Harry Phillips was the same as ever, kindly and slow and phlegmatic. He couldn't smoke a pipe or drink a reflective half pint of beer any more, but that difficulty, which one might have thought would have taken half the savor out of life for him, didn't seem to bother him at all.
"Guess if I had a smoke now I'd wonder what I ever saw in tobacco," he said philosophically. "And I don't think I'd like the taste of beer any more. Been telling myself that, anyway. I've got more than halfway to believing it, too."
I tried several times to get Harry transferred to an agricultural unit, where he would be much more useful. However, the work party system was working so well that nobody wanted to break up any of the units if it could be helped. And Harry said that in the circumstances he'd just as soon stay with us.
I didn't see much of little Bessie these days. Young children were given jobs at the research station, making things, sorting things, running errands. It would be a long time yet before there was school again for the children. When there was, Leslie and Caroline would be back at their old jobs, teaching.
Anyway, I knew Bessie would be happy. She always was.
That left only Betty and Morgan.
Betty put up a brave show. She always pretended she was perfectly happy and that Morgan and she got on very much as Leslie and I did, or the Stowes. We pretended to believe it.
Morgan continued to do only what he had to, sketchily, resentfully, without pride or interest in it. He couldn't be trusted to do anything on his own.
"Listen, Morgan," I said to him on one occasion. "Nobody's trying to make you do more than your fair share. I know you don't want to do this -- think any of us do? Why we're doing it is so that we can all be comfortable again. We -- "
"Shut up," said Morgan harshly. "I may have to work, but I don't have to listen to you."
"What's gone sour in you, Morgan?" I asked curiously. "Tell me -- was I right to pick you for my lifeship crew, or did I make a mistake? Were you a cheap chiseler back on Earth too?"
That got under his skin. He flushed a dull red down to his shoulders. I was glad to see that, not because I wanted to get under his skin but because a man isn't hopeless so long as you can.
He didn't answer.
"What's eating you, Morgan?" I persisted.
"I'll tell you," he said suddenly, passionately. "I've heard you talk about human rights, but you still act the little dictator. You always have. We had to lick your boots back in Simsville -- you had all the power, with nobody to check on you. On the lifeship you kept on being the big boss. Well, now I'm good and sick of you. I'm sick of being pushed around and worked like a slave and never being left alone. I didn't come here to be a slave. Who are you to talk about rights?"
I didn't remember talking about human rights, but I might have, and this was obviously one of Morgan's sore spots. I could tell that from the way he suddenly dragged the question of human rights from nowhere and got angry about it.
"Sometimes human rights have to be suspended for a bit," I said coolly. "Particularly such human rights as sitting on your backside and letting other people do the work."
Betty came along then. I tried to continue the discussion, but Morgan so obviously resented my bawling him out in front of Betty, as he considered it, that I shrugged and left them.
There was something in what he said about my being a dictator. I had to be. When things are grim, people have to be put in charge, people who say "Jump" and make sure everyone jumps without reporting in triplicate on their methods to some central bureau of justice.
The truth, I suspected, was not that Morgan was worried over the principle of the thing, as Sammy, say, might have been. Morgan didn't really mind someone giving the orders and cracking the whip to make sure they were immediately obeyed.
Morgan wanted to crack the whip himself.
I referred to the only law there was higher than the lieutenants -- the council Sammy had told me about when I was still in the hospital. His description hadn't been unfair. Winant was governed by the original colony committee, plus the leaders who had emerged from the complements of the big spaceships, plus a few of the lieutenants themselves -- never very many, not because we didn't all have the right to sit in on council meetings, but because there were seldom very many of us free to do so.
The council's advice on Morgan was merely: "Beat him. Starve him." It wasn't inhuman advice, it was inevitable. We were still fighting for our lives on Mars. Anyone among us who didn't pull his weight had to be kicked in the teeth until he did.
I tried docking Morgan's rations, without effect. Betty, I knew, was sharing hers with him, and I could hardly punish her too. I tried to make her see that Morgan must be brought into line, but as Leslie said: "That argument wouldn't have any effect on me, Bill, so why should it sway Betty?"
Sammy was surprised I didn't try the other suggestion. "I always thought you were a hard nut, Bill," he said. "But now when Morgan needs a swift kick in the pants, you won't give it to him."
I shrugged. "I'd beat anyone else, including you," I told him, "but I don't think it'll do Morgan the slightest good. He'll only resent it, hate me, hate everybody, and try to get even."
"He's doing that anyway," said Sammy, "so I don't see what harm it can do."
Morgan had taken up with an old acquaintance of mine, Alec Ritchie, who had just been discharged from the hospital with his leg in a cast. I remembered Ritchie showing interest in anyone who made a nuisance of himself.
"I never liked Ritchie," Sammy told Leslie and me. "Now that he and Morgan are hanging around together I know I was right."
I grinned. "Talk about bias," I said.
"No, I'm talking about Ritchie. Another thing. I don't like tbe way Morgan's been looking at Aileen Ritchie."
"Why, are you casting covetous eyes on Aileen?" demanded Leslie, interested.
"Just the words I was looking for," said Sammy. "Not that I am. Morgan is."
"Is what?"
"Casting covetous eyes on Aileen Ritchie."
"But he can't . . ." Suddenly Leslie realized that he could. Marriage didn't really count any more. Strictly, Betty and Morgan weren't married anyway. Neither were Leslie and I.
"Oh, Lord," I said, seeing more trouble.
"That would be the end of Betty," said Leslie vehemently. "She'd kill herself. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. The poor kid still worships the ground Morgan treads on."
"I know," said Sammy. "That's why I don't like it."
"But Aileen wouldn't be such a fool . . ."
"Let's hope not," I said. "But frankly I don't see any happiness for Betty until Morgan does leave her. She certainly isn't happy with him."
We were uncomfortably silent after that. There was nothing anyone could do about Betty. Hers was one of those purely private tragedies which no one else can share or understand, and which most people prefer not to see.
I wondered what Ritchie could possibly want with Morgan.
4
Occasionally as the weeks passed I remembered Ritchie's words and wondered if there was anyone among the fugitives from Earth who was just waiting for a chance to step in and take over Winant. It was possible. It made too much sense.
The big, clumsy, badly constituted council was all that was needed while everyone was still working fourteen hours a day. Keep people busy enough and they don't need a government. They don't need much law either.
Eventually, however, the situation would change. And what was being done to prepare for the time when we were no longer concerned merely with staying alive?
Nothing.
Nothing, at any rate, officially. Ritchie, of course, would be preparing. I didn't know anything of what his schemes would be, but I knew there would be schemes, all with the same object -- the greatest possible power, success, comfort, safety, and freedom for Alec Ritchie.
And if there was one Alec Ritchie, there must be more. Possibly Ritchie himself would be a complete failure, his schemes collapsing about him in ruin. But some other smart Alec
, some bigger and shrewder Ritchie, might even now be planning a future the council didn't dream of, yet a future that could swallow ours. Ritchie had put it plainly and neatly, and possibly even truly. I'd seen something of the sort happen on Earth, often.
The slow, patient, stupid peasant spends forty years saving enough to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life. And the smart, smooth, practiced con man spends forty minutes taking it away from him.
The small child slowly gathers a fine collection of shells. The bigger child acquires the whole collection by the simple method of taking it from him.
It's not as easy to take over a community like Winant as it is to take shells from a small child. Of course not. But does the peasant expect to lose his money? Does the child expect to lose his shells? No, and we were putting ourselves in line by not expecting anyone to become a dictator in Winant.
At that point I usually laughed at myself and thought of some more pleasant aspect of the future, like whether we were going to have a son or a daughter, and what we were going to call him or her.
There was no money in the settlement, and a lot of people, myself included, thought we could get on very nicely without it. When the so-called labor units came in, however, we lieutenants had to take notice of them. There were different kinds of labor units at first. The root idea behind them all was that people who wanted something made promises of one kind or another, the prospective seller insisted on having them in writing, and the buyer drew up a contract and signed it.
And before we knew it we had money again.
The principal thing that could replace money, of course, was service. People would promise, in return for something, that when they were able they would do some job or other. Sometimes the promise was to replace the article at some future date with another of slightly better quality. These promises were written down and became, inevitably, negotiable.
When we realized we had to do something about this innovation we were already too late to catch the first profiteers of the new settlement. Some cunning characters had been quick to realize the possibility of gain in this system. With their uncanny instinct for profit they had sold all they had to sell, plus a lot that they didn't, exchanged the tokens they gained for others, gave out promises of their own, shuffled their gains about with the magical sleight of hand of the brilliant businessman, sold them to the right people at the right moment, bought back their own promises, and generally kept things on the move, with each move meaning a little more in their own pockets. It was they who flooded the market with bad currency -- promises that could never be fulfilled, made by people who would promise anything -- while the real, hard cash, the tokens of the people who kept their word, was in their pockets.
We saw we couldn't stop this practice, we could only check it, standardize and administer it. We'd have liked to cancel all previous transactions, but we couldn't.
Lieutenants became bankers along with all the other things they had to do. Came the one-labor unit, representing certain stated service, the five-labor unit and the ten. We forbade anything above the ten, at first. Labor unit became labit, then laby. We had abandoned dollars, francs, pounds, marks, pesos, lire, rupees, kronen, rubles, and acquired, to replace them all, the laby. Every laby had to represent a genuine promise of service, and was countersigned by a lieutenant. It wasn't long before we were using watermarked paper, and money was back.
Close on the heels of this came another new factor connected with it.
Morgan didn't appear to work one day on the building we were erecting, but someone, a Czechoslovakian who spoke very little English, came in his place. On investigating I found he'd been paid to do Morgan's job. He was satisfied; he was a tough, honest fellow who could do two men's work. One man's work he had to do for nothing, but he could get money for the extra work he did. He must somehow have arranged his freedom from his own party, by doing three days' work in two, perhaps.
I couldn't do a thing. I didn't know where Morgan got the money -- he wasn't the kind of smart businessman who could take advantage of any opportunity to line his pockets -- but I could guess. Alec Ritchie, I was certain, was the kind of smart businessman who could take advantage of any opportunity to line his pockets, and had.
That day was notable for more than the reintroduction of paid service.
Group 94 was being transferred to the excavations, now well advanced, and three of us went on ahead to see what we were going to have to do, while the rest, minus Morgan and plus his hired hand, carried on at the old job under Sammy. The three who went were Leslie, Betty, and I.
Betty seemed unnaturally gay. She wasn't a talker as a rule, but on this occasion she talked so much that Leslie and I could hardly get a word in. I caught Leslie's inquiring glance once or twice, and wondered whether to ask Betty bluntly what the matter was. It would be something to do with Morgan, of course.
However, Leslie suddenly asked, when Betty stopped talking for a moment: "Are you feeling all right, Betty?"
Leslie must have seen things I missed. I hadn't noticed anything physically wrong with Betty. But I knew Leslie was on the right track when Betty said swiftly:
"No, it's just the air pressure. I'm all right."
Human beings always have to have a handy excuse for everything, and on Mars the reduced air pressure was blamed for a lot of things it didn't do. Mars really had a very thick envelope of air, much thicker than anyone had thought before the first ship reached Mars. The only thing Mars couldn't do in this respect was make the air weigh so much. Mars had a surprisingly high air pressure, but it was well short of what we were used to.
Knowing this, people used it as an excuse for being tired, or stiff, or having a headache, or not wanting to work, or whatever it was they wanted an excuse for. But in actual fact it had scarcely any perceptible effect on us at all, beyond reducing the boiling point of water so that what we called hot water ceased to exist except in a laboratory. Or rather, it had the same effect on all of us. We adapted to it, as we adapted to the reduced gravity. We couldn't help it.
So when Betty made the new but already old excuse I knew she was hiding something.
"You don't feel sick, do you?" I asked.
"No, it's nothing. Forget it."
Obviously it made her feel worse when we talked about it. I noticed now that she was a little unsteady on her feet. Since she wanted to talk about something else, anything else, we let her do it.
About two minutes later she reeled in a sudden gust of wind. I caught her, quite gently, and steadied her. But at my touch she stiffened and collapsed in a faint.
"Leslie," I said, "have a look at her. She fainted when I put my arm around her."
I paced about as Leslie bent over the girl. I was hoping fervently that this was nothing over which I would have to take action. I was quite sure that what I'd told Sammy about Morgan was right. The only hope for Morgan was that bit by bit he could be made to realize clearly and plainly what he was doing and see just how that conduct fitted, or didn't fit, in the fabric of the fight for existence of a tiny remnant of all the peoples of Earth.
I heard Leslie catch her breath sharply and knew that ignoring this wasn't going to be possible.
"I think you'd better have a look at her, Bill," said Leslie. There was fury in her voice which I had never heard before.
There was no sign of Betty's pregnancy yet. Her belly was thin and flat, and it was one big angry bruise. There was hardly a square inch of clear, undamaged skin below the waist. It was no surprise at all that Betty had fainted at a touch. How she could have come by those injuries I found it difficult to guess. I didn't think merely pounding her with a fist could have done that.
Leslie was too angry to speak. I wasn't angry, after one wild surge of rage, just tired, disappointed, and sorry. The man who could do that could do anything. He could easily have killed Betty; the fact that she was able to walk about and pretend nothing had happened to her wasn't his fault.
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