and now I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Earth will not be a G.D., too. But I don’t see how it can be; there is something deliciously primitive about the very thought of a planet where one can go outdoors without any special preparations. Why, Uncle Tom tells me that there are places along the Mediterranean (that’s an ocean in La Belle France) where the natives bathe in the ocean itself without any clothing of any sort, much less insulasuits or masks.
I wouldn’t like that. Not that I’m body proud; I enjoy a good sauna sweat-out as well as the next Marsman. But it would scare me cross-eyed to bathe in an ocean; I don’t ever intend to get wet all over in anything larger than a bathtub. I saw a man fished out of the Grand Canal once, in early spring. They had to thaw him before they could cremate him.
But it is alleged that, along the Mediterranean shore, the air in the summertime is often blood temperature and the water not much cooler. As may be. Podkayne is not going to take any silly chances.
Nevertheless I am terribly eager to see Earth, in all its fantastic unlikeliness. It occurs to me that my most vivid conceptions of Earth come from the Oz stories-and when you come right down to it, I suppose that isn’t too reliable a source. I mean, Dorothy’s conversations with the Wizard are instructive-but about what? When I was a child I believed every word of my Oz tapes; but now I am no longer a child and I do not truly suppose that a whirlwind is a reliable means of transportation, nor that one is likely to encounter a Tin Woodman on a road of yellow brick.
Tik-Tok, yes-because we have Tik-Toks in Marsopolis for the simpler and more tedious work. Not precisely like Tik-Tok of Oz, of course, and not called “Tik-Toks” by anyone but children, but near enough, near enough, quite sufficient to show that the Oz stories are founded on fact if not precisely historical.
And I believe in the Hungry Tiger, too, in the most practical way possible, because there was one in the municipal zoo when I was a child, a gift from the Calcutta Kiwanis KIub to Marsopolis Kiwanians. It always looked at me as if it were sizing me up as an appetizer. It died when I was about five and I didn’t know whether to be sorry or glad. It was beautiful and so very Hungry.
But Earth is still many weeks away and, in the meantime, Venus does have some points of interest for the newcomer, such as I.
In traveling I strongly recommend traveling with my Uncle Tom. On arriving here, there were no silly waits in “Hospitality” (!) rooms; we were given the “courtesy of the port” at once-to the extreme chagrin of Mrs. Royer. “Courtesy of the port” means that your baggage isn’t examined and that nobody bothers to look at that bulky mass of documents-passport and health record and security clearance and solvency proof and birth certificate and I.D.s, and nineteen other silly forms. Instead we were whisked from satellite station to spaceport in the private yacht of the Chairman of the Board and were met there by the Chairman himself!- and popped into his Rolls and wafted royally to Hilton Tannhäuser.
We were invited to stay at his official residence (his “cottage,” that being the Venus word for a palace) but I don’t think he really expected us to accept, because Uncle Tom just cocked his left or satirical eyebrow and, “Mr. Chairman, I don’t think you would want me to appear to be bribed even if you manage it.”
And the Chairman didn’t seem offended at all; he just chuckled till his belly shook like Saint Nicholas’ (whom he strongly resembles even to the beard and the red cheeks, although his eyes are cold even when he laughs, which is frequently).
“Senator,” he said, “you know me better than that. My attempt to bribe you will be much more subtle. Perhaps through this young lady. Miss Podkayne, are you fond of jewelry?”
I told him honestly that I wasn’t, very, because I always lose it. So he blinked and said to Clark, “How about you, son?”
Clark said, “I prefer cash.”
The Chairman blinked again and said nothing.
Nor had he said anything to his driver when Uncle Tom declined the offer of his roof nevertheless we flew straight to our hilton-which is why I don’t think he ever expected us to stay with him.
But I am beginning to realize that this is not entirely a pleasure trip for Uncle Tom … and to grasp emotionally a fact known only intellectually in the past, i.e., Uncle Tom is not merely the best pinochle player in Marsopolis, he sometimes plays other games for higher stakes. I must confess that the what or why lies outside my admittedly youthful horizon-save that everyone knows that the ThreePlanets conference is coming up.
Query: Could U.T. conceivably be involved in this? As a consultant or something? I hope not, as it might keep him tied up for weeks on Luna and I have no wish to waste time on a dreary ball of slag while the Wonders of Terra await me-and Uncle Tom just might be difficult about letting me go down to Earth without him.
But I wish still more strongly that Clark had not answered the Chairman truthfully.
Still, Clark would not sell out his own uncle for mere money.
On the other hand, Clark does not regard money as “mere.” I must think about this-But it is some comfort to realize that anyone who handed Clark a bribe would find that Clark had not only taken the bribe but the hand as well.
Possibly our suite at the Tannhäuser is intended as a bribe, too. Are we paying for it? I’m almost afraid to ask Uncle Tom, but I do know this: the servants that come with it won’t accept tips. Not any. Although I very carefully studied up on the subject of tipping, both for Venus and Earth, so that I would know what to do when the time came-and it had been my understanding that anyone on Venus always accepts tips, even ushers in churches and bank tellers.
But not the servants assigned to us. I have two tiny little amber dolls, identical twins, who shadow me and would bathe me if I let them. They speak Portuguese but not Ortho-and at present my Portuguese is limited to “gobble-gobble” (which means “Thank you”) and I have trouble explaining to them that I can dress and undress myself and I’m not too sure about their names-they both answer to “Maria.”
Or at least I don’t think they speak. Ortho. I must think about this, too.
Venus is officially bilingual, Ortho and Portuguese, but I’ll bet I heard at least twenty other languages the first hour we were down. German sounds like a man being choked to death, French sounds like a cat fight, while Spanish sounds like molasses gurgling gently out of a jug. Cantonese-Well, think of a man trying to vocalize Bach who doesn’t like Bach very much to start with.
Fortunately almost everybody understands Ortho as well. Except Maria and Maria. If true.
I could live a long time without the luxury of personal maids but I must admit that this hilton suite is quite a treat to a plain-living, wholesome Mars girl, namely me. Especially as I am in it quite a lot of the time and will be for a while yet. The ship’s Surgeon, Dr. Torland, gave me many of the special inoculations needed for Venus on the trip here-an unpleasant subject I chose not to mention-but there still remain many more before it will be safe for me to go outside the city, or even very much into the city. As soon as we reached our suite a physician appeared and played chess on my back with scratches, red to move and mate in five moves-and three hours later I had several tens of welts, with something horrid that must be done about each of them.
Clark ducked out and didn’t get his scratch tests until the next morning and I misdoubt he will die of Purple Itch or some such, were it not that his karma is so clearly reserving him for hanging. Uncle Tom refused the tests. He was through all this routine more than twenty years ago, and anyhow he claims that the too, too mortal flesh is merely a figment of the imagination.
So I am more or less limited for a few days to lavish living here in the Tannhäuser. If I got out, I must wear. gloves and a mask even in the city. But one whole wall of the suite’s salon becomes a stereo stage simply by voice request, either taped or piped live from any theater or club in Venusberg-and some of the “entertainment” has widened my sophistication unbelievably, especially when Uncle Tom is not around. I am beginning to realize that Mars is an essentially puritanical culture. Of course Venus doesn’t actually have laws, just company regulations, none of which seems to be concerned with personal conduct. But I had been brought up to believe that Mars Republic is a free society-and I suppose it is. However, there is “freedom” and “freedom.”
Here the Venus Corporation owns everything worth owning and runs everything that shows a profit, all in a fashion that would make Marsmen swoon. But I guess Venusmen would swoon at how straitlaced we are. I know this Mars girl blushed for the first time in I don’t know when and switched off a show that I didn’t really believe.
But the solly screen is far from being the only astonishing feature of this suite. It is so big that one should carry food and water when exploring it, and the salon is so huge that local storms appear distinctly possible. My private bath is a suite in itself, with so many gadgets in it that I ought to have an advanced degree in engineering before risking washing my hands. But I’ve learned how to use them all and purely love them! I had never dreamed that I had been limping along all my life without Utter Necessities.
Up to now my top ambition along these lines has been not to have to share a washstand with Clark, because it has never been safe to reach for my own Christmas-present cologne without checking to see that it is not nitric acid or worse! Clark regards a bathroom as an auxiliary chemistry lab; he’s not much interested in staying clean.
But the most astonishing thing in our suite is the piano. No, no, dear, I don’t mean a keyboard hooked into the sound system; I mean a real piano. Three legs. Made out of wood. Enormous. That odd awkwardgraceful curved shape that doesn’t fit anything else and can’t be put in a corner. A top that opens up and lets you see that it really does have a harp inside and very complex machinery for making it work.
I think that there are just four real pianos on all of Mars, the one in the Museum that nobody plays and probably doesn’t work, the one in Lowell Academy that no longer has a harp inside it, just wiring connections that make it really the same as any other piano, the one in the Rose House (as if any President ever had time to play a piano!), and the one in the Beaux Arts Hall that actually is played sometimes by visiting artists although I’ve never heard it. I don’t think there
can be another one, or it would have been bannerlined in the news, wouldn’t you think?
This one was made by a man named Steinway and it must have taken him a lifetime. I played Chopsticks on it (that being the best opus in my limited repertoire) until Uncle asked me to stop. Then I closed it up, keyboard and top, because I had seen Clark eying the machinery inside, and warned him sweetly but firmly that if he touched one finger to it I would break all his fingers while he was asleep. He wasn’t listening but he knows I mean it. That piano is Sacred to the Muses and is not to be taken apart by our Young Archimedes.
I don’t care what the electronics engineers say; there is a vast difference between a “piano” and a real piano. No matter if their silly oscilloscopes “prove” that the sound is identical. It is like the difference between being warmly clothed-or climbing up in your Daddy’s lap and getting really warm.
I haven’t been under house arrest all the time; I’ve been to the casinos, with Girdie and with Dexter Cunha, Dexter being the son of Mr. Chairman of the Board Kurt Cunha. Girdie is leaving us here, going to stay on Venus, and it makes me sad.
I asked her, “Why?”
We were sitting alone in our palatial salon. Girdie is staying in this same hilton, in a room not very different nor much larger than her cabin in the Tricorn, and I guess I’m just mean enough that I wanted her to see the swank we were enjoying. But my excuse was to have her help me dress. For now I am wearing (Shudder!) support garments. Arch supports in my shoes and tight things here and there intended to keep me from spreading out like an amoeba-and I won’t say what Clark calls them because Clark is rude, crude, unrefined, and barbaric.
I hate them. But at 84 percent of one standard gee, I need them despite all that exercise I took aboard ship. This alone is reason enough not to live on Venus, or on Earth, even if they~were as delightful as Mars.
Girdie did help me-she had bought them for me in the first place-but she also made me change my makeup, one which I had most carefully copied out of the latest issue of Aphrodite. She looked at me and said, “Go wash your face, Poddy. Then we’ll start over.”
I pouted out my lip and said, “Won’t!” The one thing I had noticed most and quickest was that every female on Venus wears paint like a Red Indian shooting at the Good Guys in the sollies-even Maria and Maria wear three times as much makeup just to work in as Mother wears to a formal reception-and Mother doesn’t wear any when working.
“Poddy, Poddy! Be a good girl.”
“I am being a good girl. I learned that when I was just a child. And look at yourself in the mirror!” Girdie was wearing as High-styled a Venusberg face-do as any in that magazine.
“I know what I look like. But I am more than twice your age and no one even suspects me of being young and sweet and innocent. Always be what you are, Poddy. Never pretend. Look at Mrs. Grew. She’s a comfortable fat old woman. She isn’t kittenish, she’s just nice to be around.”
“You want me to look like a hick tourist!”
“I want you to look like Poddy. Come, dear, we’ll find a happy medium. I grant you that even the girls your age here wear more makeup than grown-up women do on Mars-so we’ll compromise. Instead of painting you like a Venusberg trollop, we’ll make you a young lady of good family and gentle breeding, one who is widely traveled and used to all sorts of customs and manners, and so calmly sure of herself that she knows what is best for her-totally uninfluenced by local fads.”
Girdie is an artist, I must admit. She started with a blank canvas and worked on me for more than an hour-and when she got through, you couldn’t see that I was wearing any makeup at all.
But here is what you could see: I was at least two years older (real years, Mars years, or about six Venus years); my face was thinner and my nose not pug at all and I looked ever so slightly world-weary in a sweet and tolerant way. My eyes were enormous.
“Satisfied?” she asked.
“I’m beautiful!”
“Yes, you are. Because you are still Poddy. All I’ve done is make a picture of Poddy the way she is going to be. Before long.”
My eyes filled with tears and we had to blot them up very hastily and she repaired the damage. “Now,” she said briskly, “all we need is a club. And your mask.”
“What’s the club for? And I won’t wear a mask, not on top of this.”
“The club is to beat off wealthy stockholders who will throw themselves at your feet. And you will wear your mask, or else we won’t go.”
We compromised. I wore the mask until we got there and Girdie promised to repair any damage to my face-and promised that she would coach me as many times as necessary until I could put on that lovely, lying face myself. The casinos are safe, or supposed to be-the air not merely filtered and conditioned but freshly regenerated, free of any trace of pollen, virus, colloidal suspension or whatever. This is because lots of tourists don’t like to take all the long list of immunizations necessary actually to live on Venus; but the Corporation wouldn’t think of letting a tourist get away unbled. So the hiltons are safe and the casinos are safe and a tourist can buy a health insurance policy from the corporation fbr a very modest premium. Then he finds that he can cash his policy back in for gambling chips any time he wants to. I understand that the Corporation hasn’t had to pay off on one of these policies very often.
Venusberg assaults the eye and ear even from inside a taxi. I believe in free enterprise; all Marsmen do, it’s an article of faith and the main reason we won’t federate with Earth (and be outvoted five hundred to one). But free enterprise is not enough excuse to blare in your ears and glare in your eyes every time you leave your own roof. The shops never close (I don’t think anything ever closes in Venusberg) and full color and stereo ads climb right inside your taxi and sit in your lap and shout in your ear.
Don’t ask me how this horrid illusion is produced. The engineer who invented it probably flew off on his own broom. This red devil about a meter high appeared between us and the partition separating us from the driver (there wasn’t a sign of a solly receiver) and started jabbing at us with a pitchfork. “Get the Hi-Ho Habit!” it shrieked. “Everybody drinks Hi-Ho! Soothing, Habit-Forming. Deelishus! Get High with Hi-Ho!”
I shrank back against the cushions.
Girdie phoned the driver. “Please shut that thing off.”
It faded down to just a pink ghost and the commercial dropped to a whisper while the driver answered, “Can’t, madam. They rent the concession.” Devil and noise came back on full blast.
And I learned something about tipping. Girdie took money from her purse, displayed one note. Nothing happened and she added a second; noise and image faded down again. She passed them through a slot to the driver and we weren’t bothered any more. Oh, the transparent ghost of the red devil remained and a nagging whisper of his voice, until both were replaced by another and just as faint~-but we could talk. The giant ads in the street outside were noisier and more dazzling; I didn’t see how the driver could see or hear to drive, especially as traffic was unbelievably thick and heart-stoppingly fast and frantic and he kept cutting in and out of lanes and up and down in levels as if he were trying utmostly to beat Death to a hospital.
By the time we slammed to a stop on the roof of Dom Pedro Casino I figure Death wasn’t more than half a lap behind.
I learned later why they drive like that. The hackle is an employee of the Corporation, like most everybody-but he is an “enterprise-employee,” not on wages. Each day he has to take in a certain amount in fares to “make his nut”-the Corporation gets all of this. After he has rolled up that fixed number of paid kilometers, he splits the take with the Corporation on all other fares the rest of the day. So he drives like mad to pay off the nut as fast as possible and start making some money himself-then keeps on driving fast because he’s got to get his while the getting is good.
Uncle Tom says that most people on Earth have much the same deal, except it’s done by the year and they call it income tax.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree-Dom Pedro Casino is like that. Lavish. Beautiful.
Exotic. The arch over the entrance proclaims EVERY DIVERSION IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE, and from what I hear this may well be true. However, all Girdie and I visited were the gaming rooms. I never saw so much money in my whole life!
A sign outside the gambling sector read:
HELLO, SUCKER!
All Games Are Honest
All Games Have a House Percentage
You CAN’T WIN!
So Come On In and Have Fun-
(While We Prove It)
Checks Accepted. All Credit
Cards Honored. Free Breakfast
and a Ride to Your Hilton When
You Go Broke. Your Host,
DOM PEDRO
I said, “Girdie, there really is somebody named Dom Pedro?”
She shrugged. “He’s an employee and that’s not his real name. But he does look like an emperor. I’ll point him out. You can meet him if you like and he’ll kiss your hand. If you like that sort of thing. Come on.”
She headed for the roulette tables while I tried to see everything at once. It was like being on the inside of a kaleidoscope. People beautifully dressed (employees mostly), people dressed every sort of way, from formal evening wear to sports shorts (tourists mostly), bright lights, staccato music, click and tinkle and shuffle and snap, rich hangings, armed guards in comicopera uniforms, trays of drinks and food, nervous excitement, and money everywhere-I stopped suddenly, so Girdie stopped. My brother Clark. Seated at a crescent-shaped table at which a beautiful lady was dealing cards. In front of him several tall stacks of chips and an imposing pile of paper money.
I should not have been startled. If you think that a six-year-old boy (or eighteen-year-old boy if you use their years) wouldn’t be allowed to gamble in Venusberg, then you haven’t been to Venus. Never mind what we do in Marsopolis, here there are just two requirements to gamble: a) you have to be alive; b) you have to have money. You don’t have to be able to talk Portuguese or Ortho, nor any known language; as long as you can nod, wink, grunt, or flip a tendril, they’ll take your bet. And your shirt.
No, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Clark heads straight for money the way ions head for an electrode. Now I knew where he had ducked out to the first night and where he had been most of the time since.
I went up and tapped him on the shoulder. He didn’t look around at once but a man popped up out of the rug like a genie from a lamp and had me by the arm. Clark said to the dealer, “Hit me,” and looked around. “Hi, Sis. It’s all right, Joe, she’s my sister.”
“Okay?” the man said doubtfully, still holding my arm.
“Sure, sure. She’s harmless. Sis, this is Josie Mendoza, company cop, on lease to me for tonight. Hi, Girdie!” Clark’s voice was suddenly enthusiastic. But he remembered to say, “Joe, slip into my seat and watch the stuff. Girdie, this is swell! You gonna play black jack? You can have my seat.”
(It must be love, dears. Or a high fever.)
She explained that she was about to play roulette. “Want me to come help?” he said eagerly. “I’m pretty good on the wheel, too.”
She explained to him gently that she did not want help because she was working on a system, and promised to see him later in the evening. Girdie is unbelievably patient with Clark. I would have-Come to think of it, she’s unbelievably patient with me.
If Girdie has a system for roulette, it didn’t show. We found two stools together and she tried to give me a few chips. I didn’t want to gamble and told her so, and she explained that I would have to stand up if I didn’t. Considering what 84 percent gee does to my poor feet I bought a few chips of my own and did just what she did, which was to place minimum bets on the colors, or on odd or even. This way you don’t win, you don’t lose-except that once in a long while the little ball lands on zero and you lose a chip permanently (that “house percentage” the sign warned against).
The croupier could see what we were doing but we actually were gambling and inside the rules; he didn’t object. I discovered almost at once that the trays of food circulating and the drinks were absolutely free-to anyone who was gambling. Girdie had a glass of wine. I don’t touch alcoholic drinks even on birthdays-and I certainly wasn’t going to drink Hi-Ho, after that obnoxious ad!-but I ate two or three sandwiches and asked for, and got-they had to go get it-a glass of milk. I tipped the amount I saw Girdie tip.
We had been there over an hour and I was maybe three or four chips ahead when I happened to sit up straight-and knocked a glass out of the hand of a man standing behind me, all over him, some over me.
“Oh, dear!” I said, jumping down from my stool and trying to dab off the wet spots on him with my kerchief. “I’m terribly sorry!”
He bowed. “No harm done to me. Merely soda water. But I fear my clumsiness has ruined milady’s gown.”
Out of one corner of her mouth Girdie said, “Watch it, kid!” but I answered, “This dress? Huh uh! If that was just water, there won’t be a wrinkle or a spot in ten minutes. Travel clothes.”
“You are a visitor to our city? Then permit me to introduce myself less informally than by soaking you to the skin.” He whipped out a card. Girdie was looking grim but I rather liked his looks. Actually not impossibly older than I am (I guessed at twelve Mars years, or say thirty-six of his own-and it turned out he was only thirty-two). He was dressed in the very elegant Venus evening wear, with cape and stick and formal ruff… and the cutest little waxed mustaches. The card read:
DEXTER KURT CUNHA, STK.
I read it, then reread it, then said, “Dexter Kurt Cunha-Are you any relation to-“
“My father.”
“Why, I know your father!”-and put out my hand. Ever had your hand kissed? It makes chill bumps that race up your arm, across your shoulders, and down the other arm-and of course nobody would ever do it on Mars. This is a distinct shortcoming in our planet and one I intend to correct, even if I have to bribe Clark to institute the custom.
By the time we had names straight, Dexter was urging us to share a bite of supper and some dancing with him in the roof garden. But Girdie was balky. “Mr. Cunha,” she said, “that is a very handsome calling card. But I am responsible for Podkayne to her uncle-and I would rather see your I.D.”
For a split second he looked chilly. Then he smiled warmly at her and said, “I can do better,” and held up one hand.
The most imposing old gentleman I have ever seen hurried over. From the medals on his chest I would say that he had won every spelling contest from first grade on. His bearing was kingly and his costume unbelievable. “Yes, Stockholder?”
“Dom Pedro, will you please identify me to these ladies?”
“With pleasure, sir.” 56 Dexter was really Dexter and I got my hand kissed again. Dom Pedro does it with great flourish but it didn’t have quite the same effect-I don’t think he puts his heart into it the way Dexter does.
Girdie insisted on stopping to collect Clark-and Clark suffered an awful /moment of spontaneous schizophrenia, for he was still winning. But love won out and Girdie went up on Clark’s arm, with Josie trailing us with the loot. I must say I admire my brother in some ways; spending cash money to protect his winnings must have caused even deeper conflict in his soui, if any, than leaving the game while he was winning.
The roof garden is the Brasilia Room and is even more magnificent than the casino proper, with a nightsky roof to match its name, stars and the Milky Way and the Southern Cross such as nobody ever in history actually saw from anywhere on Venus. Tourists were lined up behind a velvet rope waiting to get in-but not us. It was, “This way, if you please, Stockholder,” to an elevated table right by the floor and across from the orchestra and a perfect view of the floor show.
We danced and we ate foods I’ve never heard of and I let a glass of champagne be poured for me but didn’t try to drink it because the bubbles go up my nose-and wished for a glass of milk or at least a glass of water because some of the food was quite spicy, but didn’t ask for it.
But Dexter leaned over me and said, “Poddy, my spies tell me that you like milk.”
“I do!”
“So do I. But I’m too shy to order it unless I have somebody to back me up.” He raised a finger and two glasses of milk appeared instantly.
But I noticed that he hardly touched his.
However, I did not realize I had been hoaxed until later. A singer, part of the floor show, a tall handsome dark girl dressed as a gypsy-if gypsies did ever dress that way, which I doubt, but she was billed as “Romany Rose”-toured the ringside tables singing topical verses to a popular song.
She stopped in front of us, looked right at me and smiled, struck a couple of chords and sang:
“Poddy Fries-uh came to town, Pretty, winsome Poddy-Silver shoes and sky blue gown, Lovely darling Podkayne- “She has sailed the starry sea, Pour another toddy! Lucky Dexter, lucky we! Drink a toast to Poddy!”
And everybody clapped and Clark pounded on the table and Romany Rose curtsied to me and I started to cry and covered my face with my hands and suddenly remembered that I mustn’t cry because of my makeup and dabbed at my eyes with my napkin and hoped I hadn’t ruined it, and suddenly silver buckets with champagne appeared all over that big room and everybody did drink a toast to me, standing up when Dexter stood up in a sudden silence brought on by a roll of drums and a crashing chord from the orchestra.
I was speechless and just barely knew enough to stay seated myself and nod and try to smile when he looked at me-
-and he broke his glass, just like story tapes, and everybody imitated him and for a while there was crash and tinkle all over the room, and I felt like Ozma just after she stops being Tip and is Ozma again and I had to remember my makeup very hard indeed!
Later on, after I had gulped my stomach back into place and could stand up without trembling, I danced with Dexter again. He is a dreamy dancer-a firm, sure lead without ever turning it into a wrestling match. During a slow waltz I said, “Dexter? You spilled that glass of soda water. On purpose.”
“Yes. How dld~ you know?”
“Because it is a sky-blue dress-or the color that is called ‘sky-blue,’ for Earth, although I’ve never seen a sky this color. And my shoes are silvered. So it couldn’t have been an accident. Any of it.”
He just grinned, not a bit ashamed. “Only a little of it. I went first to your hilton-and it took almost half an hour to find out who had taken you where and I was furious, because Papa would have been most vexed. But I found you.”
I chewed that over and didn’t like the taste. “Then you did it because your daddy told you to. Told you to entertain me because I’m Uncle Tom’s niece.”
“No, Poddy.”
“Huh? Better check through the circuits again. That’s how the numbers read.”
“No, Poddy. Papa would never order me to entertain a lady-other than formally, at our cottage-lady on my arm at dinner, that sort of thing. What he did do was show me a picture of you and ask me if I wanted to. And I decided I did want to. But it wasn’t a very good picture of you, didn’t do you justice-just one snapped by one of the servants of the Tannhäuser when you didn’t know it.”
(I decided I had to find some way to get rid of Maria and Maria, a girl needs privacy. Although this hadn’t turned out too dry.)
But he was still talking. “… and when I did find you I almost didn’t recognize you, you were so much
more dazzling than the photograph. I almost shied off from introducing myself. Then I got the wonderful idea of turning it into an accident. I stood behind you with that glass of soda water almost against your elbow for so long the bubbles all went out of it-and when you did move, you bumped me so gently I had to slop it over myself to make it enough of an accident to let me be properly apologetic.” He grinned most disarmingly.
“I see,” I said. “But look, Dexter, the photograph was probably a very good one. This isn’t my own face.” I explained what Girdie had done.
He shrugged. “Then someday wash it for me and let me look at the real Poddy. I’ll bet I’ll recognize her. Look, dear, the accident was only half fake, too. We’re even.”
“What do you mean?”
“They named me ‘Dexter’ for my maternal grandfather, before they found out I was left-handed. Then it was a case of either renaming me ‘Sinister,’ which doesn’t sound too well-or changing me over to righthanded. But that didn’t work out either; it just made me the clumsiest man on three planets.” (This while twirling me through a figure eight!)
“I’m always spilling things, knocking things over. You can follow me by the sound of fractured frangibles. The problem was not to cause an accident, but to keep from spilling that water until the right instant.” He grinned that impish grin. “I feel very triumphant about it. But forcing me out of left-handedness did something else to me too. It’s made me a rebel-and I think you are one, too.”
“Uh … maybe.”
“I certainly am. I am expected to be Chairman oc the Board someday, like my papa and my grandpapa. But I shan’t. I’m going to space!”
“Oh! So am I!” We stopped dancing and chattered
about spacing. Dexter intends to be an explorer captain, just like me-only I didn’t quite. admit that my plans for spacing included pilot and master; it is never well in dealing with a male to let him know that you think you can do whatever it is he can do best or wants to do most. But Dexter intends to go to Cambridge and study paramagnetics and Davis mechanics and be ready when the first true starships are ready. Goodness!
“Poddy, maybe we’ll even do it together. Lots of billets for women in starships.”
I agreed that that was so.
“But let’s talk about you. Poddy, it wasn’t that you looked so much better than your picture.”
“No?” (I felt vaguely disappointed.)
“No. Look. I know your background, I know you’ve lived all your life in Marsopolis. Me, I’ve been everywhere. Sent to Earth for school, took the Grand Tour while I was there, been to Luna, of course, and all over Venus-and to Mars. When you were a little girl and I wish I had met you then.”
“Thank you.” (I was beginning to feel like a poor relation.)
“So I know exactly what a honky-tonk town Venusberg is … and what a shock it is to people the first time. Especially anyone reared in a gentle and civilized place like Marsopolis. Oh, I love my hometown but I know what it is-I’ve been other places. Poddy? Look at me, Poddy. The thing that impressed me about you was your aplomb.”
“Me?”
“Your amazing and perfect savoir-faire … under conditions I knew were strange to you. Your uncle has been everywhere-and Girdie, I take it, has been, too. But lots of strangers here, older women, become quite giddy when first exposed to the fleshpots of Venusberg and behave frightfully. But you carry yourself like a queen. Savoir-falre.”
(This man I liked! Definitely. After years and years of “Beat it, runt!” it does something to a woman to be told she has savoir-faire. I didn’t even stop to wonder if he told all the girls that-I didn’t want to!)
We dldn’t stay much longer; Girdie made it plain that I had to get my “beauty sleep.” So Clark went back to his game (Josie appeared out of nowhere at the right time-and I thought of telling Clark he had better git fer home too, but I decided that wasn’t “savoir-faire” and anyhow he wouldn’t have listened) and Dexter took us to the Tannhäuser in his papa’s Rolls (or maybe his own, I don’t know) and bowed over our hands and kissed them as he left us.
I was wondering if he would try to kiss me good night and had made up my mind to be cooperative about it. But he didn’t try. Maybe it’s not a Venusberg custom, I don’t know.
Girdie went up with me because I wanted to chatter. I bounced myself on a couch and said, “Oh, Girdie, it’s been the most wonderful night of my life!”
“It hasn’t been a bad night for me,” she said quietly. “It certainly can’t hurt me to have met the son of the Chairman of the Board.” It was then that she told me that she was staying on Venus.
“But, Girdie-why?”
“Because I’m broke, dear. I need a job.”
“You? But you’re rich. Everybody knows that.”
She smiled. “I was rich, dear. But my last husband went through it all. He was an optimistic man and excellent company. But not nearly the businessman he thought he was. So now Girdie must gird her loins and get to work. Venusberg is better than Earth for that. Back home I could either be a parasite on my old friends until they got sick of me-the chronic house guest-or get one of them to give me a job that would really be charity, since I don’t know anything. Or disappear into the lower depths and change my name. Here, nobody cares and there is always work for anyone who wants to work. I don’t drink and I don’t gamble-Venusberg is made to order for me.”
“But what will you do?” It was hard to imagine her as anything but the rich society girl whose parties and pranks were known even on Mars.
“Croupier, I hope. They make the highest wages… and I’ve been studying it. But I’ve been practicing dealing, too-for black jack, or faro, or chemin de fer. But I’ll probably have to start as a change girl.”
“Change girl? Girdie-would you dress that way?”
She shrugged. “My figure is still good … and I’m quite quick at counting money. It’s honest work, Poddy-it has to be. Those change girls often have as much as ten thousand on their trays.”
I decided I had fubbed and shut up. I guess you can take the girl out of Marsopolis but you can’t quite take Marsopolis out of the girl. Those change girls practically don’t wear anything but the trays they carry money on-but it certainly was honest work and Girdie has a figure that had all the junior officers in the Tricorn running in circles and dropping one wing. I’m sure she could have married any of the bachelors and insured her old age thereby with no effort.
Isn’t it more honest to work? And, if so, why shouldn’t she capitalize her assets?
She kissed me good night soon after and ordered me to go right to bed and to sleep. Which I did-all but the sleep. Well, she wouldn’t be a change girl long; she’d be a croupier in a beautiful evening gown and saving her wages and her tips … and. someday she would be a stockholder, one share anyway, which is all anybody needs for old age in the Venus Corporation. And I would come back and visit her when I was famous.
I wondered if I could ask Dexter to put in a word for her to Dom Pedro?
Then I thought about Dexter-I know that can’t be love; I was in love once and it feels entirely different. It hurts.
This just feels grand.
X
I hear that Clark has been negotiating to sell me (black market, of course) to one of the concessionaires who ship wives out to contract colonists in the bush. Or so they say. I do not know the truth. But There Are Rumors.
What infuriates me is that he is said to be offering me at a ridiculously low price!
But in truth it is this very fact that convinces me that it is just a rumor, carefully planted by Clark himself, to annoy me-because, while I would not put it past Clark to sell me into what is tantamount to chattel slavery and a Life of Shame if he could get away with it, nevertheless he would wring out of the sordid transaction every penny the traffic would bear. This is certain.
It is much more likely that he is suffering a severe emotional reaction from having opened up and become almost human with me the other night-and therefore found it necessary to counteract it with this rumor in order to restore our relations to their normal, healthy, cold-war status.
Actually I don’t think he could get away with it, even on the black market, because I don’t have any contract with the Corporation and even if he forged one, I could always manage to get a message to Dexter, and Clark knows this. Girdie tells me that the black market in wives lies mostly in change girls or clerks or hilton chambermaids who haven’t managed to snag husbands in Venusberg (where men are in short supply) and are willing to cooperate in being sold out back (where women are scarce) in order to jump their contracts. They don’t squawk and the Corporation overlooks the matter.
Most of the bartered brides, of course, are single women among the immigrants, right off a ship. The concessionaires pay their fare and squeeze whatever cumshaw they can out of the women themselves and the miners or ranchers to whom their contracts are assigned. All Kosher.
Not that I understand it-I don’t understand anything about how this planet really works. No laws, just Corporate regulations. Want to get married? Find somebody who claims to be a priest or a preacher and have any ceremony you like-but it hasn’t any legal standing because it is not a contract with the Corporation. Want a divorce? Pack your clothes and get out, leaving a note or not as you see fit. Illegitimacy? They’ve never heard of it. A baby is a baby and the Corporation won’t let one want, because that baby will grow up and be an employee and Venus has a chronic labor shortage. Polygamy? Polyandiy? Who cares? The Corporation doesn’t.
Bodily assault? Don’t try it in Venusberg; it is the most thoroughly policed city in the system-violent crime is bad for business. I don’t wander around alone in some parts of Marsopolis, couth as my hometown is, because some of the old sand rats are a bit sunstruck and not really responsible. But I’m perfectly safe alone anywhere in Venusberg; the only assault I risk is from super salesmanship.
(The bush is another matter. Not the people so much, but Venus itself is lethal-and there is always a chance of encountering a Venerian who has gotten hold of a grain of happy dust. Even the little wingety fairies are bloodthirsty if they sniff happy dust.)
Murder? This is a very serious violation of regulations. You’ll have your pay checked for years and years and years to offset both that employee’s earning power for what would have been his working life … and his putative value to the Corporation, all calculated by the company’s actuaries who are widely known to have no hearts at all, just liquid helium pumps.
So if you are thinking of killing anybody on Venus, don’t do it! Lure him to a planet where murder is a social matter and all they do is hang you or something. No future in it on Venus.
There are three classes of people on Venus: stockholders, employees, and a large middle ground. Stockholder-employees (Girdie’s ambition), enterprise employees (taxi drivers, ranchers, prospectors, some retailers, etc.), and of course future employees, children still being educated. And there are tourists but tourists aren’t people; they have more the status of steers in a cattle pen-valuable assets to be treated with great consideration but no pity.
A person from out-planet can be a tourist for an hour or a lifetime-just as long as his money holds out. No visa, no rules of any sort, everybody welcome. But you must have a return ticket and you can’t cash it in until after you sign a contract with the Corporation. If you do. I wouldn’t.
I still don’t understand how the system works even though Uncle Tom has been very patient in explaining. But he says he doesn’t understand it either. He calls it “corporate fascism”-which explains nothing-and says that he can’t make up his mind whether it is the grimmest tyranny the human race has ever known or the most perfect democracy in history.
He says that nothing here is as bad in many ways as the conditions over 90 percent of the people on Earth endure, and that it isn’t even as bad in creature comforts and standard of living as lots of people on Mars, especially the sand rats, even though we never knowingly let anyone starve or lack medical attention.
I Just Don’t Know. I can see now that all my life I have simply taken for granted the way we do things on Mars. Oh, sure, I learned about other systems in school-but it didn’t soak in. Now I am beginning to grasp emotionally that There Are Other Ways Than Ours … and that people can be happy under them. Take Girdie. I can see why she didn’t want to stay on Earth, not the way things had changed for her. But she could have stayed on Mars; she’s just the sort of high-class immigrant we want. But Mars didn’t tempt her at all.
This bothered me because (as you may have gathered) I think Mars is just about perfect. And I think Girdie is just about perfect.
Yet a horrible place like Venusberg is what she picked. She says it is a Challenge.
Furthermore Uncle Tom says that she is Dead Right; Girdie will have Venusberg eating out of her hand in two shakes and be a stockholder before you can say Extra Dividend.
I guess he’s right. I felt awfully sorry for Girdie when I found out she was broke. “I wept that I had no shoes-till I met a man who had no feet.” Like that, I mean. I’ve never been broke, never missed any meals, never worried about the future-yet I used to feel sony for Poddy when money was a little tight around home and I couldn’t have a new party dress. Then I found out that the rich and .glamorous Miss FitzSnugglie (I still won’t use her right name, it wouldn’t be fair) had only her ticket back to Earth and had borrowed the money for that. I was so sony I hurt.
But now I’m beginning to realize that Girdie has “feet” no matter what-and will always land on them.
She has indeed been a change girl, for two whole nights-and asked me please to see to-it that Clark did not go to Dom Pedro Casino those nights. I don’t think she cared at all whether or not I saw her, but she knows what a horrible case of puppy love Clark has on her and she’s just so sweet and good all through that she did not want to risk making it worse and/or shocking him.
But she’s a dealer now and taking lessons for croupier-and Clark goes there every night. But she won’t let him play at her table. She told him point-blank that he could know her socially or professionally, but not both-and Clark never argues with the inevitable; he plays at some other table and tags her around whenever possible.
Do you suppose that my kid brother actually does possess psionic powers? I know he’s not a telepath, else he would have cut my throat long since. But he is still winning.
Dexter assures me that a) the games are absolutely honest, and b) no one can possibly beat them, not in the long run, because the house collects its percentage no matter what. “Certainly you can win, Poddy,” he assured me. “One tourist came here last year and took home over half a million. We paid it happily-and advertised it all over Earth-and still made money the very week he struck it rich. Don’t you even suspect that we are giving your brother a break. If he keeps it up long enough, we will not only win it all back but take every buck he started with. If he’s as smart as you say he is, he’ll quit while he’s ahead. But most people aren’t that smart-and Venus Corporation never gambles on anything but a sure thing.”
Again, I don’t know. But it was both Girdie and winning that caused Clark to become almost human with me. For a while.
It was last week, the night I met Dexter-and Girdie told me to go to bed and I did but I couldn’t sleep and I left my door open so that I could hear Clark come in-or if I didn’t, phone somebody and have him chased home because, while Uncle Tom is responsible for both of us, I’m responsible for Clark and always have been. I wanted Clark to be home and in bed before Uncle Tom got up. Habit, I guess.
He did come sneaking in about two hours after I did and I psst’d to him and he came into my room.
You never saw a six-year-old boy with so much money!
Josie had seen him to our door, so he said. Don’t ask me why he didn’t put it in the Tannhäuser’s vault-or do ask me: I think he wanted to fondle it.
He certainly wanted to boast. He laid it out in stacks on my bed, counting it and making sure that I knew how much it was. He even shoved a pile toward me. “Need some, Poddy? I won’t even charge you interest-plenty more where this came from.”
I was breathless. Not the money, I didn’t need any money. But the offer. There have been times in the past when Clark has lent me money against my allowance-and charged me exactly 100 percent interest come allowance day. Till Daddy caught on and spanked us both.
So I thanked him most sincerely and hugged him. Then he said, “Sis, how old would you say Girdie is?”
I began to understand his off-the-curve behavior. “I
really couldn’t guess,” I answered carefully. (Didn’t need to guess, I knew.) “Why don’t yau ask her?”
“I did. She just smiled at me and said that women don’t have birthdays.”
“Probably an Earth custom,” I told him and let it go at that. “Clark, how in the world did you win so much money?”
“Nothing to it,” he said. “All those games, somebody wins, somebody loses. I just make sure I’m one who wins.”
“But how?”
He just grinned his worst grin.
“How much money did you start with?”
He suddenly looked guarded. But he was still amazingly mellow, for Clark, so I pushed ahead. I said, “Look, if I know you, you can’t get all your fun out of it unless somebody knows, and you’re safer telling me than anyone else. Because I’ve never told on you yet. Now have I?”
He admitted that this was true by not answering-and it is true. When he was small enough, I used to clip him one occasionally. But I never tattled on him. Lately clipping him has become entirely too dangerous; he can give me a fat lip quicker than I can give him one. But I’ve never tattled on him. “Loosen up,” I urged him. “I’m the only one you dare boast to. How much were you paid to sneak those three kilos into the Tricorn in my baggage?”
He looked very smug. “Enough.”
“Okay. I won’t pry any further about that. But what was it you smuggled? You’ve had me utterly baffled.”
“You would have found it if you hadn’t been so silly anxious to explore the ship. Poddy, you’re stupid. You know that, don’t you? You’re as predictable as the law of gravity. I can always outguess you.”
I didn’t get mad. If Clark gets you sore, he’s got you.
“Guess maybe,” I admitted. “Are you oing to tell me what it was? Not happy dust, I hope?’
If you say “tock” instead of “key toss” to a Finn, he still understands it. If you mistake a Japanese for a Cantonese and say “m’goy” instead of “arigato”-well, that is the one word of Cantonese he knows. And “obrigado” everybody understands.
However, if you do guess right and pick their home language, they roll out the red carpet and genuflect, all smiles. I’ve even had tips refused-and this in a city where Clark’s greediness about money is considered only natural.
All those other long, long lists of hints on How to Get Along While Traveling that I studied so carefully before I left turn out not to be necessary; this one rule does it all.
Uncle Tom is dreadfully worried about something. He’s absent-minded and, while he will smile at me if I manage to get his attention (not easy), the smile soon fades and the worry lines show again. Maybe it’s something here and things will be all right once we leave. I wish we were back in the happy ThreeCornered Hat with next stop Luna City.
XI
Things are really grim. Clark hasn’t been home for two nights, and Uncle Tom is almost out of his mind. Besides that, I’ve had a quarrel with Dexter-which isn’t important compared with Brother being missing but I could surely use a shoulder to cry on.
And Uncle Tom has had a real quarrel with Mr. Chairman-which was what led to my quarrel with Dexter because I was on Uncle Tom’s side even though I didn’t know what was going on and I discovered that Dexter was just as blind in his loyalty to his father as I am to Uncle Tom. I saw only a bit of the quarrel with Mr. Chairman and it was one of those frightening, cold, bitter, formally polite, grown-men quarrels of the sort that used to lead inevitably to pistols at dawn.
I think it almost did. Mr. Chairman arrived at our suite, looking not at all like Santa Claus, and I heard Uncle say coldly, “I would rather your friends had called on me, sir.”
But Mr. Chairman ignored that and about then Uncle noticed that I was there-back of the piano, keeping quiet and trying to look small-and he told me to go to my room. Which I did.
But I know what part of it is. I had thought that both Clark and I had been allowed to run around loose in Venusberg-although I have usually had either Girdie or Dexter with me. Not so. Both of us have been guarded night and day, every instant we have been out of the Tannhäuser, by Corporation police. I never suspected this and I’m sure Clark didn t or he would never have hired Josie to watch his boodle. But Uncle did know it and had accepted it as a courtesy from Mr. Chairman, one that left him free to do whatever these things are that have kept him so busy here, without riding herd on two kids, one of them nutty as Christmas cake. (And I don’t mean me.)
As near as I can reconstruct it Uncle blames Mr. Chairman for Clark’s absence-although this is hardly fair as Clark, if he knew he was being watched, could evade eighteen private eyes, the entire Space Corps, and a pack of slavering bloodhounds. Or is it “wolfhounds”?
But, on top of this, Dexter says that they disagree completely on how to locate Clark. Myself, I think that Clark is missing because Clark wants to be missing because he intends to miss the ship and stay here on Venus where a) Girdie is, and b) where all that lovely money is. Although perhaps I have put them in the wrong order.
I keep telling myself this, but Mr. Chairman says that it is a kidnapping, that it has to be a kidnapping, and that there is only one way to handle a kidnapping on Venus if one ever expects to see the kidnappee alive again.
On Venus, kidnapping is just about the only thing a stockholder is afraid of. In fact they are so afraid of it
that they have brought the thing down almost to a ritual. If the kidnapper plays by the rules and doesn’t hurt his victim, he not only won’t be punished but he had the Corporation’s assurance that he can keep any ransom agreed on.
But if he doesn~‘t play by the rules and they do catch him, well, it’s pretty grisly. Some of the things Dexter just hinted at. But I understand that the mildest punishment is something called a “four-hour death.” He wouldn’t give me any details on this, either-except that there is some drug that is just the opposite of anesthesia; it makes pain hurt worse.
Dexter says that Clark is absolutely safe as long as Uncle Tom doesn’t insist on meddling with things he doesn’t understand. “Old fool” is one term that he used and that was when I slapped him.
Long sigh and a wish for my happy girlhood in Marsopolis, where I understood how things worked. I don’t here. All I really know is that I can no longer leave the suite save with Uncle Tom-and must leave it and stay with him when he does and wherever he goes.
Which is how I at last saw the Cunha “cottage”- and would have been much interested if Clark hadn’t been missing. A modest little place only slightly smaller than the Tannhäuser but much more lavish. Our President’s Rose House would fit into its ballroom. That is where I quarreled with Dexter while Uncle and Mr. Chairman were continuing their worst quarrel elsewhere in that “cottage.”
Presently Uncle Tom took me back to the Tannhäuser and I’ve never seen him look so old-fifty at least, or call it a hundred and fifty of the years they use here. We had dinner in the suite and neither of us ate anything and after dinner I went over and sat by the living window. The view was from Earth, I guess. The Grand Canyon of El Dorado, or El
Colorado, or whatever it is. Grand, certainly. But all I got was acrophobia and tears.
Uncle was just sitting, looking like Prometheus enduring the eagles. I put my hand in his and said, “Uncle Tom? I wish you would spank me.”
“Eh?” He shook his head and seemed to see me. “Flicka! Why?”
“Because it’s my fault.”
“What do you mean, dear?”
“Because I’m responsibu-bul for Clark. I always have been. He hasn’t any sense. Why, when he was a baby I must have kept him from falling in the Canal at least a thousand times.”
He shook his head, negatively this time. “No, Poddy. It is my responsibility and not yours at all. I am in loco parentis to both of you-which means that your parents were loco ever to trust me with it.”
“But I feel responsible. He’s my Chinese obligation.” He shook his head still again. “No. In sober truth no person can ever be truly responsible for another human being. Each one of us faces up to the universe alone, and the universe is what it is and it doesn’t soften the rules for any of us-and eventually, in the long run, the universe always wins and takes all. But that doesn’t make it any easier when we try to be responsible for another-as you have, as I have-and then look back and see how we could have done it better.” He sighed. “I should not have blamed Mr. Cunha. He tried to take care of Clark, too. Of both of you. I knew it.”
He paused and added, “It was just that I had a foul suspicion, an unworthy one, that he was using Clark to bring pressure on me. I was wrong. In his way and by his rules, Mr. Cunha is an honorable man-and his rules do not include using a boy for political purposes.”
“Political purposes?”
Uncle looked around at me, as if surprised that I was still in the room. “Poddy, I should have told you more than I have. I keep forgetting that you are now a woman. I always think of you as the baby who used to climb on my knee and ask me to tell her ‘The Poddy Story.’” He took a deep breath. “I still won’t burden you with all of it. But I owe Mr. Cunha an abject apology-because I was using Clark for political purposes. And you, too.”
“Huh?”
“As a cover-up, dear. Doddering great-uncle escorts beloved niece and nephew on pleasure tour. I’m sony, Poddy, but it isn’t that way at all. The truth is I am Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary for the Republic. To the Three Planets Summit. But it seemed desirable to keep it a secret until I present my credentials.”
I didn’t answer because I was having a little trouble soaking this in. I mean, I know Uncle Tom is pretty special and has done some important things, but all my life he has been somebody who always had time to hold a skein of yarn for me while I wound it and would take serious interest in helping me name paper dolls.
But he was talking. “So I used you, Flicka. You and your brother. Because-Poddy, do you really want to know all the ins and outs and snarls of the politics behind this?”
I did, very much. But I tried to be grown up. “Just whatever you think best to tell me, Uncle Tom.”
“All right. Because some of it is sordid and all of it is complex and would take hours to explain-and some of it really isn’t mine to tell; some of it involves commitments Bozo-sony, the President-Some of it has to do with promises he made. Do you know who our Ambassador is now, at Luna City?”
I tried to remember. “Mr. Suslov?”
“No, that was last administration. Artie Finnegan.
Artie isn’t too bad a boy… but he thinks he should have been President and he’s certain he knows more about interplanetary affairs and what is good for Mars than the President does. Means well, no doubt.”
I didn’t comment because the name “Arthur Finnegan” I recognized at once-I had once heard Uncle Tom sound off about him to Daddy when I was supposed to be in bed and asleep. Some of the milder expressions were “a head like a sack of mud,” “larceny in his heart,” and a “size twelve ego in a size nine soul.”
“But even though he means well,” Uncle Tom went on, “he doesn’t see eye to eye with the President-and myself-on matters that will come before this conference. But unless the President sends a special envoy-me, in this case-the Ambassador in residence automatically speaks for Mars. Poddy, what do you know about Switzerland?”
“Huh? William Tell. The apple.”
“That’s enough, I guess, although there probably never was an apple. Poddy, Mars is the Switzerland of the solar System-or it isn’t anything at all. So the President thinks, and so I think. A small man (and a small country, like Mars or Switzerland) can stand up to bigger, powerful neighbors only by being willing to fight. We’ve never had a war and I pray we never do, because we would probably lose it. But if we are willing enough, we may never have to fight.”
He sighed. “That’s the way I see it. But Mr. Finnegan thinks that, because Mars is small and weak, Mars should join up with the Terran Federation. Perhaps he’s right and this really is the wave of the future. But I don’t think so; I think it would be the end of Mars as an independent country and a free society. Furthermore, I think it is logical that if Mars gives up its independence, it is only a matter of time until Venus goes the same way. I’ve been spending the time since we got here trying to convince Mr. Cunha of this, cause him to have his Resident Commissioner make a common cause with us against Terra. This could persuade Luna to come in with us too, since both Venus and Mars can sell to Luna cheaper than Terra can. But it wasn’t at all easy; the Corporation has such a long-standing policy of never meddling in politics at all. ‘Put not your faith in princes’-which means to them that they buy and they sell and they ask no questions.
“But I have been trying to make Mr. Cunha see that if Luna and Mars and Terra (the Jovian moons hardly count), if those three were all under the same rules, in short order Venus Corporation would be no more free than is General Motors or I.G. Farbenindustrie. He got the picture too, I’m sure-until I jumped to conclusions about Clark’s disappearance and blew my top at him.” He shook his head. “Poddy, I’m a poor excuse for a diplomat.”
“You aren’t the only one who got sore,” I said, and told him about slapping Dexter.
He smiled for the first time. “Oh, Poddy, Poddy, we’ll never make a lady out of you. You’re as bad as I am.”
So I grinned back at him and started picking my teeth with a fingernail. This is an even ruder gesture than you might think-and utterly private between Uncle Tom and myself. We Maori have a very bloodthirsty history .and I won’t even-hint at what it is we are supposed to be picking out of our teeth. Uncle Tom used to use this vulgar pantomime on me when I was a little girl, to tell me I wasn’t being ladylike.
Whereupon he really smiled and mussed my hair. “You’re the blondest blue-eyed savage I ever saw. But you’re a savage, all right. And me, too. Better tell him you’re sorry, hon, because, much as I appreciate your gallant defense of me, Dexter was perfectly right. I was an ‘old fool.’ I’ll apologize to his father, doing the last hundred meters on my belly if he wants it that way; a man should admit it in full when he’s wrong, and make amends. And you kiss and make up with Dexter-Dexter is a fine boy.”
“I’ll say I’m sony and make up-but I don’t think I’ll kiss him. I haven’t yet.”
He looked surprised. “So? Don’t you like him? Or have we brought too much Norse blood into the family?”
“I like Dexter just fine and you’re crazy with the smog if you think Svenska blood is any colder than Polynesian. I could go for Dexter in a big way-and that’s why I haven’t kissed him.”
He considered this. “I think you’re wise, hon. Better do your practice kisses on boys who don’t tend to cause your gauges to swing over into the red. Anyhow, although he’s a good lad, he’s not nearly good enough for my savage niece.”
“Maybe so, maybe not. Uncle … what are you going to do about Clark?”
His halfway happy mood vanished. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“But we’ve got to do something!”
“But what, Podkayne?”
There he had me. I had already chased it through all the upper and lower segments of my brain. Tell the police? Mr. Chairman is the police-they all work for him. Hire a private detective? If Venus has any (I don’t know), then they all are under contract to Mr. Cunha, or rather, the Venus Corporation.
Run ads in newspapers? Question all the taxi drivers? Put Clark’s picture in the sollies and offer rewards? It didn’t matter what you thought of, everything on Venus belongs to Mr. Chairman. Or, rather, to the corporation he heads. Same thing, really, although Uncle Tom tells me that the Cunhas actually own only a fraction of the, stock.
“Poddy, I’ve been over everything I could think of with Mr. Cunha-and he is either already doing it, or he has convinced me that there, under conditions he knows much better than I do, it should not be done.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We wait. But if you think of anything-anything- that you think might help, tell me and if it isn’t already being done, we’ll call Mr. Cunha and find out if it should be done. If I’m asleep, wake me.”
“I will.” I doubted if he would be asleep. Or me. But something else had been bothering me. “If time comes for the Tricorn to shape for Earth-and Clark isn’t back-what do you do then?”
He didn’t answer; the lines in his face just got deeper. I knew what the Awful Decision was-and I knew how he had decided it.
But I had a little Awful Decision of my own to make
and I had talked to Saint Podkayne about it for quite a while and had decided that Poddy had to break a Saint-Podkayne oath. Maybe this sounds silly but it isn’t silly to me. Never in my life had I broken one
and never in my life will I be utterly sure about Poddy again.
So I told Uncle all about the smuggled bomb.
Somewhat to my surprise he took it seriously-when I had about persuaded myself that Clark had been pulling my leg just for exercise. Smuggling-oh, sure, I understand that every ship in space has smuggling. But not a bomb. Just something valuable enough that it was worthwhile to bribe a boy to get it aboard and probably Clark had been paid off again when he passed it along to a steward, or a cargo hand, or somebody. If I know Clark-But Uncle wanted me to describe exactly the person I had seen talking to Clark at Deimos Station.
“Uncle, I can’t! I barely glanced at him. A man. Not short, not tall, not especially fat or skinny, not dressed in any way that made me remember-and I’m not sure I looked at his face at all. Uh, yes, I did but I can’t call up any picture of it.”
“Could it have been one of the passengers?”
I thought hard about that. “No. Or I would have noticed his face later when it was still fresh in my mind. Mmm … I’m almost certain he didn’t queue up with us. I think he headed for the exit, the one that takes you back to the shuttle ship.”
“That is likely,” he agreed. “Certain-if it was a bomb. And not just a product of Clark’s remarkable imagination.”
“But, Uncle Tom, why would it be a bomb?”
And he didn’t answer and I already knew why. Why would anybody blow up the Tricorn and kill everybody in her, babies and all? Not for insurance like you sometimes find in adventure stories; Lloyd’s won’t insure a ship for enough to show a profit on that sort of crazy stunt-or at least that’s the way it was explained to me in my high school economics class.
Why, then?
To keep the ship from getting to Venus.
But the Tricorn had been to Venus tens and tens of times-To keep somebody in the ship from getting to Venus (or perhaps to Luna) that trip.
Who? Not Podkayne Fries. I wasn’t important to anybody but me.
For the next couple of hours Uncle Tom and I searched that hilton suite. We didn’t find anything, nor did I expect us to. If there was a bomb (which I still didn’t fully believe) and if Clark had indeed brought it off the ship and hidden it there (which seemed unlikely with all of the Tricorn at one end and all of the city at the other end to choose from), nevertheless he had had days and days in which to make it look like anything from a vase of flowers to a-a anything.
We searched Clark’s room last on the theory that it was the least likely place. Or rather, we started to search it together and Uncle had to finish it. Pawin through Clark’s things got to be too much for me an Uncle sent me back into the salon to lie down.
I was all cried out by the time he gave up; I even had a suggestion to make. “Maybe if we sent for a Geiger counter?”
Uncle shook his head and sat down. “We aren’t looking for a bomb, honey.”
“We aren’t?”
“No. If we found it, it would simply confirm that Clark had told you the truth, and I’m already using that as least hypothesis. Because … well because I know more about this than the short outline I gave to you … and I know just how deadly serious this is to some people, how far they might go. Politics is neither a game nor a bad joke the way some people think it is. War itself is merely an extension of politics … so I don’t find anything surprising about a bomb in politics; bombs have been used in politics hundreds and even thousands of times in the past. No, we aren’t looking for a bomb, we are looking for a man-a man you saw for a few seconds once. And probably not even for that man but for somebody that man might lead us back to. Probably somebody inside the President’s office, somebody he trusts.”
“Oh, gosh, I wish I had really looked at him!”
“Don’t fret about it, hon. You didn’t know and there was no reason to look. But you can bet that Clark knows what he looks like. If Clark-I mean, when Clark comes back, in time we will have him search the ID. files at Marsopolis. And all the visa photographs for the past ten years, if necessary. The man will be found. And through him the person the President has
been trusting who should not to be trusted.” Uncle Tom suddenly looked all Maori and very savage. “And when we do, I may take care of the matter personally. We’ll see.”
Then he smiled and added, “But right now Poddy is going to bed. You’re up way past your bedtime, even with all the dancing and late-sleeping you’ve been doing lately.”
“Uh … what time is it in Marsopolis?”
He looked at his other watch. “Twenty-seventeen. You weren’t thinking of phoning your parents? I hope not.”
“Oh, no! I won’t say a word to them unless-until Clark is back. And maybe not then. But if it’s only twenty-seventeen, it’s not late at all, real time, and I don’t want to go to bed. Not until you do.”
“I may not go to bed.”
“I don’t care. I want to sit with you.”
He blinked at me, then said very gently, “All right, Poddy. Nobody ever grows up without spending at least one night of years.”
We just sat then for quite a while, with nothing to say that had not already been said and would just hurt to say over again.
At last I said, “Unka Tom? Tell me the Poddy story-“
“At your age?”
“Please.” I crawled up on his knees. “I want to sit in your lap once more and hear it. I need to.”
“All right,” he said, and put his arm around me. “Once upon a time, long, long ago when the world was young, in a specially favored city there lived a little girl named Poddy. All day long she was busy like a ticking clock. Tick tick tick went her heels, tick tick tick went her knitting needles, and, most especially, tick tick tick went her busy little mind. Her hair was the color of butter blossoms in the spring when the ice leaves canals, her eyes were the changing blue of sunshine playing down through the spring floods, her nose had not yet made up its mind what it would be, and her mouth was shaped like a question mark. She greeted the world as an unopened present and there was no badness in her anywhere.
“One day Poddy-“
I stopped him. “But I’m not young any longer and I don’t think the world was ever young!”
“Here’s my handky,” he said. “Blow your nose. I never did tell you the end of it, Poddy; you always fell asleep. It ends with a miracle.”
“A truly miracle?”
“Yes. This is the end. Poddy grew up and had another Poddy. And then the world was young again.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all there ever is. But it’s enough.”
XII
I guess Uncle Tom put me to bed, for I woke up with just my shoes off and very rumpled. He was gone but he had left a note saying that I could reach him, if I needed to, on Mr. Chairman’s private code. I didn’t have any excuse to bother him and didn’t want to face anyone, so I chased Maria and Maria out and ate breakfast in bed. Ate quite a lot, too, I must admit-the body goes on ticking anyhow.
Then I dug out my journal for the first time since landing. I don’t mean I haven’t been keeping it; I mean I’ve been talking it instead of writing it. The library in our suite has a recorder built into its desk and I discovered how easy it was to keep a diary that way. Well, I had really found out before that, because Mr. Clancy let me use the recorder they use to keep the log on.
The only shortcoming of the recorder in the library was that Clark might drop in most any time. But the first day I went shopping I found the most darling little minirecorder at Venus Macy-only ten-fifty and it just fits in the palm of your hand and you can talk into it without even being noticed if you want to and I just couldn’t resist it. I’ve been carrying it in my purse ever since.
But now I wanted to look way back in my journal, the early written part, and see if I had said anything that might remind me of what That Man had looked like or anything about him.
I hadn’t. No clues. But I FOUND A NOTE FROM CLARK.
It read:
POD,
If you find this at all, it’s time you read it. Because I’m using 24-hr. ink and I expect to lift this out of here and you’ll never see it.
Girdie is in trouble and I’m going to rescue her. I haven’t told anybody because this is one job that is all mine and I don’t want you or anybody horning in on it.
However, a smart gambler hedges his bets, if he can. If I’m gone long enough for you to read this, it’s time to get hold of Uncle Tom and have him get hold of Chairman Cunha. All I can tell you is that there is a newsstand right at South Gate. You buy a copy of the Daily Merchandiser and ask if they carry Everlites. Then say, “Better give me two-it’s quite dark where I’m going.”
But don’t you do this, I don’t want it muffed up.
If this turns out dry, you can have my rock collection.
Count your change. Better use your fingers.
CLARK
I got all blurry. That last line-I know a holographic last will and testament when I see one, even though I had never seen one before. Then I straightened up and counted ten seconds backwards including the rude word at the end that discharges nervous tension, for I knew this was no time to be blurry and weak; there was work to be done.
So I called Uncle Tom right away, as I agreed perfectly with Clark on one point: I wasn’t going to try to emulate Space Ranger Stalwart, Man of Steel, the way Clark evidently had; I was going to get all the help I could get! With both Clark and Girdie in some sort of pinch I would have welcomed two regiments of Patrol Marines and the entire Martian Legion.
So I called Mr. Chairman’s private code-and it didn’t answer; It simply referred me to another code. This one answered all right … but with a recording. Uncle Tom. And this time all he said was to repeat something he had said in the note, that he expected to be busy all day and that I was not to leave the suite under any circumstances whatever until he got back-only this time he added that I was not to let anyone into the suite, either, not even a repairman, not even a servant except those who were already there, like Maria and Maria.
When the recording started to play back for the third time, I switched off. Then I called Mr. Chairman the public way, through the Corporation offices. A dry deal that was! By pointing out that I was Miss Fries, niece of Senator Fries, Mars Republic, I did get as far as his secretary, or maybe his secretary’s secretary.
“Mr. Cunha cannot be reached. I am veree sorree, Miss Fries.”
So I demanded that she locate Uncle Tom. “I do not have that information. I am veree sorree, Miss Fries.” -
Then I demanded to be patched in to Dexter. “Mr. Dexter is on an inspection trip for Mr. Cunha. I am veree soree.”
She either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me when Dexter was expected back-and wouldn’t, or couldn’t, find some way for me to call him. Which I just plain didn’t believe, because if I owned a planetwide corporation there would be some way to phone every mine, every ranch, every factory, every air boat the company owned. All the time. And I don’t even suspect that Mr. Chairman is less smart about how to run such a lash-up than I am.
I told her so, using the colorful rhetoric of sand rats and canal men. I mean I really got mad and used idioms I hadn’t known I even remembered. I guess Uncle is right; scratch my Nordic skin and a savage is just underneath. I wanted to pick my teeth at her, only she wouldn’t have understood it.
But would you believe it? I might as well have been cussing out a sand gator; it had no effect on her at all. She just repeated, “I’m-veree-sorree-Miss-Fries,” and I growled and switched off.
Do you suppose Mr. Chairman uses an androidal Tik-Tok as his phone monitor? I wouldn’t put it past him-and any live woman should have shown some reaction at some of the implausibiities I showered on her, even if she didn’t understand most of the words. (Well, I don’t understand some of them myself. But they are not compliments.)
I thought about phoning Daddy; I knew he would accept the charges, even if he had to mortgage his salary. But Mars was eleven minutes away; it said so, right on a dial of the phone. And the relays via Hermes Station and Luna City were even worse. With twentytwo minutes between each remark it would take me most of the day just to tell him what was wrong, even though they don’t charge you for the waiting time.
But I still might have called except-well, what could Daddy do, three hundred million kilometers away? All it would do would be to turn his last six hairs white. It wasn’t until then that I steadied down enough to realize that there had been something else amiss about that note written into my journal-besides Clark’s childish swashbuckling. Girdie-It was true that I had not seen Girdie for a couple of days; she was on a shift that caused her to zig while I zagged; newly hired dealers don’t get the best shifts. But I had indeed talked to her at a time when Clark was probably already gone even though at the time I had simply assumed that he had gotten up early for some inscrutable reason of his own, rather than not coming home at all that night.
But Uncle Tom had talked to her just before we had gone to the Cunha cottage the day before, asked her specifically if she had seen Clark-and she hadn’t. Not as recently as we had.
I didn’t have any trouble reaching Dom Pedro-not the Dom Pedro I met the night I met Dexter but the Dom Pedro of that shift. However, by now all the Dom Pedros know who Poddy Fries is; she’s the girl that is seen with Mr. Dexter. He told me at once that Girdie had gone off shift half an hour earlier and I should try her hilton. Unless-he stopped and made some inquiries; somebody seemed to think that Girdie had gone shopping.
As may be. I already knew that she was not at the little hilton she had moved to from the stylish (and expensive) Tannhäuser; a message I had already recorded there was guaranteed to fetch a call back in seconds, if and when.
That ended it. There was no one left for me to turn to, nothing at all left for me to do, save wait in the suite until Uncle returned, as he had ordered me to do.
So I grabbed my purse and a coat and left.
And got all of three meters outside the door of the suite. A tall, wide, muscular character got in my way. When I tried to duck around him, he said, “Now, now, Miss Fries. Your uncle left orders.”
I scurried the other way and found that he was awfully quick on his feet, for such a big man. So there I was, arrested! Shoved back into our own suite and held in durance vile. You know, I don’t think Uncle entirely trusts me.
I went back to my room and closed the door and thought about it. The room was still not made up and still cluttered with dirty dishes because, despite the language barrier, I have made clear to Maria and Maria that Miss Fries becomes quite vexed if anybody disturbs my room until I signal that I no longer want privacy by leaving the door open.
The clumsy, two-decker, roll-around table that had fetched my breakfast was still by my bed, looking like a plundered city.
I took everything off the lower shelf, stowed it here and there in my bath, covered the stuff on top of the table with the extra cloth used to shield the tender eyes of cash customers from the sight of dirty dishes.
Then I grabbed the house phone and told them I wanted my breakfast dishes cleared away immediately.
I’m not very big. I mean you can fit forty-nine mass kilos only one hundred fifty-seven centimeters long into a fairly small space if you scrunch a little. That lower shelf was hard but not too cramped. It had some ketchup on it I hadn’t noticed.
Uncle’s orders (or perhaps Mr. Cunha’s) were being followed meticulously, however. Ordinarily a pantry boy comes to remove the food wagon; this time the two Marias took it out the service entrance and as far as the service lift-and in the course of it I learned something interesting but not really surprising. Maria said something in Portuguese; the other Maria answered her in Ortho as glib as mine: “She’s probably soaking in the tub, the lazy brat.”
I made a note not to remember her on birthdays and at Christmas.
Somebody wheeled me off the lift many levels down and shoved me into a corner. I waited a few moments, then crawled out. A man in a well-spotted apron was looking astonished. I said, “Obrigado!” handed him a deuce note and walked out the service entrance with my nose in the air. Two minutes later I was in a taxi.
I’ve been catching up on this account while the taxi scoots to South Gate in order not to chew my nails back to the elbows. I must admit that I feel good even though nervous. Action is better than waiting. No amount of bad can stonker me, but not knowing drives me nuts.
The spool is almost finished, so I think I’ll change spools and mail this one back to Uncle at South Gate. I should have left a note, I know-but this is better than a note. I hope.
XIII
Well, I can’t complain about not having seen fairies. They are every bit as cute as they are supposed to be-but I don’t care greatly if I never see another one.
Throwing myself bravely into the fray against fearful odds, by sheer audacity I overcameIt wasn’t that way at all. I fubbed. Completely. So here I am, some nowhere place out in the bush, in a room with no windows, and only one door. That door isn’t much use to me as there is a fairy perched over it. She’s a cute little thing and the green part of her fur looks exactly like a ballet tutu. She doesn’t look quite like a miniature human with wings-but they do say that the longer you stay here the more human they look. Her eyes slant up, like a cat’s, and she has a very pretty built-in smile.
I call her “Titania” because I can’t pronounce her real name. She speaks a few words of Ortho, not much because those little skulls are only about twice the brain capacity of a cat’s skull-actually, she’s an idiot studying to be a moron and not studying very hard.
Most of the time she just stays perched and nurses her baby-the size of a kitten and twice as cute. I call it “Ariel” although I’m not sure of its sex. I’m not dead sure of Titania’s sex; they say that both males and females do this nursing thing, which is not quite nursing but serves the same purpose; they are not mammalians. Ariel hasn’t learned to fly yet, but Titania is teaching it-tosses it into the air and it sort of flops and glides to the floor and then stays there, mewing piteously until she comes to get it and flies back to her perch.
I’m spending most of my time a) thinking, b) bringing this journal up to date, c) trying to persuade Titania to let me hold Ariel (making some progress; she now lets me pick it up and hand it to her-the baby isn’t a bit afraid of me), and d) thinking, which seems to be a futile occupation.
Because I can go anywhere in the room and do anything as long as I stay a couple of meters away from that door. Guess why? Give up? Because fairies have very sharp teeth and claws; they’re carnivorous. I have a nasty bite and two deep scratches on my left arm to prove it-red and tender and don’t seem to want to heal. If I get close to that door, she dives on me.
Completely friendly otherwise. Nor do I have anything physically to complain about. Often enough a native comes in with a tray of really quite good food. But I never watch him come in and I never watch him take it away-because Venerians look entirely too human to start with and the more you look at them the worse it is for your stomach. No doubt you have seen pictures but pictures don’t give you the smell and that drooling loose mouth, nor the impression that this thing has been dead a long time and is now animated by obscene arts.
I call him “Pinhead” and to him that is a compliment.
No doubt as to its being a “him” either. It’s enough to make a girl enter a nunnery.
I eat the food because I feel sure Pinhead didn’t cook it. I think I know who does. She would be a good cook.
Let me back up a little. I told the news vendor: “Better give me two-it’s quite dark where I’m going.” He hesitated and looked at me and I repeated it. So pretty soon I am in another air car and headed out over the bush. Ever make a wide, sweeping turn in smog? That did it. I haven’t the slightest idea where I am, save that it is somewhere within two hours’ flight of Venusberg and that there is a small colony of fairies nearby. I saw them flying shortly before we landed and was so terribly interested that I didn’t really get a good look at the spot before the car stopped and the door opened. Not that it would have done any good - I got out and the car lifted at once, mussing me up
with its fans… and here was an open door to a house and a familiar voice was saying, “Poddy! Come in, dear, come in!”
And I was suddenly so relieved that I threw myself into her arms and hugged her and she hugged me back. It was Mrs. Grew, fat and friendly as ever.
And looked around and here was Clark, just sitting-and he looked at me and said, “Stupid,” and looked away. And then I saw Uncle sitting in another chair and was about to throw myself at him with wild shouts of glee when Mrs. Grew’s arms were suddenly awfully strong and she said soothingly, “No, no, dear, not quite so fast” and held me until somebody (Pinhead, it was) did something to the back of my neck.
Then I had a big comfortable chair all to myself and didn’t want it because I couldn’t move from my neck down. I felt all right, aside from some odd tingles, but I couldn’t stir.
Uncle looked like Mr. Lincoln grieving over the deaths at Waterloo. He didn’t say anything.
Mrs. Grew said cheerfully, “Well, now we’ve got the whole family together. Feel a bit more like discussing things rationally, Senator?”
Uncle shook his head half a centimeter.
She said, “Oh, come now! We do want you to attend the conference. We simply want you to attend it in the right frame of mind. If we can’t agree-well, it’s hardly possible to let any of you be found again. Isn’t that obvious? And that would be such a shame, especially for the children.”
Uncle said, “Pass the hemlock.”
“Oh, I’m sure you don’t mean that.”
“He certainly does mean it!” Clark said shrilly. “You illegal obscenity! I delete all over your censored!” And I knew he was really worked up, because Clark is contemptuous of vulgar idioms; he says they denote an inferior mind.
Mrs. Grew looked at Clark placidly, even tenderly. Then she called in Pinhead again. “Take him out and keep him awake till he dies.” Pinhead picked Clark up and carried him out. But Clark had the last word. “And besides that,” he yelled, “you cheat at solitaire! I’ve watched you!”
For a split moment Mrs. Grew looked really annoyed. Then she put her face back into its usual kindly expression and said to Uncle, “Now that I have both of the kids I think I can afford to expend one of them. Especially as you are quite fond of Poddy. Too fond of her, some people would say. Psychiatrists, I mean.”
I mulled that over…and decided that if I ever got out of this mess, I would make a rug out of her hide and give it to Uncle.
Uncle ignored it. Presently there was a most dreadful racket, metal on resounding metal. Mrs. Grew smiled. “It’s crude but it works. It is what used to be a water heater when this was a ranch. Unfortunately it isn’t quite big enough either to sit down or stand up in-but a boy that rude really shouldn’t expect comfort. The noise comes from pounding on the outside of it with a piece of pipe.” She blinked and looked thoughtful. “I don’t see how we can talk things over with such a racket going on. I think I should have the tank moved farther away-or perhaps our talk would march even more quickly if I had it brought nearer, so that you could hear the sounds he makes inside the tank, too. What do you think, Senator?”
I cut in. “Mrs. Grew!”
“Yes, dear? Poddy, I’m sony but I’m really quite busy. Later we’ll have a nice cup of tea together. Now, Senator-“
“Mrs. Grew, you don’t understand my Uncle Tom at all! You’ll never get anything out of him this way.”
She considered it. “I think you exaggerate, dear. Wishful thinking.”
“No, no, no! There isn’t any way you could possibly get my Uncle Tom to do anything against Mars. But if you hurt Clark-or me-you’ll just make him more adamant. Oh, he loves me and he loves Clark, too. But if you try to budge him by hurting either one of us, you’re just wasting your time!” I was talking rapidly and just as sincerely as I know how. I seemed to hear Clark’s screams. Not likely, I guess, not over that infernal clanging. But once when he was a baby he fell into a wastebasket…and screamed something dreadful before I rescued him. I guess I was hearing that in my mind.
Mrs. Grew smiled pleasantly. “Poddy dear, you are only a girl and your head has been filled with nonsense. The Senator is going to do just what I want him to do.”
“Not if you kill Clark, he won’t!”
“You keep quiet, dear. Do keep quiet and let me explainr I shall have to slap you a few times to keep you quiet. Poddy, I am not going to kill your brother-“
“But you said-“
“Quiet! That native who took your brother away didn’t understand what I said; he knows only trade Ortho, a few words, never a full sentence. I said what I did for the benefit of your brother… so that, when I do have him fetched back in, he’ll be groveling, begging your uncle to do anything I want him to do.”
She smiled warmly. “One piece of nonsense you’ve apparently been taught is that patriotism, or something silly like that, will overpower a man’s own self-interest. Believe me, I have no slightest fear that an old political hack like your uncle will give any real weight to such a silly abstraction. What does wony him is his own political ruin if he does what I want him to do. What he is going to do. Eh, Senator?”
“Madam,” Uncle Tom answered tightly, “I see no point in bandying words with you.”
“Nor do I. Nor shall we. But you can listen while I explain it to Poddy. Dear, your uncle is a stubborn man and he won’t accomplish his own political downfall lightly. I need a string to make him dance-and in you I have that string, I’m sure.”
“I’m not!”
“Want a slap? Or would you rather be gagged? I like you, dear; don’t force me to be forceful. In you, I said. Not your brother. Oh, no doubt your uncle goes through the solemn farce of treating his niece and his nephew just alike-Christmas presents and birthday presents and such like pretenses. But it is obvious that no one could love your brother…not even his own mother, I venture to say. But the Senator does love you-rather more than he wants anyone to suspect. So now I am hurting your brother a little-oh, just a smidgen, at worst he’ll be deaf-to let your uncle see what will happen to you. Unless he is a good boy and speaks his piece just the way I tell him to.”
She looked thoughtfully at Uncle. “Senator, I can’t decide which of two methods might work the better on you. You see, I want to keep you reminded-after you agree to cooperate-that you did agree. Sometimes a politician doesn’t stay bought. After I turn you loose, would it be better for me to send your nephew along with you, to keep you reminded? Or would it be better to keep him here and work on him just a little each day-with his sister watching? So that she would have a clear idea of what happens to her… if you try any tricks at Luna City. What’s your opinion, sir?”
“Madam, the question does not arise.”
“Really, Senator?”
“Because I will not be at Luna City unless both children are with me. Unhurt.”
Mrs. Grew chuckled. “Campaign promises, Senator. I’ll reason with you later. But now”-she glanced at an antique watch pinned to her gross bosom-“I think I had better put a stop to that dreadful racket, it’s giving me a headache. And I doubt if your nephew can hear it any longer, save possibly through his bones.” She got up and left, moving with surprising agility and grace for a woman her age and mass.
Suddenly the noise stopped.
It was such a surprise that I would have jumped if anything below my neck could jump. Which it couldn’t.
Uncle was looking at me. “Poddy, Poddy-” he said softly.
I said, “Uncle, don’t you give in a millimeter to that dreadful woman!”
He said, “Poddy, I can’t give in to her. Not at all. You understand that? Don’t you?”
“I certainly do! But look-you could fake it. Tell her anything. Get loose yourself and take Clark along, as she suggested. Then you can rescue me. I’ll hold out. You’ll see!”
He looked terribly old. “Poddy…Poddy darling
I’m very much afraid … that this is the end. Be brave, dear.”
“Uh, I haven’t had very much practice at that. But I’ll try to be.” I pinched myself, mentally, to see if I was scared-and I wasn’t, not really. Somehow I couldn’t be scared with Uncle there, even though he was helpless just then. “Uncle, what is it she wants? Is she some kind of a fanatic?”
He didn’t answer because we both heard Mrs. Grew’s jolly, belly-deep laugh. “‘Fanatic’!” she repeated, came over and tweaked my cheek. “Poddy dear, I’m not any sort of fanatic and I don’t really care any more about polities than your uncle does. But I learned many years ago when I was just a girl-and quite attractive, too, dear, much more so than you will ever be-that a girl’s best friend is cash. No, dear, I’m a paid professional and a good one.”
She went on briskly, “Senator, I think the boy is deaf but I can’t be sure; he’s passed out now. We’ll discuss it later, it’s time for my nap. Perhaps we had all better rest a little.”
And she called in Pinhead and I was carried into the room I am in now. When he picked me up, I really was truly aghast!-and found that I could move my arms and legs just a little bit-pins and needles you wouldn’t believe!-and I struggled feebly. Did me no good, I was dumped in here anyhow.
After a while the drug wore off and I felt almost normal, though shaky. Shortly thereafter I discovered that Titania is a very good watchdog indeed and I haven’t tried to reach that door since; my arm and shoulder are quite sore and getting stiff.
Instead I inspected the room. Not much in it. A bed with a mattress but no bedclothes; not that you need any in this climate. A sort of a table suspended from one wall and a chair fastened to the floor by it. Glow tubes around the upper corners of the room. I checked all these things at once after learning the hard way that Titania was not just a cutie with gauzy wings. It was quite clear that Mrs. Grew, or whoever had outfitted that room, had no intention of leaving anything in it that could be used as a weapon, against Titania or anybody. And I no longer had even my coat and purse.
I particularly regretted losing my purse, because I always cany a number of useful things in it. A nail file for example-if I had had even my nail file I night have considered taking on that bloodthirsty little fairy. But I didn’t waste time thinking about it; my purse was where I had dropped it when I was drugged.
I did find one thing very interesting: this room had been used to prison Clark before I landed in it. One of his two bags was there-and I suppose I should have missed it from his room the night before, only I got upset and left Uncle to finish the search. The bag held a very odd collection for a knight errant venturing forth to rescue a damsel in distress: some clothing-three T-shirts and two pairs of shorts, a spare pair of shoes-a slide rule, and three comic books.
If I had found a flame gun or supplies of mysterious chemicals, I would not have been surprised-more Clarkish. I suppose, when you get right down to it, for all his brilliance Clark is just a little boy.
I worried a bit then about the possibility-or probability-that he was deaf. Then I quit thinking about it. If true, I couldn’t help it-and he would miss his ears less than anything, since he hardly ever listens anyhow.
So I lay down on the bed and read his comic books.
I am not a comic-book addict but these were quite entertaining, especially as the heroes were always getting out of predicaments much worse than the one I was in.
After a while I fell asleep and had heroic dreams.
I was awakened by “breakfast” (more like dinner but quite good). Pinhead took the tray away, and light plastic dishes and a plastic spoon offered little in the way of lethal weapons. However, I was delighted to find that he had fetched my purse!
Delighted for all of ten seconds, that is-No nail file. No penknife. Not a darn thing in it more deadly than lipstick and handky. Mrs. Grew hadn’t disturbed any money or my tiny minirecorder but she had taken everything that could conceivably do any good (harm). So I gritted my teeth and ate and then brought this useless journal up to date. That’s about all I’ve done since-just sleep and eat and make friends with Ariel. It reminds me of Duncan. Oh, not alike really-but all babies are sort of alike, don’t you think?
I had dozed off from lack of anything better to do when I was awakened. “Poddy, dear-“
“Oh! Hello, Mrs. Grew.”
“Now, now, no quick moves,” she said chidingly. I wasn’t about to make any quick moves; she had a gun pointed at my belly button. I’m very fond of it, it’s the only one I have.
“Now be a good girl and turn over and cross your wrists behind you.” I did so and in a moment she had them tied, quite firmly. Then she looped the line around my neck and had me on a leash-and if I struggled, all I accomplished was choking myself. So I didn’t struggle.
Oh, I’m sure there was at least a moment when she didn’t have that gun pointed at me and my wrists were not yet tied. One of those comic-book heroes would have snatched that golden instant, rendered her helpless, tied her with her own rope.
Regrettably, none of those heroes was named “Poddy Fries.” My education has encompassed cooking, sewing, quite a lot of math and history and science, and such useful tidbits as freehand drawing and how to dip candles and make soap. But hand-to-hand combat I have learned sketchily if at all from occasional border clashes with Clark. I know that Mother feels that this is a lack (she is skilled in both karate and kill-quick, and can shoot as well as Daddy does) but Daddy has put off sending me to classes-I’ve gathered the impression that he doesn’t really want his “baby girl” to know such things.
I vote with Mother, it’s a lack. There must have been a split second when I could have lashed out with a heel, caught Mrs. Grew in her solar plexus, then broken her neck while she was still helpless-and run down the Jolly Roger and run up the Union Jack, just like in Treasure Island.
Oppernockity tunes but once-and I wasn’t in tune with it.
Instead I was led away like a puppy on a string. Titania eyed us as we went through the door but Mrs. Grew clucked at her and she settled back on her perch and cuddled Ariel to her.
She had me walk in front of her down a hallway, through that living room where I had last seen Uncle Tom and Clark, out another door and a passage and into a large room-
-and I gasped and suppressed a scream!
Mrs. Grew said cheerfully, “Take a good look, dear. He’s your new roommate.”
Half the room was closed off with heavy steel bars, like a cage in a zoo. Inside was-well, it was Pinhead, that’s what it was, though it took me a long moment of fright to realize it. You may have gathered that I do not consider Pinhead handsome. Well, dear, he was Apollo Belvedere before compared with the red-eyed maniacal horror he had become.
Then I was lying on the floor and Mrs. Grew was giving me smelling salts. Yes, sir, Captain Podkayne Fries the Famous Explorer had keeled over like a silly girl. All right, go ahead and laugh; I don’t mind. You haven’t ever been shoved into a room with a thing like that and had it introduced to you as “your new roommate.”
Mrs. Grew was chuckling. “Feel better, dear?”
“You’re not going to put me in there with him!”
“What? Oh, no, no, that was just my little joke. I’m sure your uncle will never make it necessary actually to do it.” She looked at Pinhead thoughtfully-and he was straining one arm through the bars, trying again and again to reach us. “He’s had only five milligrams, and for a long-time happy dust addict that’s barely enough to make him tempery. If I ever do have to put you-or your brother-in with him. I’ve promised him at least fifteen. I need your advice, dear. You see, I’m about to send your uncle back to Venusberg so that he can catch his ship. Now which do you think would work best with your uncle? To put your brother in there right now, while your uncle watches? He’s watching this, you know; he saw you faint-and that couldn’t have been better if you had practiced. Or to wait and-“
“My uncle is watching us?”
“Yes, of course. Or to-“
“Uncle Tom!”
“Oh, do keep quiet, Poddy. He can see you but he can’t hear you and he can’t possibly help you. Hmm-You’re such a silly billy that I don’t think I want your advice. On your feet, now!” She walked me back to my cell.
That was only hours ago; it merely seems like years. But it is long enough. Long enough for Poddy to lose her nerve. Look, I don’t have to tell this, nobody knows but me. But I’ve been truthful all through these memoirs and I’ll be truthful now: I have made up my mind that as soon as I get a chance to talk with Uncle I will beg him, plead with him, to do anything to keep me from being locked up with a happy-dusted native.
I’m not proud of it. I’m not sure I’ll ever be proud of Poddy again. But there it is and you can rub my nose in it. I ye come up against something that frightens me so much I’ve cracked.
I feel a little better about it to have admitted it baldly. I sort of hope that, when the time comes, I won’t whimper and I won’t plead. But I … just…don’t … know.
And then somebody was shoved in with me and it was Clark!
I jumped up off the bed and threw my arms around him and lifted him right off his feet and was blubbering over him. “Oh, Clarkie! Brother, brother, are you hurt? What did they do to you? Speak to me! Are you deaf?”
Right in my ear he said, “Cut out the sloppy stuff, Pod.’
So I knew he wasn’t too badly hurt, he sounded just like Clark. I repeated, more quietly, “Are you deaf?”
He barely whispered in my ear, “No, but she thinks I am, so we’ll go on letting her think so.” He untangled himself from me, took a quick look in his bag, then rapidly and very thoroughly went over every bit of the room-giving Titania just wide enough berth to keep her from diving on him.
Then he came back, shoved his face close to mine and said, “Poddy,. can you read lips?”
“No. Why?”
“The hell you can’t, you just did.”
Well, it wasn’t quite true; Clark had barely whispered-and I did find that I was “hearing” him as much from watching his mouth as I was from truly hearing him. This is a very funny thing but Clark says that almost everybody reads lips more than they think they do, and he had noticed it and practiced it and can really read lips-only he never told anybody because sometimes it is most useful.
He had me talk so low that I couldn’t hear it myself and he didn’t talk much louder. He told me, “Look, Pod, I don’t know that Old Lady Grew”-he didn’t say “Lady”-“has this room wired. I can’t find any changes in it since she had me in it before. But there are at least four places and maybe more where a mike could be. So we keep quiet-because it stands to reason she put us together to hear what we have to say to each other. So talk out loud all you want to… but just static. How scared you are and how dreadful it is that I can’t hear anything and such-like noise.”
So we did and I moaned and groaned and wept over my poor baby brother and he complained that he couldn t hear a word I was saying and kept asking me to find a pencil and write what I was saying-and in between we really did talk, important talk that Clark didn’t want her to hear.
I wanted to know why he wasn’t deaf-had he actually been in that tank? “Oh, sure,” he told me, “but I wasn’t nearly as limp by then as she thought I was, either. I had some paper in my pocket and I chewed it up into pulp and corked my ears.” He looked pained. “A twenty-spot note. Most expensive earplugs anybody ever had, I’ll bet. Then I wrapped my shirt around my head and ignored it. But stow that and listen.”
He was even more vague about how he had managed to get himself trapped. “Okay, okay, so I got
hoaxed. You and Uncle don’t look so smart, either-and anyhow, you’re responsible.”
“I am not either responsible!” I whispered indignantly.
“If you’re not responsible, then you’re irresponsible, which is worse. Logic. But forget it, we’ve got important things to do now. Look, Pod, we’re going to crush out of here.”
“How?” I glanced up at Titania. She was nursing Ariel but she never took her eyes off us.
Clark followed my glance. “I’ll take care of that insect when the time comes, forget it. It has to be soon and it has to be at night.”
“Why at night?” I was thinking that this smoggy paradise was bad enough when you could see a little, but in pitch darkness- “Pod, let that cut in your face heal; you’re making a draft. It’s got to be while Jojo is locked up.”
“Jojo?”
“That set of muscles she has working for her. The native.”
“Oh, you mean Pinhead.”
“Pinhead, Jojo, Albert Einstein. The happy-duster. He serves supper, then he washes the dishes, then she locks him up and gives him his night’s ration of dust. Then he stays locked up until he sleeps it off, because she’s as scared of him when he’s high as anybody else is. So we make our try for it while he is caged-and maybe she’ll be asleep, too. With luck the bloke who drives her sky wagon will be away, too; he doesn’t always sleep here. But we can’t count on it and it has got to be before the Tricorn shapes for Luna. When is that?”
“Twelve-seventeen on the eighth, ship Greenwich.”
“Which is?”
“Local? Nine-sixteen Venusberg, Wednesday the twentieth.”
“Check,” he answered. “On both.”
“But why?”
“Shut up.” He had taken his slide rule from his bag and was setting it. For the conversion, I assumed, so I asked, “Do you want to know the Venus second for this Terran year?” I was rather proud to have it on the tip of my tongue, like a proper pilot; Mr. Clancy’s time hadn’t been entirely wasted even though I had never let him get cuddly.
“Nope. I know it.” Clark reset the rule, read it and announced, “We both remember both figures the same way and the conversion checks. So check timepieces.” We both looked at our wrists. “Mark!”
We agreed, within a few seconds, but that wasn’t what I noticed; I was looking at the date hand. “Clark! Today’s the nineteenth!”
“Maybe you thought it was Christmas,” he said sourly. “And don’t yip like that again. I can read you if you don’t make a sound.”
“But that’s tomorrow!” (I did make it soundless.)
“Worse. It’s less than seventeen hours from now… and we can’t make a move until that brute is locked up. We get just one chance, no more.”
“Our Uncle Tom doesn’t get to the conference.”
Clark shrugged. “Maybe so, maybe not. Whether he decides to go-or sticks around and tries to find us-I couldn’t care less.”
Clark was being very talkative, for Clark. But at best he grudges words and I didn’t understand him. “What do you mean-if he sticks around?”
Apparently Clark thought he had told me, or that I already knew-but he hadn’t and I didn’t. Uncle Tom was already gone. I felt suddenly lost and forlorn. “Clark, are you sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure. She darn well saw to it that I saw him go. Jojo loaded him in like a sack of meal and I saw the wagon take off into the smog. Uncle Tom is in Venusberg by now.”
I suddenly felt much better. “Then he’ll rescue us!” Clark looked bored. “Pod, don’t be stupid squared.” “But he will! Uncle Tom … and Mr. Chairman and Dexter-“
He cut me off. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Poddy! Analyze it. You’re Uncle Tom, you’re in Venusberg, you’ve got all the help possible. How do you find this place?”
“Uh …” I stopped. “Uh …” I said again. Then I closed my mouth and left it closed.
“Uh,” he agreed. “Exactly Uh. You don’t find it. Oh, in eight or ten years with a few thousand people doing nothing but searching, you could find it by elimination. Fat lot of good that would do. Get this through your little head, Sis: nobody is going to rescue us, nobody can possibly help us. We either break out of here tonight we’ve had it.”
“Why tonight? Oh, tonight’s all right with me. But if we don’t get a chance tonight-“
“Then at nine-sixteen tomorrow,” he interrupted, “we’re dead.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Figure it out yourself, Pod. Put yourself in old Gruesome’s place. Tomorrow the Tricorn leaves. Figure it both ways: Uncle Tom leaves in it, or Uncle Tom won’t leave. Okay, you’ve got his niece and nephew. What do you do with them? Be logical about it. Her sort of logic.”
I tried, I really tried. But maybe I’ve been brought up wrong for that sort of logic; I can’t seem to visualize killing somebody just because he or she had become a nuisance to me.
But I could see that Clark was right that far: after ship’s departure tomorrow we will simply be nuisances to Mrs. Grew. If Uncle Tom doesn’t leave, we are most special nuisances-and if he does leave and she is counting on his worry about us to keep him in line at Luna City (it wouldn’t, of course, but that is what she is counting on anyway), in that case every day she risks the possibility that we might escape and get word to Uncle.
All right, maybe I can’t imagine just plain murder; it’s outside my experience. But suppose both Clark and I came down with green pox and died? That would certainly be convenient for Mrs. Grew, now, wouldn’t it?
“I scan it,” I agreed.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll teach you a thing or four yet, Pod. Either we make it tonight … or just past nine tomorrow she chills us both … and she chills Jojo, too, and sets fire to the place.”
“Why Jojo? I mean Pinhead.”
“That’s the real tipoff, Pod. The happy-duster. This is Venus … and yet she let us see that she was supplying dust to a duster. She won’t leave any witnesses.’
“Uncle Tom is a witness, too.”
“What if he is? She’s counting on his keeping his lip zipped until the conference is over… and by then she’s back on Earth and has lost herself among eight billion people. Hang around here and risk being caught? Pod, she’s going to wait here only long enough to find out whether or not Uncle Tom catches the Tricorn. Then she’ll carry out either Plan A, or Plan B-but both plans cancel us out. Get that through your fuzzy head.”
I shivered. “All right. I’ve got it.”
He grinned. “But we don’t wait. We execute our own plan-my plan-first.” He looked unbearably smug and added, “You fubbed utterly and came out here without doing any of the things I told you to
and Uncle Tom fubbed just about as badly, thinking he could make a straight payoff … but I came out here prepared!”
“You did? With what? Your slide rule? Or maybe those comic books?”
Clark said, “Pod, you know I never read comic books; they were just protective coloration.”
(And this is true, so far as I know. I thought I had uncovered his Secret Vice.)
“Then what?” I demanded.
“Just compose your soul in patience, Sister dear. All in good time.” He moved his bag back of the bed, then added, “Move around here where you can watch down the hallway. If Lady Macbeth shows up, I’m reading comic books.”
I did as he told me to but asked him one more questionn another subject, as quizzing Clark when he doesn’t want to answer is as futile as slicing water. “Clark? You figure Mrs. Grew is part of the gang that smuggled the bomb?”
He blinked and looked stupid. “What bomb?”
“The one they paid you to sneak aboard the Tricorn, of course! What bomb indeed!”
“Oh, that. Golly, Poddy, you believe everything you’re told. When you get to Terra, don’t let anybody sell you the Pyramids-they’re not for sale.” He went on working and I smothered my annoyance.
Presently he said, “She couldn’t possibly know anything about any bombs in the Tricorn, or she wouldn’t have been a passenger in it herself.”
Clark can always make me feel stupid. This was so obvious (after he pointed it out) that I refrained from comment. “How do you figure it, then?”
“Well, she could have been hired by the same people and not have known that they were just using her as a reserve.”
My mind raced and another answer came up. “In which case there could be still a third plot to get Uncle Tom between here and Luna!”
“Could be. Certainly a lot of people are taking an interest in him. But I figure it for two groups. One group-almost certainly from Mars-doesn t want Uncle Tom to be there. at all. Another group-from Earth probably, at least old Gruesome actually did come from Earth-wants him to be there but wants him to sing their song. Otherwise when she had Uncle Tom, she would never have .turned him loose; she would just have had Jojo shove him into a soft spot and wait for the bubbles to stop coming up.” Clark dug out something and looked at it. “Pod, repeat this back and don’t make a sound. You are exactly twenty-three kilometers from South Gate and almost due south of it-south seven degrees west.”
I repeated it. “How do you know?”
He held -up a small black object about as big as two packs of cigarettes. “Inertial tracker, infantry model. You can buy them anywhere here, anybody who ever goes out into the bush carries one.” He handed it to me.
I looked at it with interest; I had never seen one that small. Sand rats use them, of course, but they use bigger, more accurate ones mounted in their sand buggies-and anyhow, on Mars you can always see either the stars or the Sun. Not like this gloomy place!
I even knew how it’ worked, more or less, because inertial astrogation is a commonplace for spaceships and guided missiles-vector integration of accelerations and times. But whereas the Tricorn’s inertial tracker is-supposed to be good for one part in a million, this little gadget probably couldn’t be read closer than one in a thousand.
But it improved our chances at least a thousand to one!
“Clark! Did Uncle Tom have one of these? ‘Cause if he did-“
He shook his hetid. “If he did, he never ‘got a chance to read it. I figure they gassed him at once; he was limp when they lifted him out of the air wagon. And I never had a chance to tell him where this dump is because this has been my first chance to look at mine. Now put it in your purse; you’re going to use it to get back to Venusberg.
“Uh … it’ll be bulky in my purse, it’ll show. You better hide it wherever you had it. You won’t lose me, I’m going to hang onto your hand every step of the way.’
“No.”
“Why not?”
“In the first place I’m not going to drag this bag with me and that’s where it was hidden; I built a false bottom into it. In the second place we aren’t going back together-“
“What? Why not? We certainly are! Clark, I’m responsible for you.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. Your opinion. Look, Poddy, I’m going to get you out of this silly mess. But don’t try to use your head, it leaks. Just your memory. Listen to what I say and then do it exactly the way I tell you to-and you’ll be all right.”
“But-“
“Do you have a plan to get us out?”
“No.”
“Then shut up. You start pulling your Big Sister act now and you’ll get us both killed.”
I shut up. And I must confess that his plan made considerable sense. According to Clark there is nobody in this house but us, Mrs. Grew, Titania and Ariel, Pinhead-and sometimes her drive. I certainly haven’t seen or heard any evidences of anybody else and I suppose that Mrs. Grew has been doing it with an absolute minimum of witnesses-I know I would if I were (God forbid!) ever engaged in anything so outrageously criminal.
I’ve never seen the driver’s face and neither has Clark-on purpose, I’m sure. But Clark says that the driver sometimes stays overnight, so we must be prepared to cope with him.
Okay, assume that we cope. As soon as we are out of the house we split up; I go east, he goes west, for a couple of kilometers, in straight lines as near as bogs and swamps permit, which may be not very.
Then we both turn north-and Clark says that the ring road around the city is just three kilometers north of us; he drew me a sketch from memory of a map he had studied before he set out to “rescue Girdie.”
At the ring road I go right, he goes left-and we each make use of the first hitchhike transportation, ranch house phone, or whatever, to reach Uncle Tom and/or Chairman Cunha and get lots of reinforcements in a hurry!
The idea of splitting up is the most elementary of tactics, to make sure that at least one of us gets through and gets help. Mrs. Grew is so fat she couldn’t chase anybody on a race track, much less a swamp. We plan to do it when she doesn’t dare unlock Pinhead for fear of her own life. If we are chased, it will probably be the driver-and he can’t chase two directions at once. Maybe there are other natives she can call on for help, but even so, splitting up doubles our chances.
So I get the inertial tracker because Clark doesn’t think I can maneuver in the bush without one, even if I wait for it to get light. He’s probably right. But he claims that he can steer well enough to find that road using just his watch, a wet finger for the breeze, and polarized spectacles-which, so help me, he has with him.
I shouldn’t have sneered at his comic books; he actually did come prepared, quite a lot of ways. If they hadn’t gassed him while he was still locked in the passenger compartment of Mrs. Grew’s air buggy, I think he could have given them a very busy, bad time. A flame gun in his bag, a Remington pistol hidden on his person, knives, stun bombs-even a second inertial tracker, openly in the bag along with his clothes and comic books and slide rule.
I asked him why, and he put on his best superior look. “If anything went wrong and they grabbed me, they would expect me to have one. So I had one and it hadn’t even been started … poor little tenderfoot who doesn’t even know enough to switch the thing on when he leaves his base position. Old Gruesome got a fine chuckle out of that.” He sneered. “She thinks I’m half-witted and I’ve done my best to help the idea along.”
So they did the same thing with his bag that they did with my purse-cleaned everything out of it that looked even faintly useful for mayhem and murder, let him keep what was left.
And most of what was left was concealed by a false bottom so beautifully faked that the manufacturer wouldn’t have noticed it.
Except, possibly, for the weight-I asked Clark about that. He shrugged. “Calculated risk,” he said. “If you don’t bet, you can’t win. Jojo carried it in here still packed and she searched it in here-and didn’t pick it up afterwards; she had both arms full of junk I didn’t mind her confiscating.”
(And suppose she had picked it up and noticed? Well, Brother would still have had his brain and his hands-and I think he could take a sewing machine apart and put it back together as a piece of artillery. Clark is a trial to me-but I have great confidence in him.)
I’m going to get some sleep now-or try to-as Pinhead has just fetched in our supper and we have a busy time ahead of us, later. But first I’m going to backtrack this tape and copy it; I have one fresh spool left in my purse. I’m going to give the copy to Clark to give to Uncle, just in case. Just in case Poddy turns out to be bubbles in a swamp, I mean. But I’m not worried about that; it’s a much nicer prospect than being Pinhead’s roommate. In fact I’m not worried about anything; Clark has the situation well in hand.
But he warned me very strongly about one thing; “Tell them to get here well before nine-sixteen … or don’t bother to come at all.”
“Why?” I wanted to know.
“Just do it.”
“Clark, you know perfectly well that two grown men won’t pay any attention unless I can give them a sound reason for it.”
He blinked. “All right. There is a very sound reason. A half-a-kiloton bomb isn’t very much … but it still isn’t healthy to be around when it goes off. Unless they can get in here and disarm it before that time-up she goes!”
He has it. I’ve seen it. Snugly fitted into that false bottom. That same three kilograms of excess mass I couldn’t account for at Deimos. Clark showed me the timing mechanism and how the shaped charges were nestled around it to produce the implosion squeeze.
But he did not show me how to disarm it. I ran into his blankest, most stubborn wall. He expects to escape, yes-and he expects to come back here with plenty of help and in plenty of time and disarm the thing. But he is utterly convinced that Mrs. Grew intends to kill us, and if anything goes wrong and we don’t break out of here, or die trying, or anything … well, he intends to take her with us.
I told him it was wrong, I said that he mustn’t take the law in his own hands. “What law!” he said. “There isn’t any law here. And you aren’t being logical, Pod. Anything that is right for a group to do is right for one person to do.”
That one was too slippery for me to answer so I tried simply pleading with him and he got sore. “Maybe you would rather be in the cage with Jojo?”
“Well … no.”
“Then shut up about it. Look, Pod, I planned all this out when she had me in that tank, trying to beat my ears in, make me deaf. I kept my sanity by ignoring what was being done to me-and concentrating on when and how I would blow her to bits.”
I wondered if he had indeed kept his sanity but I kept my doubts to myself and shut up. Besides I’m not sure that he’s wrong; it may be that I’m just squeamish about blood-shed. “Anything that is moral for a group to do is moral for one person to do.” There must be a flaw in that, since I’ve always been taught that it is wrong to take the law in your own hands. But I can’t find the flaw and it sounds axiomatic, selfevident. Switch it around. If something is wrong for one person to do, can it possibly be made right by having a lot of people (a government) agree to do it together? Even unanimously?
If a thing is wrong, it is wrong-and vox populi can’t change it.
Just the same, I’m not sure I can nap with an atom bomb under by bed.
Postludes
Putnam’s was unhappy with Heinlein’s original ending to Podkayne of Mars. In the originally published version Poddy survives. As originally written, she does not. Here follow both versions. First Heinlein’s original …
Postlude
(As Originally Written)
I guess I had better finish this.
My sister got right to sleep after I rehearsed her in what we were going to do. I stretched out on the floor but didn’t go right to sleep. I’m a worrier, she isn’t. I reviewed my plans, trying to make them tighter. Then slept.
I’ve got one of those built-in alarm clocks and I woke just when I planned to, an hour before dawn. Any later and there would be too much chance that Jojo might be loose, any earlier and there would be too much time in the dark. The Venus bush is chancy even when you can see well; I didn’t want Poddy to step into something sticky, or step on something that would turn and bite her leg off. Nor me, either.
But we had to risk the bush, or stay and let old Gruesome kill us at her convenience. The first was a sporting chance; the latter was a dead certainty, even though I had a terrible time convincing Poddy that Mrs. Grew would kill us. Poddy’s greatest weakness - the really soft place in her head, she’s not too stupid otherwise-is her almost total inability to grasp that some people are as bad as they are. Evil. Poddy never has understood evil. Naughtiness is about as far as her imagination reaches.
But I understand evil, I can get right inside the skull of a person like Mrs. Grew and understand how she thinks.
Perhaps you infer from this that I am evil, or partly so. All right, want to make something of it? Whatever I am, I knew Mrs. Grew was evil before we ever left the Tricorn … when Poddy (and even Girdie!) thought the slob was just too darling for words.
I don’t trust a person who laughs when there is nothing to laugh about. Or is good-natured no matter what happens. If it’s that perfect, it’s an act, a phony. So I watched her … and cheating at solitaire wasn’t the only giveaway.
So between the bush and Mrs. Grew, I chose the bush, both for me and my sister.
Unless the air car was there and we could swipe it. This would be a mixed blessing, as it would mean two of them to cope with, them armed and us not. (I don’t count a bomb as an arm, you can’t point it at a person’s head.)
Before I woke Poddy I took care of that alate pseudosimian, that “fairy.” Vicious little beast. I didn’t have a gun. But I didn’t really want one at that point; they understand about guns and are hard to hit, they’ll dive on you at once.
Instead I had shoe trees in my spare shoes, elastic bands around my spare clothes, and more elastic bands in my pockets, and several two-centimeter steel ball bearings.
Shift two wing nuts, and the long parts of the shoe trees become a steel fork. Add elastic bands and you have a sling shot. And don’t laugh at a slingshot; many a sand rat has kept himself fed with only a sling shot. They are silent and you usually get your ammo back.
I aimed almost three times as high as I would at home, to allow for the local gravity, and got it right on the sternum, knocked it off its perch-crushed the skull with my heel and gave it an extra twist for the nasty bite on Poddy’s arm. The young one started to whine, so I pushed the carcass over in the corner, somewhat out of sight, and put the cub on it. It shut up. I took care of all this before I woke Poddy because I knew she had sentimental fancies about these “fairies” and I didn’t want her jittering and maybe grabbing my elbow. As it was - clean and fast.
She was still snoring, so I slipped off my shoes and made a fast reconnoiter.
Not so good-Our local witch was already up and reaching for her broom; in a few minutes she would be unlocking Jojo if she hadn’t already. I didn’t have a chance to see if the sky car was outside; I did well not to get caught. I hurried back and woke Poddy.
“Pod!” I whispered. “You awake?”
“Yes.”
“Wide awake? You’ve got to do your act, right now. Make it loud and make it good.”
“Check.”
“Help me up on the perch. Can your sore arm take it?
She nodded, slid quickly off the bed and took position at the door, hands ready. I grabbed her hands, bounced to her shoulders, steadied, and she grabbed my calves as I let go her hands-and then I was up on the perch, over the door. I waved her on.
Poddy went running out the door, screaming, “Mrs. Grew! Mrs. Grew! Help, help! My brother!” She did make it good.
And came running back in almost at once with Mrs. Grew puffing after her.
I landed on Gruesome’s shoulders, knocking her to the floor and knocking her gun out of her hand. I twisted and snapped her neck before she could catch her breath.
Pod was right on the ball, I have to give her credit. She had that gun before it stopped sliding. Then she held it, looking dazed.
I took it carefully from her. “Grab your purse. We go, right now! Stick close behind me.”
Jojo was loose, I had cut it too fine. He was in the living room, looking, I guess, to see what the noise was about. I shot him.
Then I looked for the air car while keeping the gun ready for the driver. No sign of either one-and I didn’t know whether to groan or cheer. I was all keyed up to shoot him but maybe he would have shot me first. But a car would have been mighty welcome compared with heading into the bush.
I almost changed my plan at that point and maybe I should have. Kept together, I mean, and headed straight north for the ring road.
It was the gun that decided me. Poddy could protect herself with it-and I would just be darn careful what I stepped on or in. I handed it to her and told her to move slowly and carefully until there was more light - but get going!
She was wobbling the gun around. “But, Brother, I’ve never shot anybody!”
“Well, you can if you have to.”
“I guess so.”
“Nothing to it. Just point it at ‘em and press the button. Better use both hands. And don’t shoot unless you really need to.”
“All right.”
I smacked her behind. “Now get going. See you later.”
And I got going. I looked behind once, but she was already vanished in the smog. I put a little distance between me and the house, just in case’, then concentrated on approximating course west.
And I got lost. That’s all. I needed that tracker but I had figured I could get along without it and Pod had to have it. I got hopelessly lost. There wasn’t breeze enough for me to tell anything by wetting my finger and that polarized light trick for finding the Sun is harder than you would think. Hours after I should have reached the ring road I was still skirting boggy places and open water and trying to keep from being somebody’s lunch.
And suddenly there was the most dazzling light possible and I went down flat and stayed there with my eyes buried in my arm and started to count.
I wasn’t hurt at all. The blast wave covered me with mud and the noise was pretty rough but I was well outside the real trouble. Maybe half an hour later I was picked up by a cop car.
Certainly, I should have disarmed that bomb. I had intended to, if everything went well; it was just meant to be a “Samson in the Temple” stunt if things turned out dry. A last resort.
Maybe I should have stopped to disarm it as soon as I broke old Gruesome’s neck-and maybe Jojo would have caught both of us if I had and him still with a happy-dust hangover. Anyhow I didn’t and then I was very busy shooting Jojo and deciding what to do and telling Poddy how to use that gun and getting her started. I didn’t think about the bomb until I was several hundred meters from the house-and I certainly didn’t want to go back then, even if I could have found it again in the smog, which is doubtful.
But apparently Poddy did just that. Went back to the house, I mean. She was found later that day, about a kilometer from the house, outside the circle of total destruction-but caught by the blast.
With a live baby fairy in her arms-her body had protected it; it doesn’t appear to have been hurt at all.
That’s why I think she went back to the house. I don’t know that this baby fairy is the one she called “Ariel.” It might have been one that she picked up in the bush. But that doesn’t seem at all likely; a wild one would have clawed her and its parents would have torn her to pieces.
I think she intended to save that baby fairy all along and decided not to mention it to me. It is just the kind of sentimental stunt that Poddy would do. She knew I was going to have to kill the adult-and she never said a word against that; Pod could always be sensible when absolutely necessary.
Then in the excitement of breaking out she forgot to grab it, just as I forgot to disarm the bomb after we no longer needed it. So she went back for it.
And lost the inertial tracker, somehow. At least it wasn’t found on her or near her. Between the gun and her purse and the baby fairy and the tracker she must have dropped it in a bog. Must be, because she had plenty of time to go back and still get far away from the house. She should have been ten kilometers away by then, so she must have lost the tracker fairly soon and walked in a circle.
I told Uncle Tom all about it and was ready to tell the Corporation people, Mr. Cunha and so forth, and take my medicine. But Uncle told me to keep my mouth shut. He agreed that I had fubbed it, mighty dry indeed-but so had he-and so had everybody. He was gentle with me. I wish he had hit me.
I’m sony about Poddy. She gave me some trouble from time to time, with her bossy ways and her illogical ideas-but just the same I’m sorry.
I wish I knew how to cry.
Her little recorder was still in her purse and part of the tape could be read. doesn’t mean much, though; she doesn’t tell what she did, she was babbling, sort of:
“… very dark where I’m going. No man is an island, complete in himself. Remember that, Clarkie. Oh, I’m sorry I fubbed it but remember that; it’s important. They all have to be cuddled sometimes. My shoulder - Saint Podkayne! Saint Podkayne, are you listening? Unka Tom, Mother, Daddy-is anybody listening? Do listen, please, because this is important. I love-“
It cuts off there. So we don’t know whom she loved. Everybody maybe.
Mr. Cunha made them hold the Tricorn and now Uncle Tom and I are on our way again. The baby fairy is still alive and Dr. Torland says it doesn’t have radiation sickness. I call it “Ariel” and I guess I’ll be taking care of it a long time; they say these fairies live as long as we do. It is taking to shipboard life all right but it gets lonely and has to be held and cuddled or it cries.
Postlude
(As Originally Published)
I guess I had better finish this.
My sister got right to sleep after I rehearsed her in what we were going to do. I stretched out on the floor but didn’t go right to sleep. I’m a worrier, she isn’t. I reviewed my plans, trying to make them tighter. Then I slept.
I’ve got one of those built-in alarm clocks and I woke just when I planned to, an hour before dawn. Any later and there would be too much chance that Jojo might be loose, any earlier and there would be too much time in the dark. The Venus bush is chancy even when you see well; I didn’t want Poddy to step into something sticky, or step on something that would turn and bite her leg off. Nor me, either.
But we had to risk the bush, or stay and let old Gruesome kill us at her convenience. The first was a sporting chance; the latter was a dead certainty, even though I had a terrible time convincing Poddy that Mrs. Grew would kill us. Poddy’s greatest weakness-the really soft place in her head, she’s not too stupid otherwise-is her almost total inability to grasp that some people are as bad as they are. Evil. Poddy never has understood evil. Naughtiness is about as far as her imagination reaches.
But I understand evil, I can get right inside the skull of a person like Mrs. Grew and understand how she thinks.
Perhaps you infer from this that I am evil, or partly so. All right, want to make something -of it? Whatever I am, I knew Mrs. Grew was evil before we ever left the Tn corn … when Poddy (and even Girdie!) thought the slob was just too darling for words.
I don’t trust a person who laughs when there is nothing to laugh about. Or is good-natured no matter what happens. If it’s that perfect, it’s an act, a phony. So I watched her … and cheating at solitaire wasn’t the only giveaway.
So between the bush and Mrs. Grew, I chose the bush, both for me and my sister.
Unless the air car was there and we could swipe it. This would be a mixed blessing, as it would mean two of them to cope with, them armed and us not. (I don’t count a bomb as an arm, you can’t point it at a person’s head.)
Before I woke Poddy I took care of that alate pseudosimian, that “fairy.” Vicious little beast. I didn’t have a gun. But I didn’t really want one at that point; they understand about guns and are hard to hit, they’ll dive on you at once.
Instead I had shoe trees in my spare shoes, elastic bands around my spare clothes, and more elastic bands in my pockets, and several two-centimeter steel ball bearings.
Shift two wing nuts, and the long parts of the shoe trees become a steel fork. Add elastic bands and you have a slingshot. And don’t laugh at a slingshot; many
a sand rat has kept himself fed with only a slingshot. They are silent and you us~ally get your ammo back.
I aimed almost three times as high as I would at home, to allow for the local gravity, and got it right on the sternum, knocked it off its perch-crushed the skull with my heel and gave it an extra twist for the nasty bite on Poddy’s arm. The young one started to whine, so I pushed the carcass over into the corner, somewhat out of sight, and put the cub on it. It shut up. I took care of all this before I woke Poddy because I knew she had sentimental fancies about these “fairies” and I didn’t want her jittering and maybe grabbing my elbow. As it was-clean and fast.
- She was still snoring, so I slipped off my shoes and made a fast reconnoiter.
Not so good-Our local witch was already up and reaching for her broom; in a few minutes she would be unlocking Jojo if she hadn’t already. I didn’t have a chance to see if the sky car was outside; I did well not to get caught. I hurried back and woke Poddy.
“Pod!” I whispered. “You awake?”
“Yes.”
“Wide awake? You’ve got to do your act, right now. Make it loud and make it good.”
“Check.”
“Help me up onto the perch. Can your sore arm take it?’
She nodded, slid quickly off the bed and took position at the door, hands ready. I grabbed her hands, bounced to her shoulders, steadied, and she grabbed my calves as I let go her hands-and then I was up on the perch, over the door. I waved her on.
Poddy went running out the door, screaming, “Mrs. Grew! Mrs. Grew! Help, help! My brother!” She did make it good.
And came running back in almost at once with Mrs. Grew puffing after her.
I landed on Gruesome’s shoulders, knocking her to the floor and knocking her gun out of her hand. I twisted and snapped her neck before she could catch her breath.
Pod was right on the ball, I have to give her credit. She had that gun before it stopped sliding. Then she held it, looking dazed.
I took it carefully from her. “Grab your purse. We go right now! Stick close behind me.”
Jojo was loose, I had cut it too fine. He was in the living room, looking, I guess, to see what the noise was about. I shot him.
‘Then I looked for the air car while keeping the gun ready for the driver. No sign of either one-and I didn’t know whether to groan or cheer. I was all keyed up to shoot him but maybe he would have shot me first. But a car would have been mighty welcome compared with heading into the bush.
I almost changed my plan at that point and maybe I should have. Kept together, I mean, and headed straight north for the ring road.
It was the gun that decided me. Poddy could protect herself with it-and I would just be darn careful what I stepped on or in. I handed it to her and told her to move slowly and carefully until there was more light-but get going!
She was wobbling the gun around. “But, Brother, I’ve never shot anybody!”
“Well, you can if you have to.”
“I guess so.”
“Nothing to it. Just point it at ‘em and press the button. Better use both hands. And don’t shoot unless you really need to.”
“All right.”
I smacked her behind. “Now get going. See you later.”
And I got going. I looked behind once, but she was
already vanished in the smog. I put a little distance between me and the house, just in case, then concentrated on approximating course west.
And I got lost. That’s all. I needed that tracker but I had figured I could get along without it and Pod had to. have it. I got hopelessly lost. There’ wasn’t breeze enough for me to tell anything by wetting my finger and that polarized, light trick for finding the Sun is harder than you wbuld think. Hours after I should have reached the ring road I was still skirting boggy places, and open water and trying to keep from being somebody’s lunch.
And suddenly there was the most dazzling light possible and I went down flat and stayed there with my eyes buried in my arm and started to count.
I wasn’t hurt at all. The blast wave covered me with mud and the noise was pretty rough, but I was well outside the real trouble. Maybe half an hour later I was picked up by a cop car.
Certainly, I should have disarmed that bomb. I had intended to, if everything went well; it was just meant to be a “Samson in the Temple” stunt if things turned out dry. A last resort.
Maybe I should have stopped to disarm it as soon as I broke old Gruesome’s neck-and maybe Jojo would have caught both of us if I had and him still with a happy-dust hangover. Anyhow I didn’t and then I was very busy deciding what to do and tefflng Poddy how to use that gun and getting her started. I dldn t think about the bomb until I was several hundred meters from the house-and I certainly didn’t want to go back then, even if I could have found it again in the smog, which is doubtful.
But apparently Poddy did just that. Went back to the house, I mean. She was found later that day, about a kilometer from the house, outside the circle of total destruction-but caught by the,~blast.
With a live baby fairy in her arms-her body had protected it; it doesn’t appear to have been hurt at all.
That’s why I think she went back to the house. I don’t know that this baby fairy is the one she called “Ariel.” It could have been one that she picked up in the bush. But that doesn’t seem at all likely; a wild one would have clawed her and its parents would have torn her to pieces.
I think she intended to save that baby fairy all along and decided not to mention it to me. It is just the kind of sentimental stunt that Poddy would pull. She knew I was going to have to kill the adult-and she never said a word against that; Pod could always be sensible when absolutely necessary.
Then in the excitement of breaking out she forgot to grab it, just as I forgot to disarm the bomb after we no longer needed it. So she went back for it.
And lost the inertial tracker, somehow. At least it wasn’t found on her or near her. Between the gun and her purse and the baby fairy and the tracker she must have dropped it in the bog. Must be, because she had plenty of time to go back and still get far away from the house. She should have been ten kilometers away by then, so she must have lost the tracker fairly soon and walked in a circle.
I told Uncle Tom all about it and was ready to tell the Corporation people, Mr. Cunha and so forth, and take my medicine. But Uncle told me to keep my mouth shut. He agreed that I had fubbed it, mighty dry indeed-but so had he-and so had everybody. He was gentle with me. I wish he had hit me.
I’m sorry about Poddy. She gave me some trouble from time to time, with her bossy ways and her illogical ideas-but just the same, I’m sorry.
I wish I knew how to cry.
Her little recorder was still in her purse and part of the tape could be read. doesn’t mean much, though; she doesn’t tell what she did, she was babbling, sort of: “…very dark where I’m going. No man is an island complete in himself. Remember that; it’s important. They all have to be cuddled sometimes. My shoulder-Saint Podkayne! Saint Podkayne, are you listening? Unka Tom, Mother, Daddy-is anybody listening? Do listen, please, because this is important. I love-“
It cuts off there. So we don’t know whom she loved. Everybody, maybe.
I’m alone here, now. Mr. Cunha made them hold the Tricorn until it was certain whether Poddy would die or get well, then Uncle Tom left and left me behind-alone, that is, except for doctors, and nurses, and Dexter Cunha hanging around all the time, and a whole platoon of guards. I can’t go anywhere without one. I can’t go to the casinos at all any more-not that I want to, much.
I heard part of what Uncle Tom told Dad about it. Not all of it, as a phone conversation with a bounce time of over twenty minutes is episodic. I heard none of what Dad said and only one monologue of Uncle’s:
“Nonsense, sir! I am not dodging my own load of guilt; it will be with me always. Nor can I wait here until you arrive and you know it and you know why-and both children will be safer in Mr. Cunha’s hands and not close to me … and you know that, too! But I have a message for you, sir, one that you should pass on to your wife. Just this: people who will not take the trouble to raise children should not have them. You with your nose always in a book, your wife gallivanting off God knows where-between you, your daughter was almost killed. No credit to either of you that she wasn’t. Just blind luck. You should tell your wife, sir, that building bridges and space stations and such gadgets is all very well … but that a woman has more important work to do. I tried to suggest this to you years ago… and was told to mind my own business. Now I am saying it. Your daughter will get well, no thanks to either of you. But I have my doubts about Clark. With him it may be too late. God may give you a second chance if you hurry. Ending transmission!”
I faded into the woodwork then and didn’t get caught. But what did Uncle Tom mean by that-trying to scare Dad about me? I wasn’t hurt at all and he knows it. I just got a load of mud on me, not even a burn … whereas Poddy still looks like a corpse and they’ve got her piped and wired like a crèche.
I don t see what he was driving at.
I’m taking care of that baby fairy because Poddy will want to see it when she gets well enough to notice things again; she’s always been a sentimentalist. It needs a lot of attention because it gets lonely and has to be held and cuddled, or it cries.
So I’m up a lot in the night-I guess it thinks I’m its mother. I don’t mind, I don’t have much else to do.
It seems to like me.
The End