“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-ship 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 passage 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 Simón 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 Municipal 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.”
When I went in,
