The Number of the Beast

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Jake answered. “Zeb, what sort of ship could cause me to think I was high in the air when in fact I was about to pole-vault into the sea?”

  “I’ve got it!” said Deety.

  “I give up,” I admitted.

  “Tell him, Pop.”

  “One manned by sailors fifteen centimeters high.”

  I thought about it. We were approaching land; I told Jake to glide to two klicks by instrument and told Gay to hold us there—it seemed much higher. “If anyone runs across Dean Swift, will you give him a swift kick for me?”

  Deety said, “Zebadiah, do you suppose the land of the giants—Brobdingnag—is on this continent?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Why not, dear? It should be fun.”

  “We don’t have time to waste on either Lilliputians or giants. Neither would have obstetricians able to take care of you two. Sharpie, get ready to take us up a hundred thousand klicks. Then to rotate. Does anyone have any theory about what has been happening to us? Aside from Sharpie’s notion that we are dead and don’t know it?”

  “I have another theory, Zebbie.”

  “Give, Sharpie.”

  “Don’t laugh—because you told me that you and Jacob discussed the heart of it, the idea that human thought exists as quanta. I don’t know quanta from Qantas Airways, but I know that a quantum is an indivisible unit. You told me that you and Jacob had discussed the possibility that imagination had its own sort of indivisible units or quanta—you called them ‘fictons’—or was it ficta? Either way, the notion was that every story ever told—or to be told if there is a difference—exists somewhere in the Number of the Beast.”

  “But, Hilda my love, that was merely abstract speculation!”

  “Jacob, your colleagues regard this car as ‘abstract speculation.’ Didn’t you tell me that the human body is merely complex equations of wave forms? That was when I bit you—I don’t mind being a wave form, waves are pretty; I bit you for using the adverb ‘merely.’”

  “Zebadiah, there is a city on the left. Shouldn’t we look at it before we leave?”

  “Captain, you must decide that. You saw what a panic we caused in that ship. Imagine yourself fourteen centimeters tall and living in that city. Along comes a great sky monster and dives on you. Would you like it? How many little people will faint? How many will die of heart failure? How many are you willing to kill to satisfy your curiosity?” I added, “To those people we are monsters worse than ‘Black-Hat’ vermin.”

  “Oh, dear! You’re right, Zebadiah—dismally so. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Copilot, set to transit straight up one hundred thousand klicks.”

  “Transition ‘H’ axis, positive, vernier setting five—set!”

  “Execute.” I continued, “Captain, I’d like to sit here a while.”

  “Very well, Zebadiah.”

  “Sharpie, let’s hear your theory. Captain, I’ve been scared silly by too many narrow escapes. We know how to translate from one Earth-analog to the next; just use plenty of elbow room. But these rotations are making me white-haired. The laws of chance are going to catch up with us.”

  “Zebbie, I don’t think the laws of chance have anything to do with it. I don’t think we have been in any danger in any rotation.”

  “So? Sharpie, I’m about to swap jobs with you as quickly as I can get the Captain’s permission.”

  “No, no! I—”

  “Chicken!”

  “Zebbie, your hunches are part of why I say that the laws of chance are not relevant.”

  “Sharpie, statistical laws are the most firmly established of all natural laws.”

  “Do they apply in the Land of Oz?” asked Deety.

  “Uh—Damned if I know! Touché!”

  “Zeb, Hilda has not expressed it as I would; nevertheless I agree with her.) To call the equations used in statistics ‘laws of nature’ is a misnomer. Those equations measure the degree of our ignorance. When I flip a coin and say that the chance of heads or tails is fifty-fifty, I am simply declaring total ignorance as to outcome. If I knew all conditions, the outcome might be subject to precalculation. But we have experienced two universes having physical laws unlike those of our home universe.”

  “Three, Jacob. Lilliput makes three.”

  “I don’t follow you, my dear.”

  “The cube-square law that runs through all biology does not apply here. A human brain can’t be placed in a space the size of a thimble by our biophysical laws. But we’re getting away from the theory Zebbie wanted me to expound. Shall I go on?”

  “Yes,” Deety ruled. “Everybody shut up but Aunt Hilda. I’m zipping my own lip. Hillbilly—proceed.”

  “All right. It’s not chance that we have been in three universes—Inside-Out, the Land of Oz, and Lilliput—in…less than twenty-four hours, isn’t it, Deety?”

  “Less than twenty-one, Aunt Hilda.”

  “Thanks hon. It’s not chance that those three are ‘fictional’ universes—I have to call them that for lack of a better word—well known to each of us. By coincidence—and again I don’t have a good word but it’s not ‘chance’—all four of us are addicted to fanciful stories. Fantasy. Fairy tales. We all like the same sort of stories. How many of us like detective stories?”

  “Some—not all,” said Deety.

  “My sole loyalty is to Sherlock Holmes,” I said.

  “Waste of time,” said Jake.

  “I’d like to try an experiment,” Hilda went on. “Write down the twenty stories you have enjoyed most. Or groups of related stories—the Oz books would count as one, so would the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series, and so would the four voyages of ‘Gulliver’s Travels.’ Make them stories you reread for pleasure when you are too tired to tackle a new book.”

  “Sharpie, is it cheating to ask how you mean to use this?”

  “No, Zebbie. If my theory is right, the next time we rotate and find ourselves near a planet, it will turn out to be the scene of a story or group of stories that appears on all four lists. We’ll arrive high enough that Jacob will have plenty of time to level off but close enough that we can ground. But we will never rotate into a mass or any danger that we can’t handle. This isn’t chance; we haven’t been dealing with chance. The Land of Oz surprised me. Lilliput didn’t surprise me at all; I expected it. Or at least a place that all of us know through stories.”

  “How about those empty universes?” I demanded.

  “Maybe they are places about which stories will be written or maybe stories have already been told but aren’t favorites of us four, so we don’t emerge close to their scenes. But those are guesses. So far as my theory is concerned, such Universes are ‘null’—they don’t count one way or the other. We find our universes.”

  “Sharpie, you have just invented pantheistic multiperson solipsism. I didn’t think it was mathematically possible.”

  “Zeb, anything is mathematically possible.”

  “Thanks, Jacob. Zebbie, ‘solipsism’ is a buzz word. I’m saying that we’ve stumbled onto ‘The Door in the Wall,’ the one that leads to the Land of Heart’s Desire. I don’t know how and have no use for fancy rationalizations. I see a pattern; I’m not trying to explain it. It just is.”

  “How does that hollow world fit your theory?”

  “Well, Deety called it Pellucidar—”

  “It was!”

  “—but I’ve read dozens of stories about worlds underground; I’ll bet all of us have. Jules Verne, S. Fowler Wright, H. G. Wells, C. L. Moore, Lovecraft—all the great masters of fantasy have taken a crack at it. Please, can we stop talking? I want all four lists before we rotate again.”

  Jake changed attitude so that Lilliput’s planet was dead ahead and told Gay to hold it there. The planet looked very small, as if we were a million kilometers out—reasonable, I decided, and wrote down “The Dorsai yarns.”

  At last Deety announced, “I’m through, Aunt Hillbilly.”

  Soon after, her father
handed Sharpie his list. “Don’t count those I’ve lined out, dear—I had trouble holding it down.”

  “‘Twenty’ is arbitrary, Jacob. I can leave your extras in.”

  “No, dear, the four I eliminated do not stand as high as the twenty I retained.”

  After some pencil-chewing I announced, “Sharpie, I’m stuck at seventeen. Got a baker’s dozen more in mind, but no choice.”

  “Seventeen will do, Zebbie—if they are your prime favorites.”

  “They are.”

  Hilda accepted my list, ran her eye down it. “A psychoanalyst would have a wonderful time with these.”

  “Wait a half! Sharpie, if you’re going to let a shrink see those lists, I want mine back.”

  “Zebbie darling, I wouldn’t do that to you.” She added, “I need a few minutes to tally.”

  I glanced at Lilliput. “Need help?”

  “No. I’ve tallied a ‘one’ after all on my list. I’ve checked Deety’s against mine and tallied a ‘two’ where they match, and added to the bottom of my list, with one vote tallied against each, those she picked but I didn’t. I’m doing the same with Jacob’s list, tallying three’s and two’s and one’s. Then Zebbie and we’ll wind up with a four-vote list—unanimous—and a list with three each—and a list with two, and with one.”

  Sharpie kept busy some minutes, then took a fresh sheet, made a list, folded it. “This should be in a sealed envelope to establish my reputation as a fortuneteller. Zebbie, there are nine soi-disant fictional universes listed. Any close approach we make by rotation should be near one of them.”

  I said, “You included Pellucidar?”

  “Pellucidar got only two votes. I stick to my theory that the inside-out world is a composite of underground fantasies. But our vote identified that third universe—the blinding lights, the one that worried you about radiation.”

  “The hell you say!”

  “I think it did. Four votes for Doctor Isaac Asimov’s ‘Nightfall.’ I expected his Foundation stories to make it but they got only three votes. Too bad, because his library planet might be able to tell us what those vermin are, where they come from—and how to beat them.”

  “My fault, Aunt Hillbilly. Pop told me I should read the Foundation series…but I never did.”

  “Sharpie,” I said, “we can put you down in New York in five minutes. The Good Doctor is getting on in years—turns out less than a million words a year now—but still likes pretty girls. He must know whatever is in the Galactic Library; he invented it. So telephone him. Better yet, sit on his lap. Cry if necessary.”

  “Zebbie, if there is one place I’m certain is loaded with ‘Black Hat’ vermin, it’s New York City! You sit on his lap!”

  “Not me. If we learn how to delouse our home planet, I’ll work on a way to spread the word. But I’m number one on their death list.”

  “No, Jacob is.”

  “No, Sharpie. Jake and Deety are dead, you are kidnapped, and I’m marked down to be ‘terminated with extreme prejudice.’ But I’ll risk grounding on the Hudson River VTOL flat long enough for you to visit the Good Doctor. Your husband can escort you; I’m going to hide in the bathroom. I figure that is actually in Oz and therefore safe.”

  “Go lay an egg!”

  “Sharpie dear, none of us is going to Earth-zero. Hand that list to Deety; she won’t peek. Captain, shall we rotate? The Science Officer has me half convinced that we can get away with it; let’s do it before I lose my nerve. Fourth and last universe in the second group, isn’t it?” I asked Sharpie.

  “Yes, Zebbie.”

  “Anybody as chicken as I am, speak up!… Isn’t anybody going to get us out of this!… Execute!”

  XXXIV

  “—all my dreams do come true!”

  Zeb:

  Gay Deceiver was right side up five hundred meters above a sunlit, gentle countryside. Jake set her to cruise in a circle. I asked, “Are we back in Oz? Sharpie, check your setting.”

  “Not Oz, Zebbie. I’ve stuck to schedule.”

  “Okay. Does your magic list tell you where we are?”

  “If it’s one of the nine, then it’s—” Hilda wrote a word on a sheet, folded it, handed it to me. “Stick this in your pocket.”

  I tucked it away. “Jake, bounce us, then range-and-target to ground us in that meadow. We’ll test the air when we’re down. Safer.”

  Jake zeroed Gay in; she grounded. “Zeb,” he said fretfully, “how can I tell what juice we have? The gauge still reads ‘Capacity.’”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “All right. Has the Captain worked out that new scram?”

  “I think so, Pop. Take G.D. straight up a hundred thousand klicks, but do it in two words, in total darkness, or with eyes dazzled, or anything. As long as anyone can get out two syllables we’ll zip far enough away from trouble that we’ll have time to work out what to do next.”

  “Good enough. Can you program it before I open a door?”

  “I think so, Zebadiah. If she’s asleep, G.D. will wake up and do it at once.”

  “Okay, will you program it? Hilda, set up the same thing on your dials as a back-up. Meanwhile I’m going to give the plumbing a field test. Don’t touch the doors till I get back.”

  I returned in a few minutes. “Our magic space warp is still with us—don’t ask me why or I’ll scream. New program inserted?”

  “Yes, Zebadiah. On tell-me-three-times and protected against execution without the doors being closed and locked. I’ve written down the magic words. Here.” Deety handed me a scrap of paper.

  On it was: “Gay—Zoom!”

  “It’s the shortest program with an unusual monosyllable that I can think of.”

  “Its shortness may save our necks. Swap seats with me, Sharpie, it’s my turn to be pioneer mother. Everybody, hold your breath; I’m going to sniff the air.”

  “Zebbie, this planet is Earthlike to nine decimal places.”

  “Which gives me a cheap chance to play hero.” I opened her door a crack, sniffed.

  Shortly I said, “I feel okay. Anybody woozy?”

  “Open the door wide, Zebbie; this place is safe.”

  I did so and stepped out into a field of daisies; the others followed me. It certainly seemed safe—quiet, warm, peaceful, a meadow bounded by a hedge row and a stream.

  Suddenly a white rabbit came running past, headed for the hedge. He barely paused, pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket, glanced at it, then moaned, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” and ran even faster. Deety started after him.

  “Deety!” I yelled.

  She stopped short. “I want to find the rabbit hole.”

  “Then keep your eye on her. You’re not going down the hole.”

  “On whom?” Deety turned back toward the hedge row. A little girl in a pinafore was hurrying toward the spot where the rabbit had disappeared. “Oh. But it didn’t hurt her to go down the hole.”

  “No, but Alice had lots of difficulties before she got out. We haven’t time; this is not a place we can stay.”

  “Why not?”

  “Nineteenth-century England did not have advanced medicine.”

  “Zebbie,” put in Hilda, “this isn’t England. Read that slip.”

  I unfolded the scrap of paper, read: Wonderland. “Just so,” I agreed, and handed it to my wife. “But it is modeled on England in the eighteen-sixties. It either has no medicine, like Oz, or pre-Pasteur medicine. Possibly pre-Semmelweiss. Deety, do you want to die from childbed fever?”

  “No, I want to go to the Mad Tea Party.”

  “We can have a mad tea party; I went mad several universes back—and it’s time for lunch. Sharpie, you win the Order of Nostradamus with diamond cluster. May I ask two questions?”

  “One may always ask.”

  “Is H. P. Lovecraft on that list?”

  “He got only one vote, Zebbie. Yours.”

  “Chthulhu be thanked! Sharpie, his stories fascinate me the way sn
akes are said to fascinate birds. But I would rather be trapped with the King in Yellow than be caught up in the worlds of the Necronomicon. Uh…did any horrids get four votes?”

  “No, dear, the rest of us prefer happy endings.”

  “So do I! Especially when I’m in it. Did Heinlein get his name in the hat?”

  “Four votes, split. Two for his ‘Future History,’ two for ‘Stranger in a Strange Land.’ So I left him out.”

  “I didn’t vote for ‘Stranger’ and I’ll refrain from embarrassing anyone by asking who did. My God, the things some writers will do for money!”

  “Samuel Johnson said that anyone who wrote for any other reason was a fool.”

  “Johnson was a fat, pompous, gluttonous, dirty old fool who would have faded into the obscurity he so richly deserved had he not been followed around by a spit-licking sycophant. Spell that ‘Psycho-’, as in ‘Bloch.’” I added, “Did Poul Anderson get in? Or Niven?”

  “Zebbie, that’s far more than two questions.”

  “I haven’t even reached the second question…which is: What do we have for a mad tea party?”

  “Surprise! Glinda had a picnic basket placed in our dressing room.”

  “I missed it,” I admitted.

  “You didn’t look in the wardrobe.” Sharpie grinned. “Can sandwiches from Oz be eaten in Wonderland? Or will they ‘softly and silently vanish away’?”

  “‘Be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!’”

  Several hundred calories later I noticed a young man hovering nearby. He seemed to want to speak but was too diffident to do so. Deety jumped up, trotted toward him. “The Reverend Mister Dodgson, is it not? I’m Mrs. Zebadiah Carter.”

  He quickly removed his straw boater. “‘Mr. Dodgson,’ yes, uh, Mrs. Carter. Have we met?”

  “Long ago, before I was married. You are looking for Alice, are you not?”

  “Dear me! Why, yes, I am. But how—”

  “She went Down the Rabbit-Hole.”

  Dodgson looked relieved. “Then she will be back soon enough. I promised to return her and her sisters to Christ Church before dark.”

  “You did. I mean, ‘you will.’ Same thing, depending on the coordinates. Come meet my family. Have you had luncheon?”