“You are a soldier?”
“Not exactly. An agent.”
“Uh…agente provocateuse?”
“Uh, close.” She smiled wryly. “Agente amoureuse perhaps. Although I wasn’t told to fall in love with you. Just to marry you. But I did fall in love with you, Richard, and it may have ruined me as an agent. Will you come with me while I report back? Please?”
I was getting more confused by the minute. “Gwen, I’m getting more confused by the minute.”
“Then why not let me explain?”
“Uh—Gwen, it can’t be explained. You claim that you’re Hazel Stone.”
“I am.”
“Damn it, I can count. Hazel Stone, if she is still alive, is well over a century old.”
“That’s right. I’m well over a hundred.” She smiled. “I robbed the cradle, dear one.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Look, dear, I’ve spent the last five nights in bed with you. You’re an exceptionally lively old bag!”
She grinned at me. “Thank you, dear. I owe it all to Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.”
“You do, eh? A patent nostrum took the calcium out of your joints and put it back into your bones, and ironed out the wrinkles in your face, and restored your youthful hormonal balance, and unclogged your arteries? Order me a barrel of it; I’m slowing down.”
“Mrs. Pinkham had expert help, dearest. Richard, if you would only let me prove to you who I am, by my thumbprint on the Declaration of Independence, your mind would then be open to the truth, strange though it is. I wish I could offer you identification by retinal patterns…but my retinas had not been photographed then. But there is that thumbprint. And there is blood typing, too.”
I began to feel panicky—what would Gwen do if her delusion pattern was toppled?
Then I remembered something. “Gwen, Gretchen mentioned Hazel Stone.”
“So she did. Gretchen is my great great granddaughter, Richard. I married Slim Lemke, of the Stone Gang, on my fourteenth birthday and had my first child by him at Terra’s fall equinox of 2078—a boy; I named him Roger for my father. In 2080 I had my first daughter—”
“Hold it. Your eldest daughter was a student at Percival Lowell when I commanded the rescue operation. So you said.”
“Part of that pack of lies, Richard. I did indeed have a descendant there—a granddaughter on the faculty. So I truly am grateful. But I had to edit the details to fit my apparent age. My first daughter was named Ingrid, for Slim’s mother…and Ingrid Henderson was named for her grandmother—my daughter, Ingrid Stone. Richard, you could not guess at the time how difficult it was for me at Dry Bones Pressure to meet for the first time five of my very own and not be able to acknowledge them.
“But I can’t be Grandmother Hazel when I am being Gwen Novak. So I didn’t admit it…and that was not the first time this has happened to me. I’ve had lots of children—forty-four years from menarche to menopause and I gave birth to sixteen by four husbands and three passing strangers—and took the Stone name back after my fourth husband died. Because I moved in with my son Roger Stone.
“I raised four of the kids Roger had by his second wife—she is a medical doctor and needed a resident grandmother. I got three of them married off, all but the baby, who is now chief surgeon at Ceres General and may never get married as he is handsome and quite self-centered and believes the old saw about ‘Why keep a cow?’
“Then I started taking the vegetable compound, and here I am, fertile again and ready to raise another family.” She smiled and patted her belly. “Let’s go back to bed.”
“God damn it, wench; that won’t solve anything!”
“No, but it’s a swell way to pass the time. And sometimes it puts a stop to recurrent bleeding. Which reminds me—If Gretchen ever shows up, I won’t interfere a second time. I just did not fancy having my great great granddaughter crowding in on my honeymoon—a honeymoon already crowded by too many people and too much excitement.”
“Gretchen is just a child.”
“You think so? She is physically as mature as I was at fourteen…when I married and got pregnant at once. Virgin at marriage, Richard; happens oftener here than anywhere else. Mama Mimi was strict and Mama Wyoh was charged with keeping an eye on me, and I wasn’t inclined to stray anyhow, as the Davis family was socially as high as you could be in Luna City in those days and I appreciated having been adopted by them. Beloved, I’m not going to tell you another word about me until you check my chop and print on the Declaration. I can feel your disbelief…and it humiliates me.”
(What do you do when your wife persists? Marriage is the greatest human art…when it works.) “Sweetheart, I don’t want to humiliate you. But I’m not competent to match thumb-prints. But there is more than one way to cook a wolf. This second wife of your son Roger: Is she still alive?”
“Very much so. Dr. Edith Stone.”
“Then there is probably a record right here in Luna City of her marriage to your son and—Is he the Roger Stone who was once mayor?”
“Yes. From 2122 to 2130. But he’s not available; he left here in 2148.”
“Where is he now?”
“Several light years away. Edith and Roger out-migrated, to Fiddler’s Green. None of that branch of my family is around any longer. It won’t work, dear—you’re looking for someone who can identify me as Hazel Stone. Aren’t you?”
“Well…yes. I thought Dr. Edith Stone would be an expert and unbiased witness.”
“Mmm…she still can be.”
“How?”
“Blood typing, Richard.”
“Look, Gwen, blood typing is a subject I’ve had to know something about, because of field surgery. I saw to it that every man in my regiment was typed. Blood typing can show who you are not; it cannot prove who you are. In a number as small as a regiment even the rare AB negative will be matched more than once; they run one in two hundred. I remember because I am one.”
She nodded agreement. “And I’m O positive, the commonest type of all. But that’s not the whole story. If you type for all thirty-odd blood groups, a blood type is as unique as a fingerprint or a retinal pattern. Richard, during the Revolution lots of our people died because they had not been blood-typed. Oh, we knew how to transfuse blood but safe donors could be found only by cross-matching, then and there. Without typing this was often too slow; many—no, most—of our wounded who needed blood died because a donor could not be identified in time.
“After peace and independence Mama Wyoh—Wyoming Knott Davis, the hospital in Kong—you know?”
“I noticed.”
“Mama Wyoh had been a professional host mother, in Kong, and knew about such things. She started the first blood bank, with money raised by Major Watenabe, another Founding Father. There may be a half liter of my blood frozen in Kong even today…but what is certain is that a complete typing of my blood is on file there, because Edith saw to it that each one of us had a full typing, all known groups, before we all started a Wanderjahr in 2148.”
Gwen smiled happily. “So take a sample of my blood, Richard; have it typed at Galileo University Medical Center. Get a full work-up, I’ll pay for it. Compare it with my typing done in 2148, filed at Wyoming Knott Memorial. Anyone who can read English can tell whether or not the two work-ups match; it doesn’t take the sort of expertise required to match fingerprints. If that doesn’t say I am me, then send for a straitjacket; it’ll be time to put me away.”
“Gwen, we’re not going back to Kong. Not for anything.”
“No need to. We pay the blood bank at Galileo to have a transcript from Kong printed out by terminal.” Her face clouded. “But it will blow my cover as Mistress Novak. Once those two records are side by side they’ll know that Grandmother Hazel has returned to the scene of her crimes. I don’t know what that will do to my mission; it was not supposed to happen. But I do know that convincing you is absolutely essential to my mission.”
“Gwen, assume that you’ve convinced me.?
??
“Truly, dear? You wouldn’t lie to me?”
(Yes, I would, little love. But I must admit that your words are persuasive. All that you have said matches my own careful study of Lunar history…and you deal with little details as if you had been there. It all is convincing but the physical impossibility—you are young, darling; you are not an old crone of more than a century.) “Sweetheart, you’ve given me two positive ways to identify you. So let’s assume that I’ve checked out one or the other or both. Let’s stipulate that you’re Hazel. Do you prefer to be called Hazel?”
“I answer to both names, darling. Suit yourself.”
“All right. The sticky point is your appearance. If you were old and dried up instead of young and juicy—”
“Are you complaining?”
“No. Merely descriptive. Stipulating that you are Hazel Stone, born 2063, how do you account for your youthful appearance? And don’t give me any guff about a legendary patent medicine.”
“You’ll find the truth hard to believe, Richard. I have undergone rejuvenation. Twice in fact. The first time to bring me back in appearance to late middle age…while restoring my bodily economy to youthful maturity. The second time was mostly cosmetic, to make me desirable in appearance. To recruit you, sir.”
“Be damned. Monkey face, is that your own face?”
“Yes. It can be changed if you would like me to look otherwise.”
“Oh, no! I’m not one to insist on prettiness as long as a girl’s heart is pure.”
“Why, you louse!”
“But since your heart isn’t all that pure, it’s nice that you’re pretty.”
“You can’t talk yourself out of it that easily!”
“Okay, you’re gorgeous and sexy and evil. But ‘rejuvenation’ explains without explaining. So far as I’ve ever heard, rejuvenation is for flatworms but not for anything higher up the evolutionary ladder.”
“Richard, this part you’ll have to take on faith—for now, at least. I was rejuvenated at a clinic a couple of thousand years away and in an odd direction.”
“Hmm. It sounds like a gimmick I might have dreamed up when I was writing fantasies.”
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Not convincing. Merely true.”
“So I see no way to investigate it. Perhaps I’ll have to get that blood-type transcript. Uh—Hazel Stone, Roger Stone—The Scourge of the Spaceways!”
“My God, my past has caught up with me! Richard, did you ever watch my show?”
“Every episode, unless I had been caught doing something that called for drastic punishment. Captain John Sterling was my childhood hero. And you wrote it?”
“My son Roger started it. I started writing it in 2148 but I didn’t put my name on it until the following year—then it was ‘Roger and Hazel Stone’—”
“I remember! But I don’t remember that Roger Stone ever wrote it by himself.”
“Oh, yes, he did—until he got tired of the golden treadmill. I took it over from him, intending to kill it off—”
“Sweetheart, you can’t kill off a serial! It’s unconstitutional.”
“I know. Anyhow, they took up the option and waved too much money under my nose. And we needed the money; we were living in space then and a spacecraft, even a little family job, is expensive.”
“I’ve never quite had the courage to write a serial against deadlines. Oh, I’ve written episodes on assignment, using a show’s bible, but not on my own and under the gun.”
“We didn’t use a bible; Buster and I just whipped ’em up as we went along.”
“‘Buster’?”
“My grandson. The one who is now chief surgeon at Ceres General. For eleven years we wrote them together, frustrating the Galactic Overlord at every turn—”
“‘The Galactic Overlord!’ The best villain in the creepies. Honey, I wish there were really a Galactic Overlord.”
“Why, you young whippersnapper, how dare you throw doubt on the authenticity of the Galactic Overlord? What do you know about it?”
“Sorry. I apologize. He’s as real as Luna City. Or John Sterling would not have had anyone to frustrate…and I certainly believe in Captain John Sterling of the Star Patrol.”
“That’s better.”
“That time Captain Sterling was lost in the Horsehead Nebula with the radiation worms after him: How did he get out? That was one of the times I was being punished and not allowed to watch.”
“As I recall—Mind you, this was some years back. I seem to recall that he jury-rigged his Doppler radar to fry them with polarized beams.”
“No, that was what he used on the space entities.”
“Richard, are you sure? I don’t think he encountered the space entities until after he escaped from the Horsehead Nebula. When he had to make a temporary truce with the Galactic Overlord to save the Galaxy.”
I thought about it. How old was I at the time? What year in school? “Hon, I do believe you’re right. I was upset that he would join forces with the Overlord even to save the Galaxy. I—”
“But he had to, Richard! He couldn’t let billions of innocent people die just to keep from soiling his hands through cooperating with the Overlord. But I can see your point. Buster and I fought over that episode—Buster wanted to take advantage of the temporary truce to do the Overlord in, once the space entities were destroyed—”
“No, Captain Sterling would never break his word.”
“True. But Buster was always the pragmatist. His solution to almost any problem was to cut somebody’s throat.”
“Well, it’s a convincing argument,” I admitted.
“But. Richard, you have to go easy in killing off characters in a serial; you must always leave something for the next episode. But you tell me you’ve never handled a series all on your own.”
“I haven’t but I do know that; I watched enough of them, back when. Hazel, why did you let me fill you with a lot of guff about the life of a writer?”
“You called me ‘Hazel’!”
“Sweetheart—Hazel my darling—I’m not interested in blood types or in thumbprints. You are undeniably the author of history’s greatest creepie The Scourge of the Spaceways. It said on the credits, week after week, year after year: ‘Written by Hazel Stone.’ Then, sadly, it began to read: ‘Based on characters created by Hazel Stone—’”
“It did? Those later credits should have included Roger; he created the show. Not me. Those nogoodniks.”
“It didn’t matter. Because the characters grew anemic and died. Without you the show was never the same.”
“I had to quit; Buster grew up. I supplied the twists; he supplied the gore. Sometimes I got soft-hearted; Buster never did.”
“Hazel? Why don’t we revive it? We’ll plot it together; you write it; I’ll do the cooking and housekeeping.” I stopped and looked at her. “What in the world are you crying about?”
“I’ll cry if I want to! You call me ‘Hazel’—you believe me!”
“I have to believe you. Anybody could trick me about blood types or thumbprints. But not about commercial fiction. Not this old hack writer. You’re the real McCoy, my love, the authentic scourge of the spaceways. But you’re still my sweaty little nymphomaniac—I find I don’t mind that you are a couple of centuries old.”
“I am not either two centuries old! I won’t be for years and years.”
“But you’re still my sweaty little nymphomaniac?”
“If you’ll let me.”
I grinned at her. “Do I have any say in the matter? Get your clothes off and let’s do some plotting.”
“‘Plotting’?”
“All the best writing is done with the gonads, Hazel my lusty bride—didn’t you know that? Battle stations! Here comes the Galactic Overlord!”
“Oh, Richard!”
XVIII
“When it comes to a choice between kindness and honesty, my vote is for kindness, every time—giving or receiving.”
IRA JOHNSON 1854-1
941
“Hazel my ancient love—”
“Richard, would you like a broken arm?”
“I don’t think you can manage it just now.”
“Want to bet?”
“Ouch! Stop that! Don’t do it again…or I’ll toss you back into the creek and marry Gretchen. She is not ancient.”
“Keep right on teasing me. My third husband was a tease. Everybody remarked on how well he looked at his funeral…and what a shame it was he died so young.” Hazel-Gwen smiled up at me. “But he turned out to be heavily insured, which does comfort a widow. Marrying Gretchen is a good idea, darling; I would enjoy bringing her up. Teaching her to shoot, helping her with the first baby, coaching her in how to handle a knife, working out with her in martial arts, all the homey domestic skills a girl needs in this modern world.”
“Hummph! My darling girl, you are as little and cute and pretty and harmless as a coral snake. I think Jinx has already trained Gretchen.”
“More likely Ingrid. But I can still put a polish on her. As you pointed out, I’m experienced. What was that word you used? ‘Ancient,’ that was it.”
“Ouch!”
“Oh, that didn’t hurt. Sissy.”
“The hell it didn’t. I’m going to enter a monastery.”
“Not till you’ve entered Gretchen. I’ve just decided, Richard; we’re going to marry Gretchen.”
I treated this ridiculous statement with the neglect it deserved—I got up and hopped into the refresher.
Shortly she followed me in. I cowered away from her. “Help! Don’t hit me again!”
“Oh, spit. I haven’t hit you once, as yet.”
“I surrender. You’re not ancient; you’re just well marinated. Hazel my love, what makes you so feisty?”
“I’m not feisty. But when you’re as small as I am and female, if you don’t stand up for your rights, you’re sure to be pushed around by big, hairy, smelly men with delusions about male superiority. Don’t yelp, dear; I haven’t hurt you, not once. I haven’t drawn blood—now have I?”
“I’m afraid to look. Mother never warned me that married life could be like this! Sweetheart, you were about to tell me why you had to recruit me and for what purpose when we got distracted.”