Stranger in a Strange Land

“It’s a long story. Want a refill?”

“No, let’s start the steak. Where’s the button?”

“Right here.”

“Well, push it.”

“Me? You offered to cook dinner. Where’s that Girl Scout spirit you were boasting about?”

“Ben Caxton, I will lie right here in the grass and starve before I will get up to push a button that is six inches from your right forefinger.”

“As you wish.” He pressed the button to tell the stove to carry out its pre-set orders. “But don’t forget who cooked dinner. Now about Valentine Michael Smith. In the first place there is grave doubt as to his right to the name ‘Smith.’”

“Repeat, please?”

“Honey, your pal appears to be the first interplanetary bastard of record. I mean ‘love child.’”

“The hell you say!”

“Please be more ladylike in your speech. Do you remember anything about the crew of the Envoy? Never mind, I’ll hit the high points. Eight people, four married couples. Two couples were Captain and Mrs. Brant, Doctor and Mrs. Smith. Your friend with the face of an angel appears to be the son of Mrs. Smith by Captain Brant.”

“How do they know? And, anyhow, who cares?” Jill sat up and said indignantly, “It’s a pretty snivelin’ thing to dig up a scandal after all this time. They’re all dead—let ’em alone, I say!”

“As to how they know, you can figure that out. Blood typing, Rh factor, hair and eye color, all those genetic things—you probably know more about them than I do. Anyhow it is a mathematical certainty that Mary Jane Lyle Smith was his mother and Captain Michael Brant was his father. All the factors are matters of record for the entire crew of the Envoy; there probably never were eight people more thoroughly measured and typed. Also it gives Valentine Michael Smith a wonderfully fine heredity; his father had an I.Q. of 163, his mother 170, and both were tops in their fields.

“As to who cares,” Ben went on, “a lot of people care very much—and a lot more will care, once this picture shapes up. Ever heard of the Lyle Drive?”

“Of course. That’s what the Champion used.”

“And every other space ship, these days. Who invented it?”

“I don’t—wait a minute! You mean she—”

“Hand the little lady a cigar! Dr. Mary Jane Lyle Smith. She knew she had something important, even though development work remained to be done on it. So before she left on the expedition, she applied for a dozen odd basic patents and placed it all in a corporate trust—not a non-profit corporation, mind you—then assigned control and interim income to the Science Foundation. So eventually the government got control of it—but your friend with the face of an angel owns it. No possible doubt. It’s worth millions, maybe hundreds of millions; I couldn’t guess.”

They brought in dinner. Caxton used ceiling tables to protect his lawn; he lowered one down in front of his chair and another to Japanese height so that Jill could sit on the grass. “Tender?” he asked.

“Ongerful!” she answered with her mouth full.

“Thanks. Remember, I cooked it.”

“Ben,” she said after swallowing, “how about Smith being a—I mean, being illegitimate? Can he inherit?”

“He’s not illegitimate. Doctor Mary Jane was at Berkeley, and California laws deny the concept of bastardy. Same for Captain Brant, as New Zealand also has civilized laws on the subject. While under the laws of the home State of Doctor Ward Smith, Mary Jane’s husband, a child born in wedlock is legitimate, come hell or high water. We have here, Jill, a man who is the Simon-pure legitimate child of three different parents.

“Huh? Now wait a minute, Ben; he can’t be it both ways. One or the other but not both. I’m not a lawyer but—”

“You sure ain’t. Such legal fictions bother a lawyer not at all. Smith is legitimate different ways in different jurisdictions, all kosher and all breaking his way—even though he is probably a bastard in his physical ancestry. So he inherits. Besides that, while his mother was wealthy, both his fathers were at least well to do. Brant was a bachelor until just before the expedition; he had ploughed most of his scandalous salary as a pilot on the Moon run back into Lunar Enterprises, Limited. You know how that stuff has boomed—they just declared another three-way stock dividend. Brant had one vice, gambling—but the bloke won regularly and invested that, too. Ward Smith had family money; he was a medical man and scientist by choice. Smith is heir to both of them.”

“Whew!”

“That ain’t half, honey. Smith is heir to the entire crew.”

“Huh?”

“All eight signed a ‘Gentlemen Adventurers’ contract, making them all mutually heirs to each other—all of them and their issue. They did it with great care, using as models similar contracts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that had stood up against every effort to break them. Now these were all high-powered people; among them they had quite a lot. Happened to include considerable Lunar Enterprises stock, too, besides what Brant held. Smith might turn out to own a controlling interest, or at least a key bloc in a proxy fight.”