"Uh ... maybe."
"I certainly am. I am expected to be Chairman oc the Board someday, like my papa and my grandpapa. But I shan't. I'm going to space!"
"Oh! So am I!" We stopped dancing and chattered
about spacing. Dexter intends to be an explorer captain, just like me-only I didn't quite. admit that my plans for spacing included pilot and master; it is never well in dealing with a male to let him know that you think you can do whatever it is he can do best or wants to do most. But Dexter intends to go to Cambridge and study paramagnetics and Davis mechanics and be ready when the first true starships are ready. Goodness!
"Poddy, maybe we'll even do it together. Lots of billets for women in starships."
I agreed that that was so.
"But let's talk about you. Poddy, it wasn't that you looked so much better than your picture."
"No?" (I felt vaguely disappointed.)
"No. Look. I know your background, I know you've lived all your life in Marsopolis. Me, I've been everywhere. Sent to Earth for school, took the Grand Tour while I was there, been to Luna, of course, and all over Venus-and to Mars. When you were a little girl and I wish I had met you then."
"Thank you." (I was beginning to feel like a poor relation.)
"So I know exactly what a honky-tonk town Venusberg is ... and what a shock it is to people the first time. Especially anyone reared in a gentle and civilized place like Marsopolis. Oh, I love my hometown but I know what it is- I've been other places. Poddy? Look at me, Poddy. The thing that impressed me about you was your aplomb."
"Me?"
"Your amazing and perfect savoir-faire ... under conditions I knew were strange to you. Your uncle has been everywhere-and Girdie, I take it, has been, too. But lots of strangers here, older women, become quite giddy when first exposed to the fleshpots of Venusberg
and behave frightfully. But you carry yourself like a queen. Savoir-falre."
(This man I liked! Definitely. After years and years of "Beat it, runt!" it does something to a woman to be told she has savoir-faire. I didn't even stop to wonder if he told all the girls that- I didn't want to!)
We dldn't stay much longer; Girdle made it plain that I had to get my "beauty sleep." So Clark went back to his game (Josie appeared out of nowhere at the right time-and I thought of telling Clark he had better git fer home too, but I decided that wasn't "savoir-faire" and anyhow he wouldn't have listened) and Dexter took us to the Tannhäuser in his papa's Rolls (or maybe his own, I don't know) and bowed over our hands and kissed them as he left us.
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 running in circles and dropping one wing. I'm sure she could have married any of the bachelors and insured her old age thereby with no effort.
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 annoy me-because, while I would not put it past Clark to sell me into what is tantamount to chattel slavery and a Life of Shame if he could get away with it, nevertheless he would wring out of the sordid transaction every penny the traffic would bear. This is certain.
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.