The Number of the Beast

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Five minutes later we bounced and translated at once, then Zeb held her in cruise while Hilda reported:

  “No trouble. Ze bewildair’ French ladee she zink les Americain’ verree gentils. Mais les arts medicals—poof! Infant mortality high, childbirth mortality gruesome. I could have left sooner but I got fascinated.”

  “Hilda,” I protested, “you had me worried to death.”

  “Jacob, I had to be certain; it’s such a nice world otherwise. Other contacts should not take as long as I’ve solved the money problem.”

  “How?” Zebadiah asked. “I’ve been noodling that. There’s an even chance that private ownership of gold will be illegal. A standard trick used whenever a government is in trouble.”

  “Yes, Zebbie—it’s illegal there, too. I still have the bullion you had me carry. Instead I sold that heavy gold chain I was wearing. Sorry, Deety; I had to.”

  “Forget it, Hillbilly. That chain was a way to horde gold. Pop bought it for Mama Jane before they clipped the zeroes and remonetized.”

  “Well… I found a public phone—didn’t try to use it; Edison would never have recognized it. But it had a phone book, so I looked up ‘gold’—and found ‘licensed gold dealers’ and sold your chain—”

  “And now you’re stuck with a lot of local money.”

  “Zebbie! See why I didn’t let you go down by yourself? The dealer was of course a coin dealer, too—and I bought foreign silver coins, worn, small, oldish, dates without being old enough to be collectors’ items. French coins, but he didn’t have enough, so I filled out with Belgian, Swiss, and German.”

  I said, “My dear, the coins you bought there will not be good here. Or at the next analog. Or the next.”

  “Jacob, who—other than a professional—is certain of designs on foreign coins?—especially if they are a few years old and a bit worn. I got real silver, none of those alloys that don’t have the right ring to them. At most a shopkeeper will phone his bank and ask for the rate. That’s how I bought this,” my beloved said proudly, pulling out of Deety’s biggest purse a World Almanac.

  I was not impressed. If she was going to buy a book, why not a technical manual that might contain new art, data Zeb and I could use?

  My darling was saying, “We must buy one in each analog we ground in. It’s the nearest thing to an encyclopedia less than a kilo mass you’ll find. History, law, vital statistics, maps, new inventions, new medicine—I could have skipped the library and learned all I needed from this book. Zebbie! Turn to the list of U.S. Presidents.”

  “Who cares?” Zeb answered, but did so. Shortly he said, “Who is Eisenhower? This shows him serving one of Harriman’s terms and one of Patton’s.”

  “Keep going, Zebbie.”

  “Okay—No! I refuse to believe it. Us Carters are taught to shoot straight, bathe every month even in the winter, and never run for office.”

  Two days later Hilda and Zeb, as a French-tourist couple, found the world where we settled.

  We slid in quietly, both through the histrionics of our “bewildered French lady” and Zeb’s unmalicious chicanery. Sometimes he was our French lady’s husband; other times he spoke English slowly with a strong Bavarian accent.

  In this analog, the United States (called that, although boundaries differ) is not as smothered in laws, regulations, licensing, and taxes as is our native country. In consequence “illegally entered aliens” do not find it difficult to hide, once they “sling the lingo” and understand local customs.

  Hilda and Zeb learned rapidly in a dozen towns, Deety and me “riding shotgun” in the sky. Deety and I learned from them and from radio. Then we moved to the Northwest, “natives” from back east, and coped with our only problem: how to keep Gay Deceiver out of sight.

  Hilda and Deety hid her in the Cascades for three days while Zeb and I found and bought a farmhouse outside Tacoma-analog. That night we moved Gay into the barn, slapped white paint on the building’s windows, and slept in Gay, with a feeling of being home!

  We own six hectares and live in the farmhouse in front of Gay’s hideaway. Gay will eventually go underground, protected by reinforced concrete; the barn will become a machine shop. We will build a new house over her bunker. Meanwhile, our old farmhouse is comfortable.

  This United States, population under a hundred million, accepts immigrants freely. Zeb considered buying phony papers to let us enter “legally”—but Hilda decided that it was simpler to use Gay to smuggle us while we smuggled Gay. The outcome is the same; we will never be a burden to the state—once we get our machine shop and electronics lab set up, Zeb and I will “invent” hundreds of gadgets this country lacks.

  We seem to be near the warmest part of an interglaciation. Wheat grows where our native world has frozen tundra; the Greenland icecap has vanished; lowlands are under water, coastlines much changed.

  Climate and custom encourage light clothing; the preposterous “body modesty” taboo does not exist. Clothing is worn for adornment and for protection—never through “shame.” Nakedness is symbolic of innocence—these people derive that symbology from the Bible used in our native culture to justify the exact opposite. The same Bible—I checked. (The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can “prove” anything from it.)

  So this is not a world where alien vermin can hide. A “man” who at all times kept arms and legs covered by long sleeves and long trousers would be as conspicuous as one in armor.

  The sects here are mostly Christian—on a Saturday morning one sees families headed for church in their finest Sabbath-go-to-meeting clothes. But, since nakedness is symbolic of innocence, they undress in an anteroom to enter their temple unadorned. One need not attend services to see this; the climate favors light, airy structures that are mostly roof and slender columns.

  The Bible affects their penal system, again by selective quotation: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth—”

  This results in a fluid code, with no intent to rehabilitate but to make the punishment fit the crime. I saw an example four days after we settled. I was driving our steam wagon and encountered a road block. A policeman told me that I could take a detour or wait twenty minutes; the highway was being used to balance a reckless driver.

  I elected to pull over and wait. A man was staked with one leg stretched out at a right angle. A police wagon drove down that cleared highway, ran over his leg, turned and drove back over it.

  An ambulance was waiting—but nothing was done for a timed seventeen minutes. Then surgeons amputated on the spot; the ambulance took him away and the block was removed.

  I went back to my wagon and shook for many minutes, then returned home, driving cautiously. I didn’t tell our family. But it was reported on radio and the evening paper had pictures—so I admitted that I had seen it. The paper noted that the criminal’s insurance had been insufficient to cover the court’s award to the victim, so the reckless driver had not only lost his left leg (as had his victim) but also had had most of his worldly goods confiscated.

  There is no speed limit and traffic regulations are merely advisory—but there are extremely few accidents. I have never encountered such polite and careful drivers.

  A poisoner is killed by poison; an arsonist is burned to death. I won’t describe what is done to a rapist. But poisoning, arson, and rape are almost unknown.

  My encounter with this brutal system of “balancing” almost caused me to think that my dear wife had been mistaken in picking this world—we should move! I am no longer certain. This place has no prisons, almost no crime, and it is the safest place to raise children I’ve ever heard of.

  We are having to relearn history. “The Years of Rising Waters” explain themselves. The change came before 1600; by 1620 new shorelines had stabilized. That had endless consequences—mass migrations, political disorder, a return of the Black Death, and much immigration from Great Britain and the lowlands of Europe while the waters rose.

  Slavery never established he
re. Indentures, yes—many a man indentured himself to get his family away from doomed land. But the circumstances that could have created “King Cotton” were destroyed by rising waters. There are citizens here of African descent but their ancestors were not slaves. Some have indentured ancestors, no doubt—but everyone claims indentured ancestors even if they have to invent them.

  Some aspects of history seem to be taboo. I’ve given up trying to find out what happened in 1965: “The Year They Hanged the Lawyers.” When I asked a librarian for a book on that year and decade, he wanted to know why I needed access to records in locked vaults. I left without giving my name. There is free speech—but some subjects are not discussed. Since they are never defined, we try to be careful.

  But there is no category “Lawyers” in the telephone book.

  Taxation is low, simple—and contains a surprise. The Federal government is supported by a head tax paid by the States, and is mostly for military and foreign affairs. This state derives most of its revenue from real estate taxes. It is a uniform rate set annually, with no property exempted, not even churches, hospitals, or schools—or roads; the best roads are toll roads. The surprise lies in this: The owner appraises his own property.

  There is a sting in the tail: Anyone can buy property against the owner’s wishes at the appraisal the owner placed on it. The owner can hang on only by raising his appraisal at once to a figure so high that no buyer wants it—and pay three years back taxes at his new appraisal.

  This strikes me as loaded with inequity. What if it’s a family homestead with great sentimental value? Zeb laughs at me. “Jake, if anybody wants six hectares of hilly land and second-growth timber, we take the profit, climb into Gay—and buy more worthless land elsewhere. In a poker game, you figure what’s in the pot.”

  XXXIX

  Random Numbers

  Hilda:

  Jacob stood, raised his glass. “Snug Harbor at last!”

  Zebbie matched him. “Hear, hear!”

  Deety and I sat tight. Zebbie said, “Snap it up, kids!” I ignored him.

  Jacob looked concerned. “What’s the matter, dear one? Zeb, perhaps they don’t feel well.”

  “It’s not that, Jacob. Deety and I are healthy as hogs. It’s that toast. For ten days, since we signed the deed, it’s been that toast. Our toast used to be: ‘Death to “Black Hats”!’”

  “But, my dear, I promised you a new Snug Harbor. The fact that you girls are having babies made that first priority. This is the place. You said so.”

  I answered, “Jacob, I never called this ‘Snug Harbor.’ I reported that I had found a culture with advanced obstetrics, and customs that made it impossible for ‘Black Hats’ to hide. I wasn’t asked what I thought of it.”

  “You signed the deed!”

  “I had no choice. My contribution was one fur cape and some jewelry. Deety put in more—but effectively no gold. She fetched her stock certificates, other securities, some money—paper—and a few coins. I fetched two twenty-five newdollar bills. Deety and I left Earth as paupers. Each of us women—not ‘girls’!, Jacob—was once wealthy in her own right. But in buying this place, you two decided, you two paid for it—all we did was sign. We had no choice.”

  Zebbie looked at Deety and said softly, “‘With all my worldly goods I thee endow,’” and took her hand.

  Jacob said, “Thanks, Zeb. I, too, Hilda—if you don’t believe that, then you don’t believe I meant the rest: ‘—for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health—’ But I did and I do.” He looked up. “Zeb, where did we go wrong?”

  “Durned if I know, Jake. Deety, what’s the score? Give.”

  “I’ll try, Zebadiah. Maybe all we should expect is washing dishes and wiping noses and changing diapers. But that doesn’t seem like a be-all and end-all when you’ve gone banging around the universes…stood guard for your husband while he bathed in a mountain stream…or—Oh, the devil with it! This place is good and clean and wholesome and dull! I’ll find myself joining the church just for company…then sleeping with the priest out of boredom!”

  “Deety, Deety!”

  “I’m sorry, Zebadiah. It would be boredom with Beulahland, not with you. The very hour we met, you saved my life; you married me before that hour was over, impregnated me before midnight, fought and killed for me only days later, saved my life twice more that same day, took me to another planet in another universe before midnight still that same day…and short hours later had again fought for me, twice. You are my gallant knight, sans peur et sans reproche. In the six weeks I have known you, you have gifted more romance, more glorious adventure, into my life than in all the twenty-two years before it. But the last twelve days—especially the last ten—have told me what we now look forward to.”

  Deety paused to sigh; I said quietly, “She speaks for me.”

  Deety went on, “You two would lay down your lives for us—you’ve come terrifyingly close. But what happened to your glorious schemes to rebuild the Solar System? To kill every last one of those vermin? Gay Deceiver sits in an old barn, dark and quiet—and today I heard you discussing how to market a can opener. Universes beyond the sky to the incredible Number of the Beast!—yet you plan to sell can openers while Hilda and I serve as brood mares. We haven’t even visited Proxima Centauri! Zebadiah—Pop!—let’s spend tonight looking for an Earth-type planet around Alpha Centauri—kill a million vermin to clean it, if that’s what it takes! Plan what planets to put on Earth’s Lagrange points. I’ll write programs to meet your grandest plans! Let’s go!”

  My husband looked sad. Zebbie held Deety’s hand and said, “Deety, we don’t want to sell can openers. But you two are pregnant and we’ve gone to a lot of trouble to put you where you and our kids will be safe. Maybe it’s dull…but it’s your duty. Forget hunting vermin.”

  “Just forget it? Zebadiah, why is Gay Deceiver loaded and ready for space? Power packs charged, water tanks full, everything? Do you and Pop have something in mind…while Hilda and I stay home and baby-sit?”

  “Deety, if we did, it wouldn’t hurt to sell a few can openers first. You two and the kids must be provided for, come what may.”

  “That Widow’s Walk again, Hillbilly. But, my husband, you have started from a false premise. You men want to protect Hilda and me and our kids at any cost—and we honor you for it. But one generation is as valuable as another, and men are as valuable as women. With modern weapons, a computer programmer is more use in war than a sniper. Or—forgive me, sir!—even an aerospace fighter pilot. I’m a programmer. I can shoot, too! I won’t be left out, I won’t!”

  I gave Deety our signal to drop it. It doesn’t do to push a man too hard; it makes him stubborn. One can’t expect logic from males; they think with their testicles and act from their emotions. And one must be careful not to overload them. We had given them five points to stew over; we would save the sixth—the clincher—for later.

  I waited three days…and struck from the other flank. Again Deety and I rehearsed: We would wrangle with each other and appeal to the men for support—crosswise.

  “Jacob, what is ‘random’? Is it correct to say that ‘random’ is shorthand for ‘I don’t know’?”

  Deety said scornfully, “Don’t let her trap you, Pop. She’s got the second law of thermodynamics mixed up with the second law of robotics—and doesn’t understand either one.” (I had to phrase this and insist; Deety didn’t want to say it. Deety is sweet, not the bitch I am.)

  “‘Random’ is used a number of ways, my love, but it usually means a set in which the members are equal in probability of experiencing some event, such as being next to be chosen.”

  “If they’re ‘chosen,’ how can it be ‘random’?”

  Deety snickered.

  Zebbie said, “Don’t let him snow you, Sharpie; ‘random’ means ‘I don’t know’—as you said.”

  “Aunt Hilda, pay no attention to Zebadiah. ‘Random’ is what you have when you maximize entropy.”

  “N
ow, Daughter, that is hardly a mathematical statement—”

  “Pop, if I gave it to her in mathematical language she’d faint.”

  “Deety, quit picking on Sharpie,” Zebbie said sternly.

  “I wasn’t picking on her. Hillbilly has this silly notion that we didn’t get anywhere hunting vermin because we went about it systematically…but every time we told Gay to shake up her random numbers and do as she pleased, we got results.”

  “Well, didn’t we?” I put in, intentionally shrill. “We had endless failures…but every time we gave Gay her head—‘Put her on random numbers,’ as Deety says—we never had a failure. ‘Random’ and ‘chance’ are not related. ‘Random chance’ is a nonsense expression.”

  “Auntie darling, you’re out of your skull. Don’t worry, Pop; pregnant women often get the vapors.”

  I indignantly listed things that could not be “random” or “chance”—then discovered that Deety and I had to start dinner. We left them wrangling, and were careful not to giggle within earshot.

  After dinner, instead of that tired toast, Jacob said, “Hilda, would you explain your concept of ‘random’? Zeb and I have been discussing it and agree that there is some factor in our adventures not subject to analysis.”

  “Jake, that’s your statement. I just said, ‘I dunno,’ and wiped the drool off my chin. Tell us, Sharpie.”

  “But Jacob told us a month ago. There isn’t any such thing as ‘chance.’ It’s a way of admitting ignorance. I thought that I had begun to understand it when we started hitting storybook universes. Lilliput. Oz. Dr. Smith’s World. Wonderland. I was so sure of it—You remember three weeks ago after our second visit to Oz? I ordered a day of rest; we spent it on Tau axis instead of Teh.”

  “Dullest day we had,” said Zebbie. “You put us in orbit around Mars. Not just one Mars but dozens. Hundreds. The only one worth a fiat dollar was the one we aren’t going back to. I got permission to go off duty and take a nap.”