“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 did 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 right-handed. 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 of 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 Cam-bridge 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-faire.”
(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 didn’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.
TEN
I hear that Clarkhas 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? Polyandry? 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 sorry for Poddy when money was a little tight around home a
nd 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 sorry 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.
Podkayne of Mars Page 12
