“How can I forget? I didn’t think when I married you I would have to buy three wedding rings, one for you one for me, and one for your brother.”
“You’re so ungrateful! Everything you have you owe him.
“I know. Ten years he’s been reminding me of it.”
“. . . And when he met you what were you, a pants presser!”
“And now . . . ?”
“Now you do vests and jackets too.”
“A presser of distinction.”
She did not hear the note of irony in his voice. She was a creature ruled by moods born of what had transpired on the televised soap-operas. This afternoon one of her favorite characters had had another tragedy befall her. It became a simple matter of transposition. She was the character in the soap-opera, Paul, the hero, and Sam, her husband, the villain. . . .
“The least you can do is try to make a success, if not for you, then for me. Ten years Paul has been helping you and what does it mean? You still have to ask him for money.
He did not look at her. He took a forkful of the tasteless meat and chewed it to pulp. Quite suddenly it came to him that a moment of decision had been reached. The hide he had thought so impervious to the jibes and insults of this woman and her brother, had through the onslaught of the years become thin, so that each word she uttered, each sound she made, was like a fiery-tipped needle holding a single drop of vitriol being inserted into him. He could take no more. Once she had been pretty, plump, with sweet mouth and soft skin, but years had coarsened the skin and prettiness and the mouth only looked sweet. And the plumpness was now a gross lazy body.
He hated her.
“ROSE,” he put the fork carefully on the edge of the plate, “I think I’ll go in and watch the news.”
“That’s my life with you! I don’t see you all day and when you come home at night all you want to do is watch the news.”
“It’s hard to see the world from behind a sewing machine,” he said.
“You didn’t eat your dinner, Sam! All day I slaved over a hot stove. Do you know how tired I am . . . ?”
“Do you know how tired I am?” he shouted suddenly. “How sick and tired I am . . . Your brother came in today again with a suit I had made for a customer. “. . . The pants too long, Sam,” he said. “. . . Can’t you learn . . . ?” Well, next month he won’t have to worry about the pants being too long. There won’t be any store to come to!”
Their hate was mutual. He saw it now in her wild-eyed stare. The sudden knowledge gave his heart a lift and brought a smile to his lips. Now he could say what he wanted and leave her and even though he would only go into the next room it would be the same as if it were another world.
“I can’t pay the rent. I told Paul when he rented the store it was in a bad place, but he knows everything, so he paid no attention to what I was saying. Now he’ll have to. Because I’m going to stop being a presser and go back to being a tailor.”
She didn’t smile, so the cruelty could be seen only in her eyes and in her voice: “You, a tailor! Don’t make me laugh! You can’t sew a seam straight! Sam: you make the pants too long!”
THERE WAS a pleasant breeze parting the dusty curtains in the living room. It felt cool against his fevered brow. He noticed his fingers were trembling against the knob and squeezed them tightly on the cold plastic. He lifted his eyes to the screen. There was a serious-faced man, seated at a desk. The man was reading from a single sheet of paper in his right hand:
“. . . There is room for a certain number of handworkers. Among the crafts the Martians have need of and want to make permanent residents of, are tailors . . . .”
He heard the outside door slam and switched the set to another station. Sam knew the sound of the door slam meant Paul Ryan had come home.
He waited tensely for what he knew was coming, for he had no doubt that Rose would tell Paul of their argument . . . .
“What’s this Rose was telling me?” Paul demanded.
“I don’t know what she told you,” Sam said as he got to his feet, “but I’m telling you this. Rose and I are through. And you and I are through. I’m walking out.”
“Well,” Paul said softly. “So you’re through? I’ll say you are. I’m fed up with carrying you around. From now on you’re on your own. We’ll see how far you can go.”
“I know how far I can go,” Sam said. “To Mars . . . .”
Paul’s eyes widened, then narrowed in laughter. “Mars! So you’ve been listening to those damn fool newscasts how they want people to settle there. Sam, the presser, is going to be one of the pioneers. Like those guys with the beards in the covered wagons. Go ahead. But what will you do when they come back and say, ‘Sam, you made the pants too long?’ ”
“I don’t know,” Sam said softly. He was facing Paul now. “Maybe this . . .”
Paul rocked back from the blow Sam gave him. He staggered as his brother-in-law hit him again and fell to the sofa under a third punch.
“. . . Ten years I been wanting to do this, Paul,” Sam said. “And now it’s done. It was worth waiting for.”
But he didn’t hear what Paul said through bleeding lips, as he walked out of the room: “You ain’t through. Just you wait— I’ll get even . . . .”
MR. CAAVA was like all Martians, extremely tall and thin. He spoke perfect English which he had learned through the transposition machine, although he spoke it with an Englishman’s accent. His lean, melancholy face with its sad eyes was thrust a little forward in attention to what the thick-chested man with the bulldog face was saying.
“. . . I want him arrested and thrown in jail, Mr. Caava. He’s a wife deserter and worse. And I want you to know it’s cost me a barrel of dough to come here to Mars. But I’m the kind of man who can’t see his sister wronged the way she’s been.”
He nodded slowly, as if in tune to the other’s words. Then he held up his hand. “Mr. Ryan,” he spoke in grave accents. “First, about the matter of desertion—your brother-in-law is now under the jurisdiction of the Martian law system, which does not recognise desertion. A wife does not hold the same position here as she does on Earth.
“But the matter of his being a presser. On his application it said, tailor. Lying is a capital offense on Mars. He could suffer serious consequences if what you say is true. I will look into the matter.”
Mr. Caava waited until Paul Ryan left, after telling him to return the next day, and called the district headquarters of the police department and asked them to bring Sam Ready to him.
“Mr. Ready,” Mr. Caava spoke in severe accents. “Your brother-in-law is here with the avowed purpose of pressing charges against you. I told him that the charge he had in mind was not valid here, but that he could prosecute on another charge, if true. Mr. Ryan said you are in truth a presser and not a tailor. He said you never could get it straight to make the pants shorter. Is that true?”
“About the pants, yes. But I am a tailor, Mr. Caava.”
“So. How can we go about proving it?”
Sam Ready looked at the man behind the shallow desk. He had wondered from the very beginning why they needed tailors on Mars. All Martian males dressed in a toga-like affair. But he had been told that the reason for their wish to have tailors was so that they could dress as the Earthmen did. He had made a number of suits for them. And had made them as he always did, with the pants too long.
“Well, sir,” Sam said. “All I can do is show my wares and let you decide.”
“Not me, Mr. Ready. The court. Very well. I will see to it that the case is brought before the bar. In the morning, Mr. Ready.”
PAUL RYAN was on the stand. He looked around him with a look of complete assurance. Six months had gone by since Sam Ready had left for Mars. Paul had discovered one of his acquaintances had also gone on the same expedition. He and this man had corresponded and so Paul knew Sam was doing well. And through his friend had also learned a little of the strange Martian laws. He hadn’t come to Mars to get Sam on a wife-de
sertion charge. He was well aware of the fact it wouldn’t hold up in court. What he wanted was to get Sam on a lying charge. He would have full vengeance then.
“Mr. Ryan,” the Judge said. “You have said that Mr. Ready is not a tailor. How is that?”
“By his own words, if he ain’t afraid to tell the truth,” Paul said.
Sam spoke from the table at which he was seated: “Anything he’ll ask I’ll answer.”
“How long you been a tailor, Sam?” Paul asked.
“Ten years,” Sam replied, “that you and I were together, and for ten years before.”
“And what did the customers always say, Sam, all those years? I mean about the pants?”
“They were always too long.”
“That’s right. You see, Judge. He always made the pants too long. So finally he stopped trying to be a tailor and became a presser. My brother-in-law could only make one kind of suit but styles changed so he was stuck and had to stop making that kind of suit. Now, here on Mars, he’s making the same kind of suit. But I’m told that the Martian people are so far ahead of us in science and things like that we got to live ten thousand more years to catch up. And what happens? This man comes and makes fools of everyone.
“Look! He brought his witnesses to court with him, wearing one of his suits. A regular zoot, that’s what his witnesses are. Tight-fitting pants at the ankles, with the wide shoulders and narrow hips like in 1945. Always behind in the styles. He should go back to pressing.”
The court looked at the way the four men Sam Ready had brought to court looked. Paul Ryan had described them perfectly. They all wondered why Sam Ready was smiling.
“I am waiting for my chief witness,” he said. “Mr. Caava. Ah! There he is.”
ALL EYES turned to the entrance. Mr. Caava was coming down the center aisle. He was wearing a lavender suit whose trousers ends fit snugly about his ankles. The trousers descended from a full waist in a pegged design. The jacket was very padded at the shoulders and had narrow hips. A wide-brimmed hat sat rakishly on the side of Mr. Caava’s head. The melancholy look was gone.
“See!” Paul shouted gleefully. “A zoot suit he’s wearing.’ Sam! You made the pants too long!”
“No, Paul,” Sam said gently. “You see, you forgot one thing. I had to fit these people right. A presser knows nothing of tailoring. But I am a tailor. An artist. These people are tall and thin. If I had made a suit for them which fits like what’s in style on Earth they would look like scarecrows with three inches of their wrists showing and six of their ankles. These people admire the pictures of Earthmen, with their broad shoulders and small hips. The only suit they could wear is the kind I made.
“A zoot suit. So you see, the only kind of suit I can make is the only kind of suit they can wear. Paul, the pants is no more too long . . . .”
The Judge nodded soberly. “The prisoner is proved in the right. And f? charges are falsely brought. Now I have here your deposition, Mr Ryan. It says in the event he is proved guilty you would like to take over his shop. Well, he is innocent. It is the opinion of this court that you, Mr. Ryan, did bring these charges with malicious intent. Therefore, since the laws of Mars are specific in these cases, I place you in the hands of this man, Mr. Ready, to do with as he wishes.”
“You can’t do that!” Paul bleated. “I’m a citizen of . . . .”
The Judge held up a hand for quiet. “Please, Mr. Ryan. You are on Mars now, where the laws of Earth do not hold. Mr. Ready, I give this man in your charge. Do as you wish with him.”
“COME, PAUL,” Sam Ready said. “You’re going to work for me, now. And every pair of pants you’re going to make is going to have a label on them: ‘These pants are too small.’ And all day you’re going to spend in making them longer. Until I say, ‘Paul, you made the pants too long.’ Then you go back to making them smaller, and so until ten years have gone by.”
The Gods of Madness
THE STRANGE feeling rushed up in Murray as he neared the entrance to the lounge. He had felt it growing, a vague uneasiness at first, then a more intense warning, until now it was suddenly strong enough to bring him to a dead stop.
He stood there in the corridor of the Galactic Survey hyper-cruiser Pegasus, swallowing and rubbing damp palms against the sides of his uniform shorts. The voices of the others, men and women, drifted to him through the open door of the lounge, and he sifted the tones and the occasional intelligible words for an indication that they knew of his blunder.
He was afraid it amounted to just that—a blunder. A blunder that only a green cadet, fresh out of Luna Base, would have made.
At that, a green cadet might be excused—but not Lieutenant Alan Murray, astrogator, veteran of a dozen “jumps” through the gray unreality of hyperspace.
And abruptly Murray knew that what he felt was shame. It was going to be difficult to face the others. In the close, intimate life aboard a hyper-cruiser, one developed a keen sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings of one’s crewmates. Things slight enough to be ignored in other circumstances became magnified out of proportion. And the mistake he had made, Murray realized, was genuinely serious, affecting as it did the safety of everyone on the ship. There were certain to be unpleasant emotional effects.
Murray already had had Latham’s reaction. His ears still burned from the scorn and the barely concealed mockery with which Latham had dismissed him from the bridge. Latham’s mockery, he knew, had been prompted by the thought of how Murray’s mistake would affect his standing with Iris Carlton. A subtle rivalry—subtle, in view of their differences in rank—existed between the two men over the vivacious blonde meteorologist. Murray had not allowed Latham’s status as commander to deter him, and Latham on his own part had no moral or legal right to use that status in his favor where courtship was concerned. Naturally, Murray thought bitterly, Latham welcomed anything that would lower him in Iris Carlton’s eyes. And Murray feared that his apparent mistake would do just that.
WHETHER a mistake had actually been made, and just how big, remained to be seen. Latham was at the moment closeted with Jules Bouchard and Marsha Roblett, examining the sun system near which the Pegasus had emerged and checking its position among the stars. The hyper-cruiser had been placed in an orbit about the doubtful sun, where it would remain until all available data had been secured.
It seemed incredible to Murray that he could have completely missed the Enderby System. He had carefully followed the hyperdrive coordinates recorded by the Charting Expedition that had discovered the new sun and its family of four planets. And he had carefully checked and rechecked his calculations, knowing that if any particular jump was a mere decimal place or fraction of a second off, the result would be for the ship to end up dozens of light-years from its Intended destination, very often in some utterly unknown corner of the galaxy. Numerous hyper-cruisers had disappeared this way, never to be heard from again—lost among the trackless mazes of the stars. It was for this reason that hyperspacial travel was a cautious jumping from reference point to carefully determined reference point. The Charting Expeditions, which plotted these reference points, were the trailblazers of man’s advance into the galactic frontier.
Murray fought down his qualms. He’d have to face the music, if it worked out that way. A hyper-cruiser was no place in which to hide one’s head like a legendary ostrich.
Taking a deep breath and settling his expression carefully, he strode into the lounge. Most of the ship’s dozen-odd passengers were gathered here, sipping lactol drinks or munching sandwiches. Tension was evident in the low-voiced conversation that filled the room. Murray felt it as though it were a chill, clinging fog. The usual laughter and strident argument were missing.
At Murray’s appearance a widening ripple of silence spread through the scattered groups. In the growing quiet the clear tenor of psychologist Tony Lorenzo seemed unnaturally loud.
“Ah, here’s Alan now! He’ll tell us what’s going on.”
“What’s happened, Al
an?” Gus Marczek, the squat, black-thatched geologist, demanded. “Why did the old man have the ship put into an orbit? Why don’t we land?”
The others remained silent, as though Marczek had adequately voiced their thoughts. Murray felt the impact of their eyes and knew they were awaiting his answer.
He shrugged. “I don’t know much more than you do. Latham claims this isn’t the Enderby System. He’s checking now, with Marsha and Jules. We’ll all know soon enough.”
“You mean we’re lost?” anthropologist Suraya Ramkitra asked breathlessly, her sloe eyes wide.
“Not exactly,” Murray returned. “It’s possible to backtrack along the hyperdrive coordinates that brought us to this point.”
“But if the coordinates happen to be wrong . . . .” Marczek suggested forebodingly.
Murray felt the tension again, thickening. He spread his hands. “All I know is that I followed the official figures—and here we are. Latham will tell us where that is. Don’t jump to any conclusions just yet.”
SUDDENLY unable to face the worried eyes that were watching him, Murray strode to the automat. He pressed the appropriate buttons for a sandwich and a lactol foamer and glanced around for Iris Carlton. He saw her sitting with Pat Hohmeyer, ecologist, and Bern Thorsen, biochemist. Iris’ blue eyes, he noted with a surge of pleasure, were fixed on him, questioning and expectant. He strode over, carrying his wrapped sandwich and the plastic lactol container.
“I heard what you said, Alan,” Iris remarked as Murray dropped into the vacant seat beside her. “I hope the situation isn’t as serious as Keith seems to think it is.”
Murray’s pleasure was somewhat dulled by her use of Latham’s first name. But Iris’ words were otherwise typical of her. She took a genuine interest in people and her sympathy was quick and unstinting. He hoped she felt more than just sympathy where he was concerned.
Women had taken an increasingly important place in almost every field of endeavor, and the spreading thin of human beings throughout the galaxy, requiring the cooperation of every able person, had hastened the process to its ultimate end. Women now worked at the side of men as equals to an extent never before acknowledged. And in galactic space it was inevitable that the time-honored customs and institutions involved in male-female relationships should give way to a more practical attitude.
The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 20