Ronny said, seating himself, “Yes, your planet is quite unique.”
She frowned slightly in puzzlement and said, “It is? I have never been overspace. In what way?”
He looked about him. “Well, this house for instance. It almost amounts to being a cave.”
She tinkled a laugh again. “What’s unique about that? A most practical manner in which to live. Houses built on the surface almost invariably deface the landscape. They are ugly, especially when congested.” She pointed upward. “Above us are grass, flowers, trees. Birds and animals find their homes in them. The plant life also releases oxygen into our atmosphere. If such was my hobby, I could even raise vegetables or fruit on my roof.”
Ronny said, “When we were driving from the spaceport, did we pass other houses such as this?”
“Certainly. Quite a few.”
“And they’re all built so that one doesn’t know he’s passing a house unless he knows it’s there?”
“Yes. We make almost a fetish of that.” She took a breath—beautifully—and said, “But I’m being a terrible hostess. I get so caught up in talking to people who have actually come from other worlds. You must be famished.”
In truth, the two had not eaten their mid-day meal, in anticipation of the landing of the Sheppard and the beginning of their new assignment.
Rosemary led the way to the dining room.
Chapter Seven
Dorn Horsten looked around appreciatively, as they seated themselves at the heavy table. He said, “This is your home? Ah, personally, I mean?”
She smiled at him. “Why, yes. As long as I wish to live in it.”
“You said that you had no gardener. But otherwise you must require quite a staff.”
“Staff?”
“Servants.”
“Oh. There are no servants on Einstein.”
Ronny eyed her in disbelief. “You mean that you do all the housework, including the gardening?”
She said, “Why, yes. The house is all but completely automated, you know. All houses are. Drudgery has been eliminated. Now, what will you gentlemen have?”
The table was obviously automated, but there was no menu set into its top, nor screen where a menu could be dialed.
Ronny cleared his throat and said, “What do you have? That is, uh, what are you pushing?”
The girl said, as though in surprise, “Why, anything.”
The two Section G agents looked at her.
“Just anything at all, my dear?” Horsten said.
“Why, yes.”
They blinked at her and Ronny said, “Now, look. Peking Duck. Suppose I wanted Peking Duck as prepared on the planet Mandarin.”
She said, projecting her voice out over the table, “An order of Peking Duck as prepared on the planet Mandarin,” and then she looked questioningly at Doctor Horsten.
He looked back at her levelly and said, deliberately, “I’ll have antipasti cassalinghi, cannelloni, both in the style of the planet Naples. Then scallopine di vitello alia bolognese, in the manner prepared on Firenze. All this with a bottle of Valpolicella.”
“My, you are hungry,” she said brightly, and repeated the order out over the table. “I am afraid that it won’t be true Valpolicella but so nearly that it is unlikely that you’ll tell the difference. The vintners among us, conscious of wine-making as an art, make a hobby of duplicating practically every vintage known.”
Ronny said in exasperation, “Wait a minute. Do you mean to tell me you have automated kitchens that contain every known recipe on any Earthling settled world?”
That seemed to puzzzle her. “Don’t you on Earth?”
Ronny said, “Possibly every cookbook ever published can be found in the United Planets Interplanetary Data Banks on Earth. But they’re most certainly not hooked up to every automated kitchen in the world.”
“Why not?”
The two men both blinked again.
“It would seem to be quite a project,” Horsten demurred. “Besides, some of the raw materials wouldn’t be available on Earth.”
She sighed. “Yes, that can be a problem. When it arises our chefs must improvise. I have a friend who has been working for years on duplicating Menelaus white fish, certainly one of the most delicate sea foods found in the galaxy.”
She spoke again out over the table, this time in a language neither of her guests understood. Then she leaned back into her chair.
She said, “On Einstein, we consider cuisine to be one of the gentler arts, and make every effort to develop it. We, too, have every cook book ever published, in our data banks.” She smiled mischievously. “We secured most of them, indirectly, from your Earth-side data banks. Some time ago, we made a trade with the planet Catalina, technological information, developed here on Einstein, for the complete United Planets Data Banks. Of course, we have also developed recipes of our own.”
Dorn Horsten was fascinated. He said, “Suppose I invented a new dish. How would I go about getting it into the automated restaurants’ recipe banks? Who would decide?”
She frowned, again puzzled, and said, “No one. You’d just put it in, it would be crossfiled, and anybody who wanted to try it could.”
Ronny said, grimly, “Suppose it was chocolate covered dill pickles with anchovy sauce.”
She laughed at him. “Then I doubt if anybody would ever order it.”
The table top sank down to return in moments with their dishes. She had evidently ordered largely salad for herself. Ronny’s Peking Duck came garnished with various other Chinese dishes. He wished that he had ordered some hot sake, while he was at it.
Dorn looked down in despair at the great pile of food he had summoned, but set to. He said, “To get back to that servants thing. You said there were none on Einstein. How about the wealthy?”
“What wealthy?”
He took her in, before saying, “I can see where people of ordinary means would utilize your high rate of automation to free themselves of the drudgery of housekeeping and the preparation of meals. But those with larger estates. Don’t they maintain staffs of servants?”
“Oh,” she said, frowning lightly as though wondering how to put this. “But, you see, there are no wealthy on Einstein. When our people first came here it must have been one of the best funded colonizations that Earthlings have ever embarked upon. They quickly built the most modern automated and computerized industries, the most efficient possible and ever since we’ve been upgrading it. There are no poor and no wealthy on Einstein. There is absolute abundance for everyone.”
“Utopia!” Ronny blurted, in disbelief.
She shook her head and her frown deepened. She said, “No, certainly not. There is no such thing as Utopia. It means perfection, which is a goal that can never be achieved. As you approach, it recedes, and you have new achievements to strive toward.”
Her eyes went back to Dorn Horsten. “We have no personal servants, but, often, an outstanding scientist may have assistants, or an outstanding artist might have one or more apprentices. An outstanding writer might have someone to help him with his research. But none of these are really servants.”
Dinner over, Rosemary murmured something out over the table in her unknown language and the table center sank in, taking the soiled dishes away.
They headed back for the living room.
Dorn Horsten said, “What is that language you speak? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it before.”
“I would imagine not, Doctor. I doubt if it is spoken anywhere except on Einstein. It’s a scientific language, largely a combination of Esperanto and Interlingua, though our own experts made deletions, or additions, of their own.”
Ronny said, “Look, let’s put this on a more informal basis. I can’t keep calling you nothing but Rosemary, while you call me Citizen Bronston, and Dorn, Doctor Horsten. What is your last name, by the way?”
“I have none. My name’s just Rosemary.”
Again the two men looked at her blankly.
; Ronny said, “I meant your family name.”
“Yes, I know. But I have no family. My name’s Rosemary and my identification number is F-123-B-1495. That, of course, is for the data banks.”
“But you’ve got to have a family. Do you mean that you are an orphan?”
“There are no, well, orphans, on Einstein. Either that, or I suppose that you could say we’re all orphans. But there are no families.”
Ronny said plaintively, “You’ve got to have families. There’s always been the family.”
“No there hasn’t,” she told him. “Certainly not in the sense in which you’re speaking. I would imagine that for ninety percent of the history of the human race, the pairing family, such as you still know it on Earth and elsewhere in United Planets, was unknown. That is a man, a woman and their children, the children taking the man’s name upon birth. The extended family applied for most of man’s history.
Dorn Horsten said gently, “We seem to have drifted away from the fascinating point. You said that you have no families on Einstein any longer.”
Rosemary turned her impossibly blue eyes to him. “There’s no need for them. Property is no longer an issue. There is none. Parents are no longer involved in having their possessions descend to their offspring.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Ronny said. “I’ve been losing things all along in this conversation, that really took a wheel off however. What do you mean, there is no property? You were telling us a little while ago that everybody had it made on Einstein. That there was an abundance for everybody.”
“Of course,” she told him, nodding her head. “But there is no private property.”
Dorn Horsten said, thinking he got it, “You mean that you have established communism on Einstein?”
She sent her eyes over to the doctor and frowned her absolutely beautiful frown at him. “It’s an elastic term… Dorn,” she said. “If you mean the so-called communism first established by Lenin on Earth, and later extended to such planets as Stalin, then no.”
Ronny said, his voice irritated and demanding, “Then what do you mean no private ownership? You told us earlier that this was your house.”
“You misunderstood,” she told him. “It is mine in the sense that I occupy it. But it isn’t mine. Or anybody else’s. Who in the name of the Holy Ultimate would want to be tied down to a house?” She stated it as though that was the most reasonable position possible. But then she added, “Of course I own, I suppose you could say, my personal things; my toothbrush, my art objects, my favorite articles of clothing—the ones I don’t send down the disposal chutes every day. So does everybody else.”
Ronny closed his eyes momentarily. “To get back to this ‘no family’ thing. Suppose a man and woman want to live together?”
“Then they do, for as long as both want to. Any number of men and women who wish to live together can.”
“Wizard,” Ronny said triumphantly. “And suppose that they have a baby?”
“If the genetics computers okay it, they do.”
Ronny looked at her, but then shook his head. “We’ll get back to that later. You’ve got a man, a woman and a child. Isn’t that a family?”
“No. Any one of the three can leave at any time.” She added, “Children are no longer dependent on their parents.”
“You mean the state raises all children?”
“There is no state on Einstein. Children are the responsibility of society.”
“Then a couple of parents aren’t allowed to raise their own child?” Dorn said.
“Certainly they are, if the computers find that they are competent to do so. However, few people desire to. Children have always been a drag. In the past you were taught that it was your duty to raise your offspring, no matter how incompetent you might be to do so. You also supposedly loved them, whatever that means. Your early education in your home, your schools, your religious institutions, all taught that you must love and raise your children. It is no longer necessary to raise them, and we are somewhat sceptical about the meaning of love. It’s too elastic a term to make much sense.”
“Confound it,” Ronny said. “Who raises the kid?”
“People who are competent to do so, and who are particularly fond of children. There are always ample volunteers to go into that field of endeavor,” She came to her feet and said, “But I’m being a terrible hostess again. Dorn, I note that you have a taste for Italian food. Would you like a glass of Marsala as a nightcap? I can recommend it. And you, Ronald?”
They both accepted and she went off for it.
Ronny said to Dorn, “I’ve still got a good many questions, obviously, but it still sounds like a Utopia to me. Why in the hell do they want to join United Planets? What have we got to offer them?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Dorn Horsten said, his voice also low. “Don’t have to raise your children, eh? Sounds like a Utopia at that. I never have liked children. One of the reasons I’ve never gotten married. We have some rather prudish institutions on the planet of my birth.”
Rosemary returned with three glasses and a dark bottle and served them.
She smiled brightly and said, “Now then, where were we? We seem to go off on tangents. Before I can answer one of your questions, two more have popped up.”
Ronny said, “Rosemary, you mentioned the genetics computers, and later you mentioned that two people could raise their own child if the computers decided they were competent. Suppose the computers decided against them in one or the other case, or both. And suppose they wanted the child anyway and wanted to raise it, and the hell with the computers.”
Rosemary finished her wine and put down her glass before answering. She said, very seriously, “Genetics are our strongest raison d’etre. It is the reason Einstein was colonized. Anyone refusing to conform to our institutions pertaining to genetics is perfectly free to leave Einstein and seek what he desires on some other planet.”
She looked at her watch. “But you two must be tired. And you’re to have a full day tomorrow. Is bed in order?”
The two men stood. “I suppose that you’re right, my dear,” the doctor said. “And perhaps we should mull over some of the things that you have already told us. It’s all been fascinating.”
She stood too and smiled her dazzling bright smile and said, “Would either, or both of you, like me to sleep with you?”
Chapter Eight
Dorn Horsten had always been a light sleeper, and since he had affiliated himself with Section G and the United Planets dream had become even more so. The cloak and dagger assignments he had been given had a tendency to sharpen the senses. A stirring brought him instantly awake.
When Rosemary had made her startling offer, obviously thinking nothing of it, both of the Section G agents had boggled at her. If she had suddenly grown an elephant’s trunk, they could hardly have been more surprised.
But Doctor Horsten had no taste for group sex, and he had noticed all evening that Ronny could hardly keep his eyes off the pretty girl. So, as politely as possible under the circumstances, the doctor had begged off, explaining that he was overtired and realized that the day ahead was to be a full one. He went off to bed, leaving Ronny and the beauteous Rosemary to their arrangements.
He had no idea, when he was awakened, what time it was or how long he had slept. Einstein had no moon, and hence nightlight was dependent upon the stars. True, the atmosphere was extremely clear, and the distant suns shone bright, but still there was little light coming through the large windows which opened onto the patio.
There was no lock on the door, allowing for easy entry into his suite, and, in spite of the dimness, Dorn Horsten realized that someone had taken advantage of the fact. Indeed, there were two of them, and at first he couldn’t make out what they were up to.
By their bulk, they were both men and, though not of Horsten’s size, substantial nevertheless. As his eyes grew more accustomed to the room, he made out what seemed to be masks, or goggles, on their
faces and both seemed to be carrying what he would have guessed were flashlights, though neither of them were lit. He wished he could take up his glasses from the night table, but that would only alert them.
They were bending over something on the floor, and at first he couldn’t make out what the object was. Then it came to him. They were going through one of his suitcases. And to one side was the other one, open. It had obviously already been ransacked.
He was completely awake now.
Suddenly he threw back the covers and was on them, hoping fervently that the objects they carried weren’t weapons. If they were some sort of laser or other advanced weapon developed on this planet, he’d undoubtedly had it.
’The scrambling fight turned out to be a farce. There was insufficient light for anyone involved to operate with any sort of efficiency. All three of them, at one time or the other, were on the floor, or stumbling about, unable to make contact in the dark.
On top of that, Dorn Horsten was pulling his punches. He knew perfectly well that a full blow from his ham-sized fist would have caved in the rib cage of one of the intruders, and he was not on Einstein to commit mayhem. He was here on peaceful mission, simply to gain information. From what Rosemary had said, the citizens of Einstein probably took a dim view of violence. The member worlds of United Planets which boasted the highest standards of living almost invariably had little criminal activity. Crime, except crimes of passion, deals almost exclusively with property, and when there is plenty for all, crime withers. And from what he learned thus far about Einstein, it had possbily the highest standard of living of any world Dorn had ever seen.
Suddenly the strangers disentangled themselves and were gone out the unlocked door.
His first inclination was to pursue, if for no other reason than to find out who they were. But he drew himself up before dashing out the door after them. For all he knew, those were weapons they carried and if they found themselves being followed, they might attempt to finish him. Besides, he knew nothing about the vicinity and the way these underground houses were camouflaged he wasn’t sure that he’d be able to find his way back, if he got more than a few meters from the entry to Rosemary’s home.
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