"So you offer me a chance you know I'm not going to take?"
"Yes," said Ritchie blandly. "You see, I think I'm making you a very good
offer -- or I would, if you'd let me. If you don't like it, and turn it
down, that's not my fault, is it?"
I couldn't help laughing at the insolence of this cheerful rogue.
"Call it quits, Ritchie," I said. "I like Aileen, despite the fact that
she's your daughter. I'll save her life any time. How did she come to be
your daughter, anyway?"
"She takes after her mother," Ritchie admitted.
You could say things like that to Ritchie. It wasn't possible to insult
him. Not only did he never seem to bear malice, he never did bear malice.
And yet nobody liked him. People are hard to please, aren't they?
Sometimes he reminded me of a bland, attentive maître d'hôtel who had far
more money than the people he served so gracefully and assiduously. His
manner must have helped him a lot. He would always, I imagined, give the
impression of wanting to lend you money, wanting to help you. And only
afterward would you realize how much helping you had helped him.
Sometimes, too, he reminded me of the beautiful, experienced women who
have really learned the art of being escorted. Women like that let you
take them out, pay enormous sums for their entertainment, wine, and dinner,
take them home, kiss their hands, and leave you with the impression that
it's been a wonderful privilege.
I kept finding and hearing of more and more people who in some way,
to some limited extent, were in Ritchie's hands. Money was becoming,
once more, a necessity, and Ritchie had money.
There were the work schemes, for example. Ritchie, still unable to work
himself because of his broken leg, bought and sold labor, and nobody
could do a thing about it. It was known that if you wanted a day off
Ritchie could arrange it. Four or five other people would work for you,
by Ritchie's arrangement, and you would sign what amounted to labies
for your day's work, plus something. Even if the something was very
small, there was no telling how little replacing you had actually cost
Ritchie. The men who filled in for you might be heavy debtors to Ritchie,
doing the job to escape a little interest.
Of course it was crazy for anyone to agree to such a thing. Most of the
people who did so knew that. This was how it came about that anyone
ever did.
You get into a fitful sleep at last about two hours before dawn. You are
wakened with everyone else, lightheaded and gummy-eyed, stiff and sore,
and you know you have a hard, heavy day's work in front of you. You think
of going to the doctor, but unless you are genuinely ill that won't do
you any good. You know there is a way you can have a day of glorious
freedom, freedom to lie in bed if you like, go around and watch everyone
else work if you like, go out and walk in the desert if you like. You
shake your head and go out and work.
The next day the same temptation is before you. And every day, until at last
you allow yourself just one day off. Ritchie arranges it, and it is glorious.
All day you have no regrets. You are quite decided that as soon as possible
you will redeem your labies . . . somehow.
That's how it happened. Ritchie was given a great chance by the inflexibility
of our rules. They had to be inflexible. We couldn't allow people to do what
they liked, when they liked, because there was far too much to be done.
It had to be an all-out, enforced effort by everybody. Particularly after
the storm had shown how acute and how immediate the problem of food and
shelter was.
When the new council of PLs was elected, it met at once to decide a few
more things which now had to be decided.
We passed a law that no one should be able to control more than a certain
amount of laby cash at any one time. It wasn't a good law, and right away
we had to make an exception in favor of the party leaders, the council
members. Promptly Alec Ritchie was returned by his section as a PL.
The truth of the matter was that if there was to be law at all there was
no way of stopping the rise to power of people like Ritchie. The law is
always blind; it protects the honest and the dishonest, the rich and poor,
the good and evil, the intelligent and the stupid. And since it's better
understood and better applied by the intelligent, the evil, the rich
and dishonest people, it always protects them far more than anyone else.
Morgan, with Ritchie's approval, wanted Aileen. But Aileen very clearly
didn't want Morgan. She kept him at arm's length, and Ritchie didn't
interfere.
The Ritchie situation had been inevitable. For the most part the people
who had been brought to Mars were as intelligent and co-operative and
good-natured as we could have hoped. The choice, however, couldn't be
perfect; people like Ritchie and Morgan slipped through.
We accomplished a tremendous amount in a few months following the storm.
When men and women realize that what they're doing is for their own
personal safety, the job is liable to be done quickly and well.
Leslie's arm was completely healed. Like so many women in the settlement,
she was doing her last spell of hard work before easing off in the late
stages of pregnancy. Leslie was one of those rare women who could continue
to be attractive right through pregnancy. Wanting the baby was part of it.
Not being unduly concerned about her appearance helped too. But most of the
reason was probably that Leslie was attractive independent of being
beautiful. She would have been attractive if she had been fat or had
gap teeth.
Twenty thousand is a pretty big labor force, particularly when things are
so easy to carry that cranes and trucks are virtually unnecessary. When
a force like that is really working together it can accomplish wonders.
We dug out our cliff and our caves and moved in. At first there were
twenty-five so-called flats in a row and eight levels. Then we dug out a
similar block at right angles. For the first time since we left Earth a
few lucky couples had something resembling a bedroom to themselves. And
of course every time someone moved into a flat conditions at the research
station became slightly better.
People are delighted at even a small improvement in their living conditions
if there has been no improvement at all for a long time. If they had been
sleeping ten in a room, they found it sheer luxury when two went away
and there were only eight left.
We seemed to have turned the corner merely because every month things were
better. But there was no serious slacking off. It might be very nice to
be sharing a room at the research station with only seven other people,
but it would naturally be better still if there were only six in the room.
Leslie and I had a room to ourselves. It wasn't finished; in fact,
by some standards it would have been said to be barely started. It
was a little bubble drilled out of the rock. It would eventually be
the kitchen of the three-room flat we were at present sharing with two
other couples. But we had no complaints; not after months of sleeping
in a tiny room at the research station with four other couples.
The four hundred flats begun so far thus took about twenty-five hundred
people. The one big building completed on the surface, already known as
the barracks, accommodated seven hundred. A warren of purely temporary
caves, corridors, galleries, and cubicles blasted and hewn in one of
the cliff faces, which would eventually be cleared away, gave shelter to
twelve hundred single men and was thus called bachelors' hall. A similar
temporary warren on the fourth side of the pit accommodated eight hundred
single women, and was called old maids' hostel, though not generally by
the inmates themselves, who had other ideas. The lifeships behind the
research station still housed about two thousand, and the other spaceships
a further thousand. All that came to eighty-two hundred, leaving not much
over ten thousand to be housed at the research station. And since it had
been built for seven thousand people, we weren't too badly off all around.
A day came when we had another storm, not quite so fierce as the great
storm, but out of the same stable, and no one was killed. About fifty
people were injured. That was all the storm could do. It didn't put work
back at all.
There was general rejoicing. In a few months more we could be ready for
another great storm. We should be able to snap our fingers at it.
Suddenly most of the women were having babies. They all dated from about
the same time -- the moment, on the life- ships, when it must have been
clear to the lieutenants in charge how little chance there was of landing
safely on Mars. It wasn't clear whether these children had been conceived
in wild, unreasonable hope or in complete despair.
Aileen Ritchie came to see us one evening after work.
"Hello," said Leslie, rather surprised. "You want to see Bill about
something?"
"No," said Aileen. "I trained as a nurse once. I wondered if you could
use some help?"
"Thanks," said Leslie warmly. "Caroline's supposed to be looking after
Betty and me, but it won't be long before she has her baby too. We'll
be glad of your help."
All sorts of arrangements had been made to deal with the situation.
However, no matter how efficient the arrangements were, there were too
many women having babies at once for the comparatively few doctors,
nurses, and midwives to deal with them all. The strong, healthy girls
like Leslie would have to have their babies with such half-qualifled
assistance as they could get. Betty was another matter. She was already
at the hospital under the doctors' eyes. Betty's labor wasn't going to
be easy at best. She was too thin and frail and narrow-hipped.
I had had no particular worries about Leslie, largely because she obviously
wasn't worried herself. I was glad to see Aileen coming to help, all
the same.
We talked for a long time. Aileen and Leslie had long ago formed one of
those casual feminine acquaintanceships which always puzzle men. They
didn't seek each other out, and Leslie never mentioned Aileen, yet when
they happened to be together there was no restraint between them and
any male in their company was apt to feel neglected. They were alike,
they understood one another, they didn't have to explain things, and they
were friendly without being wildly enthusiastic about each other. Aileen
and Leslie acted rather like some sisters-in-law I had known who got on
well together but didn't see each other much.
They certainly had one of those mysterious feminine alliances which exclude
all males and quite a few females. Half the time when they were talking
I didn't know what was going on. It's good for a man to see his wife as
a partner in such an alliance now and then -- keeps him from coming to
the dangerous conclusion that he knows all there is to be known about her.
Another thing is that men together and women together have different
standards of what they tell each other and what they don't. There are
things men don't tell men and things women don't tell women, but they
don't coincide. I was startled at some of the things Aileen and Leslie
casually told each other, and puzzled when, obviously by mutual agreement,
they avoided things that men would have made no bones about discussing.
I left them after a bit and looked in on Sammy at bachelors' hall. I told
him about Aileen, of course. I always tried to mention Aileen in a favorable
light to Sammy, which was easy enough because I had never heard or seen
anything against her except that Alec Ritchie was her father. I had no
real intention of playing matchmaker, but I could see no reason why Sammy
and Aileen shouldn't get together.
Sammy had been crossed in love, and took it hard. He had never said a word
about the incident or the girl -- all I knew about it was what I'd heard
from old Harry Phillips. Since then he'd behaved in a perfectly normal,
friendly way with Pat Darrell, Leslie, Betty, and every other girl with
whom he'd come in contact. But he seemed to have formed no attachments
whatever.
He was pleased with the way things were going, like most of us. "Just two
more months without anything serious going wrong," he said jubilantly,
"and our troubles will be over."
"Why this high optimism?" I asked. "Can't you think of anything that might
go wrong, Sammy?"
"I can think of a dozen things, but I don't think any of them are likely."
So as I left Sammy, thinking Leslie and Aileen had had long enough for
their heart-to-heart chat, I was reflecting that things must be even
better than I had thought if Sammy was so confident.
However, Leslie was alone and frowning thoughtfully when I reached our flat.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Aileen isn't happy," she told me bluntly.
"Why not?"
"She's beginning to hate her father. And she's afraid of Morgan."
"Aileen? I think she's making a mistake, both times."
"How do you figure that?"