The Number of the Beast

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The uniformed character sighed. “I got no time to listen to smart talk.” He rested his hand on the butt of his gun. “If one of you is Burroughs, speak up. I’m going to search this site and cabin. There’s stuff coming up from Sonora; this sure as hell is the transfer point.”

  Deety suddenly came out from behind me, moved quickly and placed herself beside her father. “Where’s your search warrant? Show your authority!” She had the cape clutched around her; her face quivered with indignation.

  “Another joker!” This clown snapped open his holster. “Federal land—here’s my authority!”

  Deety suddenly dropped the cape, stood naked in front of him. I drew, lunged, and cut down in one motion—slashed the wrist, recovered, thrust upward from low line into the belly above the gun belt.

  As my point entered, Jake’s saber cut the side of the neck almost to decapitation. Our target collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, lay by the pool, bleeding at three wounds.

  “Zebadiah, I’m sorry!”

  “About what, Princess?” I asked as I wiped my blade on the alleged ranger’s uniform. I noticed the color of the blood with distaste.

  “He didn’t react! I thought my strip act would give you more time.”

  “You did distract him,” I reassured her. “He watched you and didn’t watch me. Jake, what kind of a creature has bluish green blood?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sharpie came forward, squatted down, dabbed a finger in the blood, sniffed it. “Hemocyanin. I think,” she said calmly. “Deety, you were right. Alien. The largest terrestrial fauna with that method of oxygen transport is a lobster. But this thing is no lobster, it’s a ‘Black Hat.’ How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. But he didn’t sound right. Rangers are polite. And they never fuss about showing their I.D.’s.”

  “I didn’t know,” I admitted. “I wasn’t suspicious, just annoyed.”

  “You moved mighty fast,” Jake approved.

  “I never know why till it’s over. You didn’t waste time yourself, tovarishch. Drawing saber while he was pulling a gun—that takes guts and speed. But let’s not talk now—where are his pals? We may be picked off getting back to the house.”

  “Look at his pants,” Hilda suggested. “He hasn’t been on horseback. Hasn’t climbed far, either. Jacob, is there a jeep trail?”

  “No. This isn’t accessible by jeep—just barely by horse.”

  “Hasn’t been anything overhead,” I added. “No chopper, no air car.”

  “Continua craft,” said Deety.

  “Huh?”

  “Zebadiah, the ‘Black Hats’ are aliens who don’t want Pop to build a time-space machine. We know that. So it follows that they have continua craft. Q.E.D.”

  I thought about it. “Deety. I’m going to bring you breakfast in bed. Jake, how do we spot an alien continua craft? It doesn’t have to look like Gay Deceiver.”

  Jake frowned. “No. Any shape. But a one-passenger craft might not be much larger than a phone booth.”

  “If it’s a one-man—one-alien—job, it should be parked down in that scrub,” I said, pointing. “We can find it.”

  “Zebadiah,” protested Deety, “we don’t have time to search. We ought to get out of here! Fast!”

  Jake said, “My daughter is right but not for that reason. Its craft is not necessarily waiting. It could be parked an infinitesimal interval away along any of six axes, and either return automatically, preprogrammed, or by some method of signaling that we can postulate but not describe. The alien craft would not be here-now…but will be here-later. For pickup.”

  “In that case, Jake, you and I and the gals should scram out of here-now to there-then. Be missing. How long has our pressure test been running? What time is it?”

  “Seventeen-seventeen,” Deety answered instantly.

  I looked at my wife. “Naked as a frog. Where do you hide your watch, dearest? Surely, not there.”

  She stuck out her tongue. “Smarty. I have a clock in my head. I never mention it because people give me funny looks.”

  “Deety does have innate time sense,” agreed her father, “accurate to thirteen seconds plus or minus about four seconds; I’ve measured it.”

  “I’m sorry, Zebadiah—I don’t mean to be a freak.”

  “Sorry about what, Princess? I’m impressed. What do you do about time zones?”

  “Same as you do. Add or subtract as necessary. Darling, everyone has a built-in circadian. Mine is merely more nearly exact than most people’s. Like having absolute pitch—some do, some don’t.”

  “Are you a lightning calculator?”

  “Yes…but computers are so much faster that I no longer do it much. Except one thing—I can sense a glitch—spot a wrong answer. Then I look for garbage in the program. If I don’t find it, I send for a hardware specialist. Look, sweetheart, discuss my oddities later. Pop, let’s dump that thing down the septic tank and go. I’m nervous, I am.”

  “Not so fast, Deety.” Hilda was still squatting by the corpse. “Zebbie. Consult your hunches. Are we in danger?”

  “Well…not this instant.”

  “Good. I want to dissect this creature.”

  “Aunt Hilda!”

  “Take a Miltown, Deety. Gentlemen, the Bible or somebody said, ‘Know thy enemy.’ This is the only ‘Black Hat’ we’ve seen…and he’s not human and not born on earth. There is a wealth of knowledge lying here and it ought not to be shoved down a septic tank until we know more about it. Jacob, feel this.”

  Hilda’s husband got down on his knees, let her guide his hand through the “ranger’s” hair. “Feel those bumps, dearest?”

  “Yes!”

  “Much like the budding horns of a lamb, are they not?”

  “Oh—‘And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon’!”

  I squatted down, felt for horn buds. “Be damned! He did come up out of the earth—up this slope anyhow—and he spake as a dragon. Talked unfriendly, and all the dragons I’ve ever heard of talked mean or belched fire. Hilda, when you field-strip this critter, keep an eye out for the Number of the Beast.”

  “I shall! Who’s going to help me get this specimen up to the house? I want three volunteers.”

  Deety gave a deep sigh, “I volunteer. Aunt Hilda…must you do this?”

  “Deety, it ought to be done at Johns Hopkins, with x-ray and proper tools and color holovision. But I’m the best biologist for it because I’m the only biologist. Honey child, you don’t have to watch. Aunt Sharpie has helped in an emergency room after a five-car crash; to me, blood is just a mess to clean up. Green blood doesn’t bother me even that much.”

  Deety gulped. “I’ll help carry. I said I would!”

  “Dejah Thoris!”

  “Sir? Yes, my Captain?”

  “Back away from that. Take this. And this.” I unbuckled sword and belt, shoved down my swimming briefs, handed all of it to Deety. “Jake, help me get him up into fireman’s carry.”

  “I’ll help carry, Son.”

  “No, I can tote him easier than two could. Sharpie, where do you want to work?”

  “It will have to be the dining table.”

  “Aunt Hilda, I don’t want that thing on my—! I beg your pardon; it’s your dining table.”

  “You’re forgiven only if you’ll concede that it is our dining table. Deety, how many times must I repeat that I am not crowding you out of your home? We are co-housewives—my only seniority lies in being twenty years older. To my regret.”

  “Hilda my dear one, what would you say to a workbench in the garage with a drop cloth on it and flood lights over it?”

  “I say, ‘Swell!’ I don’t think a dining table is the place for a dissection, either. But I couldn’t think of anywhere else.”

  With help from Jake, I got that damned carcass draped across my shoulders in fireman’s carry. Deety started up the path with me, carrying my belt an
d sword and my briefs in one arm so that she could hold my free hand—despite my warning that she might be splashed with alien blood. “No, Zebadiah, I got overtaken by childishness. I won’t let it happen again. I must conquer all squeamishness—I’ll be changing diapers soon.” She was silent a moment. “That is the first time I’ve seen death. In a person, I mean. An alien humanoid person I should say…but I thought he was a man. I once saw a puppy run over—I threw up. Even though it was not my puppy and I didn’t go close.” She added, “An adult should face up to death, should she not?”

  “Face up to it, yes,” I agreed. “But not grow calloused. Deety, I’ve seen too many men die. I’ve never grown inured to it. One must accept death, learn not to fear it, then never worry about it. ‘Make Today Count!’ as a friend whose days are numbered told me. Live in that spirit and when death comes, it will come as a welcome friend.”

  “You say much what my mother told me before she died.”

  “Your mother must have been an extraordinary woman. Deety, in the two weeks I’ve known you, I’ve heard so much about her from all three of you that I feel as if I knew her. A friend I hadn’t seen lately. She sounds like a wise woman.”

  “I think she was, Zebadiah. Certainly she was good. Sometimes, when I have a hard choice, I ask myself, ‘What would Mama do?’—and everything falls into place.”

  “Both good and wise…and her daughter shows it. Uh, how old are you, Deety?”

  “Does it matter, sir?”

  “No. Curiosity.”

  “I wrote my birth date on our marriage license application.”

  “Beloved, my head was spinning so hard that I had trouble remembering my own. But I should not have asked—women have birthdays, men have ages. I want to know your birthday; I have no need to know the year.”

  “April twenty-second, Zebadiah—one day older than Shakespeare.”

  “‘Age could not wither her—’ Woman, you carry your years well.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “That snoopy question came from having concluded in my mind that you were twenty-six…figuring from the fact that you have a doctor’s degree. Although you look younger.”

  “I think twenty-six is a satisfactory age.”

  “I wasn’t asking,” I said hastily. “I got confused from knowing Hilda’s age…then hearing her say that she is—or claims to be—twenty years older than you. It did not jibe with my earlier estimate, based on your probable age on graduating from high school plus your two degrees.”

  Jake and Hilda had lingered at the pool while Jake washed his hands and rinsed from his body smears of alien ichor. Being less burdened, they climbed the path faster than we and came up behind us just as Deety answered,

  “Zebadiah, I never graduated from high school.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s right,” agreed her father. “Deety matriculated by taking College Boards. At fourteen. No problem since she stayed home and didn’t have to live in a dorm. Got her B.S. in three years…and that was a happy thing, as Jane lived to see Deety move the tassel from one side of her mortar board to the other. Jane in a wheelchair and happy as a child—her doctor said it couldn’t hurt her…meaning she was dying anyhow.” He added, “Had her mother been granted only three more years she could have seen Deety’s doctorate conferred, two years ago.”

  “Pop…sometimes you chatter.”

  “Did I say something out of line?”

  “No, Jake,” I assured him. “But I’ve just learned that I robbed the cradle. I knew I had but hadn’t realized how much. Deety darling, you are twenty-two.”

  “Is twenty-two an unsatisfactory age?”

  “No, my Princess. Just right.”

  “My Captain said that women have birthdays while men have ages. Is it permitted to inquire your age, sir? I didn’t pay close attention to that form we had to fill out, either.”

  I answered solemnly. “But Dejah Thoris knows that Captain John Carter is centuries old, cannot recall his childhood, and has always looked thirty years old.”

  “Zebadiah, if that is your age, you’ve had a busy thirty years. You said you left home when you graduated from high school, worked your way through college, spent three years on active duty, then worked your way through a doctor’s degree—”

  “A phony one!”

  “That doesn’t reduce required residence. Aunt Hilda says you’ve been a professor four years.”

  “Uh…will you settle for nine years older than you are?”

  “I’ll settle for whatever you say.”

  “He’s at it again,” put in Sharpie. “He was run off two other campuses. Co-ed scandals. Then he found that in California nobody cared, so he moved west.”

  I tried to look hurt. “Sharpie darling, I always married them. One gal turned out already to be married and in the other case the child wasn’t mine; she slipped one over on me.”

  “The truth isn’t in him, Deety. But he’s brave and he bathes every day and he’s rich—and we love him anyhow.”

  “The truth isn’t in you either, Aunt Hilda. But we love you anyhow. It says in ‘Little Women’ that a bride should be half her husband’s age plus seven years. Zebadiah and I hit close to that.”

  “A rule that makes an old hag out of me. Jacob, I’m just Zebbie’s age—thirty-one. But we’ve both been thirty-one for ages.”

  “I’ll bet he does feel aged after carrying that thing uphill. Atlas, can you support your burden while I get the garage open, a bench dragged out and covered? Or shall I help you put it down?”

  “I’d just have to pick it up again. But don’t dally.”

  XI

  “—citizens must protect themselves.”

  Zeb:

  I felt better after I got that “ranger’s” corpse dumped and the garage door closed, everyone indoors. I had told Hilda that I felt no “immediate” danger—but my wild talent does not warn me until the Moment of Truth. The “Blokes in the Black Hats” had us located. Or possibly had never lost us; what applies to human gangsters has little to do with aliens whose powers and motives and plans we had no way to guess.

  We might be as naive as a kitten who thinks he is hidden because his head is, unaware that his little rump sticks out.

  They were alien, they were powerful, they were multiple (three thousand? three million?—we didn’t know the Number of the Beast)—and they knew where we were. True, we had killed one—by luck, not by planning. That “ranger” would be missed; we could expect more to call in force.

  Foolhardiness has never appealed to me. Given a chance to run, I run. I don’t mean I’ll bug out on wing mate when the unfriendlies show up, and certainly not on a wife and unborn child. But I wanted us all to run—me, my wife, my blood brother who was also my father-in-law, and his wife, my chum Sharpie who was brave, practical, smart, and unsqueamish (that she would joke in the jaws of Moloch was not a fault but a source of esprit).

  I wanted us to go!—Tau axis, Teh axis, rotate, translate, whatever—anywhere not infested by gruesomes with green gore.

  I checked the gauge and felt better; Gay’s inner pressure had not dropped. Too much to expect Gay to be a spaceship—not equipped to scavenge and replenish air. But it was pleasant to know that she would hold pressure much longer than it would take us to scram for home if we had to—assuming that unfriendlies had not shot holes in her graceful shell.

  I went by the inside passageway into the cabin, used soap and hot water, rinsed off and did it again, dried down and felt clean enough to kiss my wife, which I did. Deety held onto me and reported.

  “Your kit is packed, sir. I’m finishing mine, the planned weight and space, and nothing but practical clothes—”

  “Sweetheart.”

  “Yes, Zebadiah?”

  “Take the clothes you were married in and mine too. Same for Jake and Hilda. And your father’s dress uniform. Or was it burned in Logan?”

  “But, Zebadiah, you emphasized rugged clothes.”

  “So I
did. To keep your mind on the fact that we can’t guess the conditions we’ll encounter and don’t know how long we’ll be gone or if we’ll be back. So I listed everything that might be useful in pioneering a virgin planet—since we might be stranded and never get home. Everything from Jake’s microscope and water-testing gear to technical manuals and tools. And weapons—and flea powder. But it’s possible that we will have to play the roles of ambassadors for humanity at the court of His Extreme Majesty, Overlord of Galactic Empires in thousandth-and-third continuum. We may need the gaudiest clothes we can whip up. We don’t know, we can’t guess.”

  “I’d rather pioneer.”

  “We may not have a choice. When you were figuring weights, do you recall spaces marked ‘Assigned mass such and such—list to come’?”

  “Certainly. Total exactly one hundred kilos, which seemed odd. Space slightly less than one cubic meter split into crannies.”

  “Those are yours, snubnose. And Pop or Hilda. Mass can be up to fifty percent over; I’ll tell Gay to trim to match. Got an old doll? A security blanket? A favorite book of poems? Scrapbook? Family photographs? Bring ’em all!”

  “Golly!” (I never enjoy looking at my wife quite so much as when she lights up and is suddenly a little girl.)

  “Don’t leave space for me. I have only what I arrived with. What about shoes for Hilda?”

  “She claims she doesn’t need any, Zebadiah—that her calluses are getting calluses on them. But I’ve worked out expedients. I got Pop some Dr. Scholl’s shoe liners when we were building; I have three pairs left and can trim them. Liners and enough bobby sox make her size three-and-half feet fit my clodhoppers pretty well. And I have a sentimental keepsake; Keds Pop bought me when I first went to summer camp, at ten. They fit Aunt Hilda.”

  “Good girl!” I added, “You seem to have everything in hand. How about food? Not stores we are carrying, I mean now. Has anybody thought about dinner? Killing aliens makes me hungry.”

  “Buffet style, Zebadiah. Sandwiches and stuff on the kitchen counter, and I thawed and heated an apple pie. I fed one sandwich to Hilda, holding it for her; she says she’s going to finish working, then scrub before she eats anything more.”