Then he thought about “Sir Isaac.” It was nice to run across somebody from home.
Dr. Jefferson’s apartment turned out to be far underground in an expensive quarter of the city. Don almost failed to arrive; the cab had paused at the apartment door but when he tried to get out the door would not open. This reminded him that he must first pay the fare shown in the meter—only to discover that he had pulled the bumpkin trick of engaging a robot vehicle without having coins on him to feed the meter. He was sure that the little car, clever as it was, would not even deign to sniff at his letter-of-credit. He was expecting disconsolately to be carted by the machine off to the nearest police station when he was rescued by the appearance of Dr. Jefferson.
The doctor gave him coins to pay the shot and ushered him in. “Think nothing of it, my boy; it happens to me about once a week. The local desk sergeant keeps a drawer full of hard money just to buy me out of hock from our mechanical masters. I pay him off once a quarter, cumshaw additional. Sit down. Sherry?”
“Er, no, thank you, sir.”
“Coffee, then. Cream and sugar at your elbow. What do you hear from your parents?”
“Why, the usual things. Both well and working hard and all that.” Don looked around him as he spoke. The room was large, comfortable, even luxurious, although books spilling lavishly and untidily over shelves and tables and even chairs masked its true richness. What appeared to be a real fire burned in one corner. Through an open door he could see several more rooms. He made a high, and grossly inadequate, mental estimate of the cost of such an establishment in New Chicago.
Facing them was a view window which should have looked into the bowels of the city; instead it reflected a mountain stream and fir trees. A trout broke water as he watched.
“I’m sure they are working hard,” his host answered. “They always do. Your father is attempting to seek out, in one short lifetime, secrets that have been piling up for millions of years. Impossible—but he makes a good stab at it. Son, do you realize that when your father started his career we hadn’t even dreamed that the first system empire ever existed?” He added thoughtfully, “If it was the first.” He went on, “Now we have felt out the ruins on the floor of two oceans—and tied them in with records from four other planets. Of course your father didn’t do it all, or even most of it—but his work has been indispensable. Your father is a great man, Donald—and so is your mother. When I speak of either one I really mean the team. Help yourself to sandwiches.”
Don said, “Thank you,” and did so, thereby avoiding a direct answer. He was warmly pleased to hear his parents praised but it did not seem to be quite the thing to agree heartily.
But the doctor was capable of carrying on the conversation unassisted. “Of course we may never know all the answers. How was the noblest planet of them all, the home of empire, broken and dispersed into space junk? Your father spent four years in the Asteroid Belt—you were along, weren’t you?—and never found a firm answer to that. Was it a paired planet, like Earth-Luna, and broken up by tidal strains? Or was it blown up?”
“Blown up?” Don protested. “But that’s theoretically impossible—isn’t it?”
Dr. Jefferson brushed it aside. “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it’s done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen. Studied any mathematical philosophy, Don? Familiar with infinite universe sheafs and open-ended postulate systems?”
“Uh, I’m afraid not, sir.”
“Simple idea and very tempting. The notion that everything is possible—and I mean everything—and everything has happened. Everything. One universe in which you accepted that wine and got drunk as a skunk. Another in which the fifth planet never broke up. Another in which atomic power and nuclear weapons are as impossible as our ancestors thought they were. That last one might have its points, for sissies at least. Like me.”