“I’m sorry. I guess I don’t know your rules.”
“You did all right, brother,” said a middle-aged lady with an obviously surgical bodice.
“But—I mean—when do we start actually playing? What happened to the cocked dice?”
*
The lady drew herself up and jutted an indignant brow at him. “Sir! This is a church!”
“Oh—I see—excuse me, I, I, I—” Matheny backed out of the crowd, shuddering. He looked around for some place to hide his burning ears.
“You forgot your chips, pal,” said a voice.
“Oh. Thanks. Thanks ever so much. I, I, that is—” Matheny cursed his knotting tongue. Damn it, just because they’re so much more sophisticated than I, do I have to talk like a leaky boiler?
The helpful Earthman was not tall. He was dark and chisel-faced and sleekly pomaded, dapper in blue pajamas with a red zigzag, a sleighbell cloak and curly-toed slippers.
“You’re from Mars, aren’t you?” he asked in the friendliest tone Matheny had yet heard.
“Yes. Yes, I am. M-my name’s Peter Matheny. I, I—” He stuck out his hand to shake and chips rolled over the floor. “Damn! Oh, excuse me, I forgot this was a church. Never mind the chips. No, please. I just want to g-g-get the hell out of here.”
“Good idea. How about a drink? I know a bar downshaft.”
Matheny sighed. “A drink is what I need the very most.”
“My name’s Doran. Gus Doran. Call me Gus.”
They walked back to the deaconette’s booth and Matheny cashed what remained of his winnings.
“I don’t want to—I mean if you’re busy tonight, Mr. Doran—”
“Nah. I am not doing one thing in particular. Besides, I have never met a Martian. I am very interested.”
“There aren’t many of us on Earth,” agreed Matheny. “Just a small embassy staff and an occasional like me.”
“I should think you would do a lot of traveling here. The old mother planet and so on.”
“We can’t afford it,” said Matheny. “What with gravitation and distance, such voyages are much too expensive for us to make them for pleasure. Not to mention our dollar shortage.” As they entered the shaft, he added wistfully: “You Earth people have that kind of money, at least in your more prosperous brackets. Why don’t you send a few tourists to us?”
“I always wanted to,” said Doran. “I would like to see the what they call City of Time, and so on. As a matter of fact, I have given my girl one of those Old Martian rings last Ike’s Birthday and she was just gazoo about it. A jewel dug out of the City of Time, like, made a million years ago by a, uh, extinct race . . . I tell you, she appreciated me for it!” He winked and nudged.
“Oh,” said Matheny.
*
He felt a certain guilt. Doran was too pleasant a little man to deserve—
“Of course,” Matheny said ritually, “I agree with all the archeologists it’s a crime to sell such scientifically priceless artifacts, but what can we do? We must live, and the tourist trade is almost nonexistent.”
“Trouble with it is, I hear Mars is not so comfortable,” said Doran. “I mean, do not get me wrong, I don’t want to insult you or anything, but people come back saying you have given the planet just barely enough air to keep a man alive. And there are no cities, just little towns and villages and ranches out in the bush. I mean you are being pioneers and making a new nation and all that, but people paying half a megabuck for their ticket expect some comfort and, uh, you know.”
“I do know,” said Matheny. “But we’re poor—a handful of people trying to make a world of dust and sand and scrub thorn into fields and woods and seas. We can’t do it without substantial help from Earth, equipment and supplies—which can only be paid for in Earth dollars—and we can’t export enough to Earth to earn those dollars.”
By that time, they were entering the Paul Bunyan Knotty Pine Bar & Grill, on the 73rd Level. Matheny’s jaw clanked down.
“Whassa matter?” asked Doran. “Ain’t you ever seen a ecdysiastic technician before?”
“Uh, yes, but—well, not in a 3-D image under ten magnifications.”
Matheny followed Doran past a sign announcing that this show was for purely artistic purposes, into a booth. There a soundproof curtain reduced the noise level enough so they could talk in normal voices.
“What’ll you have?” asked Doran. “It’s on me.”
“Oh, I couldn’t let you. I mean—”
“Nonsense. Welcome to Earth! Care for a thyle and vermouth?”
Matheny shuddered. “Good Lord, no!”
“Huh? But they make thyle right on Mars, don’t they?”
“Yes. And it all goes to Earth and sells at 2000 dollars a fifth. But you don’t think we’d drink it, do you? I mean—well, I imagine it doesn’t absolutely ruin vermouth. But we don’t see those Earthside commercials about how sophisticated people like it so much.”
*
“Well, I’ll be a socialist creeper!” Doran’s face split in a grin. “You know, all my life I’ve hated the stuff and never dared admit it!” He raised a hand. “Don’t worry, I won’t blabbo. But I am wondering, if you control the thyle industry and sell all those relics at fancy prices, why do you call yourselves poor?”
“Because we are,” said Matheny. “By the time the shipping costs have been paid on a bottle, and the Earth wholesaler and jobber and sales engineer and so on, down to the retailer, have taken their percentage, and the advertising agency has been paid, and about fifty separate Earth taxes—there’s very little profit going back to the distillery on Mars. The same principle is what’s strangling us on everything. Old Martian artifacts aren’t really rare, for instance, but freight charges and the middlemen here put them out of the mass market.”
“Have you not got some other business?”
“Well, we do sell a lot of color slides, postcards, baggage labels and so on to people who like to act cosmopolitan, and I understand our travel posters are quite popular as wall decoration. But all that has to be printed on Earth, and the printer and distributor keep most of the money. We’ve sold some books and show tapes, of course, but only one has been really successful—I Was a Slave Girl on Mars.
“Our most prominent novelist was co-opted to ghostwrite that one. Again, though, local income taxes took most of the money; authors never have been protected the way a businessman is. We do make a high percentage of profit on those little certificates you see around—you know, the title deeds to one square inch of Mars—but expressed absolutely, in dollars, it doesn’t amount to much when we start shopping for bulldozers and
