But I have learned a lot on Venus and would not have missed it for anything. The Art of Tipping, especially, and now I feel like an Experienced Traveler. Tipping can be a nuisance but it is not quite the vice Marsmen think it is; it is a necessary lubricant for perfect service.
Let's admit it; service in Marsopolis varies from indifferent to terrible-and I simply had not realized it. A clerk waits on you when he feels like it and goes
on gossiping with another clerk, not even able to see you until he does feel like it.
Not like that in Venusberg! However, it is not just the money-and here follows the Great Secret of Happy Travel. I haven't soaked up much Portuguese and not everybody speaks Ortho. But it isn't necessary to be a linguist if you will learn just one word-in as many languages as possible. Just "thank you."
I caught onto this first with Maria and Maria-I say "gobble-gobble" to them a hundred times a day, only the word is actually "obrigado" which sounds like "gobble-gobble" if you say it quickly. A small tip is much more savoir-fairish-and gets better, more willing service-when accompanied by "thank you" than a big tip while saying nothing.
So I've learned to say "thank you" in as many languages as possible -and I always try to say it in the home language of the person I'm dealing with, if I can guess it, which I usually can. Doesn't matter much if you miss, though; porters and clerks and taxi drivers and such usually know that one word in several languages and can spot it even if you can't talk with them at all in any other way. I've written a lot of them down and memorized them:
Obrigado
Donkey shane
Mare-see
Key toss
M 'goy
Graht-see-eh
Arigato
Spawseebaw
Gathee-oss
Tock
Or "money tock" and Clark says this one means "money talks." But Clark is wrong; he ~has to tig too high because he won't bother to say "thank you. Oh, yes, Clark tips. It hurts him, but he soon discovered that he couldn't get a taxi and that even automatic vending machines were rude to him if he tried to buck the local system. But it infuriates him so much that he won't be pleasant about it and that costs him.
If you say "tock" instead of "key toss" to a Finn, he still understands it. If you mistake a Japanese for a Cantonese and say "m'goy" instead of "arigato"-well, that is the one word of Cantonese he knows. And "obrigado" everybody understands.
However, if you do guess right and pick their home language, they roll out the red carpet and genuflect, all smiles. I've even had tips refused-and this in a city where Clark's greediness about money is considered only natural.
All those other long, long lists of hints on How to Get Along While Traveling that I studied so carefully before I left turn out not to be necessary; this one rule does it all.
Uncle Tom is dreadfully worried about something. He's absent-minded and, while he will smile at me if I manage to get his attention (not easy), the smile soon fades and the worry lines show again. Maybe it's something here and things will be all right once we leave. I wish we were back in the happy ThreeCornered Hat with next stop Luna City.
XI
Things are really grim. Clark hasn't been home for two nights, and Uncle Tom is almost out of his mind. Besides that, I've had a quarrel with Dexter-which isn't important compared with Brother being missing but I could surely use a shoulder to cry on.
And Uncle Tom has had a real quarrel with Mr. Chairman-which was what led to my quarrel with Dexter because I was on Uncle Tom's side even though I didn't know what was going on and I discovered that Dexter was just as blind in his loyalty to his father as I am to Uncle Tom. I saw only a bit of the quarrel with Mr. Chairman and it was one of those frightening, cold, bitter, formally polite, grown-men quarrels of the sort that used to lead inevitably to pistols at dawn.
I think it almost did. Mr. Chairman arrived at our suite, looking not at all like Santa Claus, and I heard Uncle say coldly, "I would rather your friends had called on me, sir."
But Mr. Chairman ignored that and about then Uncle noticed that I was there-back of the piano, keeping quiet and trying to look small-and he told me to go to my room. Which I did.
But I know what part of it is. I had thought that both Clark and I had been allowed to run around loose in Venusberg-although I have usually had either Girdle or Dexter with me. Not so. Both of us have been guarded night and day, every instant we have been out of the Tannhäuser, by Corporation police. I never suspected this and I'm sure Clark didn t or he would never have hired Josie to watch his boodle. But Uncle did know it and had accepted it as a courtesy from Mr. Chairman, one that left him free to do whatever these things are that have kept him so busy here, without riding herd on two kids, one of them nutty as Christmas cake. (And I don't mean me.)
As near as I can reconstruct it Uncle blames Mr. Chairman for Clark's absence-although this is hardly fair as Clark, if he knew he was being watched, could evade eighteen private eyes, the entire Space Corps, and a pack of slavering bloodhounds. Or is it "wolfhounds"?
But, on top of this, Dexter says that they disagree completely on how to locate Clark. Myself, I think that Clark is missing because Clark wants to be missing because he intends to miss the ship and stay here on Venus where a) Girdle is, and b) where all that lovely money is. Although perhaps I have put them in the wrong order.
I keep telling myself this, but Mr. Chairman says that it is a kidnapping, that it has to be a kidnapping, and that there is only one way to handle a kidnapping on Venus if one ever expects to see the kidnappee alive again.
On Venus, kidnapping is just about the only thing a stockholder is afraid of. In fact they are so afraid of it
that they have brought the thing down almost to a ritual. If the kidnapper plays by the rules and doesn't hurt his victim, he not only won't be punished but he had the Corporation's assurance that he can keep any ransom agreed on.
But if he doesn~'t play by the rules and they do catch him, well, it's pretty grisly. Some of the things Dexter just hinted at. But I understand that the mildest punishment is something called a "four-hour death." He wouldn't give me any details on this, either-except that there is some drug that is just the opposite of anesthesia; it makes pain hurt worse.
Dexter says that Clark is absolutely safe as long as Uncle Tom doesn't insist on meddling with things he doesn't understand. "Old fool" is one term that he used and that was when I slapped him.
Long sigh and a wish for my happy girlhood in Marsopolis, where I understood how things worked. I don't here. All I really know is that I can no longer leave the suite save with Uncle Tom-and must leave it and stay with him when he does and wherever he goes.
Which is how I at last saw the Cunha "cottage"- and would have been much interested if Clark hadn't been missing. A modest little place only slightly smaller than the Tannhäuser but much more lavish. Our President's Rose House would fit into its ballroom. That is where I quarreled with Dexter while Uncle and Mr. Chairman were continuing their worst quarrel elsewhere in that "cottage."
Presently Uncle Tom took me back to the Tannhäuser and I've never seen him look so old-fifty at least, or call it a hundred and fifty of the years they use here. We had dinner in the suite and neither of us ate anything and after dinner I went over and sat by the living window. The view was from Earth, I guess. The Grand Canyon of El Dorado, or El