Robert Heinlein - The Number of the Beast

Aunt Hilda looked frightened. "Jacob? Would one highball do any harm to this peanut inside me? I need a bracer."

"I don't think so. Jane often had a drink with me while she was pregnant. Her doctor did not have her stop until her third trimester. Can't see that it hurt Deety. Deety was so healthy she drove Jane home from the hospital."

"Pop, that's a fib. I didn't learn to drive until I was three months old. But I need one, too," I added. "Zebadiah?"

"Certainly, Princess. A medicinal drink should be by body mass. That's half a jigger for you, Sharpie dear, a jigger for Deety, a jigger and a half for Jake- two jiggers for me."

"Oh, how unfair!"

"It certainly is," I agreed. "I outweigh Pop-he's been losing, I've been gaining. Pick us up and see!"

My husband took us each around the waist, crouched, then straightened and lifted us.

"Close to a standoff," he announced. "Pop may be a trifle heavier, but you're more cuddly"-kissed me and put us down.

"There is no one more cuddly than Jacob!"

"Hilda, you're prejudiced. Let's each mix our own drinks, at the strength required for our emotional and physical conditions."

So we did-it wound up with Hilda and me each taking a jigger with soda, Pop taking a jigger and a half over ice-and Zebadiah taking a half jigger of vodka and drowning it with Coke.

While we were sipping our "medicine," Zebadiah, sprawled out, looked up over the fireplace. "Pop, you were in the Navy?"

"No-Army. If you count 'chair-borne infantry.' They handed me a commission for having a doctorate in mathematics, told me they needed me for ballistics. Then I spent my whole tour as a personnel officer, signing papers."

"Standard Operating Procedure. That's a Navy sword and belt up there. Thought it might be yours."

"It's Deety's-belonged to Jane's Grandfather Rodgers. I have a dress saber. Belonged to my Dad, who gave it to me when the Army took me. Dress blues, too. I took them with me, never had occasion to wear either." Pop got up and went into his-their bedroom, calling back, "I'll show you the saber."

My husband said to me, "Deety, would you mind my handling your sword?"

"My Captain, that sword is yours."

"Heavens, dear, I can't accept an heirloom."

"If my warlord will not permit his princess to gift him with a sword, he can leave it where it is! I've been wanting to give you a wedding present-and did not realize that I had the perfect gift for Captain John Carter."

"My apologies, Dejah Thoris. I accept and will keep it bright. I will defend my princess with it against all enemies."

"Helium is proud to accept. If you make a cradle of your hands, I can stand in them and reach it down."

Zebadiah grasped me, a hand above each knee, and I was suddenly three meters tall. Sword and belt were on hooks; I lifted them down, and myself was placed down. My husband stood straight while I buckled it around him-then he dropped to one knee and kissed my hand.

My husband is mad north-northwest but his madness suits me. I got tears in my eyes which Deety doesn't do much but Dejah Thoris seems prone to, since John Carter made her his.

Pop and Aunt Hilda watched-then imitated, including (I saw!) tears in Hilda's eyes after she buckled on Pop's saber, when he knelt and kissed her hand.

Zebadiah drew sword, tried its balance, sighted along its blade. "Handmade and balanced close to the hilt. Deety, your great-grandfather paid a pretty penny for this. It's an honest weapon."

"I don't think he knew what it cost. It was presented to him."

"For good reason, I feel certain." Zebadiah stood back, went into hanging guard, made fast moulinets vertically, left and right, then horizontally clockwise and counterclockwise-suddenly dropped into swordsman's guard- lunged and recovered, fast as a striking cat.

I said softly to Pop, "Did you notice?"

Pop answered quietly. "Know saber. Sword, too."

Hilda said loudly, "Zebbie! You never told me you went to Heidelberg."

"You never asked, Sharpie. Around the Red Ox they called me 'The Scourge of the Neckar."

"What happened to your scars?"

"Never got any, dear. I hung around an extra year, hoping for one. But no one got through my guard-ever. Hate to think about how many German faces I carved into checkerboards."

"Zebadiah, was that where you took your doctorate?"

My husband grinned and sat down, still wearing sword. "No, another school ."

"M.I.T.?" inquired Pop.

"Hardly. Pop, this should stay in the family. I undertook to prove that a man can get a doctorate from a major university without knowing anything and without adding anything whatever to human knowledge."

"1 think you have a degree in aerospace engineering," Pop said flatly.

"I'll concede that I have the requisite hours. I hold two degrees-a bacca

laureate in humane arts... meaning I squeaked through... and a doctorate from an old and prestigious school-a Ph.D. in education."

"Zebadiah! You wouldn't!" (I was horrified.)

"But I did, Deety. To prove that degrees per se are worthless. Often they are honorifics of true scientists or learned scholars or inspired teachers. Much more frequently they are false faces for overeducated jackasses."

Pop said, "You'll get no argument from me, Zeb. A doctorate is a union card to get a tenured job. It does not mean that the holder thereof is wise or learned."

"Yes, sir. I was taught it at my grandfather's knee-my Grandfather Zachariah, the man responsible for the initial 'Z' in the names of his male descendants. Deety, his influence on me was so strong that I must explain him- no, that's impossible; I must tell about him in order to explain me... and how I happened to take a worthless degree."

Hilda said, "Deety, he's pulling a long bow again."

"Quiet, woman. 'Get thee to a nunnery, go!"

"I don't take orders from my step-son-in-law. Make that a monastery and I'll consider it."

I kept my blinkin' mouf shut. My husband's fibs entertain me. (If they are fibs.)

"Grandpa Zach was as cantankerous an old coot as you'll ever meet. Hated government, hated lawyers, hated civil servants, hated preachers, hated automobiles, public schools, and telephones, was contemptuous of most editors, most writers, most professors, most of almost anything. But he' overtipped waitresses and porters and would go out of his way to avoid stepping on an insect,

"Grandpa had three doctorates: biochemistry, medicine, and law-and he regarded anyone who couldn't read Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and German as illiterate."

"Zebbie, can you read all those?"

"Fortunately for me, my grandfather had a stroke while filling out a tax form before he could ask me that question. I don't know Hebrew. I can read Latin, puzzle out Greek, speak and read French, read technical German, understand it in some accents, swear in Russian-very useful!-and speak an ungrammatical smattering of Spanish picked up in cantinas and from horizontal dictionaries.

"Grandpa would have classed me as subliterate as I don't do any of these well-and I sometimes split infinitives which would have infuriated him. He practiced forensic medicine, medical jurisprudence, was an expert witness in toxicology, pathology, and traumatology, bullied judges, terrorized lawyers, medical students, and law students. He once threw a tax assessor out of his office and required him to return with a search warrant setting forth in detail its constitutional limitations, He regarded the income tax and the Seventeenth Amendment and the direct primary as signs of the decay of the Republic."

"How did he feel about the Nineteenth?"

"Hilda, Grandpa Zach supported female suffrage. I remember hearing him

say that if women were so dad-burned foolish as to want to assume the burden, they should be allowed to-they couldn't do the country more harm than men had. 'Votes for Women' didn't annoy him but nine thousand other things did. He lived at a slow simmer, always ready to break into a rolling boil.