The Number of the Beast Page 22

  One hour—

  Three seconds for each check—

  Twelve hundred random spot checks—

  This is not a “space-filling” curve. But it should locate where the British were most thickly settled. If one hour did not do it, ten hours certainly would.

  Without Gay, without her ability to do a Drunkard’s Walk, we could have searched that planet for a lifetime, and never found either colony. It took the entire human race (of our universe) thirty centuries to search Terra…and many spots were missing until they could be photographed from space.

  My husband said, “Let’s get this straight.” He bounced us four minima. “These subprograms—Gay, are you listening?”

  “Of course. Are you?”

  “Gay, go to sleep.”

  “Roger and out, Boss.”

  “Deety, I want to make sure of these subprograms but couldn’t use code words while she was awake. I—”

  “Excuse me, Zebadiah, but you can. She will ignore code words for subprograms except while the general program is running. The code for the general program is unusual and requires the execution command, so it can’t be started by accident. You can wake Gay. We need her on some points.”

  “You’re a smart girl, Deety.”

  “I’ll bet you tell that to all adequate cooks, Boss.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Captain, it is not difficult to program a computer to supervise cooking machines. The software sold under the trademark ‘Cordon Bleu’ is reputed to be excellent. Before you wake Gay, would you answer a hypothetical question concerning computers and cooking?”

  “Captain!”

  “Copilot?”

  “I advise against permitting the Astrogator to discuss side issues—such as cooking—while we have this problem facing us.”

  “Thank you, Copilot. Astrogator, what was your hypothetical question?”

  Pop had been careful not to interfere between Zebadiah and me, But his advice from copilot to captain was intended for my ears—he was telling me to shut up, and I suddenly heard Jane saying, “Deety, anytime a wife thinks she has won an argument, she has lost it.”

  I’m not Jane, I’m Deety. I get my temper from my father. I’m not as quick to flare up as he is, but I do have his tendency to nurse a grievance. Zebadiah is sometimes a tease and knows how to get my goat.

  But Pop was telling me: “Drop it, Deety!”

  Maybe Zebadiah was right—too much argument, too much discussion, too much “sewing circle & debating society.” We were all intensely interested as we were all in the same peril…but how much tougher is it to be captain rather than one of the crew? Twice? Ten times?

  I didn’t know, Was my husband cracking under the pressure? “Getting ulcers”?

  Was I adding to his burden?

  I didn’t have to stop to think this through; it was preprogrammed below the conscious level; Pop pushed the “execute” button and the answers spilled out. I answered my husband at once,

  “What hypocritical question, sir?”

  “You said, ‘hypothetical.’ Something about computers and cooking.”

  “Captain, my mind has gone blank. Perhaps we had better get on with the job before I forget how it works.”

  “Deety, you wouldn’t fib to your poor old broken-down husband?”

  “Sir, when my husband is poor and old and broken-down, I will not fib to him.”

  “Hmm—If I hadn’t already promised my support to Hilda, I would vote for you for captain.”

  Aunt Hilda cut in: “Zebbie, I release you! I’m not a candidate.”

  “No, Sharpie, once having promised political support an honorable man never welches. So it’s all right for Gay to listen in?”

  “Certainly, sir. For display I must have her. Hello, Gay.”

  “Hi, Deety.”

  “Display dayside, globe.” At once Gay’s largest screen showed the western hemisphere of Earth, our Earth in our universe—Terra. Early afternoon at Snug Harbor? Yes, the clock in my head said so and GMT on the instrument board read 20:23:07. Good heavens, it had been only twenty hours since my husband and my father had killed the fake “ranger.” How can a lifetime be crowded into less than a day? Despite the clock in my head it seemed years since I had walked down to our pool, a touch tiddly and hanging onto my bridegroom for support.

  “Display meridians parallels. Subtract geographical features,” Gay did so. “From program coded ‘A Tramp Abroad’ display locus.”

  Gay used orthographic projection, so the 45th parallels were straight lines. Since I had told her to display dayside, these two bright lines ran to the left edge of the display, that being the sunrise line. But the right edge of the locus was an irregular line running southwest. “Add display Russian Valley.”

  To the right of the locus and touching it, Gay displayed as solid brightness a very long and quite wide blotch. “Subtract Russian Valley.” The area we had sketchily explored disappeared.

  “Deety,” my husband asked, “how is Gay doing this? Her perms have no reference points for Mars—not even Mars of our own universe.”

  “Oh. Gay, display ‘Touchdown.’”

  “Null program.”

  “Mmm, yes, that’s right; the Sun has just set where we were parked. Zebadiah, shall I have her rotate the globe enough to show it? All she would show would be a bright spot almost on the equator. I have defined the spot where we grounded as zero meridian—Greenwich for Mars. This Mars.”

  “And zero parallel? An arbitrary equator?”

  “Oh, no, no! While we slept Gay adjusted her gyrocompass to match this planet. Which gave her true north and latitude. She already knows the radius and curvature of Mars—I started to tell her and found she had retrieved it from her perms. Aerospace Almanac?”

  “I suppose so. But we discussed Mars’ diameter last night while Gay was awake. Both you and Hilda knew it; Jake and I did not.”

  As I remembered it, Aunt Hilda spoke up—then Pop kept quiet. If Pop wanted to sit back and be proud of Aunt Hilda’s encyclopedic memory that was all right with me. If my husband has a flaw, it is that he has trouble believing that females have brains…probably because he is so intensely interested in the other end. I went on with my lecture:

  “Once I start Gay, she will say and record nothing unless ordered. She will make random transitions inside that locus until someone yells ‘Bingo!’ She won’t slow down even then. She will place a bright point on the map at that latitude and longitude, record both latitude and longitude, and the exact time. She will display the Bingo time, too, for one second. If you want to retrieve that Bingo, you had better jot down that time—to the second. Because she’ll be doing twenty jumps each minute. Don’t worry about the hour, just the minute and the second. Oh, you could still retrieve it if you had the minute right, as I can ask her to run through all Bingoes in a given minute. Can’t be more than twenty and your Bingo might be the only one.

  “When we’ve done one hour of this, that map could, at most, have twelve hundred dots on it—but may have only a few—or none. If they are clustered, I’ll reduce the locus and we’ll run it again. If not, we can sleep and eat and do it for the other day side, the one twelve hours away. Either way, Gay will find the British—and we’ll be safe.”

  “I hope you’re right. Ever heard of the Opium Wars, Deety?”

  “Yes, Captain. Sir, every nation is capable of atrocities, including our own. But the British have a tradition of decent behavior no matter what blemishes there are.”

  “Sorry. Why a one-hour program?”

  “We may have to shorten it. A decision every three seconds for sixty minutes may be too tiring. If we start showing a marked hot spot sooner than that, we can shorten the first run and reduce the locus. We’ll have to try it and see. But I feel certain that a one-hour run, a short rest, then another one-hour run, will locate the British if they are now on the day side.”

  “Deety, what do you define as ‘Bingo’?”

  “Anything
that suggests human settlement. Buildings. Roads. Cultivated fields. Walls, fences, dams, aircraft, vehicles—But it is not ‘Bingo’ just because it looks interesting. Although it might be ‘Stop!’”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “‘Stop’ does not tell Gay to record or to display. For that you must add ‘Bingo.’ ‘Stop’ is for anything you want to look at more than three seconds. Maybe it looks promising and a few seconds more will let you decide. But please, everyone! There should not be more than a dozen calls for ‘Stop!’ in the hour. Any more questions?”

  We started. Hilda gave the first Bingo. I saw it, too—farm buildings. Aunt Hilda is faster than I. I almost broke my own injunction; I had to bite down on “Stop!” The temptation to take a longer look was almost overpowering.

  All of us made mistakes—but none serious. Hilda racked up the most Bingoes and Zebadiah the fewest—but I’m fairly certain that my husband was “cheating” by waiting to give Pop or me first crack at it. (He would not be competing with Aunt Hilda; port-forward and starboard-after seats have little overlapping coverage.)

  I thought it would be tedious; instead it was exciting—but dreadfully tiring. Slowly, less than one a minute, bright dots appeared on the display. I saw with disappointment that most Bingoes were clustered adjacent to the irregular margin marking Russian territory. It seemed probable that these marked Russian territory, so very probable that it hardly seemed worthwhile to check for onion spires.

  Once my husband called “Stop” and then “Bingo” at a point north and far west, at least fifteen hundred kilometers from the nearest Bingo light. I noted the time—Greenwich 21:16:51—then tried to figure out why Zebadiah had stopped us. It was pretty country, green hills and lightly wooded and I spotted a wild stream, not a canal. But I saw no buildings or anything suggesting settlement.

  Zebadiah wrote something on his knee pad, then said, “Continue.” I was itching to ask why he had stopped, but when a decision must be made every three seconds there is no time to chat.

  When the hour was nearly up, a single Bingo light in the far west that had been shining since the first five minutes was joined by another when Hilda scored another Bingo and two minutes later Pop said “Bingo!” and we had an equilateral triangle twenty kilometers on a side. I noted the time most carefully—then told myself not to be disappointed if inspection showed onion towers; we still had a hemisphere to go.

  I decided to believe in that British colony the way one has to believe hard in fairies to save Tinker Bell’s life. If there were no British colony, we might have to risk Earth-without-a-J. Gay Deceiver was a lovely car but as a spaceship she had shortcomings. No plumbing. Air for about four hours and no way to recycle. No plumbing. Limited food storage. No plumbing. No comfortable way to sleep in her. No plumbing.

  But she had talents no other spaceship had. Her shortcomings (according to my father and husband) could be corrected at any modern machine shop. But in the meantime we did not have even an outhouse behind the barn.

  At last Gay stopped, continued to display, and announced, “One hour of ‘A Tramp Abroad’ completed. Instructions, please.”

  “Gay, Bounce,” said Zebadiah. “Deety, I don’t think we’ve nailed down the piece The Sun Never Sets On. But this dense cluster here to the right—Too close to the Little Father’s little children. Eh?”

  “Yes. Zebadiah, I should tell Gay to trim the locus on the east to eliminate the clustered lights, and now we can add almost nine hundred kilometers on the west, to the present sunrise line. Gay can rotate the display to show the added area. I suspect that one more hour will fill in the picture sufficiently.”

  “Maybe even less. You were right; three seconds is not only a long time; it is excessively long. Isn’t two seconds enough? Can you change that without starting from scratch?”

  “Yes to both, Captain.”

  “Good. You can add thirty degrees on the west instead of fifteen. Because we are going to kill an hour—stretch our legs, eat a snack…and I for one want to find a bush. How do I tell Gay to return to a particular Bingo? Or will that mess up your program?”

  “Not a bit. Tell her to return to Bingo such-and-such, stating the time.”

  I was unsurprised when he said, “Gay, return to Bingo Greenwich twenty-one sixteen fifty-one.”

  It was indeed a pretty stream. Zebadiah said happily, “That beats burning juice. Who sees a clearing close to that creek, big enough for Gay? Hover and squat, I mean; I don’t dare make a glide landing, dead stick—the old girl is loaded.”

  “Zebbie, I’m sober as you are!”

  “Don’t boast about it, Sharpie. I think I see a spot. Close your eyes; I’m going to.”

  I almost wish I had.

  Zebadiah came in on a long glide, everything set for maximum lift—but no power. I kept waiting for that vibration that meant that Gay was alive and roaring…and waited…and waited—

  He said, “Gay—” and I thought that he was going to tell her to turn herself on. No. We actually dropped below the level of that bank.

  Then he suddenly switched on power by hand but in reverse—flipped us up on that bank; we stalled, and dropped perhaps a meter—we just barely missed that bank.

  I didn’t say anything. Aunt Hilda was whispering, “Hail Mary Mother of God Om Mani Padme Hum There is No God but God and Mahomet is His Prophet—” then some language I did not know but it sounded very sincere.

  Pop said, “Son, do you always cut it that fine?”

  “I saw a man do it that way when he had to; I’ve always wondered if I could. But what you didn’t know was—Gay, are you listening?”

  “Sure thing, Boss. You alerted me. Where’s the riot?”

  “You’re a smart girl, Gay.”

  “Then why am I pushing this baby carriage?”

  “Gay, go to sleep.”

  “Sleepy time. Roger and out, Boss.”

  “Jake, what you didn’t know was that I had my cheeks puffed to say B, O, U, N, C, E, explosively. Your gadget has made Gay’s reflexes so fast that I knew I could come within a split second of disaster and she would get us out. I wasn’t cutting didoes. Look at that meter. Seventy-four percent of capacity. I don’t know how many landings I’m going to have to make on that much juice.”

  “Captain, it was brilliant. Even though it almost scared it out of me.”

  “Wrong honorific, Captain. I’m the pilot going off duty. We’re landed; my resignation is effective; you’re holding the sack.”

  “Zeb, I told you that I would not be captain.”

  “You can’t help it; you are. The second-in-command takes command when the captain dies, or goes over the hill—or quits. Jake, you can cut your throat, or desert, or go on the binnacle list, or take other actions—but you can’t say you are not captain, when you are—Captain!”

  “If you can resign, I can resign!”

  “Obviously. To the Astrogator, she being next in line of command.”

  “Deety, I resign! Captain Deety, I mean.”

  “Pop, you can’t do this to me! I’ll—I’ll—” I shut up because I didn’t know what to do. Then I did. “I resign… Captain Hilda.”

  “What? Why, that’s silly, Deety. A medical officer is not in line of command. But if ‘medical officer’ is a joke and ‘science officer,’ too, then I’m a passenger and still not in line of command.”

  My husband said, “Sharpie, you have the qualifications the rest of us have. You can drive a duo—”

  “Suddenly I’ve forgotten how.”

  “—but that’s not necessary. Mature judgment and the support of your crew are the only requirements, as we are millions of miles and several universes from licenses and such. You have my support; I think you have it from the rest. Jake?”

  “Me? Of course!”

  “Deety?”

  “Captain Hilda knows she has my support,” I agreed. “I was first to call her ‘Captain.’”

  Aunt Hilda said, “Deety, I’ve just resigned.”<
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  “Oh, no, you haven’t anybody to resign to!” I’m afraid I was shrill.

  “I resign to the Great Spirit Manitou. Or to you, Zebbie, and it comes around in a circle and you are captain again…as you should be.”

  “Oh, no, Sharpie. I’ve stood my watch; it’s somebody else’s turn. Now that you have resigned, we have no organization. If you think you’ve stuck me with it, think again. You have simply picked an unusual way to homestead on this spot. In the meantime, while nobody is in charge, I hope that you all are getting both ears and a belly full of what got me disgusted. Yack yack yack, argue, fuss, and jabber—a cross between a Hyde Park open forum and a high school debating society.”

  Aunt Hilda said, in sober surprise, “Why, Zebbie, you almost sound vindictive.”

  “Mrs. Burroughs, it is possible that you have hit upon the right word. I have taken a lot of guff…and quite a bit of it has been from you.”

  I haven’t seen Aunt Hilda look so distressed since Mama Jane died. “I am very sorry, Zebbie. I had not realized that my conduct had displeased you so. I did not intend it so, ever. I am aware—constantly!—that you have saved our—my—life five distinct times…as well as continuously by your leadership. I’m as grateful as my nature permits—a giant amount, even though you consider me a shallow person. But one can’t show deepest gratitude every instant, just as one cannot remain in orgasm continuously; some emotions are too strong to stay always at peak.”

  She sighed, and tears rolled down her face. “Zebbie, will you let me try again? I’ll quit being a Smart Aleck. It will be a hard habit to break; I’ve been one for years—my defense mechanism. But I will break it.”

  “Don’t be so tragic, Hilda,” Zebadiah said gently. “You know I love you…despite your little ways.”

  “Oh, I know you do!—you big ugly giant. Will you come back to us? Be our captain again?”

  “Hilda, I’ve never left. I’ll go right on doing the things I know how to do or can learn. And as I’m told. But I won’t be captain.”