Part 1

WEST O' MARS

By CHARLES L. FONTENAY

Illustrated by JOHN SCHOENHERR

_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."

I thought a minute.

"Surely, he couldn't have any objection to my visiting _him_ tonight, could he? And if you're there, well...."

"We're staying at the Ringo Hotel," she said after a moment's hesitation, and favored me with a shy smile.

Well, I was able to borrow some money, and with it I bought a few flowers for Dori and a quantity of the rawest, cheapest whiskey I could find. I had recognized the symptoms of the sot in the old man's pouchy face and shaking hands.

The Ringo Hotel was a run-down place in the eastern sector of town. The old man was not especially glad to see me when I appeared early that evening, but his attitude changed quickly when I unwrapped the liquor. Within an hour he was dead drunk and snoring on the bed.

Dori drank nothing, and I drank just enough to loosen my tongue and my inhibitions. It was not the sort of romantic atmosphere I would have preferred, with the two of us facing each other in hard, straight-backed chairs, the bare light bulb glaring down on us and the old souse snorting away in his drunken dreams; but I was determined not to let this opportunity escape me.

I talked my way carefully, without making any precipitous advances or suggestions, and I soon learned one inescapable fact. Dori had no love left for her father and would leave him in a moment; but her long-dead mother had instilled in her a rigid morality that left no door open for an informal association, no matter how attractive I made it. There was one course open to me.

"Dori," I said, "I have never married because all my life I have been waiting for the woman to appear whom I knew would be right for me. When I saw you, I thought you were that woman and now I know. Will you marry me?"

Now, would you think any woman would consider such a proposal seriously from a man she had met eight hours before, especially a sedate, conventional woman like Dori? It was an indication of her hatred of the life she led that she did not even glance at the old man on the bed.

Her answer was in the light that flooded her thin face. In that moment, she was beautiful.

* * * * *

I had made fast work of my courtship of Dori, and I made fast work of the task of getting rid of her father. After our marriage, I gave him enough money to get blind drunk, and then we left town in a hurry. As much as she had grown to detest the old bum, Dori did not particularly approve of this trick, but she had surrendered to a love for me so complete she was willing to do anything I asked without question. I understand he died in jail soon afterward.

Our match was not an unhappy one. I have no great capacity for affection, but I was not cruel to Dori. To win her in a hurry, I had had to convince her I was desperately in love with her, and it was to my interest to continue the illusion.

For my plans encompassed no continuation of the piddling little magic show she had put on with her father. I was a gambler, and with Dori at my side a great field of opportunity lay before me.

I don't know if you are familiar with the game of dice, Mr. Peache? No? It's a very ancient and honorable game.

The player with the dice rolls them. If a seven or an eleven comes up, it's a natural and he wins the bet and keeps the dice for another roll. If a two, three or twelve turns up, it's craps and he loses his bet but keeps the dice for another roll. If any other number comes up, that's his point, and he keeps rolling the dice until either that number repeats or a seven comes up. If he wins his point, he wins the bet and keeps the dice, but a seven loses him both his bet and the dice.

Dori's method of controlling the dice was to control one of them. When they are rolled, dice rarely stop at the same instant. She would let the first one stop, then keep giving the other the necessary mental push until it reached the number that gave the combination she wanted. Since the numbers on each die run from one to six, seven was the only number she could be sure of forcing; but if a point were set, she could prevent the dice from hitting seven until the opportunity occurred to make the point.

She was reluctant at first to use her ability in a way she felt was dishonest, but, as I said, she had given herself up to adoration of me, and it took only a little affectionate persuasion to soothe her conscience into abeyance. She did what I asked, and in a remarkably short time we entered on a life of ease and luxury that was strange to both of us.

No more for me the small-time gambler who folded on a bluff when only a few dollars were at stake. I knew where the big fish swam, and I went after them.

Naturally, dice was my game. Since childhood I had been an expert at cards, but cards do not lend themselves readily to psychokinetic manipulation, without the additional talent of clairvoyance, and Dori had none of that. But how she could make those dice tumble!

By the time the people who had both money and the gambling instinct realized I was one of those infallible phenomena to be avoided, we were rich beyond even my dreams. Suicides and paupers were left in our wake.

It seems that for every advantage a man gains in life, he is faced with a corresponding disadvantage. He must pay the piper. Here I have wealth, and West o' Mars, without Dori.... Well, I anticipate myself.

You may not know it, Mr. Peache, but even now I might find it dangerous to be back on Earth again. It certainly was advisable for me to leave Earth at that time. Some of the men I had broken had not been left without the means to avenge themselves on me.

So Dori and I came to Mars.

* * * * *

Those were the days before there were luxurious space liners. Laugh if you will, Mr. Peache, but they are luxurious; I haven't traveled in them, but I've gone through them at Marsport. When Dori and I came to Mars, passengers were strictly expensive cargo who slept and ate on the centerdeck with the crew and were told brusquely to stay out of the way if they went north of the centerdeck. For a modest woman like Dori--the only woman aboard on this trip--it was an ordeal; always at least one crew member was sleeping or relaxing on the centerdeck, and I had to shield her with a blanket when she dressed or undressed. An inadequate towel was her only screen when she took a shower or went to the toilet.

I had feared trouble because my wife would be the only woman aboard, among a dozen men, on a trip that would last for months. Those fears were groundless. I understand that now women make up an adequate percentage of the crews, but at that time they solved the problem by doctoring the food while aspace.

But tensions mount under such conditions, perhaps more so when their main outlet is suppressed. The terrible thing about the trip, for me, was the deadly monotony. The crewmen had their jobs which, surprisingly to me, kept them busy throughout their duty shifts. Dori, being a woman, was more placid than I. But for me the monotony was torture: you must remember that, besides the lack of privacy, our food was doctored, too, and we could not have lived as man and wife had we had privacy.

Of course, I played cards with the crew, for there was always at least one who was off duty and not sleeping. But I had determined I would do nothing to make Mars as untenable for me as Earth had become, and I resisted the temptation to really gamble with any of them. And gambling for pennies is not card playing to me.

The man who came to my rescue at last was the astrogator, a Hawaiian named Kei. With Polynesian perspicacity, he had smuggled a personal supply of liquor aboard, against regulations. The other crew members knew he took a nip regularly on off-duty hours, but they never could locate his cache.

"Pretty dull, huh, groundie?" remarked Kei as we played gin rummy with cards that insisted on floating off into the wilds of the gravityless centerdeck. "Maybe I can pep things up. Ever been drunk in free fall?"

"No," I said. "I'm afraid I don't have your foresight."

He grinned smugly.

"You got to try it once, anyhow," he said. "Maybe once will be all you'll want, though, after the hangover hits you. It makes DTs look like a Grade B movie. Let's go down to the storage deck."

I glanced over at Dori. She was apparently asleep in her bunk.

We went below, and Kei broke out a bottle of fair whiskey from a cache behind one of the storage cabinets. He winked at me, cracked the cork and passed it over.

It didn't take long for the liquor to take hold, and I began to realize what Kei meant when he said it was an experience every man should go through once. As you know, when a spaceship is in "free fall," with no rockets blasting, there is no gravity at all, and you float free in space. To be drunk in free fall is to add the freedom of the alcohol to the freedom of space. You float on rosy clouds, not just mentally, but physically. You swim around in nothing, airily, deliciously. There's nothing on Earth or Mars like it, because you can experience it only in space.

I saw, too, why Kei would go to the storage deck to drink, even if he hadn't kept his private cache there. On the storage deck, your wild gestures won't hit some vital lever or button--and no one else can hear your ravings. For there's something about a space drunk that makes you babble. You talk your head off; you talk your heart out.

A space drunk is a good catharsis for all the mental quirks and repressions that have been bothering you, and maybe I needed such a catharsis. Possibly Kei did, too. At any rate, we chattered to each other like boyhood chums, telling our dreams, our aspirations, revealing our most secret vices and meannesses.

I was not shocked, but duly sympathetic, to learn that Kei had knifed his brother to death in his teens, and had taken up space service to escape the resulting complications. Beside this revelation of fratricide, my own selfishness and my cold-blooded reasons for marrying Dori seemed tame. But I made it as strong as I could.

"She thinks I love her!" I shouted, laughing uproariously, and Kei laughed with me. "Think of that! I'm a brilliant, hard-headed, practical man, and look at her: nice enough, but washed-out, colorless. She's useful. She's made me rich. But if I'd pick out a woman to fall in love with...."

Floating in the air as I talked, I had swung around gradually, and now my eyes fell on the companionway to the centerdeck above us. Dori was clinging to it, and from her expression I could tell she had heard everything I said about her.

Her eyes were enormous from the shock, and her face was as grief-stricken as though I had stabbed her callously through the heart without cause. She turned without a word and left the deck.

In my drunken exaltation, it seemed funny to me. I laughed about it, and made jokes about it to Kei. I felt quite smart and heartless. Later, during the hangover, it didn't seem so funny, but, on the other hand, I was so miserable I didn't care one way or the other.

Dori spoke of it to me only once, and that was just before we blasted down to Mars in the G-boat. She looked at me levelly and said, without a trace of emotion:

"I hate you, Samlaan. Always remember that."

* * * * *

Mars was a wild frontier planet then, where violence was not out of the ordinary. The spirit of the adventurer and the pioneer pervaded it, as it does the outer moons today. But the frontier has its own code, which makes it safer sometimes than the steel and stone jungles of civilization.

I had what I wanted now--riches--and I had no desire to be forced to leave Mars, too. There was no more gambling for me, no more living on the edge of the law. I bought into several respectable business ventures, content to add to my wealth slowly.

Dori and I built a home in Syrtis Major near Mars City and lived a quiet life together. Mars at that time was a man's world; it lacked divorce laws and similar legal and social machinery for terminating unsuccessful marriages. I doubt that Dori, being what she was, would have taken advantage of such avenues, anyhow. She was a good wife to me; she lacked only that former breathless adoration which had meant so little to me.

A few years after we arrived on Mars, we were invited to a week-long house party at the home of a business acquaintance, Leswill Odaan. Odaan's wealth was comparable to my own, and he lived here, in the lowland of Lacus Lucrinus.

These house parties are not as common now as they were in the old days. At that time, they were the major social activity of the rural dwellers of Mars. One invited one's friends for a week at his private dome in the lowlands--maybe twenty or forty at once. Then for a year or two he could expect to be a guest at similar parties every month or so, scattered all over the inhabited area of Mars. That's why the old homes of the wealthy out in the lowlands are so big.

Odaan didn't live in West o' Mars; I built it later. He had a square, sprawling chunk of buildings under a dome out in the center of the Lacus Lucrinus lowland. It was a crude display of raw wealth in execrable taste, with 14th century tapestries and neo-modern furniture mixed up in rooms which might be of Egypto-Cretan architecture. I saw nothing he owned to excite my envy--until, on a sage-jumping jaunt across the lowland the second day of our visit, I climbed the western cliff and saw the desert.

Bleak, lonely beauty has a strong appeal for me, Mr. Peache. Perhaps it is because it strikes a chord in the bleakness and loneliness of my own heart. But I never had seen anything before, and I never have seen anything since, to match the stark beauty of those buttes in the Aeolia Desert, as seen from the western cliffs of Lacus Lucrinus.

It was then that the conception of West o' Mars, as it could be and should be, sprang full-blown to my mind. I tell you, Mr. Peache, I saw this place then in my imagination, just as it is today, with this tower and this great window that overlooks the desert.

I had to have Lacus Lucrinus. And Leswill Odaan owned it.