To Sail Beyond the Sunset

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET

In this latest addition to one of the most prestigious bodies of literature in the field of science fiction, bestselling author and Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein has written a novel that is the culmination of his life’s work, tying together themes and characters from previous stories as no book has done before.

On page one of
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Maureen Johnson wakes up in bed with a man and a cat. The cat is Pixel, well-known to readers of the
New York Times
bestseller
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
. The man is a stranger to her, and besides that he is dead. This, Maureen says to herself, is not a good way to start the day.

But it is a wonderful way to start
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
, the autobiography of Maureen Johnson, the mother of that most infamous Heinlein character, Lazarus Long. As we would expect in a Heinlein novel, straightforward plot description barely scratches the surface. Maureen Johnson is not only Lazarus Long’s mother but also eventually his wife, and perhaps his daughter as well; the twists of time and universes are full of paradox. As we bound along through the wonderfully intricate multiverses, we are reassured that both Pixel and other favorite characters are alive and well and apt to turn up in surprising new guises.

As a wonderful side-order to this feast, Robert Heinlein adds more about his own life than has ever been told before. Maureen Johnson is born in southern Missouri in 1882. Robert Heinlein was born in the same state in 1907. He has always woven generous amounts of himself into his characters, but here as never before we feel the warmth and strength of his own long life radiating through the irresistible red-haired Maureen. No reader of Heinlein—and of course there are millions of them—can fail to be fascinated and genuinely moved by the experience of
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
, as the creator gathers his characters and all their universes together in a novel that is both adventurous and life-affirming.

R
OBERT
A. H
EINLEIN
is the author of dozens of novels, including the bestselling
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
and
Friday
. He lives in California.

AN ACE / PUTNAM BOOK
Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Copyright © 1987 by Robert A.
and Virginia Heinlein, trustees U.D.T., 6/20/83
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,
may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Published simultaneously in Canada by
General Publishing Co. Limited, Toronto

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Heinlein, Robert A. (Robert Anson), date
To sail beyond the sunset.

I. Title.
PS3515.E288T6 1987 813'.54 86-25449
ISBN 0-399-13267-8

Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

To little girls and butterflies and kittens.
To Susan and Eleanor and Chris and (always) to Ginny.

With my love,
R.A.H.

ONE
The Committee for Aesthetic Deletions

TWO
The Garden of Eden

THREE
The Serpent in the Garden

FOUR
The Worm in the Apple

FIVE
Exit from Eden

SIX
“When Johnny Comes Marching Home—”

SEVEN
Ringing the Cash Register

EIGHT
Seacoast Bohemia

NINE
Dollars and Sense

TEN
Random Numbers

ELEVEN
A Dude in a Derby

TWELVE
“Hang the Kaiser!”

THIRTEEN
Over There!

FOURTEEN
Black Tuesday

FIFTEEN
Torrid Twenties, Threadbare Thirties

SIXTEEN
The Frantic Forties

SEVENTEEN
Starting Over

EIGHTEEN
Bachelorhood

NINETEEN
Cats and Children

TWENTY
Soothsayer

TWENTY-ONE
Serpent’s Tooth

TWENTY-TWO
The Better-Dead List

TWENTY-THREE
The Adventures of Prudence Penny

TWENTY-FOUR
Decline and Fall

TWENTY-FIVE
Rebirth in Boondock

TWENTY-SIX
Pixel to the Rescue

TWENTY-SEVEN
At the Coventry Cusp

TWENTY-EIGHT
Eternal Now

APPENDIX
People in This Memoir

The Committee for
Aesthetic Deletions

I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not.

I closed my eyes and tried to pull myself together—hook “now” to my memory of last night.

No good. There wasn’t any “last night.” My last clear memory was of being a passenger in a Burroughs irrelevant bus, bound for New Liverpool, when there was a loud bang, my head hit the seat in front of me, then a lady handed me a baby and we started filing out the starboard emergency exit, me with a cat in one arm and a baby in the other, and I saw a man with his right arm off—

I gulped and opened my eyes. A stranger in my bed was better than a man bleeding to death from a stump where his right forearm ought to be. Had it been a nightmare? I fervently hoped so.

If it was not, then what had I done with that baby? And whose baby was it? Maureen, this won’t do. Mislaying a baby is inexcusable. “Pixel, have you seen a baby?” The cat stood mute and a plea of not guilty was directed by the court.

My father once told me that I was the only one of his daughters capable of sitting down in church and finding that I had sat on a hot lemon meringue pie…anyone else would have looked. (I
had
looked. But my cousin Nelson—Oh, never mind.)

Regardless of lemon pies, bloody stumps, or missing babies, there was still this stranger in my bed, his bony back toward me—husbandly rather than loverly. (But I did not recall marrying him.)

I’ve shared beds with men before, and with women, and wet babies, and cats who demand most of the bed, and (once) with a barbershop quartet. But I do like to know with whom I am sleeping (just an old-fashioned girl, that’s me). So I said to the cat, “Pixel, who is he? Do we know him?”

“
No-o-o-o.
”

“Well, let’s check.” I put a hand on the man’s shoulder, intending to shake him awake and then ask where we had met—or had we?

His shoulder was cold.

He was quite dead.

This is not a good way to start the day.

I grabbed Pixel and got out of bed by instantaneous translation; Pixel protested. I said sharply, “Shut up, you! Mama has problems.” I forced a thalamic pause of at least a microsecond, maybe longer, and decided not to flee headlong outdoors, or out into the hallway, as the case might be…but to slow down and attempt to assess the situation, before screaming for help. Perhaps just as well, as I found that I was barefooted all the way up. I am not jumpy about skin but it did seem prudent to dress before reporting a corpse. Police were certain to want to question me and I have known cops who would exploit any advantage in order to throw one off balance.

But first a look at the corpse—

Still clutching Pixel I went around and bent over the other side of the bed. (Gulp.) No one I knew. No one I would choose to bed with, even were he in perfect health. Which he was not; that side of the bed was soggy with blood. (Two gulps and a frisson.) He had bled from his mouth—or his throat had been cut; I was not sure which and was unwilling to investigate.

So I backed away and looked around for my clothes. I knew in my bones that this bedroom was part of a hostelry; rooms for hire do not taste like private homes. It was a luxury suite; it took me a longish time to poke through all the closets and cubbyholes and drawers and cupboards et cetera…and then to do it all over again when the first search failed to locate my clothes. The second search, even more thorough, found not a rag—neither his size nor my size, neither women’s clothes nor men’s.

I decided willy-nilly to telephone the manager, tell him the problem, and let him call the cops—and ask him for a courtesy bathing robe or kimono or some such.

So I looked for a telephone.

Alexander Graham Bell had lived in vain.

I stopped in frustration. “Name of a dog! Where have they hidden that frimping phone?”

A bodyless voice said, “Madam, may we offer you breakfast? We are proud of our Harvest Brunch: a lavish bowl of assorted fresh fruits; a tray of cheeses; a basket of freshly baked hot breads, crisp breads, and soft breads with jams and jellies and syrups and Belgian butter. Basted baby barlops
en brochette
; drawn eggs Octavian; smoked savannah slinker; farkels in sweet-sour; Bavarian strudel; your choice of still and sparkling wines, skull-buster Strine beer, Mocha, Kona, Turkish, and Proxima coffees, blended or straight; all served with—”

I repressed a gagging reflex. “I don’t want breakfast!”

“Perhaps Madam would enjoy our Holiday Eyeopener: your choice of fruit juice, a roll hot from our oven, your choice of gourmet jams or jellies, your choice in a filling but nonfattening hot cup. Served with the latest news, or background music, or restful silence.”

“I don’t want to eat!”

The voice answered thoughtfully, “Madam, I am a machine programmed for our food and beverage services. May I switch you to another program? Housekeeping? Head porter? Engineering?”

“Get me the manager!”

There was a short delay. “Guest services! Hospitality with a smile! How may I help you?”

“Get me the manager!”

“Do you have a problem?”

“You’re the problem! Are you a man, or a machine?”

“Is that relevant? Please tell me how I can help you.”