Robert Heinlein - The Number of the Beast

"Excuses. What about my clothes? All on the starboard wing. Where are they now? Floating up in the stratosphere? Coming down where? I'll never find them."

"I thought you preferred to dress Barsoomian style?"

"Doesn't mean I want to be forced to! Besides, Deety lent them to me. I'm sorry, Deety."

I patted her hand. "S'all right, Aunt Hilda. I'll lend you more. Give them, I mean." I hesitated, then said firmly, "Zebadiah, you should apologize to Aunt Hilda."

"Oh, for the love of- Sharpie? Sharpie darling."

"Yes, Zebbie?"

"I'm sorry I let you think that we were leaving Barsoom. I'll buy you clothes that fit. We'll make a quick trip back to Earth-"

"Don't want to go back to Earth! Aliens! They scare me."

"They scare me, too. I started to say: 'Earth-without-a-J.' It's so much like our own that I can probably use U.S. money. If not, I have gold. Or I can barter. For you, Sharpie, I'll steal clothes. We'll go to Phoenix-without-a-J- tomorrow-today we take a walk and see some of this planet-your planet- and we'll stay on your planet until you get tired of it. Is that enough? Or must I confess putting Jello into your pool when I didn't?"

"You really didn't?"

"Cross my heart."

"Be darned. Actually I thought it was funny. I wonder who did it? Aliens, maybe?"

"They play rougher than that. Sharpie darling, I'm not the only weirdo in your stable-not by dozens."

"Guess maybe. Zebbie? Will you kiss Sharpie and make up?"

On the ground, under the starboard wing, we found nur travel clothes, and under the port wing, those of our husbands. Zebadiah looked bemused. "Jake? I thought Hilda was right. It had slipped my mind that we had clothing on the wings."

"Use your head, Son." "I'm not sure I have one."

"I don't understand it either, darling," Aunt Hilda added.

"Daughter?" Pop said.

"Pop, I think I know. But- I pass!"

"Zeb, the car never moved. Instead-"

Aunt Hilda interrupted, "Jacob, are you saying that we did not go straight up? We were there-five minutes ago."

"Yes, my darling. But we didn't move there. Motion has a definable meaning:

A duration of changing locations. But no duration was involved. We did not successively occupy loci between here-then and there-then."

Aunt Hilda shook her head. "I don't understand. We went whoosh! up into the sky... then whoosh! back where we started."

"My darling, we didn't whoosh! Deety! Don't be reticent."

I sighed. "Pop, I'm not sure there exists a symbol for the referent. Aunt Hilda. Zebadiah. A discontinuity. The car-"

"Got it!" said Zebadiah.

'I didn't," Aunt Hilda persisted.

"Like this, Sharpie," my husband went on. "My car is here. Spung!-it vanishes. Our clothes fall to the ground. Ten seconds later-flip!-we're back where we started. But our clothes are on the ground. Get it now?"

"I- I guess so. Yes."

"I'm glad you do... because I don't. To me, it's magic." Zebadiah shrugged. "'Magic.'"

"Magic," I stated, "is a symbol for any process not understood."

"That's what I said, Deety. 'Magic.' Jake, would it have mattered if the car had been indoors?"

"Well....hat fretted me the first time Deety and I translated to Earthwithout-the-letter-J. So I moved our car outdoors. But now I think that only the destination matters. It should be empty-I think. But I'm too timid to experiment."

"Might be interesting. Unmanned vehicle. Worthless target. A small asteroid. A baby sun?"

"I don't know, Zeb. Nor do I have apparatus to spare. It took me three years to build this one."

"So we wait a few years. Jake? Air has mass."

"That worried me also. But any mass, other than degenerate mass, is mostly

empty space. Air-Earth sea-level air-has about a thousandth the density of the human body. The body is mostly water and water accepts air readily. I can't say that it has no effect-twice I've thought that my temperature went up a trifle at transition or translation in atmosphere but it could have been excitement. I've never experienced caisson disease from it. Has any of us felt discomfort?"

"Not me, Jake."

"I've felt all right, Pop," I agreed.

"I got space sick. Till Deety cured it," Aunt Hilda added.

"So did I, my darling. But that was into vacuo and could not involve the phenomenon."

"Pop," I said earnestly, 'we weren't hurt; we don't have to know why. A basic proposition of epistemology, bedrock both for the three basic statements of semantics and for information theory, is that an observed fact requires no proof. It simply is, self-demonstrating. Let philosophers worry about it; they haven't anything better to do."

"Suits me!" agreed Hilda. "You big brains had Sharpie panting. I thought we were going to take a walk?"

"We are, dear," agreed my husband. "Right after those steaks."

"-the whole world is alive."

Zebadiah:

Four Dagwoods later we were ready to start walkabout. Deety delayed by wanting to repeat her test by remote control. I put my foot down. "No!"

"Why not, my Captain? I've taught Gay a program to take her straight up ten klicks. It's G, A, Y, B, 0, U, N, C, ~-a new fast-escape with no execution word necessary. Then I'll recall her by B, U, G, 0, U, T. If one works via walkytalky, so will the second. It can save our lives, it can!"

"Uh-" I went on folding tarps and stowing my sleeping bag. The female

mind is too fast for me. I often can reach the same conclusion; a woman gets there first and never by the route I have to follow. Besides that, Deety is a genius.

"You were saying, my Captain?"

"I was thinking. Deety, do it with me aboard. I won't touch the controls. Check pilot, nothing more."

"Then it won't be a test."

"Yes, it will. I promise, Cub Scout honor, to let it fall sixty seconds. Or to three klicks H-above-G, whichever comes first."

"These walky-talkies have more range than ten kilometers even between themselves. Gay's reception is much better."

"Deety, you trust machinery; I don't. If Gay doesn't pick up your second command-sun spots, interference, open circuit, anything-I'll keep her from crashing."

"But if something else goes wrong and you did crash, I would have killed you!" She started to cry.

So we compromised. Her way. The exact test she had originally proposed.

I wasted juice by roading Gay Deceiver a hundred meters, got out, and we all backed off. Deety said into her walky-talky, "Gay Deceiver... Bug Out!"

It's more startling to watch than it is to be inside. There was Gay Deceiver off to our right, then she was off to our left. No noise-not even an implosion splat! Magic.

"Well, Deety? Are you satisfied?"

"Yes, Zebadiah. Thank you, darling. But it had to be a real test. You see that-don't you?"

I agreed, while harboring a suspicion that my test had been more stringent. "Deety, could you reverse that? Go somewhere else and tell Gay to come to you?"

"Somewhere she's never been?"

"Yes."

Deety switched off her walky-talky and made sure that mine was off. "I don't want her to hear this. Zebadiah, I always feel animistic about a computer. The Pathetic Fallacy-I know. But Gay is a person to me."

Deety sighed. "I know it's a machine. It doesn't have ears; it can't see; it doesn't have a concept of space-time. What it can do is manipulate circuitry in complex ways-complexities limited by its grammar and vocabulary. But those limits are exact. If I don't stay precisely with its grammar and vocabulary, it reports 'Null program.' I can tell it anything by radio that I can tell it by voice inside the cabin-and so can you. But I can't tell it to come look for me in a meadow beyond a canyon about twelve or thirteen klicks approximately southwest of here-now. That's a null program-five undefined terms."