The Number of the Beast

by Robert A. Heinlein

  I caught sight of Libby’s face as Lazarus made that last statement—her mouth twitched in a half smile about to become (I think) a snicker, had she not suppressed all expression. No one but I caught it.

  I made note to ask her about it later—then I remembered what the mouse told the cat and decided not to.

  “But I do what any prudent Howard does; I have tissue on deposit. One may do this either of two ways: Pay high…or pay much lower and sign a release on half the donation for research and instruction.” He grinned. “I’m stingy. My tissue is available to medical students.”

  He went on, “Not all medical schools are ethical. I can think of at least three planets where—” Lazarus looked directly at my wife. “Deety, you raised this issue. While I can think of three planets where one can buy any sort of monster, I can think of at least thirty where, for a much lower fee, I could simply say, ‘I want that one’”—he pointed at Sharpie—“and the answer would be, ‘It’s a deal, Mac. How freshly dead and when do you want delivery?’”

  Sharpie looked around behind herself as if to see at whom Lazarus had pointed.

  “That’s the cheapest way—”

  “Then you weren’t pointing at me!” Sharpie interrupted. “Woodie, it’s not polite to point. For a moment you had me worried. I’m never cheap—high-priced, always.”

  “So I found out, Commodore. Deety, that’s cheapest, and safe for the buyer in the places I have in mind. But how can I convince you that I never gave even a moment’s consideration to that method? You seem to know a lot about me—more than I know about any of you. Is there anything that you have ever read or heard, anything that I’ve said or done, that would cause you to think that I would murder or contract for a murder—same but nastier—in order to further my own ends? I’m not saying that I have never killed. A man who has lived even half as long as I have has found himself more than once in a kill-or-be-killed situation. But the best way to deal with such a situation is not to get into it. Anticipate it. Avoid it.”

  Lazarus Long stopped and looked sad, and for the only time of my acquaintance with him, looked his age. I do not mean he suddenly looked decrepit. But he had an aura of ancient sorrow. “Professor Burroughs, if it would do any good, I would junk all my plans, accept being forever stranded here, for the privilege of taking a twenty-pound sledge and smashing your space-time twister.”

  I was shocked (damn it, I like good machinery). Jake looked hurt, Deety and Sharpie looked stunned.

  Jake said tightly, “Lazarus…why?”

  “Not to hurt you, Professor; you have my highest respect. You are one of three: the man who invented the wheel, the man who discovered how to use fire—and you. But, in making this supreme discovery, you have accomplished something I had thought impossible. You have made interstellar war logistically practical. Interstellar? Intergalactic—interuniversal!”

  Lazarus suddenly straightened up, threw off his gloom, grinned. “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men can’t close Pandora’s Box again. Once it hits the fan, the only thing to do is sweep it up, package it, and sell it as fertilizer. Hilda has plans along that line. But I’m going to have to start thinking in military terms again. Figure out how to defend my home place against what appears to be that Ultimate Weapon much talked about but never achieved. I am glad to say that Hilda plans to keep it a close-held secret as long as possible; that may buy us time.”

  He turned his attention back to my wife. “Deety, I have never murdered, I never will. The nearest I ever came to it was once being sorely tempted to strangle a five-year-old boy. I admit that the thought has often passed through my mind that this character or that would look his best as the centerpiece of a funeral. But can I convince you that I have never acted on such thoughts? Think hard, please—all that you know of me. Am I capable of murder?”

  Deety doesn’t dither. (Remember how we got married?) She jumped up, hurried around our kitchen table, and kissed Lazarus—and stopped hurrying. It was a kiss that calls for a bed, or even a pile of coal—had there not been urgent business before the house.

  Deety broke from it, sat down beside him, and said, “Tell us how we get this unmurdered fresh corpse. It’s clear that we’re going to have to go pick it up—in Gay. So we must know.”

  Libby said gently, “Lazarus, this is what you have been avoiding. May I tell it?”

  “Thanks, Lib. No, you would pretty it up. I—”

  “Pipe down!” said Deety. “Elizabeth, give us the straight word. Briefly.”

  “Very well. The medical school of B.I.T. is as ethical as you will find. My sister-wife Ishtar is director of the rejuvenation clinic and chairman of the board of the medical school, and still finds time to teach. I have never seen Maureen Johnson as I was born about two centuries after she was. But she is supposed to resemble Laz and Lor—unsurprising; she is their genetic mother, since they were cloned from Lazarus.”

  “Oh! I see. There is still a third clone from Lazarus. Female?”

  “A spoiled one, Deety. Ishtar tells me that it is difficult, rather than otherwise, to get a bad clone from Lazarene tissue…so it is especially suitable for induced mutation experiments. She orders the destruction of these experiments when they have served their purpose.”

  “Deety said to make it brief,” growled Lazarus.

  Lib ignored him. “But, while Ishtar checks on the students, no one checks on her. For twenty years Ishtar watched for a clone that would look human but not be human. So deficient in forebrain that it could never be anything but a vegetable, unaware. She told me that her students had unknowingly provided her with dozens to work on. Usually they died too soon, or never developed human appearance, or had some other fault that made them unusable. But several years ago she succeeded. I testify that this thing looked like Laz and Lor as it passed through the stage of its forced development…and also that it looked like an older version, wrinkled and hair streaked with gray, when it died two Tertian years ago—”

  “Huh? ‘Fresh corpse’!”

  “—and was quick-frozen at once. I testify to something else. Friends, in becoming a woman I acquired an interest in biology that I had not had, as a male. While I teach math at B.I.T., I am also staff mathematician to the clinic and have studied a bit of human biology. When I say that this spoiled clone was never alive in any real sense I speak as the mathematical biologist who checked its monitors’ records daily. It always required full metabolic support; we monitored everything. The surprising thing is that Ishtar could keep it alive long enough to let it appear to age. But Ishtar is very skillful.” Libby added, “Lazarus would not only have become upset in telling this, but he could not have told it first hand as Ishtar refused to permit Lazarus to see this spoiled clone or any records on it.”

  “A willful woman,” said Lazarus. “In three seconds I could have told Ish whether or not this thing looked enough like my mother to be useful. Instead I must depend on the opinions of people who have never laid eyes on my mother. Damn it, I am owner of record of the clinic and Chairman Regent of all B.I.T. Does that count with Ishtar? Hilda, my senior wife is as tough a case as you are…and looks as little like it as you do.”

  “So? It will be interesting to see what happens when I am your junior wife,” Sharpie answered at her pertest.

  “Are you going to be my junior wife?” Lazarus swung around and looked at her husband. “Jake?”

  “I don’t think I have a vote,” my blood brother answered easily.

  “I’ll automatically be your junior wife if we are invited to join the Long Family which we damn well ought to be if we make this work!” Sharpie said indignantly.

  “Wait a half!” I put in. “If we are invited to join the Long Family—a tall assumption if I ever saw one—Deety would be junior. Not you, you elderly baggage.”

  “Hillbilly can be junior if she wants to be. I don’t mind.”

  “Deety,” I said, “are you serious? I’ve been trying to point out to your stepmother that you don�
�t push your way into a family.”

  “I wasn’t pushing, Zebadiah,” my wife answered. “I want us to stay on Tertius at least until we have our babies, and possibly make it our home; it seems to be a pleasant place and should be free of ‘Black Hats’—no skin taboos. But that doesn’t mean that the Longs have to have us in their laps.”

  “I intend to nominate you, Zebadiah,” Libby told me. “All four of you. And I hope you four accept. But, Deety twin, you know what I’m attempting. With your father.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m cheering for it.”

  “Your husband must hear this. Deety, I still have that Y chromosome in every cell even though it has been so inhibited by hormone balance that I don’t notice it. You and I could try for a mathematical-genius baby, too.”

  “Huh! Which one of us supplies the penis?”

  “Ishtar does. Neither of us would be host-mother, the way it would be done. But any of my sister-wives would supply womb room if she didn’t happen to be pregnant. Or the host-mother could be a stranger we would never meet and the child’s family-parents strangers, too—all handled by Ishtar who always reads the relevant genetic charts before approving anything.”

  “Zebadiah?”

  I said without hesitation, “It’s up to you, hon. I’m in favor of it; it makes sense. But don’t lose track of the child. Elizabeth, I want to adopt the baby ahead of time. Hmm—Bottle baby…but the formulas are probably better now. Not here-now. Tertius there-then-now.”

  “‘Bottle baby’? Oh! No longer done; a baby needs to suckle. But there is usually spare milk around the Longs’. If I’m lactating I always have excess; I turn out to be a good milch cow despite that extra chromosome. But Deety can nurse our child if she wishes to; causing a woman to come fresh with milk without bearing a child is a minor biochemical manipulation today—Tertian-today. Professional wet nurses do it regularly and are likely to be in that vocation because they love babies but can’t have ’em themselves for some reason.”

  “Sounds good.” (What sounded best was this: a baby Deety is a wonderful idea—but a baby Deety who is also a baby Libby is sure to be wonderful squared. Cubed!)

  “While I’m on this and no one here but family—Jacob, there is no reason not to create a third mathematical supergenius by crossing you with your daughter.”

  I was looking at my wife, thinking pleasant thoughts about baby Deety-Libby, when Elizabeth dropped this bomb—and Deety shut down her face. It’s not an unpleasant expression; it’s a no-expression, a closed door, while Deety sorts out her thoughts.

  So I looked at Jake, in time to see his face shift from surprise to shock. “But that’s—”

  “Incest?” Libby supplied. “No, Jacob, incest is a social matter. Whether you bed your daughter is none of my business. I’m speaking of genes, of still another way to conserve mathematical genius. Ishtar would scan your charts most carefully and would resort to chromosome surgery if there was the slightest chance of double dosage of a bad allele. But you and your daughter could see Ishtar on different days and never know anything about the outcome. Your genes are not your property; they come from your race. This offers opportunity to give them back to the race with your highest talent reinforced…without loss to anyone. Think about it.”

  Jake looked at me, then at his daughter. “Deety?”

  She added no-expression voice to no-expression face—but directed her answer to me: “Zebadiah, this is necessarily up to you and Jacob.” I’m not sure that anyone but Sharpie noticed that she had not said “Pop.”

  Deety added at once with total change in manner, “First things first! Maureen’s rescue. All of you are stuck in a rut of time sequence. Oh, the minor problem of keeping clear of Dora and the missile both times. Routine.” (And I was hit by a satori.)

  Lazarus answered, “But Deety, I promised Dora never again to take her anywhere near Albuquerque.”

  Deety sighed. “Lib?”

  “Frames one-thirteen through seven-seven-two, then seven-seven-three through one thousand and two?”

  “Precisely. And precisely it must be, too. I’m timing it by that yellow open roadable approaching from the other direction. What are you using?”

  “The same one. Easy to spot and its speed never varies.”

  Lazarus said, “Jake, do you know what they are saying?”

  “Yes and no. They are treating it as two problems. But we lack three seconds of time enough to dump one and snatch the other. Those—traffic lights, you called them?—leave that intersection clear by a measured interval, clocked by your camera.”

  Sharpie suddenly grinned; I nodded to her to take it. She did. “Deety and Libby are saying that we do it twice. First, we rescue Maureen. Then we come back and dump the corpse.”

  I added, “But the second time we don’t ground. Jake, I’m going to ask you to move over—Deety moves to my seat. We’ll dump the dead meat so that it hits the ground between frames seven-seven-two and seven-seven-three. I’ll be on manual and hovering. I need to know where Dora is and where that missile is and need to be sure of the acceleration of gravity, Earth-Prime. Because that corpse will already be falling, right over our heads, while we are making the snatch. Close timing. Mmm—Gay can fly herself more precisely than I can. I think that Deety and I will write a program…then I’ll be on override-suspenders and belt.”

  Jake added, “Zeb, I see the procedure. But, if we are hovering for the drop while we are also on the ground, why aren’t we shown in the photographs?”

  “May be in some of them. Doesn’t matter. Deety, when do we do this? Cancel. Sharpie? Your orders, Captain?”

  Deety and Sharpie swapped glances. Then they sounded like Laz-Lor, with Sharpie leading. “Now to bed. It’s almost midnight in our biological time, slightly later in local time.”

  “We do both jobs after breakfast,” Deety responded. “But sleep as late as we can. Be sharp and on our toes. ’Minds me. Just one ’fresher, quite primitive. But the two in Gay are as available here as anywhere; since they are actually in Oz. Six people, three pots, not difficult.”

  “And three beds,” added Sharpie. “Jacob, kiss us goodnight and take Lib to bed. Master bedroom and good luck! Use my toothbrush, Lib hon—anything else you need?”

  “No. A good cry, maybe. I love you, Hilda.”

  “If I didn’t love you, Elizabeth, I wouldn’t be Madam of this joint. We’ll cry together the day Ishtar tells us you’ve caught. Now shoosh! Scat! Kiss us and go to bed.”

  As they headed upstairs Sharpie said to me, “Zebbie, give Deety a pre-amnesty so that she can try out Lazarus and find out whether she wants to be junior wife.”

  I tried to look amazed. “Deety, haven’t you tried Lazarus yet?”

  “You know darn well I haven’t! When have I had time?”

  “From a woman who specializes in programming time machines that is a silly question. Lazarus, she’s already knocked up, so don’t fret about it. One warning: She bites.”

  “The best ones always do.”

  “Hush. Kiss us good-night, dears. Zebbie, open the couch in the living room; that’s where you’re going to keep me warm.”

  “But who’s going to keep me warm? A skinny little runt like you?”

  Sharpie bites.

  XLV

  A Stitch in Time

  Jake:

  We popped out one klick H-above-G over Albuquerque, Earth-Prime, and Gay tilted her nose down. A last-minute change put my daughter Deety at copilot, while I sat left rear, nominal navigator. Deety can use verniers as accurately as I, did not expect to use them at all, did need to be able to see the yellow roadable—and has this clock in her head.

  Elizabeth Long was in the after compartment, strapped down but not on lumps of ordnance. Rifles, pistols, bed clothes for the control compartment, anything else that could be moved easily to reduce clutter, had been shifted into our space warp, as had Lazarus Long.

  Doctor Ishtar had warned Lazarus not to let his mother recognize him, as the shock
to her might be harmful, even fatal. While Lazarus had been trying to figure out how to make the snatch using Dora, he had planned on wearing disguise. But hiding in our Land-of-Oz addition was simpler—especially as Ishtar was almost as anxious that Lazarus not see his mother, not see his mother’s pseudo corpse—this I learned from Elizabeth in the night.

  So I showed Lazarus the everlasting picnic basket, advised him to use bed clothes to make a shakedown and sleep if possible as there would be time to kill, and supplied him with books—but don’t come out until I open the door! Then did not mention that I was locking him in.

  I was relieved to have only a nominal job. I was not sleepy despite a short night—I was bemused.

  I was falling in love with—had fallen in love with—Elizabeth Long. No less in love with Hilda—more in love with her than ever! I am learning that love does not subtract—it multiplies!

  As Gay tilted down I reached over and touched Hilda’s hand. She smiled and threw me a kiss. I’m sure she had a sweet night; she has loved Zeb as long as she has known him. “As a loyal chum,” she tells me—but Hilda holds to the Higher Truth that it is better to be kind than to be frank. It did not matter either way; Zeb is my blood brother beloved by me, perfect husband for my daughter, and, if not Hilda’s lover in the past, then he surely was now—and it troubled me not at all. On awakening I had discussed it with Jane before I opened my eyes—Jane approves and is delighted by Elizabeth.

  My daughter had an unusual night, too. If the myths are true, Lazarus is more than one hundred times as old as Deety. This gulf may not matter to him—but Deety takes everything seriously.

  Apparently it had done her no harm; at breakfast she was bright-eyed and bubbly. All of us were euphoric and eager to get on with it.