Double Star

by Robert Anson Heinlein

  «Eh?»

  «He said you could go to hell. Embroidered it a bit, but that was the gist.»

  «He did? Well, tell him I'll save him a seat by the fire.»

  «Can Penny come in?»

  «Oh, sure! But you can tell her that she is wasting her time; the answer is still “No.”»

  So I changed my mind. Confound it, why should an argument seem so much more logical when underlined with a whiff of Jungle Lust? Not that Penny used unfair means, she did not even shed tears — not that I laid a finger on her — but I found myself conceding points, and presently there were no more points to concede. There is no getting around it. Penny is the worldsaver type and her sincerity is contagious.

  The boning I did on the trip out to Mars was as nothing to the hard study I put in on the trip to New Batavia. I already had the basic character; now it was necessary to fill in the background, prepare myself to be Bonforte under almost any circumstances. While it was the royal audience I was aiming at, once we were at New Batavia I might have to meet any of hundreds or thousands of people. Rog planned to give me a defense in depth of the sort that is routine for any public figure if he is to get work done; nevertheless, I would have to see people — a public figure is a public figure, no way to get around that.

  The tightrope act I was going to have to attempt was made possible only by Bonforte's Farleyfile, perhaps the best one ever compiled. Farley was a political manager of the twentieth century, of Eisenhower I believe, and the method he invented for handling the personal relations of politics was as revolutionary as the German invention of staff command was to warfare. Yet I had never heard of the device until Penny showed me Bonforte's.

  It was nothing but a file about people. However, the art of politics is «nothing but» people. This file contained all, or almost all, of the thousands upon thousands of people Bonforte had met in the course of his long public life; each dossier consisted of what he knew about that person from Bonforte's own personal contact. Anything at all, no matter how trivial — in fact, trivia were always the first entries: names and nicknames of wives, children, and pets, hobbies, tastes in food or drink, prejudices, eccentricities. Following this would be listed date and place and comments for every occasion on which Bonforte had talked to that particular man.

  When available, a photo was included. There might or might not be «below-the-line» data, i.e. information which had been researched rather than learned directly by Bonforte. It depended on the political importance of the person. In some cases the «below-the-line» part was a formal biography running to thousands of words.

  Both Penny and Bonforte himself carried minicorders powered by their body heat. If Bonforte was alone he would dictate into his own when opportunity offered — in rest rooms, while riding, etc.; if Penny went along she would take it down in hers, which was disguised to look like a wrist watch. Penny could not possibly do the transcribing and microfilming; two of Jimmie Washington's girls did little else.

  When Penny showed me the Farleyfile, showed me the very bulk of it — and it was bulky, even at ten thousand words or more to the spool — and then told me that this represented personal information about Mr. Bonforte's acquaintances, I scroaned (which is a scream and groan done together, with intense feeling). «God's mercy, child! I tried to tell you this job could not be done. How could anyone memorize all that?»

  «Why, you can't, of course.»

  «You just said that this was what he remembered about his friends and acquaintances.»

  «Not quite. I said that this is what he wanted to remember. But since he can't, not possibly, this is how he does it. Don't worry; you don't have to memorize anything. I just want you to know that it is available. It is my job to see that he has at least a minute or two to study the appropriate Farleyfile before anybody gets in to see him. If the need turns up, I can protect you with the same service.»

  I looked at the typical file she had projected on the desk reader. A Mr. Saunders of Pretoria, South Africa, I believe it was. He had a bulldog named Snuffles Bullyboy, several assorted uninteresting offspring, and he liked a twist of lime in his whisky and splash. «Penny, do you mean to tell me that Mr. B. pretends to remember minutiae like that? It strikes me as rather phony.»

  Instead of getting angry at the slur on her idol Penny nodded soberly. «I thought so once. But you don't look at it correctly, Chief. Do you ever write down the telephone number of a friend?»

  «Eh? Of course.»

  «Is it dishonest? Do you apologize to your friend for caring so little about him that you can't simply remember his number?»

  «Eh? All right, I give up. You've sold me.»

  «These are things he would like to remember if his memory were perfect. Since it isn't, it is no more phony to do it this way than it is to use a tickler file in order not to forget a friend's birthday — that's what it is: a giant tickler file, to cover anything. But there is more to it. Did you ever meet a really important person?»

  I tried to think. Penny did not mean the greats of the theatrical profession; she hardly knew they existed. «I once met President Warfield. I was a kid of ten or eleven.»

  «Do you remember the details?»

  «Why, certainly. He said, “How did you break that arm, son?” and I said, “Riding a bicycle, sir,” and he said, “Did the same thing myself, only it was a collarbone.”»

  «Do you think he would remember it if he were still alive?»

  «Why, no.»

  «He might — he may have had you Farleyfiled. This Farleyfile includes boys of that age, because boys grow up and become men. The point is that top-level men like President Warfield meet many more people than they can remember. Each one of that faceless throng remembers his own meeting with the famous man and remembers it in detail. But the supremely important person in any one's life is himself — and a politician must never forget that. So it is polite and friendly and warmhearted for the politician to have a way to be able to remember about other people the sort of little things that they are likely to remember about him. It is also essential — in politics.»

  I had Penny display the Farleyfile on King Willem. It was rather short, which dismayed me at first, until I concluded that it meant that Bonforte did not know the Emperor well and had met him only on a few official occasions — Bonforte's first service as Supreme Minister had been before old Emperor Frederick's death. There was no biography below the line, but just a notation, «See House of Orange .» I didn't — there simply wasn't time to plow through a few million words of Empire and pre-Empire history and, anyhow, I got fair-to-excellent marks in history when I was in school. All I wanted to know about the Emperor was what Bonforte knew about him that other people did not.

  It occurred to me that the Farleyfile must include everybody in the ship since they were (a) people (b) whom Bonforte had met. I asked Penny for them. She seemed a little surprised.

  Soon I was the one surprised. The Tom Paine had in her six Grand Assemblymen. Rog Clifton and Mr. Bonforte, of course — but the first item in Dak's file read: «Broadbent, Darius K., the Honorable, G. A. for League of Free Travelers, Upper Division.» It also mentioned that he held a Ph.D. in physics, had been reserve champion with the pistol in the Imperial Matches nine years earlier, and had published three volumes of verse under the nom de plume of «Acey Wheelwright.» I resolved never again to take a man at merely his face value.

  There was a notation in Bonforte's sloppy handwriting: «Almost irresistible to women — and vice versa!»

  Penny and Dr. Capek were also members of the great parliament. Even Jimmie Washington was a member, for a «safe» district, I realized later — he represented the Lapps, including all the reindeer and Santa Claus, no doubt. He was also ordained in the First Bible Truth Church of the Holy Spirit, which I had never heard of, but which accounted for his tight-lipped deacon look.

  I especially enjoyed reading about Penny — the Honorable Miss Penelope Taliaferro Russell. She was an M.A. in government administrati
on from Georgetown and a B.A. from Wellesley, which somehow did not surprise me. She represented districtless university women, another «safe» constituency (I learned) since they are about five to one Expansionist Party members.

  On down below were her glove size, her other measurements, her preferences in colors (I could teach her something about dressing), her preference in scent (Jungle Lust, of course), and many other details, most of them innocuous enough. But there was «comment»:

  «Neurotically honest — arithmetic unreliable — prides herself on her sense of humor, of which she has none — watches her diet but is gluttonous about candied cherries — little-mother-of-all-living complex — unable to resist reading the printed word in any form.»

  Underneath was another of Bonforte's handwritten addenda: «Ah, Curly Top! Snooping again, I see.»

  As I turned them back to her I asked Penny if she had read her own Farleyfile. She told me snippily to mind my own business! Then turned red and apologized.

  Most of my time was taken up with study but I did take time to review and revise carefully the physical resemblance, checking the Semiperm shading by colorimeter, doing an extremely careful job on the wrinkles, adding two moles, and setting the whole job with electric brush. It was going to mean a skin peel before I could get my own face back but that was a small price to pay for a make-up job that could not be damaged, could not be smeared even with acetone, and was proof against such hazards as napkins. I even added the scar on the «game» leg, using a photograph Capek had kept in Bonforte's health history. If Bonforte had had wife or mistress, she would have had difficulty in telling the impostor from the real thing simply on physical appearance. It was a lot of trouble but it left my mind free to worry about the really difficult part of the impersonation.

  But the all-out effort during the trip was to steep myself in what Bonforte thought and believed, in short the policies of the Expansionist Party. In a manner of speaking, he himself was the Expansionist Party, not merely its most prominent leader but its political philosopher and greatest statesman. Expansionism had hardly been more than a «Manifest Destiny» movement when the party was founded, a rabble coalition of groups who had one thing in common: the belief that the frontiers in the sky were the most important issue in the emerging future of the human race. Bonforte had given the party a rationale and an ethic, the theme that freedom and equal rights must run with the Imperial banner; he kept harping on the notion that the human race must never again make the mistakes that the white subrace had made in Africa and Asia.

  But I was confused by the fact — I was awfully unsophisticated in such matters — that the early history of the Expansionist Party sounded remarkably like the present Humanity Party. I was not aware that political parties often change as much in growing up as people do. I had known vaguely that the Humanity Party had started as a splinter of the Expansionist movement but I had never thought about it. Actually it was inevitable; as the political parties which did not have their eyes on the sky dwindled away under the imperatives of history and ceased to elect candidates, the only party which had been on the right track was bound to split into two factions.

  But I am running ahead; my political education did not proceed so logically. At first I simply soaked myself in Bonforte's public utterances. True, I had done that on the trip out, but then I was studying how he spoke; now I was studying what he said.

  Bonforte was an orator in the grand tradition but he could be vitriolic in debate, e.g. a speech he made in New Paris during the ruckus over the treaty with the Martian nests, the Concord of Tycho. It was this treaty which had knocked him out of office before; he had pushed it through but the strain on the coalition had lost him the next vote of confidence. Nevertheless, Quiroga had not dared denounce the treaty. I listened to this speech with special interest since I had not liked the treaty myself; the idea that Martians must be granted the same privileges on Earth that humans enjoyed on Mars had been abhorrent to me — until I visited the Kkkah nest.

  «My opponent,» Bonforte had said with a rasp in his voice, «would have you believe that the motto of the so-called Humanity Party, “Government of human beings, by human beings, and for human beings,” is no more than an updating of the immortal words of Lincoln. But while the voice is the voice of Abraham, the hand is the hand of the Ku Klux Klan. The true meaning of that innocent-seeming motto is “Government of all races everywhere, by human beings alone, for the profit of a privileged few.”

  «But, my opponent protests, we have a God-given mandate to spread enlightenment through the stars, dispensing our own brand of Civilization to the savages. This is the Uncle Remus school of sociology — the good dahkies singin' spirituals and Old Massa lubbin' every one of dem! It is a beautiful picture but the frame is too small; it fails to show the whip, the slave block — and the counting house!»

  I found myself becoming, if not an Expansionist, then at least a Bonfortite. I am not sure that I was convinced by the logic of his words — indeed, I am not sure that they were logical. But I was in a receptive frame of mind. I wanted to understand what he said so thoroughly that I could rephrase it and say it in his place, if need be.

  Nevertheless, here was a man who knew what he wanted and (much rarer!) why he wanted it. I could not help but be impressed, and it forced me to examine my own beliefs. What did I live by?

  My profession, surely! I had been brought up in it, I liked it, I had a deep though unlogical conviction that art was worth the effort — and, besides, it was the only way I knew to make a living. But what else?

  I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. I have sampled them — public libraries are a ready source of recreation for an actor short of cash — but I had found them as poor in vitamins as a mother-in-law's kiss. Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.

  I had the same contempt for the moral instruction handed to most children. Much of it is prattle and the parts they really seem to mean are dedicated to the sacred proposition that a «good» child is one who does not disturb mother's nap and a «good» man is one who achieves a muscular bank account without getting caught. No, thanks!

  But even a dog has rules of conduct. What were mine? How did I behave — or, at least, how did I like to think I behaved?

  «The show must go on.» I had always believed that and lived by it. But why must the show go on? — seeing that some shows are pretty terrible. Well, because you agreed to do it, because there is an audience out there; they have paid and each one of them is entitled to the best you can give. You owe it to them. You owe it also to stagehands and manager and producer and other members of the company — and to those who taught you your trade, and to others stretching back in history to open-air theaters and stone seats and even to storytellers squatting in a market place.Noblesse oblige.

  I decided that the notion could be generalized into any occupation. «Value for value.» Building «on the square and on the level.» The Hippocratic oath. Don't let the team down. Honest work for honest pay. Such things did not have to be proved; they were an essential part of life — true throughout eternity, true in the farthest reaches of the Galaxy.

  I suddenly got a glimpse of what Bonforte was driving at. If there were ethical basics that transcended time and place, then they were true both for Martians and for men. They were true on any planet around any star — and if the human race did not behave accordingly they weren't ever going to win to the stars because some better race would slap them down for double-dealing.

  The price of expansion was virtue. «Never give a sucker an even break» was too narrow a philosophy to fit the broad reaches of space.

  But Bonforte was not preaching sweetness and light. «I am not a pacifist. Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay — and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Mr. Speaker, life belongs to those who do not fear to lose it. This bill must pass!» And with that he had got up and crossed the aisle in su
pport of a military appropriation his own party had refused in caucus.

  Or again: «Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong — but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong! Heaven save us from poltroons who fear to make a choice. Let us stand up and be counted.» (This last was in a closed caucus but Penny had caught it on her minicorder and Bonforte had saved it — Bonforte had a sense of history; he was a record keeper. If he had not been, I would not have had much to work with.)

  I decided that Bonforte was my kind of man. Or at least the kind I liked to think I was. His was a persona I was proud to wear.

  So far as I can remember I did not sleep on that trip after I promised Penny that I would take the royal audience if Bonforte could not be made ready. I intended to sleep — there is no point in taking your stage with your eyes bagging like hound's ears — but I got interested in what I was studying and there was a plentiful supply of pepper pills in Bonforte's desk. It is amazing how much ground you can cover working a twenty-four-hour day, free from interruptions and with all the help you could ask for.

  But shortly before we were due at New Batavia, Dr. Capek came in and said, «Bare your left forearm.»

  «Why?» I asked.

  «Because when you go before the Emperor we don't want you falling flat on your face with fatigue. This will make you sleep until we ground. Then I'll give you an antidote.»

  «Eh? I take it that you don't think he will be ready?»

  Capek did not answer, but gave me the shot. I tried to finish listening to the speech I was running but I must have been asleep in seconds. The next thing I knew Dak was saying deferentially, «Wake up, sir. Please wake up. We're grounded at Lippershey Field.»

  Eight

  Our moon being an airless planet, a torchship can land on it. But the Tom Paine, being a torchship, was really intended to stay in space and be serviced only at space stations in orbit; she had to be landed in a cradle. I wish I had been awake to see it, for they say that catching an egg on a plate is easy by comparison. Dak was one of the half dozen pilots who could do it.