The Number of the Beast

VI

Are men and women one race?

Hilda:

Deety and I washed dishes, then soaked in her tub and talked about husbands. We giggled, and talked with the frankness of women who trust each other and are sure that no men can overhear. Do men talk that openly in parallel circumstances? From all I have been able to learn in after-midnight horizontal conversations, all passion spent, men do not. Or not men I would take to bed. Whereas a "perfect lady" (which Jane was, Deety is, and I can simulate) will talk with another "perfect lady" she trusts in a way that would cause her father, husband, or son to faint.

I had better leave out our conversation; this memoir might fall into the hands of one of the weaker sex and I would not want his death on my conscience.

Are men and women one race? I know what biologists say-but history is loaded with "scientists" jumping to conclusions from superficial evidence. It seems to me far more likely that they are symbiotes. I am not speaking from ignorance; I was one trimester short of a B.S. in biology (and a straight-A student) when a "biology experiment" blew up in my face and caused me to leave school abruptly.

Not that I need that. degree- I've papered my private bath with honorary degrees, mostly doctorates. I hear that there are things no whore will do for money but I have yet to find anything that a university chancellor faced with a deficit will boggle at. The secret is never to set up a permanent fund but to dole it out when need is sharpest, once every academic year. Done that way, you not only own a campus but also the town cops learn that it's a waste of time to hassle you. A univer$ity alway$ $tand$ $taunchly by it$ $olvent a$$ociate$; that'$ the ba$ic $ecret of $chola$tic $ucce$$.

Forgive my digre$$ion; we were speaking of men and women. I am strong for women's rights but was never taken in by unisex nonsense. I don't yearn to be equal; Sharpie is as unequal as possible, with all the perks and bonuses and special privileges that come from being one of the superior sex. If a man fails to hold a door for me, I fail to see him and step on his instep. I feel no shame in making lavish use of the strongest muscles, namely male ones (but my own strongest muscle is dedicated to the service of men-noblesse oblige). I don't begrudge men one whit of their natural advantages as long as they respect mine. I am not an unhappy pseudomale; I am female and like it that way.

I borrowed makeup that Deety rarely uses, but I carry my own perfume in my purse and used it in the twenty-two classic places. Deety uses only the basic aphrodisiac: soap and water. Perfume on her would be gilding the lily; fresh out of a hot tub she smells like a harem. If I had her natural fragrance, I could have saved at least ten thousand newdollars over the years as well as many hours spent dabbing bait here and there.

She offered me a dress and I told her not to be silly; any dress of hers would fit me like a tent. "You put something bridal and frilly around your hips and lend me your boldest G-string job. Dear, I surprised you when I jockeyed you into taking off your halter, after telling you that you were wise not to rush it. But the chance showed up and I grabbed the ring on the fly. We've got our men gentled to nearly naked and we'll hold that gain. At first opportunity we'll get pants off all of us, too, without anything as childish as strip poker. Deety, I want us to be a solid family, and relaxed about it. So that skin doesn't mean sex, it just means we are home, en famille."

"Your skin is pretty sexy, Nanny Goat."

"Deety, do you think I'm trying to make a pass at Zebbie?"

"Heavens, no, Aunt Hilda. You would never do that."

"Piffle, dear. I don't have morals, just customs. I don't wait for a man to make a pass; they fumble around and waste time. But when I met him I picked Zebbie for a chum-so I gave him an opening; he made a polite pass, I carefully failed to see it, and that ended it. I'm sure he's as much fun on the workbench as you tell me he is-but bedmates are easy to find, while worthwhile male friends are scarce. Zebbie is one to whom I can holler for help in the middle of the night and be certain he'll rally around. I'm not going to let that change merely because a weird concatenation now makes him my son-in-law. Besides, Deety, although your old Aunt Sharpie may seem undignified, I refuse to be the campus widow who seduces younger men. Save for minor exceptions close to my age, I always have bedded older men. When I was your age, I tripped several three times my age. Educational."

"It certainly is! Aunt Hilda, I got ninety percent of my instruction two years ago-a widower three times my age. I was programming for him and we took shared time when we could get it, often after midnight. I didn't think anything of it until one night I was startled to find that I was helping him to take off my panties. Then I was still more surprised to learn how little I had learned in seven years. He gave me a tutored seminar, usually three times a week- all the time he was willing to spare me-for the next six months. I'm glad I got tutoring from an expert before last night rolled around-or Zebadiah would have found me a dead arse, willing but clumsy. I didn't tell this to my darling; I let him think he was teaching me."

"That's right, dear. Never tell a man anything he doesn't need to know, and lie with a straight face rather than hurt his feelings or diminish his pride."

"Aunt Nanny Goat, I just plain love you."

We quit yakking and looked for our men. Deety said that they were certain to be in the basement. "Aunt Hilda, I don't go there without invitation. It's Pop's sanctum sanctorum."

"You're warning me not to risk a faux pas?"

"I'm his daughter, you're his wife. Not the same."

"Well... he hasn't told me not to-and today he'll forgive me, if ever. Where do you hide the stairs?"

"That bookcase swings out."

"Be darned! For a so-called cabin this place is loaded with surprises. A bidet in each bath didn't startle me; Jane would have required them. Your walk-in freezer startled me only by being big enough for a restaurant. But a bookcase concealing a priest's hole-as Great-Aunt Nettie used to say, 'I do declare!"

"You should see our septic tank-yours, now."

"I've seen septic tanks. Pesky things-always need pumping at the most inconvenient time."

"This one won't have to be pumped. Over three hundred meters deep. An even thousand feet."

"For the love of- Why?"

"It's an abandoned mine shaft below us that some optimist dug a hundred years back. Here was this big hole, so Pop used it. There is a spring farther up the mountain. Pop cleaned that out, covered it, concealed it, put pipe underground, and we have lavish pure water under pressure. The rest of Snug Harbor Pop designed mostly from prefab catalogs, fireproof and solid and heavily insulated. We have-you have, I mean-this big fireplace and the little ones in the bedrooms, but you won't need them, other than for homeyness. Radiant heat makes it skin-comfortable even in a blizzard."

"Where do you get your power? From the nearest town?"

"Oh, no! Snug Harbor is a hideout, nobody but Pop and me-and now you and Zebadiah-knows it's here. Power packs, Aunt Hilda, and an inverter in a space behind the back wall of the garage. We bring in power packs ourselves, and take them out the same way. Private. Oh, the leasehold record is buried in a computer in Washington or Denver, and the Federal rangers know the leaseholds. But they don't see us if we see or hear them first. Mostly they cruise on past. Once one came by on horseback. Pop fed him beer out under the trees-and from outside this is just a prefab, a living room and two shedroof bedrooms. Nothing to show that important parts are underground."

"Deety, I'm beginning to think that this place-this cabin-cost more than my townhouse."

"Uh., probably."

"I think I'm disappointed. Sugar Pie, I married your papa because I love him and want to take care of him and promised Jane that I would. I've been thinking happily that my wedding present to my bridegroom would be his weight in bullion, so that dear man need never work again."

"Don't be disappointed, Aunt Hilda. Pop has to work; it's his nature. Me, too. Work is necessary to us. Without it, we're lost."

"Well... yes. But working because you want to is the best sort of play."

"Correct!"

"That's what I thought I could give Jacob. I don't understand it. Jane wasn't rich, she was on a scholarship. Jacob had no money-still a teaching fellow, a few months shy of his doctorate. Deety, Jacob's suit that he wore to be married in was threadbare. I know that he pulled up from that; he made full professor awfully fast. I thought it was that and Jane's good management."

"It was both."

"That doesn't account for this. Forgive me, Deety, but Utah State doesn't pay what Harvard pays."

"Pop doesn't lack offers. We like Logan. Both the town and the civilized behavior of Mormons. But- Aunt Hilda, I must tell you some things."

The child looked worried. I said, "Deety, if Jacob wants me to know something he'll tell me."

"Oh, but he won't and I must!"

"No, Deety!"

"Listen, please! When I said, 'I do,' I resigned as Pop's manager. When you said, 'I do,' the load landed on you. It has to be that way, Aunt Hilda. Pop won't do it; he has other things to think about, things that take genius. Mama did it for years, then I learned how, and now it's your job. Because it can't be farmed out. Do you understand accountancy?"

"Well, I understand it, I took a course in it. Have to understand it, or the government will skin you alive. But I don't do it, I have accountants for that- and smart shysters to keep it inside the law."

"Would it bother you to be outside the law? On taxes?"

"What? Heavens, no! But Sharpie wants to stay outside of jail-I detest an institutional diet."

"You'll stay out ofjail. Don't worry, Aunt Hilda-I'll teach you double-entry bookkeeping they don't teach in school. Very double. One set for the revenooers and another set for you and Jake."

"It's that second set that worries me. That one puts you in the pokey. Fresh air alternate Wednesdays."

"Nope. The second set is not on paper; it's in the campus computer at Logan."

"Worse!"

"Aunt Hilda, please! Certainly my computer address code is in the department's vault and an I.R.S. agent could get a court order. It wouldn't do him any good. It would spill out our first set of books while wiping every trace of the second set. Inconvenient but not disastrous. Aunt Hillbilly, I'm not a champion at anything else but I'm the best software artist inthe business. I

at your elbow until you are sure of yourself.

"Now about how Pop got rich- All the time he's been teaching he's also been inventing gadgets-as automatically as a hen lays eggs. A better can opener. A lawn irrigation system that does a better job, costs less, uses less water. Lots of things. But none has his name on it and royalties trickle back in devious ways.

"But we aren't freeloaders. Every year Pop and I study the Federal Budget and decide what is useful and what is sheer waste by fat-arsed chairwarmers and pork-barrel raiders. Even before Mama died we were paying more income tax than the total of Pop's salary, and we've paid more each year while I've been running it. It does take a bundle to run this country. We don't begrudge money spent on roads and public health and national defense and truly useful things. But we've quit paying for parasites wherever we can identify them.

"It's your job now, Aunt Hilda. If you decide that it's dishonest or too risky, I can cause the computer to make it all open and legal so smoothly that hankypanky would never show. It would take me maybe three years, and Pop would pay high capital gains. But you are in charge of Pop now."

"Deety, don't talk dirty."

"Dirty, how? I didn't even say 'spit."

"Suggesting that I would willingly pay what those clowns in Washington want to squeeze out of us. I would not be supporting so many accountants and shysters if I didn't think we were being robbed blind. Deety, how about being manager for all of us?"

"No, ma'am! I'm in charge of Zebadiah. I have my own interests to manage, too. Mama wasn't as poor as you thought. When I was a little girl, she came into a chunk from a trust her grandmother had set up. She and Pop gradually moved it over into my name and again avoided inheritance and estate taxes, all legal as Sunday School. When I was eighteen, I converted it into cash, then caused it to disappear. Besides that, I've been paying me a whopping salary as Pop's manager. I'm not as rich as you are, Aunt Hilda, and certainly not as rich as Pop. But I ain't hurtin'."

"Zebbie may be richer than all of us."

"You said last night that he was loaded but I didn't pay attention because I had already decided to marry him. But after experiencing what sort of car he drives I realize that you weren't kidding. Not that it matters. Yes, it did matter-it took both Zebadiah's courage and Gay Deceiver's unusual talents to save our lives."

"You may never find out how loaded Zebbie is, dear. Some people don't let their left hands know what their right hands are doing. Zebbie doesn't let his thumb know what his fingers are doing."

Deety shrugged. "I don't care. He's kind and gentle and he's a storybook hero who saved my life and Pop's and yours... and last night he proved to me that life is worth living when I've been uncertain about it since Mama had to leave us. Let's go find our men, Aunt Nanny Goat. I'll risk Pop's Holy of Holies if you'll go first."

"Suits. Lay on your duff and cursed be he who first cries, 'Nay, enough."

"I don't think they're interested in that now, Nanny Goat."

"Spoilsport. How do you swing back this bookcase?"

"Switch on the cove lights, then turn on the cold water at the sink. Then switch off the cove lights, then turn off the water-in that order."

"Curiouser and curiouser," said Alice."

The bookcase closed behind us and was a door with a knob on the upper landing side. The staircase was wide, treads were broad and nonskid, risers gentle, guard rails on both sides-not the legbreaker most houses have as cellar stairs. Deety went down beside me, holding my hand like a child needing reassurance.

The room was beautifully lighted, well ventilated, and did not seem like a basement. Our men were at the far end, bent over a table, and did not appear to notice us. I looked around for a time machine, could not spot it-at least not anything like George Pal's or any I had ever read about. All around was machinery. A drill press looks the same anywhere and so does a lathe, but others were strange-except that they reminded me of machine shops.

My husband caught sight of us, stood up, and said, "Welcome, ladies!"

Zebbie turned his head and said sharply, "Late to class! Find seats, no whispering during the lecture, take notes; there will be a quiz at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. If you have questions, raise your hands and wait to be called on. Anyone who misbehaves will remain after class and wash the chalk boards."

Deety stuck out her tongue, sat down quietly. I rubbed his brush cut and whispered an indecency into his ear. Then I kissed my husband and sat down.

My husband resumed talking to Zebbie. "I lost more gyroscopes that way."

I held up my hand. My husband said, "Yes, Hilda dear?"

"Monkey Ward's sells gyro tops-I'll buy you a gross."

"Thank you, dearest, but these weren't that sort. They were made by Sperry Division of General Foods."

"So I'll get them from Sperry."

"Sharpie," put in Zeb, "you're honing to clean the erasers, too."

"Just a moment, Son. Hilda may be the perfect case to find out whether or not what I have tried to convey to you-and which really can't be conveyed save in the equations your cousin Zebulon used, a mathematics you say is unfamiliar to you-"

"It is!"

"-but which you appear to grasp as mechanics. Would you explain the concept to Hilda? If she understands it, we may hypothesize that a continua craft can be designed to be operated by a nontechnical person."

"Sure," I said scornfully, "poor little me, with a button for a head. I don't have to know where the electrons go to use television or holovision. I just twist knobs. Go ahead, Zebbie. Take a swing at it, I dare you."

"I'll try," Zebbie agreed. "But, Sharpie, don't chatter and keep your comments to the point. Or I'll ask Pop to give you a fat lip."

"He wouldn't dast~"

"So? I'm going to give him a horsewhip for a wedding present-besides the Weird Tales, Jake; you get those too. But you need a whip. Attention, Sharpie."

"Yes, Zebbie. And the same to you doubled."

"Do you know what 'precess' means?"

"Certainly. Precession of the equinoxes. Means that Vega will be the North Star when I'm a great-grandmother. Thirty thousand years or some such."

"Correct in essence. But you're not even a mother yet."

"You don't know what happened last night. I'm an expectant mother. Jacob doesn't dare use a whip on me."

My husband looked startled but pleased-and I felt relieved. Zebbie looked at his own bride. Deety said solemnly, "It is possible, Zebadiah. Neither of us was protected, each was on or close on ovulation. Hilda is blood type B Rhesus positive and my father is AB positive. I am A Rh positive. May I inquire yours, sir?"

"I'm an 0 positive. Uh.... may have shot you down the first salvo."

"It would seem likely. But-does this meet with your approval?"

"Approval'!" Zebbie stood up, knocking over his chair. "Princess, you could not make me happier! Jake! This calls for a toast!"

My husband stopped kissing me. "Unanimous! Daughter, is there champagne chilled?"

"Yes, Pop."

"Hold it!" I said. "Let's not get excited over a normal biological function. Deety and I don't know that we caught; we just hope so. And-"

"So we try again," Zebbie interrupted. "What's your calendar?"

"Twenty-eight and a half days, Zebadiah. My rhythm is pendulum steady."

"Mine's twenty-seven; Deety and I just happen to be in step. But I want that toast at dinner and a luau afterwards; it might be the last for a long time. Deety, do you get morning sick?"

"I don't know; I've never been pregnant. before."

"I have and I do and it's miserable. Then I lost the naked little grub after trying hard to keep it. But I'm not going to lose this one! Fresh air and proper exercise and careful diet and nothing but champagne for me tonight, then not another drop until I know. In the meantime- Professors, may I point out that class is in session? I want to know about time machines and I'm not sure I could understand with champagne buzzing my buttonhead."

"Sharpie, sometimes you astound me."

"Zebbie, sometimes I astound myself. Since my husband builds time machines, I want to know what makes them tick. Or at least which knobs to turn. He might be clawed by the Bandersnatch and I would have to pilot him home. Get on with your lecture."

"I read you loud and clear."

But we wasted ("U'wasted?") a few moments because everybody had to kiss everybody else-even Zebbie and my husband pounded each other on the back and kissed both cheeks Latin style. Zebbie tried to kiss me as if I were truly his mother-in-law but I haven't kissed that way since junior high. Once I was firm with him he gave in and kissed me better than he ever had before-whew! I'm certain Deety is right but I won't risk worrying my older husband over a younger man and I'd be an idiot to risk competing with Deety's teats et cetera when all I have is fried eggs and my wonderful old goat seems so pleased with my et cetera.

Class resumed. "Sharpie, can you explain precession in gyroscopes?"

"Well, maybe. Physics One was required but that was a long time ago. Push a gyroscope and it doesn't go the way you expect, but ninety degrees from that direction so that the push lines up with the spin. Like this-" I pointed a forefinger like a little boy going: "Bang!-you're dead!"

"My thumb is the axis, my forefinger represents the push, the other fingers show the rotation."

"Go to the head of the class. Now-think hard!-suppose we put a gyroscope in a frame, then impress equal forces at all three spatial coordinates at once; what would it do?"

I tried to visualize it. "I think it would either faint or drop dead."

"A good first hypothesis. According to Jake, it disappears."

"They do disappear, Aunt Hilda. I watched it happen several times."

"But where do they go?"

"I can't follow Jake's math; I have to accept his transformations without proof. But it is based on the notion of six space-time coordinates, three of space, the usual three that we see-marked x, y, and z-and three time coordinates:

one marked 't' like this-" (t) "-and one marked 'tau,' Greek alphabet-" ('i-) "-and the third from the Cyrillic alphabet, 'teh'-" (rn)

"Looks like an 'm' with a macron over it."

"So it does, but it's what the Russians use for 't."

"No, the Russians use 'chai' for tea. In thick glasses with strawberry jam."

"Stow it, Sharpie. So we have x, y, and z; t, tau, and teh, six dimensions. It is basic to the theory that all are at right angles to each other, and that any one may be swapped for any of the others by rotation-or that a new coordinate may be found (not a seventh but replacing any of the six) by translation-say 'tau' to 'tau prime' by displacement along 'x."

"Zebbie, I think I fell off about four coordinates back."

My husband suggested, "Show her the caltrop, Zeb."

"Good idea." Zeb accepted a widget from my husband, placed it in front of me. It looked like jacks I used to play with as a little girl but not enough things sticking out_four instead of six. Three touched the table, a tripod; the fourth stuck straight up.

Zeb said, "This is a weapon, invented centuries ago. The points should be sharp but these have been filed down." He flipped it, let it fall to the table. "No matter how it falls, one prong is vertical. Scatter them in front of cavalry; the horses go down-discouraging. They came into use again in Wars One and Two against anything with pneumatic tires-bicycles, motorcycles, lorries, and so forth. Big enough, they disable tanks and tracked vehicles. A small sort can be whittled from thorn bushes for guerrilla warfare-usually poisoned and quite nasty.

"But here this lethal toy is a geometrical projection, a drawing of the coordinates of a four-dimensional space-time continuum. Each spike is exactly ninety degrees from every other spike."

"fliit +h~~7 ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~, mrn~ fh,iy, ~ ricj1,t ,it,crlt~ '~

"I said it was a projection. Sharpie, it's an isometric projection of fourdimensional coordinates in three-dimensional space. That distorts the angles....nd the human eye is even more limited. Cover one eye and hold still and you see only two dimensions. The illusion of depth is a construct of the brain."

"I'm not very good at holding still-"

"No, she isn't," agreed my bridegroom whom I love dearly and at that instant could have choked.

"But I can close both eyes and feel three dimensions with my hands."

"A good point. Close your eyes and pick this up and think of the prongs as the four directions of a four-dimensional space. Does the word tesseract mean anything to you?"

"My high school geometry teacher showed us how to construct them-projections-with modeling wax and toothpicks. Fun. I found other four-dimensional figures that were easy to project. And a number of ways to project them."

"Sharpie, you must have had an exceptional geometry teacher."

"In an exceptional geometry class. Don't faint, Zebbie, but I was grouped with what they called 'overachievers' after it became 'undemocratic' to call them 'gifted children."

"Be durned! Why do you always behave like a fritterhead?"

"Why don't you ever look beneath the surface, young man! I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke. That doesn't mean I don't read and can't think. I read everything from Giblett to Hoyle, from Sartre to Pauling. I read in the tub, I read on the john, I read in bed, I read when I eat alone, and I would read in my sleep if I could keep my eyes open. Deety, this is proof that Zebbie has never been in my bed: the books downstairs are display; the stuff I read is stacked in my bedroom."

"Deety, did you think I had been sleeping with Sharpie?"

"No, Zebadiah."

"And you never will! Deety told me what a sex maniac you are! You lay your lecherous hands on me and I'll scream for Jacob and he'll beat you to a pulp."

"Don't count on it, dear one," my husband said mildly. "Zeb is bigger and younger and stronger than I... and if I found it needful to try, Deety would cry and beat me to a pulp. Son, I should have warned you: my daughter is vicious at karate. The killer instinct."

"Thanks. Forewarned, forearmed. I'll use a kitchen chair in one hand, a revolver in the second, and a whip in the other, just as I used to do in handling the big cats for Ringling, Barnum, and Bailey."

"That's three hands," said Deety.

"I'm four-dimensional, darling. Professor, we can speed up this seminar; we've been underrating our overachiever. Hilda is a brain."

"Zebbie, can we kiss and make up?"

"Class is in session."

"Zebadiah, there is always time for that. Right, Pop?"

"Ki~ hc~v Smi nr Qhp'll sulk "

"I don't sulk, I bite."

"I think you're cute, too," Zebbie answered, grabbed me by both shoulders, dragged me over the table, and kissed me hard. Our teeth grated and my nipples went spung! Sometimes I wish I weren't so noble.

He dropped me abruptly and said, "Attention, class. The two prongs of the caltrop painted blue represent our three-dimensional space of experience. The third prong painted yellow is the t-time we are used to. The red fourth prong simulates both Tau-time and Teh-time, the unexplored time dimensions necessary to Jake's theory. Sharpie, we have condensed six dimensions into four, then we either work by analogy into six, or we have to use math that apparently nobody but Jake and my cousin Ed understands. Unless you can think of some way to project six dimensions into three-you seem to be smart at such projections."

I closed my eyes and thought hard. "Zebbie, I don't think it can be done. Maybe Escher could have done it."

"It can be done, my dearest," answered my dearest, "but it is unsatisfactory. Even with a display computer with capacity to subtract one or more dimensions at a time. A superhypertesseract-a to the sixth power-has too many lines and corners and planes and solids and hypersolids for the eye to grasp. Cause the computer to subtract dimensions and what you have left is what you already knew. I fear it is an innate incapacity of visual conception in the human brain."

"I think Pop is right," agreed Deety. "I worked hard on that program. I don't think the late great Dr. Marvin Minsky could have done it better in flat projection. Holovision? I don't know. I would like to try if I ever get my hands on a computer with holovideo display and the capacity to add, subtract, and rotate six coordinates."

"But why six dimensions?" I asked. "Why not five? Or even four, since you speak of rotating them interchangeably."

"Jake?" said Zeb.

My darling looked fussed. "It bothered me that a space-time continuum seemed to require three space dimensions but only one time dimension. Granted that the universe is what it is, nevertheless nature is filled with symmetries. Even after the destruction of the parity principle, scientists kept finding new ones. Philosophers stay wedded to symmetry-but I don't count philosophers."

"Of course not," agreed Zeb. "No philosopher allows his opinions to be swayed by facts-he would be kicked out of his guild. Theologians, the lot of them."

"I concur. Hilda my darling, after I found a way to experiment, it turned out that six dimensions existed. Possibly more-but I see no way to reach them."

"Let me see," I said. "If I understood earlier, each dimension can be swapped for any other."

"By ninety-degree rotation, yes."

"Wouldn't that be the combinations taken four at a time out of a set of six? How many is that?"

"Fifteen," Zebbie answered.

"Goodness! Fifteen whole universes? And we use only one?"

"No, no, my darling! That would be ninety-degree rotations of one Euclidean universe. But our universe, or universes, has been known to be non-Euclidean at least since 1919. Or 1886 if you prefer. I stipulate that cosmology is an imperfect discipline, nevertheless, for considerations that I cannot state in nonmathematical terms, I was forced to assume a curved space of positive radius-that is to say, a closed space. That makes the universes possibly accessible to use either by rotation or by translation this number." My husband rapidly wrote three sixes.

"Six sixty-six," I said wonderingly. "The Number of the Beast."

"Eh? Oh! The Revelation of Saint John the Divine. But I scrawled it sloppily. You took it that I wrote this: "666" But what I intended to write was this:

666 ~ Six raised to its sixth power, and the result in turn raised to its sixth power. That number is this:" 1.03144 + X 10~~ "-or written in full:" 10,314,424,798,490,535,546,171,949,056 "-or more than ten million sextillion universes in our group."

What can one say to that? Jacob went on, "Those universes are our nextdoor neighbors, one rotation or one translation away. But if one includes comb inations of rotation and translation-think of a hyperplane slicing through superhypercontinua not at the point of here-now-the total becomes indenumerable. Not infinity-infinity has no meaning. Uncountable. Not subject to manipulation by mathematics thus far invented. Accessible to continua craft but no known way to count them."

"Pop-"

"Yes, Deety?"

"Maybe Aunt Hilda hit on something. Agnostic as you are, you nevertheless keep the Bible around as history and poetry and myth."

"Who said I was agnostic, my daughter?"

"Sorry, sir. I long ago reached that conclusion because you won't talk about

it. Wrong of me. Lack of data never justifies a conclusion. But this key number-one-point-oh-three-one-four-four-plus times ten to its twenty-eighth power-perhaps that is the 'Number of the Beast."

"What do you mean, Deety?"

"That Revelation isn't history, it's not good poetry, and it's not myth. There must have been some reason for a large number of learned men to include it- while chucking out several dozen gospels. Why not make a first hypothesis with Occam's Razor and read it as what it purports to be? Prophecy."

"Hmm. The shelves under the stairs, next to Shakespeare. The King James version, never mind the other three."

Deety was back in a moment with a well-worn black book-which surprised me. I read the Bible for my own reasons but it never occurred to me that Jacob would, We always marry strangers.

"Here," said Deety. "Chapter thirteen, verse eighteen: 'Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."

"That can't be read as exponents, Deety."

"But this is a translation, Pop. Wasn't the original in Greek? I don't remember when exponents were invented but the Greek mathematicians of that time certainly understood powers. Suppose the original read 'Zeta, Zeta, Zeta!'-and those scholars, who weren't mathematicians, mistranslated it as six hundred and sixty-six?"

"Uh....oondrift, Daughter."

"Who taught me that the world is not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we can imagine? Who has already taken me into two universes that are not this one... and brought me safely home?"

"Wait a half!" Zebbie said. "You and Pop have already tried the time-space machine?"

"Didn't Pop tell you? We made one minimum translation. We didn't seem to have gone anywhere and Pop thought he had failed. Until I tried to look up a number in the phone book. No 'J' in the book. No 'J' in the Britannica. No 'J' in any dictionary. So we popped back in, and Pop returned the verniers to zero, and we got out, and the alphabet was back the way it ought to be and I stopped shaking. But our rotation was even more scary and we almost died. Out in space with blazing stars-but air was leaking out and Pop just barely put it back to zero before we passed out... and came to, back here in Snug Harbor."

"Jake," Zebbie said seriously, "that gadget has got to have more fail-safes, in series with deadman switches for homing." He frowned. "I'm going to keep my eye open for both numbers, six sixty-six and the long one. I trust Deety's hunches. Deety, where is the verse with the description of the Beast? It's somewhere in the middle of the chapter."

"Here. '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."

"Hmm- I don't know how dragons speak. But if something comes up out of the earth and has two horns... and I see or hear either number-I'm going to assume that he has a 'Black Hat' and try to do unto him before he does unto us. Deety, I'm peaceable by policy... but two near misses is too many. Next time I shoot first."

I would as lief Zebbie hadn't mentioned "Black Hats." Hard to believe that someone was trying to kill anyone as sweet and innocent and harmless as my darling Jacob. But they were-and we knew it.

I said, "Where is this time machine? All I've seen is a claptrap."

'Caltrop,' Aunt Hilda. You're looking at the space-time machine."

"Huh? Where? Why aren't we in it and going somewhere fast? I don't want my husband killed; he's practically brand-new. I expect to get years of wear out of him."

"Sharpie, stop the chatter," Zebbie put in. "It's on that bench, across the table from you."

"All I see is a portable sewing machine."

"That's it."

"What? How do you get inside? Or do you ride it like a broom?"

"Neither. You mount it rigidly in a vehicle-one airtight and watertight by strong preference. Pop had it mounted in their car-not quite airtight and now kaputt. Pop and I are going to mount it in Gay Deceiver, which is airtight. With better fail-safes."

"Much better fail-safes, Zebbie," I agreed.

"They will be. I find that being married makes a difference. I used to worry about my own skin. Now I'm worried about Deety's. And yours. And Pop's. All four of us."

"Hear, hear!" I agreed. "All for one, and one for all!"

"Yup," Zebbie answered. "Us four, no more. Deety, when's lunch?"