We Open on Venus - Starship Troupers 2

by Christopher Stasheff

  That meant that it had cleared his credit card for use. I had a brief but dizzying vision of electronic impulses corresponding to his credit number, spinning through the fibers of the information network of New Venus, then flashing out across the void to a central computer register on Terra … No, of course not. There was no faster-than-light radio; the credit check would have taken three weeks en route to Terra, just as we had, then taken another three weeks for the confirmation to return—and that only if there happened to be a spaceship leaving, one that could take a recording of the transaction. By radio itself, the signal would have taken four years each way, for a total of eight. No, New Venus must have had a complete copy of the credit data base from Terra, updated periodically.

  “Information, please,” Barry said.

  “Information,” the mellifluous voice replied. “How may we help you?”

  “Hotels, please,” Barry said.

  “The Cosmos Hotel,” the computer said as the name appeared in tinted letters on the screen.

  “12-34561.”

  Barry waited.

  “The Cosmos Hotel,” the voice said again.

  “12-34561.”

  Barry stared, surprised.

  “Is there only the one?” I asked.

  Before Barry could answer, the voice asked, “Will there be anything more, sir?”

  “There are no other hotels?” Barry asked, then remembered that computers analyze syntax, not inflection, “Are there no other hotels?”

  “None, sir. Shall I connect you to the Cosmos?”

  “Yes, if you would be so kind,” Barry answered.

  I caught myself wondering if the computer would also record the conversation, and decided I was becoming paranoid.

  A face appeared on the screen, a polite mask with a frame of auburn hair about it. “Hotel Cosmos.”

  “I wish to speak with Mr. Publius Promo,” Barry told the mask.

  The face only smiled back for a second, its eyes never leaving Barry’s face, then abruptly said, “He is not in, sir. Would you care to leave a message?”

  I realized, with a shock, that the polite mask was only that—a mask, a computer-generated picture of a face, seeming more real than the actuality. It had no need to look up information; it had only needed to search its memory, which had taken less than a second.

  “Yes, please,” Barry said. “Ask him to contact Mr. Barry Tallendar at the starship Cotton Blossom.”

  “Yes, sir. Will that be all?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Thank you for calling the Hotel Cosmos, sir.” And the screen went blank.

  Barry turned away from the phone. “Well, he’s not in his room. Where would you think to look for him?”

  “In the taverns, of course,” I answered. “Where else?” Barry looked startled for a moment, then nodded. “Of course. Why did I not think of that? Come, Horace. Let us see if we can find a tavern.”

  We found one. We found several. We found many. There were a very great number of taverns.

  Barry was beginning to look gaunt and weary as we came out of the fifteenth house of alcoholic refreshment, and I confess that I was not feeling terribly spry myself. All that walking had been bad enough—though not outrageous, for men used to navigating Manhattan. What truly wore us out was the ladies parading for temperance.

  “Is the poison washed out!”

  Barry and I had looked up and back, startled.

  There they were, frowsy housewives in shapeless dresses with trumpets and drums, beating up a racket and blaring most ferociously—and off-key; I winced visibly. I assumed their instruments had some symbolic significance—that was the only reason I could imagine for not using electronic keyboards that would, at least, have had accurate pitch. But no, the trumpets shrilled, and the bass drum battered our ears. They were gathered around a huge wheeled vehicle with a shape like a pregnant cucumber, and a sign on the side that proclaimed HO DELIVERIES. A man slunk out of the cab and caught the nozzle of a huge hose as he passed, very quickly, and almost ran to the nearest building, where he fastened the hose to a coupling in the wall and leaned back in relief.

  Now the good ladies did use electronics, or at least their leader did. “Climb on the water wagon!’” she bellowed through an amplified megaphone—and, yes, she really did yell, into an instrument that was amplifying her voice— yell, when all she had to do was turn up the volume. As it was, she accomplished nothing but a horrifying distortion of her voice that rendered her words almost incomprehensible.

  “Are you whited in the wash?” she bellowed. “Have you flushed out the booze? Or do you have a wife and children at home, waiting for your paycheck? Hard-hearted heathens!”

  Barry winced; I was afraid I must have also.

  “You there!” The harpy pounced with avarice. “You men!”

  We looked around; surely she must have been addressing someone else. But no, the street was empty except for Barry and myself. I was sure there had been a score of men walking about only moments before.

  “Where is your wife!” The harridan’s forefinger stabbed out at me.

  “Which one?” Barry asked, wide-eyed.

  “Bigamy!” one of the other women shouted.

  The harridan turned on me. “How many poor girls have you despoiled, deceiver?”

  “None,” I said. “At least, they weren’t poor when I left them.”

  “So you thought to buy their virtue, did you? Whoremaster!”

  “No, husband,” I said imperturbably, “and only once. Though I will admit to the occasional liaison before I met her.”

  “Poor, naive girls whom you despoiled and threw away!”

  “A few years older than me, actually, and quite sophisticated.”

  “And you threw them away!”

  “No, actually, they broke up with me, though they were quite gentle about it—all except my wife.”

  “Because you were a slave to demon rum!” the fishwife orated, raising her right arm on high as if to smite the evildoer. “A worthless drone made useless by the devil gin!”

  “Wrong again,” I said, fighting down my irritation. “I rarely overindulge, and never on working days.”

  Disappointed, she turned to Barry. “And where are your wives?”

  “All back on Terra,” Barry said, with imperturbable poise, “and all collecting alimony.”

  Well. Now I knew what had happened to all that money he had earned in his prime.

  The harridan opened her mouth, but Barry forestalled her. “My habits are temperate; I drink, but rarely in excess.”

  “Rarely!” she trumpeted. “That means you do get drunk! How often is ‘rarely,’ sinner? How many women have you left in poverty because you were so sodden with drink that you couldn’t earn a living?”

  “None,” Barry assured her. “As I’ve told you, they all take alimony, though none of them really needs it—and all three chose divorce, though I didn’t wish it.”

  “No doubt because you were enslaved to the demon!”

  “Not unless you’re counting work as a demon. In fact, that was their cause for complaint, all three—that I spent to much time earning, and too little with them.”

  “Deserter!” the ringleader cried. “Abandoned” But doubt was beginning to shadow her face.

  Barry ignored the accusation. “As to the frequency of ‘rarely,’ I exercise moderation in all things—including moderation.”

  “How can you moderate moderation!” the harridan fairly screeched.

  “By occasional excesses. It restores a sense of balance to a disciplined life.”

  “You’re talking nonsense!” the woman orated, and turned to her followers. “Sisters! His brain is a sponge soaked in alcohol! So thoroughly soaked that he cannot make sense! Exhort them, admonish them!” Then she turned back to the two of us and began to chant, “Climb! Climb! Climb on the water wagon!”

  The ladies behind her took it up:

  “Water wagon! Water wagon!


  Climb on the wagon!

  Throw away the booze,

  Pull on your shoes!

  Go out and earn a life

  For your children and your wife!”

  The chap with the nozzle unscrewed it from the connection on the shop front, nerved himself with a shudder, and dashed back to the shelter of his cab. The drum on the back revolved slowly, winding up the hose. The nozzle thrashed to and fro like a cobra looking for a choice morsel, and one of the women had to jump out of its way. “Brute!” she shouted at the driver. “Trying to strike a poor, defenseless housewife with the end of your great long thrasher!”

  But the driver had made it back to the shelter of his cab, and the truck rumbled with menace as it heaved itself into motion. The women sidestepped deftly and followed after it, shouting and banging. The leader looked back for a parting shot at Barry and myself. “Go home to your wives and your families, slackers!” But she had to turn away and hurry to catch up with her mob, as the truck pulled away. The last of the women followed it around the corner, though we could still hear their chanting and thumping— and we found ourselves facing the blank, bleak face of another tavern. With one accord, we dashed into it as if to a haven in a storm.

  We came in, shuddering. “What was all that about?” Barry wondered.

  “Apparently, the ladies have taken exception to their husbands’ frequenting of establishments like this one,” I guessed, “though if they behave like that at home, I don’t wonder the poor men would rather spend their time in bars. At least in here there is peace and fellowship.”

  Barry turned to me with pursed lips. “That’s right, you did know what it was to always come home to an argument, didn’t you?”

  I looked away.

  Quickly, he said, “No, no, I know you never spoke of it, and won’t to this day—but I knew as well as you did, I’m afraid. I was quite relieved when she left you—though heaven knows she had no cause.”

  “I had become rather inattentive,” I admitted.

  “Who wouldn’t, with a harridan like that?” He held up a palm. “No, no, old chap, no offense intended; sorry about the insult to your former lady. And perhaps I wrong these possibly-worthy housewives; I seem to remember that men who feel trapped into a bleak existence of unremitting toil tend toward alcoholism.”

  I nodded. “It was endemic on the American frontier, as well as in the mill towns—and if the man became so incapacitated as to be unable to work, his wife and children fell into utter poverty. I seem to have read somewhere that a woman’s only protection was a sober, hardworking man, which was why the Ladies’ Temperance Union gained so many adherents and thrived for so long.”

  Barry nodded. “Though one wonders if they wouldn’t have done better to make their homes and themselves so pleasant that their husbands would have felt they were worth all that work.”

  “I seem to remember the argument that such efforts constituted expoitation of women,” I demurred, though not with much conviction. “Why were they clustered around that huge truck, though?”

  “I noticed the sign on the side,” Barry said. “I believe that truly was a water wagon—or its modern equivalent. But why was it going about making deliveries?”

  “No doubt we’ll discover that in time.” I sighed. “Perhaps municipal plumbing isn’t all that it should be.” My eyes suddenly lost focus as I contemplated a thought. “On Terra, when petroleum was scarce, water ran through the city pipes, but oil was delivered by truck. You don’t suppose … ?”

  “Perhaps,” Barry mused. “But it does seem odd that a tavern should be concerned about its water supply.”

  “It may be that the bartenders know better than to sample their own product,” I conjectured. “After all, they know what is in it.”

  Reminded of our whereabouts, we looked around us. It seemed just like any other tavern—dim and dingy, with a row of recreational machines against the far wall. The air reeked of stale beer. The atmosphere of taverns will always be the same, I fear—one of the enduring characteristics of mankind, I reflected as I surveyed the room.

  Then my head stopped turning, and my eyes focused on a face. I felt as if that face had just jumped closer to fill my field of vision. It was a somber face, a hangdog face, a woeful and woebegone face, as crestfallen as I’d ever seen—and at the moment, it seemed to have fallen into the mug of dark liquid in front of it. Bitter, I judged by the color, and of strong alcoholic content, as I judged by the heaviness of his eyelids and the slight swaying in his seat.

  I nudged Barry. “I think I have discovered the reason for our lack of publicity.”

  He turned, and his breath hissed out in a sigh of satisfaction. “Indeed, it would seem to have been drowned in beer.”

  Then we were moving forward together, splitting to go around to opposite sides of the table, and sitting in the chairs to either side of the face, that lugubrious face with the gaze sunk deep into its glass of bitter. It was much gone to flesh, flesh that sagged into jowls. The chin sagged, too, into a double or more—unshaven, at the moment. The eyes seemed too small for all that skin.

  Barry reached out and gently removed the glass from the hand. The fold of mouth opened to let out a cry and glared up at him—then turned ash pale, and the eyes suddenly seemed of a size with the face. “M-Mr. Tallendar!”

  “I was ‘Barry’ on Terra, and I’m still ‘Barry’ here,” my friend said gently.

  “Of—of course, Mr. … Barry!”

  “I am delighted to see you again, Publius,” Barry said, still gently.

  “Uh—same here, Mr. Tal—Barry! But, uh, I uh, wasn’t, uh, expecting you …”

  Certainly not, I reflected grimly; but Barry was more solicitous. “We had a sudden change of plans, due to the efforts of Elector Rudders. He worked up enough sentiment among the electors so that they were on the verge of passing a law that would have prevented our emigrating to bring the benefits of culture to the heathen of the frontier planets—so my brother Valdor fought a delaying action while we moved our departure date up a bit. Of course, we’ll understand if it is impossible for us to open before our scheduled playing date—but I was rather hoping to be able to move the opening up somewhat.”

  “Uh … yeah, sure, Mr. … Barry!” Publius was regaining some poise, but he still looked fearful—and quite bleary.

  “I was rather disappointed to see no trace of publicity announcing our arrival,” Barry said, still gently, “though I suppose that might have been premature, with opening night still a month away.”

  “Uhhhh … yeah! Premature!” Publius nodded vigorously.

  Barry took hold of his forearm, and his voice rang with the echo of steel. “Publius—have you placed an order for posters?”

  Publius hung his head.

  “Publius,” Barry said, “have you rented a theater?”

  He was about to go on, but I touched his elbow. Barry looked and saw that Publius’s shoulders were shaking. “It’s horrible, Mr. Tallendar! The ignorance in which this planet is sunk! They’re uncultured, that’s what they are, totally uncultured, swine sunk in darkness, that’s what, and they don’t give a fig about art or poetry, they don’t even dream of pulling themselves up, they’re just know-nothings full of turpitude and proud of their heathenry!”

  “From that,” I said, “I would gather that you’ve had no success.”

  But Barry, kindly again, said, “Come, man, pull yourself together and tell us the worst of it!”

  “They won’t let us play,” Publius blubbered.

  “Won’t let us play!” we both cried, horrified.

  “Well, they’ll have to, at least for one performance,” Publius amended. He pulled a sheet of paper out of his inner pocket and unfolded it on the table. Craning my neck, I could make out an official seal under some signatures at the bottom. “I got it in writing—oh, they were overjoyed at first! ‘Culture for the people,’ they said. ‘That should keep them quiet for a spell!’ And I got them to sign this before the enthusiasm wo
re off, says we have the privilege of performing in public in the city of Aphrodite—but it doesn’t say where, nor how often! Then just today, they called me in and told me they’d changed their minds …”

  “Just today?” Barry looked up at me, frowning. “How long ago was this?”

  “Two hours.”

  The same thought leaped to both our minds, I’m sure, for Barry’s eyes must have been a reflection of my own—that the courier ship that had passed us had indeed carried a private message from the LORDS party to their members here—of whom management was no doubt inclusive. Rudders had anticipated us, had sent word that we weren’t to be allowed to perform. Would our whole tour be blockaded thus? For surely, while we tarried on New Venus battling bureaucracy for access to an audience, Rudders’ couriers were speeding through the void to bear the same message to all the colony planets.

  There had to be another explanation. Barry turned to Publius. “Why?”

  “I can’t say.” Publius looked down into his drink, a fat tear forming at the inner corner of his eye. “I only know that every poster I paste up gets torn down; every merchant I ask to display our bill in his window refuses. Of course, they’re all Company stores.”

  “Then why don’t you try non-Company stores?” I asked.

  “There aren’t any. Even the bartenders won’t let me post bills!”

  “Though they don’t mind letting you run one up.” I watched as he tipped his mug to drain the last drop; the bill must have been gigantic.

  Right on cue, the waiter came up with a tumbler full of a clear fluid.

  “I think we could do with one of those, too.” Barry glanced at me; I nodded. “Each,” he said to the waiter. “But you might put a little vermouth in it.”

  The waiter nodded and turned away, and Barry turned back to Publius just as he set the glass down and asked, hoping not to hear the answer we suspected, “Why are they so intent on stopping us?”