Analog SFF, April 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Maybe no one does.”

  I asked what he meant.

  “I've watched,” he said, “not because I'm nosey but because a dometown's a small place and you pretty much hear all the news. But you know how many people have held your job in thirty Earth years? I'll tell you. Sixteen. Sixteen people have gotten your job and then gotten out, or been pushed out. We on the outside don't know what's happening over in City Hall proper, but I figure, with sixteen people in the last thirty years, something's up, right? Maybe the job's so awful people hate it and just need to get out. Maybe no one wants to be the one snapping the whip. Or maybe it's just a good job but a tough job that's waiting for the special person.”

  “You make me feel real secure.”

  “I think folks usually land on their feet, once they're out.”

  “But what if they send me back?”

  “Send you back? From Mars? After getting you here? Who can afford to send anyone back? Don't talk crazy at me!”

  He laughed, saying that. Even so I detected a grain of truth in what he said. If I messed this up, I might be out a job—but not a planet.

  A Martian—already!

  Ron took me to the Engineering roof, where we stood on a spongy walkway between solar tiles, gazing up at the rosy sky and the complicated undersurface of the dome itself.

  “You see, it's partly a solid dome and partly see-through; and the magnetic shielding is just as important a component as the glass and metal. There's even a bit of shimmery light effect off the field. The titanium-alloy struts between the panes are painted, so they pretty much disappear against the Martian day sky. But you can tell they're there. At night, if you're walking along and looking up, you'll see stars wink out, just for a split second. People like to do that, in fact. They take walks in the evening and if they can see Earth, they make it blink behind one of the roof struts. It's like a tiny blue eye winking. A child's game, really—but people have been doing it so long it's habit, now.”

  “People think about Earth a lot, up here, don't they?”

  “You're giving yourself away!”

  “What?”

  “You say, ‘Up here.’ We say we're ‘down here.’ Earth's ‘up there.’ Opposite to the way newbies put it.”

  “I still think of Mars being in the sky. And Earth—well, it's Earth.”

  “Like I said!”

  Before being handed off to someone else on my tour, I asked Ron if he had any notion what my job really was.

  “The problem in answering that, I guess, is in figuring out what efficiency means,” he said.

  “For engineers I figure it's clear-cut.”

  “I'm not so sure about that, myself. Because look: mistakes aren't efficient. That said, though, sometimes I think an efficient system for people is one that lets them make mistakes,” he said. “If you can't make mistakes, you don't learn. And what kind of efficiency is it, that won't let you learn?”

  * * * *

  You can get to know a person any way at all—except efficiently, someone said to me. Is there a way to efficiently learn a job? Am I to know? By day five I was losing track of who said what, who made which allusion, who suggested what idea to whomever else. I was feeling lost—quite lost. A Martian dometown may be small, by Terrene urban standards, but I needed do no more than turn a block, with my funny, big-stepping Earth walk I hoped to shed before too long, and I would find myself in the totally wrong place. Fortunately I knew people too poorly—let us say, too inefficiently—to stumble into the wrong situation, in anything like personal terms, for everything I did was all impersonal and official, just the stumbling of an Earthman lost in a tiny place on Mars, just the wrong turnings of the ignorant newcomer. These streets had never had any reason to be particularly straight, contributing to my confusion. The dometown had sprawled outward from its center through accretion, not planned growth. I kept going wrong ways and taught myself to stop being surprised when I did.

  This fifth morning, though, I walked into Prithivi Park and came upon a scene that left me amazed. I asked myself, Should I weep at the sight or laugh? What first struck my eye, though, was a vision of such normalcy I puzzled over what seemed odd about it.

  Two curly headed girls, one in a light green dress and the other in a bright tulip-yellow outfit, sat at a small table and chair set. They must have brought it here, for a tea party. From a small white pot they poured water into tiny cups to daintily sip.

  They seemed perfectly content in their playtime, beneath that dark blue sky...

  Blue?

  I stared upward, baffled. Then I heard voices. When I moved nearer I made out this:

  “All right. Now that you can hear me, can you just tell me what in the heck you're doing!”

  I spotted the voice's owner, deeper in the park: Rhoda Davis, one of the grounds crew. I had met her before on my rounds.

  “What does it look like I'm doing?” said a voice of someone hidden by trees.

  “It looks like you're painting the sky!”

  “Well,” said the other. “That's it, all right.”

  Once I took a few Earth steps nearer I saw Eddy, the old man, atop a wheeled riser platform. The support struts were mostly folded up; he must have brought himself down to talk to Rhoda. This part of the dome not being particularly high—the trees must have been dwarf varieties—Eddy only had to be up thirty or thirty-five feet to reach the inner dome surface.

  Atop the platform was one of those lightweight painting outfits with a roller easily five feet wide. I tried one out, once, and found it amazingly balanced. Even a child could easily paint a wide swath—as could a retired oldster whose morning fitness routine involved finding an exercise bench of the park variety, where he could heavy-lift the eight-ounce cup.

  “You see,” said Eddy down to Rhoda, “I had this idea to paint the sky blue. And at the hardware outlet they had a lot of blue paint on sale. Just house paint. But it works! It's taken me all morning.”

  “You're covering up the glass!”

  “Oh, the paint's translucent enough, and it'll clean off. I made sure about that, at the hardware outlet.”

  Having noticed me, Rhoda nervously looked my way now and then. I took her glances for a reminder: I was not here as Jay Wirth, newcomer from Earth, but as Jay Wirth, F.o.E. Was I supposed to react to the crazy old bum's actions and mutter about lost man hours, or the waste of paint—surely a scarce enough commodity on Mars, even if on sale at the hardware outlet?

  “Now look at the girls,” Eddy went on, pointing down. “They like it. Don't you, girls? Don't you like a blue sky?”

  Both yelled a hurrah. I wondered if I should wander nearer, or if that would mean getting myself involved.

  Rhoda Davis made up my mind for me, by walking in my direction herself.

  “Listen,” she said. “Don't mind Eddy. He means no harm. This will decrease our solar gain a little, even though it's just a small sub-dome, over this park. But it's a little aggravating, you know? To have to clean up after him? Oh, well! Life goes on!”

  She eyed me curiously, as though waiting to see how I would react. Then she half-smiled, although her eyebrows still seemed frowning. She walked away, shaking her head, toward one of the grounds buildings.

  “Don't worry,” she called back at me over her shoulder, “I'll have a gang here pronto to get that off!”

  The two girls, meanwhile, were having a grand time at their tea party. Being still pretty much a stranger, I figured it best to not bother them, although I wanted to do nothing else than to go over and bathe in their sunny cheer.

  Blue sky, on Mars! Last I looked, Eddy was boosting his lift skyward again, gazing upward with a grin on his unshaven face. I guessed he would keep on, until someone stopped him. Was I supposed to? In my pocket I did have my all-powerful “Efficiency Orders” pad, which I had yet to use.

  I just watched the two girls for a while more, then went along down the street.

  When I checked in later, to see if Grounds had shown up
with foam cleaner to remove the paint—I had checked into what they would use—I found no workers on hand, as of yet. I knew they had a full slate of chores for the day, to judge from daily efficiency reports the supervisors had logged over the last few days.

  The girls had finished their play and had left, too.

  This is not to say, though, that the modest parallelogram of Prithivi Park sat empty. Far from it.

  I had walked through quite a few of these small parks, beneath their various sub-domes, since arriving, and without fail I would see a few people sitting on benches or wandering the paths between trees and shrubs. I believed they were finding relief from a townscape that otherwise tended toward the too rectilinear and too well contained. The juxtapositions of random leaves and branches against nearby building fronts, and the smell of grass and earth ... the eye and nose needed those sights, those smells, and maybe the brain needed them, too, after working inside enclosed, human-determined spaces for most of the day.

  The parks did people good, and by very simple means—or maybe not so simple means, really, given the massive amount of engineering that lay behind the sheer possibility of there being such sub-domes within an elaborate Martian dometown habitat.

  Today, though, Prithivi looked about as packed as I had seen any space here in Neuhight. People packed the half dozen benches. Others were walking the winding paths—and then turning around to retrace their steps. That accounted for the higher than usual density, I supposed. Lots of people casually walked through these parks. The dometown was set up exactly so that people were almost forced to go through one or two in the course of their daily activities, as the simplest of dometown mental-health measures, but now people were backtracking and purposely going through second and third times. And many of them—this struck me—were vaguely smiling, sometimes nodding.

  I felt a nudge against my arm.

  “Eddy!” I said. The old man, in paint-stained coveralls, leaned against the wall where I had stopped to take in the scene.

  “Look at that, will you, Mr. Wirth,” the old man said. “I just had this notion and I don't know why I went through with it but I did, and by gum these other folks like it. Just look at them. It's the sky, you know.”

  “The sky?”

  “Maybe it's hardwired in us, you know? I suppose that's why blue is such a good seller at the hardware outlet. They told me it was, when I bought this. Even though they ordered too much, it's still a good seller. And you know they were surprised I was buying so much? But I said I had a big room to paint. Mighty big.” He laughed.

  “Eddy, how could you afford to paint the sky of this whole dome?”

  “Oh, I spread it real thin. Some of the light comes through, see? And I know the paint has to come off real soon. That Rhoda Davis told me so. I don't mind. I just had the notion and I did it and look how glad people are, walking around there. Isn't it pretty?”

  “I still don't know how you could afford it!”

  “Well, Mr. Wirth, you have to save for a little craziness now and then. It's good for a person to have a little craziness, don't you think?”

  “You know, Eddy, I think you'd be the only person in this city to talk to me this way.”

  It had just sunken in, how people in Prithivi were catching sight of me, increasing their pace a little, and leaving.

  “You mean to talk about needing a little craziness?” said Eddy. “Well, I suppose when you, Mr. Wirth, look at people it worries them, that you're looking. Me, I'm not worried. I'm retired. Those others, pah, let them worry. They still have to work! Me, no! Let them worry!”

  “They're worried about me, you mean?”

  “Sure. You're the Face of Efficiency here in Dometown 26, Mr. Wirth, and sure they have to worry about you looking at them, because they have their jobs and you have yours.”

  “You can call me Jay.”

  “Sure. I'll try, but it's hard remembering that when you're dealing with the Face of Efficiency. You know what I mean, Mr. Wirth?”

  I walked away, thinking of the way Rhoda Davis had left me, earlier in the day, with an insincere smile and frowning eyebrows. Worry? That could have been in it. In fact, from what I could see, maybe I had gotten this job because no one here wanted it. Had Ron said something to that effect? Who wants to act the heavy? Who wants to crack the whip?

  For all us bums secretly know we are not really very good at what we do, that we goof off too much, that we fail to get much done. The last thing we want, though, is to be found out. Everyone fears an Efficiency Ogre!

  And that ogre was me.

  I saw the pattern, now. People came from outside, took this job, became the ogre—and then could take no more. So they got out.

  Or else they were too good at being the ogre and got themselves hated—and so were pushed out.

  The Ogre of Neuhight! Last thing I wanted!

  Because once perceived as an ogre, and forced out ... who would hire the ogre for more pleasant work?

  So if I were to mess up in my job, I had best do it in the most easygoing, affable way possible.

  The most inefficient way, too, for that matter!

  For messing up looked the best way of not being forced to become the Ogre of Neuhight.

  * * * *

  First place to go, I figured, was Engineering, where I had noticed this thickset, mop-haired fellow Nick Chomis. He had looked a little harried and surly, the day I toured the building. I knew Ron Pierce and his department had a pressing deadline for turning in some analyses to Claudetown, where the regional government had its seat. They also had work to do relating to the Bliss Region Dometown Summit, the next week. A lot of city offices were feeling a time pinch due to that.

  I walked over to the desk of this Nick Chomis, who showed weariness in his baggy lower eyelids and slumped posture. He worked too hard. He would obviously be a prize performer for any Chief of Efficiency in any dometown on any planet of the Solar System. In fact, from the daily efficiency reports, I knew he was exactly that.

  So I sat in the chair opposite him, tilted it back, and stuck my feet up on his desk.

  He suddenly put on those worried, unhappy eyebrows I had seen on Rhoda Davis—without the smile.

  “What's this?” he said.

  “You're overworked.”

  “I'm always overworked, but that's what these freaking deadlines do to a soul. Sorry. Now if you'll allow me—”

  “No, I won't. You know, I've looked over my job description, and I have plenty of discretionary power in cases of efficiency. I'm supposed to step in. You're overworking and you look like you're going to make yourself sick working too many hours without a break. How efficient's that?”

  “You're going to make me take a break? What are you going to do if I don't? I have a heck of a lot to do and don't have time for this!”

  “I'll just sit here and bug you until you take a break. No sweat off my back. So are you going, or am I staying?”

  We argued about it for five minutes, with others elsewhere in the room noticing something funny was going on and furtively peering our way now and then. Finally Nick agreed to take fifteen minutes. I told him to go to that nearby Prithivi Park. He fumed and kept from muttering curses loud enough to be heard distinctly and walked out with something less than joy in his step.

  Walking outside after him, I followed his dwindling form with my eyes to make sure he was not looping back around. I decided not to follow: That would be a little overzealous. Maybe I would cut off from work early today, to make a point. Yes! Time to cut out for a beer!

  I ended up working a while past my standard shutting-down time, though, mainly because I was banging my head trying to think of ways of being inefficient and not really coming up with anything good.

  Over the next day or two I found few other chances to impose inefficiencies, unfortunately. One opportunity did pop up while touring the water department, where pressure was being felt due to that Dometown Summit. A young, willowy underling named Diane Ho sat dithering at
her desk, stylus in hand but eyes on the ceiling—making it only natural I stop rather than walk by.

  “What's up?” I said to the daydreamer.

  “Oh, Mr. Wirth! I'm sorry, I was just worrying about my concert in the park on Friday. There's a part in the Langetti that still bothers me, and I'm afraid I got distracted, thinking about it.” She had a fast, animated manner. A bundle of nerves, in other words.

  “Musician?”

  “Violinist.”

  “But you have plenty to do right here at your desk, don't you?”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Wirth. In fact, Gilda—my boss—is on my back to get these analyses done by tomorrow morning—”

  “Indeed,” I said, getting out my Efficiency Orders. The pad made my words official, sending copies automatically to my office and to town records. It let me leave the proverbial paper trail—in this case, I hoped, of my inefficiency. “Give this to Gilda. Tell her I told you to leave early, to go home and practice. In fact, why not leave right now?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now! Obviously you're thinking about practicing, not work, so just go and do it! Doesn't make sense trying to think about two things at once.”

  I scribbled out the form imperiously, handed the print to her, and left before the puzzlement in her face could make me feel too foolish—and before Gilda could get her hands on me.

  * * * *

  I ran into Nick Chomis again only because I had just written a note to leave work early myself—a silly measure, really—but I had been working too many hours, to tell the truth, and had found it strangely hard to leave my office before the daily departmental efficiency reports started appearing at the end of the afternoon. But I forced myself, this day, to make a minor but still flagrant show of inefficiency.

  I sauntered over to a nice open-air cafe that had a dozen tables along the sidewalk beneath the rosy sky and another seating area beneath a gaily-striped awning. On a tall stool there, at the counter, I saw grumpy Nick sitting with Ron Pierce. To my surprise, Nick caught my eye, smiled, and waved me over.

  “Why did you make me go to that park the other day?” he said, sitting with his hands around a soda.