WHEN JOEL JOHNSTON FIRST MET JINNY HAMILTON, it seemed like a dream come true. And when she finally agreed to marry him, he felt like the luckiest man in the universe.
There was just one small problem. He was broke. His only goal in life was to become a composer, and he knew it would take years before he was earning enough to support a family.
But Jinny wasn’t willing to wait. And when Joel asked her what they were going to do for money, she gave him a most unexpected answer. She told him that her name wasn’t really Jinny Hamilton—it was Jinny Conrad, and she was the granddaughter of Richard Conrad, the wealthiest man in the solar system.
And now that she was sure that Joel loved her for herself, not for her wealth, she revealed her family’s plans for him—he would be groomed for a place in the vast Conrad empire and sire a dynasty to carry on the family business.
Most men would have jumped at the opportunity. But Joel Johnston wasn’t most men. To Jinny’s surprise, and even his own, he turned down her generous offer and then set off on the mother of all benders. And woke up on a colony ship heading out into space, torn between regret over his rash decision and his determination to forget Jinny and make a life for himself among the stars.
He was on his way to succeeding when his plans—and the plans of billions of others—were shattered by a cosmic cataclysm so devastating it would take all of humanity’s strength and ingenuity just to survive.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN is universally acknowledged as modern science fiction’s greatest author. At his death, in 1988, he left a legacy of books and stories that has profoundly influenced the course of the field for generations.
But one of Heinlein’s most ambitious works was never finished. In 1955, he began work on a novel to be titled Variable Star, completing a detailed outline and making extensive notes for the book, only to set it aside to focus on other novels, including Tunnel in the Sky and the Hugo Award-winning Double Star. For more than half a century, the work lay forgotten among Heinlein’s papers. Then, on its rediscovery a few years ago, the Robert A. Heinlein Trust selected an author to finish the work.
The author chosen for the project was, appropriately enough, a writer The New York Times has hailed as “the New Robert Heinlein”—SPIDER ROBINSON, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of such modern SF classics as Stardance and “Melancholy Elephants.” Faithful to the spirit of Heinlein’s original vision, and laced with contemporary touches that will appeal to modern readers, Variable Star is a rare treat for the Grand Master’s many fans.
Profits from the book will help fund the $500,000 Heinlein Prize for innovation in commercial manned spaceflight, a goal Mr. Heinlein considered crucial to humanity’s long-term survival.
Books by Robert A. Heinlein
Assignment in Eternity
The Best of Robert A. Heinlein
Between Planets
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
Citizen of the Galaxy
Destination Moon
The Door into Summer
Double Star
Expanded Universe: More Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein
Farmer in the Sky
Farnham’s Freehold
For Us, the Living
Friday
Glory Road
Grumbles from the Grave
The Green Hills of Earth
Have Space Suit—Will Travel
I Will Fear No Evil
Job: A Comedy of Justice
The Man Who Sold the Moon
The Menace from Earth
Methuselah’s Children
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
The Number of the Beast—
Orphans of the Sky
The Past Through Tomorrow
Podkayne of Mars
The Puppet Masters
Red Planet
Revolt in 2100
Rocket Ship Galileo
The Rolling Stones
Sixth Column
Space Cadet
The Star Beast
Starman Jones
Starship Troopers
Stranger in a Strange Land
Take Back Your Government
Three by Heinlein
Time Enough for Love
Time for the Stars
Tomorrow the Stars [ed.]
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Tramp Royale
Tunnel in the Sky
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
Waldo & Magic, Inc.
The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein
Variable Star (with Spider Robinson)
Books by Spider Robinson
Antinomy
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Callahan and Company (omnibus)
The Callahan Chronicals (omnibus)
The Callahan Touch
Callahan’s Lady
Callahan’s Con
Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon
Callahan’s Key
Callahan’s Legacy
Callahan’s Secret
Copyright Violation
Deathkiller (omnibus)
The Free Lunch
God Is an Iron and other stories
Kill the Editor
Lady Slings the Booze
Lifehouse
Melancholy Elephants
Mindkiller
Night of Power
Off the Wall at Callahan’s
The Star Dancers (with Jeanne Robinson)
Stardance (with Jeanne Robinson)
Starmind (with Jeanne Robinson)
Starseed (with Jeanne Robinson)
Telempath
Time Pressure
Time Travelers Strictly Cash
True Minds
User Friendly
Very Bad Deaths
Variable Star (with Robert A. Heinlein)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously
VARIABLE STAR
Copyright © 2006 by The Robert A. & Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust and Spider Robinson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Book Design by Mary A. Wirth
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heinlein, Robert A. (Robert Anson), 1907—
Variable star / Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN-13: 978-0-765-31312-6
ISBN-10: 0-765-31312-X (acid-free paper)
I. Robinson, Spider. II. Title.
PS3515.E288V37 2006
813‘.54—dc22 2006006865
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
For the women without whom
none of this would have been necessary:
Bam, Evelyn, Ginny, Jeanne, Amy, Terri Luanna,
Ruth, Kate, and Eleanor
Contents
Editor’s Preface
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
>
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Afterword
Editor’s Preface
In Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land there is a story about a Martian artist so focused on his work that he fails to notice his own death, and completes the piece anyway. To Martians, who don’t go anywhere when they die but simply become Old Ones, the burning question was: should this work be judged by the standards used for art by the living, or for art by the dead?
A similar situation occurs here for one of the first times on this planet. This book is a posthumous collaboration, begun when one of its collaborators was seven, and completed when the other was seventeen-years-dead. Spider Robinson discusses this at length in his Afterword, but a brief explanation at the start may help readers to better appreciate what they’re reading, and to decide by what standards they should evaluate it.
After the passing of Robert Heinlein’s widow, Virginia, in 2003, his archivist/biographer discovered a detailed outline and notes for a novel the Grand Master had plotted in 1955, but had never gotten around to writing, tentatively titled The Stars Are a Clock. Heinlein’s estate executor and literary agent decided the book deserved to be written and read, and agreed that Spider Robinson was the only logical choice to complete it.
First called “the new Robert Heinlein” by the New York Times Book Review in 1982, Robinson has been linked with him in the reviews of most of his own thirty-two award-winning books. The two were close friends. Spider penned a famous essay demolishing his mentor’s detractors called “Rah, Rah, R.A.H.!,” and contributed the introduction to Heinlein’s recently-discovered 1939 first book, For Us, the Living.
It was a pairing as fortuitous as McCartney and Lennon. You are about to read something genuinely unique and quite special: a classic novel fifty years in the making, conceived in the Golden Age of SF by its first Grand Master, and completed in the Age of Cyberspace by one of his greatest students. Variable Star is Robert A. Heinlein’s only collaborative novel—and we believe he would be as proud of it as Spider Robinson is, and as we at Tor are to publish it.
—Cordwainer LoBrutto,
Senior Editor
One
For it was in the golden prime
Of good Harun Alrashid…
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
Recollections of the Arabian Nights
I thought I wanted to get married in the worst way. Then that’s pretty much what I was offered, so I ended up going trillions of kilometers out of my way instead. A great many trillions of kilometers, and quite a few years—which turns out to be much the greater distance.
It began this way:
Jinny Hamilton and I were dancing.
This was something of an accomplishment for me, in and of itself—I was born on Ganymede, and I had only been Earthside a few years, then. If you’ve never experienced three times the gravity you consider normal, imagine doing your favorite dance…with somebody your own weight sitting on each of your shoulders, on a pedestal a few meters above concrete. Broken bones, torn ligaments, and concussions are hazards you simply learn to accept.
But some people play water polo, voluntarily. Jinny and I had been going out together for most of a year, and dancing was one of her favorite recreations, so by now I had not only made myself learn how to dance, I’d actually become halfway decent at it. Enough to dimly understand how someone with muscles of steel and infinite wind might consider it fun, anyway.
But that night was something else.
Part of it was the setting, I guess. Your prom is supposed to be a magical time. It was still quite early in the evening, but the Hotel Vancouver ballroom was appropriately decorated and lit, and the band was excellent, especially the singer. Jinny was both the most beautiful and the most interesting person I had ever met. She and I were both finally done with Fermi Junior College, in Surrey, British Columbia. Class of 2286 (Restored Gregorian), huzzah—go, Leptons! In the fall we’d be going off to university together at Stony Brook, on the opposite coast of North America—if my scholarship came through, anyway—and in the meantime we were young, healthy, and hetero. The song being played was one I liked a lot, an ancient old ballad called “On the Road to the Stars,” that always brought a lump to my throat because it was one of my father’s favorites.
It’s the reason we came from the mud, don’t you know
’cause we wanted to climb to the stars,
In our flesh and our bone and our blood we all know
we were meant to return to the stars,
Ask anyone which way is God, and you know
he will probably point to the stars…
None of that explained the way Jinny danced that night. I knew her as a good dancer, but that night it was almost as if she were possessed by the ghost of Gillis. It wasn’t even just her own dancing, though that was inspired. She did some moves that startled me, phrases so impressive she started to draw attention even on a crowded dance floor. Couples around us kept dancing, but began watching her. Her long red hair swirled through the room like the cape of an inspired toreador, and for a while I could only follow like a mesmerized bull. But then her eyes met mine, and flashed, and the next thing I knew I was attempting a combination I had never even thought of before; one that I knew as I began, was way beyond my abilities—and I nailed it. She sent me a grin that felt like it started a sunburn and offered me an intriguing move, and I thought of something to do with it, and she lobbed it back with a twist, and we got through five fairly complex phrases without a train wreck and out the of her side as smoothly as if we’d been rehearsing for weeks. Some people had stopped dancing to watch, now.
On the way to the stars
every molecule in you was born in the heart of a star.
On the way to the stars—
in the dead of the night they’re the light that’ll show
where you are
yes they are
from so far…
In the back of my head were a few half-formed, half-baked layman’s ideas for dance steps that I wasn’t even sure were physically possible in a one-gee field. I’d never had the nerve to actually try any of them with a partner, in any gravity; I really hate looking ridiculous. But Jinny lifted an eyebrow—what have you got?—and before I knew it I was trying one, even though there was no way she could know what her response was supposed to be. Only she did, somehow, and made it—or rather, an improved variation of what I’d thought of—and not only was the result successful enough to draw applause, by luck it happened to offer a perfect lead-in to another of my ideas, which also turned out to work, and suggested something to her—
We flew.
We’ll be through if the day ever comes when we no
longer yearn to return to the stars.
I can’t prove it’s so, but I’m certain: I know
that our ancestors came from the stars.
It would not be so lonely to die if I knew
I had died on the way to the stars.
Talking about dance is as silly as dancing about architecture. I don’t know how to convey exactly how we danced that night, or what was so remarkable about it. I can barely manage to believe we did it. Just let it stand that we deserved the applause we received when the music finally ended and we went into our closing clinch. It was probably the first time since I’d come to Terra that I didn’t feel heavy and weak and fragile. I felt strong…graceful…manly…
“After dancing like that, Stinky, a couple really ought to get married,” Jinny said about two hundred millimeters below my ear.
I felt fourteen. “Damn it, Jinny—” I said, and pulled away from her. I reached down for her hands, trying to make it into a dance move, but she eluded me. Instead she curtsied, blew me a kiss, turned on her heel, and left at high speed, to spirited applause.
It increased when I ran after her.
Jinny was 178 ce
ntimeters tall, not especially tall for a Terran, and I was a Ganymedean beanpole two full meters high, so her legs were considerably shorter than mine. But they were also adapted from birth to a one-gee field—to sports in a one-gee field. I didn’t catch up with her until we’d reached the parking lot, and then only because she decided to let me.
So we’d each had time to work on our lines.
Ginny went with, “Joel Johnston, if you don’t want to marry me—”
“Jinny, you know perfectly well I’m going to marry you—”
“In five more frimpin’ years! My God, Stinky, I’ll be an old, old woman by then—”
“Skinny, you’ll never be an old woman,” I said, and that shut her up for a second. Every so often a good one comes to me like that. Not often enough. “Look, don’t be like this. I can’t marry you right now. You know I can’t.”
“I don’t know anything of the sort. I know you won’t. But I see nothing preventing you. You don’t even have to worry about parental consent.”
“What does that have to do with it? Neither do you. And we wouldn’t let parental disapproval stand in our way if we did want to get married.”
“You see? I was right—you don’t want to!”
I was becoming alarmed. I had always thought of Jinny as unusually rational, for a girl. Could this be one of those hormonal storms I had read about? I hoped not—all authorities seemed to agree the only thing a man could do in such weather was lash himself to the mast and pray. I made a last stubborn attempt to pour logic on the troubled waters. “Jinny, please—be reasonable! I am not going to let you marry a dole bludger. Not even if he’s me.”
“But—”
“I intend to be a composer. You know that. That means it’s going to take me at least a few years to even start to get established. You knew that when we started dating. If, I say ‘if,’ all those bullocks I sacrificed to Zeus pay off and I actually win a Kallikanzaros Scholarship, it will be my great privilege to spend the next four years living on dishrag soup and scraped fridge, too poor to support a cat. If, and I say ‘if,’ I am as smart as I think I am, and luckier than I usually am, I’ll come out the other end with credentials that might, in only another year or two, leave me in a position to offer you something more than half of a motel cubicle. Meanwhile, you have your own scholarships and your law degree to worry about, so that once my music starts making serious money, nobody will weasel it away from us.”