The Number of the Beast Read online

  Our hostess converged on the row. “Yes, Deety? Why did you stop them, darling? You didn’t give us time to get bets down.” Fights were no novelty at “Sharp” Corners’ parties. Her food and liquor were lavish, the music always live; her guests were often eccentric but never dull—I had been surprised at the presence of N. O. Brain.

  I now felt that I understood it: a planned hypergolic mixture.

  Deety ignored her questions. “Will you excuse Pop and me and Mr. Carter? Something urgent has come up.”

  “You and Jake may leave if you must. But you can’t drag Zebbie away. Deety, that’s cheating.”

  Deety looked at me. “May I tell?”

  “Eh? Certainly!”

  That bliffy “Brainy” picked this moment to interrupt. “Mrs. Corners, Doctor Burroughs can’t leave until he apologizes! I insist. My privilege!”

  Our hostess looked at him with scorn. “Merde, Professor. I’m not one of your teaching fellows. Shout right back at Jake Burroughs if you like. If your command of invective equals his, we’ll enjoy hearing it. But just one more word that sounds like an order to me or to one of my guests—and out you go! Then you had best go straight home; the Chancellor will be trying to reach you.” She turned her back on him. “Deety, you started to add something?”

  “Sharp” Corners can intimidate Internal Revenue agents. She hadn’t cut loose on “Brainy”—just a warning shot across his bow. But from his face one would have thought she had hulled him. However, her remark to Deety left me no time to see whether he would have a stroke.

  “Not Deety, Hilda. Me. Zeb.”

  “Quiet, Zebbie. Whatever it is, the answer is No. Deety? Go ahead, dear.”

  Hilda Corners is related to that famous mule. I did not use a baseball bat because she comes only up to my armpits and grosses forty-odd kilos. I picked her up by her elbows and turned her around, facing me. “Hilda, we’re going to get married.”

  “Zebbie darling! I thought you would never ask.”

  “Not you, you old harridan. Deety. I proposed, she accepted; I’m going to nail it down before the anesthetic wears off.”

  Hilda looked thoughtfully interested. “That’s reasonable.” She craned her neck to look at Deety. “Did he mention his wife in Boston, Deety? Or the twins?”

  I set her back on her feet. “Pipe down, Sharpie; this is serious. Doctor Burroughs, I am unmarried, in good health, solvent, and able to support a family. I hope this meets with your approval.”

  “Pop says Yes,” Deety answered. “I hold his power of attorney.”

  “You pipe down, too. My name is Carter, sir—Zeb Carter. I’m on campus; you can check my record. But I intend to marry Deety at once, if she will have me.”

  “I know your name and record, sir. It doesn’t require my approval; Deety is of age. But you have it anyhow.” He looked thoughtful. “If you two are getting married at once, you’ll be too busy for shop talk. Or would you be?”

  “Pop—let it be; it’s all set.”

  “So? Thank you, Hilda, for a pleasant evening. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “You’ll do no such thing; you’ll come straight back and give me a full report. Jake, you are not going on their honeymoon—I heard you.”

  “Aunt Hilda—please! I’ll manage everything.”

  We were out the side door close on schedule. At the parking lot there was a bobble: which heap, mine or theirs. Mine is intended for two but can take four. The rear seats are okay for two for short trips. Theirs was a four-passenger family saloon, not fast but roomy—and their luggage was in it. “How much luggage?” I asked Deety, while I visualized two overnight bags strapped into one back seat with my prospective father-in-law stashed in the other.

  “I don’t have much, but Pop has two big bags and a fat briefcase. I had better show you.”

  (Damn.) “Perhaps you had better.” I like my own rig, I don’t like to drive other people’s cars, and, while Deety probably handled controls as smoothly as she danced, I did not know that she did—and I’m chicken. I didn’t figure her father into the equation; trusting my skin to his temper did not appeal. Maybe Deety would settle for letting him trail us—but my bride-to-be was going to ride with me! “Where?”

  “Over in the far corner. I’ll unlock it and turn on the lights.” She reached into her father’s inside jacket pocket, took out a Magic Wand.

  “Wait for baby!”

  The shout was from our hostess. Hilda was running down the path from her house, purse clutched in one hand and about eight thousand newdollars of sunset mink flying like a flag from the other.

  So the discussion started over. Seems Sharpie had decided to come along to make certain that Jake behaved himself and had taken just long enough to tell Max (her bouncer-butler-driver) when to throw the drunks out or cover them with blankets, as needed.

  She listened to Deety’s summary, then nodded. “Got it. I can handle yours, Deety; Jake and I will go in it. You ride with Zebbie, dear.” She turned to me. “Hold down the speed, Zebbie, so that I can follow. No tricks, Buster. Don’t try to lose us or you’ll have cops busting out of your ears.”

  I turned my sweet innocent eyes toward her. “Why, Sharpie darling, you know I wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  “You’d steal city hall if you could figure a way to carry it. Who dumped that load of lime Jello into my swimming pool?”

  “I was in Africa at that time, as you know.”

  “So you say. Deety darling, keep him on a short leash and don’t feed him meat. But marry him; he’s loaded. Now where’s that radio link? And your car.”

  “Here,” said Deety, pointed the Magic Wand and pressed the switch.

  I gathered all three into my arms and dived. We hit the ground as the blast hit everything else. But not us. The blast shadow of other cars protected us.

  III

  “—Professor Moriarty isn’t fooled—”

  Zeb:

  Don’t ask me how. Ask a trapeze artist how he does a triple ’sault. Ask a crapshooter how he knows when he’s “hot.” But don’t ask me how I know it’s going to happen just before it hits the fan.

  It doesn’t tell me anything I don’t need to know. I don’t know what’s in a letter until I open it (except the time it was a letter bomb). I have no precognition for harmless events. But this split-second knowledge when I need it has kept me alive and relatively unscarred in an era when homicide kills more people than does cancer and the favorite form of suicide is to take a rifle up some tower and keep shooting until the riot squad settles it.

  I don’t see the car around the curve on the wrong side; I automatically hit the ditch. When the San Andreas Fault cut loose, I jumped out a window and was in the open when the shock arrived—and didn’t know why I had jumped.

  Aside from this, my E.S.P. is erratic; I bought it cheap from a war-surplus outlet.

  I sprawled with three under me. I got up fast, trying to avoid crushing them. I gave a hand to each woman, then dragged Pop to his feet. No one seemed damaged. Deety stared at the fire blazing where their car had been, face impassive. Her father was looking at the ground, searching. Deety stopped him. “Here, Pop.” She put his glasses back on him.

  “Thank you, my dear.” He started toward the fire.

  I grabbed his shoulder. “No! Into my car—fast!”

  “Eh? My briefcase—could have blown clear.”

  “Shut up and move! All of you!”

  “Do it, Pop!” Deety grabbed Hilda’s arm. We stuffed the older ones into the after space; I shoved Deety into the front passenger seat and snapped: “Seat belts!” as I slammed the door—then was around to the left so fast that I should have caused a sonic boom. “Seat belts fastened?” I demanded as I fastened my own and locked the door.

  “Jake’s is fastened and so is mine, Zebbie dear,” Hilda said cheerfully.

  “Belt tight, door locked,” Deety reported.

  The heap was hot; I had left it on trickle—what use is a fast car that won’t
go scat? I switched from trickle to full, did not turn on lights, glanced at the board and released the brake.

  It says here that duos must stay grounded inside city limits—so I was lifting her nose before she had rolled a meter and she was pointed straight up as we were clearing the parking lot.

  Half a klick straight up while the gee meter climbed—two, three, four—I let it reach five and held it, not being sure what Pop’s heart would take. When the altimeter read four klicks, I cut everything—power, transponder, the works—while hitting a button that dropped chaff, and let her go ballistic. I didn’t know that anyone was tracking us—I didn’t want to find out.

  When the altimeter showed that we had topped out, I let the wings open a trifle. When I felt them bite air, I snap-rolled onto her belly, let wings crawl out to subsonic aspect and let her glide. “Everybody okay?”

  Hilda giggled. “Whoops, dear! Do that again! This time, somebody kiss me.”

  “Pipe down, you shameless old strumpet. Pop?”

  “I’m okay, son.”

  “Deety?”

  “Okay here.”

  “Did that fall in the parking lot hurt you?”

  “No, sir. I twisted in the air and took it on one buttock while getting Pop’s glasses. But next time put a bed under me, please. Or a wrestling mat.”

  “I’ll remember.” I switched on radio but not transponder, tried all police frequencies. If anyone had noticed our didoes, they weren’t discussing it on the air. We were down to two klicks; I made an abrupt wingover to the right, then switched on power. “Deety, where do you and your Pop live?”

  “Logan, Utah.”

  “How long does it take to get married there?”

  “Zebbie,” Hilda cut in, “Utah has no waiting time—”

  “So we go to Logan.”

  “—but does require blood test. Deety, do you know Zebbie’s nickname around campus? The Wasp. For ‘Wassermann Positive.’ Zebbie, everybody knows that Nevada is the only state that offers twenty-four-hour service, no waiting time, no blood test. So point this bomb at Reno and sign off.”

  “Sharpie darling,” I said gently, “would you like to walk home from two thousand meters?”

  “I don’t know; I’ve never tried it.”

  “That’s an ejection seat…but no parachutes.”

  “Oh, how romantic! Jake darling, we’ll sing the Liebestod on the way down—you sing tenor, I’ll force a soprano and we’ll die in each other’s arms. Zebbie, could we have more altitude? For the timing.”

  “Doctor Burroughs, gag that hitchhiker. Sharpie, Liebestod is a solo.”

  “Picky, picky! Isn’t dead-on-arrival enough? Jealous because you can’t carry a tune? I told Dicky Boy that should be a duet and Cosima agreed with me—”

  “Sharpie, button your frimpin’ lip while I explain. One: Everybody at your party knows why we left and will assume that we headed for Reno. You probably called out something to that effect as you left—”

  “I believe I did. Yes, I did.”

  “Shut up. Somebody made a professional effort to kill Doctor Burroughs. Not just kill but overkill; that combo of high explosive and Thermit was intended to leave nothing to analyze. But it is possible that no one saw us lift. We were into this go-wagon and I was goosing it less than thirty seconds after that booby trap exploded. Innocent bystanders would look at the fire, not at us. Guilty bystanders—There wouldn’t be any. A professional who booby-traps a car either holes up or crosses a state line and gets lost. The party or parties who paid for the contract may be nearby, but if they are, Hilda, they’re in your house.”

  “One of my guests?”

  “Oh, shut it, Sharpie; you are never interested in the morals of your guests. If they can be depended on to throw custard pies or do impromptu strips or some other prank that will keep your party from growing dull, that qualifies them. However, I am not assuming that the boss villain was at your party; I am saying that he would not be lurking where the Man might put the arm on him. Your house would be the best place to hide and watch the plot develop.

  “But, guest or not, he was someone who knew that Doctor Burroughs would be at your party. Hilda, who knew that key fact?”

  She answered with uncustomary seriousness. “I don’t know, Zebbie. I would have to think.”

  “Think hard.”

  “Mmm, not many. Several were invited because Jake was coming—you, for example—”

  “I became aware of that.”

  “—but you weren’t told that Jake would be present. Some were told—‘No Brain,’ for example—but I can’t imagine that old fool booby-trapping a car.”

  “I can’t either, but killers don’t look like killers; they look like people. How long before the party did you tell ‘Brainy’ that Pop would be present?”

  “I told him when I invited him. Mmm, eight days ago.”

  I sighed. “The possibles include not only the campus but the entire globe. So we must try to figure probables. Doctor Burroughs, can you think of anyone who would like to see you dead?”

  “Several!”

  “Let me rephrase it. Who hates your guts so bitterly that he would not hesitate to kill your daughter as long as he got you? And also bystanders such as Hilda and me. Not that we figure, save to show that he didn’t give a hoot who caught it. A deficient personality. Amoral. Who is he?”

  Pop Burroughs hesitated. “Doctor Carter, disagreement between mathematicians can be extremely heated…and I am not without fault.” (You’re telling me, Pop!) “But these quarrels rarely result in violence. Even the death of Archimedes was only indirectly related to his—our—profession. To encompass my daughter as well—no, even Doctor Brain, much as I despise him, does not fit the picture.”

  Deety said, “Zeb, could it have been me they were shooting at?”

  “You tell me. Whose dolly have you busted?”

  “Hmm—I can’t think of anyone who dislikes me even enough to snub me. Sounds silly but it’s true.”

  “It’s the truth,” put in Sharpie. “Deety is just like her mother was. When Jane—Deety’s mother, and my best friend until we lost her—when Jane and I were roommates in college, I was always getting into jams and Jane was always getting me out—and never got into one herself. A peacemaker. So is Deety.”

  “Okay, Deety, you’re out of it. So is Hilda and so am I, as whoever placed that booby trap could not predict that either Hilda or I would be in blast range. So it’s Pop they’re gunning for. Who we don’t know, why we don’t know. When we figure out why, we’ll know who. Meantime we’ve got to keep Pop out of range. I’m going to marry you as fast as possible, not only because you smell good but to give me a legitimate interest in this fight.”

  “So we go first to Reno.”

  “Shut up, Sharpie. We’ve been on course for Reno since we leveled off.” I flipped on the transponder, but to the left, not right. It would now answer with a registered, legal signal…but not one registered to my name. This cost me some shekels I did not need but were appreciated by a tight-lipped family man in Indio. Sometimes it is convenient not to be identified by sky cops every time one crosses a state line.

  “But we aren’t going to Reno. Those cowboy maneuvers were intended to deceive the eye, radar, and heat seekers. The evasion against the heat seekers—that rough turn while we were still in glide—either worked or was not needed, as we haven’t had a missile up the tail. Probably wasn’t needed; people who booby-trap cars aren’t likely to be prepared to shoot a duo out of the sky. But I couldn’t be certain, so I ducked. We may be assumed to be dead in the blast and fire, and that assumption may stand up until the mess has cooled down and there is daylight to work by. Even later it may stand up, as the cops may not tell anyone that they were unable to find organic remains. But I must assume that Professor Moriarty isn’t fooled, that he is watching by repeater scope in his secret HQ, that he knows we are headed for Reno, and that hostiles will greet us there. So we won’t go there. Now quiet, please; I must
tell this baby what to do.”

  The computer-pilot of my car can’t cook but what she can do, she does well. I called for display map, changed scale to include Utah, used the light pen to trace route—complex as it curved around Reno to the south, back north again, made easting over some very empty country, and passed north of Hill Air Force Range in approaching Logan. I fed in height-above-ground while giving her leeway to smooth out bumps, and added one change in speed-over-ground once we were clear of Reno radar. “Got it, girl?” I asked her.

  “Got it, Zeb.”

  “Ten-minute call, please.”

  “Call you ten minutes before end of routing—right!”

  “You’re a smart girl, Gay.”

  “Boss, I bet you tell that to all the girls. Over.”

  “Roger and out, Gay.” The display faded.

  Certainly I could have programmed my autopilot to accept a plan in response to a punched “Execute.” But isn’t it pleasanter to be answered by a warm contralto? But the “smart girl” aspect lay in the fact that it took my voice to make a flight plan operative. A skilled electron pusher might find a way to override my lock, then drive her manually. But the first time he attempted to use autopilot, the car would not only not accept the program but would scream for help on all police frequencies. This causes car thieves to feel maladjusted.

  I looked up and saw that Deety had been following this intently. I waited for some question. Instead Deety said, “She has a very pleasant voice, Zeb.”

  “Gay Deceiver is a very nice girl, Deety.”

  “And talented. Zeb, I have never before been in a Ford that can do the things this car—Gay Deceiver?—can do.”

  “After we’re married I’ll introduce you to her more formally. It will require reprogramming.”

  “I look forward to knowing her better.”

  “You will. Gay is not exactly all Ford. Her external appearance was made by Ford of Canada. Most of the rest of her once belonged to Australian Defense Forces. But I added a few doodads. The bowling alley. The powder room. The veranda. Little homey touches.”

  “I’m sure she appreciates them, Zeb. I know I do. I suspect that, had she not had them, we would all be as dead as canasta.”