Public-domain ebook
Language: en469 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Science-Fiction & Fantasy·Novels
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #64965.
The opening · free to read
Colonists on Talbor had little time for anything but work, which was bad for morale. So Earth sent a special ship--with a unique cargo.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy October 1953 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Marsden had filled a basin with well water and began to lather his hands and face with soap when Marie entered their cabin. He looked up and clucked his tongue in disapproval. "Lord," he said. "Look at yourself."
Marie scowled at him as she removed her bandanna and shook loose her short-cropped hair. "How do you expect me to look?" Her plain but pretty face was sweat-streaked. She wore a simple tunic which fell halfway down her thighs and almost matched her sturdy, sun-darkened legs in color, although sweat darkened the back of the garment and left rings of white under the armpits where it had evaporated.
"I know how I'd like you to look."
"Harry Marsden, just what do you mean by that?"
He had felt it for some time now, this smouldering resentment which had wedged its way between them after only two years of marriage. He couldn't talk to her without arguing, not after they had finished working for the day under the broiling sun and returned, bone-weary and stiff-muscled, to their cabin. The routine sickened him: he would come in first, splash cold water on his face, maybe scrub up some. Marie would follow after feeding their chickens (chickens here on Talbor, three dozen long light years from Earth!), strip off her tunic and try to scrub the grime from her body while he looked at her. And if it were warm she'd prepare their simple dinner half-naked, with no thought for modesty, until he knew every plane, every curve of her body and realized it was a body strong for work and not soft for play, a body good for bearing children, a body which could work all day in the fields like a machine but which would never lose the grit from its pores.
"I didn't mean anything by it. Forget what I said, Marie." Marsden went to the clothing rack and took down his one good suit. He looked again at Marie, then closed his eyes and let a growing eagerness engulf him.
The ship from Earth was coming. Not the ship with more farm machinery, not the battered freighter which reached Talbor twice every year, but a tourist ship--the first one in Marsden's memory. There would be real Earth people on it, men and women. He thought deliciously of the women, wasp-waisted, high-breasted, lithe-legged and delicate. Marie would seem so plain against them, so tragically unfeminine--unless the pictures lied. Born on Talbor, Marsden had never seen a real woman of Earth.
Maybe Marsden would feel more inclined to watch the patterned years drag by on Talbor if he just once saw the women of Earth. He never told this to Marie, for she wouldn't understand.
"We'd better hurry," she said, "or we won't get to town till after the ship comes in."
Marsden nodded. "Like to see it land. Everyone will be there, I'll bet."
"I suppose so. It's a great deal of trouble, if you ask me."
"Trouble? Don't you want to see the people of Earth?" There it was again--Marsden felt an argument brewing. Marie spoke like an old woman, but she was only twenty-five. You couldn't blame her, though, and every time Marsden's thoughts took that tack he felt sorry for his wife. She had known nothing but Talbor all her life.
"They're people," said Marie. "Just folks." But she carefully removed the frilly dress which had hung near Marsden's suit on the rack and examined it critically.
"You're going to wear that?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing. You haven't put it on since we got married, that's all."
"We can't scare the Earth people off with a lot of tunics and coveralls."
"Better get dressed," said Marsden, chuckling with grim amusement as Marie struggled with the unfamiliar garment. Marsden's own starched collar threatened to choke him, but the women of Earth would expect it.
"What's so funny, Harry?"
"There must be an easier way to climb into that thing. You look so funny."
Marie's back was toward him. She took the dress off and threw it across the bed. "All right, I won't wear it. I won't wear anything. I'm not going."
"Now, Marie."
"Don't you 'now' me. I'll stay right here."
"I was joking," said Marsden, squirming uncomfortably inside his collar.
Marie flung the dress from bed to floor. "You can throw it out, for all I care. Or give it away."
"Thank you, I'll stay here."
"For crying out loud!" Marsden said in exasperation. "This is the biggest thing to hit Talbor in years. The Earth people are coming to visit us and you want to stay home."
"They probably will make fun of us."
"If we act like bumpkins they will. If we act--well, sophisticated, they won't."
"I'm not sophisticated." Marie sat down on the bed where her dress had been, drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around her knees. "Do I look sophisticated?"
"Put the dress on."
"I've never been off Talbor, never. We have one town, two hundred people on seventy or eighty farms. Is it my fault I wasn't born on Earth? Do you think I would have married you if I had much choice?"
"Oh," said Marsden. "I see."
Marie stared at him and shrugged her bare shoulders. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that, Harry. But you don't see. Talbor is all right for you because you're a man and you like to work like that. Don't you think I'd rather be small and attractive, instead of--"
"I think you're very attractive."
"That's a lie. I know how you and Charlie Adcock get together and look at those magazines with pictures of Earth women. Your tongues practically hang out."
"You've been spying on us."
"Really, Harry. Is looking at a magazine so secret I'm not permitted to watch? Why don't you treat me like an equal, anyway? But no, you think of the women of Earth. Well, let me tell you this, Harry Marsden: I'm stronger than them, I can work harder and I'll probably live longer and have more kids. What do you say to that?"
The book keeps going
Reading is free forever. Sign up and watch scenes appear while you read.
Scenes Storieta drew for other classics.
New illustrated classics
Once or twice a month: the latest books to get full character casts, scene art, and free comic editions. No account needed.
