Four-Day Planet Part 26

He looked at her guilelessly and said, "No; I was waiting for it."

"Well, I'll get it," she said. "I thought the other nurse had brought it." She started out, and then she came back and had to fuss with his cus.h.i.+ons, and then she saw the tray on the floor.

"You did so have your lunch!" she accused.

Tom looked at her as innocently as ever. "Oh, you mean these samples?

Why, they were good; I'll take all of them. And a big slab of roast beef, and brown gravy, and mashed potatoes. And how about some ice cream?"

It was a good try; too bad it didn't work.

"Don't worry, Tom," I told him. "I'll get my lawyer to spring you out of this jug, and then we'll take you to my place and fill you up on Mrs. Laden's cooking."

The nurse sniffed. She suspected, quite correctly, that whoever Mrs.

Laden was, she didn't know anything about scientific dietetics.

When I got back to the _Times_, Dad and Julio had had their lunch and were going over the teleprint edition. Julio was printing corrections on blank sheets of plastic and Dad was cutting them out and cementing them over things that needed correcting on the master sheets. I gave Julio a short item to the effect that Tom Kivelson, son of Captain and Mrs. Joe Kivelson, one of the _Javelin_ survivors who had been burned in the tallow-wax fire, was now out of all danger, and recovering. Dad was able to scrounge that onto the first page.

There was a lot of other news. The T.F.N. destroyer _Simon Bolivar_, en route from Gimli to pick up the notorious Anton Gerrit, alias Steve Ravick, had come out of hypers.p.a.ce and into radio range. Dad had talked to the skipper by screen and gotten interviews, which would be telecast, both with him and Detective-Major MacBride of the Colonial Constabulary. The _Simon Bolivar_ would not make landing, but go into orbit and send down a boat. Detective-Major MacBride (alias Dr. John Watson) would remain on Fenris to take over local police activities.

More evidence had been unearthed at Hunters' Hall on the frauds practiced by Leo Belsher and Gerrit-alias-Ravick; it looked as though a substantial sum of money might be recovered, eventually, from the bank accounts and other holdings of both men on Terra. Acting Resident-Agent Gonzalo Ware--Ware, it seemed, really was his right name, but look what he had in front of it--had promulgated more regulations and edicts, and a crackdown on the worst waterfront dives was in progress. I'll bet the devoted flock was horrified at what their beloved bishop had turned into. Bish would leave his diocese in a lot healthier condition than he'd found it, that was one thing for sure. And most of the gang of thugs and plug-uglies who had been used to intimidate and control the Hunters' Co-operative had been gathered up and jailed on vagrancy charges; prisoners were being put to work cleaning up the city.

And there was a lot about plans for a registration of voters, and organization of election boards, and a local electronics-engineering firm had been awarded a contract for voting machines. I didn't think there had ever been a voting machine on Fenris before.

"The commander of the _Bolivar_ says he'll take your story to Terra with him, and see that it gets to Interworld News," Dad told me as we were sorting the corrected master sheets and loading them into the photoprint machine, to be sent out on the air. "The _Bolivar_'ll make Terra at least two hundred hours ahead of the _Cape Canaveral_.

Interworld will be glad to have it. It isn't often they get a story like that with the first news of anything, and this'll be a big story."

"You shouldn't have given me the exclusive by-line," I said. "You did as much work on it as I did."

"No, I didn't, either," he contradicted, "and I knew what I was doing."

With the work done, I remembered that I hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast, and I went down to take inventory of the refrigerator. Dad went along with me, and after I had a.s.sembled a lunch and sat down to it, he decided that his pipe needed refilling, lit it, poured a cup of coffee and sat down with me.

"You know, Walt, I've been thinking, lately," he began.

Oh-oh, I thought. When Dad makes that remark, in just that tone, it's all hands to secure s.h.i.+p for diving.

"We've all had to do a lot of thinking, lately," I agreed.

"Yes. You know, they want me to be mayor of Port Sandor."

I nodded and waited till I got my mouth empty. I could see a lot of sense in that. Dad is honest and scrupulous and public-spirited; too much so, sometimes, for his own good. There wasn't any question of his ability, and while there had always been antagonism between the hunter-s.h.i.+p crews and waterfront people and the uptown business crowd, Dad was well liked and trusted by both parties.

"Are you going to take it?" I asked.

"I suppose I'll have to, if they really want me. Be a sort of obligation."

That would throw a lot more work on me. Dad could give some attention to the paper as mayor, but not as much as now.

"What do you want me to try to handle for you?" I asked.

"Well, Walt, that's what I've been thinking about," he said. "I've been thinking about it for a long time, and particularly since things got changed around here. I think you ought to go to school some more."

That made me laugh. "What, back to Hartzenbosch?" I asked. "I could teach him more than he could teach me, now."

"I doubt that, Walt. Professor Hartzenbosch may be an old maid in trousers, but he's really a very sound scholar. But I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about your going to Terra to school."

"Huh?" I forgot to eat, for a moment. "Let's stop kidding."

"I didn't start kidding; I meant it."

"Well, think again, Dad. It costs money to go to school on Terra. It even costs money to go to Terra."

"We have a little money, Walt. Maybe more than you think we do. And with things getting better, we'll lease more teleprinters and get more advertising. You're likely to get better than the price of your pa.s.sage out of that story we're sending off on the _Bolivar_, and that won't be the end of it, either. Fenris is going to be in the news for a while. You may make some more money writing. That's why I was careful to give you the by-line on that Gerrit story." His pipe had gone out again; he took time out to relight it, and then added: "Anything I spend on this is an investment. The _Times_ will get it back."

"Yes, that's another thing; the paper," I said. "If you're going to be mayor, you won't be able to do everything you're doing on the paper now, and then do all my work too."

"Well, shocking as the idea may be, I think we can find somebody to replace you."

"Name one," I challenged.

"Well, Lillian Arnaz, at the Library, has always been interested in newspaper work," he began.

"A girl!" I hooted. "You have any idea of some of the places I have to go to get stories?"

"Yes. I have always deplored the necessity. But a great many of them have been closed lately, and the rest are being run in a much more seemly manner. And she wouldn't be the only reporter. I hesitate to give you any better opinion of yourself than you have already, but it would take at least three people to do the work you've been doing.

When you get back from Terra, you'll find the _Times_ will have a very respectable reportorial staff."

"What'll I be, then?" I wondered.

"Editor," Dad told me. "I'll retire and go into politics full time.

And if Fenris is going to develop the way I believe it will, the editor of the _Times_ will need a much better education than I have."

I kept on eating, to give myself an excuse for silence. He was right, I knew that. But college on Terra; why, that would be at least four years, maybe five, and then a year for the round trip....

"Walt, this doesn't have to be settled right away," Dad said. "You won't be going on the _Simon Bolivar_, along with Ravick and Belsher.

And that reminds me. Have you talked to Bish lately? He'd be hurt if you didn't see him before he left."

The truth was, I'd been avoiding Bish, and not just because I knew how busy he was. My face felt like a tallow-wax fire every time I thought of how I'd been trying to reform him, and I didn't quite know what I'd be able to say to him if I met him again. And he seemed to me to be an entirely different person, as though the old Bish Ware, whom I had liked in spite of what I'd thought he was, had died, and some total stranger had taken his place.

But I went down to the Munic.i.p.al Building. It didn't look like the same place. The walls had been scrubbed; the floors were free from litter. All the drove of loafers and hangers-on had been run out, or maybe jailed and put to work. I looked into a couple of offices; everybody in them was busy. A few of the old police force were still there, but their uniforms had been cleaned and pressed, they had all shaved recently, and one or two looked as though they liked being able to respect themselves, for a change.

The girl at the desk in the mayor's outside office told me Bish had a delegation of uptown merchants, who seemed to think that reform was all right in its place but it oughtn't to be carried more than a few blocks above the waterfront. They were protesting the new sanitary regulations. Then she buzzed Bish on the handphone, and told me he'd see me in a few minutes. After a while, I heard the delegation going down the hall from the private office door. One of them was saying:

"Well, this is what we've always been screaming our heads off for. Now we've got it good and hard; we'll just have to get used to it."