Buck Rogers 2 - That Man on Beta (26 page)

The computer droned on.

And on.

And on.

Several hours later Buck had removed Theopolis from the pillow and placed him on the chair. As Buck put it, “You don’t have the same sensors built into your ventral planar casement surface that I have in my
gluteus maximus.
You take the chair for a while and
I’ll
take the bed.” Buck then settled comfortably on his back, arms folded happily behind his head as he nestled into the pillow.

“Ah, that’s fine,” Buck exhaled. “All right, Doc. Resume the recitation if you please.”

The computer started naming relatives and giving biographical statistics once more. Eventually he reached the year 2487
A.D.
“. . . Which brings us to the present geometric computation of your descendants, Buck,” the electronic voice droned, “in the proportion, after five centuries at an average breeding age of 22.76321, of some 86,000 to one—”

There was a sudden, loud knocking on the door.

Buck turned his head and called lazily, “Come in.”

The door opened and Wilma Deering stepped into the room.

“Hello, Buck,” she greeted. “You said you’d see me later, and here it is, later. You
did
mean me, didn’t you? Or did you have Dr. Huer in mind?”

Buck rose from the bed and embraced Wilma. “Which do you think?”

They exchanged a brief kiss. Wilma reached behind her with one hand and shoved the door shut.

“Nobody ordered this,” Wilma said. Buck looked puzzled for a moment—then, comprehending, he grinned.

“You know what this all means?” Wilma asked Buck. “No perfumed fountains, no phony waterfalls or piped-in music? Not”—she looked around the room—“any bowls of fresh cold fruit, even?”

“It means anything we do, we do because
we
want to,” Buck said.

“Right! Give that man a prize!”

“I already have one,” Buck countered. They broke off their embrace but took the few steps across the room hand-in-hand. They seated themselves on the edge of Buck’s bed and kissed again. The kiss turned into a rather extended clinch. At one point Wilma opened her eyes and happened to glance at the chair next to the bed.

There was Dr. Theopolis, indicator panel blinking on and off in a regular pattern as he observed all that took place before his optical sensing devices.

Wilma reached to the chair, picked up the computer brain and turned it so the indicator panel was on the opposite side from herself and Buck. As were the optical sensors!

As Wilma turned dreamily back to Buck he shoved himself upright on one elbow. “Wait a minute,” he exclaimed. “I’m not really so sure of this after all. You know, Theopolis learned a lot about my relatives from that Draconian computer. And he’s been telling me all about it today.”

“Yes?” Wilma asked, annoyed. “So?”

“So,” Buck explained, “in five hundred years, the computer says that any given person’s descendants intermix with
other
people’s descendants, the number of offspring and collateral relations increasing to the point that the ‘I’ of five hundred years ago would have no fewer than 86,000 descendants.”

“Uh, huh,” Wilma yawned.

“And,” Buck went on, “the ‘you’ of
today
would have had no fewer than 86,000 ancestors five hundred years ago! You see?”

Wilma shook her head. “No.”

“Well, what I’m saying,” Buck explained, “is this. That, uh, while it hasn’t been determined with certainty, Wilma, well, you see, in terms of mathematically determined statistical probability, that, ah—”

“Are you saying that I’m your granddaughter?” Wilma exclaimed. She jumped off the bed and faced Buck with fiery eyes.

“Yeah,” Buck conceded miserably. “Well, not my granddaughter, of course. Something more like my great-great-great, ah, you know . . . But, yes. That’s just about it.”

Wilma thought about that for a moment.

“I don’t give a damn!” she said succinctly, and jumped back onto the bed.

Buck rubbed his chin thoughtfully.