By Carol Van Strum
John Quincy Masefield told people all his life that he was no relation to any poet or politician. “Never ran for office or read a damn poem my whole life,” he boasted. Until his 148th birthday, that is. Then such a boast, had he made it, would have been false.
The day began inauspiciously. The only notice of what day it was came from the Remote Elder Minder unit by his bed, which added a hollow, “Many happy returns of the day, sir,” to its metallic version of Jeeves announcing breakfast. Even worse, in a misguided attempt at celebration, the robot housekeeper had prepared a wall display of relics of John Quincy Masefield’s long life. It was a depressing display: a cap worn in some forgotten zero-gravity tournament of his youth; a framed printout of his first million-dollar balance sheet; bridal trinkets from two failed marriages (“Learned that lesson at least,” he thought); and something he’d never seen before, a book inscribed to his son, John, so long dead he could scarcely conjure the child’s face.
“To Robert John-John Masefield, for Excellence in Literature,” the inscription read. He must have been excellent indeed, Masefield thought, wondering why he remembered so little of the boy or his award. Books were exceedingly rare in exo-colonies, sent as ballast in supply ships long ago from Mother Earth and treasured as remnants of a lost world. Idly, but with due care, he opened the book and viewed the typeset quatrains and couplets with disgust. Poetry! Of all things! He turned pages, looking in vain for honest prose, and was about to shut the book when some lines caught his eye.