She was expecting us, actually waiting for us, so there wasn't much chance of our getting an informal look at her. On the way, Ellen was irritated, as usual. Being Ellen, she was keeping me informed on her view of the situation. She drove, keeping her eyes on the road, but throwing out occasional asides.
"We aren't just messengers," she muttered.
"Anyone at all would have done," she grumbled.
"We've never had to do anything I liked less," she complained.
Silently, I agreed with that, at least.
We were Terran Control agents and we were doing a job that someone had to do. In itself, it was simple and rather boring, which was behind Ellen's complaint that we weren't just messengers. But there was more than simplicity and boredom in it. Much more. The trouble was that we knew exactly what was in it. Sometimes we had been sent out, blind, to do very different jobs for TC, and we hadn't liked that. This time we knew what we were doing and, if anything, we liked it less.
"There are more important things we might be doing than escorting an overgrown schoolgirl to Lotrin," Ellen beefed.
I quoted ironically from the newscasts. "But what a girl," I said nasally. "What a history she's going to have. What a life story she will one day be able to write."
"Save that for the great galactic public," Ellen snapped. "Anyway, this girl is ordinary. Picked out because she's ordinary, normal, average, typical."
She drew up outside the small-town maisonette where the future First Lady of Lotrin lived. She stopped in her usual way, with a furious jerk of four locked wheels. She didn't wait for me, but was out and crunching up the gravel path while the car was still rocking.
We thought at first there was nobody home, and Ellen sneered something about cold feet. But when we went around the back, there was the girl, pretending not to see us. She was draped on a garden seat, wearing a play-suit and reading a book.
"Just to show she doesn't care," said Ellen.
Ellen, this once, was dead right. Shirley Judson—we'd seen pictures of her, and this was the girl, all right—was good-looking. Where she was just attractive, not beautiful, was where current standards of beauty deviated from the norm. Make no mistake about it, there was nothing in Shirley's looks to stop a million men from falling in love with her.
Yet Ellen muttered: "Not chosen for her looks, anyway."
I threw an expressive glance at her. Why will women insist on giving their worthless opinions of other women's attractiveness or homeliness? It wasn't a million women who were supposed to fall in love with Shirley.
We moved over to her and introduced ourselves. Shirley didn't notice exactly when it became impossible to pretend any more that she hadn't seen us, and give up the pretense, so I suppose technically it's still going on yet.
There was casual, pointless conversation—not about Lotrin. We didn't bow and express our pleasure to meet the First Lady of Lotrin. In fact, just to make sure there was no misunderstanding, we put her very much in her place. At any rate, Ellen did. At first.
Ellen always looks like something straight out of Vogue, and in all modesty I can say I have seen worse-looking men of thirty-five than me. Shirley was a very young twenty-one, and her playsuit, as Ellen soon demonstrated to her without saying a word, was two mistakes. Wearing a playsuit was wrong, and wearing that particular playsuit was wronger.
Shirley was keyed up almost to breaking-point, naturally enough. Her nostrils were white, she was breathing quickly and shallowly, and somehow one knew her voice was coming out two tones higher than usual. But that couldn't be helped; the playsuit could. It had been meant to show she was completely at her ease, unimpressed by the solemnity of the occasion, and not in the least scared of us. It did pretty much the opposite.
Instead of seeing the nervousness of her hands and face, four curious eyes noted the nervousness of her whole body. And the white frilly rompers suggested child when she wanted to be mature and at no disadvantage with us. And if we wanted to be nasty, which Ellen nearly always does with other women, it was only necessary to look at Shirley's legs or shoulders and then away, with faint distaste, to make it obvious that there was something wrong with the legs, or the display of them, without giving the girl anything she could answer.
I haven't covered everything, but you can imagine the general lines of the situation. Anyway, Ellen made the most of it. I tried to counteract the effect a little, but no one has ever been able to counteract Ellen.
Then suddenly, just as the girl was about to cry, Ellen said, "Joe, take a walk," in an unexpectedly brisk tone, and jerked her head.
Meekly, I went up the garden.
I stopped where I could still see them, but not hear what they said. The funny thing about Ellen is that people don't hate her the way they should. Other people strive hard for affection and don't get it; Ellen seems to put in a lot of good solid work to be hated, only it doesn't turn out that way.
She was very careful with Shirley, I saw, not even touching her at first. Then they were all over each other in that curious way women have. Shirley was crying by this time, of course. Her white shoulders and chestnut hair were mixed up with Ellen's blue frocks and there was a tangle of bare arms and chic elbow-length gloves.
And for some reason I had a lump in my throat.
I wasn't in the next part much. I wasn't around because Shirley spent most of the next two months in bra and panties or less, being poked and tapped by doctors, getting massages, doing violent exercises and being checked and doublechecked, slipping in and out of dresses, blouses, skirts, slacks and almost every other form of feminine attire.
One might have thought that clothes wouldn't matter much to the First Lady of Lotrin, who would be literally the first woman to set foot on the planet, certainly the last for a long time, and possibly the last ever. But Shirley was going to represent her whole sex on Lotrin. She would have to be supremely feminine, and a few crates of clothes, even if they had to be transported hundreds of light-years at fabulous cost, as these would be, were not regarded by Terran Control as a luxury. They really weren't for Shirley. They were for Lotrin.
I wasn't there, but Ellen was, so I naturally heard all about it. I heard the story of every examination, every test, every checkup, every experiment; the details of Shirley's trousseau were inflicted on me, down to the last clip and lace curlicue. Ellen was bored with the whole business and she didn't see why mv being a man should excuse me from being bored with them, too.
So if anyone wants to know anything at all about what happens to a First Lady—any First Lady—before she leaves the New York TC center, just ask me. Nothing too minute, too intimate. The story of the testing and preparation and coaching and beautifying and swearing in and final passing of a First Lady is yours for the asking.
Of course it isn't very interesting.
I haven't said much about Terran Control. First of all, the name—it means control of everything from and by Earth. Some say it's a clumsy and unworkable system, bound to fall apart eventually. Maybe it is, but it won't collapse during this generation or the next. Meantime, what TC says goes. And as far as Shirley was concerned, Ellen and I were TC; we represented it.
I always say as little for or against TC as possible. This isn't because my job depends on keeping my mouth shut. TC is an autocracy, but not that kind.
When you've got a big job in hand, like, say, colonizing a galaxy, there's only one good way of doing it. Before you start, there may be plenty of ways. Again, if you start and fail, you may try another way. But, if you start and don't fail, you have to keep on the way you began. I'm not going to argue about it; I'm just saying what I believe.
One of the points of TC's way was this: the human race must stay human. There have been enough civil wars without creating new races so that there can be new race wars. The Martian War showed what can happen when men become not-men and somewhere else men stay men. As it happened, the men won—there are no Martians left.
There never will be Martians again while
TC rules colonization. Humans can't live on Mars and stay human. Mars is a plague spot, and the ruins of human habitation on the red planet crumble to dust.
Venus is another matter. So are the Aldebaran worlds, and the other scattered worlds named for themselves, not their suns—Jenta, Smith, Babylon, Eyrie, Nostral, Hover, Gluckstein, Fortan, Jissel, Maple. Others, like Mars—Robinson, Dahlia, Mantor, Arka—are crossed out, forgotten names. Just plague snots. Dead, most of them. Some, unfortunately, are only dying.
Others still—Civnet, Lotrin, Martin, Beckland, Everest, Red Dawn—have question marks after them. It takes a long time to remove a question mark. But, broadly, the query begins to fade at a set point. After that a world may still turn out to be a plague spot, but that's liable to be a gradual business. People can betaken out and settled elsewhere. Their strain will be watched, they may even be sterilized, but they will still be regarded as men.
The set point is the birth of the first child conceived and delivered on the world under study. Scientists and doctors do everything but take the poor kid to pieces. Then they deliver their verdict. They say go ahead, or go ahead cautiously, or wait a while, or hold everything, or stop, or…
But no one likes to examine that end of the scale too closely.
And that's the main reason why the First Lady is so important. She's the chosen mother of that first child. The father is chosen, too, of course.
TC is matchmaker as well as godfather.
Shirley and some Lotrin settler whose name I didn't know were the future of Lotrin. The shape of Shirley's life, and the destiny of a whole world, depended on a child she would have by a man she was going out to marry, but had never met.
It was a queer situation, though not new any longer. The First Lady of Jenta was dead a long while; so was the First Lady of Smith. The First Lady of Babylon was over a hundred, and still, it was said, went for a swim in a mountain stream every morning. Eyrie's First Lady was ninety-three. Nostral's was not only First Lady, but President of Nostral as well. So on down to Maple's First Lady, who could still wear a playsuit like Shirley's, and to better effect, from what I'd been told.
I'm not, if I can help it, going to say anything about the First Ladies of Robinson, Dahlia, Mantor or Arka.
I told you those places are plague spots.
It must have been that curious power of divination they call feminine intuition that made Ellen call Shirley an overgrown schoolgirl before she had even met her, when she had only seen a photograph or two of the girl. For that's what Shirley was. I don't know whether TC has a definite pattern for the choice of First Ladies which includes an emotional maturity index; I haven't met many First Ladies. But if there is a pattern, and Shirley fitted it, a First Lady must be rather shy, quiet, inexperienced, above all virginal—an overgrown schoolgirl, as a matter of fact.
One might have thought a First Lady should be dynamic, reckless, or a hundred per cent glamor. TC apparently didn't agree. I don't mean that Shirley was timid, incapable of recklessness, and sexless. She was—homy. One could see her as somebody's sister, somebody's girl friend, somebody's wife. Not as an official, a TC agent like Ellen and me, a dancehall girl, an athlete. Not as anything that needed drive or responsibility or amorality.
It's difficult to describe Shirley at all, because anything you say about her, you have to qualify. If you say she was shy, you have to add that she wasn't very shy. And if she wasn't brilliant, you couldn't describe her as stupid.
Likewise, when she insisted on traveling incognito to avoid a great sendoff at New York, she could have been persuaded, and when the time came, I think she wished we hadn't given in so easily. She would never seek the limelight, but when she found herself in it, she would be capable of enjoying it.
There were no cheering crowds and reporters and photographers when we left from New York spaceport.
Shirley was traveling as Ellen's sister. She seemed to like the part. She had a crush on Ellen good and hard.
TC was used to misleading the press. One might have thought some smart newsman would put two and two together and work out that since Lotrin's First Lady was about due to go out, and since this ship, in the course of its four-month tour, was going to touch Lotrin, and since Shirley had most of the hallmarks of a First Lady, it might be worth investigating her a little. But TC announced officially that the First Lady wasn't chosen yet, and circulated privately a rumor that she was chosen and would go on the next ship.
The newspapermen rejected the statement and accepted the rumor. And if anyone checked over the passenger list of the Sardonia, he would have seen that we were going out to settle the Aldebaran section.
Shirley looked around with interest. "It's a wonderful ship," she said, gazing up at the smooth hull.
"Is it?" murmured Ellen, obviously surprised that anyone should think it was wonderful. "Just wait till you get inside. You'll find that every foot has only nine inches. You'll get used to that, but when you reach the Moon, you'll discover the foot has shrunk to seven inches. On the next tender it'll be five, and when you're on the liner it'll come down to four."
Shirley stared at her. "Isn't this the Sardonia?"
"Sometimes I wonder where you've been living these last twenty-one years. Tell her, Joe."
Pencil skirts were in again; Ellen hobbled toward the tender. She could talk like that to Shirley. If I tried it, the tears would come. I wondered how many gallons Shirley bad wept since TC first found her. Most of them, according to Ellen, were about her mother, and they were usually down Ellen's dress.
"This is only a tender to take us to the Moon, Shirley," I said. "Curiously, it's power-to-weight ratio is much higher than that of the ship that will take us all those light-years. On the Moon there'll be another check and another tender will take us to the Sardonia, which by that time will be orbiting around the Moon."
I took Shirley's arm and steered her after Ellen. No one had any time for us; spaceships have no room for flunkeys.
"The starships never land anywhere," I went on. "They're assembled in space, and when, despite all the safeguards, they're eventually saturated with radiation leakage, they're destroyed in space."
"I can't make you and Ellen out," said Shirley suddenly, showing how much good my lecturette for children had done. "Do you love her, Joe?"
I grinned wryly. "Shirley, sometimes you're too shy to say perfectly ordinary things, and other times you're a little too frank. Outside of novels, people don't go around asking people if they love other people."
"But do you," she insisted, "since I've asked it?"
"First define love," I said. "When you've done that to my satisfaction, ask me again. Then if you get an answer in the morning, see if it's the same answer in the afternoon, and the next day, and next week."
"You're married, I suppose?"
"Why should you suppose that?"
She seemed taken back. "You are living together," she said. "Aren't you?"
"We certainly work together, but that doesn't mean we're married."
She was silent while we climbed to the airlock and began to sidle along the narrow passage.
"I think I know what you are," she said. "You're secret agents. The way you don't answer questions shows you're used to it."
"That's a point," I said agreeably.
A few minutes later—it was a slow business moving along that passage—Shirley stated emphatically from behind me: "You're Joe Dell and she's Ellen Dell."
"That settles it, then," I observed. "We must be married."
"Don't you ever give a fact away, free?"
I half turned and looked down at her reprovingly.
"Weren't you listening? I told you about the tenders and the Sardonia—"
"Which I could have got from the steward. He can't tell me if you love Ellen."
"Well, that makes two of us," I said easily. "Neither can I."
"You won't, anyway."
We had almost caught up with Ellen, and she stopped at that and waited.
&n
bsp; "He won't what?" she said.
I was between them, so they could hardly see each other at all. Corridors on spaceships have to be seen to be believed. Ellen and Shirley might have passed each other, but only at the cost of buttons and tears and bruises, and that's no exaggeration. If I had to pass anyone, we could only do it by climbing over each other.
Shirley was silent. She was ready to ask questions of me, but not of Ellen. Not that kind of question.
"It doesn't matter," I said, "since it's settled that I won't."
Ellen accepted that, for the moment. She had found our room.
"Yours is around the corner, Shirley," she said. "Come and I'll show you how things work."
I backed into the cabin to get out of the way, and they went past. Shirley gave me a last searching, puzzled glance.
Fitting into the routine of space travel again is always pretty much the same. Ellen made the same grumbles, phrased differently. This time she wondered ironically why they didn't feed us on condensed milk and shortbread and make sure we starved. Remarked that you rubbed your head before you got up in anticipation of the bump. Said she realized at last why spacegirls on magazine covers wore tights—they couldn't squeeze through spaceship doors wearing anything else. Suggested we come to some arrangement whereby I breathed out when she breathed in.
Shirley, to whom it was all new, took it very much for granted. That is, she noticed with surprise how little room there was, adjusted herself to the new conditions and forgot the whole thing.
When we were on the second tender, taking us out to the Sardonia, I asked Ellen: "How much does Shirley know?"
She didn't feel like being sarcastic, for once, so she cut out everything but what I wanted to know.
"Not much," she said. "Shirley doesn't know she's got to marry this character—let's call him Bill. She thinks she does, but she doesn't realize how absolutely inescapable it is that she must marry him and no one else. She doesn't know that she must be kind—but not too kind—to the million others. No doubt she has her own ideas on that. What she doesn't realize is that she must be the perfect, flawless figurehead, the dreamgirl, the model for all women, at once the vestal virgin, the perfect wife, everybody's sister, everybody's sweetheart and everybody's mother."
Another Part of the Galaxy Page 11