The Door into Summer

by Robert A. Heinlein

I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats—I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures.

I think I'm going to like this narrator

Now I was retired whether I liked it or not (I didn’t); instead of being on my honeymoon I was sitting in a second-rate bar drinking Scotch purely for anesthesia; instead of a wife I had one much-scarred tomcat with a neurotic taste for ginger ale; and as for liking right now, I would have swapped it for a case of gin and then busted every bottle.

“Bag? Cat?” I said wonderingly. “My friend, I think you’ve come down with an acute figure of speech.”

I love this narrator!

When the Cold War boiled over, I was a sergeant-technician at Sandia Weapons Center in New Mexico, stuffing atoms in atom bombs and planning what I would do when my time was up.

While I was in the service I had thought hard about what one engineer can do. Go to work for Standard, or du Pont, or General Motors? Thirty years later they give you a testimonial dinner and a pension. You haven’t missed any meals, you’ve had a lot of rides in company airplanes. But you are never your own boss.

If I could do that it would be the Second Emancipation Proclamation, freeing women from their age-old slavery. I wanted to abolish the old saw about how “women’s work is never done.” Housekeeping is repetitious and unnecessary drudgery; as an engineer it offended me.

I may seem a glutton for punishment to decide to trust one female just after I had been clipped by another.

Ughhhhg.

Besides, Ricky didn’t have physical specifications capable of warping a man’s judgment.

Ughughugh

“Miles, I’m not too angry with you. The things a man will do for a larcenous woman are beyond belief.

Ughhhhh!!!!!

Finally I accidentally touched the lower right-hand corner of the first sheet; it curled up and out of the way...some surface-charge phenomenon, triggered at that point.

Funny to read on a kindle

Dear little Ricky! If she had been ten years older I would never have looked at Belle...and wouldn’t have got my fingers burned.

CREEPY.

Let’s see, how old would she be now? Forty—no, forty-one. It was hard to think of Ricky as forty-one. Still, that wouldn’t be old in a woman these days—or even those days.

Ughhhhhh

I might have made a mistake in making Flexible Frank too flexible. Receptionists used to be pretty girls, not machines.

Urghhhhhhh

But just to transport something horizontally, say from San Francisco to Great Los Angeles, just lift it once, then float along, no power at all, like an ice skater riding a long edge.

I wish.

The “little thing” I mentioned was the changes in female styles made possible by the Sticktite fabrics. I was not startled by mere skin on bathing beaches; you could see that coming in 1970.

Ughhhg

Hired Girl, Inc., did not use their own automatons as receptionists; they used real flesh and blood.

She was fat and shrill and kittenish.

Of course....

I had worked late the night before, then had been awakened early by the torturing clang of an alarm clock so that I could shave and be ready to go when they came by. I shut the sadistic thing off and thanked God that they had got rid of such horrible devices in 2001,

I wishhhhh

Jenny was not much impressed by Drafting Dan (it isn’t a woman’s gismo, unless she herself is an engineer), but she was wide-eyed over Protean Pete.

RAGE

“Goodness! I’m certainly glad to find that at least one man understands housework. Did you hear what he said, dear? But don’t stop to teach him now, Danny. I’ll do them myself.” She looked around. “Danny, you’ve been living like a pig, to put it gently.”

Sigh

I didn’t kiss her; I did not touch her at all. I’ve never been one to paw children and Ricky was the sort of little girl who only put up with it when she could not avoid it. Our original relationship, back when she was six, had been founded on mutual decent respect for the other’s individualism and personal dignity.

Gross. He talks about wanting to marry her and hi restraint when she is just a little girl!!!!

When you are twenty-one—if you still want to see us—you’ll have enough money to take the Long Sleep yourself.

Uh..

She would not look up and her voice was so low that I could barely hear her. But I did hear her. “If I do...will you marry me?”

CREEPY

Then I gave her my class ring from Tech (it was all I had) and told her it was hers; we were engaged.

Ahhhhhhh!!!!11!1!

Ricky took to being married as if she had invented it, and me—well, I had Ricky.

Ewwwww

“Why, Danny, how cruel! Besides, guinea pigs don’t have tails.” She seemed to think that proved something. I should never have tried to explain.

Of course he thinks shes done...