Podkayne of Mars (16 page)

“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 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 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.

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 you 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 going 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?”

“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?
”