“Oh, we don’t expect immigration,” said Matheny shyly. He was a fairly young man but small, with a dark-thatched snub-nosed gray-eyed head that seemed too large for his slender body. “We learned long ago no one is interested any more in giving up even second-class citizenship on Earth to live in the Republic. But we only wanted to hire .. . uh, I mean engage .. . an, an adviser…. We’re not businessmen, we know our export trade hasn’t a chance among all your corporations unless we get somea five-year contract?” He heard his words trailing off idiotically, and swore at himself.
“Well, good luck.” The official’s tone was skeptical. He stamped the passport and handed it back. “There, now, you are free to travel anywhere in the Protectorates. But I would advise you to leave the capital and get into the sticks er-hum, I mean the provincesI am sure there must be tolerably competent sales executives in Russia or Congolese Belgium or such regions. Frankly, sir, I do not believe you can attract anyone out of Newer York.”
“Thanks,” said Matheny, “but you see … I … we need … that is. … Oh, well. Thanks. Goodbye.” He backed out of the office.
A dropshaft deposited him on a walkway. The crowd, a rainbow of men in pajamas and cloaks, women in Neo-Cretan dresses and goldleaf hats.
60
The Unicorn Trade
swept him against the rail. For a moment, squashed to the wire, he stared a hundred feet down at a river of automobiles. Phobos! he thought wildly. If the barrier gives, I’ll be sliced in two by a dorsal fin before I hit the pavement! .
The August twilight wrapped him in heat and stickiness. He could see neither stars nor even moon through the city’s blaze. The forest of multi-colored towers, cataracting half a mile skyward across more acreage than his eyes reached, was impressive and all that, buthe used to stroll out in the rock garden behind his cottage and smoke a pipe in company with Orion. On summer evenings, that is, when the night temperature wasn’t too far below zero.
Why did they tap me for this job? he asked himself in-a surge of homesickness. What the hell was the Martian Embassy here for? He, Peter Matheny, was no more than a peaceful little professor of sociodynamics at Devil’s Kettle University. Of course, he had advised his government before now, in fact the Red Ankh Society had been his idea, but still he was only at ease with his books and his chess and his mineral collection, a faculty poker party on Tenthday night and an occasional trip to Swindle-townMy God, thought Matheny, here I am, one solitary outlander in the greatest commercial empire the human race has even seen, and I’m supposed to find my planet a con man!
He began walking, disconsolately at random. His lizardskin shirt and black culottes drew glances, but derisive ones: their cut was forty years out of date. He should find himself a hotel,
THE INNOCENT ARRIVAL
61
he thought drearily, but he wasn’t tired; the spaceport would pneumo his baggage to him whenever he did check in. The few Martians who had been to Earth had gone into ecstasies over the automation which put any service you could name on a twenty-four-hour basis. But it would be a long time before Mars had such machines. If ever.
The city roared at him.
He fumbled after his pipe. Of course, he told himself, that’s why the Embassy can’t act. I may find it advisable to go outside the law. Please, sir, where can I contact the underworld?
He wished gambling were legal on Earth. The Constitution of the Martian Republic forbade sumptuary and moral legislation; quite apart from the rambunctious individualism which that document formulated, the article was a practical necessity. Life was bleak enough on the deserts, without being denied the pleasure of trying to bottom deal some friend who was happily trying to mark the cards. Matheny would have found a few spins of roulette soothing: it was always an intellectual challenge to work out the system by which the management operated a wheel. But more, he would have been among people he understood. The frightful thing about the Earthman was the way he seemed to exist only in organized masses. A gypsy snake oil peddler, plodding his syrtosaur wagon across Martian sands just didn’t have a prayer against, say, the Grant, Harding & Adams Public Relations Agency.