So I thanked Senhorita Guerra and told her good-by and waved my ticket at a sleepy gatekeeper. He answered in Portuguese and I looked stupid, so he changed it to, “Outdowngo rightwards. Ask from allone.” I was on my way.
Somehow everybody in the ship seemed to know that I was a Rip Van Winkle and the hostess insisted on helping me make the change at White Sands. But they were friendly and did not laugh at me. One chap wanted to know about the colony being opened up on Capella VIII and did not understand why I hadn’t been there if I had spaced all that time. I tried to explain that Capella was clear across the sky and more than a hundred light-years from where I had been, but I didn’t put the idea across.
But I did begin to see why we had not made a big splash in the news. Colony planets were the rage and there was a new one every day, so why should anyone be excited over one that we had found sixty years back? Or even over one just a few months back which did not compare with ones being turned up now? As for starships-see the latest news for current departures.
We were going to be a short paragraph in history and a footnote in science books; there wasn’t room for us in the news. I decided that even a footnote averaged well and forgot it.
Instead I started thinking about my re-education which, I was beginning to realize, was going to have to be extensive; the changes had been more than I had bargained for. Take female styles, for example-look, I’m no Puritan, but they didn’t dress, if you want to call it that, this way when I was a kid. Girls running around without a thing on their heads, not even on top … heads bare-naked, like an animal.
It was a good thing that Dad hadn’t lived to see it. He never let our sisters come to the table without a hat, even if Pat and I were the only unmarried males present.
Or take the weather. I had known that LRF was working on it, but I never expected them to get anywhere. Don’t people find it a little dull to have it rain only at night? Or take trucks. Of course, all you expect of a truck is that it haul things from here to there. But the lack of wheels does make them look unstable.
I wonder how long it will be before there is not a wheel on Earth?
I had decided that I would just have to get used to it all, when the hostess came by and put something in my lap and when I picked it up, it spoke to me. It was just a souvenir of the trip.
Pat’s town house was eight times as big as the flat seven of us used to live in; I decided that he had managed to hang onto at least some of the money. His robutler took my cape and boots and ushered me in to see him.
He didn’t get up. I wasn’t sure he could get up. I had known that he was old, but I hadn’t realized that he was old! He was-let me see, eighty-nine. Yes, that was right; we had our ninetieth birthday coming up.
I tried to keep it casual. “Hi, Pat.”
“Hi, Tom.” He touched the arm of his chair and it rolled toward me. “Don’t move. Stand there and let me look at you.” He looked me up and down, then said wonderingly, “I knew intellectually that you would not have changed with the years. But to see it, to realize it, is quite another thing, eh? ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray.’ “
His voice was old.
“Where is the family?” I said uncomfortably.
“I’ve told the girls to wait. I wanted to see my brother alone at first. If you mean Gregory and Hans as well, no doubt you will meet them at dinner tonight. But never mind them, lad; just let me visit with you, for a while. It’s been a long time.” I could see tears, the ready tears of old age, in his eyes and it embarrassed me.