Callahan's Place 07 - Callahan's Legacy (v5.0) Read online

  CALLAHAN'S LEGACY

  Spider Robinson

  www.spiderrobinson.com

  Copyright © 1996 by Spider Robinson

  Cover design by Passageway Pictures, Inc.

  Books by Spider Robinson

  Callahan’s Place books:

  Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon

  Time Travelers Strictly Cash

  Callahan’s Secret

  Off The Wall at Callahan’s

  Lady Sally’s House books:

  Callahan’s Lady

  Lady Slings the Booze

  Mary’s Place books:

  The Callahan Touch

  Callahan’s Legacy

  Callahan’s Key

  Callahan’s Con

  Stardance books:

  Stardance (with Jeanne Robinson)

  Starseed (with Jeanne Robinson)

  Starmind (with Jeanne Robinson)

  Deathkiller books:

  Time Pressure, Mindkiller (published together as Deathkiller)

  Lifehouse

  Very books:

  Very Bad Deaths

  Very Hard Choices

  Other books:

  Variable Star (Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson)

  God Is An Iron and Other Stories (collection)

  The Free Lunch

  By Any Other Name (collection)

  User Friendly (collection)

  Night of Power

  Melancholy Elephants (collection)

  The Best of All Possible Worlds (anthology)

  Antinomy (collection)

  Telempath

  This one's for Mary, John,

  Jeanne, Megan, and Patrick,

  and for Jim

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book couldn't 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 couldn't have been completed without the assistance of Montréal 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 book's interminable genesis were supplied by the Cultural Services Branch of the British Columbia Ministry of Small Business, Tourism and Culture, and by Don DeBrandt, Dr. Oliver Robinow, Guy Immega, Bob Atkinson, and just about all the caffeine-inflamed members of the British Columbia Science Fiction Association's Alternative-FRED Society;

  This book couldn't have been contemplated without the support and assistance of my wife, Jeanne, and daughter, Terri (it constitutes Jeanne's 20th wedding anniversary present—here you go, spice! But yours was better…);

  This book wouldn't 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 Vancouver's serious word junkies; or without Patrick Regan, habitué of Usenet's alt.callahan's, 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.

  —Vancouver, B.C.

  28 November 1995

  CALLAHAN'S LEGACY

  Spider Robinson

  www.spiderrobinson.com

  1

  TOO HOT TO HOOT

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

  It was a good climax, at least.

  Well, okay, maybe that’s a silly statement. Perhaps you feel that there is no such thing as a bad climax; that some are better than others, is all. I could argue the point, but I won’t. Let’s just agree with Woody Allen that “The worst one I ever had was right on the money,” stipulate that they’re all at least okay, and try to quantify the matter a bit.

  On a scale of ten, then, rating “the least enjoyable orgasm I’ve 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 I’m speaking of now was probably about a Nine-Five.

  This despite the fact that every one of the ingredients I’ve named for a Ten were present. The foreplay had been so extensive and inventive (Groucho, leering: “…and the afterplay wasn’t 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 isn’t. The way I see it, our relationship is really just a single continuous 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 that’s always been my experience.

  No, what brought the meter down as low as Nine-Five was merely a matter of mechanics. Zoey has never been a small woman, not since the sixth grade, anyway, and she was nine and a half months 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, we’d probably own the Galaxy by now.

  But I digress…

  As I was 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 don’t care about?), a combination of sounds that always puts me right to sleep. That’s probably just where I’d have gone if Zoey hadn’t poked me in a tender spot and murmured drowsily, “…’cha snickering about?”

  I hadn’t realized I was. In fact, I wasn’t. “I’m not,” I said. “I’m chuckling.”

  She shook her head. “Unh-unh. I like Snickers better’n 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, it’s just this silly mental picture I get after we make love,” I admitted. “I 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. I’ll be
t they tickle. The little tyke must get a chuckle out of it.”

  “Or a chortle,” she agreed, chortling sleepily. “I will too—f’now 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 we’d 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, there’s one underneath most toilet seats: your weight coming down on the seat somehow causes the phone to ring. (Unless you’ve brought the phone in with you: in that case the switch cues a Jehovah’s Witness to knock on your door.) There’s 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 the air to go to commercial. The most maddening thing about these switches is that, being of Murphy, they’re 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 my eyelids, sensing that I was just about to drop 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 Zoey’s 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. Sunlight gave you the skin cancer, everybody knew that. Civilians got up at dawn, for heaven’s sake.

  Well, so do nine-and-a-half-month-pregnant women. And their partners. No matter what their normal sleep-cycle is.

  ***

  Being more than nine months pregnant may mean nothing at all. Not even when you get up to nine and a half months, and the kid hasn’t even dropped yet. Maybe you just guessed wrong on the conception date. We don’t want you to worry, Ms. Berkowitz. But maybe, just maybe something is wrong in there. Maybe little Nameless doesn’t want to come out and play, ready or not. If so, it is a bad decision, however one might sympathize—because once Nameless is ready, he or she will begin to do what all fully formed babies do best: excrete. And, polluting the womb, will die. And possibly take you along for company. The chances of this are indeterminate…but it might be wisest if you just checked into the hospital now, Ms. Berkowitz, and allowed us to induce labor with a pitocin drip…

  Zoey had awarded that offer an emphatic “Fuck you very much, Doctor,” and I was behind her a hundred percent. At the time. We had both devoured most of the available literature on birthing as a subversive activity, and were determined to Do This Naturally—not with drugs and episiotomies, like postmodern drones, but the way our primitive ancestors did it in the caves: with a trained Lamaze partner, a camcorder, and a physician standing by just in case. As far as we were concerned, Nameless could emerge in his or her own good time.

  The hospital had seen all too many zealots like us; they sighed and agreed to let us wait as long as we could stand it, against advice…provided we were willing to furnish daily proof that Nameless was not in fact dying in there. In the form of a maternal urine sample. Which they would need first thing in the morning. Every morning. Wherefore:

  BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!

  ***

  As far as I can see, the biggest disadvantage to having a pregnant lady around the home is that it’s always your turn to get up. I said a few words, and Zoey stuck an elbow in my ribs, saying, “Not in front of the baby!” So I said some more words, but in my head, and got up out of bed. As I went around the bed, I confirmed by eye that her chamber pot was placed where she would be able to conveniently straddle it, and went to the bathroom to get another specimen container from the package under the sink. (If you think ten yards is too short a walk to the bathroom for a chamber pot to be necessary, you’ve never been nine and a half months pregnant.) And then…well, it got complicated.

  I bent over, see, and took the package by a scrap of torn flap at the top, and straightened up, intending to rummage inside the thing for a specimen container once I got it up to around waist level. But Zoey had been pregnant for nine months and thirteen days, and those damn packages hold a dozen…so it was empty…and since it was empty, it didn’t weigh anything…and since I was expecting it to weigh at least something, and was more than a little groggy…well, I overbalanced and landed ass-first in the bathtub, whanging my head against the tile wall.

  It could have happened to you, okay? Sure, it didn’t, and never will…but it could have. And if it had, I wouldn’t have laughed at you.

  Oh all right, I’m lying. Go ahead.

  Zoey had apparently decided to rest her eyes until I got back, and then get up into a sitting position, when there was someone there to help. But her love was true: I believe the combination of my piteous wail and the loud reverberating boom were probably enough to cause at least one of her eyes to open, perhaps as much as halfway. “You alive, hon?” she murmured.

  I was dazed, and not honestly sure of the answer, but I could not ignore the concern in her voice. “Depends on what you call living,” I temporized, trying with little success to get out of the tub.

  Her reply was a snore.

  My struggles triggered another of those invisible Murphy Switches: the shower-head’s built-in bombsight detected the presence of an unsuspecting human in its target area, and cut loose with the half-cup or so of ice-water it keeps handy for such occasions, scoring a direct hit on my groin. That got me up out of the bathtub, at least, though I can’t explain exactly how; all I know is, an instant later I was standing up and drawing in breath to swear. Loudly. With a great effort I managed to squelch it. The useless empty paper sack that should have held specimen jars was still in my hand; I flung it angrily toward the wastebasket beyond the toilet bowl. But of course it had poor aerodynamic characteristics for a projectile: it fluttered and flapped and curled over and fell short, square into the toilet bowl. Two points. This time I was not entirely successful in suppressing my bark of rage; it emerged as a kind of moan. I turned angrily on my heel, and walked straight into the edge of the open bathroom door. The sun went nova, and when it had cooled, I found that I was sitting again, on the cold tile floor this time. The front of my head now hurt as much as the back, and my buttocks hurt twice as much.

  Outside in the bedroom, Zoey snored again.

  For the third time, my lungs sucked in air…and then let it out again, very slowly. If I woke Zoey with screamed curses, I’d have to explain why—and then refrain from strangling her while she giggled. Or chortled. I got up, rubbed the places that hurt, and turned my attention to the problem of improvising an alternate urine container. If it had been for myself or another male, no problem—but females need a wider aperture. I shuffled past the sleeping Zoey and left the bedroom, searching for inspiration.

  By the time I found it, I had left our living quarters completely and wandered out into Mary’s Place proper.

  Living in back of a tavern has been a lifelong dream of mine, and the reality has turned out to be even better than I imagined. There, for instance, ranked in rows behind the bar, were a plethora of acceptable receptacles. (Say that three times fast with marbles in your mouth and you’ll never need a dentist again.) Before selecting one, I punched a combination into The Machine and set a mug upright on its conveyor belt, which hummed into life and whisked the mug away into the interior. Less than a minute later it emerged from the far side of The Machine, filled now with fresh hot Tanzanian Peaberry coffee
adulterated to my taste. I took it and the specimen container I had chosen back into the bedroom.

  There are few things a very pregnant woman will wake up for, but peeing is definitely one of them. Getting Zoey to a sitting position on the side of the bed (without tipping over the chamber pot) was probably less difficult than portaging a piano. The smell of coffee must have helped. She took a long sip of it, then came fully awake when she recognized the receptacle I was offering her.

  “Jake, I am not peeing into a stein.”

  “Oh hell, Zoey, what’s its religion got to do with anything? It’s wide enough, it’s been sterilized, it’s got a lid I can tape shut after, we’re out of specimen jars, just go ahead and get it over with, okay? Whoever it is today will be here any minute.”

  My best friends in the world—AKA: my regular clientele—had organized what they insisted on calling a Pee Pool: each morning one of them took a turn at coming by Mary’s Place to pick up the day’s specimen and ferry it to the hospital for analysis. I had no idea whose turn it was today, and was too groggy to figure it out, but the way things were going I suspected it would be one of the rare prompt ones.

  Zoey thought it over, and relaxed to the inevitable. She set the coffee down where I couldn’t reach it without stepping over her, deployed the stein above the thundermug, and cut loose.

  Sure enough, just as she finished, there was a thunderous knocking. A distant thunderous knocking—at the bar’s front door.

  That irritated me. Whoever it was could have just as easily come around to this side of the building and knocked on the much-closer back door. As a gesture of my irritation, I tossed aside the underpants I had just managed to locate, snatched the filled stein out of Zoey’s hand, and set off to answer the knock stark naked. “Jake—” Zoey called after me, and I snarled, “Whoever it is has it coming,” over my shoulder. For the second time that day I padded out of the living area and into the bar, went through the swinging doors into the foyer, and flung open the outside door with a flourish.