Podkayne of Mars (12 page)

I suppose it’s all right. They need to get away and Venus needs all the people they can get. But I’m glad Mars Republic doesn’t subsidize immigration, or we would be swamped. We take immigrants but they have to pay their own way and have to deposit return tickets with the PEG board, tickets they can’t cash in for two of our years.

A good thing, too. At least a third of the immigrants who come to Mars just can’t adjust. They get homesick and despondent and use those return tickets to go back to Earth. I can’t understand anyone’s not
liking
Mars, but if they don’t then it’s better if they don’t stay.

I lay there, thinking about such things, a little bit excited and a little bit bored, and mostly wondering why somebody didn’t do something about those poor babies.

The lights had been dimmed and when somebody came up to my shelf I didn’t see who it was at first. “Poddy?” came Girdie’s voice, softly but clearly. “Are you in there?”

“I think so. What’s up, Girdie?” I tried to keep my voice down too.

“Do you know how to change a baby?”

“I certainly do!” Suddenly I wondered how Duncan was doing . . . and realized that I hadn’t really thought about him in
days.
Had he forgotten me? Would he know Grandmaw Poddy the next time he saw her?

“Then come along, chum. There’s work to be done.”

There certainly was! The lowest part of the shelter, four catwalks below my billet and just over the engineering spaces, was cut like a pie into four quarters—sanitary units, two sick bays, for men and for women and both crowded—and jammed into a little corner between the infirmaries was a sorry pretense for a nursery, not more than two meters in any dimension. On three walls of it babies were stacked high in canvas crib baskets snap-hooked to the walls, and more overflowed into the women’s sick bay. A sweeping majority of those babies were crying.

In the crowded middle of this pandemonium two harassed stewardesses were changing babies, working on a barely big enough shelf let down out of one wall. Girdie tapped one of them on the shoulder. “All right, girls, reinforcements have landed. So get some rest and a bite to eat.”

The older one protested feebly, but they were awfully glad to take a break; they backed out and Girdie and I moved in and took over. I don’t know how long we worked, as we never had time to think about it—there was always more than we could do and we never quite got caught up. But it was better than lying on a shelf and staring at another shelf just centimeters above your nose. The worst of it was that there simply wasn’t enough room. I worked with both elbows held in close, to keep from bumping Girdie on one side and a basket crib that was nudging me on the other side.

But I’m not complaining about that. The engineer who designed that shelter into the
Tricorn
had been forced to plan as many people as possible into the smallest possible space; there wasn’t any other way to do it and still give us all enough levels of shielding during a storm. I doubt if he worried much about getting babies changed and dry; he had enough to do just worrying about how to keep them alive.

But you can’t tell that to a baby.

Girdie worked with an easy, no-lost-motions efficiency that surprised me; I would never have guessed that she had ever had her hands on a baby. But she knew what she was doing and was faster than I was. “Where are their mothers?” I asked, meaning: “Why aren’t those lazy slobs down here helping instead of leaving it to the stewardesses and some volunteers?”

Girdie understood me. “Most of them—all of them, maybe—have other small children to keep quiet; they have their hands full. A couple of them went to pieces themselves; they’re in there sleeping it off.” She jerked her head toward the sick bay.

I shut up, as it made sense. You couldn’t possibly take care of an infant properly in one of those shallow niches the passengers were stacked in, and if each mother tried to bring her own baby down here each time, the traffic jam would be indescribable. No, this assembly-line system was necessary. I said, “We’re running out of Disposies.”

“Stacked in a cupboard behind you. Did you see what happened to Mrs. Garcia’s face?”

“Huh?” I squatted and got out more supplies. “You mean Mrs. Royer, don’t you?”

“I mean both of them. But I saw milady Garcia first and got a better look at her, while they were quieting her down. You didn’t see her?”

“No.”

“Sneak a look into the women’s ward first chance you get. Her face is the brightest, most amazing chrome yellow I’ve ever seen in a paint pot, much less on a human face.”

I gasped. “Gracious! I did see Mrs. Royer—bright red instead of yellow. Girdie—what in the world happened to them?”

“I’m fairly sure I know what happened,” Girdie answered slowly, “but no one can figure out
how
it happened.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“The colors tell the story. Those are the exact shades of two of the water-activated dyes used in photography. Know anything about photography, hon?”

“Not much,” I answered. I wasn’t going to admit what little I did know, because Clark is a very accomplished amateur photographer. And I wasn’t going to mention
that,
either!

“Well, surely you’ve seen someone taking snapshots. You pull out the tab and there is your picture—only there’s no picture as yet. Clear as glass. So you dip it in water and slosh it around for about thirty seconds. Still no picture. Then you lay it anywhere in the light and the picture starts to show . . . and when the colors are bright enough to suit you, you cover it up and let it finish drying in darkness, so that the colors won’t get too garish.” Girdie suppressed a chuckle. “From the results, I would say that they didn’t cover their faces in time to stop the process. They probably tried to scrub it off and made it worse.”

I said, in a puzzled tone—and I
was
puzzled, about part of it—“I still don’t see how it could happen.”

“Neither does anybody else. But the Surgeon has a theory. Somebody booby-trapped their washcloths.”

“Huh?”

“Somebody in the ship must have a supply of the pure dyes. That somebody soaked two washcloths in the inactive dyes—colorless, I mean—and dried them carefully, all in total darkness. Then that same somebody sneaked those two prepared washcloths into those two staterooms and substituted them for washcloths they found there on the stateroom wash trays. That last part wouldn’t be hard for anyone with cool nerves—service in the staterooms has been pretty haphazard the last day or two, what with this flap over the radiation storm. Maybe a fresh washcloth appears in your room, maybe it doesn’t—and all the ship’s washcloths and towels are the same pattern. You just wouldn’t know.”

I certainly hope not! I said to myself—and added aloud, “I suppose not.”

“Certainly not. It could be one of the stewardesses—or any of the passengers. But the real mystery is: where did the dyes come from? The ship’s shop doesn’t carry them . . . just the rolls of prepared film . . . and the Surgeon says that he knows enough about chemistry to be willing to stake his life that no one but a master chemist, using a special laboratory, could possibly separate out pure dyes from a roll of film. He thinks, too, that since the dyes aren’t even manufactured on Mars, this somebody must be somebody who came aboard at Earth.” Girdie glanced at me and smiled. “So you’re not a suspect, Poddy. But I am.”

“Why are you a suspect?” (And if I’m not a suspect, then my brother isn’t a suspect!) “Why, that’s silly!”

“Yes, it is . . . because I wouldn’t have known how even if I’d had the dyes. But it isn’t, inasmuch as I could have bought them before I left Earth, and I don’t have reason to like either of those women.”

“I’ve never heard you say a word against them.”

“No, but they’ve said a few thousand words about me—and other people have ears. So I’m a hot suspect, Poddy. But don’t fret about it. I didn’t do it, so there is no possible way to show that I did.” She chuckled, “And I hope they never catch the somebody who did!”

I didn’t even answer, “Me, too!” I could think of one person who might figure out a way to get pure dyes out of a roll of film without a complete chemistry laboratory, and I was checking quickly through my mind every item I had seen when I searched Clark’s room.

There hadn’t been
anything
in Clark’s room which could have been photographic dyes. No, not even film.

Which proves precisely nothing where Clark is concerned. I just hope that he was careful about fingerprints.

 

 

Two other stewardesses came in presently and we fed all the babies, and then Girdie and I managed a sort of a washup and had a snack standing up, and then I went back up to my assigned shelf and surprised myself by falling asleep.

I must have slept three or four hours, because I missed the happenings when Mrs. Dirkson had her baby. She is one of the Terran emigrants to Venus and she shouldn’t have had her baby until long after we reach Venus—I suppose the excitement stirred things up. Anyhow, when she started to groan they carried her down to that dinky infirmary, and Dr. Torland took one look at her and ordered her carried up into the control room because the control room was the only place inside the radiation safe space roomy enough to let him do what needed to be done.

So that’s where the baby was born, on the deck of the control room, right between the chart tank and the computer. Dr. Torland and Captain Darling are godfathers and the senior stewardess is godmother and the baby’s name is “Radiant,” which is a poor pun but rather pretty.

They jury-rigged an incubator for Radiant right there in the control room before they moved Mrs. Dirkson back to the infirmary and gave her something to make her sleep. The baby was still there when I woke up and heard about it.

I decided to take a chance that the Captain was feeling more mellow now, and sneaked up to the control room and stuck my head in. “Could I please see the baby?”

The Captain looked annoyed, then he barely smiled and said, “All right, Poddy. Take a quick look and get out.”

So I did. Radiant masses about a kilo and, frankly, she looks like cat meat, not worth saving. But Dr. Torland says that she is doing well and that she will grow up to be a fine, healthy girl—prettier than I am. I suppose he knows what he is talking about, but if she is ever going to be prettier than I am, she has lots of kilometers to go. She is almost the color of Mrs. Royer and she’s mostly wrinkles.

But no doubt she’ll outgrow it, because she looks like one of the pictures toward the end of the series in a rather goody-goody schoolbook called
The Miracle of Life
—and the earlier pictures in that series were even less appetizing. It is probably just as well that we can’t possibly see babies until they are ready to make their debut, or the human race would lose interest and die out.

It would probably be still better to lay eggs. Human engineering isn’t all that it might be, especially for us female types.

 

 

I went back down where the more mature babies were to see if they needed me. They didn’t, not right then, as the babies had been fed again and a stewardess and a young woman I had never met were on duty and claimed that they had been working only a few minutes. I hung around anyhow, rather than go back up to my shelf. Soon I was pretending to be useful by reaching past the two who really were working and checking the babies, then handing down the ones who needed servicing as quickly as shelf space was cleared.

It speeded things up a little. Presently I pulled a little wiggler out of his basket and was cuddling him; the stewardess looked up and said, “I’m ready for him.”

“Oh, he’s not wet,” I answered. “Or ‘she’ as the case may be. Just lonely and needs loving.”

“We haven’t time for that.”

“I wonder.” The worst thing about the midget nursery was the high noise level. The babies woke each other and egged each other on and the decibels were something fierce. No doubt they were all lonely and probably frightened—I’m sure I would be. “Most of these babies need loving more than they need anything else.”

“They’ve all had their bottles.”

“A bottle can’t cuddle.”

She didn’t answer, just started checking the other infants. But I didn’t think what I had said was silly. A baby can’t understand your words and he doesn’t know where he is if you put him in a strange place, nor what has happened. So he cries. Then he needs to be soothed.

Girdie showed up just then. “Can I help?”

“You certainly can. Here . . . hold this one.”

In a few minutes I rounded up three girls about my age and I ran across Clark prowling around the catwalks instead of staying quietly in his assigned billet so I drafted him, too. He wasn’t exactly eager to volunteer, but doing anything was slightly better than doing nothing; he came along.

I couldn’t use any more help as standing room was almost nonexistent. We worked it only by having two baby-cuddlers sort of back into each of the infirmaries with the mistress of ceremonies (me) standing in the little space at the bottom of the ladder, ready to scrunch in any direction to let people get in and out of the washrooms and up and down the ladder—and with Girdie, because she was tallest, standing back of the two at the changing shelf and dealing out babies, the loudest back to me for further assignment and the wet ones down for service—and vice versa: dry ones back to their baskets unless they started to yell; ones that had fallen asleep from being held and cuddled.

At least seven babies could receive personal attention at once, and sometimes as high as ten or eleven, because at one-tenth gee your feet never get tired and a baby doesn’t weigh anything at all worth mentioning; it was possible to hold one in each arm and sometimes we did.

In ten minutes we had that racket quieted down to an occasional whimper, quickly soothed. I didn’t think Clark would stick it out, but he did—probably because Girdie was part of the team. With a look of grim nobility on his face, the like of which I have never before seen there, he cuddled babies and presently was saying “Kitchy-koo kitchy-koo!” and “There, there, honey bun,” as if he had been doing it all his life. Furthermore, the babies seemed to like him; he could soothe one down and put it to sleep quickest of any of us. Hypnotism, maybe?