We searched Clark’s room last on the theory that it was the least likely place. Or rather, we started to search it together and Uncle had to finish it. Pawing through Clark’s things got to be too much for me and Uncle sent me back into the salon to lie down.
I was all cried out by the time he gave up; I even had a suggestion to make. “Maybe if we sent for a Geiger counter?”
Uncle shook his head and sat down. “We aren’t looking for a bomb, honey.”
“We aren’t?”
“No. If we found it, it would simply confirm that Clark had told you the truth, and I’m already using that as least hypothesis. Because . . . well, because I know more about this than the short outline I gave to you . . . and I know just how deadly serious this is to some people, how far they might go. Politics is neither a game nor a bad joke the way some people think it is. War itself is merely an extension of politics . . . so I don’t find anything surprising about a bomb in politics; bombs have been used in politics hundreds and even thousands of times in the past. No, we aren’t looking for a bomb, we are looking for a man—a man you saw for a few seconds once. And probably not even for that man but for somebody that man might lead us back to. Probably somebody inside the President’s office, somebody he trusts.”
“Oh, gosh, I wish I had really looked at him!”
“Don’t fret about it, hon. You didn’t know and there was no reason to look. But you can bet that Clark knows what he looks like. If Clark—I mean, when Clark comes back, in time we will have him search the I.D. files at Marsopolis. And all the visa photographs for the past ten years, if necessary. The man will be found. And through him the person the President has been trusting who should not to be trusted.” Uncle Tom suddenly looked all Maori and very savage. “And when we do, I may take care of the matter personally. We’ll see.”
Then he smiled and added, “But right now Poddy is going to bed. You’re up way past your bedtime, even with all the dancing and late-sleeping you’ve been doing lately.”
“Uh . . . what time is it in Marsopolis?”
He looked at his other watch. “Twenty-seventeen. You weren’t thinking of phoning your parents? I hope not.”
“Oh, no! I won’t say a word to them unless—until Clark is back. And maybe not then. But if it’s only twenty-seventeen, it’s not late at all, real time, and I don’t want to go to bed. Not until you do.”
“I may not go to bed.”
“I don’t care. I want to sit with you.”
He blinked at me, then said very gently, “All right, Poddy. Nobody ever grows up without spending at least one night of years.”
We just sat then for quite a while, with nothing to say that had not already been said and would just hurt to say over again.
At last I said, “Unka Tom? Tell me the Poddy story—”
“At your age?”
“Please.” I crawled up on his knees. “I want to sit in your lap once more and hear it. I need to.”
“All right,” he said, and put his arm around me. “Once upon a time, long, long ago when the world was young, in a specially favored city there lived a little girl named Poddy. All day long she was busy like a ticking clock. Tick tick tick went her heels, tick tick tick went her knitting needles, and, most especially, tick tick tick went her busy little mind. Her hair was the color of butter blossoms in the spring when the ice leaves canals, her eyes were the changing blue of sunshine playing down through the spring floods, her nose had not yet made up its mind what it would be, and her mouth was shaped like a question mark. She greeted the world as an unopened present and there was no badness in her anywhere.
“One day Poddy—”
I stopped him. “But I’m not young any longer . . . and I don’t think the world was ever young!”
“Here’s my handky,” he said. “Blow your nose. I never did tell you the end of it, Poddy; you always fell asleep. It ends with a miracle.”
“A truly miracle?”
“Yes. This is the end. Poddy grew up and had another Poddy. And then the world was young again.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all there ever is. But it’s enough.”
TWELVE
I guess Uncle Tom put me to bed, for I woke up with just my shoes off and very rumpled. He was gone, but he had left a note saying that I could reach him, if I needed to, on Mr. Chairman’s private code. I didn’t have any excuse to bother him and didn’t want to face anyone, so I chased Maria and Maria out and ate breakfast in bed. Ate quite a lot, too, I must admit—the body goes on ticking anyhow.
Then I dug out my journal for the first time since landing. I don’t mean I haven’t been keeping it; I mean I’ve been talking it instead of writing it. The library in our suite has a recorder built into its desk and I discovered how easy it was to keep a diary that way. Well, I had really found out before that, because Mr. Clancy let me use the recorder they use to keep the log on.
The only shortcoming of the recorder in the library was that Clark might drop in most any time. But the first day I went shopping I found the most darling little minirecorder at Venus Macy—only ten-fifty and it just fits in the palm of your hand and you can talk into it without even being noticed if you want to and I just couldn’t resist it. I’ve been carrying it in my purse ever since.
But now I wanted to look way back in my journal, the early written part, and see if I had said anything that might remind me of what That Man had looked like or anything about him.
I hadn’t. No clues. But I FOUND A NOTE FROM CLARK.
It read:POD,
If you find this at all, it’s time you read it. Because I’m using 24-hr. ink and I expect to lift this out of here and you’ll never see it.
Girdie is in trouble and I’m going to rescue her. I haven’t told anybody because this is one job that is all mine and I don’t want you or anybody horning in on it.
However, a smart gambler hedges his bets, if he can. If I’m gone long enough for you to read this, it’s time to get hold of Uncle Tom and have him get hold of Chairman Cunha. All I can tell you is that there is a newsstand right at South Gate. You buy a copy of the Daily Merchandiser and ask if they carry Everlites. Then say, “Better give me two—it’s quite dark where I’m going.”
But don’t you do this, I don’t want it muffed up.
If this turns out dry, you can have my rock collection.
Count your change.
Better use your fingers.
CLARK
I got all blurry. That last line—I know a holographic last will and testament when I see one, even though I had never seen one before. Then I straightened up and counted ten seconds backwards including the rude word at the end that discharges nervous tension, for I knew this was no time to be blurry and weak; there was work to be done.
So I called Uncle Tom right away, as I agreed perfectly with Clark on one point: I wasn’t going to try to emulate Space Ranger Stalwart, Man of Steel, the way Clark evidently had; I was going to get all the help I could get! With both Clark and Girdie in some sort of pinch I would have welcomed two regiments of Patrol Marines and the entire Martian Legion.
So I called Mr. Chairman’s private code—and it didn’t answer; it simply referred me to another code. This one answered all right . . . but with a recording. Uncle Tom. And this time all he said was to repeat something he had said in the note, that he expected to be busy all day and that I was not to leave the suite under any circumstances whatever until he got back—only this time he added that I was not to let anyone into the suite, either, not even a repairman, not even a servant except those who were already there, like Maria and Maria.
When the recording started to play back for the third time, I switched off. Then I called Mr. Chairman the public way, through the Corporation offices. A dry deal that was! By pointing out that I was Miss Fries, niece of Senator Fries, Mars Republic, I did get as far as his secretary, or maybe his secretary’s secretary.
“Mr. Cunha cannot be reached. I am
veree sorree, Miss Fries.”
So I demanded that she locate Uncle Tom. “I do not have that information. I am veree sorree, Miss Fries.”
Then I demanded to be patched in to Dexter. “Mr. Dexter is on an inspection trip for Mr. Cunha. I am veree sorree.”
She either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me when Dexter was expected back—and wouldn’t, or couldn’t, find some way for me to call him. Which I just plain didn’t believe, because if I owned a planetwide corporation there would be some way to phone every mine, every ranch, every factory, every air boat the company owned. All the time. And I don’t even suspect that Mr. Chairman is less smart about how to run such a lash-up than I am.
I told her so, using the colorful rhetoric of sand rats and canal men. I mean I really got mad and used idioms I hadn’t known I even remembered. I guess Uncle is right; scratch my Nordic skin and a savage is just underneath. I wanted to pick my teeth at her, only she wouldn’t have understood it.
But would you believe it? I might as well have been cussing out a sand gator; it had no effect on her at all. She just repeated, “I’m-veree-sorree-Miss-Fries,” and I growled and switched off.
Do you suppose Mr. Chairman uses an androidal Tik-Tok as his phone monitor? I wouldn’t put it past him—and any live woman should have shown some reaction at some of the emplausibilities I showered on her, even if she didn’t understand most of the words (Well, I don’t understand some of them myself. But they are not compliments.)
I thought about phoning Daddy; I knew he would accept the charges, even if he had to mortgage his salary. But Mars was eleven minutes away; it said so, right on a dial of the phone. And the relays via Hermes Station and Luna City were even worse. With twenty-two minutes between each remark it would take me most of the day just to tell him what was wrong, even though they don’t charge you for the waiting time.
But I still might have called except—well, what could Daddy do, three hundred million kilometers away? All it would do would be to turn his last six hairs white.
It wasn’t until then that I steadied down enough to realize that there had been something else amiss about that note written into my journal—besides Clark’s childish swashbuckling. Girdie—
It was true that I had not seen Girdie for a couple of days; she was on a shift that caused her to zig while I zagged, newly hired dealers don’t get the best shifts. But I had indeed talked to her at a time when Clark was probably already gone even though at the time I had simply assumed that he had gotten up early for some inscrutable reason of his own, rather than not coming home at all that night.
But Uncle Tom had talked to her just before we had gone to the Cunha cottage the day before, asked her specifically if she had seen Clark—and she hadn’t. Not as recently as we had.
I didn’t have any trouble reaching Dom Pedro—not the Dom Pedro I met the night I met Dexter but the Dom Pedro of that shift. However, by now all the Dom Pedros know who Poddy Fries is; she’s the girl that is seen with Mr. Dexter. He told me at once that Girdie had gone off shift half an hour earlier and I should try her hilton. Unless—he stopped and made some inquiries; somebody seemed to think that Girdie had gone shopping.
As may be. I already knew that she was not at the little hilton she had moved to from the stylish (and expensive) Tannhäuser; a message I had already recorded there was guaranteed to fetch a call back in seconds, if and when.
That ended it. There was no one left for me to turn to, nothing at all left for me to do, save wait in the suite until Uncle returned, as he had ordered me to do.
So I grabbed my purse and a coat and left.
And got all of three meters outside the door of the suite. A tall, wide, muscular character got in my way. When I tried to duck around him, he said, “Now, now, Miss Fries. Your uncle left orders.”
I scurried the other way and found that he was awfully quick on his feet, for such a big man. So there I was, arrested! Shoved back into our own suite and held in durance vile. You know, I don’t think Uncle entirely trusts me.
I went back to my room and closed the door and thought about it. The room was still not made up and still cluttered with dirty dishes because, despite the language barrier, I have made clear to Maria and Maria that Miss Fries becomes quite vexed if anybody disturbs my room until I signal that I no longer want privacy by leaving the door open.
The clumsy, two-decker, roll-around table that had fetched my breakfast was still by my bed, looking like a plundered city.
I took everything off the lower shelf, stowed it here and there in my bath, covered the stuff on top of the table with the extra cloth used to shield the tender eyes of cash customers from the sight of dirty dishes.
Then I grabbed the house phone and told them I wanted my breakfast dishes cleared away immediately.
I’m not very big. I mean you can fit forty-nine mass kilos only one hundred fifty-seven centimeters long into a fairly small space if you scrunch a little. That lower shelf was hard but not too cramped. It had some ketchup on it I hadn’t noticed.
Uncle’s orders (or perhaps Mr. Cunha’s) were being followed meticulously, however. Ordinarily a pantry boy comes to remove the food wagon; this time the two Marias took it out the service entrance and as far as the service lift—and in the course of it I learned something interesting but not really surprising. Maria said something in Portuguese; the other Maria answered her in Ortho as glib as mine: “She’s probably soaking in the tub, the lazy brat.”
I made a note not to remember her on birthdays and at Christmas.
Somebody wheeled me off the lift many levels down and shoved me into a corner. I waited a few moments, then crawled out. A man in a well-spotted apron was looking astonished. I said, “Obrigado!” handed him a deuce note and walked out the service entrance with my nose in the air. Two minutes later I was in a taxi.
I’ve been catching up on this account while the taxi scoots to South Gate in order not to chew my nails back to the elbows. I must admit that I feel good even though nervous. Action is better than waiting. No amount of bad can stonker me, but not knowing drives me nuts.
The spool is almost finished, so I think I’ll change spools and mail this one back to Uncle at South Gate. I should have left a note, I know—but this is better than a note. I hope.
THIRTEEN
Well, I can’t complain about not having seen fairies. They are every bit as cute as they are supposed to be—but I don’t care greatly if I never see another one.
Throwing myself bravely into the fray against fearful odds, by sheer audacity I overcame—
It wasn’t that way at all, I fubbed. Completely. So here I am, some nowhere place out in the bush, in a room with no windows, and only one door. That door isn’t much use to me as there is a fairy perched over it. She’s a cute little thing and the green part of her fur looks exactly like a ballet tutu. She doesn’t look quite like a miniature human with wings—but they do say that the longer you stay here the more human they look. Her eyes slant up, like a cat’s, and she has a very pretty built-in smile.
I call her “Titania” because I can’t pronounce her real name. She speaks a few words of Ortho, not much because those little skulls are only about twice the brain capacity of a cat’s skull—actually, she’s an idiot studying to be a moron and not studying very hard.
Most of the time she just stays perched and nurses her baby—the size of a kitten and twice as cute. I call it “Ariel” although I’m not sure of its sex. I’m not dead sure of Titania’s sex; they say that both males and females do this nursing thing, which is not quite nursing but serves the same purpose; they are not mammalians. Ariel hasn’t learned to fly yet, but Titania is teaching it—tosses it into the air and it sort of flops and glides to the floor and then stays there, mewing piteously until she comes to get it and flies back to her perch.
I’m spending most of my time a) thinking, b) bringing this journal up to date, c) trying to persuade Titania to let me hold Ariel (making some progress; she now lets
me pick it up and hand it to her—the baby isn’t a bit afraid of me), and d) thinking, which seems to be a futile occupation.
Because I can go anywhere in the room and do anything as long as I stay a couple of meters away from that door. Guess why? Give up? Because fairies have very sharp teeth and claws; they’re carnivorous. I have a nasty bite and two deep scratches on my left arm to prove it—red and tender and don’t seem to want to heal. If I get close to that door, she dives on me.
Completely friendly otherwise—Nor do I have anything physically to complain about. Often enough a native comes in with a tray of really quite good food. But I never watch him come in and I never watch him take it away—because Venerians look entirely too human to start with and the more you look at them the worse it is for your stomach. No doubt you have seen pictures but pictures don’t give you the smell and that drooling loose mouth, nor the impression that this thing has been dead a long time and is now animated by obscene arts.
I call him “Pinhead” and to him that is a compliment. No doubt as to its being a “him” either. It’s enough to make a girl enter a nunnery.
I eat the food because I feel sure Pinhead didn’t cook it. I think I know who does. She would be a good cook.
Let me back up a little. I told the news vendor: “Better give me two—it’s quite dark where I’m going.” He hesitated and looked at me and I repeated it.
So pretty soon I am in another air car and headed out over the bush. Ever make a wide, sweeping turn in smog? That did it. I haven’t the slightest idea where I am, save that it is somewhere within two hours’ flight of Venusberg and that there is a small colony of fairies nearby. I saw them flying shortly before we landed and was so terribly interested that I didn’t really get a good look at the spot before the car stopped and the door opened. Not that it would have done any good—
I got out and the car lifted at once, mussing me up with its fans . . . and here was an open door to a house and a familiar voice was saying, “Poddy! Come in, dear, come in!”