Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II by William Tenn Page A
Authors: William Tenn
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about."
The bacteriologist prodded his shoulder tenderly. "Talking about it in Boston and building it in northern Canada—a little different, don't you think? You haven't married the gal yet."
"You don't know Caroline," Marquis told her confidently. "Besides, we'll be only forty miles from Little Fermi—and the town will grow. The lode we're working on seems to be about ten times as rich as the Eldorado mine over at Port Radium. If it holds up, we'll build a uranium pile that will be a power plant for the entire western hemisphere. Business will get interested, real estate values will boom—"
"So it's a good investment, too? Sheer mysticism, like your opinion that a lifetime spent behind Beacon Street walls makes the housemaid-and-mistress combo you want in a wife."
"Now you sound like that mad medico Connor Kuntz when I beat his classic Capablancan chess with an inspirational heresy. There's a nineteenth-century mechanist you could be happy with; all he wants is a mate of good disposition and fair heredity who will be absorbed in her work and let him do his bone-setting in peace. I don't want a mate—I want a marriage. No servant any employment agency ever—"
"Dr. Kuntz is a mass of greasy rationalization. And I wasn't proposing to you by indirection."
"—ever sent out," he went on doggedly, "could handle the menial essentials of domestic living with the affection and grace of a wife. Machines are no substitute; you don't get omnipresent, understanding love from a machine. Not that I'm marrying Caroline just to get someone who'll kiss me while she's preparing dinners I like—"
"Of course not! It's comfortable, though, to know you'll get it just the same. Which you wouldn't if you married, say... oh, say a female bacteriologist who had work of her own to do and would be as tired as you at the end of the day. Up with the double standard; but keep it intellectual!"
The excessively thin young man slapped the car to a stop and turned with his mouth open for a blast. Esther Sakarian was one of those tidy, docile-appearing women whose remarks generated a surprising amount of factional heat in men.
"Look here, Es," he began loudly, "social development and the relatively new integrity of the individual to one side, people still consist of men and women. Women—with the exception of maladjusted—"
"Hey, there!" Esther was staring over his shoulder with her nostrils flaring respectfully. "You've done quite a job! It doesn't look a bit prefabricated, Paul. But it must have been expensive getting priorities for those sections on the Diesel snow trains. And you banged it together in one week by yourself? Quite a job!"
"I would appreciate it if you stopped raving and told me—"
"Your house... your Cape Cod cottage! It's perfect."
"My what ?" Paul Marquis spun around.
Esther slid the right-hand door back into its slot and stepped delicately onto the mud. "I'll bet you have it half furnished, too. And full of the crazy domestic gimmicks you're always working out. Downy old duck, aren't you? 'Come on, Es, I want to ask your advice on where to stick a house on that land I bought!' So go on and smirk: don't worry, I won't have the gall to say I knew it all the time."
Marquis watched the progress of her feminized blue jeans up the bush-infested hill toward the green and white cottage with anything but a smirk.
Finally, he swung madly over the side, slipped headlong into the mud, picked himself up and clambered on, dripping great brown chunks of Canadian soil as he thudded up the slope.
Esther nodded at him as he approached, her hand truculent on the long, old-fashioned doorknob. "What's the sense of locking doors in this wilderness? If anyone were going to burglarize, they could smash a window quite easily and help themselves while you were away. Well, don't stand there looking philosophical—make with the key, make with the key!"
"The... the key." Dazed, he took a small key chain out of his pocket, looked at it for a
The bacteriologist prodded his shoulder tenderly. "Talking about it in Boston and building it in northern Canada—a little different, don't you think? You haven't married the gal yet."
"You don't know Caroline," Marquis told her confidently. "Besides, we'll be only forty miles from Little Fermi—and the town will grow. The lode we're working on seems to be about ten times as rich as the Eldorado mine over at Port Radium. If it holds up, we'll build a uranium pile that will be a power plant for the entire western hemisphere. Business will get interested, real estate values will boom—"
"So it's a good investment, too? Sheer mysticism, like your opinion that a lifetime spent behind Beacon Street walls makes the housemaid-and-mistress combo you want in a wife."
"Now you sound like that mad medico Connor Kuntz when I beat his classic Capablancan chess with an inspirational heresy. There's a nineteenth-century mechanist you could be happy with; all he wants is a mate of good disposition and fair heredity who will be absorbed in her work and let him do his bone-setting in peace. I don't want a mate—I want a marriage. No servant any employment agency ever—"
"Dr. Kuntz is a mass of greasy rationalization. And I wasn't proposing to you by indirection."
"—ever sent out," he went on doggedly, "could handle the menial essentials of domestic living with the affection and grace of a wife. Machines are no substitute; you don't get omnipresent, understanding love from a machine. Not that I'm marrying Caroline just to get someone who'll kiss me while she's preparing dinners I like—"
"Of course not! It's comfortable, though, to know you'll get it just the same. Which you wouldn't if you married, say... oh, say a female bacteriologist who had work of her own to do and would be as tired as you at the end of the day. Up with the double standard; but keep it intellectual!"
The excessively thin young man slapped the car to a stop and turned with his mouth open for a blast. Esther Sakarian was one of those tidy, docile-appearing women whose remarks generated a surprising amount of factional heat in men.
"Look here, Es," he began loudly, "social development and the relatively new integrity of the individual to one side, people still consist of men and women. Women—with the exception of maladjusted—"
"Hey, there!" Esther was staring over his shoulder with her nostrils flaring respectfully. "You've done quite a job! It doesn't look a bit prefabricated, Paul. But it must have been expensive getting priorities for those sections on the Diesel snow trains. And you banged it together in one week by yourself? Quite a job!"
"I would appreciate it if you stopped raving and told me—"
"Your house... your Cape Cod cottage! It's perfect."
"My what ?" Paul Marquis spun around.
Esther slid the right-hand door back into its slot and stepped delicately onto the mud. "I'll bet you have it half furnished, too. And full of the crazy domestic gimmicks you're always working out. Downy old duck, aren't you? 'Come on, Es, I want to ask your advice on where to stick a house on that land I bought!' So go on and smirk: don't worry, I won't have the gall to say I knew it all the time."
Marquis watched the progress of her feminized blue jeans up the bush-infested hill toward the green and white cottage with anything but a smirk.
Finally, he swung madly over the side, slipped headlong into the mud, picked himself up and clambered on, dripping great brown chunks of Canadian soil as he thudded up the slope.
Esther nodded at him as he approached, her hand truculent on the long, old-fashioned doorknob. "What's the sense of locking doors in this wilderness? If anyone were going to burglarize, they could smash a window quite easily and help themselves while you were away. Well, don't stand there looking philosophical—make with the key, make with the key!"
"The... the key." Dazed, he took a small key chain out of his pocket, looked at it for a
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