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HEINLEIN’S LEGACY

by Douglas Goodman

“If we aren’t having sex, why am I here?”

“Sorry. I just want to talk. A terrible fight with my wife. I want to talk about it.”

“Don’t expect me to keep anything you say secret from Ginny.”

“Of course.”

“Was it another fight about not having children?”

“Yes. It’s my fault, I know, but she thinks, well she doesn’t think it’s my fault. She thinks I’m

whining. But I’ve had TB and all those allergies, urethritis, kidney and you already know the sexual

problems. But maybe it’s not all me. I don’t know.”

Robert Heinlein knew that she might talk to Ginny about this, but everybody was a

responsible, consenting adult. They all knew what an open relationship means. But Matilda had her

own reasons for keeping quiet. She was a Negro living in a white neighborhood. She was married.

Her husband was white. She was having an affair with the science fiction writer down the street. And
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with his wife. Most of her life was already secret. She was almost a kind of alien passing as one of us.

He’ll probably use her in a story someday.

She sat in front of the fireplace, tawny skin glowing like the fire was inside her. Heinlein

thought that she looked like a majestic African animal. Her hair was dark and straight in a style that

looked very natural to him. She was exotic and beautiful. He and Ginny both cared very much for her.

It was March 1951, Colorado Springs, in the modern, science-fictiony house that Heinlein had

designed and built. He had just written the first truly modern science-fiction film, Destination Moon.

He was getting most of his short stories published. He was starting to make some inroads into

mainstream publishing. But still most of his money came from children. Science fiction for juveniles.

This house, his living, came from children even though he couldn’t have any of his own. He wouldn’t

write a plot so blatantly ironic.

Standing before the fireplace, Heinlein stared into flames. Matilda curled up on a nearby

chair, her small, brown feet under her ample bottom. Above the fireplace was a large oil painting of a

lizard-like alien dressed in a Zulu costume and carrying a spear. She was shockingly female. She

crouched in a Colorado forest ready to pounce.

Heinlein interrogated himself. What are the facts? Skip the speculations. No children with

Ginny and when Leslie and I decided to have children, that was no go too. I know I’m a sick puppy,

but Ginny is just as unhealthy: amoebic dysentery, kidney stones and one sees evidence of TB in her

too. And she seems to be getting sicker the longer we live in the Rockies. But could it all be just

psychosomatic? She doesn’t really want babies. At least not like he did.

For him, babies gave meaning to the future. They were the reason for sex, the reason for

family. When it came right down to it, they were the reason for humanity. Inside each of us was a

little puppet master. He had heard that Crick and Watson were about to publish a paper showing

that the puppet master was called Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. It just uses us to replicate itself.
 Goodman / Heinlein’s Legacy / 3

Everybody thinks that The Puppet Masters was about communism. It turns out it was really about

DNA.

Ginny has her little cat, Pixel, for a substitute baby. Heinlein has his characters. Ross Jenkins

was his son. So was Matt Dodson, Jim Marlowe and Hamilton Felix. Books and stories were Heinlein’s

womb. But they weren’t real people, were they? They were more like the spirits of unborn babies

come to torture and haunt him. Certainly, that was the character he was working on now, a human

baby born and raised on Mars that would come to Earth to haunt humanity with our own unfulfilled

promises.

“I thought you were going to adopt,” Matilda said.

“Yes, we talk round and round about it, but we never do anything. It’s more like we’re trying

to talk ourselves into wanting a baby, instead of how to get one.”

“You can have one of mine.”

“I’d take those little monkeys in a minute,” he said. Heinlein took any chance he could to be

around children. It just felt natural.

“Please don’t call them that.”

“Why not?”

“That’s what their white grandma calls them, half-breed little…” Her answer was interrupted

by a loud thump on the front door.

“Are you expecting someone?” she asked.

“No,” he answered as he crossed the living room to open the front door.

The light from the living room flooded the small porch and he saw a thin, motionless young

man laying before the threshold with a kneeling figure at his side. The young woman’s hoarse voice

said, “Please help us. They’re after us.”

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Like a hero in one of his novels, Heinlein didn’t ask any questions. Lifting the boy and carrying

him inside, Heinlein laid him on the couch. The boy looked fifteen or sixteen. He opened his eyes. His

face was bland and innocent. His eyes were not.

Heinlein turned to the young woman. In the light, he saw that she was older than he first

thought. “Who’s after you?”

“We’re safe in here,” she said.

Heinlein, himself, took some comfort from those words. The agitation that he had felt ever

since the fight with Ginny was gone and his lingering anger melted away. He crossed back to the

front door and closed it as though this could protect them. He looked across the room at the slight

figure of the boy laying helplessly on the couch. The boy’s vulnerability went straight to Heinlein’s

heart. He did not doubt that the boy had committed some crime against society and that it was

justice that was after him, but Heinlein felt certain that society had sinned against the boy more than

he had sinned against society.

“I am here!” the boy exclaimed. “I am here.”

The boy’s resolute tone startled everyone. Matilda, who had watched this all with surprised

apprehension got out of her chair, went over to take the hand of the prone boy and said, “Yes, you’re

here. You’re safe.”

The boy pulled his hand away from Matilda contemptuously, and stared into Heinlein’s eyes.

“I know you,” he said. Heinlein felt naked before the boy’s gaze, as though a lost soul were peering

across perdition to recognize the barrenness of his heart. As though the boy could see a desolation

that was hidden even from himself.

“You are Robert A. Heinlein, the science fiction writer.”

On Heinlein’s face was a struggle between hard-won rationality and an age-old fear of those-

who-have-the-sight, but his voice was calm, “And who are you?”
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“Charlie Manson.”

As a child, Heinlein had heard a story about an earthworm who declared his love for another

worm he’d met deep underground. “Don’t be silly,” said the worm. “I’m just your other end.”

Heinlein had always felt that all people are connected and that if he could only become fully awake,

he would recognize that we are all one. But the name meant nothing to him and, of course, he did

not know this boy.

“I am Celeste,” said the woman. Her dirty blonde blunt cut and pimply complexion gave her

the appearance of a teen-ager, but in fact, she now looked middle-aged.

“Who are you running from?” Heinlein asked again.

“Everyone, I guess,” Charlie said. “Right now, the cops, the Fosterites--that’s what I call the

Indiana Boys School, because we’re all foster kids—the FBI, the local sheriff, they’re all after me. In a

sense, you could say the entire universe is after me. Maybe I committed a great sin in another life,”

he shrugged, “or perhaps I will in the future, but for some reason, they’re all after me.”

Heinlein felt the dismay that he always felt when trying to talk to boys of this generation.

Most of them had been raised without fathers. The Second World War had broken a connection that

stretched back through the generations of men. The secret wisdom of masculinity was never

transmitted from fathers to sons and so they grew up dependent on women, jumping from one

mother figure to another. Charlie was just another one of those who would surround himself with

women. He would seem to be in control, but in fact, they would control him.

“I’m a big fan of yours,” said Celeste. “I’ve been reading your stuff to Charlie.”

Heinlein immediately warmed to her. “I get a lot of criticism for the female characters.

People think they’re too strong, too much like men. I’m glad you like them.”

“The female characters? No, I like the aliens, the Martians, the Venerians. Your women are

too fuckable. I can’t relate to them. I like the weird, alien ones. They’re like me, ugly, a little scary.”
 Goodman / Heinlein’s Legacy / 6

“I keep telling her she’s beautiful in her own way; the timeless universe thinks she’s

beautiful; but she won’t listen,” Charlie said. Heinlein had to agree with Celeste.

“What’s wrong with those kind of women?” asked Heinlein.

“I don’t have anything against fuckable women.” She looked at Matilda. “There’s nothing

wrong with getting dressed up and going on dates and getting married and having children, but that’s

not me and maybe that’s not most of your female readers. The fuckable ones don’t have time for a

lot of reading, and if they do, it’s not science fiction. The uglies, the sluts, the nerdettes, the

unfuckables are the ones reading your stuff.”

“Please,” said Matilda, “I don’t like that language.”

“What? Fuckable? What about beautiful, is that better? Well it means the same fucking

thing. It just sounds nicer.”

“Celeste is right, Matilda. Enough with the hypocrisy. We all know what the word means.

There’s no reason not to use it,” Heinlein said.

“What word?” asked Celeste.

“You know,” said Heinlein.

“You mean fuck?”

“Yes, that word. Sex should be something we can talk freely about. Sex is about pleasure. It’s

the foundation of the family and therefore the foundation of society. Sex is part of every human

motivation. It’s the source for all hopes and fears. It colors and controls everything we do. Above all,”

Heinlein said pedantically, “it’s natural.”

Celeste sneered. “What’s natural about it? It’s all about power. Sex is power. Power is sex.

Every act of sex is nothing but a move in a power game. And in every game, there are winners and

losers. I’m tired of being the loser.”

 Goodman / Heinlein’s Legacy / 7

“But we are animals. We are part of nature. We have a sexuality, or I should say male and

female sexualities. It’s not just some power game. We are sexual and to imagine otherwise is

delusional.”

“Of course, we’re delusional, or we’re crazy, or we’re whores, or we’re virgins, or we’re little

children and Daddy will explain it all to us…very slowly.”

Heinlein began to protest, but Matilda interrupted him. “She’s right, you know. Sex is just a

little power game that you men play. I too am tired of being a loser.”

Celeste looked her up and down. “Sister, I don’t think you’ve ever lost at anything in your life.

Oh, I don’t doubt that you let your boyfriends beat you at cards, just so they feel smarter than you,

but that’s not really the same as being a loser. Is it?”

Heinlein had just written an essay about this. “The family is the basic unit of society. The

purpose of the family is to raise children. The roles of mother and father are whatever is necessary to

raise well-adjusted children. Just as there are male and female biologies, each with its own special

role in reproducing, so there are male and female psyches each with its own special role in raising a

well-adjusted child.”

“That doesn’t make it natural,” Matilda said.

“Nature wants us to have children and therefore she makes it pleasurable and enriching for

both men and women but in different ways,” Heinlein said.

“Nature!” said Celeste. “Nature herself is against women, but especially ugly women. Nature

doesn’t want us to reproduce.”

“If nature wants you to have children, where are yours?” Charlie asked Heinlein and Matilda.

“Oh, we aren’t married,” said Matilda.

“What’s that got to do with it?” asked Charlie. “My parents weren’t married, but they still

had me. I never even met my father, but I guess, as you said, nature wanted them to have children
 Goodman / Heinlein’s Legacy / 8

and that’s why he raped her. Would you say that our little family was one of the basic units of

society?”

“Maybe it will be a new type of family that we have yet to create in the future,” said

Heinlein.

“Oh yeh, we’ll have new kinds of families, but they’ll be worse, especially when they’re

created by people like me,” Charlie said as if it were already a fact.

Heinlein looked as though his heart would break. “Who are you running from? You are too

young to have done anything that terrible. Who could hold you responsible?”

“It’s not what I’ve done. It’s what I will do. I have seen the future and it is horrible.”

“Nothing is set in stone. You’re still young. Your future is still to be written,” Heinlein said.

But looking into Charlie’s eyes, Heinlein had a feeling that he too could see the future. He saw pools

of blood on a flagstone porch. He saw mutilated bodies dressed in colorfully flowered clothes. He

saw the bloody, almost nude body of a pregnant woman with a white nylon rope draped around her

neck. For a brief instant, he thought he saw a bloody X carved into Charlie’s forehead.

“My son…” Heinlein began to say.

“I’m not your son. Not now. I could have been, but I’m not.” Charlie wondered if now was

the time to reveal why he was really there. It’s all about time, he thought. Everything in their future is

in my past.

“My boy, tell me what you’ve done. Don’t be afraid. Just tell me and maybe I can help.” But

in some strange way, Heinlein already knew what he’d done, and worse, what he would do. Hadn’t

he just seen the future?

“Why should we help him?” Matilda asked. “He’s a racist. Can’t you see that? See how he

looks at me! His cold, crazy stare makes me shudder. Like I was his possession. Like I was his slave.”

“If he is, it’s society’s fault, not his,” Heinlein said.

 Goodman / Heinlein’s Legacy / 9

“You’re wrong. Racism is deeper than society. I can see it in him. He is evil. It’s in his soul!”

Matilda said.

“If I’m evil, it’s his fault,” Charlie said pointing at Heinlein. “His and Leslie’s. Leslie knew. She

knew I should have been born and it drove her to madness.” Charlie paused, and looked toward

Matilda. “Tell her who Leslie is!”

Heinlein answered with quivering voice, “She was my wife, before Ginny.”

“She could have been my mother. You could have been my father. Your prophylaxis was my

condemnation. You kept me from being born and then your TB took away any chance. You denied

my existence, but I found another way in. Another mother; another life.”

“What are you saying?” Heinlein asked astonished at the boy’s uncanny knowledge.

“And instead I was born to Kathy, the sadistic bitch. She taught me to hate, and race has

been just one more excuse.”

“What’re you saying?”

“I should have been your son, but I’m not. And that is the reason for the evil in me. If you

believe in nature, believe that you were meant to have a child. I am the child you were meant to

have.”

“Here we go again,” Celeste muttered. From their first meeting, she’d thought that Charlie

was more than a little crazy. Who else but a crazy boy picks up a skag from Lincoln, Nebraska and

transports her across state lines in a stolen car? Who else but a crazy person prattles on and on

about time travel and the coming revolution? And for the entire trip, he would not shut up about

being born to the wrong parents.

“We wanted a child. Just not yet. Does that make me guilty for what you will do? Are you

here to tell me that I’m guilty for all the crimes you will commit?”
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“The crimes I’ll commit? Yes, they’ll blame you. You’ll write some beatnik, free-love book and

they’ll say it led to all the killing.” A maniacal chuckle burst from him. “I’ll even help. I’ll name my son

after one of your characters.”

Heinlein saw again the terrible vision of mutilated bodies. Aghast he said, “My characters

could never do that. It cannot be true. My heroes are good. I’ve created them to be good.”

“What difference does that make? We’re not talking about your characters. It’s your future

readers. You’ve no control over them and they’ll do what they will with your characters.”

“But I’m not responsible for my readers!”

“That’s what every parent says of their children. But people have decided differently. You will

be blamed for what your readers do just as every parent is blamed for the sins of their children.”

“You lie. No one could believe that my writing would cause the murder of innocent women. I

love women. I respect women. I write to further their equality.”

“Have you heard the word, misogynist? That’s what you’ll be called. And racist, too, because

you didn’t follow the latest, trendy theories. They won’t just disagree with you. They’ll vilify you.”

“Nobody would call you racist after the work you’ve done,” promised Matilda.

Heinlein ignored the Negress. He looked into the eyes of the boy who should have been his

son, and knew he spoke the truth. “Will that be my legacy?”

“Nobody ever leaves a legacy. A legacy is just something the next generation makes up to

excuse their own actions. The most you will leave them is one more text open to any interpretation;

one more delusion about a meaningful life.” Charlie knew the distorted and dangerous

interpretations that would be made of Heinlein’s work, especially his not yet written magnum opus,

The Revolt of the Scientists.

“In that case, if it will all be misconstrued anyway, I should only write what I happen to find

entertaining and profitable and to hell with trying to improve the world.”
 Goodman / Heinlein’s Legacy / 11

“Yes! Good idea!” Charlie said enthusiastically. “Who could blame you for that!”

Charlie smiled to himself. He was a temporal agent sent back from the future to prevent an

undesirable timeline, and this had been easier than he had anticipated. One of Heinlein’s books

would have inspired a revolution that threatened the Temporal Bureau’s control. Now that book

would never be written. He laughed out loud. The others looked at him as if he were crazy, but he

was used to that. In fact, it was the one thing that unified his past and his future. “You always laugh

at me,” he thought, “until…you don’t.”