Robert A Heinlein - Podkayne of Mars

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PODKAYNE OF MARS

By Robert A. Heinlein

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book

are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely

For Gale and Astrid

All my life I’ve wanted to go to Earth. Not to live, of course-just to see it. As

evei body knows, Terra is a wonderful place to visit but not to live. Not truly

suited to human habitation.

Personally, I’m not convinced that the human race originated ~n Earth. I

mean to say, how much reliance should you place on the evidence of a few

pounds of old bones plus the opinions of anthropologists who usually

contradict each other anyhow when what you are being asked to swallow so

obviously flies in the face of all common sense?

Think it through- The surface acceleration of Terra is clearly too great for the

human structure; it is known to result in flat feet and hernias and heart

trouble. The incident solar radiation on Terra will knock down dead an

unprotected human in an amazingly short time- and do you know of any other

organisll which has to be artificially protected~from what is alleged to be its

own natural environment in order to stay alive? As to Terran ecolo~i-

Never mind. We humans just couldn’t have originated on Earth. Nor (I admit)

on Mars, for that matter-although Mars is certainly as near ideal as you can

find in this planetary system today. Possibly the Missing Planet was our first

home-even though I think of Mars as “home” and will always want to return to

it no matter how far I travel in later years . . . and I intend to travel a long,

long way.

But I do want to visit Earth as a starter, not only to see how in the world eight

billion people manage to live almost sitting in each other’s laps (less than half

of the land area of Terra is even marginally habitable) but mostly to see

oceans ... from a safe distance. Oceans are not only fantasically unlikely but

to me the very thought of them is terrifying. All that unimaginable amount of

water, unconfined. And so deep that if you fell into it, it would be over your

head. Incredible!

But now we are going there!

Perhaps I should introduce us. The Fries Family, I mean. Myself: Podkayne

Fries-“Poddy” to my friends and we might as well start off being friendly.

Adolescent female: I’m eight plus a few months, at a point in my development

described by my Uncle Tom as “frying size and just short of husband high”-.a

fairenough description since a female citizen of Mars may contract plenary

marriage without guardian’s waiver on her ninth birthday, and I stand 157

centimeters tall in my bare feet and mass 49 kilograms. “Five feet two and

eyes of blue” my daddy calls me, but he is a historian and romantic. But I am

not romantic and would not consider even a limited marriage on my ninth

birthday; I have other plans.

Not that I am opposed to marriage in due time, nor do I expect to have any

trouble snagging the male of my choice. In these memoirs I shall be frank

rather than modest because they will not be published until I am old and

famous, and I will certainly revise them

before then. In the meantime I am taking the precaution of writing English in

Martian Oldsctipt-a combination which I’m sure Daddy could puzzle out, only

he wouldn’t do such a thing unless I invited him to. Daddy is a dear and does

not snoopervise me. My brother Clark would pry, but he regards English as a

dead language and would never bother his head with Oldscript anyhow.

Perhaps you have seen a book titled: Eleven Years Old: The Pre-Adolescent

Adjustment Crisis in the Male. I read it, hoping that it would help me to cope

with my brother. Clark is just six, but the “Eleven Years” referred to in that title

are Terran years because it was written on Earth. If you will apply the

conversion factor of 1.8808 to attain real years, you will see that my brother

is exactly eleven of those undersized Earth years old.

That book did not help me much. It talks about “cushioning the transition into

the social group”-but there is no present indication that Clark ever intends to

join the human race. He is more likely to devise a way to blow up the

universe just to hear the bang. Since I am responsible for him much of the

time and since he has an I.Q. of 160 while mine is only 145, you can readily

see that I need all the advantage that greater age and maturity can give me.

At present my standing rule with him is: Keep your guard up and never offer

hostages.

Back to me-I’m colonial mongrel in ancestry, but the Swedish part is

dominant in my looks, with Polynesian and Asiatic fractions adding no more

than a notunpleasing exotic flavor. My legs are long for my height, my waist

is 48 centimeters and my chest is 90-not all of which is rib cage, I assure you,

even though we old colonial families all run to hypertrophied lung

development; some of it is burgeoning secondary sex characteristic. Besides

that, my hair is pale

blond and wavy and I’m pretty. Not beautiful-Praxiteles would not have given

me a second look-but real beauty is likely to scare a man off, or else make

him quite unmanageable, whereas prettiness, properly handled, is an asset.

Up till a couple of years ago I used to regret not being male (in view of my

ambitions), but I at last realized how silly I was being; one might as well wish

for wings. As Mother says: “One works with available materials” . .. and I

found that the materials available were adequate. In fact I found that I like

being female; my hormone balance is okay and I’m quite well adjusted to the

world and vice versa. I’m smart enough not unnecessarily to show that I am

smart; I’ve got a long upper lip and a short nose, and when I wrinkle my nose

and look baffled, a man is usually only too glad to help me, especially if he is

about twice my age. There are more ways of computing a ballistic than by

counting it on your fingers.

That’s me: Poddy Fries, free citizen of Mars, female. Future pilot and

someday commander of deep-space exploration parties. Watch for me in the

news.

Mother is twice as good-looking as I am and much taller than I ever will be;

she looks like a Valkyrie about to gallop off into the sky. She holds a

systemwide license as a Master Engineer, Heavy Construction, Surface or

Free Fall, and is entitled to wear both the Hoover Medal with cluster and the

Christiana Order, Knight Commander, for bossing the rebuilding of Deimos

and Phobos. But she’s more than just the traditional hairy engineer; she has

a social presence which she can switch from warmly charming to frostily

intimidating at will, she holds honorary degrees galore, and she publishes

popular little gems such as “Design Criteria with Respect to the Effects of

Radiation on the Bonding of Pressure-Loaded Sandwich Structures.”

It is because Mother is often away from home for professional reasons that

Lam, from time to time, the reluctant custodian of my younger brother. Still, I

suppose it is good practice, for how can I ever expect to command my own

ship if I can’t tame a six-year-old savage? Mother says that a boss who is

forced to part a man’s hair with a wrench has failed at some point, so I try to

control our junior nihilist without resorting to force. Besides, using force on

Clark is very chancy; he masses as much as I do and he fights dirty.

It was the job Mother did on Deimos that accounts for Clark and myself.

Mother was determined to meet her construction dates; and Daddy, on leave

from Ares U. with a Guggenheim grant, was even more frantically determined

to save every scrap of the ancient Martian artifacts no matter how much it

delayed construction; this threw them into such intimate and bitter conflict

that they got married and for a while Mother had babies.

Daddy and Mother are Jack Spratt and his wife; he is interested in everything

that has already happened, she is interested only in what is going to happen,

especially if she herself is making it happen. Daddy’s title is Van Loon

Professor of Terrestrial History but his real love is Martian history, especially

if it happened fifty million years ago. But do not think that Daddy is a

cloistered don given only to contemplation and study. When he was even

younger than I am now, he lost an arm one chilly night in the attack on the

Company Offices during the Revolution-and he can still shoot straight and

fast with the hand he has left.

The rest of our family is Great-Uncle Tom, Daddy’s father’s brother. Uncle

Tom is a parasite. So he says. It is true that you don’t see him work much,

but he was an old man before I was born. He is a Revolutionary veteran,

same as Daddy, and is a Past Grand Commander of the Martian Legion and

a Senator-at-Large

of the Republic, but he doesn’t seem to spend much time on either sort of

politics, Legion or public; instead he hangs out at the Elks Club and plays

pinochle with other relics of the past. Uncle Tom is really my closest relative,

for he isn’t as intense as my parents, nor as busy, and will always take time

to talk with me. Furthermore he has a streak of Original Sin which makes him

sympathetic to my problems. He says that I have such a streak, too, much

wider than his. Concerning this, I reserve my opinion.

That’s our family and we are all going to Earth. Wups! I left out three-the

infants. But they hardly count now and it is easy to forget them. When Daddy

and Mother got married, the PEG Board-Population, Ecology, & Genetics-

pegged them at five and would have allowed them seven had they requested

it, for, as you may have gathered, my parents are rather highgrade citizens

even among planetary colonials all of whom are descended from, or are

themselves, highly selected and drastically screened stock.

But Mother told the Board that five was all that she had time for and then had

us as fast as possible, while fidgeting at a desk job in the Bureau of Planetary

Engineering. Then she popped her babies into deep-freeze as fast as she

had them, all but me, since I was the first. Clark spent two years at constant

entropy, else he would be almost as old as I am-deep-freeze time doesn’t

count, of course, and his official birthday is the day he was decanted. I

remember how jealous I was- Mother was just back from conditioning Juno

and it didn’t seem fair to me that she would immediately start raising a baby.

Uncle Tom talked me out of that, with a lot of lap sitting, and I am no longer

jealous of Clark-merely wary.

So we’ve got Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon in the subbasement of the crèche

at Marsopolis, and we’ll uncork

and name at least one of them as soon as we get back from Earth. Mother is

thinking of revivifying Gamma and Epsilon together and raising them as twins

(they’re girls) and then launching Delta, who is a boy, as soon as the girls are

housebroken. Daddy says that is not fair, because Delta is entitled to be

older than Epsilon by natural priority of birth date. Mother says that is mere

worship of precedent and that she does wish Daddy would learn to leave his

reverence for the past on the campus when he comes home in the evening.

Daddy says that Mother has no sentimental feelings-and Mother says she

certainly hopes not, at least with any problem requiring rational analysis-and

Daddy says let’s be rational, then . . . twin older sisters would either break a

boy’s spirit or else spoil him rotten.

Mother says that is unscientific and unfounded. Daddy says that Mother

merely wants to get two chores out of the way at once-whereupon Mother

heartily agrees and demands to know why proved production engineering

principles should not be applied to domestic economy?

Daddy doesn’t answer this. Instead he remarks thoughtfully that he must

admit that two little girls dressed just alike would be kind of cute ... name

them “Margret” and “Marguerite” and call them “Peg” and “Meg”- Clark

muttered to me, “Why uncork them at all?

Why not just sneak down some night and open the valves and call it an

accident?”

I told him to go wash out his mouth with prussic acid and not let Daddy hear

him talk that way. Daddy would have walloped him properly. Daddy, although

a historian, is devoted to the latest, most progressive theories of child

psychology and applies them by canalizing the cortex through pain

association whenever he really wants to ensure that a lesson will not be

forgotten. As he puts it so neatly: “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

I canalize most readily and learned very early indeed how to predict and

avoid incidents which would result in Daddy’s applying his theories and his

hand. But in Clark’s case it is almost necessary to use a club simply to gain

his divided attention.

So it is now clearly evident that we are going to have twin baby sisters. But it

is no headache of mine, I am happy to say, for Clark is quite enough

maturing trauma for one girl’s adolescence. By the time the twins are a

current problem I expect to be long gone and far away.

Interlude

Hi, Pod.

So you think I can’t read your worm tracks.

A lot you know about me! Poddy-oh, excuse me, “Captain” Podkayne Fries, I

mean, the famous Space Explorer and Master of Men-Captain Poddy dear,

you probably will never read this because it wouldn’t occur to you that I not

only would break your “code” but also write comments in the big, wide

margins you leave.

Just for the record, Sister dear, I read Old Anglish just as readily as I do

System Ortho. Anglish isn’t all that hard and I learned it as soon as I found

out that a lot of books I wanted to read had never been translated. But it

doesn’t pay to tell eveiything you know, or somebody comes along and tells

you to stop doing whatever it is you are doing. Probably your older sister.

But imagine calling a straight substitution a “code”! Poddy, if you had actually

been able to write Old Martian, it would have taken me quite a lot longer. But

you can’t. Shucks, even Dad can’t write it without stewing over it and he

probably knows more about Old Martian than anyone else in the System.

But you won’t crack my code-because I haven’t any.

Try looking at this page under ultraviolet light-a sun lamp, for example.

Oh, Unspeakables!

Dirty ears! Hangnails! Snel-frockey! Spit! WE AREN’T GOING!

At first I thought that my brother Clark had managed one of his more

charlatanous machinations of malevolent legerdemain. But fortunately (the

only fortunate thing about the whole miserable mess) I soon perceived that it

was impossible for him to be in fact guilty no matter what devious

subversions roil his id. Unless he has managed to invent and build in secret a

time machine, which I misdoubt he would do if he could . . . nor am I

prepared to offer odds that he can’t. Not since the time he rewired the

delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks and charge them to

my code number without (so far as anyone could ever prove) disturbing the

company’s seal on the control box.

We’ll never know how he did that one, because, despite the fact that the

company offered to Forgive All and pay a cash bonus to boot if only he would

please tell them how he managed to beat their unbeatable seal-despite this,

Clark looked blank and would not talk. That left only circumstantial evidence,

i.e~, it was clearly evident to anyone who knew us both (Daddy and Mother,

namely) that I would never order candy-stripe ice cream smothered in

hollandaise sauce, or-no, I can’t go on; I feel ill. Whereas Clark is widely

known to eat anything which does not eat him first.

Even this clinching psychological evidence would never have convinced the

company’s adjuster had not their own records proved that two of these

obscene feasts had taken place while I was a house guest of friends in Syrtis

Major, a thousand kilometers away. Never mind, I simply want to warn all

girls not to have a Mad Genius for a baby brother. Pick instead a stupid,

stolid, slightly subnormal one who will sit quietly in front of the solly box,

mouth agape at cowboy classics, and never wonder what makes the pretty

images.

But I have wandered far from my tragic tale.

We aren’t going to have twins.

We already have triplets.

Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon, throughout all my former life mere topics of

conversation, are now Grace, Duncan, and Elspeth in all too solid flesh-

unless Daddy again changes his mind before final registration; they’ve had

three sets of names already. But what’s in a name?-they are here, already in

our home with a nursery room sealed on to shelter them . . . three helpless

unfinished humans about canal-worm pink in color and no features worthy of

the name. Their limbs squirm aimlessly, their eyes don’t track, and a faint,

queasy odor of sour milk permeates every room even when they are freshly

bathed. Appalling sounds come from one end of each-in which they

heterodyne each other-and even more appalling conditions prevail at

the other ends. (I’ve yet to find all three of them dry at the same time.)

And yet there is something decidedly engaging about the little things; were it

not that they are the proximate cause of my tragedy I could easily grow quite

fond of them. I’m sure Duncan is beginning to recognize me already.

But, if I am beginning to be reconciled to their presence, Mother’s state can

only be described as atavistically maternal. Her professional journals pile up

unread, she has that soft Madonna look in her eyes, and she seems

somehow both shorter and wider than she did a week ago.

First consequence: she won’t even discuss going to Earth, with or without the

triplets.

Second consequence: Daddy won’t go if she won’t go-he spoke quite sharply

to Clark for even suggesting it.

Third consequence: since they won’t go, we can’t go. Clark and me, I mean.

It is conceivably possible that I might have been permitted to travel alone

(since Daddy agrees that I am now a „young adult“ in maturity and judgment

even though my ninth birthday lies still some months in the fttture), but the

question is formal and without content since I am not considered quite old

enough to accept full responsible control of my brother with both my parents

some millions of kilometers away (nor am I sure that I would wish to, unless

armed with something at least as convincing as a morning star) and Daddy is

so dismayingly fair with that he would not even discuss permitting one of us

to go and not the other when both of us had been promised the trip.

Fairness is a priceless virtue in a parent-but just at the moment I could stand

being spoiled and favored instead.

But the above is why I am sure that Clark does not

have a time machine concealed in his wardrobe. This incredible contretemps,

this idiot’s dream of interlocking mishaps, is as much to his disadvantage as

it is to mine.

How did it happen? Gather ye round- Little did we dream that, when the

question of a family trip to Earth was being planned in our household more

than a month ago, this disaster was already complete and simply waiting the

most hideous moment to unveil itself. The facts are these: the crèche at

Marsopolis has thousands of newborn babies marbleized at just short of

absolute zero, waiting in perfect safety until their respective parents are

ready for them. It is said, and I believe it, that a direct hit with a nuclear bomb

would not hurt the consigned infants; a thousand years later a rescue squad

could burrow down and find that automatic, self-maintaining machinery had

not permitted the tank temperatures to vary a hundredth of a degree.

In consequence, we Marsmen (not „Martians,“ please!-Martians are a non-

human race, now almost extinct)-Marsmen tend to marry early, have a full

quota of babies quickly, then rear them later, as money and time permit. It

reconciles that discrepancy, so increasingly and glaringly evident ever since

the Terran Industrial Revolution, between the best biological age for having

children and the best social age for supporting and rearing them.

A couple named Breeze did just that, some ten years ago-married on her

ninth birthday and just past his tenth, while he was still a pilot cadet and she

was attending Ares U. They applied for three babies, were pegged

accordingly, and got them all out of the way while they were both finishing

school. Very sensible.

The years roll past, he as a pilot and later as master, she as a finance clerk

in his ship and later as purser- a happy life. The spacelines like such an

arrangement;

married couples spacing together mean a taut, happy ship.

Captain and Mrs. Breeze serve their ten-and-a-half (twenty Terran) years and

put in for half-pay retirement, have it confirmed-and immediately radio the

crèche to uncork their babies, all three of them.

The radio order is received, relayed back for confirmation; the crèche accepts

it. Five weeks later the happy couple pick up three babies, sign for them, and

start the second half of a perfect life.

So they thought- But what they had deposited was two boys and a

girl; what they got was two girls and a boy. Ours.

Believe this you must-it took them the better part of a week to notice it. I will

readily concede that the difference between a brand-new boy baby and a

brand-new girl baby is, at the time, almost irrelevant. Nevertheless there is a

slight difference. Apparently it was a case of too much help-between a

mother, a mother-in-law, a temporary nurse, and a helpful neighbor, and

much running in and out, it seems unlikely that any one person bathed all

three babies as one continuous operation that first week. Certainly Mrs.

Breeze had not done so-until the day she did . . . and noticed ... and fainted-

and dropped one of our babies in the bath water, where it would have

drowned had not her scream fetched both her husband and the neighbor

lady.

So we suddenly had month-old triplets.

The lawyer man from the crèche was very vague about how it happened; he

obviously did not want to discuss how their „foolproof“ identification system

could result in such a mixup. So I don’t know myself- but it seems logically

certain that, for all their serial numbers, babies’ footprints, record machines,

et cetera, there is some point in the system where one clerk read aloud

„Breeze“ from the radioed order and

another clerk checked a file, then punched „Fries“ into a machine that did the

rest.

But the fixer man did not say. He was simply achingly anxious to get Mother

and Daddy to settle out of court-accept a check and sign a release under

which they agreed not to publicize the error.

They settled for three years of Mother’s established professional earning

power while the little fixer man gulped and looked relieved.

But nobody offered to pay me for the mayhem that had been committed on

my life, my hopes, and my ambitions.

Clark did offer a suggestion that was almost a sensible one, for him. He

proposed that we swap even with the Breezes, let them keep the warm ones,

we could keep the cold ones. Everybody happy-and we all go to Earth.

My brother is far too self-centered to realize it, but the Angel of Death

brushed him with its wings at that point. Daddy is a truly noble soul ... but he

had had almost more than he could stand.

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摘要：

PODKAYNEOFMARSByRobertA.HeinleinThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelyForGaleandAstridIAllmylifeI’vewantedtogotoEarth.Nottolive,ofcourse-justtoseeit.Aseveibodyknows,Terraisawonderfulplacetovisitbutnottolive.No...

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Robert A Heinlein - Podkayne of Mars

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