Robert Heinlein - Between Planets

"Had two helpers. Both joined up. Boys don't want to work these days; all they think about is playing soldier."

"So I'm filling two jobs, eh? Better hire another boy, or I might join up, too."

"Work is good for you."

"Maybe. You certainly take your own advice; I've never seen anybody work as hard as you do."

Charlie leaned back and rolled a cigarette of the shaggy native "crazy weed." "While I work I think about how someday I go home. A little garden with a wall around it. A little bird to sing to me." He waved his hand through choking smoke at the dreary walls of the restaurant. "While I cook, I don't see this. I see my little garden."

"Oh."

"I save money to go home." He puffed furiously. "I go home-or my bones will."

Don understood him; he had heard of "bone money" in his childhood. All the immigrant Chinese planned to go home; too often it was only a package of bones that made the trip. The younger, Venus-born Chinese laughed at the idea; to them Venus was home and China only a much-gummed tale.

He decided to tell Charlie his own troubles and did so, omitting any mention of the ring and all connected with it. "So you see, I'm just as anxious to get to Mars as you are to go home to China."

"Mars is a long way off."

"Yes-but I've got to get there."

Charlie finished his cigarette and stood up. "You stick with Charlie. Work hard and I cut you in on the profits. Someday this war nonsense will be over-then we both go." He turned to go. "G'night."

"Good night." This time Don checked personally to see that no moveovers had managed to sneak in, then retired to his cubbyhole. He was asleep almost at once, to dream of climbing endless mountain ranges of dishes, with Mars somewhere beyond.

Don was lucky to have a cubbyhole in a cheap restaurant as a place to sleep; the city was bursting at its seams. Even before the political crisis which had turned it into the capital of a new nation, New London had been a busy place, market place for a million square miles of back country and principal space port of the planet. The de facto embargo on interplanetary shipping resulting from the outbreak of war with the mother planet might eventually starve the fat off the city but as yet the only effect had been to spill into the town grounded spacemen who prowled the streets and sampled what diversions the town offered.

The spacemen were hardly noticed; much more numerous were the politicians. On Governor's Island, separated from Main Island by a stagnant creek, the Estates General of the new republic was in session; nearby, in what had been the gubernatorial mansion, the Executive General, his chief of State, and the departmental ministers bickered with each other over office space and clerical help. Already a budding bureaucracy was spilling over onto Main Island, South Island, East Spit, and Tombstone Island, vying with each other for buildings and sending rents sky high. In the wake of the statesmen and elected officials-and much more numerous-were the small fry and hangers-on of government, clerks who worked and special assistants who did not, world savers, men with Messages, lobbyists for and lobbyists against, men who claimed to speak for the native dragons but had never gotten around to learning whistle speech, and dragons who were quite capable of speaking on their own behalf-and did.

Nevertheless Governor's Island did not sink under the load

North of the city on Buchanan Island another city was burgeoning training camps for the Middle Guard and the Ground Forces. It was protested bitterly in the Estates that the presence of training grounds at the national capital was an invitation to national suicide, as one H-bomb could wipe out both the government and most of the armed forces of Venus-nevertheless nothing had been done about it. It was argued that the men had to have some place for recreation; if the training grounds were moved out into the trackless bush, the men would desert and go back to their farms and mines.

Many had deserted. In the meantime New London swarmed with soldiery. The Two Worlds Dining Room was jammed from morning until night. Old Charlie left the range only to tend the cash register; Don's hands were raw from hot water and detergent. Between times he stoked the water boiler back of the shack, using oily Chika logs hauled in by a dragon known as "Daisy" (but male despite the chosen name). Electric water heating would have been cheaper; electric power was an almost costless by-product of the atomic pile west of the city-but the equipment to use electric power was very expensive and almost unobtainable.

New London was full of such frontier contrasts. Its muddy, unpaved streets were lighted, here and there, by atomic power. Rocket-powered sky shuttles connected it with other human settlements but inside its own boundaries transportation was limited to shank's ponies and to the gondolas that served in lieu of taxis and tubes-some of these were powered, more moved by human muscle.

New London was ugly, uncomfortable, and unfinished, but it was stimulating. Don liked the gusty, brawling drive of the place, liked it much better than the hothouse lushness of New Chicago. It was as alive as a basketful of puppies, as vital as a punch in the jaw. There was a feeling in the air of new things about to happen, new hopes, new problems.

After a week in the restaurant Don felt almost as if he had been there all his life. Furthermore he was not unhappy at it. Oh, to be sure, the work was bard, and he still was determined to get to Mars-eventually-but in the meantime he slept well, ate well, and had his hands busy... and there were always the customers to talk and argue with-spacemen, guardsmen, smalltime politicians who could not afford the better restaurants. The place was a political debating club, city news desk, and rumor mill; the gossip swapped over Charlie's food was often tomorrow's headline in the New London Times.

Don kept up the precedent of a mid-afternoon break, even when he had no business to transact. If Isobel was not too busy, he would take her across the street for a coke; she was, as yet, his only friend outside the restaurant. On one such occasion she said, "No-come on inside. I want you to meet the manager."

"Eh?"

"About your 'gram."

"Oh, yes-I'd been meaning to, Isobel, but there's no point in it yet. I haven't got the money. I'm going to wait another week and hit Old Charlie for a loan. He can't replace me very easily; I think he'll come across to keep me in durance vile."

"That's no good-you ought to get a better job as soon as you can. Come on."

She opened the gate in the counter desk and led him into an office in the rear where she introduced him to a worried-looking middle-aged man. "This is Don Harvey, the young man I was telling you about."

The older man shook hands. "Oh, yes-something about a message to Mars, I think my daughter said."

Don turned to Isobel. " `Daughter'? You didn't tell me the manager was your father."

"You didn't ask me."

"But- Never mind. Glad to know you, sir."

"And you. Now about that message?"

"I don't know why Isobel brought me in here. I can't pay for it. All I have is Federation money."

Mr. Costello examined his nails and looked troubled. "Mr. Harvey, under the rules I am supposed to require cash payment for interplanetary traffic. I'd like to accept your Federation notes. But I can't; it's against the law." He stared at the ceiling. "Of course there is a black market in Federation money."

Don grinned ruefully. "So I found out. But fifteen, or even twenty per cent, is too low a rate. I still couldn't pay for my 'gram."

"Twenty per cent! The going rate is sixty per cent."

"It is? I guess I must have looked like a sucker."

"Never mind. I was not going to suggest that you go to the black market. In the first place-Mr. Harvey, I am in the odd position of representing a Federation corporation which has not been expropriated, but I am loyal to the Republic. If you walked out of here and returned shortly with money of the Republic instead of Federation notes, I would simply call the police."