The Number of the Beast

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"He's a Mad Scientist and I'm his Beautiful Daughter."

That's what she said: the oldest cliché 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 talk.'

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.

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