you, there's always somebody with their hand out.' And I found other passages where it says he owned his own house, he paid his taxes and he wasn't a scrounger. Now if we can just link our message to Martian life-style thinking.. .
"If only we could talk to the Jord family, Deke."
But Vilo Jord and his kin never came on deck. We found ourselves, like anthropologists in pursuit of a lost tribe, trying to reconstruct the Martians we'd never met from all available information, even from fiction. One old novel claimed that Martians shared water; we knew they shared nothing. Another novel had them playing German batball; we found their game of preference to be softball.
"I don't see why we shouldn't use a lot of softball metaphors," said Deacon. "Say the pitcher's mound is Calvary, runners on first and third are the good thieves, Judas Iscariot is the cleanup batter, the rosin bag is gall and vinegar, and so on." He sat studying his cracked, bleeding hands for a moment. "And so on." We'd been aboard the Doodlebug for more than a month, now, and the Deacon had begun to crack in other ways. Was there a pitcher's mound in softball?
The idea of spending time among the Martians was beginning to lose its appeal, as we read on: They were mainly rough, uncouth men with no imagination, no ambition, no money. They all lived in tiny surburban bungalows—metal outside, paperframe inside—with "colonial" façades. Usually such a house would have a bong tree in the glassed-in front yard, which was called a godden . Bong trees were sickly items, but much prized on Mars. They were four-foot yellow spindles producing a few needles and a few large yellow pods, empty as the rest of Martian life.
The house itself, called a teep , usually had three rooms: kitchen, bedroom and sickroom. Because of the handling of mined minerals, no less than the constant drinking and drugs, it was necessary to have one room which could be cleaned very easily, the sickroom or barfy . If the house had a fourth room, it was the garage. Martians spend a lot of time with their cars.
Before we tackled videos of the actual Martians talking about their lives, we first had to learn their language. It was an American dialect, spoken with a North Iowa accent, but the vocabulary had undergone deep changes: Mars or Martian was now Marty ; a man was a brudda or a Martybrudda ; a woman was a snap . Food was spew ; dinner was grabbin the barf-bag ; a car was a goodwheel or a can ; whiskey was Budapest ; gin was goose ; beer was parthenogenesis ; all amphetamine-related drugs were monkey bread ; antidepressants were furze ; tranquillizers were Circassian chicken ; sleeping pills were weenies ; cola drinks of any type were jissom ; poison capsules (sold openly and quite legally in the colony) were Sylvesters ; a hand-scrubbed floor was a murph ; wages were greengage ; racing imaginary horses was purplesnow ; a message from Earth was a plywooder . Knuckle keys, for some reason, were called wurpy .
One day the Deacon was jubilant ( serrated ). "I've really cracked this language barrier, you know? I mean I've really, really cracked it. I can communicate, I can get right inside the head and guts of these people, you know? Know thy enemy, like. I mean I can finally cut through the bullshit ( quidge ) and talk to them. That means some chance of really converting them.
"Listen, you've been really helpful here, I'm gonna do something for you in return. You work for the Crusade for just one year after we land, and I'll turn you loose."
"Turn me loose?"
"On Mars, there are free robots. The cook told me. They can work and earn wages just like any free human being! Oh, I tell you, there's a glorious day a-coming!" He waved his hideous hands, now covered with pus and weeping sores. I saw that the Deacon was feverish, probably delirious. I began to hate him, if hate is the word. Even in his pain he had to be smug, making promises that could not be kept. Either he would turn out to be
"If only we could talk to the Jord family, Deke."
But Vilo Jord and his kin never came on deck. We found ourselves, like anthropologists in pursuit of a lost tribe, trying to reconstruct the Martians we'd never met from all available information, even from fiction. One old novel claimed that Martians shared water; we knew they shared nothing. Another novel had them playing German batball; we found their game of preference to be softball.
"I don't see why we shouldn't use a lot of softball metaphors," said Deacon. "Say the pitcher's mound is Calvary, runners on first and third are the good thieves, Judas Iscariot is the cleanup batter, the rosin bag is gall and vinegar, and so on." He sat studying his cracked, bleeding hands for a moment. "And so on." We'd been aboard the Doodlebug for more than a month, now, and the Deacon had begun to crack in other ways. Was there a pitcher's mound in softball?
The idea of spending time among the Martians was beginning to lose its appeal, as we read on: They were mainly rough, uncouth men with no imagination, no ambition, no money. They all lived in tiny surburban bungalows—metal outside, paperframe inside—with "colonial" façades. Usually such a house would have a bong tree in the glassed-in front yard, which was called a godden . Bong trees were sickly items, but much prized on Mars. They were four-foot yellow spindles producing a few needles and a few large yellow pods, empty as the rest of Martian life.
The house itself, called a teep , usually had three rooms: kitchen, bedroom and sickroom. Because of the handling of mined minerals, no less than the constant drinking and drugs, it was necessary to have one room which could be cleaned very easily, the sickroom or barfy . If the house had a fourth room, it was the garage. Martians spend a lot of time with their cars.
Before we tackled videos of the actual Martians talking about their lives, we first had to learn their language. It was an American dialect, spoken with a North Iowa accent, but the vocabulary had undergone deep changes: Mars or Martian was now Marty ; a man was a brudda or a Martybrudda ; a woman was a snap . Food was spew ; dinner was grabbin the barf-bag ; a car was a goodwheel or a can ; whiskey was Budapest ; gin was goose ; beer was parthenogenesis ; all amphetamine-related drugs were monkey bread ; antidepressants were furze ; tranquillizers were Circassian chicken ; sleeping pills were weenies ; cola drinks of any type were jissom ; poison capsules (sold openly and quite legally in the colony) were Sylvesters ; a hand-scrubbed floor was a murph ; wages were greengage ; racing imaginary horses was purplesnow ; a message from Earth was a plywooder . Knuckle keys, for some reason, were called wurpy .
One day the Deacon was jubilant ( serrated ). "I've really cracked this language barrier, you know? I mean I've really, really cracked it. I can communicate, I can get right inside the head and guts of these people, you know? Know thy enemy, like. I mean I can finally cut through the bullshit ( quidge ) and talk to them. That means some chance of really converting them.
"Listen, you've been really helpful here, I'm gonna do something for you in return. You work for the Crusade for just one year after we land, and I'll turn you loose."
"Turn me loose?"
"On Mars, there are free robots. The cook told me. They can work and earn wages just like any free human being! Oh, I tell you, there's a glorious day a-coming!" He waved his hideous hands, now covered with pus and weeping sores. I saw that the Deacon was feverish, probably delirious. I began to hate him, if hate is the word. Even in his pain he had to be smug, making promises that could not be kept. Either he would turn out to be
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