"No."
"Okay. Anything you want, William, old conquerer."
Manet scrunched up inside himself in impotent fury.
Ronald was maddeningly co-operative and peaceful. He would even get in
a fist fight to avoid trouble between them. He would do anything Manet
wanted him to do. He was so utterly damned stupid.
Manet's eyes orbitted towards the checkerboard.
But if he were so much more stupid than he, Manet, why was it that
their checker games always ended in a tie?
<tb>
The calendar said it was Spring on Earth when the radio was activated
for a high-speed information and entertainment transmission.
The buzzer-flasher activated in the solarium at the same time.
Manet lay stretched out on his back, naked, in front of the transparent
wall.
By rolling his eyes back in his head, Manet could see over a hedge of
eyebrows for several hundred flat miles of white sand.
And several hundred miles of desert could see him.
For a moment he gloried in the blatant display of his flabby muscles
and patchy sunburn.
Then he sighed, rolled over to his feet and started trudging toward
Communication.
He padded down the rib-ridged matted corridor, taking his usual small
pleasure in the kaleidoscopic effect of the spiraling reflections on
the walls of the tubeway.
As he passed the File Room, he caught the sound of the pounding
vibrations against the stoppered plug of the hatch.
"Come on, Billy Buddy, let me out of this place!"
Manet padded on down the hall. He had, he recalled, shoved Ronald
in there on Lincoln's Birthday, a minor ironic twist he appreciated
quietly. He had been waiting in vain for Ronald to run down ever since.
In Communication, he took a seat and punched the slowed down playback
of the transmission.
"Hello, Overseers," the Voice said. It was the Voice of the B.B.C.
It irritated Manet. He never understood how the British had got the
space transmissions assignment for the English language. He would have
preferred an American disk-jockey himself, one who appreciated New York
swing.
"We imagine that you are most interested in how long you shall
be required to stay at your present stations," said the Voice of
God's paternal uncle. "As you on Mars may know, there has been much
discussion as to how long it will require to complete the present
schedule--" there was of course no "K" sound in the word--"for
atmosphere seeding.
"The original, non-binding estimate at the time of your departure was
18.2 years. However, determining how long it will take our stations
properly to remake the air of Mars is a problem comparable to finding
the age of the Earth. Estimates change as new factors are learned. You
may recall that three years ago the official estimate was changed to
thirty-one years. The recent estimate by certain reactionary sources
of two hundred and seventy-four years is <i>not</i> an official government
estimate. The news for you is good, if you are becoming nostalgic for
home, or not particularly bad if you are counting on drawing your
handsome salary for the time spent on Mars. We have every reason to
believe our <i>original</i> estimate was substantially correct. The total
time is, within limits of error, a flat 18 years."
A very flat 18 years, Manet thought as he palmed off the recorder.
He sat there thinking about eighteen years.
He did not switch to video for some freshly taped westerns.
Finally, Manet went back to the solarium and dragged the big box out.
There was a lot left inside.
One of those parts, one of those bones or struts of flesh sprayers, one
of them, he now knew, was the Modifier.
The Modifier was what he needed to change Ronald. Or to shut him off.
If only the Master Chart hadn't been lost, so he would know what the
Modifier looked like! He hoped the Modifier itself wasn't lost. He
hated to think of Ronald locked in the Usher tomb of the File Room
for 18 flat years. Long before that, he would have worn his fists away
hammering at the hatch. Then he might start pounding with his head.
Perhaps before the time was up he would have worn himself down to
nothing whatsoever.
Manet selected the ripple-finished gray-covered manual from the
hodgepodge, and thought: eighteen years.
Perhaps I should have begun here, he told himself. But I really don't
have as much interest in that sort of thing as the earthier types.
Simple companionship was all I wanted. And, he thought on, even an
insipid personality like Ronald's would be bearable with certain
compensations.
Manet opened the book to the chapter headed: <i>The Making of a Girl</i>.
<tb>
Veronica crept up behind Manet and slithered her hands up his back and
over his shoulders. She leaned forward and breathed a moist warmth into
his ear, and worried the lobe with her even white teeth.
"Daniel Boone," she sighed huskily, "only killed three Indians in his
life."
"I know."