“I will be. Isobel, would you do me a favor?”
“If it’s not impossible, illegal, or scandalous—yes.”
Don fished the ring out of his pocket. “Would you take care of this for me? Keep it safe until I want it back?”
She took it, held it up to look at it. “Careful!” Don urged. “Keep it out of sight.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t want anyone to know you have it. Get it out of sight.”
“Well—” She turned away; when she turned back the ring was gone. “What’s the mystery, Don?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Huh?”
“I can’t tell you any more than that. I just want to keep that ring safe. Somebody is trying to get it away from me.”
“But—Look, does it belong to you?”
“Yes. That’s all I can tell you.”
She searched his face. “All right, Don. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks.”
“No trouble—I hope. Look—stop in again soon. I want you to meet the manager.”
“Okay, I will.”
She turned away to take care of a customer. Don waited around until a phone booth was free, then reported his address to the security office at the space port. That done, he returned to his dishes.
Around midnight, hundreds of dishes later, Charlie turned away the last customer and locked the front door. Together they ate a meal there had been no time for earlier, one with chopsticks, one with fork. Don found himself almost too tired to eat. “Charlie,” he asked, “how did you run this place with no help?”
“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.