I felt really warm and no longer lost in a strange land for the first time since I had wakened. Picky was the answer to everything.
Then deep inside me I heard a voice: 'Look, stupid, you can't marry Ricky, because a girl as sweet as she was going to be would now have been married for at least twenty years. She'll have four kids...aybe a son bigger than you are-and certainly a husband who won't be amused by you in the role of good old Uncle Danny.'
I listened and my jaw sagged. Then I said feebly, 'All right, all right-so I've missed the boat again. But I'm still going to look her up. They can't do mote than shoot me. And, after all, she's the only other person who really understood Pete.'
I turned another page, suddenly very glum at the thought of having lost both Ricky and Pete. After a while I fell asleep over the paper and slept until Eager Beaver or his twin fetched lunch.
While I was asleep I dreamed that Picky was holding me on her lap and saying, 'It's all right, Danny. I found Pete and now we're both here to stay. Isn't that so, Pete?'
'YeeeoW)'
The added vocabularies were a cinch; I spent much more time on the historical summaries. Quite a lot can happen in thirty years, but why put it down when everybody else knows it better than I do? I wasn't surprised that the Great Asia Republic was crowding us out of the South American trade; that had been in the cards since the Formosall treaty. Nor was I surprised to find India more Balkanized than ever. The notion of England being a province of Canada stopped me for a moment. Which was the tail and which was the dog? I skipped over the panic of `87; gold was a wonderful engineering material for some uses; I could not regard it as a tragedy to find that it was now cheap and no longer a basis for money, no matter how many people lost their shirts in the change- over.
I stopped reading and thought about the things you could do with cheap gold, with its high density, good conductivity, extreme ductility... and stopped when I realized I would have to read the technical literature first. Shucks, in atomics alone it would be invaluable. The way the stuff could be worked, far better than any other metal, if you could use it in - I stopped, morally certain that Eager Beaver had had his 'head' crammed full of gold. I would just have to get busy and find out what the boys had been doing in the 'small back rooms' while I bad been away.
The Sawtelle Sanctuary wasn't equipped to let me read up on engineering, so I told Doc Albrecht I was ready to check out. He shrugged, told me I was an idiot, and agreed. But I did stay one more night; I found that I was fagged just from lying back and watching words chase past in a book scanner.
They brought me modern clothes right after breakfast the next morning...and I had to have help in dressing. They were not so odd in themselves (although I had never worn cerise trousers with bell bottoms before) but I could not manage the fastenings without coaching. I suppose my grandfather might have had the same trouble with zippers if he had not been led into them gradually. It was the Sticktite closure seams, of course-I thought I was going to have to hire a little boy to help me go to the bathroom before I got it through my head that the pressure- sensitive adhesion was axially polarized.
Then I almost lost my pants when I tried to ease the waistband. No one laughed at me.
Dr. Albrecbt asked, 'What are you going to do?'
'Me? First I'm going to get a map of the city. Then I'm going to find a place to sleep. Then I'm going to do nothing but professional reading for quite a while... maybe a year. Doc, I'm an obsolete engineer. I don't aim to stay that way.'
'Mmmm. Well, good luck. Don't hesitate to call if I can help.'
I stuck out my hand. 'Thanks, Doc. You've been swell. Uh, maybe I shouldn't mention this until I talk to the accounting office of my insurance company and see just how well off I am-but I don't intend to let it go with words. Thanks for the sort of thing you've done for me should be more substantial. Understand me?'
He shook his head. 'I appreciate the thought. But my fees are covered by my contract with the sanctuary.'
'But-'
'No. I can't take it, so please let's not discuss it.' He shook hands and said, 'Good-by. If you'll stay on this slide it will take you to the main offices.' He hesitated. 'If you find things a bit tiring at first, you're entitled to four more days recuperation and reorientation here without additional charge under the custodial contract. It's paid for. Might as well use it. You can come and go as you like.'
I grinned. 'Thanks, Doc. But you can bet that I won't be back-other than to say hello someday.'
I stepped off at the main office and told the receptionist there who I was. It handed me an envelope, which I saw was another phone message from Mrs. Schultz. I still had not called her, because I did not know who she was, and the sanctuary did not permit visits nor phone calls to a revivified client until he wanted to accept them. I simply glanced at it and tucked it in my blouse, while thinking that I might have made a mistake in making Flexible Frank too flexible. Receptionists used to be pretty girls, not machines.
The receptionist said, 'Step this way, please. Our treasurer would like to see you.'
Well, I wanted to see him, too, so I stepped that way. I was wondering how much money I had made and was congratulating myself on having plunged in common stocks rather than playing it 'safe.' No doubt my stocks had dropped in the Panic of `87, but they ought to be back up now-in fact I knew that at least two of them were worth a lot of dough now; I had been reading the financial section of the Times. I still had the paper with me, figuring I might want to look up some others.
The treasurer was a human being, even though he looked like a treasurer. He gave me a quick handshake. 'How do you do, Mr. Davis. I'm Mr. Doughty. Sit down, please.'
I said, 'Howdy, Mr. Doughty. I probably don't need to take that much of your time. Just tell me this: does my insurance company handle its settlements through your office? Or should I go to their home offices?'
'Do please sit down. I have several things to explain to you.'
So I sat. His office assistant (good old Frank again) fetched a file folder for him and he said, 'These are your original contracts. Would you like to see them?'
I wanted very much to see them, as I had kept my fingers crossed ever since I was fully awake, wondering if Belle had figured out some way to bite the end off that certified check. A certified check is much harder to play hanky-panky with than is a personal check, but Belle was a clever gal.
I was much relieved to see that she had left my commitments unchanged, except of course that the side contract for Pete was missing and also the one concerning my Hired Girl stock. I supposed that she had just burned those, to keep from raising questions. I examined with care the dozen or more places where she had changed 'Mutual Assurance Company' to 'Master Insurance Company of California.'
The gal was a real artist, no question. I suppose a scientific criminologist armed with microscope and comparison stereo and chemical tests and so forth could have proved that each of those documents had been altered, but I could not. I wondered how she had coped with the closed endorsement on the back of the certified check, since certified checks are always on paper guaranteed nonerasable. Well, she probably had not used an eraser-what one person can dream up another person can outsmart... and Belle was very smart.
Mr. Doughty cleared his throat. I looked up. 'Do we settle my account here?'
'Yes.'
'Then I can put it in two words. How much?'
'Mmm ... Mr. Davis, before we go into that question, I would like to invite your attention to one additional document and to one circumstance. This is the contract between this Sanctuary and Master Insurance Company of California for your hypothermia, custody, and revivification. You will note that the entire fee is paid in advance. This is both for our protection and for yours, since it guarantees your safe-being while you are helpless. The funds-all such funds-are placed in escrow with the superior-court division handling chancery matters and are paid quarterly to us as earned.'
'Okay. Sounds like a good arrangement.'
'It is. It protects the helpless. Now you must understand clearly that this sanctuary is a separate corporation from your insurance company; the custodial contract with us was a contract entirely separate from the one for the management of your estate.'
'Mr. Doughty, what are you getting at?'
'Do you have any assets other than those you entrusted to Master Insurance Company?'
