dimensional globe, a separate holographic image, winked into being, suspended in mid-air. It was a memory album, compiled by Ward. A rapid succession of scenes and portraits appeared. Old flat photographs and crude holographic projections made with the now-obsolete three-color emulsion process. The views showed the passing years of the Saunder family.

  Ward and Jael’s wedding picture. It had to be a match made in heaven. No human agent would dared have tried to bring this crazy coupling about. The financial empire’s princess and the tinkerer with all those wild ideas, a man obviously doomed to penniless obscurity. Jael threw away everything for him, abandoning what had seemed, in those days, her only chance to survive. How could anyone know that her family’s fortune would go under, along with so much other wealth, and that Jael would build a new one on the glittering gold of Ward Saunder’s creativity?

  Baby Patrick, sitting up, staring innocently at the audience—at himself more than thirty years older and sadder and wiser. Then it was Todd’s turn to submit to the cute-baby-picture routine, and Mariette’s. Scenes of them bare-bottomed and diaperless. Scenes of them toddling through the yards or rooms of a dozen half-forgotten residences the family had occupied. The three of them playing around an old plane they’d cobbled together from junk found near the old farmhouse outside of Chicago. Todd watched them growing older, the years telescoping. Stair-steps kids. Mari had been almost as tall as Todd, for a while, during their adolescence, when she was still four years younger than he. That had driven him crazy, at the time; baby sister, as tall as he was, and nearly as tough! Todd had been scared Ward would teach her to fly before he himself had a chance at a plane’s controls. That had seemed unbearably important, then. He was sure if that happened, he would die of shame, or he’d run away from home and join the Looter Troops in the newly created United Ghetto States. The images Went on, speeding them through time. Todd and Mari and Pat shot up to their adult height, lost their childish bodies and faces. Todd wanted to slow down the flow. They were approaching the end too fast.

  It was the present—the present of twelve years ago—and all of them were in the scene with Ward. The small holograph insert album was gone. Back to real time. They posed for a family portrait, clustering around Ward. Ward’s arm, in the image, rested on Todd’s shoulders. The memory was so vivid Todd felt anew that loving presence, close, touching, holding him; felt Ward’s fingers squeeze his arm, and the way his father shook all over when he laughed. Ward’s hand rumpling Todd’s hair, a comment in his ear—and from the projection—“This damned kid’s damned near as tall as I am. That’s as big as you’re going to get, boy. You’ll bust out of your hat size if you show me up any more . . .”

  It wasn’t an Oedipal challenge. Glowing fatherly pride filled the words. Todd had taken that for his theme. Remember who he was, and who Ward had been. He would never be able to surpass his father, but he would try to live up to those high standards.

  “Smile for the camera, Jael. Give me a kiss.” The Jael in the image leaned toward him, their lips meeting. It was meant as a thea
trical buss but developed into something far more loving and lingering. They turned their faces to the lenses, smiling, surrounded by their children. Happy. Perfect.

  The image was gone.

  Todd had studied old museum films and outdated magnetic tape systems. He had to admit a few of those quaint projections still could have an emotional impact. But when they ended, there were noises—machines clicking off, film ends flapping, or a suddenly blank white screen—jarring the deeply moved viewer out of the carefully built mood. Here there was no jolt. Silently, the image had vanished, taking with it the man they remembered with love.

  Slowly, as if the systems were aware of their grief, the lights came up.

  “If only . . .” Pat murmured after a lengthy stillness, “if only we’d had the Antarctic facility ready, his DNA tissue samples, his sperm . . . just six more months, that’s all it would have needed.”

  “Ward has his legacy,” Jael said. Tears dried on her cheeks. Her eyes were very bright. “You. All of you. You’re Ward Saunder’s tomorrow, the second generation. And you’re going to give us that third generation, aren’t you, Carissa?”

  Dian and Mariette stared at Carissa with a mixture of curiosity and envy.

  “Mother, I was supposed to tell them,” Pat said irritably.

  Jael flung up her hands in counterfeit apology. “Sorry! What’s the fuss? It’ll all in the family, anyway. A natural phenomenon that’s been going on a long time.” She rose and walked over to Carissa, stroking her daughter-in-law’s fair hair. Todd saw that greedy look once more. Carissa, preening quietly, didn’t seem to mind the attention.