Mezzerow Loves Company Part 4

"That's all, Mary Ellen?"

"Of course, I have a last name, but I'm hoping to change it."

He sighed in resignation. "Mary Ellen, we won't discuss marriage again.

Is this clear? However I have plans for you. I'll get in touch with you before we leave Earth." They were nearing a brightly lit thoroughfare and he felt safer.

"I was hoping you'd say that," she said wistfully. She dug into a tiny purse and handed him a card. "You'll notice there's another name on it, too. That's Chloe, my half-sister. She's smart and I like her, but I hope you don't like her--not better than me, anyway."

"I'm sure I won't. But why half-sister? I'd think it would be rather difficult for your mother to marry again."

"Of course she couldn't," she said scornfully. "No woman's allowed more than half a--"

"Mary Ellen!"

"All right, I won't say it," she said crossly. "But you asked."

He could fill in the missing information. With women drastically outnumbering men, husbands had to be shared. Men were allowed more than one mate, but women never were. Perhaps the development of polygamy had been inevitable.

Earth was the center of a vast and spreading civilization. Men went out to settle the newly discovered planets while, for the most part, women tended to remain behind. More than that, there were some women who came to Earth from planets that had been settled longer, attracted by the glamor of an older civilization and high-paying jobs, never realizing until they got there the other conditions that went with it.

Earth's dilemma was therefore a partial solution to one of the problems of his own planet. But the important problem, getting the name changed to Mezzerow, was harder than he had antic.i.p.ated. He wasn't looking forward to tomorrow.

He noticed Mary Ellen glancing curiously around. "Is there anything wrong?" he asked.

"Nooo. It's just sort of funny that you'd stay here--in the heart of the unmarried girls' residential district." She grinned at him. "Maybe I'd better go in with you."

"I think you'd better," he said. That's what the pudgy clerk had meant.

He should have listened to him and gone to the men's hotel.

The lobby was crowded with women, many of whom, he suspected, had been waiting for their return. On a man-starved planet, word got around.

Perhaps he was imagining it, but he thought he heard an audible sigh of disappointment when they came in with Mary Ellen. She had more than repaid them for the few anxious moments she had caused. Much more, though she didn't know it yet.

They went directly to their rooms and Marcus sent Wilbur inside, lingering at the door to talk with the girl. "Should I come in?" she asked hopefully. "I'm really sorry about your legs."

"You will not come in, Mary Ellen. I don't trust myself alone with you."

"You mean it?"

"I was never more sincere." He almost believed it himself.

"We don't _have_ to get married if you're not going to be here long enough to make it worthwhile," she said happily. "I was thinking--"

He glanced warningly inside the room.

"He's a big nuisance," she whispered. "Look. I've got to work tomorrow, but in the evening I'll be free. Put the kid on a merry-go-round and come and see me, huh?" She threw her arms around Marcus and kissed him pa.s.sionately. Then she turned and ran down the hall.

Marcus shook his head and went into his room.

In the morning, Marcus had little difficulty contacting an infolegger.

For a rather large sum, a map purporting to show the location of A-CELO exchanged hands. For another sum, a map of the princ.i.p.al transportation tubes was added to it. Both were a.s.suredly out of date in many respects, but were probably correct in the one detail Marcus was concerned with.

They started rather late to avoid the morning rush. There were some transportation complications. At the first trial they arrived at the wrong section of the city. After consultation with various pa.s.sengers and robot way stations, they got it straightened out. Penciling corrections on the map, they retraced their route, making only one mistake along the way. This mistake was not their fault. A transfer junction had been relocated since they had pa.s.sed through it on the way out.

They got to their destination in good time, perhaps faster than if they had used the services of Information Center. A-CELO was also an example of neo-drive-in cla.s.sical. But instead of resembling something appropriate, say a five or six pointed star, it appeared to be a mere jumble of children's curv-blocks. A closer look convinced Marcus that his first appraisal had been wrong. Originally it must have been built to house another A-function. Perhaps A-WR (Anatomy; woman, reclining).

Whatever it was on the outside, A-CELO was confusion within. Marcus found it impossible to get near the question booths. Robots scurried about in seemingly useless tasks and workmen shouted orders that no one paid attention to. In the midst of the dust and turmoil, one man stood on a platform and watched the frantic effort with bored serenity.

"Moving," he said automatically as Marcus approached.

"Where to?"

"I don't know. It depends on whom we can b.u.mp."

Marcus paled visibly. They were moving and didn't know where. Another day and his map was useless. And if this man was right, even Information Center wouldn't know where A-CELO was tomorrow. "Isn't there a planning commission?" he said. "Don't they tell you where to move?"

The man shrugged. "There's a planning commission. But they had too many responsibilities and had to move to a larger building, the same as we're doing. Until they get settled, everyone's on his own." The man spoke quietly into the mike and the tempo of the removal robots accelerated.

He turned back to Marcus and added an explanation: "Three exploration s.h.i.+ps returned yesterday, loaded to the brim with micro-data. That's why we have to move."

Marcus rubbed his face. He could see it posed a problem. It was not merely the storage of new data, the data also had to be made available to the public. This required new offices, human supervisors, robot clerks.

That was the way they did things on Earth, but he wished they'd waited a few days. "You can't be moving this stuff out on the streets. Somebody must have an idea where you're going. Tell me who he is. I've got to find out where you'll be tomorrow."

"Oh, no. If you found where we're moving, you'd learn who we're going to b.u.mp," said the man with cheerful cunning. "They'd take steps to repel us. Can't have that." The man scratched his head. "Tell you, if you're really honest--if you're not a department spy--I can show you how to take care of your business today."

"I'm an Outer," said Marcus. "I don't care about your squabbles. I want to get something settled and get out of here."

"You look like an Outer," said the man. "Here's what you do. Part of the department is still functioning. Go to the side entrance. Question booths there are open." He turned back to the mike and barked orders that had no visible effect on anything.

The man was partly wrong. The side entrance was open, but corridors and booths were jammed with displaced information seekers. Marcus was not easily discouraged. By now he was accustomed to the vast machinations required for the simplest things. He went to the back entrance. It, too, was jammed, but after a short desperate struggle he squeezed into a booth, leaving Wilbur to hang on the outside.

The official who answered him was sleepy and hara.s.sed, a difficult expression. He yawned and took his feet off the desk to acknowledge the call and then a robot removed the desk. He had no place to put his feet so he kept them firmly on the floor as if he expected that, too, to vanish.

Marcus stated the request clearly, spreading the chart for the man to see. "Here is the original from which the photo-tape was made and sent to Earth with his comments. I don't know what happened here. Perhaps the tape was fuzzy or it may have been fogged in transit by radiation. Or it may have been faulty interpretation on the part of a robot."

The official peered out of the view plate. "Messy Row. Mezzerow. Ha, ha." He laughed perfunctorily and got up to pace. A robot came near the chair and he sat down hastily.

"Here, you can see that in his own hand he spelled it Mezzerow," said Marcus. "He named it after himself as every explorer is ent.i.tled to do once in his career. I ask that in simple justice the mistake be corrected. I have a pet.i.tion signed by everyone on the planet."

The official waved the doc.u.ments back. "It doesn't matter who signed,"

he said. "We don't allow these things to influence our decision." He put his head in his hand though he had no desk for his elbow. His lips moved soundlessly as he framed the reply.