Ford gasped as they went in, as the warmed air and flowery scent wrapped around him. It was nothing like the MAC store, which had rows of empty shelves, and what merchandise was there, was dusty; everything here looked clean and new. He didn’t even know what most of it was for. Sleek, pretty people smiled from behind the counters.
He smiled back at them, until he passed a counter and came face to face with three men skulking along—skinny scarecrows with shaven heads, with canal mud on their boots. He blushed scarlet to realize he was looking into a mirror. Was he that gawky person between his dad and Sam? Did his ears really stick out like that? Ford pulled his cap down, so mortified he wanted to run all the way back down the mountain.
But he kept his eyes on the back of his dad’s coat instead, following until they came to the Footwear Department. There he was diverted by the hundreds and hundreds of shoes on the walls, apparently floating in space, turning so he could see them better. They were every color there was, and they were clearly never designed to be worn while shoveling muck out of the cowsheds.
He came close and peered at them, as his dad and Sam argued with one of the beautiful people, until he saw the big-eyed boy staring back at him from beyond the dancing shoes. Another mirror; did he really have his mouth hanging open like that? And, oh, look at his nose, pinched red by the cold, and look at those watery blue eyes all rimmed in red, and those gangling big hands with the red chapped knuckles!
Ford turned around, wishing he could escape from himself. There were his dad and Sam, and they looked just like him, except his dad was old. Was he, Ford, going to look just like that, when he was somebody’s dad? How mean and small his dad looked, trying to sound posh as he talked to the clerk:
“Look, we don’t want this fancy trim and we don’t want your shiny brass, thank you very much, we just want plain decent waders the lad can do a day’s honest work in! Now, you can understand that much, can’t you?”
“I like the brass buckles, Dad,” said Sam.
“Well, you don’t need ’em—they’re only a vanity,” said their dad. Sam shut his mouth like a box.
Ford stood by, cringing inside, as more boots were brought, until at last a pair was found that was plain and cheap enough to suit their dad. More embarrassment followed then, as their dad pulled out a wad of MAC scrip and tried to pay with it, before remembering that scrip could only be used at the MAC store. Worse still, he then pulled out a wrinkly handful of Martian paper money. Both Ford and Sam saw the sales clerks exchange looks; what kind of people didn’t have credit accounts? Sam tried to save face by being sarcastic.
“We’re all in the Stone Age down the hill, you know,” he said loudly, accepting the wrapped boots and tucking them under his arm. “I reckon we’ll get around to having banks one of these centuries.”
“Banks are corrupt institutions,” said their dad like a shot, rounding on him. “How’d you get so tall without learning anything, eh? What have I told—”
“Sam?” A girl’s voice stopped him. Ford turned in astonishment and saw one of the beautiful clerks hurrying toward them, smiling as though she meant it. “Sam, where were you last week? We missed you at the party—I wanted to show you my new…” She faltered to a stop, looking from Sam to their dad and Ford. Ford felt his heart jump when she looked at him. She had silver-gold hair, and wore makeup, and smelled sweet.
“I … er … Is this your family? How nice to meet you—” she began lamely, but their dad cut her off.
“Who’s this painted cobweb, then?” he demanded of Sam. Sam’s face turned red.
“Don’t you talk that way about her! Her name is Galadriel, and—it so happens we’re dating, not that it’s any of your business.”
“You’re what?” Outraged, their dad clenched his knobby fists. “So you’ve been sneaking up here at night to live the high life, have you? No wonder you’re no bloody use in the mornings! MAC girls not good enough for you? Fat lot of use a little mannequin like that’s going to be when you settle down! Can she drive a tractor, eh?”
Sam threw down the boots. “Got a wire for you, Dad,” he shouted. “I’m not settling down on Mars! I hate Mars, I’ve hated it since the day you dragged me up here, and the minute I come of age, I’m off back to Earth! Get it?”
Sam leaving? Ford felt a double shock, of sadness and betrayal. Who’d tell him stories if Sam left?
“You self-centered great twerp!” their dad shouted back. “Of all the ungrateful—when the MAC’s fed you and clothed you all these years—just going to walk out on your duty, are you?”
Galadriel was backing away into the crowd, looking as though she wished she were invisible, and Ford wished he could be invisible too. People all over the store had stopped what they were doing to turn and stare.
“I never asked to join the MAC, you know,” said Sam. “Nobody’s ever given a thought to what I wanted at all!”
“That’s because there are a few more important things in the world than what one snotty-nosed brat wants for himself!”
“Well, I’m telling you now, Dad—if you think I’m going to live my life doing the same boring thing every day until I get old like you, you’re sadly mistaken!”
“Am I then?” Their dad jumped up and grabbed Sam by the ear, wringing tight. “I’ll sort you out—”
Sam, grimacing in pain, socked their dad. Ford bit his knuckles, terrified. Their dad staggered back, his eyes wide and furious.
“Right, that’s it! You’re no son of mine, do you hear me? You’re disowned! The Collective doesn’t need a lazy, backsliding traitor like you!”
“Don’t you call me a traitor!” said Sam. He put his head down and ran at their dad, and their dad jumped up and butted heads with him. Sam’s nose gushed blood. They fell to the ground, punching each other. Sam was sobbing in anger.
Ford backed away from them. He was frightened and miserable, but there was a third emotion beginning to float up into his consciousness: a certain sense of wonder. Could Sam really stop being his father’s son? Was it really possible just to become somebody else, to drop all the obligations and duties of your old life and step into a new life? Who would he, Ford, be, if he had the chance to be somebody else?
Did he have to be that red-nosed farm boy with muddy boots?
People were gathering around, watching the fight with amusement and disgust. Someone shouted, “You can’t take the MAC anyplace nice, can you?” Ford’s ears burned with humiliation.
Then someone else shouted, “Here come Mother’s Boys!”
Startled, Ford looked up and saw several big men in Security uniforms making their way through the crowd. Security!
The police are a bunch of brutes, his dad had told him. They like nothing better than to beat the daylights out of the likes of you and me, son!
Ford’s nerve broke. He turned and fled, weaving and dodging his way through the crowd until he got outside the shop, and then he ran for his life.
He had no idea where he was going, but he soon found himself in a street that wasn’t nearly as elegant as the promenade. It was an industrial district, dirty and shabby, with factory workers and energy plant techs hurrying to and fro. If the promenade with its gardens was the fancy case of Mons Olympus, this was its circuit board, where the real works were. Feeling less out of place, Ford slowed to a walk and caught his breath. He wandered on, staring around him.
He watched for a long moment through the open door of a machine shop, where a pair of mechanics were repairing a quaddy. Their welding tools shot out fiery-bright stars that bounced harmlessly to the ground. There were two other men watching too, though as the minutes dragged by they began watching Ford instead. Finally they stepped close to him, smiling.
“Hey, Collective. You play cards?” said one of them.
“No,” said Ford.
“That’s okay,” said the other. “This is an easy game.” He opened his coat and Ford saw that he had a kind of box strapped to his chest. It had the word NEBULIZER painted on
it, but when the man pressed a button, the front of the box swung down and open like a tray. The other man pulled a handful of cards from his back pocket.
“Here we go,” he said. “Just three cards. Ace, deuce, Queen of Diamonds. See ’em? I’m going to shuffle them and lay them out, one, two, three.” He laid them out face down on the tray. “See? Now, which one’s the queen? Can you find her?”
Ford couldn’t believe what a dumb game this was. Only three cards? He turned over the queen.
“Boy, it’s hard to fool you,” said the man with the tray. “You’ve got natural luck, kid. Want to go again?” The other man had already swept the three cards up and was shuffling them.
“Okay,” said Ford.
“Got any money? Want to place a bet?”
“I don’t have any money,” said Ford.
“No money? That’s too bad,” said the man with the tray, closing it up at once. “A lucky guy like you, you could win big. But they don’t get rich down there in the Collective, do they? Same dull work every day of your life, and nothing to show for it when it’s all over. That’s what I hear.”
Ford nodded sadly. It wasn’t just Sam, he realized; everybody laughed at the MAC.
“What would you say to a chance at something better, eh?” said the man with the cards. In one smooth movement he made the cards vanish and produced instead a text plaquette. Its case was grubby and cracked, but the screen was bright with a lot of very small words.
“Know what I have here? This is a deal that’ll set you up as a diamond prospector. Think of that! You could make more with one lucky strike than you’d make working the Long Acres the whole rest of your life. Now, I know what you’re going to say—you don’t have any tools and you don’t have any training. But, you know what you have got? You’re young. You’re in good shape, and you can take the weather Outside.
“So here’s the deal: Mr. Agar has the tools and the training, but he ain’t young. You agree to go to work for him, and he’ll provide what you need. You pay him off out of your first big diamond strike, and then you’re in business for yourself. Easiest way to get rich there is! And all you have to do is put your thumbprint right there. What do you say?” He held out the plaquette to Ford.
Ford blinked at it. He had heard stories of the people who dug red diamonds out of the clay—why, Mons Olympus had been founded by a lady who’d got rich like that! He was reaching for the plaquette when a voice spoke close to his ear.
“Can you read, kid?”
Ford turned around. A Hauler was looking over his shoulder, smiling.
“Well—I read a little—”
“Get lost!” said the man with the plaquette, looking angry.
“I can’t read,” the Hauler went on, “but I know these guys. They’re with Agar Steelworks. You know what they’re trying to get you to thumb? That’s a contract that’ll legally bind you to work in Agar’s iron mines for fifteen years.”
“Like you’d know, jackass!” said the man with the plaquette, slipping it out of sight. He brought out a short length of iron bar and waved it at the Hauler meaningfully. The Hauler’s red eyes sparkled.
“You want to fight?” he said, smacking his fists together. “Yeah! You think I’m afraid of you? You lousy little street-corner hustler! C’mere!”
The man took a swipe at him with the bar, and the Hauler dodged it and grabbed it out of his hand. The other two broke and ran, vanishing down an alley. The Hauler grinned after them, tossing the bar into the street.
“Freakin’ kidnappers,” he said to Ford. “You’re, what, twelve? I have a kid your age.”
“Thank you,” Ford stammered.
“That’s okay. You want to watch out for Human Resourcers, though, kid. They work that con on a lot of MAC boys like you. Diamond prospectors! Nobody but Mother ever got rich that way.” The Hauler yawned and stretched. “You head off to the nearest Security post and report ’em now, okay?”
“I can’t,” said Ford, and to his horror he felt himself starting to shake. “I—they—there was this fight, and—Security guys came and—I have to hide.”
“You in trouble?” The Hauler leaned down and looked at Ford closely. “Fighting? Mother’s Boys don’t allow no fighting, that’s for sure. You need a place to hide? Maybe get out of town until it all blows over?” He gave Ford a conspiratorial wink.
“Yes, please,” said Ford.
“You come along with me, then. I got a safe place,” said the Hauler. Without looking back to see if Ford was following him, he turned and loped off up the street. Ford ran after him.
“Please, who are you?”
The Hauler glanced over his shoulder. “Billy Townsend,” he said. “But don’t tell me who you are. Safer that way, right?”
“Right,” said Ford, falling into step beside him. He looked up at his rescuer. Billy was tall and gangly, and lurched a little when he walked, but he looked as though he wasn’t the least bit worried what people thought of him. His face and dreadlocked hair and beard were all red, the funny bricky red that came from years of going Outside and having the red dust get everywhere, until it became so deeply engrained water wouldn’t wash it off. There were scars all over his face and hands, too. On the back of his psuit someone had painted white words in a circle.
“What’s it say on your back?” Ford asked him.
“Says Bipolar Boys and Girls,” said Billy. “On account of we go Up and Down there, see? And because we’re nutcases, half of us.”
“What’s it like in the ice mines?”
“Cold,” said Billy, chuckling. “Get your face mask on, now. Here we go! Here’s our Beautiful Evelyn.”
They stepped out through the airlock, and the cold bit into Ford. He gulped for air and followed Billy into a vast echoing building like a hangar. It was the car barn for the ice processing plant. Just now it was deserted, but over by the loading chute sat a freighter. Ford caught his breath.
He had never seen one up close before, and it was bigger than he had imagined. Seventy-five meters long, set high on big knobbed ball tires. Its steel tank had been scoured to a dull gleam by the wind and sand. At one end was a complication of hatches and lenses and machinery that Ford supposed must be the driver’s cab. Billy reached up one long arm and grabbed a lever. The foremost hatch hissed, swung open and a row of steps clanked down into place.
“There you go,” said Billy. “Climb on up! Nobody’ll think to look for you in there. I’ll be back later. Make yourself at home.”
Ford scrambled up eagerly. He looked around as the hatch squeezed shut behind him, and air rushed back in. He pulled down his mask.
He was in a tiny room with a pair of bunks built into one side. The only light came from a dim panel set in the ceiling. There was nothing else in the room, except for a locker under the lower bunk and three doors in the wall opposite. It was disappointingly plain and spotless.
Ford opened the first door and beheld the tiniest lavatory he had ever seen, so compact he couldn’t imagine how to use it. He tried the second door and found a kitchen built along similar lines, more a series of shelves than a room. The third door opened into a much larger space. He crawled through and found himself in the driver’s cab.
Timidly, he edged his way farther in and sat down at the console. He looked up at the instrument panels, at the big screens that ran all around the inside of the cab. They were blank and blind now, but what would it be like to sit here when the freighter was roaring along the High Road?
On the panel above the console was a little figurine, glued in place. It was a cheap-looking thing, of cast red stone like the souvenirs he had seen for sale on the handcarts in Commerce Square. It represented a lady, leaning forward as though she were running, or perhaps flying. The sculptor had given her hair that streamed back in an imaginary wind. She was grinning crazily, as the Haulers all did. She had only one eye, of red cut glass; Ford guessed the matching one had fallen off. He looked on the floor of the cab, but didn’t see it.
Ford grinned too, and, because no one was there to see him, he put his hands on the wheel. “Brrrrroooom,” he whispered, and looked up at the screens as though to check on his location. He felt a little stupid.
But in every one of the screens, his reflection was smiling back at him. Ford couldn’t remember when he’d been so happy.
III
Bill’s dinner had gone cold, though he stuffed a forkful in his mouth every now and then when he noticed Mother watching him. He couldn’t keep his eyes away from the door much. Where was Billy?
He might have gotten in a fight, and Mother’s Boys might have hauled him off to the Security Station; if that were the case, sooner or later Mother would come over to Bill with an apologetic cough and say something like, “Your dad’s just had a bit of an argument, dear, and I think you’d best doss down here tonight until he, er, wakes up. We’ll let him out tomorrow.” And Bill would feel his face burning with shame, as he always did when that happened.
Or Billy might have met someone he knew, and forgotten about the time … or he might have gone for a drink somewhere else … or …
Bill was so busy imagining all the places Billy might be that he got quite a shock when Billy walked through the airlock. Before Billy had spotted him and started making his way across the room, the cramping worry had turned to anger.
“Where were you?” Bill shouted. “You were supposed to be here!”
“I had stuff to do,” said Billy vaguely, sliding into the booth. He waved at Mother, who acknowledged him with a nod and sent one of her daughters over to take his order. Bill looked him over suspiciously. No cuts or bruises on his face, nothing broken on his psuit. Not fighting, then. Maybe he had met a girl. Bill relaxed just a little, but his anger kept smoldering.
When Billy’s beer had been brought, Bill said:
“I wondered where you were. How come you had the comm turned off?”
“Is it off?” Billy groped for the switch in his shoulder. “Oh. Wow. Sorry, kiddo. Must have happened when I took my mask off.”
The Very Best of the Best Page 28