Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein

Then back to the nearest apport booth and hesitated–I needed companionship the way an Alcoholics-Anonymous needs his hand held. But I had no intimates, just hundreds of acquaintances. It isn’t easy for the Empress’s consort to have friends.

Rufo it had to be. But in all the months I had been on Center I had never been in Rufo’s home. Center does not practice the barbarous custom of dropping in on people and I had seen Rufo only at the Residence, or on parties; Rufo had never invited me to his home. No, no coldness there; we saw him often, but always he had come to us.

I looked for him in apport listings–no luck. Then as little with see-speak lists. I called the Residence, got the communication officer. He said that “Rufo” was not a surname and tried to brush me off. I said, “Hold it, you overpaid clerk! Switch me off and you’ll be in charge of smoke signals in Timbuktu an hour from now. Now listen. This bloke is elderly, baldheaded, one of his names is ‘Rufo’ I think, and he is a distinguished comparative culturologist. And he is a grandson of Her Wisdom. I think you know who he is and have been dragging your feet from bureaucratic arrogance. You have five minutes. Then I talk to Her Wisdom and ask her, while you pack!”

(“Stop! Danger you! Other old bald Rufo (?) top compculturist. Wisdom egg-sperm-egg. Five-minutes. Liar and/or fool. Wisdom? Catastrophe!”)

In less than five minutes Rufo’s image filled the tank. “Well!” he said. “I wondered who had enough weight to crash my shutoff.”

“Rufo, may I come see you?”

His scalp wrinkled. “Mice in the pantry, son? Your face reminds me of the time my uncle–”

“Please, Rufo!”

“Yes, son,” he said gently. “I’ll send the dancing girls home. Or shall I keep them?”

“I don’t care. How do I find you?”

He told me, I punched his code, added my charge number, and I was there, a thousand miles around the horizon. Rufo’s place was a mansion as lavish as Jocko’s and thousands of years more sophisticated. I gathered an impression that Rufo had the biggest household on Center, all female. I was wrong. But all female servants, visitors, cousins, daughters, made themselves a reception committee–to look at Her Wisdom’s bedmate. Rufo shooed them away and took me to his study. A dancing girl (evidently a secretary) was fussing over papers and tapes. Rufo slapped her fanny out, gave me a comfortable chair, a drink, put cigarettes near me, sat down and said nothing.

Smoking isn’t popular on Center, what they use as tobacco is the reason. I picked up a cigarette. “Chesterfields! Good God!”

“Have ’em smuggled,” he said. “But they don’t make anything like Sweet Caps anymore. Bridge sweepings and chopped hay.”

I hadn’t smoked in months. But Star had told me that cancer and such I could now forget. So I lit it–and coughed like a Nevian dragon. Vice requires constant practice.

” ‘What news on the Rialto?’ ” Rufo inquired. He glanced at my sword.

“Oh, nothing.” Having interrupted Rufo’s work, I now shied at baring my domestic troubles.

Rufo sat and smoked and waited. I needed to say something and the American cigarette reminded me of an incident, one that had added to my unstable condition. At a party a week earlier, I had met a man thirty-five in appearance, smooth, polite, but with that supercilious air that says: “Your fly is unzipped, old man, but I’m too urbane to mention it.”

But I had been delighted to meet him, he had spoken English!

I had thought that Star, Rufo, and myself were the only ones on Center who spoke English. We often spoke it. Star on my account, Rufo because he liked to practice. He spoke Cockney like a costermonger, Bostonese like Beacon Hill, Aussie like a kangaroo; Rufo knew all English languages.

This chap spoke good General American. “Nebbi is the name, he said, shaking hands where no one shakes hands, “and you’re Gordon, I know. Delighted to meet you.”

“Me, too,” I agreed. “It’s a surprise and a pleasure to hear my own language.”

“Professional knowledge, my dear chap. Comparative culturologist, linguisto-historo-political. You’re American, I know. Let me place it–Deep-South, not born there. Possibly New England. Overlaid with displaced Middle Western, California perhaps. Basic speech, lower-middle class, mixed.”