"Looks like a ruby. Here's another just like it."
"Unh! Maybe I'd better take my rubies off? So we won't lose them. Or should we water the mules first?"
"You mean before we eat?"
"Uh...yes, I guess that's what. I mean. Tease."
"You're not speaking very plainly, little Dora. Tell Uncle Gibbie what you want."
"I'm- not 'little Dora.' I'm Rangy Lil, the horniest girt south of Separation-you said so yourself. I cuss and I swear and I spit between thy teeth and I'm concubine to Lazarus Long, Super Stud of the Stars and better than any six men- and you know damn well what I want, and if you pinch my nipples again, I'm likely to trip you and take it. But I guess we ought to water the mules."
Minerva, Dora was just plain nice to be around, always. It wasn't her physical beauty...which wasn't that outstanding by the usual criteria in any case-although she was utterly beautiful to me. Nor was it her enthusiastic interest in sharing "Eros"-although she was indeed enthusiastic, ready any time, and always on a short fuse. And skilled at it and got more so; Sex is a learned art, as much so as ice skating or tight wire walking or fancy diving; it is not instinct. Oh, two animals couple by instinct, but it takes intelligence and patient willingness to turn copulation into a high and lively art. Dora was good at it and got better and better, always eager to learn, free of fetishes or silly preconceptions, patiently willing to practice anything she learned or was taught-and with it that spiritual quality that turns sweaty exercise into a living sacrament.
But Minerva, love in what still goes on when you ate not horny.
Dora was good company at any time, but the tougher things were, the better companion she was. Oh, she fretted about broken eggs because chickens were her responsibility; she did not complain that she was thirsty. Instead of nagging me to do something about that rooster, she figured out what had to be done and did it-shoved all the hens in with the other rooster, tied the feet of the egg breaker and laid him aside while she moved the partition between the cages, then the smaller rooster was in solitary confinement and we lost no more eggs.
But the truly tough parts lay ahead of us; she did not fret at all during those, or ever turn balky when I did not have time to explain. Minerva, much of the trek was slow death, other parts were sudden dangers that could have been, quick death. She was endlessly patient in the former, always kept her head and helped in the latter. Dear, you are awesomely learned-but you are a city girl and you've always been on a civilized planet; perhaps I had better explain some things.
Maybe you have been asking yourself: "Is this trip necessary?"-and; if it is, why do it the hard way?
"Necessary-" Having done something a Howard should never do, namely, marry an ephemeral, I had three choices: Take her to live among Howards. Dora rejected that-although I would have tried to talk her out of it if she had said Yes. A short-timer alone in a community of the long-lived is almost certain to go into suicidal depression; I had seen it first in my friend Slayton Ford and I've seen it many times since then. I did not want this to happen to Dora. Whether the number of her years was ten or a thousand, I wanted her to enjoy them.
Or we could stay in Top Dollar or-the same thing-near one of the villages of that small piece of the planet that was settled then. I almost chose this, as the "Bill Smith" dodge would work for that-for a time.
But only for a short time. The few Howards on New Beginnings-the Magees and three other families as I recall- had all arrived incognito-"masquerade" in Howard jargon- and by simple dodges they could shuffle things around and never be 'caught' at it. Grandmother Magee could "die," then show up as "Deborah Simpson" on another Howard homestead. The more people there were on the planet, the easier it was to pull this-especially after the fourth wave arrived, all of them cold-sleep cargo and thereby never having gotten acquainted with each other.
But "Bill Smith" was married to an ephemeral. If I stayed around the settled parts, I would have to be most careful to keep my hair dyed-not just on my head but all over my body lest some accident give me away-and then be careful to "age" as fast as my wife did. Worse, I would have to avoid people who had known "Ernest Gibbons" well- most of Top Dollar, that is to say-or someone would see my profile and hear my voice and start wondering, as I had had no chance for plastic surgery or anything of that sort. At other times, when it was needful to change name and identity, I had always changed location as well, that being the only foolproof way to do it. Even plastic surgery won't disguise me very long; I regenerate too easily. I once had my nose bobbed (the alternative seemed to involve having my neck bobbed); ten years later it was just as it is now, big and ugly.
Not that I was too jumpy about being disclosed as a Howard. But if I was going to have to live in masquerade, the more carefully I used these cosmetic tricks, the more Dora's nose would be rubbed in the fact that I was different from her-different in the saddest way of all, a husband and a wife who ran on very different time rates.
Minerva, it seemed to me that the only way I could give my pretty new wife a square shake was by taking her far away from both sorts of people, long-lived and short, where I could quit pretending and we could ignore the difference, forget it and be happy. So I decided to take her clear out of reach of other people, decided this before we got back to town the very day I married her.
It seemed the best answer to an otherwise impossible situation, but one not as irreversible as a parachute jump if she got too lonely, if she grew to hate the sight of my ugly mug, I could bring her out to the settlements again, still young enough to hook another husband. I had this in, mind, Minerva, as some of my wives have grown tired of me fairly quickly. I had arranged with Zack Briggs, at the same time I had arranged with John Magee to act as factor for Zack-arranged with Zack to ask John what had happened to "Bill Smith" and the little schoolmarm? It was possible that I would need a ride off-planet someday.
But why didn't I have Zack put us down on the spot on the map I had picked as being our likely place of settlement?- with everything we would need to start farming: and thereby avoid a long, dangerous trek. Not risk death by thirst, or by lopers, or the treacheries of mountains, or whatever.
Minerva, this was a long time ago and I can explain only in terms of technology available there and then. The Andy J. could not land; she received her overhauls in orbit around Secundus or some other advanced planet. Her cargo boat could land on any big flat field but required a minimum of a radar-corner reflector to home on, then had to have many metric tons of water to lift off again. The captain's gig was the only boat in the Andy J. capable of landing anywhere a skilled pilot could put her down, then lift off without help. But her cargo capacity was about two postage stamps-whereas I needed mules and plows and a load of other things.
Besides, I needed to learn how to get out of those mountains by going into them. I could not take Dora into there without being reasonably sure that I could fetch her out again. Not fair! It's no sin not to be pioneer-mother material-but it is tragic for both husband and wife to find it out too late.
So we did not do it the bard way; we did it the only way for that time 'and place. But I have never put the effort into a mass calculation for a spaceship at liftoff that I put into deciding what to take, what to do without, for that trek. First, the basic parameter: how many wagons in the train? I wanted three wagons so badly I could taste it. A third wagon would mean luxuries for Dora, more tools for me, more books and such for both of us, and (best!) a precut one-room house to get my pregnant bride out of the weather almost instantly at the other end.
But three wagons meant eighteen mules hauling, plus spare mules-~add six by rule-of-thumb-which meant half again as much, time spent harnessing and unharnessing, watering the animals, taking care of them otherwise. Add enough Wagons and mules and at some point your day's march is zero; one man can't handle the work. Worse, there would be places in the mountains where I would have to unshackle the wagons, move them one at a time to a more open place- go back for each wagon left behind, bring it up-a process that would take twice as long for a three-wagon train as for a two-wagon one, and would happen oftener, even much oftener, with three wagons than with two. At that rate we might have three babies born en route instead of getting there before our first one was born.