Robert Heinlein - The Number of the Beast

"Don't shift. Wait."

Eternities later we heard Hilda's sweet voice: "I'm heading for rendezvous. I no longer have to pretend that this is a hearing aid-but everybody accepted ~ it as such. You needn't be cautious picking me up; we're leaving."

Five minutes later we bounced and translated at once, then Zeb held her in cruise while Hilda reported:

"No trouble. Ze bewildair' French ladee she zink les Americain' verree gentils. Mais les arts medicals-poof! Infant mortality high, childbirth mortality gruesome. I could have left sooner but I got fascinated."

"Hilda," I protested, "you had me worried to death."

"Jacob, I had to be certain; it's such a nice world otherwise. Other contacts,Y should not take as long as I've solved the money problem."

"How?" Zebadiah asked. "I've been noodling that. There's an even chance that private ownership of gold will be illegal. A standard trick used whenever a government is in trouble."

"Yes, Zebbie-it's illegal there, too. I still have the bullion you had me carry. Instead I sold that heavy gold chain I was wearing. Sorry, Deety; I had to."

"Forget it, Hillbilly. That chain was a way to horde gold. Pop bought it for~ Mama Jane before they clipped the zeroes and remonetized."

"Well... I found a public phone-didn't try to use it; Edison would neve have recognized it. But it had a phone book, so I looked up 'gold'-and foun 'licensed gold dealers' and sold your chain-"

"And now you're stuck with a lot of local money."

"Zebbie! See why I didn't let you go down by yourself? The dealer was 0 course a coin dealer, too-and I bought foreign silver coins, worn, small, oldis, dates without being old enough to be collectors' items. French coins, but h didn't have enough, so I filled out with Belgian, Swiss, and German."

I said, "My dear, the coins you bought there will not be good here. Or at the next analog. Or the next."

"Jacob, who-other than a professional-is certain of designs on foreign cojns?-especially if they are a few years old and a bit worn. I got real silver, none of those alloys that don't have the right ring to them. At most a shopkeeper will phone his bank and ask for the rate. That's how I bought this," my beloved said proudly, pulling out of Deety's biggest purse a World Almanac.

I was not impressed. If she was going to buy a book, why not a technical manual that might contain new art, data Zeb and I could use?

My darling was saying, "We must buy one in each analog we ground in. It's the nearest thing to an encyclopedia less than a kilo mass you'll find. History, law, vital statistics, maps, new inventions, new medicine-I could have skipped the library and learned all I needed from this book. Zebbie! Turn to the list of U.S. Presidents."

"Who cares?" Zeb answered, but did so. Shortly he said, "Who is Eisenhower? This shows him serving one of Harriman's terms and one of Patton's."

"Keep going, Zebbie."

"Okay- No! I refuse to believe it. Us Carters are taught to shoot straight, bathe every month even in the winter, and never run for office."

Two days later Hilda and Zeb, as a French-tourist couple, found the world where we settled.

We slid in quietly, both through the histrionics of our "bewildered French lady" and Zeb's unmalicious chicanery. Sometimes he was our French lady's husband; other times he spoke English slowly with a strong Bavarian accent.

In this analog, the United States (called that, although boundaries differ) is not as smothered in laws, regulations, licensing, and taxes as is our native country. In consequence "illegally entered aliens" do not find it difficult to hide, once they "sling the lingo" and understand local customs.

Hilda and Zeb learned rapidly in a dozen towns, Deety and me "riding shotgun" in the sky. Deety and I learned from them and from radio. Then we moved to the Northwest, "natives" from back east, and coped with our only problem: how to keep Gay Deceiver out of sight.

Hilda and Deety hid her in the Cascades for three days while Zeb and I found and bought a farmhouse outside Tacoma-analog. That night we moved Gay into the barn, slapped white paint on the building's windows, and slept in Gay, with a feeling of being home!

We own six hectares and live in the farmhouse in front of Gay's hideaway. Gay will eventually go underground, protected by reinforced concrete; the barn will become a machine shop. We will build a new house over her bunker. Meanwhile, our old farmhouse is comfortable.

This United States, population under a hundred million, accepts immigrants freely. Zeb considered buying phony papers to let us enter "legally"-but Hilda decided that it was simpler to use Gay to smuggle us while we smuggled Gay. The outcome is the same; we will never be a burden to the state-once we get

our machine shop and electronics lab set up, Zeb and I will "invent" hundreds of gadgets this country lacks.

We seem to be near the warmest part of an interglaciation. Wheat grows where our native world has frozen tundra; the Greenland icecap has vanished; lowlands are under water, coastlines much changed.

Climate and custom encourage light clothing; the preposterous "body modesty" taboo does not exist. Clothing is worn for adornment and for protection- never through "shame." Nakedness is symbolic of innocence-these people derive that symbology from the Bible used in our native culture to justify the exact opposite. The same Bible-I checked. (The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can "prove" anything from it.)

So this is not a world where alien vermin can hide. A "man" who at all times kept arms and legs covered by long sleeves and long trousers would be as conspicuous as one in armor.

The sects here are mostly Christian-on a Saturday morning one sees families headed for church in their finest Sabbath-go-to-meeting clothes. But, since nakedness is symbolic of innocence, they undress in an anteroom to enter their temple unadorned. One need not attend services to see this; the climate favors light, airy structures that are mostly roof and slender columns.

The Bible affects their penal system, again by selective quotation: "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth-"

This results in a fluid code, with no intent to rehabilitate but to make the punishment fit the crime. I saw an example four days after we settled. I was driving our steam wagon and encountered a road block. A policeman told me that I could take a detour or wait twenty minutes; the highway was being used to balance a reckless driver.

I elected to pull over and wait. A man was staked with one leg stretched out at a right angle. A police wagon drove down that cleared highway, ran over his leg, turned and drove back over it.

An ambulance was waiting-but nothing was done for a timed seventeen minutes. Then surgeons amputated on the spot; the ambulance took him away and the block was removed.

I went back to my wagon and shook for many minutes, then returned home, driving cautiously. I didn't tell our family. But it was reported on radio and the evening paper had pictures-so I admitted that I had seen it. The paper noted that the criminal's insurance had been insufficient to cover the court's award to the victim, so the reckless driver had not only lost his left leg (as had his victim) but also had had most of his worldly goods confiscated.

There is no speed limit and traffic regulations are merely advisory-but there are extremely few accidents. I have never encountered such polite and careful drivers.

A poisoner is killed by poison; an arsonist is burned to death. I won't describe what is done to a rapist. But poisoning, arson, and rape are almost unknown.

My encounter with this brutal system of "balancing" almost caused me to think that my dear wife had been mistaken in picking this world-we should move! I am no longer certain. This place has no prisons, almost no crime, and