The Number of the Beast

XXXV

"It's a disturbing idea-"

Jake:

"Deety, how does it feel to say good-bye without getting kissed?"

"Zebadiah, I didn't make it possible. Lewis Carroll was terrified by females over the age of puberty."

"That's why I stayed close. Deety hon, if I had gone with Jake and Hilda, he would have left at once."

"I can't figure out how he got here in the first place," said my dear wife Hilda. "Lewis Carroll was never in Wonderland; he simply wrote about it. But this is Wonderland-unless rabbits in England wear waistcoats and watches."

"Aunt Hilda, who can possibly be as deeply inside a story as the person who writes it?"

"Hmm- I'll have to study that."

"Later, Sharpie," Zeb said. "Stand by to rotate. Mars, isn't it?"

"Right, Zebbie," Hilda agreed.

"Gay... Sagan!"

Mars-zero lay ahead, in half phase at the proper distance.

"Set!" Hilda reported. "To tenth universe, third group."

"Execute." It was another starry void with no familiar groupings; we ran through routine, Zeb logged it as "possible" and we moved on to the second of the third group-and I found myself facing the Big and Little Dippers. Again we ran through a routine tumble-but failed to find the Sun or any planets. I don't know the southern constellations too well but I spotted Crux and the Magellanic Clouds. To the north there could be no doubt about Cygnus and a dozen others.

Zeb said, "Where is Sol? Deety? Sharpie?"

"I haven't seen it, Zebadiah."

"Zebbie, don't go blaming me. I put it right back where I found it."

"Jake, I don't like this. Sharpie, are you set?"

"Set. Standing orders. Third group, third of three."

"Keep your finger near the button. How does this fit your theory? I don't recall listing a story that doesn't have the Solar System in it."

"Zebbie, it can't fit two of those left, could fit the others, and could fit half a dozen or more that got three votes. You said that about a dozen were tied in your mind. Were any of them space-travel stories?"

"Almost all."

"Then we could be in any world that takes our universe as a model but far enough from the Sun so that it appears as second or third magnitude. That wouldn't have to be far; our Sun is pretty faint. So this could be the Darkover universe, or Niven's Known Space, or Dr. Williamson's Legion of Space universe, or the Star Trek universe, or Anderson's world of the Polesotechnic League, or Dr. Smith's Galactic Patrol world. Or several more."

"Sharpie, what were two that this could not be?"

"King Arthur and his Knights, and the World of the Hobbits."

"If we find ourselves in either of those, we leave. No obstetricians. Jake, any reason to stay here longer?"

"None that I see," I answered.

"Captain Deety, I advise scram. Those space-opera universes can be sticky. I don't care to catch a photon torpedo or a vortex bomb or a negative-matter projectile, just through failure to identify ourselves promptly."

So we rotated.

This time we weren't merely close; we were on the ground. Charging straight at us was a knight in armour, lance couched in attack. I think it unlikely that a lance could damage Gay. But this "gentle knight" was unfriendly; I shouted, "Gay!-Zoom!"

Sighed with relief at sudden darkness and at the Captain's next words:

"Thanks, Pop. You were on your toes."

"Thank you. End of group three. Back to Mars? 5, A, G, A, N?"

"Let's get on with it," Zeb agreed. "All Hands-"

"Zebadiah!" my daughter interrupted. "Is that all you wish to see of King Arthur and his Knights?"

"Captain Deety, that wasn't one of King Arthur's Knights. He was wearing plated mail."

"That's my impression," my beloved agreed. "But I gave more attention to his shield. Field sable, argent bend sinister, in chief sun proper with crown, both or."

"Sir Modred," my daughter decided. "I knew he was a baddie! Zebadiah, we should have hit him with your L-gun."

"Killed that beautiful beer-wagon horse? Deety, that sort of armor wasn't made earlier than the fifteenth century, eight or nine centuries after the days of King Arthur."

"Then why was he carrying Sir Modred's shield?"

"Sharpie, was that Sir Modred's coat of arms?"

"I don't know; I blazoned what I saw. Aren't you nit-picking in objecting to plate armor merely because it's anachronistic?"

"But history shows that-"

"That's the point, Zebbie. Camelot isn't history; it's fiction."

Zeb said slowly, "Shut my big mouth."

"Zebbie, I venture to guess that the version of Camelot we blundered into is a patchwork of all our concepts of King Arthur and the Round Table. I picked up mine from Tennyson, revised them when I read 'Le Morte d'Arthur.' Where did you get yours?"

"Mark Twain gave me mine-'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.' Add some Prince Valiant. Jake?"

I said, "Zeb, there seems little doubt that there was a king or a general named Arthur or Arturius. But most people think of King Arthur from stories having little connection with any historical person. 'The Sword in the Stone' and 'The Once and Future King' are my favorites."

My daughter persisted, "I do believe in the Round Table, I do! We should go back and look! Instead of guessing."

"Captain Deety," her husband said gently, "the jolly, murderous roughnecks called the Knights of the Round Table are fun to read about but not to know socially. Nor are people the only dangers. There would be honest-to-God dragons, and wyverns, and malevolent magic-not the Glinda-the-Good variety. We've learned that these alternate worlds are as real as the one we came from. We don't need to relearn it by getting suddenly dead. That's my official advice. If you don't agree, will you please relieve me at the conn... Ma'am?"

"Zebadiah, you're being logical-a most unfair way to argue!"

"Jacob," said my wife, "suppose we were people who don't like fanciful stories. What sort of worlds would we find?"

"I don't know, Hilda. Probably only humdrum slice-of-life universes indistinguishable from the real world. Correction: Substitute 'Universe-zero' for 'real world'-because, as your theory requires, all worlds are equally real. Or unreal."

"Jacob, why do you call our universe 'universe-zero?"

"Eh....or convenience. Our point of origin."

"Didn't you tell me that no frame is preferred over any other? Each one to the Number of the Beast is equally zero in six axes?"

"Well... theory requires it."

"Then we are fiction in other universes. Have I reasoned correctly?"

I was slow in answering. "That seems to be a necessary corollary. It's a disturbing idea: that we ourselves are figments of imagination."

"I'm nobody's figment!" my daughter protested. "I'm real, I am! Pinch me!....uch! Zebadiah, not so hard!"

"You asked for it, dear," Zeb told her.

"My husband is a brute. And I've got a cruel stepmother just like Snow White. I mean 'Cinderella.' And my Pop thinks I'm imaginary! But I love you anyway because you're all I've got."

"If you fictional characters will pipe down, we'll get this show on the road. Stand by to rotate. Gay Sagan!"

Mars was where it should be. I felt more real.