Robert Heinlein - The Number of the Beast

This time Jake not only had air, I could hear it. Jake got her leveled out hastily. "Copilot, H-above-G!"

"Thirteen hundred meters."

"Too close! Zeb, I'm going to retire and take up tatting. Where are we? I can't see a thing."

"We're over water, Pop, with a light fog. I see a shoreline to starboard." Jake turned Gay to the right, I picked out the shoreline. Gay's wings were spread; Jake held her at an easy glide and placed her on automatic. "We'll leave this kite sealed now; I won't check the air without going up high."

"Sail ho!"

"Where away, Sharpie?"

"Starboard bow. A sailing ship."

Durn if it wasn't. A square-rigger out of the seventeenth century, high forecastle and sterncastle. Jake took us down for a better look. I wasn't afraid; people who sail ships like that don't use guided missiles-so I kept telling myself.

It was a pretty sight. Jake dropped the starboard wing so that we could have a good look. But we must not have been a "pretty sight" to them; sailors were rushing around and the helmsman let her get away from him and she

fell into irons, her canvas flapping foolishly. Not wanting to get the poor fellow keelhaUled, I told Jake to level off and head for land.

Deety said, "Good God, Pop, you scared me silly."

"Why, Deety?-Captain Deety. They were scared-but surely you aren't scared by black-powder cannon?"

"You almost put the starboard wing into the water."

"Don't be silly, Deety; I was above two hundred meters. Well, maybe a hundred and fifty when I did that steep turn. But plenty of room."

"Take a look at your altimeter. And pressure."

Jake looked and so did I. The radar altimeter stated that we were nineteen meters above the water; Jake had to change scales to read it. Pressure showed well over a thousand millibars-a sea-level high. So I snapped, "Gay Bounce!"

Gay did and I caught my breath.

"Deety, how did I make that error?" Jake asked.

"I don't know, Pop. I can see the right wing tip; you can't. When it looked to me as if you might cut the water, I looked at the instruments. I was about to yell when you straightened out."

"Captain, I was driving seat-of-my-pants by the ship's masts. I would swear I never got within three hundred meters of that ship, on the slant. That should put me plenty high."

Sharpie said, "Jacob, don't you recognize this place?"

"Hilda, don't tell me you've been here before?"

"Only in books, Beloved. A child's version in third grade. A more detailed version in junior high. Finally I laid hands on the unexpurgated version, which was pretty racy for the age I was then. I still find it pleasantly bawdy."

"Sharpie," I demanded, "what are you talking about?"

Jake answered. "Zeb, what sort of ship could cause me to think I was high in the air when in fact I was about to pole-vault into the sea?"

"I've got it!" said Deety.

"I give up," I admitted.

"Tell him, Pop."

"One manned by sailors fifteen centimeters high."

I thought about it. We were approaching land; I told Jake to glide to two klicks by instrument and told Gay to hold us there-it seemed much higher. "If anyone runs across Dean Swift, will you give him a swift kick for me?"

Deety said, "Zebadiah, do you suppose the land of the giants-Brobdingnag-is on this continent?"

"I hope not."

"Why not, dear? It should be fun."

"We don't have time to waste on either Lilliputians or giants. Neither would have obstetricians able to take care of you two. Sharpie, get ready to take us up a hundred thousand klicks. Then to rotate. Does anyone have any theory about what has been happening to us? Aside from Sharpie's notion that we are dead and don't know it?"

"I have another theory, Zebbie."

"Give, Sharpie."

"Don't laugh-because you told me that you and Jacob discussed the heart of it, the idea that human thought exists as quanta. I don't know quanta from Qantas Airways, but I know that a quantum is an indivisible unit. You told me that you and Jacob had discussed the possibility that imagination had its own sort of indivisible units or quanta-you called them 'fictons'-or was it ficta? Either way, the notion was that every story ever told-or to be told if there is a difference-exists somewhere in the Number of the Beast."

"But, Hilda my love, that was merely abstract speculation!"

"Jacob, your colleagues regard this car as 'abstract speculation.' Didn't you tell me that the human body is merely complex equations of wave forms? That was when I bit you-I don't mind being a wave form, waves areS pretty; I bit you for using the adverb 'merely."

"Zebadiah, there is a city on the left. Shouldn't we look at it before we leave?"

"Captain, you must decide that. You saw what a panic we caused in that ship. Imagine yourself fourteen centimeters tall and living in that city. Along comes a great sky monster and dives on you. Would you like it? How many little people will faint? How many will die of heart failure? How many are you willing to kill to satisfy your curiosity?" I added, "To those people we are monsters worse than 'Black-Hat' vermin."

"Oh, dear! You're right, Zebadiah-dismally so. Let's get out of here."

"Copilot, set to transit straight up one hundred thousand klicks."

"Transition 'H' axis, positive, vernier setting five-set!"

"Execute." I continued, "Captain, I'd like to sit here a while."

"Very well, Zebadiah."

"Sharpie, let's hear your theory. Captain, I've been scared silly by too many narrow escapes. We know how to translate from one Earth-analog to the next; just use plenty of elbow room. But these rotations are making me white-haired. The laws of chance are going to catch up with us."

"Zebbie, I don't think the laws of chance have anything to do with it. I don't think we have been in any danger in any rotation."

"So? Sharpie, I'm about to swap jobs with you as quickly as I can get the Captain's permission."

"No, no! I-"

"Chicken!"

"Zebbie, your hunches are part of why I say that the laws of chance are not~ relevant."

"Sharpie, statistical laws are the most firmly established of all natural~ laws."

"Do they apply in the Land of Oz?" asked Deety.

"Uh- Damned if I know! Touché!"

"Zeb, Hilda has not expressed it as I would; nevertheless I agree with her.) To call the equations used in statistics 'laws of nature' is a misnomer. Those,~ equations measure the degree of our ignorance. When I flip a coin and say~ that the chance of heads or tails is fifty-fifty, I am simply declaring totai,~ ignorance as to outcome. If I knew all conditions, the outcome might be subject~

to precalculation. But we have experienced two universes having physical laws unlike those of our home universe."

"Three, Jacob. Lilliput makes three."

"I don't follow you, my dear."

"The cube-square law that runs through all biology does not apply here. A human brain can't be placed in a space the size of a thimble by our biophysical laws. But we're getting away from the theory Zebbie wanted me to expound. Shall I go on?"

"Yes," Deety ruled. "Everybody shut up but Aunt Hilda. I'm zipping my own lip. Hillbilly-proceed."

"All right. It's not chance that we have been in three universes-InsideOut, the Land of Oz, and Lilliput-in... less than twenty-four hours, isn't it, Deety?"

"Less than twenty-one, Aunt Hilda."

"Thanks hon. It's not chance that those three are 'fictional' universes-I have to call them that for lack of a better word-well known to each of us. By coincidence-and again I don't have a good word but it's not 'chance'-all four of us are addicted to fanciful stories. Fantasy. Fairy tales. We all like the same sort of stories. How many of us like detective stories?"

"Some-not all," said Deety.

"My sole loyalty is to Sherlock Holmes," I said.