Podkayne of Mars

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. Bi~t 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 (Girdle'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 Girdle 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 Girdle 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 Girdle 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 Girdle and winning that caused Clark to become almost human with me. For a while.

It was last week, the night I met Dexter-and Girdle 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 Girdle 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?'

"Oh, no!" he said and looked shocked. "You know what they do to you for happy dust around here? They turn you over to natives who are hopped up with it, that's what they do-and then they don't even have to bother to cremate you."

I shuddered and returned to the subject. "Going to tell me?"

"Mmm . .

"I swear by Saint Podkayne Not to Tell." This is my own private oath, nobody else would or could use it.

"By Saint Podkayne!" (And I should have kept my lip zipped.)

"Okay," he said. "But you swore it. A bomb."

"A what?"

"Oh, not much of a bomb. Just a little squeezer job. Total destruction not more than a kilometer. Nothing much."

I reswallowed my heart. "Why a bomb? And what did you do with it?"

He shrugged. "They were stupid. They paid me this silly amount, see? Just to sneak this little package aboard. Gave me a lot of north wind about how it was meant to be a surprise for the Captain-and that I should give it to him at the Captain's party, last night out. Gift wrapped and everything. 'Sonny,' this silly zero says to me, 'just keep it out of sight and let him be surprised-because last night out is not only the Captain's party, it's his birthday.'

"Now, Sis, you know I wouldn't swallow anything like that. If it had really been a birthday present they would just have given it to the Purser to hold-no need to bribe me. So I just played stupid and kept jacking up the price. And the idiots paid me. They got real jumpy when time came to shove us through passport clearance and paid all I asked. So I shoved it into

your bag while you were yakking to Uncle Tom-then saw to it you didn't get inspected.

"Then the minute we were aboard I went to get it-and got held up by a stewardess spraying your cabin and had to do a fast job and go back to relock your bag because Uncle Tom came back in looking for his pipe. That first night I opened the thing in the dark-and opened it from the bottom; I already had a hunch what it might be."

"Why?"

"Sis, use your brain. Don't just sit there and let it rust out. First they offer me what they probably figured was big money to a kid. When I turn it down, they start to sweat and up the ante. I kept crowding it and the money got important. And more important. They don't even give me a tale about how a man with a flower in his lapel will come aboard at Venus and give me a password. It has to be that they don't care what happens to it as long as it gets .into the ship. What does that add up to? Logic."

He added, "So I opened it and took it apart. Time bomb. Set for three days after we space. Blooey!"

I shivered, thinking about it.

"What a horrible thing to do!"

"It could have turned out pretty dry," he admitted, "if I had been as stupid as they thought I was."

"But why would anybody want to do such a thing?"

"Didn't want the ship to get to Venus."

"But why?"

"You figure it out. I have."

"Uh ... what did you do with it?"

"Oh, I saved it. The essential pieces. Never know when you might need a bomb."

And that's all I got out of him-and here I am stuck with a Saint Podkayne oath. And nineteen questions left unanswered. Was there really a bomb? Or was I swindled by my brother's talent for improvising

explanations that throw one off the obvious track? If there was where is it? Still in the Tricorn? Right here in this suite? In an innocent-looking package in the safe of the Tannhäuser? Or parked with his private bodyguard, Josie? Or a thousand other places in this big city? Or is it still more likely that I simply made a mistake of three kilograms in my excitement and that Clark was snooping just to be snooping? (Which he will always do if not busy otherwise.)

No way to tell. So I decided to squeeze what else I could from this Moment of Truth-if it was one. "I'm awful glad you found it," I said. "But the slickest thing you ever dld was that dye job on Mrs. Garcia and Mrs. Royer. Girdle admires it, too."

"She does?" he said eagerly.

"She certainly does. But I never let on you did it. So you can still tell her yourself, if you want to."

"Mmm .. ." He looked quite happy. "I gave Old Lady Royer a little extra, just for luck. Put a mouse in her bed."

"Clark! Oh, wonderful! But where did you get a mouse?"

"Made a deal with the ship's cat."

I wish II had a nice, normal, slightly stupid family. It would be a lot more comfortable. Still, Clark has

his points. -

But I haven't had too much time to worry about my brother's High Crimes and Misdemeanors; Venusberg offers too much to divert the adolescent female with a hitherto unsuspected taste for high living. Especially Dexter- I am no longer a leper; I can now go anywhere,

even outside the city, without wearing a filter snout that makes me look like a blue-eyed pig-and dashing, darling Dexter has been most flatteringly eager to escort me everywhere. Even shopping. Using both hands a girl could spend a national debt there on

clothes alone. But I am being (almost) sensible and spending only that portion of my cash assets earmarked for Venus. If I were not firm with him, Dexter would buy me anything I admire, just by lifting his finger. (He never carries any money, not even a credit card, and even his tipping is done by some unobvious credit system.) But I haven't let him buy me anything more important than a fancy ice cream sundae; I have no intention of jeopardizing my amateur status for some pretty clothes. But I don't feel too compromised over ice cream and fortunately I do not as yet have to worry about my waistline-I'm hollow clear to my ankles.

- So, after a hard day of sweating over the latest Rio styles Dexter takes me to an ice cream parlor-one that bears the same relation to our Plaza Sweet Shoppe that the Tricorn does to a sand car-and he sits and toys with café au lait and watches in amazement while I eat. First some little trifle like an everlasting strawberry soda, then more serious work on a sundae composed by a master architect from creams and syrups and imported fruits and nuts of course, and perhaps a couple of tens of scoops of ice cream in various flavors and named "The Taj Mahal" or "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" or such.

(Poor Girdie! She diets like a Stylite every day of the year. Query: Will I ever make that sacrifice to remain svelte and glamorous? Or will I get comfortably fat like Mrs. Grew? Echo Answereth Not and I'm not afraid to listen.)

I've had to be firm with him in other ways, too, but much less obviously. Dexter turns out to be a master of seductive logic and is ever anxious to tell me a bedtime story. But I have no intention of being a Maid Betrayed, not at my age. The tragedy about Romeo and Juliet is not that they died so young but that the boy-meets-girl reflex should be so overpowering as to defeat all common sense.

My own reflexes are fine, thank you, and my hormonal balance is just dandy. Dexter's fruitless overtures give me a nice warm feeling at the pit of my stomach and hike up my metabolism. Perhaps I should feel insulted at his dastardly intentions toward meand possibly I would, at home, but this is Venusberg, where the distinction between a shameful proposition and a formal proposal of honorable marriage lies only in the mind and would strain a semantician to define. For all I know, Dexter already has seven wives at home, numbered for the days of the week. I haven't asked him, as I have no intention of becoming number eight, on any basis.

I talked this over with Girdle and asked why I didn't feel "insulted." Had they left the moral circuits out of my cybernet, as they so obviously did with my brother Clark? -

Girdle smiled her sweet and secret smile that always means she is thinking about something she doesn't intend to be fully frank about. Then she said, "Poddy, girls are taught to be 'insulted' at such offers for their own protection-and it is a good idea, quite as good an idea as keeping a fire extinguisher handy even though you don't expect a fire. But you are right; it is not an insult, it is never an insult-it is the one utterly honest tribute to a woman's charm and femininity that a man can offer her. The rest of what they tell us is mostly polite lies ....ut on this one subject a man is nakedly honest. I don't see any reason ever to be insulted if a man is polite and gallant about it."

I thought about it. "Maybe you're right, Girdle. I guess it is a compliment, in a way. But why is it that that is all a boy is ever after? Nine times out of ten anyhow."

"You've got it just backwards, Poddy. Why should he ever be after anything else? Millions of years of evolution is the logic behind every proposition. Just be

glad that the dears have learned to approach the matter with handkissing instead of a club. Some of them, anyhow. It gives us more choice in the matter than we've ever had before in all history. It's a woman's world today, dear-enjoy it and be grateful."

I had never thought of it that way. When I've thought of it at all, I've mostly been groused because it is so hard for a girl to break into a "male" profession, such as piloting.

I've been doing some hard thinking about piloting- and have concluded that there are more ways of skinning a cat than buttering it with parsnips. Do I really want to be a "famous explorer captain"? Or would I be just as happy to be some member of his crew?

Oh, I want to space, let there be no doubt about that! My one little trip from Mars to Venus makes me certain that travel is for me. I'd rather be a junior stewardess in the Tricorn than President of the Republic. Shipboard life is fun; you take your home and your friends along with you while you go romantic new places-and with Davis-drive starships being built those places are going to be newer and more romantic every year. And Poddy is going to go, somehow. I was born to roam- But let's not kid ourselves, shall we? Is anybody

going to let Poddy captain one of those multimegabuck ships?

Dexter's chances are a hundred times as good as mine. He's as smart as I am, or almost; he'll have the best education for it that money can buy (while I'm loyal to Ares U., I know it is a hick college compared with where he plans to go); and also it is quite possible that his daddy could buy him a Star Rover ship. But the clincher is that Dexter is twice as big as I am and male. Even if you leave his father's wealth out of the equation, which one of us gets picked?

But all is not lost. Consider Theodora, consider Catherine the Great. Let a man boss the job ... then boss that man. I am not opposed to marriage. (But if Dexter wants to many me-or anything-he'll have to follow me to Marsopolis where we are pretty oldfashioned about such things. None of this lighthearted Venusberg stuff. Marriage should be every woman's end-but not her finish. I do not regard marriage as a sort of death.

Girdle says always to "be what you are." All right, let's look at ourselves in a mirror, dear, and forget "Captain Podkayne Fries, the famous Explorer" for the nonce. What do we see?

Getting just a touch broad-shouldered in the hips, aren't we, dear? No longer any chance of being mistaken for a boy in a dim light. One might say that we were designed for having babies. And that doesn't seem too bad an idea, now does it? Especially if we could have one as nice as Duncan. Fact is, all babies are pretty nice even when they're not.

Those eighteen miserable hours during the storm in the Tricorn-weren't they just about the most fun you ever had in your life? A baby is lots more fun than differential equations.

Every starship has a crèche. So which is better? To study crèche engineering and pediatrics-and be a department head in a starship? Or buck for pilot training and make it ... and wind up as a female pilot nobody wants to hire?

Well, we don't have to decide now- I'm getting pretty anxious for us to shape for Earth.

Truth is, Venusberg's fleshpots can grow monotonous to one of my wholesome (or should I say "limited") tastes. I haven't any more money for shopping, not if I am to have any to shop in Paris; I don't think I could ever get addicted to gambling (and don't want to; I'm

one of those who lose and thereby offset in part Clark's winning); and the incessant noise and lights are going to put wrinkles where I now have dimples. And I think Dexter is beginning to be just a bit bored with my naïve inability to understand what he is driving at.

If there is any one thing I have learned about males in my eight and a half years, it is that one should sign off before he gets bored. I look forward to just one last encounter with Dexter now: a tearful farewell just before I must enter the Tricovn's loading tube, with a kiss so grown-up, so utterly passionate and all-out giving, that he will believe the rest of his life that Things Could Have Been Different if Only He Had Played His Cards Right.

I've been outside the city just once, in a sealed tourist bus. Once is more than enough; this ball of smog and swamp should be given back to the natives, only they wouldn't take it. Once a fairy in flight was pointed out, so they said, but I didn't see anything. Just smog.

I'll settle now for just one fairy, in flight or even perched. Dexter says that he knows of a whole colony, a thousand or more, less than two hundred kilometers away, and wants to show it to me in his Rolls. But I'm not warm to that idea; he intends to drive it himself- and that dratted thing has automatic controls. If I can sneak Girdle, or even Clark, into the picnic-well, maybe.

But I have learned a lot on Venus and would not have missed it for anything. The Art of Tipping, especially, and now I feel like an Experienced Traveler. Tipping can be a nuisance but it is not quite the vice Marsmen think it is; it is a necessary lubricant for perfect service.

Let's admit it; service in Marsopolis varies from indifferent to terrible-and I simply had not realized it. A clerk waits on you when he feels like it and goes

on gossiping with another clerk, not even able to see you until he does feel like it.

Not like that in Venusberg! However, it is not just the money-and here follows the Great Secret of Happy Travel. I haven't soaked up much Portuguese and not everybody speaks Ortho. But it isn't necessary to be a linguist if you will learn just one word-in as many languages as possible. Just "thank you."

I caught onto this first with Maria and Maria-I say "gobble-gobble" to them a hundred times a day, only the word is actually "obrigado" which sounds like "gobble-gobble" if you say it quickly. A small tip is much more savoir-fairish-and gets better, more willing service-when accompanied by "thank you" than a big tip while saying nothing.

So I've learned to say "thank you" in as many languages as possible -and I always try to say it in the home language of the person I'm dealing with, if I can guess it, which I usually can. Doesn't matter much if you miss, though; porters and clerks and taxi drivers and such usually know that one word in several languages and can spot it even if you can't talk with them at all in any other way. I've written a lot of them down and memorized them:

Obrigado

Donkey shane

Mare-see

Key toss

M 'goy

Graht-see-eh

Arigato

Spawseebaw

Gathee-oss

Tock

Or "money tock" and Clark says this one means "money talks." But Clark is wrong; he ~has to tig too high because he won't bother to say "thank you. Oh, yes, Clark tips. It hurts him, but he soon discovered that he couldn't get a taxi and that even automatic vending machines were rude to him if he tried to buck the local system. But it infuriates him so much that he won't be pleasant about it and that costs him.

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.