without yaks blatting at me through a thin bulkhead.
It wasn't hard to fit in. Frostbite was a swell place to lose your ambition and acquire a permanent thirst. The sardonic sked posted on the bureau wall—I had been planning to tear it down for a month, but the inclination became weaker and weaker. It was so true to life.
I would wake up the Hamilton House, have a skimpy breakfast and get down to the bureau. Then there'd be a phone conversation with Weems during which he'd nag me for more and better Frostbite-slant stories.
In an hour of 'wire-time' I'd check in with Marsbuo. At first I risked trying to sneak a chat with Ellie, but the jokers around Marsbuo cured me of that. One of them pretended he was Ellie on the other end of the wire and before I caught on had me believing that she was six months pregnant with a child by McGillicuddy and was going to kill herself for betraying me. Good dean fun, and after that I stuck to spacemail for my happy talk.
After lunch, at the Hamilton House or more often in a tavern, I'd tear up the copy from the printer into neat sheets and deliver them to the Phoenix building on the better end of Main Street. (If anything big had come up, I would have phoned them to hold the front page open. If not, local items filled it, and ISN copy padded out the rest of their sheet.) As in Kennedy's sked, I gabbed with Chenery or watched the compositors or proof pullers or transmittermen at work, and then went back to the office to clip my copy rolling out of the faxer. On a good day I'd get four or five items—maybe a human interester about a yak mothering an orphaned baby goat, a new wrinkle on barn insulation with native materials dial the other cold-fanning planets we served could use, a municipal election or a murder trial verdict to be filed just for the record.
Evenings I spent at a tavern talking and sopping up home brew, or at one of the two-a-day vaudeville houses, or at the Clubhouse. I once worked on the Philadelphia Bulletin, so the political setup was nothing new to me. After Joe Downing decided I wouldn't get pushy, he took me around to meet The Boys.
The Clubhouse was across the street from the three-story capitol building of Frostbite's World Government. It was a little bigger than the capitol and in much better repair. Officially it was the headquarters of the Frostbite Benevolent Society, a charitable, hence tax-free, organization. Actually it was the headquarters of the Frostbite Planetary Party, a standard gang of brigands. Down on the wrong end of Main Street somewhere was an upper room where the Frostbite Interplanetary Party, made up of liberals, screwballs, and disgruntled ex-members of the Organization but actually run by stooges of that Organization, hung out.
The Boys observed an orderly rotation of officers based on seniority. If you got in at the age of 18, didn't bolt and didn't drop dead you'd be president some day. To the party you had to bring loyalty, hard work—
not on your payroll job, naturally, but on your electioneering—and cash. You kept bringing cash all your life; salary kickbacks, graft kickbacks, contributions for gold dinner services, tickets to testimonial banquets, campaign chest assignments, widows' and orphans' fund contributions, burial insurance, and dues, dues, dues.
As usual, it was hard to learn who was who. The President of Frostbite was a simple-minded old boy named Wither-spoon, so far gone in senile decay that he had come to believe the testimonial-banquet platitudes he uttered. You could check him off as a wheelhorse. He was serving the second and last year of his second and last term, and there was a mild battle going on between his Vice-President and the Speaker of the House as to who would succeed him. It was a traditional battle and didn't mean much; whoever lost would be next in line. When one of the contestants was so old or ill that he might not live to claim his term if he lost, the scrap would be waived in a spirit of good sportsmanship that the voters would probably admire if they ever heard of it.
Joe Downing was a comer. His sponsorship of me meant more than the friendship of Witherspoon would have. He was Chenery's ally; they were the leadership of the younger, sportier element. Chenery's boss Weems was with the older crowd that ate more, talked more, and drank less.
I had to join a committee before I heard of George, though. That's the way those things work.
It was a special committee for organizing a testimonial banquet for Witherspoon on his 40th year in the party. I wound up in the subcommittee to determine a testimonial gift for the old buffer. I knew damned well that we'd be expected to start the subscription for the gift rolling, so I suggested a handsome—and—inexpensive—illuminated scroll with a sentiment lettered on it. The others were scandalized. One fat old woman called me 'cheap' and a fat male pay-roller came close to accusing me of irregularity, at which I was supposed to tremble and withdraw my suggestion. I stood on my rights, and wrote a minority report standing up for the scroll while the majority of the subcommittee agreed on an inscribed sterling tea service.
At the next full committee meeting we delivered our reports and I thought it would come to a vote right away. But it seemed they weren't used to there being two opinions about anything. They were flustered, and the secretary slipped out with both reports during a five-minute adjournment. He came back and told me, beaming, 'Chenery says George liked your idea.' The committee was reconvened and because George likedHmy idea my report was adopted and I was appointed a subcommittee of one to procure the scroll.
I didn't learn any more about George after the meeting except that some people who liked me were glad I'd been favorably noticed and others were envious about the triumph of the Johnny-come-lately.
I asked Chenery in the bar. He laughed at my ignorance and said,
'George Parsons.'
'Publisher of the Phoenix? I thought he was an absentee owner.'
'He doesn't spend a lot of time on Frostbite. At least I dont think he does. As a matter of fact, I don't know a lot about his comings and goings. Maybe Weems does.'
'He swings a lot of weight in the Organization.'
Chenery looked puzzled. 'I guess he does at that Every once in a while he does speak up and you generally do what he says. It's the paper, I suppose. He could wreck any of the boys.' Chenery wasn't being irregular: newsmen are always in a special position.
I went back to the office and, late as it was, sent a note to the desk to get the one man subcommittee job cleaned up:
ATTN MCGILLICUDDY RE CLIENT RELATIONS NEED SOONEST
ILLUMINATED SCROLL PRESENT HOMER WITHERSPOON PRESIDENT
FROSTBITE HONORING HIM 40 YEARS MEMBERSHIP FROSTBITE
PLANETARY PARTY USUAL SENTIMENTS NOTE MUST BE
TERRESTRIAL STYLE ART IF NOT ACTUAL WORK EARTHER ACCOUNT
ANTIBEM PREJUDICE HERE FRBBUO END.
That happened on one of those Sundays which, according to Kennedy's sardonic sked, was to be devoted to writing and filing enterprisers.
The scroll came through with a memo from McGillicuddy: 'Fyi ckng w/
clnt etif this gag wll hv ur hide. Reminder guppy's firstest job offheading orchidbitches one which bypassed u yesterweek. How?
McG'
There was a sadly sweet letter from Ellie aboard the same rust-bucket.
She wanted me to come back to her, but not a broken man. She wanted me to do something really big on Frostbite to show what I had in me.
She was sure that if I really looked there'd be something more to file than the copy I'd been sending in. Yeah.
Well, the big news that week would be the arrival of a loaded immigrant ship from Thetis of Procyon, a planet whose ecology had been wrecked beyond repair in a few short generations by DDT, hydraulic mining, unrestricted logging, introduction of rabbits and house cats and the use of poison bait to kill varmints. In a few thousand years maybe the planet would have topsoil, cover crops, forests, and a balanced animal population again, but Thetis as of now was a ruin whose population was streaming away to whatever havens it could find.
Frostbite had agreed to take 500 couples provided they were of terrestrial descent and could pass a means test—that is, provided they had money to be fleeced of. They were arriving on a bottom called Esmeralda. According to my year-old 'LLOYDS' SHIPPING INDEX'—
'exclusive accurate and up-to-date, being the result of daily advices from every part of the galaxy'—Esmeralda was owned by the Frimstedt Atomic Astrogation Company, Gammadion, gross tonnage 830,000, net tonnage 800,000, class GX—'freighter/steerage passengers'—
insurance rating: hull A, atomics A. The tonnage difference meant real room for only about 850. If she took the full 1,000 she'd be jammed. She was due to arrive at Frostbite in the very early morning. Normally I would have kept a deathwatch, but the AA rating lulled me and I went to the Hamilton House to sleep.
