One in 300

by J. T. McIntosh

  The truth of the matter was that if there was to be law at all there was no way of stopping the rise to power of people like Ritchie. The law is always blind; it protects the honest and the dishonest, the rich and poor, the good and evil, the intelligent and the stupid. And since it's better understood and better applied by the intelligent, the evil, the rich and dishonest people, it always protects them far more than anyone else.

  Morgan, with Ritchie's approval, wanted Aileen. But Aileen very clearly didn't want Morgan. She kept him at arm's length, and Ritchie didn't interfere.

  The Ritchie situation had been inevitable. For the most part the people who had been brought to Mars were as intelligent and co-operative and good-natured as we could have hoped. The choice, however, couldn't be perfect; people like Ritchie and Morgan slipped through.

  We accomplished a tremendous amount in a few months following the storm. When men and women realize that what they're doing is for their own personal safety, the job is liable to be done quickly and well.

  Leslie's arm was completely healed. Like so many women in the settlement, she was doing her last spell of hard work before easing off in the late stages of pregnancy. Leslie was one of those rare women who could continue to be attractive right through pregnancy. Wanting the baby was part of it. Not being unduly concerned about her appearance helped too. But most of the reason was probably that Leslie was attractive independent of being beautiful. She would have been attractive if she had been fat or had gap teeth.

  Twenty thousand is a pretty big labor force, particularly when things are so easy to carry that cranes and trucks are virtually unnecessary. When a force like that is really working together it can accomplish wonders.

  We dug out our cliff and our caves and moved in. At first there were twenty-five so-called flats in a row and eight levels. Then we dug out a similar block at right angles. For the first time since we left Earth a few lucky couples had something resembling a bedroom to themselves. And of course every time someone moved into a flat conditions at the research station became slightly better.

  People are delighted at even a small improvement in their living conditions if there has been no improvement at all for a long time. If they had been sleeping ten in a room, they found it sheer luxury when two went away and there were only eight left.

  We seemed to have turned the corner merely because every month things were better. But there was no serious slacking off. It might be very nice to be sharing a room at the research station with only seven other people, but it would naturally be better still if there were only six in the room.

  Leslie and I had a room to ourselves. It wasn't finished; in fact, by some standards it would have been said to be barely started. It was a little bubble drilled out of the rock. It would eventually be the kitchen of the three-room flat we were at present sharing with two other couples. But we had no complaints; not after months of sleeping in a tiny room at the research station with four other couples.

  The four hundred flats begun so far thus took about twenty-five hundred people. The one big building completed on the surface, already known as the barracks, accommodated seven hundred. A warren of purely temporary caves, corridors, galleries, and cubicles blasted and hewn in one of the cliff faces, which would eventually be cleared away, gave shelter to twelve hundred single men and was thus called bachelors' hall. A similar temporary warren on the fourth side of the pit accommodated eight hundred single women, and was called old maids' hostel, though not generally by the inmates themselves, who had other ideas. The lifeships behind the research station still housed about two thousand, and the other spaceships a further thousand. All that came to eighty-two hundred, leaving not much over ten thousand to be housed at the research station. And since it had been built for seven thousand people, we weren't too badly off all around.

  A day came when we had another storm, not quite so fierce as the great storm, but out of the same stable, and no one was killed. About fifty people were injured. That was all the storm could do. It didn't put work back at all.

  There was general rejoicing. In a few months more we could be ready for another great storm. We should be able to snap our fingers at it.

  Suddenly most of the women were having babies. They all dated from about the same time -- the moment, on the life- ships, when it must have been clear to the lieutenants in charge how little chance there was of landing safely on Mars. It wasn't clear whether these children had been conceived in wild, unreasonable hope or in complete despair.

  Aileen Ritchie came to see us one evening after work.

  "Hello," said Leslie, rather surprised. "You want to see Bill about something?"

  "No," said Aileen. "I trained as a nurse once. I wondered if you could use some help?"

  "Thanks," said Leslie warmly. "Caroline's supposed to be looking after Betty and me, but it won't be long before she has her baby too. We'll be glad of your help."

  All sorts of arrangements had been made to deal with the situation. However, no matter how efficient the arrangements were, there were too many women having babies at once for the comparatively few doctors, nurses, and midwives to deal with them all. The strong, healthy girls like Leslie would have to have their babies with such half-qualifled assistance as they could get. Betty was another matter. She was already at the hospital under the doctors' eyes. Betty's labor wasn't going to be easy at best. She was too thin and frail and narrow-hipped.

  I had had no particular worries about Leslie, largely because she obviously wasn't worried herself. I was glad to see Aileen coming to help, all the same.

  We talked for a long time. Aileen and Leslie had long ago formed one of those casual feminine acquaintanceships which always puzzle men. They didn't seek each other out, and Leslie never mentioned Aileen, yet when they happened to be together there was no restraint between them and any male in their company was apt to feel neglected. They were alike, they understood one another, they didn't have to explain things, and they were friendly without being wildly enthusiastic about each other. Aileen and Leslie acted rather like some sisters-in-law I had known who got on well together but didn't see each other much.

  They certainly had one of those mysterious feminine alliances which exclude all males and quite a few females. Half the time when they were talking I didn't know what was going on. It's good for a man to see his wife as a partner in such an alliance now and then -- keeps him from coming to the dangerous conclusion that he knows all there is to be known about her.

  Another thing is that men together and women together have different standards of what they tell each other and what they don't. There are things men don't tell men and things women don't tell women, but they don't coincide. I was startled at some of the things Aileen and Leslie casually told each other, and puzzled when, obviously by mutual agreement, they avoided things that men would have made no bones about discussing.

  I left them after a bit and looked in on Sammy at bachelors' hall. I told him about Aileen, of course. I always tried to mention Aileen in a favorable light to Sammy, which was easy enough because I had never heard or seen anything against her except that Alec Ritchie was her father. I had no real intention of playing matchmaker, but I could see no reason why Sammy and Aileen shouldn't get together.

  Sammy had been crossed in love, and took it hard. He had never said a word about the incident or the girl -- all I knew about it was what I'd heard from old Harry Phillips. Since then he'd behaved in a perfectly normal, friendly way with Pat Darrell, Leslie, Betty, and every other girl with whom he'd come in contact. But he seemed to have formed no attachments whatever.

  He was pleased with the way things were going, like most of us. "Just two more months without anything serious going wrong," he said jubilantly, "and our troubles will be over."

  "Why this high optimism?" I asked. "Can't you think of anything that might go wrong, Sammy?"

  "I can think of a dozen things, but I don't think any of them are likely."

  So as I left Sammy, thinkin
g Leslie and Aileen had had long enough for their heart-to-heart chat, I was reflecting that things must be even better than I had thought if Sammy was so confident.

  However, Leslie was alone and frowning thoughtfully when I reached our flat. "What's the matter?" I asked.

  "Aileen isn't happy," she told me bluntly.

  "Why not?"

  "She's beginning to hate her father. And she's afraid of Morgan."

  "Aileen? I think she's making a mistake, both times."

  "How do you figure that?"

  "Morgan isn't really big enough to be afraid of. He's a nuisance rather than a real danger."

  Leslie shook her head rather impatiently. "We've been through this already. He's only a nuisance to you. But to Betty or Aileen, or anyone else weaker than himself, he can certainly be a danger. How about Ritchie? Why is it a mistake to hate him?"

  "Nobody likes him, but he doesn't actually interfere with anyone. He hasn't interfered with Aileen, or me, or you, or Sammy, or anyone else we know. If he did it would be different. Why hate a man who leaves you alone, who -- "

  "You're talking nonsense, Bill," said Leslie warmly. "I suppose you'd say if a man threatened you with a gun, that was nothing, that didn't matter, until he shot you?"

  I grinned. "That's hardly an exact parallel, is it, honey?"

  "Maybe I'm not logical," retorted Leslie, "but I'd rather be right than logical, any day. And I think I'm right about Ritchie, and that Aileen has good reason . . . But one thing at a time. Let's go back to Morgan. You say Aileen hasn't any reason to be afraid of him. Suppose you were Aileen. Would you like to be Morgan's girl?"

  "She doesn't have to be."

  Leslie appealed to the heavens. "Look, Bill. Didn't you people realize what you were doing when you abolished marriage?"

  "What?"

  "You were abolishing all sex crimes. There couldn't be any crime connected with sex any more -- rape, adultery, bigamy -- "

  "Hey, wait a minute. Assault's still a crime.

  "Is it? Suppose Morgan just carries Aileen off, like a caveman. Who's to stop him?"

  I started to say something, but Leslie was in full cry. She very rarely got worked up over anything. When she did, however, she could swamp most people. She had quite enough intelligence to make all the right points, when she cared to use it. I could just see her as Portia in the trial scene.

  "Betty doesn't matter," Leslie went on warmly, "since by abolishing marriage you've abolished bigamy. Aileen would say it was assault, Morgan and Ritchie would deny it. And who would Aileen appeal to? Ritchie's her PL. The council wouldn't pay any attention. They haven't any sympathy for people who want to stay single.

  "So any time Ritchie decides to back Morgan, Aileen becomes Morgan's girl whether she likes it or not. Use your imagination, Bill. Don't just say it can't happen. It can. It will. Aileen's already asked to be transferred to some other group, and been turned down. What now?"

  "I told you," I said patiently, "that Aileen didn't have to be Morgan's girl if she didn't want to, and I meant it. She can take Sammy instead."

  "Say that again."

  I did. Curiously, Leslie didn't seem to have thought of that. She hesitated for a moment, put off her stroke. Then she murmured: "That's the first sensible thing you've said."

  Leslie had done us an injustice when she hinted that the lieutenants didn't know what they were doing when they abolished marriage. We were a people struggling to live, a people which must grow stronger and bigger. We couldn't afford to be concerned about the moral niceties of civilization. We weren't going to argue over bigamy, adultery, divorce, remarriage, desertion, and all the rest of it.

  The only thing that did still deserve some attention, we thought, was the case where a man wanted a girl and the girl didn't want him, or vice versa. Sex freedom was all very well, but it had to be freedom for both. Laissez-faire isn't freedom -- it's freedom for the strong, the determined, the persistent, and slavery for everyone else.

  But someone pointed out that if A wanted B and B didn't want A, the answer was for B to find someone else.

  So the PLs were told to deal sternly with assault, but with that principle in mind. In general, it was working very well. If someone, say, assaulted Caroline Stowe (not that that was at all likely, but the law must occasionally deal with hypothetical cases), and Caroline and John Stowe demanded justice, the man concerned would be very, very sorry he'd done it before the PLs concerned were finished with him. However, if some proud, beautiful girl, used to having her own way and determined to keep her figure the way it was, complained indignantly of assault, she was liable to be asked if she had some other man in mind, and if she hadn't, the offender was punished so mildly that he generally wasn't sorry at all.

  I told Leslie some of this and she agreed that the lieutenants hadn't been such fools after all.

  "We can hardly allow people to wait around for years to fall in love," I said. "I don't expect Sammy and Aileen are in love, or anything like it. This is a different kind of community from the one we left, and they both have sense enough to realize it. If they don't dislike each other -- "

  "I'm away ahead of you," said Leslie calmly. "We'll send them out tomorrow night before it gets too cold, to hold hands and generally get acquainted. You talk to Sammy first and I'll talk to Aileen. And maybe we can get the Morrisons in the next room to move out to one of the new flats lower down, more sheltered."

  So after all this time of solitary grieving, drinking, hoping, fearing, and working, Sammy found he had a girl. It was a queer, bittersweet situation, the sort of thing that would naturally happen to Sammy. For there was no pretense about it -- Aileen merely wanted a protector. She still thought she might be forced in the end to take Morgan, and she wanted to devalue herself, like a man gambling away a property because he hated the people who were going to inherit it. She would live with Sammy, but she told him -- in our room, before they went out -- with somewhat unnecessary frankness, I thought:

  "I don't pretend I'm going to love you, Sammy."

  "That's all right," said Sammy with similar frankness, "I don't think I'm going to love you either."

  They laughed. "Well, anyway, you'll be better than Morgan," Aileen observed.

  "If that's the best you can say for me," retorted Sammy, "I want a divorce."

  They may have been more tender under the stars, when they went out to get acquainted. I didn't see how they could help it. When they had gone, I permitted myself for a moment to imagine myself in Sammy's place. . . .

  "Enjoying it, darling?" asked Leslie tartly. I hear I'm not the first man to discover his wife is a telepath.

  "I was just thinking," I said, "that on the whole I'd rather have you. Shall I tell you why?"

  "Yes, please," said Leslie.

  Later she said: "As a matter of fact they've been darned lucky, both of them. I don't know why either of them has been allowed to hang around single for so long, waiting for us to rub their noses together. As for the fact that they hardly know each other -- you always claimed that you weren't in love with me, didn't you?"

  "That," I said, "was when I was young and foolish."

  Sammy and Aileen were as matter-of-fact about living together as they had been about discussing it. The Morrisons didn't move, but another couple near us did, and Sammy and Aileen moved in at once.

  Aileen insisted on taking Sammy's name. "I don't like Hoggan much," she said, "but I like it a lot better than Ritchie."

  That was the first time she made any public admission of how she felt about her father. We didn't follow it up, for she didn't invite discussion of the subject.

  Thereafter she insisted on people calling her Aileen Hoggan and always called her father Ritchie, as if trying to pretend that there was no connection between them.