“Have you not got some other businesses?”
“Well, we do sell a lot of color slides, postcards, baggage labels, and so on to people who like to act cosmopolitan; and I understand our travel posters are quite popular as wall decoration. But all that has to be printed on Earth, and the printer and distributor keep most of the money. We’ve sold some books and show tapes, of course, but only one has been really successful/ Was a Slave Girl on Mars. Our most prominent novelist was co-opted to ghostwrite that one. Again, though, your income taxes took most of the money; authors never have been protected the way a businessman is. We do make a high percentage of profit on those little certificates you see aroundyou know, the title deeds to one square inch of Marsbut expressed absolutely, in dollars, it doesn’t amount to much when we start shopping for bulldozers and thermo-nuclear power plants.”
“How about-postage stamps?” inquired Doran. “Philately is a big business, I have heard.”
68 The Unicorn Trade
“It was our mainstay,” admitted Matheny, “but it’s been overworked. Martian stamps are a drug on the market. What we’d like to operate is a sweepstakes, but the antigambling laws on Earth forbid that.”
Doran whistled. “I got to give you people credit for enterprise, anyway!” He fingered his mustache. “Uh, pardon me, but have you tried to, well, attract capital from Earth?”
“Of course,” said Matheny bitterly. “We offer the most liberal concessions in the Solar System. Any little mining company or transport firm or … or anybody . .. who wanted to come and actually invest a few dollars in Marswhy, we’d probably give him the President’s daughter as security. No, the Minister of Ecology has a better-looking one. But who’s interested? Mars is forty million miles away at closest. We haven’t a thing that Earth hasn’t got more of. We’re only the descendants of a few scientists, a few political malcontents, oddballs who happen to prefer elbow room and a bill of liberties to the incorporated statewhat could General Nucleonics hope to get from Mars?”
“I see. Well, what are you having to drink?”
“Beer,” said Matheny without hesitation.
“Huh? Look, pal, this is on me.”
“The only beer on Mars comes forty million miles, with interplanetary freight charges tacked on,” said Matheny. “Tuborg!”
Doran shrugged, dialed the dispenser and fed it coins.
“This is a real interesting talk, Pete,” he said.
THE INNOCENT ARRIVAL
69
“You are being very frank with me. I like a man that is frank.”
Matheny shrugged. “I haven’t told you anything that isn’t known to every economist.”
Of course I haven’t. I’ve not so much as mentioned the Red Ankh, for instance. But in principle, I have told him the truth, told him of our need; for even the secret operations do not yield us enough.
The beer arrived. Matheny engulfed himself in it. Doran sipped at a whiskey sour and unobtrusively set a fresh brew in front of the Martian.
“Ahhh!” said Matheny. “Bless you, my friend.”
“A pleasure.”
“But now you must let me buy you one.”
“That is not necessary. After all,” said Doran with great tact, “with the situation as you have been describing”
“Oh, we’re not that poor! My expense allowance assumes I will entertain quite a bit.”
Doran’s brows lifted a few minutes of arc. “You’re here on business, then?”
“Yes. I told you we haven’t any tourists. I was sent to hire a business manager for the Martian export trade.”
“What’s wrong with your own people? I mean, Pete, it is not your fault there are so many rackets … uh, taxes … and middlemen and agencies and et cetera. That is just the way Earth is set up these days.”
“Exactly.” Matheny’s finger stabbed in the general direction of Doran’s pajama top. “And who set it up that way? Earthmen. We Martians are babes in the bush. What chance do we have to earn dollars on the scale we need them, in
70
The Unicorn Trade
competition with corporations which could buy and sell our whole planet before breakfast? Why, we couldn’t afford three seconds of commercial time on a Lullaby Pillow ‘cast. What we need, what we have to hire, is an executive who knows Earth, who’s an Earthman himself. Let him tell us what will appeal to your people, and how to dodge the tax bite and .. . and, well, you see how it goes, that sort of, uh, thing.” Matheny felt his eloquence running down and grabbed for the second bottle of beer.