Podkayne of Mars

I was wondering if he would try to kiss me good night and had made up my mind to be cooperative about it. But he didn't try. Maybe it's not a Venusberg custom, I don't know.

Girdle went up with me because I wanted to chatter. I bounced myself on a couch and said, "Oh, Girdle, it's been the most wonderful night of my life!"

"It hasn't been a bad night for me," she said quietly. "It certainly can't hurt me to have met the son of the Chairman of the Board." It was then that she told me that she was staying on Venus.

"But, Girdle-why?"

"Because I'm broke, dear. I need a job."

"You? But you're rich. Everybody knows that."

She smiled. "I was rich, dear. But my last husband went through it all. He was an optimistic man and excellent company. But not nearly the businessman he thought he was. So now Girdle must gird her loins and get to work. Venusberg is better than Earth for that. Back home I could either be a parasite on my old friends until they got sick of me-the chronic house guest-or get one of them to give me a job that

would really be charity, since I don't know anything. Or disappear into the lower depths and change my name. Here, nobody cares and there is always work for anyone who wants to work. I don't drink and I don't gamble-Venusberg is made to order for me."

"But what will you do?" It was hard to imagine her as anything but the rich society girl whose parties and pranks were known even on Mars.

"Croupier, I hope. They make the highest wages... and I've been studying it. But I've been practicing dealing, too-for black jack, or faro, or chemin de fer. But I'll probably have to start as a change girl."

"Change girl? Girdie-would you dress that way?"

She shrugged. "My figure is still good ... and I'm quite quick at counting money. It's honest work, Poddy-it has to be. Those change girls often have as much as ten thousand on their trays."

I decided I had fubbed and shut up. I guess you can take the girl out of Marsopolis but you can't quite take Marsopolis out of the girl. Those change girls practically don't wear anything but the trays they carry money on-but it certainly was honest work and Girdle has a figure that had all the junior officers in the Tricorn ru

Isn't it more honest to work? And, if so, why shouldn't she capitalize her assets?

She kissed me good night soon after and ordered me to go right to bed and to sleep. Which I did-all but the sleep. Well, she wouldn't be a change girl long; she'd be a croupier in a beautiful evening gown

and saving her wages and her tips ... and. someday she would be a stockholder, one share anyway, which is all anybody needs for old age in the Venus Corporation. And I would come back and visit her when I was famous.

I wondered if I could ask Dexter to put in a word for her to Dom Pedro?

Then I thought about Dexter- I know that can't be love; I was in love once and it feels entirely different. It hurts.

This just feels grand.

X

I hear that Clark has been negotiating to sell me (black market, of course) to one of the concessionaires who ship wives out to contract colonists in the bush. Or so they say. I do not know the truth. But There Are Rumors.

What infuriates me is that he is said to be offering me at a ridiculously low price!

But in truth it is this very fact that convinces me that it is just a rumor, carefully planted by Clark himself, to a

It is much more likely that he is suffering a severe emotional reaction from having opened up and become almost human with me the other night-and therefore found it necessary to counteract it with this

rumor in order to restore our relations to their normal, healthy, cold-war status.

Actually I don't think he could get away with it, even on the black market, because I don't have any contract with the Corporation and even if he forged one, I could always manage to get a message to Dexter, and Clark knows this. Girdie tells me that the black market in wives lies mostly in change girls or clerks or hilton chambermaids who haven't managed to snag husbands in Venusberg (where men are in short supply) and are willing to cooperate in being sold out back (where women are scarce) in order to jump their contracts. They don't squawk and the Corporation overlooks the matter.

Most of the bartered brides, of course, are single women among the immigrants, right off a ship. The concessionaires pay their fare and squeeze whatever cumshaw they can out of the women themselves and the miners or ranchers to whom their contracts are assigned. All Kosher.

Not that I understand it- I don't understand anything about how this planet really works. No laws, just Corporate regulations. Want to get married? Find somebody who claims to be a priest or a preacher and have any ceremony you like-but it hasn't any legal standing because it is not a contract with the Corporation. Want a divorce? Pack your clothes and get out, leaving a note or not as you see fit. Illegitimacy? They've never heard of it. A baby is a baby and the Corporation won't let one want, because that baby will grow up and be an employee and Venus has a chronic labor shortage. Polygamy? Polyandiy? Who cares? The Corporation doesn't.

Bodily assault? Don't try it in Venusberg; it is the most thoroughly policed city in the system-violent crime is bad for business. I don't wander around alone in some parts of Marsopolis, couth as my hometown

is, because some of the old sand rats are a bit sunstruck and not really responsible. Bi~t I'm perfectly safe alone anywhere in Venusberg; the only assault I risk is from super salesmanship.

(The bush is another matter. Not the people so much, but Venus itself is lethal-and there is always a chance of encountering a Venerian who has gotten hold of a grain of happy dust. Even the little wingety fairies are bloodthirsty if they sniff happy dust.)

Murder? This is a very serious violation of regulations. You'll have your pay checked for years and years and years to offset both that employee's earning power for what would have been his working life ... and his putative value to the Corporation, all calculated by the company's actuaries who are widely known to have no hearts at all, just liquid helium pumps.

So if you are thinking of killing anybody on Venus, don't do it! Lure him to a planet where murder is a social matter and all they do is hang you or something. No future in it on Venus.

There are three classes of people on Venus: stockholders, employees, and a large middle ground. Stockholder-employees (Girdle's ambition), enterprise employees (taxi drivers, ranchers, prospectors, some retailers, etc.), and of course future employees, children still being educated. And there are tourists but tourists aren't people; they have more the status of steers in a cattle pen-valuable assets to be treated with great consideration but no pity.

A person from out-planet can be a tourist for an hour or a lifetime-just as long as his money holds out. No visa, no rules of any sort, everybody welcome. But you must have a return ticket and you can't cash it in until after you sign a contract with the Corporation. If you do. I wouldn't.

I still don't understand how the system works even though Uncle Tom has been very patient in explaining.

But he says he doesn't understand it either. He calls it "corporate fascism"-which explains nothing-and says that he can't make up his mind whether it is the grimmest tyra