Five days later there was a power failure just as Miriam had made up her mind to search out Tony Bellini in an effort to repay further her debt to him. In the sudden blackness and immediate uproar she became disorientated, collided with a wall and hit her nose hard. She screamed along with the others. She felt the warm blood running down her upper lip into her mouth. Fury burst into her mind like a raging tiger leaping from an open cage door. Tony had not been joking. It was a dirty, deliberate act. The smoke, the flood, the five days of thirst, the blackness — all deliberate!
She shrieked: “Put ’em on! Put ’em on, you rotten beasts!” Then she made a great effort and steadied herself Carefully she turned and with one hand held before her, the other pinching her nose, she retraced her steps, and by sheer furious determination found her way to the surgery. Inside, Mary McPrince was waiting for the expected flood of bruises and abrasions with a portable fluorescent lamp burning on her desk.
She looked up as Miriam lurched in from blackness to light. Miriam leaned back against the door still holding her nose.
“You bitch!” she snapped. “You an’ your precious Cabtain Able! Put on the damn lights.”
“What are you talking about?” asked McPrince. “And what do you mean my ‘precious Captain Able’?”
“I saw you!” suddenly shrieked Miriam, releasing her nose. “You and him. You and him. In bed. Ha!” She could not continue, unable to express the disgust she felt because truly it was not disgust that motivated her but jealousy that her ‘mother’ could give herself to another.
“That’s none of your business,” declared McPrince with dignity. “And we can’t put on the power until the engines are repaired.”
“Lies!” shouted Miriam, “You arranged it: you and him. You’re waiting, aren’t you, for the broken bones? I know it alclass="underline" the fire and the water and now no power, All faked. And what have you got arranged for us next while you and him roll about in bed? Well, you can forget it because I’m going to tell everybody what you’re doing. And they’ll kill you, mother! Damn you.…” Tears diluted the blood under her nose.
McPrince moved forward quickly and slapped Miriam on the cheek.
“Let me clean up your face, dear. You look an awful mess.” She took her hand and pulled her to the light. Miriam began sobbing. Expertly McPrince mopped her up and as deftly injected a quantity of tranquilizer. Miriam sat down in a chair and looked at the desk light in a daze. “Moooo,” she murmured.
McPrince looked at her and then turned to the intercom. “Julie,” she said. “I’ve got Miriam Chokewater in the surgery. She’ll need hospitalization. Can you come up here and help? I want to put her in the isolation bay until this crisis blows over. OK?” She turned round and stood watching Miriam.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to lock you up for a time, dear, until all the incidents are finished. Nurse Julie will look after you, but I’ll look in every day, Will you be a good girl?”
“Mmmm,” sighed Miriam, her eyes almost closed.
The surgery door opened and Julie Smith stepped in. Together the two women lifted Miriam on to a mobile bed, and after some consultation the body was wheeled off to the small isolation ward adjourning the surgery.
The power remained off for three days, and the temperature plummeted. The crew, dressed in heavy suiting, moved about the passenger quarters with hand lamps, but the five hundred women passengers suffered with the cold because only a limited stock of extra bedding and clothing was available. Groups took to sleeping in one bed taking turns to be top layer. Meals were cold and there were no hot drinks any more. On the third day alcohol intended for the two-month distant Christmas celebration was issued and there was much maudlin misery as the cold meal was consumed. Tony Bellini, helping to distribute bottles to the tables, made discreet enquiries as to the whereabouts of Miriam Chokewater. None of the girls knew where she was but one of the cooks who knew Julie Smith was able to tell him that Miriam was incarcerated in the ship’s isolation bay under sedation.
“On sedation? Isolated?”
“That’s what Julie said. Maybe they’re afraid her swollen nose might blow up.” The cook giggled.
Bellini thought sickly: Miriam was in possession of forbidden knowledge and she was being held indefinitely where others were unable to see her. The two things had to be linked. It was he who had given Miriam the forbidden knowledge — therefore it was up to him to get hers out of her predicament. He began to form a typically youthful, wild plan to do it.
Miriam, in the meantime, had had a lot of quiet time to think about herself. Sedation had been discontinued after the first day, but she was confined by a locked door to the little isolation ward behind the surgery. A small, low voltage light was allowed her and an extra blanket for her bed, and there she was left alone except for a brief visit from Nurse Julie with cold meals and her ration of cold water.
McPrince visited her after the first day and explained concisely the reason why the planned ‘accidents’ were arranged and why their efficiency would be nullified if Miriam divulged the secret to others.
“When it is all finished you will be let out. I’m truly sorry, Miriam, to do this to you, but you do understand the importance of it, don’t you?”
Miriam stared at her in the dim light. There was no mother-love in her regard, only coolness born of introspection.
“And what about me? Is it important for me? You don’t care about me, do you? Your tricks won’t do anything for me, will they? But you don’t care about that so long as the rest get off on Mars properly conditioned. They’ll be used to the cold and no water, they’ll be brave, and used to dim light and I expect other things. But me, I’ll never accept these things because I know you tricked us and I hate you for it. If I get out of here I’ll tell everyone.”
McPrince stared at her in some uncertainty. It was not that she was afraid of the effect any revelations Miriam might make to the rest of the brides once the accidents were over. The strengthening of their moral fiber would already have been achieved and their body adaptation to Martian physical conditions well underway and not to be altered by words. What concerned her was Miriam’s future. To be a settler on Mars was unlike being a settler on Earth; there was no way back; no mules crossed space, no buses, no ships; all that got back to Earth was Martian moss packed in the rooms now occupied by the women.
It was useless to dream of returning to Earth. Anyone who yearned for home was doomed to a life of misery more hopeless than any prisoner in any isolated prison on Earth. If Miriam was put down on Mars believing she had been callously used as a pawn in some incomprehensible game she would pine away within the year for Earth and her mother.
Somehow her fiber had to be stiffened, her courage and confidence increased, her spirit made to look forward rather than backward. Physically she was being hardened whether she liked it or not, and after the next ‘accident’ she would be well on the way to being perfectly adapted to current Martian conditions, but no girl likes being molded in a laboratory experiment like a caged rat, changed permanently just for the privilege of grubbing a living with some sweaty male on Mars.
It had been realized that no ordinary girl would volunteer to go through the physical hardships involved for such a small reward, and after some trial and error the scheme of introducing the conditions by ‘accident’ was conceived. It both hardened the girls to the harsh physical conditions and also made them able to face up to crisis. Both were important, but on a world still only barely able to support terrestrials, crises were part of the daily diet and courage and steadiness as important as health. Miriam Chokewater had to have this stiffness of backbone. Medical officer McPrince went out and had a long discussion with Nurse Julie Smith.