"Oh, my goodness, no!" Valentine's smile was still in place, but he was gritting his teeth. "Cash moneys only, if you please! 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be,' as according to poor Richard Almanack. And concerning these other stipends..." He leaned over and studied the lines on her ticketing screen. John Valentine paid few taxes unnecessarily and none willingly. "The harried, hurried traveling public is a market ripe for a swindle, Dodger," he said whenever they went anywhere. "Most of them have no idea that not all those fees apply to them." After five minutes of haggling, he had eliminated six dollars in amusement ("We don't plan to be amused"), transaction ("This is applying to credit dealings only"), and air imposts ("Our temple is contributing most generously each year to the Beggars' Breathing Fund, or as Richard Almanack once said, 'I gave at the office.' ").
Those battles won, Valentine pulled his wad of cash from his coat pocket and paid the fare. The lady validated the ticket and handed it to him.
"Now, may I see your passport, please?"
"Passport? Passport? Surely I am told this is not being necessary, for purposes of tourism or religious pilgrimage not to exceed two weeks of durations. Rahman, my son, are you bringing the passports?" Valentine had been patting himself down, exploring his pockets in distraction. Now he smiled. "We are Sikhs," he said, explaining. "Rahman!"
Dodger had been woolgathering, on the high seas aboard a pirate ship. Now he jerked awake, and patted all his pockets. "No, my father."
"There, you see!" Valentine said.
"You're right, of course," said the lady, "but I do need some identification."
"This should be of no type of problem," Valentine assured her. "Here is an abundance of such items." He fanned several cards out on the counter like a winning poker hand. Dodger felt the pressure on his hand increase. Mr. Rajiv Singh was unlikely to have missed the items, since he was deadballing to Neptune at the moment, only one week into his journey. Valentine had been guaranteed these documents would survive the cursory scrutiny needed to buy tourist passage to Mars. Still, it paid to be cautious, and Dodger was ready, should his hand be squeezed three times, to start complaining loudly about a sudden and violent need to empty his bladder. He was prepared to piss his pants, if it came to that. He really hoped it wouldn't come to that.
He sighed in relief when he saw she was buying it, simply glancing at the stolen identification and making a mark on her screen.
"I can offer you a stateroom upgrade, with a private bath, for a fee increase of only twenty dollars," the lady said.
"Oh, my goodness, yes, of course. Won't that be so jolly, Rahman?"
"Yes, my father."
"And are there any... special dietary needs associated with your faith, Mr. Singh?"
"Oh, my goodness, no. We shall be most pleased to be eating whatsoever the other passengers have been eating. Hamburgers and hot dogs, eh, my son?"
"Oh, my goodness!" Dodger agreed.
"Very well. Your ticket will also function as your meal card, so please don't lose it. Since your departure isn't for another four hours, you may use it to purchase a meal at the spaceport snack bars, in appreciation for your early arrival, courtesy of IPB. Please be at the boarding gate in three hours, with your luggage. Have a pleasant flight, and enjoy your visit to Mars."
"Oh, a most devotional trip, indeed!" Valentine said. "May the sacred monkeys of the New Temple of Amritsar guide you through the day."
The woman's smile became a bit glassy, as though not sure if she wanted to be guided by monkeys, sacred or otherwise, but when Dodger waved to her she waved back. When they were far enough away, Dodger looked up at his father.
"Why don't you buy me some eggs?" he asked. "Since you already—"
"Have provided the ham," Valentine finished, sheepishly. "Damn it, Dodger, why don't you stop me? It's a disease, I tell you, a disease. I can't stop myself."
"I really liked the part about the monkeys."
John Valentine threw his head back and laughed. Dodger loved it when he laughed. He'd been laughing a lot since they got back from Sentry Studios, hardly twenty-four hours ago.
"We've got time to kill, pardner," Valentine said. "What say we take IPB up on their offer to do lunch? Think their budget would stretch to a couple Cokes and Coney Islands?"
John Valentine produced the validated plastic with a flourish, and the clerk ran it through his machine. He and his son carried their trays to a booth overlooking the vast flat plain of the spaceport.
Dodger had contented himself with some mustard and a few spoonfuls of relish on his Coney, but Valentine had buried his, as usual, in chili, diced onions, relish, mustard, cheese, and a barely sublethal dose of the Tabasco sauce he put on almost everything he ate. Valentine's energies were enormous, and so were his appetites.
"You're going to like Mars, Dodge," he said, gingerly lifting the soggy load to his mouth and taking a big bite. "There's more gravity. Get your feet firmly on the ground for a change." He frowned, and chewed. "You remember Mars at all? What were you..."
"Three, you said," Dodger told him. "I don't remember much."
"No, I don't suppose you would. Well, take my word, it's a great place. It's the perfect place for the little theater we've always talked about. Your average Martian has an inferiority complex when it comes to Luna. No real reason they should, it's a much nicer place than here, but they do, that's the point. Luna is the great Golden Globe for most of the system, and the fact that Mars is a perpetual also-ran, Mars is in second place to Luna in just about anything you want to name... well, that just makes it worse. Some little godforsaken asteroid, they don't worry too much about measuring up to Luna. But Mars, Mars is sort of like Chicago, compared to New York. Chicago always had good theaters, good dance troupes. But Chicago never had a Broadway, and they knew they never would. But they always wanted to be New York, you see what I mean? That's where the action was. That's where the best actors, the best dancers, the best directors... if you weren't working in New York, people thought you weren't really doing serious work. "Or like Hollywood in the film business. You could make a perfectly good film in Florida, but Hollywood was the center of the universe. It's where you went to be a star. 'There's no business like show business, there's no business I know!' " He sang, not really at the top of his voice, but John Valentine seldom spoke more quietly than a stage whisper, and several people in the snack bar turned to see the man in the orange turban singing a jaunty showbiz tune. Dodger kicked his father under the table.
Valentine looked around, and laughed. "You're right, Dodge," he said in a lower voice. "Sikhs do work in the industry, you know, but you're right, it looks out of character." Dodger was entitled to kick his father anytime he stepped out of character when they were working in public.
"Anyway," he went on, more confidentially, "what it does to the Martians is, they're much more receptive to culture. You stage Love's Labour's Lost in King City, it's a yawn. Oh, people will come, you might even fill the theater because there's so damn many people here. You do it on Mars, you get a lot more appreciation. The Martians are glad to have you, they cherish you, because by doing Shakespeare or any other of them highfalutin Greeks, you're telling your average Martian rube—and there's nothing rubier than a Martian rube—that he's just as good as a Lunarian. He'll go, even if he doesn't understand every third word, and he'll praise you, and thank you for going to the trouble. And that's good, Dodger, because frankly, other than myself—and you, when you're ready—there's not going to be a Luna-quality cast in the supporting roles. The best of them have already moved to Luna, they're breaking their hearts here. The sort of troupe I'm thinking of, it would get absolutely hammered in the King City reviews. But I guarantee you, on Mars, it will never be noticed."