The Past Through Tomorrow (61 page)

When she received it, she started a small tornado. Jones had been released, the liens against his contract paid, and ample credit posted to his name on Venus, in less than twenty-four hours. “So that was that,” concluded Jones, “except that I’ve got to explain to big sister when I get home just how I got into this mess. She’ll burn my ears.”

Jones had chartered a rocket for North Pole and had gotten on Wingate’s trail at once. “If you had held on one more day, I would have picked you up. We retrieved your ex-patron about a mile from his gates.”

“So the old villain made it. I’m glad of that.”

“And a good job, too. If he hadn’t I might never have been able to square you. He was pretty well done in, and his heart was kicking up plenty. Do you know that abandonment is a capital offense on this planet—with a mandatory death sentence if the victim dies?”

Wingate nodded. “Yeah, I know. Not that I ever heard of a patron being gassed for it, if the corpse was a client. But that’s beside the point. Go ahead.”

“Well, he was plenty sore. I don’t blame him, though I don’t blame you, either. Nobody wants to be sold South, and I gather that was what you expected. Well, I paid him for his crock, and I paid him for your contract—take a look at me, I’m your new owner!—and I paid for the contracts of your two friends as well. Still he wasn’t satisfied. I finally had to throw in a first-class passage for his daughter back to Earth, and promise to find her a job. She’s a big dumb ox, but I guess the family can stand another retainer. Anyhow, old son, you’re a free man. The only remaining question is whether or not the Governor will let us leave here. It seems it’s not done.”

“No, that’s a point. Which reminds me—how did you locate the place?”

“A spot of detective work too long to go into now. That’s what took me so long. Slaves don’t like to talk. Anyhow, we’ve a date to talk to the Governor tomorrow.”

Wingate took a long time to get to sleep. After his first burst of jubilation he began to wonder. Did he want to go back? To return to the law, to citing technicalities in the interest of whichever side employed him, to meaningless social engagements, to the empty, sterile, bunkum-fed life of the fat and prosperous class he had moved among and served—did he want that, he, who had fought and worked with
men
? It seemed to him that his anachronistic little “invention” in radio had been of more worth than all he had ever done on Earth.

Then he recalled his book.

Perhaps he could get it published. Perhaps he could expose this disgraceful, inhuman system which sold men into legal slavery. He was really wide awake now.
There
was a thing to do! That was his job—to go back to Earth and plead the cause of the colonists. Maybe there was destiny that shapes men’s lives after all. He was just the man to do it, the right social background, the proper training.
He
could make himself heard.

He fell asleep, and dreamt of cool, dry breezes, of clear blue sky. Of moonlight…

Satchel and Jimmie decided to stay, even though Jones had been able to fix it up with the Governor. “It’s like this,” said Satchel. “There’s nothing for us back on Earth, or we wouldn’t have shipped in the first place. And you can’t undertake to support a couple of deadheads. And this isn’t such a bad place. It’s going to be something someday. We’ll stay and grow up with it.”

They handled the crock which carried Jones and Wingate to Adonis. There was no hazard in it, as Jones was now officially their patron. What the authorities did not know they could not act on. The crock returned to the refugee community loaded with a cargo which Jones insisted on calling their ransom. As a matter of fact, the opportunity to send an agent to obtain badly needed supplies—one who could do so safely and without arousing the suspicions of the company authorities—had been the determining factor in the Governor’s unprecedented decision to risk compromising the secrets of his constituency. He had been frankly not interested in Wingate’s plans to agitate for the abolishment of the slave trade.

Saying goodbye to Satchel and Jimmie was something Wingate found embarrassing and unexpectedly depressing.

For the first two weeks after grounding on Earth both Wingate and Jones were too busy to see much of each other. Wingate had gotten his manuscript in shape on the return trip and had spent the time getting acquainted with the waiting rooms of publishers. Only one had shown any interest beyond a form letter of rejection.

“I’m sorry, old man,” that one had told him. “I’d like to publish your book, in spite of its controversial nature, if it stood any chance at all of success. But it doesn’t. Frankly, it has no literary merit whatsoever. I would as soon read a brief.”

“I think I understand,” Wingate answered sullenly. “A big publishing house can’t afford to print anything which might offend the powers-that-be.”

The publisher took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the younger man before replying. “I suppose I should resent that,” he said quietly, “but I won’t. That’s a popular misconception. The powers-that-be, as you call them, do not resort to suppression in this country. We publish what the public will buy. We’re in business for that purpose.

“I was about to suggest, if you will listen, a means of making your book saleable. You need a collaborator, somebody that knows the writing game and can put some guts in it.”

Jones called the day that Wingate got his revised manuscript back from his ghost writer. “Listen to this, Sam,” he pleaded. “Look, what the dirty so-and-so has done to my book. Look. ‘—I heard again the crack of the overseer’s whip. The frail body of my mate shook under the lash. He gave one cough and slid slowly under the waist-deep water, dragged down by his chains.’ Honest, Sam, did you ever see such drivel? And look at the new title: ‘I
Was a Slave on Venus
.’ It sounds like a confession magazine.”

Jones nodded without replying. “And listen to this,” Wingate went on, “‘—crowded like cattle in the enclosure, their naked bodies gleaming with sweat, the women slaves shrank from the—’ Oh, hell, I can’t go on!”

“Well, they did wear nothing but harnesses.”

“Yes, yes—but that has nothing to do with the case. Venus costume is a necessary concomitant of the weather. There’s no excuse to leer about it. He’s turned my book into a damned sex show. And he had the nerve to defend his actions. He claimed that social pamphleteering is dependent on extravagant language.”

“Well, maybe he’s got something.
Gulliver’s Travels
certainly has some racy passages, and the whipping scenes in
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
aren’t anything to hand a kid to read. Not to mention
Grapes of Wrath
.”

“Well, I’m damned if I’ll resort to that kind of cheap sensationalism. I’ve got a perfectly straightforward case that any one can understand.”

“Have you now?” Jones took his pipe out of his mouth. “I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to get your eyes opened. What is your case? It’s nothing new; it happened in the Old South, it happened again in California, in Mexico, in Australia, in South Africa. Why? Because in any expanding free-enterprise economy which does not have a money system designed to fit its requirements the use of mother-country capital to develop the colony inevitably results in subsistence-level wages at home and slave labor in the colonies. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and all the good will in the world on the part of the so-called ruling classes won’t change it, because the basic problem is one requiring scientific analysis and a mathematical mind. Do you think you can explain those issues to the general public?”

“I can try.”

“How far did I get when I tried to explain them to you—before you had seen the results? And you are a smart hombre. No, Hump, these things are too difficult to explain to people and too abstract to interest them. You spoke before a women’s club the other day, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How did you make out?”

“Well…the chairwoman called me up beforehand and asked me to hold my talk down to ten minutes, as their national president was to be there and they would be crowded for time.”

“Hmm…you see where your great social message rates in competition. But never mind. Ten minutes is long enough to explain the issue to a person if they have the capacity to understand it. Did you sell anybody?”

“Well… I’m not sure.”

“You’re darn tootin’ you’re not sure. Maybe they clapped for you but how many of them came up afterwards and wanted to sign checks? No, Hump, sweet reasonableness won’t get you anywhere in this racket. To make yourself heard you have to be a demagogue, or a rabble-rousing political preacher like this fellow Nehemiah Scudder. We’re going merrily to hell and it won’t stop until it winds up in a crash.”

“But—Oh, the devil! What can we
do
about it?”

“Nothing. Things are bound to get a whole lot worse before they can get any better. Let’s have a drink.”

MY NAME
is Holly Jones and I’m fifteen. I’m very intelligent but it doesn’t show, because I look like an underdone angel. Insipid.

I was born right here in Luna City, which seems to surprise Earthside types. Actually, I’m third generation; my grandparents pioneered in Site One, where the Memorial is. I live with my parents in Artemis Apartments, the new co-op in Pressure Five, eight hundred feet down near City Hall. But I’m not there much; I’m too busy.

Mornings I attend Tech High and afternoons I study or go flying with Jeff Hardesty—he’s my partner—or whenever a tourist ship is in I guide groundhogs. This day the
Gripsholm
grounded at noon so I went straight from school to American Express.

The first gaggle of tourists was trickling in from Quarantine but I didn’t push forward as Mr. Dorcas, the manager, knows I’m the best. Guiding is just temporary (I’m really a spaceship designer), but if you’re doing a job you ought to do it well.

Mr. Dorcas spotted me. “Holly! Here, please. Miss Brentwood, Holly Jones will be your guide.”

“‘Holly,’” she repeated. “What a quaint name. Are you really a guide, dear?”

I’m tolerant of groundhogs—some of my best friends are from Earth. As Daddy says, being born on Luna is luck, not judgment, and most people Earthside are stuck there. After all, Jesus and Gautama Buddha and Dr. Einstein were all groundhogs.

But they can be irritating. If high school kids weren’t guides, whom could they hire? “My license says so,” I said briskly and looked her over the way she was looking me over.

Her face was sort of familiar and I thought perhaps I had seen her picture in those society things you see in Earthside magazines—one of the rich playgirls we get too many of. She was almost loathsomely lovely…nylon skin, soft, wavy, silver-blond hair, basic specs about 35-24-34 and enough this and that to make me feel like a matchstick drawing, a low intimate voice and everything necessary to make plainer females think about pacts with the Devil. But I did not feel apprehensive; she was a groundhog and groundhogs don’t count.

“All city guides are girls,” Mr. Dorcas explained. “Holly is very competent.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” she answered quickly and went into tourist routine number one: surprise that a guide was needed just to find her hotel, amazement at no taxicabs, same for no porters, and raised eyebrows at the prospect of two girls walking alone through “an underground city.”

Mr. Dorcas was patient, ending with: “Miss Brentwood, Luna City is the only metropolis in the Solar System where a woman is really safe—no dark alleys, no deserted neighborhoods, no criminal element.”

I didn’t listen; I just held out my tariff card for Mr. Dorcas to stamp and picked up her bags. Guides shouldn’t carry bags and most tourists are delighted to experience the fact that their thirty-pound allowance weighs only five pounds. But I wanted to get her moving.

We were in the tunnel outside and me with a foot on the slidebelt when she stopped. “I forgot! I want a city map.”

“None available.”

“Really?”

“There’s only one. That’s why you need a guide.”

“But why don’t they supply them? Or would that throw you guides out of work?”

See? “You think guiding is makework? Miss Brentwood, labor is so scarce they’d hire monkeys if they could.”

“Then why not print maps?”

“Because Luna City isn’t flat like—” I almost said, “—groundhog cities,” but I caught myself.

“—like Earthside cities,” I went on. “All you saw from space was the meteor shield. Underneath it spreads out and goes down for miles in a dozen pressure zones.”

“Yes, I know, but why not a map for each level?”

Groundhogs always say, “Yes, I know, but—”

“I can show you the one city map. It’s a stereo tank twenty feet high and even so all you see clearly are big things like the Hall of the Mountain King and hydroponics farms and the Bats’ Cave.”

“‘The Bats’ Cave,’” she repeated. “That’s where they fly, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s where we fly.”

“Oh, I want to see it!”

“OK. It first…or the city map?”

She decided to go to her hotel first. The regular route to the Zurich is to slide up and west through Gray’s Tunnel past the Martian Embassy, get off at the Mormon Temple, and take a pressure lock down to Diana Boulevard. But I know all the shortcuts; we got off at Macy-Gimbel Upper to go down their personnel hoist. I thought she would enjoy it.

But when I told her to grab a hand grip as it dropped past her, she peered down the shaft and edged back. “You’re joking.”

I was about to take her back the regular way when a neighbor of ours came down the hoist. I said, “Hello, Mrs. Greenberg,” and she called back, “Hi, Holly. How are your folks?”

Susie Greenberg is more than plump. She was hanging by one hand with young David tucked in her other arm and holding the
Daily Lunatic
, reading as she dropped. Miss Brentwood stared, bit her lip, and said, “How do I do it?”

I said, “Oh, use both hands; I’ll take the bags.” I tied the handles together with my hanky and went first.

She was shaking when we got to the bottom. “Goodness, Holly, how do you stand it? Don’t you get homesick?”