The Number of the Beast Read online

  Zeb ate two stacks. I concluded that my daughter would have a happy marriage.

  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 happ
ily 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 of jail. 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 in the business. I can make a computer sit up and beg. Or roll over and play dead. And I’ll be 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 hanky-panky 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 O positive. Uh… I 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?”