The Number of the Beast

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “So I had to think hard and long. Almost ten seconds. I left home next day with one suitcase and a pitiful sum of money.

  “Wound up on campus that had two things to recommend it: an Aerospace R.O.T.C. that would pick up part of my expenses, and a phys. ed. department willing to award me a jockstrap scholarship in exchange for daily bruises and contusions, plus all-out effort whenever we played. I took the deal.”

  “What did you play?” asked my father.

  “Football, basketball, and track—they would have demanded more had they been able to figure a way to do it.”

  “I had thought you were going to mention fencing.”

  “No, that’s another story. These did not quite close the gap. So I also waited tables for meals—food so bad the cockroaches ate out. But that closed the gap, and I added to it by tutoring in mathematics. That gave me my start toward piling up money to qualify.”

  I asked, “Did tutoring math pay enough to matter? I tutored math before Mama died; the hourly rate was low.”

  “Not that sort of tutoring, Princess. I taught prosperous young optimists not to draw to inside straights, and that stud poker is not a game of chance, but that craps is, controlled by mathematical laws that cannot be flouted with impunity. To quote Grandfather Zachariah, ‘A man who bets on greed and dishonesty won’t be wrong too often.’ There is an amazingly high percentage of greedy people and it is even easier to win from a dishonest gambler than it is from an honest one…and neither is likely to know the odds at craps, especially side bets, or all of the odds in poker, in particular how odds change according to the number of players, where one is seated in relation to the dealer, and how to calculate changes as cards are exposed in stud.

  “That was also how I quit drinking, my darling, except for special celebrations. In every ‘friendly’ game some players contribute, some take a profit; a player determined to take a profit must be neither drunk nor tired. Pop, the shadows are growing long—I don’t think anybody wants to know how I got a worthless doctorate.”

  “I do!” I put in. “Me, too!” echoed Aunt Hilda.

  “Son, you’re outvoted.”

  “Okay. Two years active duty after I graduated. Sky jockeys are even more optimistic than students and have more money—meanwhile I learned more math and engineering. Was sent inactive just in time to be called up again for the Spasm War. Didn’t get hurt, I was safer than civilians. But that kept me on another year even though fighting was mostly over before I reported in. That made me a veteran, with benefits. I went to Manhattan and signed up for school again. Doctoral candidate. School of Education. Not serious at first, simply intending to use my veteran’s benefits while enjoying the benefits of being a student—and devote most of my time to piling up cash to qualify for the trust.

  “I knew that the stupidest students, the silliest professors, and the worst bull courses are concentrated in schools of education. By signing for large-class evening lectures and the unpopular eight a.m. classes I figured I could spend most of my time finding out how the stock market ticked. I did, by working there, before I risked a dime.

  “Eventually I had to pick a research problem or give up the advantages of being a student. I was sick of a school in which the pie was all meringue and no filling but I stuck as I knew how to cope with courses in which the answers are matters of opinion and the opinion that counts is that of the professor. And how to cope with those large-class evening lectures: Buy the lecture notes. Read everything that professor ever published. Don’t cut too often and when you do show up, get there early, sit front row center, be certain the prof catches your eye every time he looks your way—by never taking your eyes off him. Ask one question you know he can answer because you’ve picked it out of his published papers—and state your name in asking a question. Luckily ‘Zebadiah Carter’ is a name easy to remember. Family, I got straight ‘A’s’ in both required courses and seminars…because I did not study ‘education,’ I studied professors of education.

  “But I still had to make that ‘original contribution to human knowledge’ without which a candidate may not be awarded a doctor’s degree in most so-called disciplines…and the few that don’t require it are a tough row to hoe.

  “I studied my faculty committee before letting myself be tied down to a research problem…not only reading everything each had published but also buying their publications or paying the library to make copies of out-of-print papers.”

  My husband took me by my shoulders. “Dejah Thoris, here follows the title of my dissertation. You can have your divorce on your own terms.”

  “Zebadiah, don’t talk that way!”

  “Then brace yourself. ‘An Ad-Hoc Inquiry Concerning the Optimization of the Infrastructure of Primary Educational Institutions at the Interface Between Administration and Instruction, with Special Attention to Group Dynamics Desiderata.’”

  “Zebbie! What does that mean?”

  “It means nothing, Hilda.”

  “Zeb, quit kidding our ladies. Such a title would never be accepted.”

  “Jake, it seems certain that you have never taken a course in a school of education.”

  “Well…no. Teaching credentials are not required at university level but—”

  “But me no ‘buts,’ Pop. I have a copy of my dissertation; you can check its authenticity. While that paper totally lacks meaning it is a literary gem in the sense in which a successful forging of an ‘old master’ is itself a work of art. It is loaded with buzz words. The average length of sentences is eighty-one words. The average word length, discounting ‘of,’ ‘a,’ ‘the,’ and other syntactical particles, is eleven-plus letters in slightly under four syllables. The bibliography is longer than the dissertation and cites three papers of each member of my committee and four of the chairman, and those citations are quoted in part—while avoiding any mention of matters on which I knew that members of the committee held divergent (but equally stupid) opinions.

  “But the best touch was to get permission to do field work in Europe and have it count toward time on campus; half the citations were in foreign languages, ranging from Finnish to Croatian—and the translated bits invariably agreed with the prejudices of my committee. It took careful quoting out of context to achieve this, but it had the advantage that the papers were unlikely to be on campus and my committee were not likely to go to the trouble of looking them up even if they were. Most of them weren’t at home in other languages, even easy ones like French, German, and Spanish.

  “But I did not waste time on phony field work; I simply wanted a trip to Europe at student air fares and the use of student hostels—dirt cheap way to travel. And a visit to the trustees of Grandpa’s fund.

  “Good news! The fund was blue chips and triple-A bonds and, at that time, speculative stocks were rising. So the current cash value of the fund was down, even though income was up. And two more of my cousins and one uncle had qualified, again reducing the pro-rata…so, Glory Be!—I was within reaching distance. I had brought with me all that I had saved, swore before a notary that it was all mine, nothing borrowed, nothing from my father—and left it on deposit in Zurich, using the trustees as a front. And I told them about my stamp and coin collection.

  “Good stamps and coins never go down, always up. I had nothing but proof sets, first-day covers, and unbroken sheets, all in perfect condition—and had a notarized inventory and appraisal with me. The trustees got me to swear that the items I had collected before I left home had come from earned money—true, the earliest items represented mowed lawns and such—and agreed to hold the pro-rata at that day’s cash value—lower if the trend continued—if I would sell my collection and send a draft to Zurich, with businesslike speed as soon as I returned to the States.

  “I agreed. One trustee took me to lunch, tried to get me liquored up—then offered me ten percent over appraisal if I would sell that very afternoon, then send it to him by courier at his expense (bonded couriers go back and forth between Europe and Ameri
ca every week).

  “We shook hands on it, went back and consulted the other trustees. I signed papers transferring title, the trustee buying signed his draft to me, I endorsed it to the trustees to add to the cash I was leaving in their custody. Three weeks later I got a cable certifying that the collection matched the inventory. I had qualified.

  “Five months later I was awarded the degree of doctor of philosophy, summa cum laude, And that, dear ones, is the shameful story of my life, Anyone have the energy to go swimming?”

  “Son, if there is a word of truth in that, it is indeed a shameful story.”

  “Pop! That’s not fair! Zebadiah used their rules—and outsmarted them!”

  “I didn’t say that Zeb had anything to be ashamed of. It is a commentary on American higher education. What Zeb claims to have written is no worse than trash I know is accepted as dissertations these days. His case is the only one I have encountered wherein an intelligent and able scholar—you, Zeb—set out to show that an ‘earned’ Ph.D. could be obtained from a famous institution—I know which one!—in exchange for deliberately meaningless pseudoresearch. The cases I have encountered have involved button-counting by stupid and humorless young persons under the supervision of stupid and humorless old fools. I see no way to stop it; the rot is too deep. The only answer is to chuck the system and start over.” My father shrugged. “Impossible.”

  “Zebbie,” Aunt Hilda asked, “what do you do on campus? I’ve never asked.”

  My husband grinned. “Oh, much what you do, Sharpie.”

  “I don’t do anything. Enjoy myself.”

  “Me, too. If you look, you will find me listed as ‘research professor in residence.’ An examination of the university’s books would show that I am paid a stipend to match my rank. Further search would show that slightly more than that amount is paid by some trustees in Zurich to the university’s general fund…as long as I remain on campus, a condition not written down. I like being on campus, Sharpie; it gives me privileges not granted the barbarians outside the pale. I teach a course occasionally, as supply for someone on sabbatical or ill.”

  “Huh? What courses? What departments?”

  “Any department but education. Engineering mathematics. Physics One-Oh-One. Thermogoddamics. Machine elements. Saber and dueling sword. Swimming. And—don’t laugh—English poetry from Chaucer through the Elizabethans. I enjoy teaching something worth teaching. I don’t charge for courses I teach; the Chancellor and I understand each other.”

  “I’m not sure I understand you,” I said, “but I love you anyhow. Let’s go swimming.”

  X

  “‘—and he had two horns like a lamb,

  and he spake as a dragon’!”

  Zeb:

  Before heading for the pool our wives argued over how Barsoomian warriors dress—a debate complicated by the fact that I was the only one fairly sober. While I was telling my “shameful story,” Jake had refreshed his Scotch-on-rocks and was genially argumentative, Our brides had stuck to one highball each but, while one jigger gave Deety a happy glow, Sharpie’s mass is so slight that the same dosage made her squiffed.

  Jake and I agreed to wear side arms. Our princesses had buckled them on; we would wear them. But Deety wanted me to take off the grease-stained shorts I had worn while working. “Captain John Carter never wears clothes. He arrived on Barsoom naked, and from then on never wore anything but the leather and weapons of a fighting man. Jeweled leather for state occasions, plain leather for fighting—and sleeping silks at night. Barsoomians don’t wear clothes. When John Carter first laid eyes on Dejah Thoris,” Deety closed her eyes and recited: “‘She was as destitute of clothes as the Green Martians…save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked…’” Deety opened her eyes, stared solemnly. “The women never wear clothes, just jewelry.”

  “Purty shilly,” said her father, with a belch. “Scuse me!”

  “When they were chilly, they wrapped furs around them, Pop. I mean ‘Mors Kajak, my revered father.’”

  Jake answered with slow precision. “Not…‘chilly.’ Silly! With a clash of blades and flash of steel, man doesn’t want family treasures swinging in the breeze ‘n’ banging his knees. Distracts him. Might get ’em sliced off. Correc’, Captain John Carter?”

  “Logical,” I agreed.

  “Besides, illustrations showed men wearing breech clouts. Pro’ly steel jockstrap underneath. I would.”

  “Those pictures were painted early in the twentieth century, Pop. Censored. But the stories make it clear. Weapons for men, jewelry for women—furs for cold weather.”

  “I know how I should dress,” put in Sharpie. “Thuvia wears jewels on bits of gauze—I remember the book cover. Not clothes. Just something to fasten jewels to. Deety—Dejah Thoris, I mean—do you have a gauze scarf I can use? Fortunately I was wearing pearls when Mors Kajak kidnapped me.”

  “Sharpie,” I objected, “you can’t be Thuvia. She married Carthoris. Mors Kajak—or Mors Kajake, might be a misspelling—is your husband.”

  “Cer’nly Mors Jake is my husband! But I’m his second wife; that explains everything. But it ill becomes the Warlord to address a princess of the House of Ptarth as ‘Sharpie.’” Mrs. Burroughs drew herself up to her full 152 centimeters and tried to look offended.

  “My humble apologies, Your Highness.”

  Sharpie giggled. “Can’t stay mad at our Warlord. Dejah Thoris hon—Green tulle? Blue? Anything but white.”

  “I’ll go look.”

  “Ladies,” I objected, “if we don’t get moving, the pool will cool off. You can sew on pearls this evening. Anyhow, where do pearls come from on Barsoom? Dead sea bottoms—no oysters.”

  “From Korus, the Lost Sea of Dor,” Deety explained.

  “They’ve got you, Son. But I either go swimming right now—or I have another drink…and then another, and then another. Working too hard. Too tense. Too much worry.”

  “Okay, Pop; we swim. Aunt H—Aunt Thuvia?”

  “All right, Dejah Thoris. To save Mors Jacob from himself. But I won’t wear earthling clothes. You can have my mink cape; may be chilly coming back.”

  Jake wrapped his sarong into a breech clout, strapped it in place with his saber belt. I replaced those grimy shorts with swim briefs which Deety conceded were “almost Barsoomian.” I was no longer dependent on Jake’s clothes; my travel kit, always in my car, once I got at it, supplied necessities from passport to poncho. Sharpie wore pearls and rings she had been wearing at her party, plus a scarf around her waist to which she attached all the costume jewelry Deety could dig up. Deety carried Hilda’s mink cape—then wrapped it around her. “My Captain, someday I want one like this.”

  “I’ll skin the minks personally,” I promised her.

  “Oh, dear! I think this is synthetic.”

  “I don’t. Ask Hilda.”

  “I will most carefully not ask her. But I’ll settle for synthetic.”

  I said, “My beloved Princess, you eat meat. Minks are vicious carnivores and the ones used for fur are raised for no other purpose—not trapped. They are well treated, then killed humanely. If your ancestors had not killed for meat and fur as the last glaciation retreated, you would not be here. Illogical sentiment leads to the sort of tragedy you find in India and Bangladesh.”

  Deety was silent some moments as we followed Jake and Hilda down toward the pool. “My Captain—”

  “Yes, Princess?”

  “I stand corrected. But your brain works so much like a computer that you scare me.”

  “I don’t ever want to scare you. I’m not bloodthirsty—not with minks, not with steers, not with anything. But I’ll kill without hesitation…for you.”

  “Zebadiah—”

  “Yes, Deety?”

  “I am proud that you made me your wife. I will try to be a good wife…and your princess.”

  “You do. You have. You always will. Dejah Thoris, my princess and only love, until I met you, I was a bo
y playing with oversized toys. Today I am a man. With a wife to protect and cherish…a child to plan for. I’m truly alive, at last! Hey! What are you sniffling about? Stop it!”

  “I’ll cry if I feel like it!”

  “Well…don’t get it on Hilda’s cape.”

  “Gimme a hanky.”

  “I don’t even have a Kleenex.” I brushed away her tears with my fingers. “Sniff hard. You can cry on me tonight. In bed.”

  “Let’s go to bed early.”

  “Right after dinner. Sniffles all gone?”

  “I think so. Do pregnant women always cry?”

  “So I hear.”

  “Well… I’m not going to do it again. No excuse for it; I’m terribly happy.”

  “The Polynesians do something they call ‘Crying happy.’ Maybe that’s what you do.”

  “I guess so. But I’ll save it for private.” Deety started to shrug the cape off. “Too hot, lovely as it feels.” She stopped with the cape off her shoulders, suddenly pulled it around her again. “Who’s coming up the hill?”

  I looked up, saw that Jake and Hilda had reached the pool—and a figure was appearing from below, beyond the boulder that dammed it.

  “I don’t know. Stay behind me.” I hurried toward the pool.

  The stranger was dressed as a Federal Ranger. As I closed in, I heard the stranger say to Jake, “Are you Jacob Burroughs?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Are you or aren’t you? If you are, I have business with you. If you’re not, you’re trespassing. Federal land, restricted access.”

  “Jake!” I called out. “Who is he?”

  The newcomer turned his head. “Who are you?”

  “Wrong sequence,” I told him. “You haven’t identified yourself.”

  “Don’t be funny,” the stranger said. “You know this uniform. I’m Bennie Hibol, the Ranger hereabouts.”

  I answered most carefully, “Mr. Highball, you are a man in a uniform, wearing a gun belt and a shield. That doesn’t make you a Federal officer. Show your credentials and state your business.”