“We’re partners, Rod. Always.”
“Bob do you want to do this? You and Carmen?”
“Yes. Well . .
“‘Well’ what?”
“Rod, we’re sticking with you. This election is all very well but you took us in when we needed it and teamed with us. We’ll never forget it. Furthermore I think that you make a sounder team captain than Cowper is likely to make. But there is one thing.”
“Yes.”
“If you decide that we leave, Carmen and I will appreciate it if you put it off a day.”
“Why?” demanded Caroline. “Now is the time.”
“Well they’ve set this up as a formal colony, a village with a mayor. Everybody knows that a regularly elected mayor can perform weddings.”
“Oh!” said Caroline. “Pardon my big mouth.”
“Carmen and I can take care of the religious end it’s not very complicated in our church. But, just in case we ever are rescued, we would like it better and our folks would like it if the civil requirements were all perfectly regular and legal. You see?”
Rod nodded. “I see.”
“But if you say to leave tonight . . .”
“I don’t,” Rod answered with sudden decision. “We’ll stay and get you two properly married. Then”
“Then we all shove off in a shower of rice,” Caroline finished.
“Then we’ll see. Cowper may turn out to be a good mayor. We won’t leave just because I lost an election.” He looked around at their faces. “But . . . but I certainly do thank you. I”
He could not go on. Carmen stepped forward and kissed him quickly. “Goodnight, Rod. Thanks.”
9 “A Joyful Omen”
Mayor Cowper got off to a good start. He approved, took over, and embellished a suggestion that Carmen and Bob should have their own quarters. He suspended work on the wall and set the whole village to constructing a honeymoon cottage. Not until his deputy, Roy Kilroy, reminded him did he send out hunting parties.
He worked hard himself, having set the wedding for that evening and having decreed that the building must be finished by sundown. Finished it was by vandalizing part of the wall to supply building stone when the supply ran short Construction was necessarily simple since they had no tools, no mortar but clay mud, no way to cut timbers. It was a stone box as tall as a man and a couple of meters square, with a hole for a door. The roof was laid up from the heaviest poles that could be cut from a growth upstream of giant grass much like bamboo the colonists simply called it “bamboo.” This was thatched and plastered with mud; it sagged badly.
But it was a house and even had a door which could be closed a woven grass mat stiffened with bamboo. It neither hinged nor locked but it filled the hole and could be held in place with a stone and a pole. The floor was clean sand covered with fresh broad leaves.
As a doghouse for a St. Bernard it would have been about right; as a dwelling for humans it was not much. But it was better than that which most human beings had enjoyed through the history and prehistory of the race. Bob and Carmen did not look at it critically.
When work was knocked off for lunch Rod self-consciously sat down near a group around Cowper. He had wrestled with his conscience for a long time in the night and had decided that the only thing to do was to eat sour grapes and pretend to like them. He could start by not avoiding Cowper.
Margery Chung was cook for the day; she cut Rod a chunk of scorched meat. He thanked her and started to gnaw it. Cowper was talking. Rod was not trying to overhear but there seemed to be no reason not to listen.
“which is the only way we will get the necessary discipline into the group. I’m sure you agree. Cowper glanced up, caught Rod’s eye, looked annoyed, then grinned. “Hello, Rod.”
“Hi, Grant.”
“Look, old man, we’re having an executive committee meeting. Would you mind finding somewhere else to eat lunch?”
Rod stood up blushing. “Oh! Sure.”