_Peache believed that behind
every man lies the influence
of a woman. Influence, though,
can take odd forms...._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity April 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of all the planets, Peache liked Mars best. Peache was a salesman, and
his territory was the inhabited planets and moons. There were things
he liked about each one, even Earth, but he particularly enjoyed the
gentle gravity of Mars--a gravity that made him feel as though he were
flying when he walked in long, easy leaps, and yet didn't frighten him
by letting him shoot halfway out to space.
His stop at Mars in 2081 added an experience which Peache considered
an extraordinary piece of luck. Having supper with Samlaan Britt in
West o' Mars was comparable to having tea with Shah Jehan in the Taj
Mahal.
The supper had been incomparable. Now the two of them sat in the
Dice Room of the tower, warmed by a green and orange blaze in the
huge fireplace, and smoked the sweet, strong, foot-long cigars that
are produced only in the Hadriacum Lowlands of Mars. Beyond the
double-thick glass of the window-wall, the sun was setting behind the
fantastic dunes of the Aeolia Desert.
Around them in the dim-lit room, the air was thick with cigar smoke,
haunted by the aura of legend. The tales of the founding of West o'
Mars were vague: Peache had heard the vast wealth that built it had
been won on a single throw of the dice, that Britt had been driven to
build it by the hatred of a woman he loved, that he had built it above
the bones of a man who had stolen his wife, that it was a memorial to
his wife. While he was here, Peache hoped to sift truth from fancy, for
he was a man of romantic bent.
Below them the tower dropped down the side of the cliff to a clear
dome on the now-shadowed lowland of Lacus Lucrinus. The dome enclosed
most of the majestic building and its exotic gardens from the
thin, oxygen-poor Martian air. It was a daring conception, nowhere
duplicated--an air-tight building that projected high above its
plasticene dome.
Peache inhaled a long sweet draft of smoke and blessed the fact that
his product was the latest in weather-control units. Only for such a
major purchase would Samlaan Britt have invited him here.
"You aren't married, Mr. Britt," said Peache when the conversation
provided him with an opening. "Don't you get lonesome out here,
hundreds of miles from the nearest city, with no one around but robots?"
"I have many tapes and films, Mr. Peache," replied Britt, smiling.
He was a short, slight man with close-cropped gray hair and round,
guileless eyes. "I have my gardens, and the lowland of Lacus Lucrinus,
and the desert."
"Even so, I'm surprised you haven't found a woman to share all this
beauty and wealth with you. I'm sure there are many of them who'd be
willing."
"No doubt," replied Britt drily. "But I am a man of peculiar tastes.
I enjoy my own thoughts, and generally I prefer my own viewpoint
unalloyed by the differing outlook of someone else. I find your company
interesting for an evening, Mr. Peache, but few women could share this
isolation without becoming bored and, consequently, a nuisance."
Then Peache told Britt of his theory: that behind the accomplishments
of every successful man, somewhere, lies the influence of a woman. It
might be that his mother babied him far into puberty, and he achieved
things to prove his integrity as an individual. It might be that he
reacted to an unhappy love affair by proving himself a better man than
his more fortunate rival.
"In my case, I was the only boy among eight children," said Peache. "I
chose the freedom of traveling about through space, I think, through
an unconscious desire to escape from a female-dominated society. I
think achievement in any field is a sublimation of the sex drive, and
I understand you did not inherit any of your wealth, Mr. Britt, but
amassed it all yourself."
Britt was silent for a moment, contemplating the end of his cigar.
"And, of course, you're curious about the conflicting stories that are
spread around the system," he suggested. "Well, there was a woman,
Mr. Peache, but I'm afraid what occurred has nothing to do with your
theory."
* * * * *
West o' Mars (said Britt) represents a dream I have cherished, I think,
since boyhood. I think the seed of the dream must have been sown when I
saw the early newsfilms of the dome-cities on Luna and Mars.
The dream drove me to study architecture. Man was expanding swiftly
into space and my primary interest was in extra-terrestrial design. I
faced a bright future.
But twenty years ago, when I met Dori, the realization of West o' Mars
seemed farther away than it had in boyhood. An architect's draftsman is
paid well but not lavishly, and you can imagine what sort of wealth
was required to build a place like this, forty million miles from Earth.
My trouble was, I was in a hurry. My weakness was, I knew that the turn
of a card or the roll of the dice could double my weekly salary. It
could but, of course, as often as not it didn't. Consequently, I might
be rich for a day, only to go hungry for a week.
It was during one of the hungry periods in 2060 that I attended a
meeting of the Astronaut Club for the sake of my stomach. I was living
then in Huntsville, the Alabama spaceport city, and it was for business
reasons that I belonged to the Astronaut Club.
The food was fair, the speeches dull. I was little interested in the
entertainment that was to follow, but I wanted to finish my cigar and
coffee. The entertainment, it turned out, was Dori.
Her father came out of the wings first, a consumptive old man with a
shock of unkempt gray hair. In the center of the table he laid a small
rubber ball, a coin and a pair of dice.
He bounced the rubber ball. It bounced a few times and subsided, after
a couple of helpful Astronauts had prevented it from rolling off the
edge of the table. He tossed the coin about a dozen times and rolled
the dice about a dozen times, to prove that the falls were at random.
All the while, he gave out a tired, monotonous spiel about the laws of
chance.
Then Dori came out. She was too thin to be pretty, but there was a
childish appeal about her. She had big, dark eyes in a sad little face,
and almost colorless hair. She impressed me not at all. What held me
then was that something obviously was to be done with dice.
The old man bounced the ball again. Dori stood a little way from the
table and did nothing but keep her eyes on the bouncing ball. It
bounced. It kept bouncing. It did not slow down. At the top of each
arc, something invisible seemed to give it an additional downward push,
so that it did not stop. When it drifted toward the edge of the table,
something invisible seemed to guide it gently but forcefully back to
the center.
The old man tossed the coin. Dori watched it silently as it spun in a
sparkling arc. It fell heads. He tossed it again. It fell heads. As
long as anyone at the table still doubted--nineteen times, I think--he
tossed the coin and it fell heads.
The old man rolled the dice. Dori watched them as they rolled. They
fell seven. He rolled them again. They fell seven. This time I counted.
Twenty-two times he rolled the dice, and twenty-two times they fell
seven. Then someone called for an eight, and they fell eight.
The act ended on a farcical note, with water jumping from a glass to
splash the shirt front of Gerss, the club president. Gerss, whose shirt
was well stuffed, didn't appear to appreciate it much, but the others
roared. Then Dori and her father retired--and I was up from the table,
nearly upsetting my chair, to follow them.
Most of the other members of the Astronaut Club undoubtedly thought
the act was a clever piece of legerdemain. But I knew the power Dori
possessed, for I had read much about it and had yearned for it myself.
* * * * *
Obviously, Dori had strong psychokinetic ability. If you are not
familiar with that, Mr. Peache, it is the ability to manipulate
physical things by means of the mind alone. It is still a subject for
investigation, but it was a quality that Dori possessed beyond any
doubt.
I caught up with them in the next room, waiting; for Greene, our club
secretary, was a cautious man and never paid entertainers in advance.
When Dori's father realized I was not the man bringing his money to
him, he sat down disconsolately in a straight-backed chair and let me
talk to Dori without interruption. Probably he had been through this
before.
I introduced myself to Dori and, since her impatient expression didn't
encourage idle chatter, started right in with:
"You and your father are picking up pennies, when you could be rich.
Now--"
"If you were going to offer to be our manager, you're wasting your
breath. My father has had such offers before, and we want no manager.
He's satisfied with things as they are."
That's what I had planned, although being their "manager" would have
been only a blind for what I had in mind. I changed my tack.
"As a matter of fact, I was interested in you, Miss Dori. I was
attracted to you the moment I saw you. I wonder if you'd go out to
dinner with me tonight?"
It was a risky invitation, for I'd have to borrow money for such a
date, and prospective creditors were wary of me by now. Her face lit
up a little at the words--I'm sure she had received such a compliment
rarely, if ever. But she said:
"My father doesn't allow me to go out with men."