"Robert A Heinlein - The Number of the Beast v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

XLVI "I'm gifted with second sight." 461
XLVII "There are no tomorrows." 468



L 'En voi
XLVIII Rev. XXII: 13 487


I

"-it is better to marry than to burn."
-Saul of Tarsus




"He's a Mad Scientist and I'm his Beautiful Daughter."
That's what she said: the oldest clichщ in pulp fiction. She wasn't old enough to remember the pulps.
The thing to do with a silly remark is to fail to hear it. I went on waltzing while taking another look down her evening formal. Nice view. Not foam rubber.
She waltzed well. Today most girls who even attempt ballroom dancing drape themselves around your neck and expect you to shove them around the floor. She kept her weight on her own feet, danced close without snuggling, and knew what I was going to do a split second before I led it. A perfect partner-as long as she didn't talk.
"Well?" she persisted.
My paternal grandfather-an unsavory old reactionary; the FemLibbers would have lynched him-used to say, ~'Zebadiah, the mistake we made was not in putting shoes on them or in teaching them to read-we should never have taught them to talkY'
I signaled a twirl by pressure; she floated into it and back into my arms right on the beat. I inspected her hands and the outer corners of her eyes. Yes, she really was young-minimum eighteen Hilda Corners never permitted legal 'infants' at her parties), maximum twenty-five, first approximation twenty-two. Yet she danced like her grandmother's generation.
'V~ eli?" she repeated more firmly.
This time I openly stared. "Is that cantilevering natural? Or is there an
invisible bra, you being in fact the sole support of two dependents?"
She glanced down, looked up and grinned. "They do stick out, don't they? Your comment is rude, crude, unrefined, and designed to change the subject."
"What subject? I made a polite inquiry; you parried it with amphigory."
"Amphigory' my tired feet! I answered precisely."
'Amphigory," I repeated. "The operative symbols were 'mad,' 'scientist,' 'beautiful,' and 'daughter.' The first has several meanings-the others denote opinions. Semantic content: zero."
She looked thoughtful rather than angry. "Pop isn't rabid. . . although I did use 'mad' in ambivalent mode. 'Scientist' and 'beautiful' each contain descriptive opinions, I stipulate. But are you in doubt as to my sex? If so, are you qualified to check my twenty-third chromosome pair? With transsexual surgery so common I assume that anything less would not satisfy you."
"I prefer a field test."
"On the dance floor?"
"No, the bushes back of the pool. Yes, I'm qualified-laboratory or field. But it was not your sex that lay in the area of opinion; that is a fact that can be established.. . although the gross evidence is convincing. I-"
"Ninety-five centimeters isn't gross! Not for my height. One hundred seventy bare-footed, one eighty in these heels. It's just that I'm wasp-waisted for my mass-forty-eight centimeters versus fifty-nine kilos."
"And your teeth are your own and you don't have dandruff. Take it easy, Deedee; I didn't mean to shake your aplomb"-or those twin glands that are not gross but delicious. I have an infantile bias and have known it since I was six-six months, that is. "But the symbol 'daughter' encompasses two statements, one factual-sex-and the other a matter of opinion even when stated by a forensic genetohematologist."
"Gosh, what big words you know, Mister. I mean 'Doctor."
"Mister' is correct. On this campus it is swank to assume that everyone holds a doctorate. Even I have one, Ph.D. Do you know what that stands for?"
"Doesn't everybody? I have a Ph.D., too. 'Piled Higher and Deeper."
I raised that maximum to twenty-six and assigned it as second approximation. "Phys. ed.?"
"Mister Doctor, you are trying to get my goat. Won't work. I had an undergraduate double major, one being phys. ed. with teacher's credentials in case I needed a job. But my real major was math-which I continued in graduate school."
"And here I had been assuming that 'Deedee' meant 'Doctor of Divinity."
"Go wash out your mouth with soap. My nickname is my initials-Dee Tee. Or Deety. Doctor D. T. Burroughs if being formal, as I can't be 'Mister' and refuse to be 'Miz' or 'Miss.' See here, Mister; I'm supposed to be luring you with my radiant beauty, then hooking you with my feminine charm. . . and not getting anywhere. Let's try another tack. Tell me what you piled higher and deeper."
"Let me think. Flycasting? Or was it basketweaving? It was one of those transdisciplinary things in which the committee simply weighs the dissert&
tion. Tell you what. I've got a copy around my digs. I'll find it and see what title the researcher who wrote it put on it."
"Don't bother. The title is 'Some Implications of a Six-Dimensional NonNewtonian Continuum.' Pop wants to discuss it."
I stopped waltzing. "Huh? He'd better discuss that paper with the bloke who wrote it."
"Nonsense; I saw you blink-I've hooked you. Pop wants to discuss it, then offer you a job."
"'Job'! I just slipped off the hook."