At last I said, "Unka Tom? Tell me the Poddy story-"
"At your age?"
"Please." I crawled up on his knees. "I want to sit in your lap once more and hear it. I need to."
"All right," he said, and put his arm around me. "Once upon a time, long, long ago when the world was young, in a specially favored city there lived a little girl named Poddy. All day long she was busy like a ticking clock. Tick tick tick went her heels, tick tick tick went her knitting needles, and, most especially, tick tick tick went her busy little mind. Her hair was the color of butter blossoms in the spring when the
ice leaves canals, her eyes were the changing blue of sunshine playing down through the spring floods, her nose had not yet made up its mind what it would be, and her mouth was shaped like a question mark. She greeted the world as an unopened present and there was no badness in her anywhere.
"One day Poddy-"
I stopped him. "But I'm not young any longer and I don't think the world was ever young!"
"Here's my handky," he said. "Blow your nose. I never did tell you the end of it, Poddy; you always fell asleep. It ends with a miracle."
"A truly miracle?"
"Yes. This is the end. Poddy grew up and had another Poddy. And then the world was young again."
"Is that all?"
"That's all there ever is. But it's enough."
XII
I guess Uncle Tom put me to bed, for I woke up with just my shoes off and very rumpled. He was gone but he had left a note saying that I could reach him, if I needed to, on Mr. Chairman's private code. I didn't have any excuse to bother him and didn't want to face anyone, so I chased Maria and Maria out and ate breakfast in bed. Ate quite a lot, too, I must admit- the body goes on ticking anyhow.
Then I dug out my journal for the first time since landing. I don't mean I haven't been keeping it; I mean I've been talking it instead of writing it. The library in our suite has a recorder built into its desk and I discovered how easy it was to keep a diary that way. Well, I had really found out before that, because Mr. Clancy let me use the recorder they use to keep the log on.
The only shortcoming of the recorder in the library was that Clark might drop in most any time. But the first day I went shopping I found the most darling
little minirecorder at Venus Macy-only ten-fifty and it just fits in the palm of your hand and you can talk into it without even being noticed if you want to and I just couldn't resist it. I've been carrying it in my purse ever since.
But now I wanted to look way back in my journal, the early written part, and see if I had said anything that might remind me of what That Man had looked like or anything about him.
I hadn't. No clues. But I FOUND A NOTE FROM CLARK.
It read:
POD,
If you find this at all, it's time you read it. Because I'm using 24-hr. ink and I expect to lift this out of here and you'll never see it.
Girdle is in trouble and I'm going to rescue her. I haven't told anybody because this is one job that is all mine and I don't want you or anybody horning in on it.
However, a smart gambler hedges his bets, if he can. If I'm gone long enough for you to read this, it's time to get hold of Uncle Tom and have him get hold of Chairman Cunha. All I can tell you is that there is a newsstand right at South Gate. You buy a copy of the Daily Merchandiser and ask if they carry Everlites. Then say, "Better give me two-it's quite dark where I'm going."
But don't you do this, I don't want it muffed up.
If this turns out dry, you can have my rock collection.
Count your change. Better use
your fingers.
CLARK
I got all blurry. That last line-I know a holographic
last will and testament when I see one, even though I had never seen one before. Then I straightened up and counted ten seconds backwards including the rude word at the end that discharges nervous tension, for I knew this was no time to be blurry and weak; there was work to be done.
So I called Uncle Tom right away, as I agreed perfectly with Clark on one point: I wasn't going to try to emulate Space Ranger Stalwart, Man of Steel, the way Clark evidently had; I was going to get all the help I could get! With both Clark and Girdle in some sort of pinch I would have welcomed two regiments of Patrol Marines and the entire Martian Legion.
So I called Mr. Chairman's private code-and it didn't answer; It simply referred me to another code. This one answered all right ... but with a recording. Uncle Tom. And this time all he said was to repeat something he had said in the note, that he expected to be busy all day and that I was not to leave the suite under any circumstances whatever until he got back- only this time he added that I was not to let anyone into the suite, either, not even a repairman, not even a servant except those who were already there, like Maria and Maria.
When the recording started to play back for the third time, I switched off. Then I called Mr. Chairman the public way, through the Corporation offices. A dry deal that was! By pointing out that I was Miss Fries, niece of Senator Fries, Mars Republic, I did get as far as his secretary, or maybe his secretary's secretary.
"Mr. Cunha cannot be reached. I am veree sorree, Miss Fries."
So I demanded that she locate Uncle Tom. "I do not have that information. I am veree sorree, Miss
Fries." -
Then I demanded to be patched in to Dexter. "Mr.
Dexter is on an inspection trip for Mr. Cunha. I am veree soree."
She either couldn't, or wouldn't, tell me when Dexter was expected back-and wouldn't, or couldn't, find some way for me to call him. Which I just plain didn't believe, because if I owned a planetwide corporation there would be some way to phone every mine, every ranch, every factory, every air boat the company owned. All the time. And I don't even suspect that Mr. Chairman is less smart about how to run such a lash-up than I am.
I told her so, using the colorful rhetoric of sand rats and canal men. I mean I really got mad and used idioms I hadn't known I even remembered. I guess Uncle is right; scratch my Nordic skin and a savage is just underneath. I wanted to pick my teeth at her, only she wouldn't have understood it.
But would you believe it? I might as well have been cussing out a sand gator; it had no effect on her at all. She just repeated, "I'm-veree-sorree-Miss-Fries," and I growled and switched off.
Do you suppose Mr. Chairman uses an androidal Tik-Tok as his phone monitor? I wouldn't put it past him-and any live woman should have shown some reaction at some of the implausibiities I showered on her, even if she didn't understand most of the words. (Well, I don't understand some of them myself. But they are not compliments.)
I thought about phoning Daddy; I knew he would accept the charges, even if he had to mortgage his salary. But Mars was eleven minutes away; it said so, right on a dial of the phone. And the relays via Hermes Station and Luna City were even worse. With twentytwo minutes between each remark it would take me most of the day just to tell him what was wrong, even though they don't charge you for the waiting time.
But I still might have called except-well, what
could Daddy do, three hundred million kilometers away? All it would do would be to turn his last six hairs white.
It wasn't until then that I steadied down enough to realize that there had been something else amiss about that note written into my journal-besides Clark's childish swashbuckling. Girdie- It was true that I had not seen Girdle for a couple
of days; she was on a shift that caused her to zig while I zagged; newly hired dealers don't get the best shifts. But I had indeed talked to her at a time when Clark was probably already gone even though at the time I had simply assumed that he had gotten up early for some inscrutable reason of his own, rather than not coming home at all that night.