Robert Heinlein - The Number of the Beast

My daughter took a deep breath and went on: "And you bawled her out for ordering a scram escape. Twenty-seven minutes ago you said-and I quote:

'All Hands!-we are all free at all times to use any of the escape programs to get us out of danger.' End of quotation. Pop, how can you expect orders to be obeyed when you can't remember what orders you've given? Nevertheless, we have obeyed you, every time and no back talk-and we've all caught hell. Aunt Hilda caught the most-but Zebadiah and I caught quite a bit. Pop, you've been- I won't say it, I won't!"

I looked out the port at Mars for long unhappy minutes. Then I turned around. "I've no choice but to resign. Effective as I ground her. Family, I must admit to great humiliation. I had thought that I was doing quite well. Uh, back to our streamside, I think. Gay-"

"GayDeceiverOverride! Not on your tintype! You'll serve as long as I did-

not a second less! But Sharpie is right in refusing to take the conn under you; you've been mistreating her. Despite being a colonel, you have never learned that you can't assign responsibility without delegating authority to match- and then respect it. Jake, you're a lousy boss. We're going to keep you in the hot seat until you learn better. But there's no reason for Sharpie to resign over your failings."

"I still have something to say," said my daughter.

"Deety," Zeb said forcefully, "leave well enough alone!"

"Zebadiah, this is to ~ou quite as much-or more-as it is to Pop. Complaints of another sort."

My son-in-law looked startled. "Oh. Sorry. You have the floor."

"-the first ghosts ever to search for an obstetrician."

Hilda:

If Zebbie and Jacob have a fault in common, it is overprotectiveness. Having always been the runt, I am habitually willing to accept protection. But Deety ~ rebels.

When Zebbie asked Jacob whether or not they were justified in exposing us to unknown dangers, Deety stuck her oar in-and Zebbie tried to hush her.

Zebbie should have known better.

But he is barely getting acquainted with her, whereas I've known her since her diaper days. Once when Deety was, oh, possibly four, I started to tie her shoes. She pulled away. "Deety do!" she announced indignantly-and Deety did: on one shoe a loose half bow that came apart almost at once, on the other a Gordian knot that required the Alexandrian solution.

It's been "Deety do!" ever since, backed by genius and indomitable will.

Deety told him, "Zebadiah, concerning completing this schedule: Is there some reason to exclude Hilda and me from the decision?"

"Damn it, Deety, this is one time when husbands have to decide!"

"Damn it, Zebadiah, this is one time when wives must be consulted!"

Zebbie was shocked. But Deety had simply matched his manner and rhetoric. Zebbie is no fool; he backed down. "I'm sorry, hon," he said soberly. "Go ahead."

"Yessir. I'm sorry I answered the way I did. But I do have something to say-and Hilda, too. I know I speak for both of us when I say that we appreciate

that you and Pop would die for us... and that you feel this more intensely now that we are pregnant.

"But we have not been pregnant long enough to be handicapped. Our bellies do not bulge. They will bulge, and that gives us a deadline. But for that very reason we will either sample those rotation universes today... or we will never sample them."

"Why do you say 'never,' Deety?"

"That deadline. We've sampled five and, scary as some have been, I wouldn't have missed it! We can look at the other ten in the next few hours. But if we start searching Teh axis there is no way to guess how long it will take. Thousands of universes along Teh axis and it seems likely that each holds an analog of Earth. We may check hundreds before we find what we are looking for. Let's say we find it and Hilda and I have babies with skilled medical attention. Then what? Zebadiah, are you going to be more willing to take women with babies into strange universes than you are without babies?"

"Uh... that's not the way to put it, Deety."

"How would you put it, sir? Are you thinking that you and Pop might check those ten while Hilda and I stay home with the kids?"

"Well... yes, I suppose I am. Something of the sort."

"Zebadiah, I married you for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. I did not marry to walk the Widow's Walk! Where you go, I go!.-till death do us part."

"Deety speaks for me," I said, and shut up. Deety had it figured: If Jacob and Zebbie didn't finish those rotations today, they would have that "far horizons" look for the rest of their lives-and they wouldn't want us along. Not with kids. Sharpie wasn't going to hold still for that. No, sir!

"Deety, are you through?"

"Not quite, sir. All humans are created unequal. You are bigger and stronger than Pop; I am bigger and stronger than Hilda. I have the least years of experience; Pop has the most. Pop is a supergenius... but he concentrates so hard that he forgets to eat-unless he has a nursemaid to watch him-as Mama did, as I did, as Hilda now does. You, sir, are the most all-around competent man I've ever met, whether driving a duo, or dancing, or telling outrageous tales. Three of us have eight or nine earned degrees... but Aunt Hilda with none is a walking encyclopedia from insatiable curiosity and extraordinary memory. We two are baby factories and you two are not-but two men can impregnate fifty women-or five hundred. There is no end to the ways that we four are unequal. But in one supremely important way all of us are equals.

"We are pioneers.

"Men alone are not pioneers; they can't be. Pioneer mothers share the dangers of pioneer fathers and go on having babies. Babies were born in the Mayflower, lots were born in covered wagons-and lots died, too. Women didn't stay home; they went along.

"Zebadiah, I do not ask to be taken to those next ten universes-"

"It sounds like it."

"You didn't listen, sir. I would like to finish sampling those fifteen. It's my preference but not my demand. What I do demand I have stated: Where you go, I go. Today and to the end of our lives. Unless you tell me to get out, that you don't want me anymore. I have spoken."

"You certainly have, dear. Hilda?"

Fish or cut bait, Sharpie-what do you want? I didn't care; any new universe was bound to be strange. But Deety had laid down the party line; I didn't want to fuzz it up-so I answered instantly, "Deety speaks for me in every word."

"Jake? Back to my original question: 'Are we justified in exposing our wives to conditions we can't even imagine?"

"Zeb, you are the one who convinced me that it would be prudent to sample the universes accessible through rotation before searching by translation."

"True. But that was before we sampled five of them."

"I don't see that the situation has changed. An imaginable danger is not necessarily better than an unimaginable one; it may be worse. Our home planet had grave shortcomings before we tangled with the vermin. No need to list them; we all know that the Four Horsemen are ready to ride again. But I can think of a very close analog of our home planet that would be far worse than Earth-zero even if it didn't have a single 'Black-Hat' vermin on it."

"Go on."

"One in which Hitler got atomic weapons but we did not. I can't see that vermin are more to be dreaded than Hitler's S.S. Corps. The sadism of some human beings-not just Storm Troopers; you can find sadists in any country including the United States-is more frightening to me than any monster."

"Not to me!" Deety blurted it out.

"But, my dear, we don't know that those vermin are cruel. We got in their way; they tried to kill us. They did not try to torture us. There is a world of difference."