The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

by Robert A. Heinlein

Right on the dot of the completion of Tira’s masterpieces, Thuvia had arrived, decked out just as ornately, escorted by a guard in dress leathers, and they had been taken to call on the jeddara, Dejah Thoris.

  “What sort of a person is she?” I asked.

  “Sweet, very gracious.”

  “But what does she look like?” asked Jake. “Pretty as she is supposed to be?”

  “Uh, not exactly. I don’t think you two should try to see her.”

  “Correct,” agreed Sharpie. “She’s an old woman, you know. One walleye, sort of hunched, hair stringy and mostly white. Wrinkles ….”

  “Sharpie!”

  “Just backing your play, kiddo.”

  “Zebadiah, have you ever been an actor?”

  “Tried it once, went up on my lines. Why?”

  “Do you understand the term ‘upstaged’?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Who was the most beautiful woman in history?”

  “Helen of Troy.”

  “Try again. Do better.”

  “Venus? Paris didn’t think so.”

  “Keep trying.”

  “Cleopatra?”

  Hilda said, “That’s three strikes and you’re out. Dejah Thoris.”

  “And if you two ever see her,” Deety added, “Neither of you will be satisfied with us common broads again. You’ll leave us. I’m not sure that what she did is ‘upstaging’—maybe ‘underplaying’ is the word. But we three were, Thuvia wearing more hunks of gorgeous rocks than we were. Even though most of what Sharpie wore came from Dejah Thoris, Thuv told us—mine are Thuv’s excess, out-of-style geegaws. But guess what Dejah Thoris wore?”

  “A diamond overcoat? Maybe with rubies and sapphires to set it off?”

  “Better than that.”

  “I know,” said Jake. “A dagger on a belt. Like Thuvia when she came back here.”

  “Wrong. But she did wear something.”

  “Quit stalling, Deety,” I told her firmly. “What did Dejah Thoris wear?”

  “A smile. Just a smile. Not even makeup or perfume. Hair just brushed down her back. And she was the most gorgeously dressed of any of us. I think she knew it.”

  “I’m sure she knew it,” said Sharpie. “But she never let on. Treated us as her favorite big sisters. And told us how beautiful we were. Darn her big, lovely liquid eyes! If she returns the call—she threatened to—I’m going to wear just skin. Mine’s not much, compared with hers. But it’s my own and I’m going to flaunt it. With a hip wiggle.”

  XXV

  Zebadiah

  We refugees from Earth-Zero kept very busy the next ten-day; Doctor Burroughs tackled the problem of how to convey the methods of “moving” by quanta jumps via six-dimensional space to Prince Carthoris. I spent my time trying to modify Gay Deceiver from a sports car jury-rigged with a Burroughs’ time-space twister into something more like a spaceship—a life-support capsule in space that would also be a strong, safe, and tolerable igloo in any weather on any planet we risked grounding on. It was a knotty problem, primarily through shortage of space inside Gay Deceiver.

  I had already learned that our prime need was space for four to stretch out horizontally. How to do it was a jigsaw puzzle, and one that had to be solved within limits set by the shell of Gay Deceiver’s body, a space cluttered with seats, controls, instrument board, computer, L-gun, Burroughs 6-space distorter, wiring, tubing, supplies, clothing, power packs, water tank, gadgets, gear, and a big main thrust motor never intended to fit inside the monocoque of a Ford duo.

  I never considered altering the shell. The strength of Gay’s skin was our protection against the buffeting of weather (What weather? What sorts of planets?), gut-wrenching maneuvers, radiation, attacks from outside. She had weak points enough in her doors, in the mounting of the transparent quintuple sandwich of her “windshield,” the L-guns’ “eye,” the dissimilar “eyes” of ranging radar and anti-collision radars, and other points (such as air scoops) where for one reason or another, her shell had been penetrated, then beefed up to offset the stress-raisers thus formed, and sealed against loss of air.

  Her wheel wells, and her wing-root recesses that let her fold wings for hypersonic flight or spread them for subsonic, were outside her gas-tight shell. Those cavities blemished her lovely shape by creating weirdly varying concentrations of stress—again offset by beefing up … parasitic weight, but such trade-offs had to be accepted.

  I hoped that her chief designer, materials engineer, aerodynamicist, and chief inspector had all been pessimists soaked in the bitter wisdom of Murphy’s Law. I thought they all had been such—the old girl had never let me down. But there was always that first time … that could be a last time. I shrugged and said, “Goodnight, Gay. Over.”

  “Sleep tight, Zeb. Over.”

  “Thank you, Gay. Over and out.”

  Besides sleeping space, I wanted to add air bottles (if Barsoom technology had such), a CO2 scavenger (I thought I could manage one if Barsoom chemistry was as advanced as it appeared to be). I rejected the notion of pure O2, even if available—many organic polymer items aboard, all potentially explosive in straight oxygen—odd that human beings breathed the most dangerous element of all.

  The simplest—and hardest—problem was sleeping space.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere crawling around inside Gay—all knees and elbows, getting in my own way every time I tried to take a measurement. What had Cart said about a “master sculptor?” A model that could be opened up, with manikins exactly to scale, might make a solution evident.

  I got out of the car, telling Gay to button up. The sergeant of the guard around the car called the guard to attention, saluted. “At ease!” I called out in Barsoomian and returned the salute. My escort fell into step around me.

  “It’s not that I’m the better mathematician, Zeb,” Burroughs explained. “Mobyas Toras might be superior to any mathematician on Earth. He’s not the narrow specialist that I and most of my colleagues are.” Burroughs looked wistful. “What … I mean ‘how much’ … could a man learn if he had a thousand years in which to poke into the fascinating byways of mathematics? Gracious!”

  “Is Mobyas Toras actually that old?”

  “I don’t know and shan’t ask. I’ve gathered an impression that age is not a polite subject. I don’t know how old Mobyas Toras is, but he is the only man I’ve met who has gray hair, wrinkles, and other signs of old age.”

  “Probably means he has only century or two left in him.”

  “How can you say ‘probably’ when you have no data? I do know that he is skilled in many abstruse branches of mathematics, many more than I am, and some I’ve never heard of. But I’ve had less success in trying to explain my postulates for n-dimensional closed continua to him than I had with you.”

  “You had zero success with me; you’re …”

  “Pig’s tripe! You have the engineering approach, Zeb. Certain transformations were Greek to you—and would be to anyone without proper foundation. You accepted my abstract work without worrying about it, just as it doesn’t bother an electronics engineer to accept the square root of minus one. Zeb, you do understand the practical equations I wound up with. You could build another continua craft without my help.”

  “Well … maybe.”

  “Certainly you could! And your second-stage article would have better design. Mine is a breadboard job, patched together with off-the-shelf items. Does a designer today repeat the work of the Wright brothers or of Goddard? Mine is a Model T Ford; yours might be a Rolls Royce. Or might not—but yours would surpass my Model T; that’s an elementary fact of development engineering. But back to the learned Mobyas Toras; the obstacle is language.”

  “I suppose so. Thuvia’s English isn’t up to the job? Not a mathematician?—no reason why she should be, of course.”

  “No, no! As near as I can judge, Thuvia knows quite a lot of what I would describe as practical engineering mathematics—”

  “Like me, huh?” />
  “Possibly. Although she wouldn’t be able to read your reference books—even though she reads English—much more easily than you could read hers. The trouble is basic. Zeb, mathematics is language—and that’s all it is.”

  “So what is new? I learned that as an undergraduate.”

  “Maybe you don’t have it deep in your bones—the way Deety has, being a symbologist by profession. Zeb, can you use an abacus?”

  “I’ve tried it. Learned simple multiplication—slowly. But I use a hand calculator for routine problems. For something lengthy or complex I turn it over to someone like Deety to shove through a computer.” Zeb grinned happily. “Got my own software artist now.”

  “I’m proud of that girl, if I do say so as shouldn’t.”

  “Jake, I wouldn’t even like you if you weren’t proud of your daughter.”

  “Zeb, let’s get back to Mobyas Toras. Speaking by analogy, I’m using an abacus while he uses a slide rule. Our symbols don’t match, even by substitution. Took us most of one day and wore Thuv to a frazzle to get across this one idea: two plus two equals four. Mobyas finally agreed that it sometimes was true … but not often.”

  “Well … he’s right.”

  “So I told him, through Thuvia. He answered, in effect, ‘Then why didn’t you say so?’ He ended the session soon after; he was tired and visibly restraining his irritation at my stupidity. Zeb, it may be necessary to show him, physically, how Gay Deceiver works, before I can get anywhere with him.”

  “Let him tinker with it? No!”

  “Your reasons, sir?”

  “Doctor, you might try asking your wife. Sharpie will tell you, I think, that the simplest and usual way to demonstrate elementary physiology is to dissect a living frog. But the frog isn’t much use afterward. Jake, the working parts of your apparatus that make Gay Deceiver more than just a duo are hermetically sealed. Do you want to unseal them? If so, you had better plan on homesteading here. A planet with no obstetricians. Even if you want to risk your apparatus—I don’t—but if you want to, I think you should first clear it with your wife. And your daughter.”

  “Zeb, Zeb! Of course I don’t want to open the gyro housings. But we could demonstrate what Gay Deceiver can do.”

  “Jake, I’m not anxious to demonstrate our car until we are ready to leave. Call it a hunch, but I can rationalize it if you wish. But, aside from hunch, I don’t think you would convince Mobyas Toras of anything merely by physical demonstration. Have you ever seen fire walking?”

  “No. I’ve heard the usual tales.”

  “I’ve seen it. It’s not fake. Barefooted people totally unharmed by intensely hot fire.”

  “Some preparation that insulates their feet. And probably thick calluses.”

  “Deety has thick calluses. Do you think she can walk, unharmed, through a fire pit ten meters long and so hot that I could feel my face start to blister when I tried to move close to the edge of the pit?”

  “Some sort of preparation … even if you could not see it.”

  “You’re saying that I’m not a competent observer. For the record, I had not been drinking, I was not hypnotized, it was bright sunlight, and I had an unobstructed view from as close as I could approach without unendurable discomfort. About a meter from the edge for a few moments during the fire walking, then I backed off a couple of meters—but still with a clear view. However, there was preparation.”

  “What sort?”

  “An old priestess stepped down into the fire pit and stood in it, not walking, while she prayed. She also sprinkled a few grains of something on the fire. She didn’t sprinkle it all over, just in the spot where she stood. That was the preparation—an old woman’s prayers.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! You missed something.”

  “If I did, you would have missed it, too. I have normal eyesight. Jake, you refuse to believe that I saw what I did see because it runs contrary to your beliefs. But there is a classic explanation of what I saw. Standard ‘least hypothesis.’ Occam’s Razor.”

  “Hmm. State of hypothesis.”

  “Magic.”

  Burroughs sighed. “Zeb, do be serious.”

  “I’m dead serious, Jake. ‘Magic’ is the classic—and correct—word—symbol—for any phenomenon totally unfamiliar to a culture. Not explainable by the concepts of that culture. You can’t teach new mathematics to an old, learned mathematician by showing him magical tricks. He will either reject it as fakery—which is what you did—or he will call it by whatever Barsoomian word translates as ‘magic’ … and dismiss it as having nothing to do with mathematics. But you won’t convince him that you have learned a six-dimensional closed-space geometry and how to apply it as engineering. He will resent your attempt to make a fool of him by magical trickery. You will make an enemy unnecessarily—apparently an influential one. You say Thuvia treats him with deference?”

  “Oh, quite! She doesn’t prostrate herself, but she treats him with extreme respect. I wish that coeds I have taught treated me with a tenth the respect she shows Mobyas Toras.”

  “Consort of the Prince Regent. Even money Cart is just as respectful.”

  “Oh, he is! Both he and Dejah Thoris made a try at translating for me—didn’t I say? Both of them treated him the way a … well, the way a Catholic king might treat the Pope. Not cringing, but most carefully respectful.”

  “Hmm … Jake, if you have any respect for my opinion, you’ll either learn his mathematical terminology and symbols, or find some way to teach him yours. Or give it up. But you won’t risk anything so crass as an engineering demonstration to this savant without his first understanding this math I couldn’t follow.”

  Burroughs sighed again. “I’ll try. But it is hard to teach a student who feels that he knows more than you do. Worse yet, in this case my student is right. Overall, I mean. Just not in my narrow specialty.”

  “Deety to Zebadiah. Come in, Zebadiah.”

  “Zeb to Deety, I read you loud and clear. How far away are you?”

  “I’ll ask Kach. Kach Kachkan, how far have we gone? He says we are about halfway to the spot where we’ll picnic. Let me test directly to Gay, dear.”

  “Okay, I’ll shut up. Over and out.”

  “Hello, Gay!”

  “Howdy, Deety!”

  “You’re a Smart Girl, Gay.”

  “Not so loud, Deety. You keep my secrets, I’ll keep yours.”

  “Goodnight, Gay. Over.”

  “Hurry back, Deety. Over.”

  “Over and out, Gay. Deety to Zebadiah, come in.”

  “Zeb to Deety. I could hear both ends. Your voice in my ear plug, Gay’s voice here in the cabin. Both loud and clear.”

  “Pretty tight hookup, huh? Sounds good.”

  “Maybe. Inverse Square Law may lick us. And we may be enjoying a lucky bounce. This building doesn’t seem to have much metal in it; attrition may be low. But you must be over the horizon, and I’m in a hole, so to speak.”

  “Look at the hole, not the doughnut.”

  “You mean, ‘Look at the dough ….’ ”

  “I meant what I said, sweet innocent darling. Zebadiah, quit being pessimistic. Eight months from now I’m going to say, ‘Ouch!’ in some nice, bright, horribly antiseptic hospital and you’ll be the father of a four-kilo bouncing boy. I have confidence in you.”

  “A three-kilo girl.”

  “Anything but a hermaphrodite with green blood. A human baby. One who will throw up all over your necktie, Papa.”

  “I’m not wearing a necktie and don’t ever plan to again. Deety, any baby of yours is welcome to throw up on me anytime.”

  “Three cheers for Zebbie! Deety, our Zebbie talks good, as a husband should.”

  “Sharpie”—Zeb’s voice sounded stern—“have you been eavesdropping again?”

  “I always do when possible, dear—I learn so many interesting things. Want to make something of it?”

  “Not with a gal who fights giants for me. Your babies are
welcome to throw up on me, too, Sharpie.”

  “Why, thank you, Zebbie! You can change their diapers, too.”

  “Hey, wait a half …. Okay, I guess I can learn.”

  “I’ll supply a clothes pin, dear. Tawm Takus sends his respects to Captain Zebadiah John Carter of Virginia. Official.”

  “Oh. Our green friends are getting only half of this—right?”

  “Natch. Deety and I are using ear plugs. And they ignore the half they do hear. But Tommy heard me say your name.”

  “Please tell him that I return his sentiments with thanks—but add that I think that’s purty durn formal from a man who got drunk with me just last night.”

  “I didn’t hear that second part, Zebbie, so I can’t relay it. They are formal here, dear—and especially los hombres verdes.”

  “Do it your way, Sharpie; you always do. Over to Deety. No need to test again, until you reach the spot. I’ll stay hooked in, I’ve work to do in the cabin. Cart sends word not to wonder about a flier circling you about a klick up and a klick out. It’s there to protect you. Over.”

  “Why, Kach and Tommy can protect us from anything! Over.”

  “Or die trying; I’m certain of that. Deety, Cart is a suspenders-and-belt man, just as I am. If that burns out a bearing or ten thousand maddened banths come charging out of the foothills, half the Helium Navy will swoop down and save you before you can say, ‘The Marines have landed!’ Besides that, if you get tired, you can come home by air. Just holler. Over.”

  “Zebadiah, if you think we would leave Kach and Tommy out here to come home alone when it’s not necessary, then you have misjudged both Hilda and me. Over.”

  “I don’t think I’ve misjudged either of you. You’ve both got hearts too big for your size and courage to match your hearts. But I have in mind that you two are knocked-up frails. Combining this test with a picnic is a worthy ploy; our Sharpie is sharp. But if either of you miscarry as a result of too long a thoat ride, I’ll give you long odds that both Tommy and Kach will fall on their swords to regain lost honor. Think about it. Over.”

  “Sharpie to Zeb! I can assure you, from years of volunteer hospital experience and quite a bit of study, we aren’t even close to a critical date. Hell’s bells, buster, we’re not a full month gone. Over.”