Farnham’s Freehold By Robert A. Heinlein

“My dear, do you realize that the human race lasted at least a million years with no diapers at all? Whereas we may not last another hour. So let’s not spend it talking about diapers.”

“I simply meant- Wups! They’re moving us.”

“Sit flat on the floor and brace your feet against the wall. Before we have scrambled babies. You were saying?”

“I simply meant, my darling, that I do not care about diapers, I don’t care about anything-now that I have you with me again. But if we aren’t going to die-if this thing works- I’m going to have to be practical. And do you know of anything more practical than diapers?”

“Yes. Kissing. Making love.”

“Well, yes. But they lead to diapers. Darling, could you hold Hughie in your other arm and put this one around me? Uh, they’re moving us again. Hugh, is this thing going to work? Or are we going to be very suddenly dead? Somehow I can imagine time travel frontwards-and anyhow we did it. But I can’t imagine it backwards. I mean, the past has already happened. That’s it. Isn’t it?”

“Well, yes. But you haven’t stated it correctly. The way I see it, there are no paradoxes in time travel, there can’t be. If we are going to make this time jump, then we already did; that’s what happened. And if it doesn’t work, then it’s because it didn’t happen.”

“But it hasn’t happened yet. Therefore, you are saying that it didn’t happen, so it can’t happen. That’s what I said.”

“No, no! We don’t know whether it has already happened or not. If it did, it will. If it didn’t, it won’t.”

“Darling, you’re confusing me.”

“Don’t worry about it. ‘The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on’-and only then do you find out if it goosed you in passing. I think we’ve straightened out on a course; we’re steady now, just the faintest vibration. If they are taking us where I think they are, James County I mean, then we’ve got at least an hour before we need worry about anything.” He tightened his arm around her. “So let’s be happy that hour.”

She snuggled in. “That’s what I was saying. Beloved, we’ve come through so many narrow squeaks together that I’m not ever going to worry again. If it’s an hour, I’ll be happy every second of it. If it’s forty years, I’ll be happy every second of that, too. If it’s together. And if it’s not together, I don’t want it. But either way, we go on. To the end of our day.”

“Yes. ‘To the end of our day.’”

She sighed happily, rearranged a wet and sleeping infant, snuggled into his shoulder and murmured, “This feels like our very first day. In the tank room of the shelter, I mean. We were just as crowded and even warmer-and I was never so happy. And we didn’t know whether we were going to live through that day, either. That night.”

“We didn’t expect to. Else we wouldn’t have twin boys now.”

“So I’m glad we thought we were going to die. Hugh? It isn’t any more crowded than it was that night in the tank room.”

“Woman, you are an insatiable lecher. You’ll shock the boys.”

“I don’t think once in more than a year is being insatiable. And the boys are too young to be shocked. Aw, come on! You said yourself we might be dead in an hour.”

“Yes, we might and you have a point and I’m theoretically in favor of the idea. But the boys do inhibit me and there actually isn’t quite as much room even if we weren’t cluttered up with eight or nine wet babies and I don’t see how it’s mechanically possible. The act would be a tesseract, at least.”

“Well- I guess you’re right. I don’t see any way either; we would probably squash them. But it does seem a shame, if we’re going to die.”

“I refuse to assume that we’re going to die. I won’t ever make that assumption again. All my figuring is based on the assumption that we are going to live. We go on. No matter what happens-we go on.”