"Yeah. Short for Alberta, but I haven't found a man who can draw a
blaster fast enough to call me that. You see, Pop came over in the
eighties--the big wave of immigrants when they evacuated Ontario. Named
all us boys after Canadian provinces. I was the youngest, so I got the
name they were saving for a girl."
"You had a lot of brothers, Mr. Butt?"
He grinned with a mighty set of teeth. "Oh, a nestful. Of course, they
were all killed in the Blue Chicago Rising by the MacGregor boys--all
except me and Saskatchewan. Then Sas and me hunted the MacGregors down.
Took a heap of time; we didn't float Jock MacGregor's ugly face down
the Tuscany till both of us were pretty near grown up."
I walked up close to where I could see the tiny bright copper coils of
the blaster above the firing button. "Have you killed a lot of men with
that, Mr. Butt?"
"Butt. Just plain Butt to you, Ford." He frowned and sighted at
the light globe. "No more'n twelve--not counting five government
paddlefeet, of course. I'm a peaceable planter. Way I figure it,
violence never accomplishes much that's important. My brother Sas,
now--"
* * * * *
He had just begun to work into a wonderful anecdote about his brother
when the dinner gong rang. Butt told me to scat. He said I was a
growing tadpole and needed my vitamins. And he mentioned, very
off-hand, that he wouldn't at all object if I brought him some fresh
fruit. It seemed there was nothing but processed foods in the lifeboat
and Butt was used to a farmer's diet.
Trouble was, he was a special kind of farmer. Ordinary fruit would have
been pretty easy to sneak into my pockets at meals. I even found a way
to handle the kelp and giant watercress Mr. Brown liked, but things
like seaweed salt and Venusian mud-grapes just had too strong a smell.
Twice, the mechanical hamper refused to accept my jacket for laundering
and I had to wash it myself. But I learned so many wonderful things
about Venus every time I visited that stowaway....
I learned three wild-wave songs of the Flatfolk and what it is that the
native Venusians hate so much; I learned how you tell the difference
between a lousy government paddlefoot from New Kalamazoo and the
slaptoe slinker who is the planter's friend. After a lot of begging,
Butt Lee Brown explained the workings of his blaster, explained it
so carefully that I could name every part and tell what it did from
the tiny round electrodes to the long spirals of transformer. But no
matter what, he would never let me hold it.
"Sorry, Ford, old tad," he would drawl, spinning around and around in
the control swivel-chair at the nose of the lifeboat. "But way I look
at it, a man who lets somebody else handle his blaster is like the
giant whose heart was in an egg that an enemy found. When you've grown
enough so's your pop feels you ought to have a weapon, why, then's the
time to learn it and you might's well learn fast. Before then, you're
plain too young to be even near it."
"I don't have a father to give me one when I come of age. I don't even
have an older brother as head of my family like your brother Labrador.
All I have is Sis. And _she_--"
"She'll marry some fancy dryhorn who's never been farther South than
the Polar Coast. And she'll stay head of the family, if I know her
breed of green shata. _Bossy, opinionated._ By the way, Fordie," he
said, rising and stretching so the fish-leather bounced and rippled off
his biceps, "that sister. She ever...."
And he'd be off again, cross-examining me about Evelyn. I sat in the
swivel chair he'd vacated and tried to answer his questions. But there
was a lot of stuff I didn't know. Evelyn was a healthy girl, for
instance; how healthy, exactly, I had no way of finding out. Yes, I'd
tell him, my aunts on both sides of my family each had had more than
the average number of children. No, we'd never done any farming to
speak of, back in Undersea, but--yes, I'd guess Evelyn knew about as
much as any girl there when it came to diving equipment and pressure
pump regulation.
How would I know that stuff would lead to trouble for me?
* * * * *
Sis had insisted I come along to the geography lecture. Most of the
other girls who were going to Venus for husbands talked to each other
during the lecture, but not _my_ sister! She hung on every word, took
notes even, and asked enough questions to make the perspiring purser
really work in those orientation periods.
"I am very sorry, Miss Sparling," he said with pretty heavy sarcasm,
"but I cannot remember any of the agricultural products of the Macro
Continent. Since the human population is well below one per thousand
square miles, it can readily be understood that the quantity of
tilled soil, land or sub-surface, is so small that--Wait, I remember
something. The Macro Continent exports a fruit though not exactly an
edible one. The wild _dunging_ drug is harvested there by criminal
speculators. Contrary to belief on Earth, the traffic has been growing
in recent years. In fact--"
"Pardon me, sir," I broke in, "but doesn't _dunging_ come only from
Leif Erickson Island off the Moscow Peninsula of the Macro Continent?
You remember, purser--Wang Li's third exploration, where he proved the
island and the peninsula didn't meet for most of the year?"
The purser nodded slowly. "I forgot," he admitted. "Sorry, ladies, but
the boy's right. Please make the correction in your notes."
But Sis was the only one who took notes, and she didn't take that one.
She stared at me for a moment, biting her lower lip thoughtfully, while
I got sicker and sicker. Then she shut her pad with the final gesture
of the right hand that Mom used to use just before challenging the
opposition to come right down on the Council floor and debate it out
with her.
"Ferdinand," Sis said, "let's go back to our cabin."
The moment she sat me down and walked slowly around me, I knew I was
in for it. "I've been reading up on Venusian geography in the ship's
library," I told her in a hurry.
"No doubt," she said drily. She shook her night-black hair out. "But
you aren't going to tell me that you read about _dunging_ in the ship's
library. The books there have been censored by a government agent of
Earth against the possibility that they might be read by susceptible
young male minds like yours. She would not have allowed--this Terran
Agent--"
"Paddlefoot," I sneered.
Sis sat down hard in our zoom-air chair. "Now that's a term," she said
carefully, "that is used only by Venusian riffraff."
"They're not!"
"Not what?"
"Riffraff," I had to answer, knowing I was getting in deeper all the
time and not being able to help it. I mustn't give Mr. Brown away!
"They're trappers and farmers, pioneers and explorers, who're building
Venus. And it takes a real man to build on a hot, hungry hell like
Venus."
"Does it, now?" she said, looking at me as if I were beginning to grow
a second pair of ears. "Tell me more."
"You can't have meek, law-abiding, women-ruled men when you start
civilization on a new planet. You've got to have men who aren't afraid
to make their own law if necessary--with their own guns. That's where
law begins; the books get written up later."
"You're going to _tell_, Ferdinand, what evil, criminal male is
speaking through your mouth!"
"Nobody!" I insisted. "They're my own ideas!"
"They are remarkably well-organized for a young boy's ideas. A boy
who, I might add, has previously shown a ridiculous but nonetheless
entirely masculine boredom with political philosophy. I plan to have a
government career on that new planet you talk about, Ferdinand--after
I have found a good, steady husband, of course--and I don't look
forward to a masculinist radical in the family. Now, who has been
filling your head with all this nonsense?"
* * * * *
I was sweating. Sis has that deadly bulldog approach when she feels
someone is lying. I pulled my pulpast handkerchief from my pocket to
wipe my face. Something rattled to the floor.
"What is this picture of me doing in your pocket, Ferdinand?"
A trap seemed to be hinging noisily into place. "One of the passengers
wanted to see how you looked in a bathing suit."
"The passengers on this ship are all female. I can't imagine any of
them that curious about my appearance. Ferdinand, it's a man who has
been giving you these anti-social ideas, isn't it? A war-mongering
masculinist like all the frustrated men who want to engage in
government and don't have the vaguest idea how to. Except, of course,
in their ancient, bloody ways. Ferdinand, who has been perverting that
sunny and carefree soul of yours?"
"Nobody! _Nobody!_"
"Ferdinand, there's no point in lying! I demand--"
"I told you, Sis. I told you! And don't call me Ferdinand. Call me
Ford."
"Ford? _Ford?_ Now, you listen to me, Ferdinand...."
After that it was all over but the confession. That came in a few
moments. I couldn't fool Sis. She just knew me too well, I decided
miserably. Besides, she was a girl.
All the same, I wouldn't get Mr. Butt Lee Brown into trouble if I could
help it. I made Sis promise she wouldn't turn him in if I took her to
him. And the quick, nodding way she said she would made me feel just a
little better.
The door opened on the signal, "Sesame." When Butt saw somebody was
with me, he jumped and the ten-inch blaster barrel grew out of his
fingers. Then he recognized Sis from the pictures.
He stepped to one side and, with the same sweeping gesture, holstered
his blaster and pushed his green hood off. It was Sis's turn to jump
when she saw the wild mass of hair rolling down his back.
"An honor, Miss Sparling," he said in that rumbly voice. "Please come
right in. There's a hurry-up draft."
So Sis went in and I followed right after her. Mr. Brown closed the
door. I tried to catch his eye so I could give him some kind of hint or
explanation, but he had taken a couple of his big strides and was in
the control section with Sis. She didn't give ground, though; I'll say
that for her. She only came to his chest, but she had her arms crossed
sternly.
"First, Mr. Brown," she began, like talking to a cluck of a kid in
class, "you realize that you are not only committing the political
crime of traveling without a visa, and the criminal one of stowing away
without paying your fare, but the moral delinquency of consuming stores
intended for the personnel of this ship solely in emergency?"
* * * * *
He opened his mouth to its maximum width and raised an enormous hand.
Then he let the air out and dropped his arm.
"I take it you either have no defense or care to make none," Sis added
caustically.
Butt laughed slowly and carefully as if he were going over each word.
"Wonder if all the anura talk like that. And _you_ want to foul up
Venus."
"We haven't done so badly on Earth, after the mess you men made of
politics. It needed a revolution of the mothers before--"
"Needed nothing. Everyone wanted peace. Earth is a weary old world."
"It's a world of strong moral fiber compared to yours, Mr. Alberta Lee
Brown." Hearing his rightful name made him move suddenly and tower over
her. Sis said with a certain amount of hurry and change of tone, "What
_do_ you have to say about stowing away and using up lifeboat stores?"
* * * * *
He cocked his head and considered a moment. "Look," he said finally,
"I have more than enough munit to pay for round trip tickets, but I
couldn't get a return visa because of that brinosaur judge and all
the charges she hung on me. Had to stow away. Picked the _Eleanor
Roosevelt_ because a couple of the boys in the crew are friends of mine
and they were willing to help. But this lifeboat--don't you know that
every passenger ship carries four times as many lifeboats as it needs?
Not to mention the food I didn't eat because it stuck in my throat?"
"Yes," she said bitterly. "You had this boy steal fresh fruit for you.
I suppose you didn't know that under space regulations that makes him
equally guilty?"
"No, Sis, he didn't," I was beginning to argue. "All he wanted--"
"Sure I knew. Also know that if I'm picked up as a stowaway, I'll be
sent back to Earth to serve out those fancy little sentences."
"Well, you're guilty of them, aren't you?"
He waved his hands at her impatiently. "I'm not talking law, female;
I'm talking sense. Listen! I'm in trouble because I went to Earth to
look for a wife. You're standing here right now because you're on your
way to Venus for a husband. So let's."
Sis actually staggered back. "Let's? Let's _what_? Are--are you daring
to suggest that--that--"
"Now, Miss Sparling, no hoopla. I'm saying let's get married, and you
know it. You figured out from what the boy told you that I was chewing
on you for a wife. You're healthy and strong, got good heredity, you
know how to operate sub-surface machinery, you've lived underwater, and
your disposition's no worse than most of the anura I've seen. Prolific
stock, too."