Podkayne of Mars, Page 2

  INTERLUDE

  Hi, Pod.

  So you think I can’t read your worm tracks.

  A lot you know about me! Poddy—oh, excuse me, “Captain” Podkayne Fries, I mean, the famous Space Explorer and Master of Men—Captain Poddy dear, you probably will never read this because it wouldn’t occur to you that I not only would break your “code” but also write comments in the big, wide margins you leave.

  Just for the record, Sister dear, I read Old Anglish just as readily as I do System Ortho. Anglish isn’t all that hard and I learned it as soon as I found out that a lot of books I wanted to read had never been translated. But it doesn’t pay to tell everything you know, or somebody comes along and tells you to stop doing whatever it is you are doing. Probably your older sister.

  But imagine calling a straight substitution a “code”! Poddy, if you had actually been able to write Old Martian, it would have taken me quite a lot longer. But you can’t. Shucks, even Dad can’t write it without stewing over it and he probably knows more about Old Martian than anyone else in the System.

  But you won’t crack my code—because I haven’t any.

  Try looking at this page under ultraviolet light—a sun lamp, for example.

  TWO

  Oh, Unspeakables!

  Dirty ears! Hangnails! Snel-frockey! Spit! WE AREN’T GOING!

  At first I thought that my brother Clark had managed one of his more charlatanous machinations of malevolent legerdemain. But fortunately (the only fortunate thing about the whole miserable mess) I soon perceived that it was impossible for him to be in fact guilty no matter what devious subversions roil his id. Unless he has managed to invent and build in secret a time machine, which I misdoubt he would do if he could . . . nor am I prepared to offer odds that he can’t. Not since the time he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks and charge them to my code number without (so far as anyone could ever prove) disturbing the company’s seal on the control box.

  We’ll never know how he did that one, because, despite the fact that the company offered to Forgive All and pay a cash bonus to boot if only he would please tell them how he managed to beat their unbeatable seal—despite this, Clark looked blank and would not talk. That left only circumstantial evidence, i.e., it was clearly evident to anyone who knew us both (Daddy and Mother, namely) that I would never order candy-stripe ice cream smothered in hollandaise sauce, or—no, I can’t go on; I feel ill. Whereas Clark is widely known to eat anything which does not eat him first.

  Even this clinching psychological evidence would never have convinced the company’s adjuster had not their own records proved that two of these obscene feasts had taken place while I was a house guest of friends in Syrtis Major, a thousand kilometers away. Never mind, I simply want to warn all girls not to have a Mad Genius for a baby brother. Pick instead a stupid, stolid, slightly subnormal one who will sit quietly in front of the solly box, mouth agape at cowboy classics, and never wonder what makes the pretty images.

  But I have wandered far from my tragic tale.

  We aren’t going to have twins.

  We already have triplets.

  Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon, throughout all my former life mere topics of conversation, are now Grace, Duncan, and Elspeth in all too solid flesh—unless Daddy again changes his mind before final registration; they’ve had three sets of names already. But what’s in a name?—they are here, already in our home with a nursery room sealed on to shelter them . . . three helpless unfinished humans about canal-worm pink in color and no features worthy of the name. Their limbs squirm aimlessly, their eyes don’t track, and a faint, queasy odor of sour milk permeates every room even when they are freshly bathed. Appalling sounds come from one end of each—in which they heterodyne each other—and even more appalling conditions prevail at the other ends. (I’ve yet to find all three of them dry at the same time.)

  And yet there is something decidedly engaging about the little things; were it not that they are the proximate cause of my tragedy I could easily grow quite fond of them. I’m sure Duncan is beginning to recognize me already.

  But, if I am beginning to be reconciled to their presence, Mother’s state can only be described as atavistically maternal. Her professional journals pile up unread, she has that soft Madonna look in her eyes, and she seems somehow both shorter and wider than she did a week ago.

  First consequence: she won’t even discuss going to Earth, with or without the triplets.

  Second consequence: Daddy won’t go if she won’t go—he spoke quite sharply to Clark for even suggesting it.

  Third consequence: since they won’t go, we can’t go. Clark and me, I mean. It is conceivably possible that I might have been permitted to travel alone (since Daddy agrees that I am now a “young adult” in maturity and judgment even though my ninth birthday lies still some months in the future), but the question is formal and without content since I am not considered quite old enough to accept full responsible control of my brother with both my parents some millions of kilometers away (nor am I sure that I would wish to, unless armed with something at least as convincing as a morning star) and Daddy is so dismayingly fair with that he would not even discuss permitting one of us to go and not the other when both of us had been promised the trip.

  Fairness is a priceless virtue in a parent—but just at the moment I could stand being spoiled and favored instead.

  But the above is why I am sure that Clark does not have a time machine concealed in his wardrobe. This incredible contretemps, this idiot’s dream of interlocking mishaps, is as much to his disadvantage as it is to mine.

  How did it happen? Gather ye round—Little did we dream that, when the question of a family trip to Earth was being planned in our household more than a month ago, this disaster was already complete and simply waiting the most hideous moment to unveil itself. The facts are these: the crèche at Marsopolis has thousands of newborn babies marbleized at just short of absolute zero, waiting in perfect safety until their respective parents are ready for them. It is said, and I believe it, that a direct hit with a nuclear bomb would not hurt the consigned infants; a thousand years later a rescue squad could burrow down and find that automatic, self-maintaining machinery had not permitted the tank temperatures to vary a hundredth of a degree.

  In consequence, we Marsmen (not “Martians,” please!—Martians are a non-human race, now almost extinct)—Marsmen tend to marry early, have a full quota of babies quickly, then rear them later, as money and time permit. It reconciles that descrepancy, so increasingly and glaringly evident ever since the Terran Industrial Revolution, between the best biological age for having children and the best social age for supporting and rearing them.

  A couple named Breeze did just that, some ten years ago—married on her ninth birthday and just past his tenth, while he was still a pilot cadet and she was attending Ares U. They applied for three babies, were pegged accordingly, and got them all out of the way while they were both finishing school. Very sensible.

  The years roll past, he as a pilot and later as master, she as a finance clerk in his ship and later as purser—a happy life. The spacelines like such an arrangement; married couples spacing together mean a taut, happy ship.

  Captain and Mrs. Breeze serve their ten-and-a-half (twenty Terran) years and put in for half-pay retirement, have it confirmed—and immediately radio the crèche to uncork their babies, all three of them.

  The radio order is received, relayed back for confirmation; the crèche accepts it. Five weeks later the happy couple pick up three babies, sign for them, and start the second half of a perfect life.

  So they thought—

  But what they had deposited was two boys and a girl; what they got was two girls and a boy. Ours.

  Believe this you must—it took them the better part of a week to notice it. I will readily concede that the difference between a brand-new boy baby and a brand-new girl baby is, at the time, almost irrelevant. Nevertheless there is a s
light difference. Apparently it was a case of too much help—between a mother, a mother-in-law, a temporary nurse, and a helpful neighbor, and much running in and out, it seems unlikely that any one person bathed all three babies as one continuous operation that first week. Certainly Mrs. Breeze had not done so— until the day she did . . . and noticed . . . and fainted—and dropped one of our babies in the bath water, where it would have drowned had not her scream fetched both her husband and the neighbor lady.

  So we suddenly had month-old triplets.

  The lawyer man from the crèche was very vague about how it happened; he obviously did not want to discuss how their “foolproof” identification system could result in such a mixup. So I don’t know myself—but it seems logically certain that, for all their serial numbers, babies’ footprints, record machines, et cetera, there is some point in the system where one clerk read aloud “Breeze” from the radioed order and another clerk checked a file, then punched “Fries” into a machine that did the rest.

  But the fixer man did not say. He was simply achingly anxious to get Mother and Daddy to settle out of court—accept a check and sign a release under which they agreed not to publicize the error.

  They settled for three years of Mother’s established professional earning power while the little fixer man gulped and looked relieved.

  But nobody offered to pay me for the mayhem that had been committed on my life, my hopes, and my ambitions.

  Clark did offer a suggestion that was almost a sensible one, for him. He proposed that we swap even with the Breezes, let them keep the warm ones, we could keep the cold ones. Everybody happy—and we all go to Earth.

  My brother is far too self-centered to realize it, but the Angel of Death brushed him with its wings at that point. Daddy is a truly noble soul . . . but he had had almost more than he could stand.

  And so have I. I had expected today to be actually on my way to Earth, my first space trip farther than Phobos—which was merely a school field trip, our “Class Honeymoon.” A nothing thing.

  Instead, guess what I’m doing.

  Do you have any idea how many times a day three babies have to be changed?

  THREE

  Hold it! Stop the machines! Wipe the tapes! Cancel all bulletins—

  WE ARE GOING TO EARTH AFTER ALL!!!!

  Well, not all of us. Daddy and Mother aren’t going, and of course, the triplets are not. But—Never mind; I had better tell it in order.

  Yesterday things just got to be Too Much. I had changed them in rotation, only to find as I got the third one dry and fresh that number one again needed service. I had been thinking sadly that just about that moment I should have been entering the dining saloon of S.S. Wanderlust to the strains of soft music. Perhaps on the arm of one of the officers . . . perhaps even on the arm of the Captain himself had I the chance to arrange an accidental Happy Encounter, then make judicious use of my “puzzled kitten” expression.

  And, as I reached that point in my melancholy daydream, it was then that I discovered that my chores had started all over again. I thought of the Augean Stables and suddenly it was just Too Much and my eyes got blurry with tears.

  Mother came in at that point and I asked if I could please have a couple of hours of recess?

  She answered, “Why, certainly dear,” and didn’t even glance at me. I’m sure that she didn’t notice that I was crying; she was already doing over, quite unnecessarily, the one that I had just done. She had been tied up on the phone, telling someone firmly that, while it was true as reported that she was not leaving Mars, nevertheless she would not now accept another commission even as a consultant—and no doubt being away from the infants for all of ten minutes had made her uneasy, so she just had to get her hands on one of them.

  Mother’s behavior had been utterly unbelievable. Her cortex has tripped out of circuit and her primitive instincts are in full charge. She reminds me of a cat we had when I was a little girl—Miss Polka Dot Ma’am and her first litter of kittens. Miss Pokie loved and trusted all of us—except about kittens. If we touched one of them, she was uneasy about it. If a kitten was taken out of her box and placed on the floor to be admired, she herself would hop out, grab the kitten in her teeth and immediately return it to the box, with an indignant waggle to her seat that showed all too plainly what she thought of irresponsible people who didn’t know how to handle babies.

  Mother is just like that now. She accepts my help simply because there is too much for her to do alone. But she doesn’t really believe that I can even pick up a baby without close supervision.

  So I left and followed my own blind instincts, which told me to go look up Uncle Tom.

  I found him at the Elks Club, which was reasonably certain at that time of day, but I had to wait in the ladies’ lounge until he came out of the card room. Which he did in about ten minutes, counting a wad of money as he came. “Sorry to make you wait,” he said, “but I was teaching a fellow citizen about the uncertainties in the laws of chance and I had to stay long enough to collect the tuition. How marches it, Podkayne mavourneen?”

  I tried to tell him and got all choked up, so he walked me to the park under the city hall and sat me on a bench and bought us both packages of Choklatpops, and I ate mine and most of his and watched the stars on the ceiling and told him all about it and felt better.

  He patted my hand. “Cheer up, Flicka. Always remember that, when things seem darkest, they usually get considerably worse.” He took his phone out of a pocket and made a call. Presently he said, “Never mind the protocol routine, miss. This is Senator Fries. I want the Director.” Then he added in a moment, “Hymie? Tom Fries here. How’s Judith? Good, good . . . Hymie, I just called to tell you that I’m coming over to stuff you into one of your own liquid helium tanks. Oh, say about fourteen or a few minutes after. That’ll give you time to get out of town. Clearing.” He pocketed his phone. “Let’s get some lunch. Never commit suicide on an empty stomach, my dear; it’s bad for the digestion.”

  Uncle Tom took me to the Pioneers Club where I have been only once before and which is even more impressive than I had recalled—It has real waiters . . . men so old that they might have been pioneers themselves, unless they met the first ship. Everybody fussed over Uncle Tom and he called them all by their first names and they all called him “Tom” but made it sound like “Your Majesty” and the master of the hostel came over and prepared my sweet himself with about six other people standing around to hand him things, like a famous surgeon operating against the swift onrush of death.

  Presently Uncle Tom belched behind his napkin and I thanked everybody as we left while wishing that I had had the forethought to wear my unsuitable gown that Mother won’t let me wear until I’m nine and almost made me take back—one doesn’t get to the Pioneers Club every day.

  We took the James Joyce Fogarty Express Tunnel and Uncle Tom sat down the whole way, so I had to sit, too, although it makes me restless; I prefer to walk in the direction a tunnel is moving and get there a bit sooner. But Uncle Tom says that he gets plenty of exercise watching other people work themselves to death.

  I didn’t really realize that we were going to the Marsopolis Crèche until we were there, so bemused had I been earlier with my own tumultuous emotions. But when we were there and facing a sign reading: OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR—PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR, Uncle Tom said, “Hang around somewhere; I’ll need you later,” and went on in.

  The waiting room was crowded and the only magazines not in use were Kiddie Kapers and Modern Homemaker, so I wandered around a bit and presently found a corridor that led to the Nursery.

  The sign on the door said that visiting hours were from 16 to 18.30. Furthermore, it was locked, so I moved on and found another door which seemed much more promising. It was marked: POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE—but it didn’t say “This Means You” and it wasn’t locked, so I went in.

  You never saw so many babies in your whole life!

  Row upon row upon row, each in its own littl
e transparent cubicle. I could really see only the row nearest me, all of which seemed to be about the same age—and much more finished than the three we had at home. Little brown dumplings they were, cute as puppies. Most of them were asleep, some were awake and kicking and cooing and grabbing at dangle toys that were just in reach. If there had not been a sheet of glass between me and them I would have grabbed me a double armful of babies.

  There were a lot of girls in the room, too—well, young women, really. Each of them seemed to be busy with a baby and they didn’t notice me. But shortly one of the babies nearest me started to cry whereupon a light came on over its cubicle, and one of the nurse girls hurried over, slid back the cover, picked it up and started patting its bottom. It stopped crying.

  “Wet?” I inquired.

  She looked up, saw me. “Oh, no, the machines take care of that. Just lonely, so I’m loving it.” Her voice came through clearly in spite of the glass—a hear and speak circuit, no doubt, although the pickups were not in evidence. She made soft noises to the baby, then added, “Are you a new employee? You seem to be lost.”

  “Oh, no,” I said hastily, “I’m not an employee. I just—”

  “Then you don’t belong here, not at this hour. Unless”—she looked at me rather skeptically—“just possibly you are looking for the instruction class for young mothers?”

  “Oh, no, no!” I said hastily. “Not yet.” Then I added still more hastily, “I’m a guest of the Director.”

  Well, it wasn’t a fib. Not quite. I was a guest of a guest of the Director, one who was with him by appointment. The relationship was certainly concatenative, if not equivalent.

  It seemed to reassure her. She asked, “Just what did you want? Can I help you?”

  “Uh, just information. I’m making a sort of a survey. What goes on in this room?”

  “These are age six-month withdrawal contracts,” she told me. “All these babies will be going home in a few days.” She put the baby, quiet now, back into its private room, adjusted a nursing nipple for it, made some other sort of adjustments on the outside of the cubicle so that the padding inside sort of humped up and held the baby steady against the milk supply, then closed the top, moved on a few meters and picked up another baby. “Personally,” she added, “I think the age six-month contract is the best one. A child twelve months old is old enough to notice the transition. But these aren’t. They don’t care who comes along and pets them when they cry . . . but nevertheless six months is long enough to get a baby well started and take the worst of the load off the mother. We know how, we’re used to it, we stand our watches in rotation so that we are never exhausted from being ‘up with the baby all night’ . . . and in consequence we aren’t short-tempered and we never yell at them—and don’t think for a minute that a baby doesn’t understand a cross tone of voice simply because he can’t talk yet. He knows! And it can start him off so twisted that he may take it out on somebody else, years and years later. There, there, honey,” she went on but not to me, “feel better now? Feeling sleepy, huh? Now you just hold still and Martha will keep her hand on you until you are fast asleep.”