Margaret St. Clair (2 page)

“Yes. You know how the Martians are —a time for everyt hing, and lots of festivals. Well, this is the time when they make business arrangements for all next year. Treaties, too, affairs of state, that sort of thing. And it winds up with a big celebration with pretty girls, perfume carts, soma fountains in the iters, all the fancy stuff you can think of. As I say, I hate to miss it, but I’m going starside. Transshipping in a sealed tube so I won’t have to go through the octroi.” He drank from his glass. “Have another drink.”

“No, thank you, I —”

“Oh, a little more phlomis won’t hurt you. Here, barman, two more of the same …”

Several drinks later Farnsworth said, “Say, Baker, could you do me a favor?”

“Well I —” George started. Phlomis had a little dulled his innate caution, but he was still wary.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Farnsworth drew a lucite disk from his pocket. “This is for a man that works at the Topaz Rhyoorg, just on the edge of the spaceport. You may know him —his name’s Louey Varth. His sister Myrtle asked me to give this to him when I was on Mars, and like a gowk I promised, forgetting I wouldn’t be off ship. It’s a picture of her little girl.”

George inspected the three-dimensional image of the spindly blonde child which was imbedded in the clear material. “Well, I suppose —”

The ship’s announcing system began to blare excitedly. “George Baker report at once in cabin 1 IB. George Baker report at once in cabin 1 IB. On the double!”

Eleven-B was Bill’s cabin. George sprang to his feet, shoving the lucite disk absently into his po cket. “Got to go,” he said. Mr. Farnsworth looked after him.

It did not need the medical officer’s pursed lips to tell George that Bill was worse. Bill’s pupils were dilated, his breathing shallow and rough. Crusts had formed on his lip. George felt a st ab of guilt, mixed with surprise.

“The steward called me,” the medical officer explained rather severely. “The patient’s condition frightened him. In my opinion, he should be hospitalized —with your consent, of course. I’ve given a him a sedative.” The medical officer, Daniel, was a stiff little man with a great respect for professional etiquette. He changed his tunic three times daily when the Cyniscus was in space, and flirted warily with the lady passengers. He and George had always disliked each othe r.

“He had the classical syndrome for kenoalgia,” George murmured defensively.

“Kenoalgia, certainly,” Daniel snapped. “But he’s also suffering from food poisoning of the gamma type.”

“Want to talk to George,” Bill panted, looking up anxiously.
“Got to talk to George. Get out, doc. Got to talk to George.” His forehead was wet.

Daniel took Bill’s circulatory reading and frowned. “Five minutes,” he warned. “No more.” His stiff blue back expressing disapproval of George’s mistaken diagnosis, he went ou t.

“Listen, George,” Bill croaked weakly when the door had closed, “you got to deliver the pig.”

“Pig?” George answered incredulously. “Now, now, don’t worry. You’ll be all right.”

“I’m not delirious,” Bill answered with a flare of spirit. “Just damn ed sick. The pig’s over there, in that little brown box.

“I’m working on a private courier service —‘speed and secrecy guaranteed’ —between Terra and the planets, and that pig is what I have to deliver on this trip. If I don’t deliver it, I’ll be black listed. You’ve got to deliver it for me.”

Still incredulous but obedient to Bill’s pointing finger, George got the box and opened it. He was greeted by a fishy smell and a feeble oink. Inside, a small blue animal some twenty centimeters long, regarded hi m comatosely.

“It’s some kind of cult object,” Bill explained. “One of those Martian cults.” He stopped to retch. “You spray it with deodorant to keep it from smelling. But you don’t have to feed it or anything.”

“But —”

“Listen, if you deliver it you can have half my bonus, and then you can marry Darleen. You said she’d marry you if only you had more in the bank. You won’t get into any trouble with the pig. It’s not like it was valuable.”

Daniel knocked on the door. “Two minutes more,” he said warn ingly.

“You’re to give it to a man with a black camellia in his buttonhole you’ll meet at the north edge of the spacepo rt at 23 on Thursday, Martian time.” Bill’s words were coming more and more slowly: the sedative Daniel had given him seemed to be taking effect. “He’s the cult’s representative. You … go … up to him … and … and say, ‘Perfumed Mars, planet of perfu mes,’ and he’ll … he’ll …”

Bill’s eyelids fluttered and sank. George shook him gently without result. He was out like a light.

Daniel opened the door. “Ah, I see he’s quiet now,” he said, coming in. “I trust you agree he should be put in the hospital.”

“Oh, certainly,” George replied. He had picked up the pig’s carrying case and was holding it under one arm as he tried to think. “I quite agree with you.”

Daniel relaxed a little. He called two stewards. Bill was loaded on a stretcher and carried out into the hall. As the stretcher rounded the door post one of the stewards stumbled and Bill got a jar that made the teeth click audibly in his head. His eyes opened. He was looking straight at George. “Pig,” he said insistently, “pig.” He groaned and then lapsed into unconsciousness again.

He’d have to deliver the pig now, George thought. Bill’s last words had been like the injunction of a dying man, impossible to disobey. Besides, they were cousins, Bill’s job depe nded on it, and there was the not inconsiderable matter of the bonus and Darleen. Professionally speaking, George had noticed a lack of euphoria in himself lately. It must be caused by his frustrated feeling for the girl.

All the same it was a mess. Mars was less than 42 hours away, and Bill might be unconscious until after they landed. In that case, George would have to deliver the pig (at 23, to a man wearing a black camellia) without knowing the countersign. He hated messy things. It was a good thing t he pig wasn’t valuable.

He rooted around in Bill’s baggage until he found the deodorant spray and then carried it and the pig to his own cabin. As he opened the door the polka-dotted purple zygodactyl he had bought the last time they touched at Venus ope ned one eye and stared evilly at him. “You’ll be sorry!” it croaked. “You’ll be sorry!” It was the only thing George had ever been able to teach the bird to say; it had been funny at first, but George was beginning to be tired of it. “You’ll be sorry,” th e zygodactyl went on, working itself up into a verbal frenzy, “you’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry!”

George threw a book at it to make it shut up. Then he pulled out his bunk to its fullest extent, sat down on it, and looked at the pig.

His first impression, that it was alive, seemed to be correct. When he punched it with his finger it made a weak noise, and even moved its mouth at him. But it was a sluggish, low-grade kind of life. The pig appeared to be basically a collection of fatty ti s sue surrounded with a pale blue skin. Considering its size it might have been an attractive, appealing little animal, but it wasn’t. It had no personality.

It was beginning to smell. George gave it a good spraying and bent to put it in his foot locker. He hesitated. Bill had said it wasn’t valuable, but there was something funny about Bill’s food poisoning, when you considered it. Nobody else on the ship had been affected. You never could tell with religious things.

The cabin was poor in hiding places. In the end George loosened one of the plastitiles of the ceiling with a multi-tool and shoved the pig up in the space behind. It would get plenty of air there, at any rate. He anchored the tile in place again with a sliver of preemex.

He had other patients to see to. He couldn’t spend all day on Bill’s pig. He took one last look at the ceiling and then went out. As he closed the door the zygodactyl croaked, “You’ll be sorry!” at him.

In the forty-one and a third hours before the
Cyniscus put in at Marsp ort, George’s cabin was searched twice without the pig’s, apparently, being discovered. George made attempt after attempt to see Bill, but his cousin was always receiving sedation. It was not until the ship was almost in Mars’ atmosphere that he was admitt ed to the hospital ward.

Bill, looking extremely wan, was lying on one pillow with a refrigerator pack on the back of his head. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi. You look terrible. Say, what’s the countersign?”

Bill frowned. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’ve tried and tried to think, but somehow I can’t remember.”

“Mental block, caused by anxiety,” George barked professionally. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it out of you in no time under deep hypnosis.”

The red-headed nurse who had been hovering in the background came up. “You’ll have to go if you excite him,” she said warningly.

Bill waved her aside with one thin hand. “It doesn’t matter, though,” he said. “Give the pig to the man with the black camellia. It’s not valuable.”

“My cabin’s been searched twice.”

“You’re imagining it. Martian cults aren’t important, the way religion is on Earth. You know how Martians are —extremely sane, realistic, unimaginative. Only a little lunatic fringe is interested in their cults. Nobody’s trying to get the pig away from you.” Bill had majored in Martian subjects at the University.

“Well, if it’s so unimportant, why did they send it from Terra with a private courier?”

“Save time, I guess. You know how many complaints there’ve been about the slowness of the regula r mail. I don’t think the cult has more than six members all told. But don’t you worry about it. You deliver the pig.”

The nurse came up and took Bill’s circulatory reading. She pursed her lips. “You’ll have to go,” she said to George.

The north side of the spaceport was near the drainage pits. As George approached it through the flickering shadows of the Martian night there seemed to be echoes everywhere. He felt tense and keyed up. Of course Bill was right, and nobody was trying to get the pig. On th e other hand, he had always found his cousin’s judgment brash and overconfident. He shifted the pig’s carrying case under his arm, a movement which added a taint of fish to the perfumed Martian breeze, and swallowed. His throat was dry.

The man with the black camellia was waiting about fifty meters further on, in the shadow of one of the triple cranes. George went up to him, his footfalls echoing slowly on the rhodium-colored pave. He cleared his throat. “Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” he said.

“Huh?” the man said after a minute. He was a big man, of a typically somatotonic build, and he put a world of interrogation into the sound.

“Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” George repeated, beginning to grow warm around the ears.

“Run along, sonny,” the man said indulgently. He turned his head to one side for a leisurely expectoration. George saw, in the skipping light of Phobos, that what he had thought was a black camellia was, in fact, one of the half-animal Dryland epiphytes which Martian geeksters liked to wear. “Run along,” the somatotonic type repeated. “You got the wrong tzintz. Do I look like I’d be interested in sightseeing tours?”

His face hot, George beat a retreat. Of all the fool things to have to go up and say to a stranger! “Perfumed Ma rs, planet —” Bah! As far as he was concerned, Mars and the pig both stank.

A good deal farther on he encountered the second man. He was a small, dark tzintz (Martian for “bozo”) with a thin little goatee. George circled around him warily, making sure th at he was really wearing a camellia and that it really was black, before he spoke.

“Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” he said. “Rubbledyrubbledryrubbledlyrube,” the stranger said, his head bent.

George paused. A suspicion was stirring in his mind. What the man had answered might have been Old Martian, of course, but surely the countersign would have been in Terrese, like the sign itself. And anyhow, it hadn’t sounded like a language at all, just mumbling.

“Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” he said for the fourth time that night.

“Rubbledlvrube,” the thin dark tzintz answered, more briefly. He stuck out his hand.

George drew back. There was a fishy odor about this. It smelled as bad as the pig. “No you don’t,” he snapped. I —”

The next thing he knew he was lying at the bottom of one of the drainage pits, a lump as big as a rhea egg on his head. From above someone was speaking to him.

“Be reasonable!” the voice said scoldingly . “How do you expect me to pull you up if you won’t cooperate? Do be reasonable!”

Something brushed George lightly on the face. He sat up, rubbing the lump on his head and trying not to groan.

“That’s better,” the voice said encouragingly. “Now you’re being reasonable. The next time I cast for you with the shari, take hold of the mesh and pull yourself up.”

Once more there came a light touch on George’s face. He looked up. A girl was leaning over the edge of the drainage pit, trailing her shari at him.

The shari is an invariable part of the costume of Martian women of every class. A long, strong, slender net, as richly ornamented as the means of its owner will allow, it is used to carry parcels, tie up the hair, transport young children, and as an emergency brassiere. A Martian woman would feel naked without it and, by Terrestrial standards, she very nearly would be. This was the first time George had ever been asked to climb up one. As it trailed over his face again he hooked his fingers in it and pulled himself upright.

“That’s fine!” the girl cried. Even in the poor light he could see that she was a good-looking girl —though not, of course, as pretty as Darleen. Darleen was like a picture, never a hair out of place. “You hold on, and I’ll tie it around the winch.”

Still holding the shari she got lightly to her feet and whirled off into the darkness. “Hook your fingers and toes in the mesh!” she called back. George obeyed. After a moment the shari began to move slowly upward. Obviously the girl had tied its end to a hand winch and was pulling him up. He only hop e d the shari wouldn’t break.

He stepped out on the level just as the mesh of the shari gave an ominous creak. He was still disentangling himself from it when the girl came back. She was panting a little and her dark red hair was disarranged. “Tore my shar i some,” she observed ruefully, taking the net from George. She smoothed her hair with a skillful hand, settled the shari around her head so that it fell in a glinting golden cascade over her nape, and drew the shari’s end through her girdle in front to f o rm a garment which, if not exactly modest, was adequate.