One in 300 (27 page)

Betty wasn't going to do any rebuilding. She didn't have Leslie's capacity
for that. What wouldn't have broken Leslie or Aileen or Caroline had broken
Betty once and for all, beyond repair. We knew that, and didn't want to talk
about it.

 

 

Presently Leslie deliberately dragged her mind and mine off Betty.

 

 

"Now we must see about giving Pat a little brother," she said brightly.

 

 

I protested. I had no quarrel with the idea in general, I said -- not in
the least. "But I want to have my beautiful wife just the way she is for
a little while," I added.

 

 

I hadn't told her what Ritchie had said. I didn't see what good it would do
to tell her.

 

 

 

 

A few days after Leslie came back to work, the food in the settlement
began to improve. There could have been a general improvement before
if all the extra supplies hadn't been passed on to pregnant women. Now
there weren't nearly so many, and the diet of Winant in general siowly
improved in both quantity and variety.

 

 

The exploration parties had paid off. They found no vast tracts of arable
land, certainly, but they found a lot of little bits. Quite a few groups
were taken away to work elsewhere -- by spaceship, of course. That was
the only means of transport we had.

 

 

The cattle were allowed to breed, a few of the older bulls were slaughtered,
and there was a little fresh meat at last. Eggs remained in short supply for
a while as chickens were hatched. There still was scarcely any milk, but it
would be only a matter of time before there was plenty for everybody.

 

 

The weather was becoming much more predictable. For one thing, the climate
of Mars was still settling after the big change that had come over it.
For another, we were becoming more used to the signs, and what had been,
at first, storms completely without warning now gave us enough advance
information to enable us to gauge their intensity.

 

 

We eased off a little in our work. It was too hot in mid-summer, as it
was now, to carry on with the same backbreaking labor. And the urgency
wasn't as great now. We had turned the corner as far as the agricultural
and accommodation problems were concerned.

 

 

Instead of devoting all our energies to providing rough-and-ready new
accommodation, we now had half our force employed on refining what had
been started. Slowly the cliffs were being faced with concrete, the
various levels reinforced, lined, floored. We were no longer primitive
cave dwellers. Our flats were beginning to resemble what we had been used
to back on Earth. We couldn't paper our walls or finish them in wood,
and we had no material for curtains or slip covers. But we had plenty of
plaster and paint, and gradually the right plastics were being evolved
to replace the cloth and leather we wouldn't have for a long time.

 

 

Landmark after landmark was passed. We had electric light long before we
had water closets and taps and baths. However, these came at last. For a
time we had electric radiators in the rooms. Then these disappeared and
the whole block of flats had an efficient electric heating system. Big
windows were put into the front rooms. None of them opened. We weren't
going to make the mistake that had been made so often in Earth buildings,
the mistake of having two independent and incompatible ventilation
systems.

 

 

There were no outside staircases. At one time we had had to climb to our
caves over the cliff face, and in high winds two or three people had
been blown off the crude ladders and killed. Now there were ten broad
stairways in the interior of the block, behind the flats. Soon there
would be elevators.

 

 

Old maids' hostel was cleared away -- there weren't many spinsters left.
We now had five thousand flats at least started, some of them almost
finished.

 

 

The future would have been bright if it hadn't been for Ritchie. He was
still working assiduously at his self-appointed job of undermining
everything that was done, with considerable success. I saw that clearly,
now that I had stopped underestimating him.

 

 

The work parties were gradually dissolving. I hardly ever saw Morgan now.
I knew he was with Ritchie most of the time. And Aileen didn't have to
have much to do with 92 or with Ritchie. Occasionally PLs had to report
on their parties, and they were still held responsible for their people.
However, the emergency period being almost over, there was more freedom
for everyone. Whether it was a good thing or not, our daily life was
becoming more and more like what it had been on Earth.

 

 

In the council it was becoming harder and harder to get anyone to commit
himself over Ritchie. I could understand that only too well. I was only
one of many PLs who didn't want to oppose him too conspicuously. I didn't
fawn on him. There was no pretense that I approved of him in any way.

 

 

But I didn't dare risk Leslie and Pat.

 

 

Though Ritchie was as strong as an ox, he had never done any work in Winant.
First there had been his broken leg, and when that was no longer an excuse
he had got round a doctor and had himself declared unfit for hard manual
labor. Later still he had too much power for anyone to be able to do
anything about him.

 

 

His top-floor flat was now a well-appointed suite, at least five times
as luxurious as any other dwelling in Winant. With him or near him lived
Morgan and a dozen other men whom he seemed to control absolutely.

 

 

The effect of the luxury in which Ritchie lived was much more serious
than it appeared on the surface. Everyone knew that Ritchie had started
off level with them. They saw the gulf that had opened between him and
them, and resented him, hated him, feared him, admired him, envied him.

 

 

Only two others in the whole community had accomplished anything remotely
resembling what Ritchie had accomplished. They were Giuseppe Bonelli and
PL Smythe, both opportunists like Ritchie, though not in the same class.

 

 

However, it's not worth saying much about Bonelli and Smythe, for just about
the time when they were coming into prominence, Ritchie had them murdered.

 

 

Just like that.

 

 

This time, of course, Ritchie himself had an absolutely unshakable alibi.
He had been on his sunroof with twenty other people, hand-picked as
reliable witnesses. Morgan didn't have as good a natural alibi, but he
had a perfectly sound bought one.

 

 

Of course we were fools to let Ritchie get away with it. We should have
strung him up without trial if we could. But who was going to be the
ringleader in a scheme like that, which might fail? Who was going to be
known as the man who tried to get Ritchie hanged?

 

 

Not I.

 

 

One evening I met Morgan in the passages, and to my astonishment he grinned
at me. I didn't want to have anything to do with him, but I was so surprised
I stopped.

 

 

"Okay, Bill," he said. "We fought long enough."

 

 

I waited.

 

 

"You brought me here," he went on, "and I'm grateful. I didn't like you
when you could push me around. Now you can't. No one can. You can shake
or not, as you like, and I don't give a damn."

 

 

He held out his hand.

 

 

"I'd shake, Morgan," I said, "if I thought we could both really mean it."

 

 

"What do you mean?" he asked quickly, with a flash of the old resentment.

 

 

"I don't think you can honestly shake hands in friendship with anybody
any more, Morgan. And I'm sorry for it."

 

 

"I've got plenty of friends," he snapped.

 

 

I shrugged. "No doubt."

 

 

Quickly he recovered his good humor. The whole act was obviously based
on Ritchie. Morgan wasn't with Ritchie because he was afraid of him,
but because he admired him. Ritchie was all he wanted to be. And if
Ritchie never took offense, Morgan wanted never to take offense either.

 

 

"All right," he said. "But there's no reason why we should snarl every time
we see each other, is there?"

 

 

"None at all," I said civilly. "I'm not snarling."

 

 

And then on impulse I made what I knew was my last appeal to Morgan.

 

 

"Morgan," I said, "if you're carrying on the way you're doing because
you think it's too late to do anything else -- don't. You can always
start again. Always."

 

 

"You mean -- "

 

 

"I mean if you've killed men, that doesn't mean you must always be a killer.
It's never too late. The people you're moving among now probably sneer
when anyone says anything like that, but sneering at a thing doesn't
make it false. It isn't too late for you, Morgan."

 

 

He hesitated, uncertain. He had lost his angry defiance. He seemed to be
open to reason again, which he hadn't been the last time I talked to him.

 

 

"What could I do?" he asked almost defensively.

 

 

"I don't know. You'd have to find that out for yourself. But you could do
something. And Betty would help you."

 

 

"Betty?" He stared at me for a moment as if he didn't know anybody called
Betty. Then he laughed, not bitterly but with real mirth. "Betty!"
he exclaimed, and laughed again.

 

 

He was still laughing when Betty herself came hurrying upstairs. I looked
at her in surprise. Instead of plain work clothes she wore a soft blouse
and a long, pleated skirt which swung gracefully about her thin legs. She
was very attractive.

 

 

"I was looking for you, Morgan," she said.

 

 

"Okay," he said. "Let's go." He grinned at me, and they went off together.

 

 

I went to our flat, puzzled. The last I knew of Betty and Morgan, just after
she came out of the hospital, they had been complete strangers. Yet they had
gone away arm in arm.

 

 

It looked as if Ritchie had changed his mind, and as if Morgan, knowing
he couldn't have Aileen, was making the best of Betty.

 

 

It looked that way for just six hours. Late that night Aileen came quietly
into our flat with Sammy. Though they were quiet, I knew at once that
something was very wrong.

 

 

"Ritchie has made up his mind," she told us. "I'm to marry Morgan --
marry, you'll notice. I'm to do it willingly or else."

 

 

Leslie started to speak, but Aileen went on in the same controlled voice.
"He didn't stop there. He told me or else what."

 

 

First, Sammy would die. Then Leslie. Then me.

 

 

Ritchie meant it. At first shrewd and careful, he was becoming drunk with
power. He realized he had the power to do almost anything that crossed his
mind -- and what good was power if it wasn't used?

 

 

"He told me," I said. "He does things just to prove he can."

 

 

Aileen nodded. "He got the idea of marrying Betty," she said. "Yes, Betty.
Your Betty. He wants to marry her and make her happy. So he's giving her
everything she asks for, and -- "

 

 

"Betty!" I exclaimed. "Then that's why she went with Morgan. What's her
point of view on this -- marrying Ritchie?"

 

 

Aileen shrugged. "She doesn't care. She doesn't care about anything.
I think she goes to the flat just to be near Morgan. That's over, really --
even for her it's over. But she still has to see him."

 

 

She dismissed Betty with a gesture. "You know," she went on, "it never
crossed my mind until tonight that Ritchie was mad. Even now I don't think
he is, except in that one thing. If you do mad things, even things you
don't want to do, just to show people you can do them, you're crazy,
aren't you?"

 

 

"What happened, Aileen?" Leslie asked.

 

 

"It was a party. They got me there, and Sammy -- "

 

 

"It was easy enough," Sammy said quietly, bitterly. "Morgan came and pointed
a gun at us, and we went."

 

 

"Ritchie doesn't like wild parties," Aileen went on. "But then, you see,
he was showing some friends and a few other PLs and some people he hasn't
quite got in his pocket what he could do. It was the wildest party that
anyone ever threw. Everything happened, short of murder. He keeps his
murders discreet, and there was nothing discreet about this. You were
nearly there, Leslie."

 

 

"Huh?"

 

 

"Oh, you'd have come, just as we went. Somebody suggested getting you to
come and making you dance naked -- "

 

 

"For Pete's sake!"

 

 

"And you'd have done that too. You'd have realized it didn't really matter
beside the threats Ritchie would have used, and meant. But Betty vetoed it.
That was the only crazy thing that was stopped, though, and it was only
half stopped. I had to stand in for you."

 

 

"You don't mean," said Leslie incredulously, "that Ritchie made his own
daughter -- "

 

 

"You're missing the point," said Aileen coolly. "Ritchie is the boss.
Nobody shares his power with him, though he may give in to Betty on a
point or two. I don't matter any more than anyone else. Only he matters --
"

 

 

"He
is
crazy," said Leslie. "I see the pattern, but it's a crazy pattern."

 

 

"Maybe. Anyway, we needn't talk about the other things that happened,
sane or insane. None of that makes any difference any more, and Ritchie
is going to stop being a nuisance or an emperor or a terror or whatever
he is. If nobody else is going to do anything about him, I am."