Robert Heinlein - The Number of the Beast

"What!!"

"Talk to Zebbie and Jacob. We'll organize Black Hat Safaris, Pty., too, but it may be a dummy for a while. We'll have an emporium in New Rome, imports from many universes. Uh... The Pawnshop, of course, with the Hook Joint above it. Ultra expensive imported styles up there, modelled by New Rome's most beautiful hetaerae. Private rooms for private viewings. This one is a gift to Laz-Lor, save for the ten percent that is voting stock of which I vote my usual control, through you. The twins can do as they please with it; our leash will be slack. Probably they will do their own importing, with a resident manager. But they might work in it some, just to know the business."

"Which business?"

"Both. They are grown women, Lazarus; you must not try to run their lives. The overall holding company, run by you and me, usual split with my one percent advantage, is a nonprofit corporation supporting Ishtar's clinic. We funnel whatever is needed into the clinic, holding down the book profits elsewhere, but paying whopping salaries and consulting fees. My husband is chief scientist in one part while consultant by fee elsewhere, with Elizabeth-Lib- his mirror image elsewhere. Lazarus, we must have Deety work on it; she has the finest head in our family for manipulation of this sort-I'm just her awed pupil."

"And I'm just your awed pupil!"

"Piffle again. Lazarus, from what I've read of you, your sole weakness lies in a delight in cheating for its own sake; Deety treats it as an intellectual art. One thing more- No, two things. Can you persuade Dora, as a favor to 01' Buddy Boy, to go along with the hoax until we deliver your mother to Ishtar? Make it a mammoth joke, under which she takes orders from me because she wants to be in on the fun. Take you out of arrest, of course; wipe it from her memory."

"It was never in her memory; Lor put her in nonrecording mode while the hooraw was on."

"Good! Can you persuade her to call me 'Commodore' while you use some fancy title?"

"Hilda, I'm your chief of staff for this ship; Zeb is chief of staff, flagship. Dora doesn't really understand ranks; I can tell her that 'chief of staff is one notch senior to God. No problem. As long as she can see that you and I are buddy-buddy,"

"And we are!"

"It's reassuring to hear that. Hilda, I underestimated you so badly that I'm still in a state of shock. What's the last item?"

"Rejuvenation for all of us for as long as you-Ishtar-can stretch nonHowards"

"I can promise that; I'm Board Chairman of the Clinic. But-Ishtar is not a magician. What's the average age of death for your parents, grandparents, any ancestors you know about?"

"My family, both sides, are considered long-lived-although I lost my parents in a car crash. The others I don't know about except that Deety's mother died of cancer, much too young."

"We can handle that."

"Is longevity on Earth-our Earth, not yours-of interest? Same length of year as Old-Home-Terra; Deety and Lor checked."

"Of course!"

"These figures apply to North America. Some other places are higher, some lower, some no data. Females. Menarche at thirteen plus-or-minus nine percent. Menopause at fifty-six to sixty-seven plus-or-minu-"

"Stop there! Average age of death, female?"

"One hundred seventeen. But males average eight years less. Sad. My own family averages higher, but only a few years. I don't know about Jacob but he mentioned once that his great-grandfather got himself killed, in an odd fashion, at ninety-seven. He-"

"Enough. I must report this. By definition, all of you are 'Missing Howards."

"But, Lazarus, that's simply the average on Earth-our Earth, now that I know that there are thousands of analogs."

"Doesn't matter. Different universe, different time line-not my problem. Here you are a Howard. You four and all your descendants."

Hilda smiled happily. "That's cheerful news to a woman six weeks pregnant."

"You?"

"And Deety. Same time and doesn't show yet. Lazarus, I was tempted a while ago to tell you... because I was tempted. Now, now! Down, Rover! Outline to me how we rescue a woman dead for many centuries."

"Hilda, someday I'm going to get you drunk."

"Want to bet?"

"Never with you. There is mystery about my mother's death. She appears to have been killed accidentally at a relatively young age, for a Howard. Just short of a hundred. I was notified as her purse I.D.'s named me as 'next of kin'-and I bawled like a baby for I had been planning to pay her a visit on her century day, July 4th, 1982. Instead I attended her funeral, flying to Albuquerque two weeks early.

"Nobody there but me. She was living alone under her maiden name, she and my father having separated thirty years earlier. But apparently she hadn't listed her last address change with the Howard Foundation, hadn't notified her other children. Howards are like that; they live so long that kinship is not enough reason to stay in touch. Closed casket and cremation-authorized by stuff in her purse; I never saw her body.

"But there was no doubt as to her I.D.'s and so forth. In my world, 1982 was a time when you couldn't sneeze without carrying a thick pack of cards all, in effect, saying that you were you. I was feeling it because I was seventy later that year and looked thirty-five. Embarrassing. I had plans to drive south from Albuquerque, cross the border, and not come back until I had bought a new passport to match a new name.

"Hilda, it was over two thousand years later, in preparing for my first time trip, that I learned that my mother was not listed in the Archives as dead but simply as 'record missing.'

"The matter troubled me. A few years ago-my time-Laz-Lor took me

back. Didn't ground; a missile chased us and scared Dora silly. But I got a motion picture that seems to show the accident. There is a blur on the frames just before the first one that shows what I think is the corpse. Can you guess the size and shape?"

"Shan't try, Lazarus."

"As near as I can measure on a film a centimeter square, shot with a telephoto lens from too high because Dora was crying and wanting to go home, it is the size of that berth Gay Deceiver is in. Hilda, I think I photographed you rescuing my mother before you did it."

'What? Lazarus, that's-"

"Don't say impossible. The Land of Oz is impossible. You're impossible. I'm impossible. Who invented pantheistic multiperson solipsism? You did."

"I wasn't going to say 'impossible.' Now that you know that I'm pregnant, you will realize why I want to try to rescue your mother right away, before my belly starts growing where the seat belt crosses it. Her name was Marian? Marian Johnson Smith?"

"Maureen Johnson."

"That proves that the real Lazarus Long stood up. It bothered me that there might be a series of analog-Lazarus-Longs like analog-Earths."

"Wouldn't bother me. That's their problem."

"But it would destroy the theory I worked out that would account for my sitting here in a pool of water in a time-travelling flying saucer with a fabulous man-both ways!-when I know he's a fictional character in a book I read years back. That makes me a fictional character, too, but that doesn't trouble me as I can't read a novel with me in it, any more than you could read the one I read about you."

"I came close to doing just that."

"Don't be mysterious, Lazarus."

"I like wild stories. Used to read every one I could find in the Kansas City Public Library. On another time trip I picked up a magazine of a type you may never have seen. Read one installment of a serial. Ridiculous. Four people traveling in space in an airplane. At the end of that installment they are hailed by a flying saucer. Continued next month. Hilda, how do you think Dora was able to be at the right place at the right time when Gay Deceiver popped out of nowhere?"