“Maureen, you frighten me.”
“I frighten myself, George. It’s rarely comfortable to know what is going to happen.” I decided to take the plunge. “The rolling roads will continue to be built at a frantic pace, as fast as sunpower screens can be manufactured to drive them—down the East Coast, along Route Sixty-six, on El Camino Real from San Diego to Sacramento and beyond—and a good thing, too, as the sunpower screens on the roofs of the road cities will take up the slack and fend off a depression when the Paradise power plant is shut down and placed in orbit.”
George kept quiet so long I thought he had fallen asleep. At last he said, “Did I hear you correctly? The big atomic power pile in Paradise, Arizona, will be placed in orbit? How? And why?”
“By means of spaceships based on today’s glide rockets. But operating with an escape fuel developed at Paradise. But, George, George, it must not happen! The Paradise plant must be shut down, yes; it is terribly dangerous, it is built wrong—like a steam engine without a relief valve.” (In my head I could hear Sergeant Theodore’s dear voice saying it: “They were too eager to build…and it was built wrong—like a steam engine without a relief valve.”) “It must be shut down but it must not be placed in orbit. Safe ways will be found to build atomic power plants; we don’t need the Paradise plant. In the meantime the sunpower screens can fill the gap.”
“If it’s dangerous—and I know some people have worried about it—if it is placed in orbit, it won’t be dangerous.”
“Yes, George, that’s why they will put it in orbit. Once in orbit, it would not be dangerous to the town of Paradise, or the state of Arizona…but what about the people in orbit with it? They will be killed.”
Another long wait—“It seems to me that it might be possible to design a plant to operate by remote control, like a freighter rocket. I must ask Ferguson.”
“I hope you are right. Because you will see, when you return to Kansas City and open my envelope number six and also number seven, that I prophesy that the Paradise power plant will be placed in orbit, and that it will blow up and kill everybody on board, and destroy the rocketship that services it. George, it must not be allowed to happen. You and Mr. Harriman must stop it. I promise you, dear, that if this can be stopped—if my prophecy can be proved wrong—I will break my crystal ball and never prophesy again.”
“I can’t make any promises, Maureen. Sure, both Delos and I are directors of the Power Syndicate…but we hold a minor position both in stock and on the board. The Power Syndicate represents practically all the venture capital in the United States; the Sherman Anti-Trust Law was suspended to permit it to be formed in order to build the Paradise plant. Mmm…a man named Daniel Dixon controls a working majority, usually. A strong man. I don’t like him much.”
“I’ve heard of him, haven’t met him. George, can he be seduced?”
“Maureen!”
“George, if I can keep fifty-odd innocent people from being killed in an industrial accident, I’ll do considerably more than offer this old body as a bribe. Is he susceptible to women? If I am not the woman he is susceptible to, perhaps I can find her.”
Dixon didn’t cotton to me at all (nor I to him, but that was unimportant) and he did not seem to have any cracks in his armor. After the Power Syndicate voted to shut down the Paradise plant “in the public interest” I was successful only in getting George and Mr. Harriman to vote against reactivating that giant bomb in orbit—theirs were the only dissenting votes—The death scenario rolled on and I could not stop it: Power satellite and spaceship Charon blew up together, all hands killed—and I stared at the ceiling for nights on end, reflecting on the bad side of knowing too much about the future.
But I did not stop working. Back in 1952, shortly after I had given George my earliest predictions, I had gone to Canada to see Justin: 1) to set up a front to handle business for my “Prudence Penny” column, and 2) to offer Justin the same detailed predictions I was giving to George.
Justin had not been pleased with me. “Maureen, do I understand that you have been holding all these years additional information you got from Sergeant Bronson—or Captain Long, whatever—the Howard from the future—and did not turn it over to the Foundation?”
“Yes.”
Justin had shown an expression of controlled exasperation. “I must confess to surprise. Well, better late than never. Do you have it in writing, or will you dictate it?”
“I’m not turning it over to you, Justin. I will continue to pass on to you, from time to time, data that I have conserved, item by item as you need to know it.”
“Maureen, I really must insist. This is Foundation business. You got these data from a future chairman of the Foundation—so he claimed and so I believe—so I am their proper custodian. I am speaking not as your old friend Justin, but as Justin Weatheral in my official capacity as chief executive officer of the Foundation and conserver of its assets for the benefit of all of us.”
“No, Justin.”
“I must insist.”
“Insist away, old dear—it’s good exercise.”
“That’s hardly the right attitude, Maureen. You don’t own that data. It belongs to all of us. You owe it to the Foundation.”
“Justin, don’t be so tediously male! Data from Sergeant Theodore saved the Foundation’s bacon on Black Tuesday, in 1929. Stipulated?”
“Stipulated. That’s why—”
“Let me have my say. And that same data also saved your arse and made you rich—and made the Foundation rich. Why? How? Who? Old busy bottom Maureen, that’s who! Because I’m an amoral wench who fell in love with this enlisted man and kicked his feet out from under him—and got him to talking. That had nothing to do with the Foundation, just me and my loose ways. If I hadn’t cut you in on it, you would never have met Theodore. Admit it! True? False? Answer me.”
“Well, when you put it that way—”
“I do put it that way and let’s have no more nonsense about what I owe the Foundation. Not until you’ve counted up what the Foundation owes me. I still promise to pass on data as needed. Right now, the Foundation should get heavily into Douglas-Martin Sunpower Screens, and if you don’t know about them, see your files of the Economist or the Wall Street Journal or the Toronto Star. After that, the hottest new investment as soon as it opens up will be rolling roads and real estate near them.”
“Rolling roads?”
“Damn it, Justin, I know Theodore mentioned them in that rump meeting of the board on Saturday the twenty-ninth of June, 1918, as I took notes and typed them out and gave you a copy, as well as the original to Judge Sperling. Look it up.” So clear back in 1952 I showed Justin where the principal roadtowns would be, as told to me by Theodore. “Watch for them, get in early. Enormous profits to the early birds. But get rid of all railroad stock.”
At that time I decided not to bother Justin with my “Prudence Penny” venture—not when he was feeling bruised on his maleness bump. Instead, I had taken it up with Eleanor. Entrusting a secret to Eleanor was safer than telling it to Jesus.
“Prudence Penny, The Housewife Investor” started out as a weekly column in country newspapers of the sort we had had in Thebes, the Lyle County Leader. I always offered the first six weeks free. If a trial period stirred any interest, a publisher could continue it for a very small fee—those small-town weeklies can’t pay more than peanuts; there was no sense in trying to make money on it at first.
In fact my purpose was not to make money. Or only indirectly.
I set the format in 1953 with the first column and never varied it:
Prudence Penny
THE HOUSEWIFE INVESTOR
TODAY’S DEFINITION: (Each column I gave at least one definition. Money people have their own language. If you don’t know their special words, you can’t play in their poker game. Some of the words I defined for my readers were: Common stock, preferred stock, bonds, municipal bonds, debentures, margin, selling short, puts and calls, living trust, joint tenancy, tenants in com
mon, float, load, points, deficiency judgment, call money, prime rate, gold standard, fiat money, easement, fee simple, eminent domain, public domain, copyright, patent, etc., etc.
(Trivial? To you, perhaps. If so, you did not need “Prudence Penny.” But to most people these elementary terms might as well be ancient Greek. So I offered one definition each column, in one-syllable Anglo-Saxon words that could be misunderstood only by a professor of English.)
Next I offered a discussion of something in the news of the day that might affect investing. Since everything, from weather to elections to killer bees, affects investing, this was easy. If I could include a little juicy gossip, I did. But not anything hurtful, or cruel, and I was most careful not to offer anything actionable.
My next item each week was TODAY’S RECOMMENDED INVESTMENT. This was a sure thing, based directly or indirectly on Theodore’s predictions. The same recommendation might be repeated many times, alternated with others from the same source.
I always closed with Prudence Penny’s Portfolio:
Ladies, we started this portfolio with one thousand dollars ($1,000.00) in January 1953. If you invested the same amount and at the same time, investing and changing investments just as we did, your portfolio is now worth $4,823.17.
If you invested $10,000.00, your portfolio is now worth $48,231.70.
If you invested $100,000, today your portfolio is worth $482,317.00.
But it is never too late to start prudent investing with Penny. You can start today with $4,823.17 (or any multiple or fraction), which you then place as follows:
(List of investments that add up to $4,823.17.)
If you want to see for yourself the details of how a thousand dollars grows to (current figure) in only (fill in) years and (blank) months, send ($1.00, $2.50, $4.00—the price went steadily up) to Pinch-Penny Publications, Suite 8600, Harriman Tower, New York, N.Y. HKL030 (that being a drop box that caused mail to be routed, eventually, to Eleanor’s stooge in Toronto) or buy it at your local book store: The Housewife’s Guide to Thrifty Investing by Prudence Penny.
The hugger-mugger about the address was intended to keep the Securities Exchange Commission from learning that “Prudence Penny” was a director of Harriman Industries. The SEC takes a jaundiced view of “inside information.” So far as I could tell, it would matter not at all to them that my advice was truly beneficial to anyone who followed it. In fact, that might get me beheaded even more quickly.
The column spread from country weeklies to city dailies and did make money after the first year, and quite a lot of money in the thirteen years that I wrote it. Women read it and followed it—so my mail indicated—but I think even more men read it, not to follow my advice, but to try to figure out how this female bear could waltz at all.
I knew that I had succeeded when one day George Strong quoted “Prudence Penny” to me.
My ultimate purpose was not to make money and not to impress anyone but to establish a reputation that let me write a special column in April 1964, one headed “THE MOON BELONGS TO EVERYONE—but the first Moonship will belong to Harriman Industries.”
I advised them to hang on to their Prudence Penny portfolio…but to take every other dime they could scrape up and bet it on the success of D. D. Harriman’s great new venture, placing a man on the Moon.
From then on “Prudence Penny” always had something to say about space travel and Harriman Industries in every column. I freely admitted that space was a long-term investment (and I continued to recommend other investments, all backed by Theodore’s predictions) but I kept on pounding away at the notion that untold riches awaited those farsighted investors who got in early in space activities and hung on. Don’t buy on margin, don’t indulge in profit-taking—buy Harriman stock outright, put it away in your safety deposit box and forget it—your grandchildren will love you.
In the spring of 1965 I moved my household to the Broadmoor Hotel south of Colorado Springs because Mr. Harriman was building his Moonship on Peterson Field. In 1952 I had tried half-heartedly to drop my lease in Kansas City after Brian had taken Priscilla and Donald back to Dallas (another story and not a good one). But George had outflanked me. Title to that house was in George, not Harriman and Strong, not Harriman Industries. When I told him that I no longer needed a four-bedroom house (counting the maid’s room), he asked me to keep it, rent free.
I pointed out that, if I was to become his paid mistress, it wasn’t enough, but if I was to continue the pretense of being a respectable woman, it was too much. He said, All right, what was the going rate for mistresses?—he would double it.
So I kissed him and took him to bed and we compromised. The house was his and he would put his driver and wife in the house, and I could stay in it any time I wished…and the resident couple would take care of Princess Polly.
George had spotted my weak point. I had once subjected this little cat to the trauma of losing her Only Home; I grabbed this means of avoiding doing it to her again.
But I did take an apartment at the Plaza, moved my most necessary books there, got my mail there, and occasionally took Polly there—subjecting her to the indignity of a litter box, true, but she did not fuss. (The new clay pellets were a vast improvement over sand or soil.) Moving back and forth this short distance got her used to a carrying cage and to being away from home now and then. Eventually she got to be a true traveling cat, dignified and at home in the best hotels, a sophisticated guest who would never think of scratching the furniture. This made it much easier for Elijah and Charlene to take vacations, or go elsewhere if George needed them elsewhere.
So in the spring of 1965 a few weeks before the historic first flight to the Moon, Princess Polly and I moved into the Broadmoor. I arrived with Polly in her carrying case, baggage to follow from the terminal of the Harriman Prairie Highway fifty miles north of there—I hated those rolling roads from the first time I rode one; they gave me headaches. But I had been told that the noise problem had been overcome on the Prairie Highway. Never trust a flack!
The desk clerk at the Broadmoor told me, “Madam, we have an excellent kennel back of the tennis club. I’ll have a bellman take your cat there.”
“Just a moment.” I got out my Harriman Industries card—mine had a gold band.
The clerk took one look at it, got the assistant manager on duty. He hurried over, gardenia and striped pants and professional smile. “Mrs. Johnson! So happy to welcome you! Do you prefer a suite? Or a housekeeping apartment?”
Princess Polly did not have to go to a kennel. She dined on chopped liver, courtesy of the management, and had her own cat bed and litter box, both guaranteed sterilized—so said the paper band around each of them, like the one around the toilet seat in my bath.
No bidet—aside from that the Broadmoor was a first-class hotel.
After a bath and a change—my luggage arrived while I was in the bath (of course)—I left Princess Polly to watch television (which she liked, especially the commercials) and went to the bar, to have a solitary drink and see what developed.
And found my son Woodrow.
He spotted me as I walked in. “Hi, Mom!”
“Woodrow!” I was delighted! I kissed him and said, “Good to see you, son! What are you doing here? The last I heard you were at Wright-Patterson.”
“Oh, I quit that; they didn’t appreciate genius. Besides, they expected me to get up too early. I’m with Harriman Industries now, trying to keep ’em straight. It ain’t easy.”
(Should I tell Woodrow that I was now a director of Harriman Industries? I had avoided telling anyone who did not need to know—so wait and see.) “I’m glad you’re keeping them straight. This Moonship of theirs—Do you have something to do with it?”
“Sit down first. What’ll you drink?”
“Whatever you’re having, Woodrow.”
“Well, now, I’m having Manitou Water, with a twist.”
“It looks like vodka tonic. Is that what it is?”
“Not exact
ly. Manitou Water is a local mineral water. Something like skunk, but not as tasty.”
“Hmm—Make mine a vodka tonic with lime. Is Heather here?”
“She doesn’t like the altitude. When we left Wright-Patterson, she took the kids back to Florida. Don’t raise your eyebrows at me; we get along just fine. She lets me know when it’s time for her to get pregnant again. About every three years, that is. So I go home, stay a month or two, get reacquainted with the kids. Then I go back to work. No huhu, no sweat, no family quarrels.”
“Sounds like a fine arrangement if it suits you two.”
“It does.” He paused to order my drink. I had never learned to drink but I had learned how to order a tall drink and make it last all evening, while ice cubes diluted it. I looked Woodrow over. His skin seemed tight on his face and his hands quite bony.
The waitress left; he turned back. “Now, Mom, tell me what you’re doing here.”
“I’ve always been a space travel buff—remember how we read Roy Rockwood’s Great Marvel series together? Lost on the Moon, Through Space to Mars—”
“Sure do! I learned to read because I thought you were holding out on me.”
“Not in those. A little in the Barsoom books, perhaps.”
“I’ve always wanted a beautiful Martian princess…but not the way you had to get one on Barsoom. Remember how they were always spilling each other’s blood? Not for me! I’m the peaceful type, Mom. You know me.”
(I wonder if any mother ever knows her children. But I do feel close to you, dear. I hope you and Heather really are all right.) “So when I heard about the Moonship, I made plans to come here. I want to see it lift off…since I can’t go in it. What do you think of it, Woodrow? Will it do the job?”
“Let’s find out.” Woodrow looked around, then called out to someone sitting at the bar. “Hey, Les! Bring your redeye over here and come set awhile.”
The man addressed came over. He was a small man, with the big hands of a jockey. My son said, “May I present Captain Leslie LeCroix, skipper of the Pioneer? Les, this is my daughter Maureen.”