Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

“Improving my brain,” I said. “You are looking at the World’s Greatest Authority.”

“Authority on what?” Goldie asked.

“Anything. Just ask me. The easy ones I answer at once; the hardest ones I’ll answer tomorrow.”

“Prove it,” said Anna. “How many angels can sit on the point of a needle?”

“That’s an easy one. Measure the angels’ arses. Measure the point of the needle. Divide A into B. The numerical answer is left as an exercise for the student.”

“Smart-aleck. What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

“Even easier. Switch on a recorder, using any nearby terminal. Clap with one hand. Play back the result.”

“You try her, Goldie. She’s been eating meat.”

“What is the population of San Jose?”

“Ah, that’s a hard one! I’ll report tomorrow.”

This fiddling went on for over a month before it filtered through my skull that someone (Boss, of course) was in fact trying to force me to become “the World’s Greatest Authority.”

At one time there really was a man known as “the World’s Greatest Authority.” I ran across him in trying to nail down one of the many silly questions that kept coming at me from odd sources. Like this: Set your terminal to “research.” Punch parameters in succession “North American culture,” “English-speaking,” “midÄtwenti

eth century,” “comedians,” “the World’s Greatest Authority.” The answer you can expect is “Professor Irwin Corey.” You’ll find his routines timeless humor.

Meanwhile I was being force-fed, like a Strasbourg goose.

Nevertheless it was a very happy time. Often, as often as not, one of my true friends would invite me to share a bed. I don’t recall ever refusing. Rendezvous would usually be arranged during afternoon sunbathing and the prospect added a tingle to the sensuous pleasure of lying in the sun. Because everyone at HQ was so civilizedÄsweet through and throughÄit was possible to answer, “Sorry, Terence asked me first. Tomorrow maybe? No? Okay, sometime soon”Ä and have no hurt feelings. One of the shortcomings of the S-group I used to belong to was that such arrangements were negotiated among the males under some protocol that was never explained to me but was not free from tension.

The silly questions speeded up. I found myself just getting acquainted with the details of Ming ceramics when a message showed up in my terminal saying that someone in staff wanted to know the relationships between men’s beards, women’s skirts, and the price of gold. I had ceased to wonder at silly questions; around Boss anything can happen. But this one seemed supersilly. Why should there be any relationship? Men’s beards did not interest me; they tickle and often are dirty. As for women’s skirts, I knew even less. I have almost never worn skirts. Skirted costumes can be pretty but they aren’t practical for travel and could have gotten me killed three or four timesÄand when you’re home, what’s wrong with skin? Or as near as local custom permits.

But I had learned not to ignore questions merely because they were obvious nonsense; I tackled this one by calling up all the data I could, including punching out some most unlikely association chains. I then told the machine to tabulate all retrieved data by categories.

Durned if I didn’t begin to find connections!

As more data accumulated I found that the only way I could see all of it was to tell the computer to plot and display a three-dimensional graphÄand that looked so promising that I told it to convert to holographic in color. Beautiful! I did not know why these three variables fitted together but they did. I spent the rest of that day

changing scales, X versus Y versus Z in various combinationsÄ magnifying, shrinking, rotating, looking for minor cycloid relations under the obvious gross ones. . . and noticed a shallOw double sinusoidal hump that kept showing up as I rotated the holoÄand suddenly, for no reason I can assign, I decided to subtract the double sunspot curve.

Eureka! As precise and necessary as a Ming vase! Before dinnertime I had the equation, just one line that encompassed all the silly data I had spent five days dragging out of the terminal. I punched the chief of staff’s call and recorded that one-line equation, plus definitions of variables. I added no comment, no discussion; I wanted to force the faceless joker to ask for my opinions.