Happiness: A Planet (4 page)

So for nine more days the crisis developed unchecked. The only other crisis that Munred had had to deal with on XE2 had come from a woman begging to be taken off an outstation because of the violent behaviour of a drunken technician. Munred had had them both removed, had replaced them with a competent recluse.

“Why,” Munred had asked the recluse during his interview, “do you dislike people so much?”

“They disappoint me,” the technician had replied, and had refused to elaborate.

For those nine days Munred had fretted and fumed at the planet called Happiness and its uncommunicative inhabitants. He had called them many derogatory names, gave full vent to his prejudices against those who chose to live on dusty unstable planets.

Munred’s prejudice was not untypical. Probably because like many another he felt insulted by the settlers dismissing as cheap all that Space holds dear, by their voluntary relinquishment of all the beauties and benefits of Space for a grubby existence on a hazardous planet. Planetary inhabitants, incidentally, think of this prejudice as Space snobbery.

While for the rest of us the perverse values of planetary inhabitants are largely an academic affront, in Munred’s instance the prejudice had a more personal foundation, for he had interviewed two prospective emigrants to Happiness. He had concluded that interview with the distinct impression that it had been they who, regarding him with the contempt of neophytes, had patronised him. Hence his dislike of them all, intensified by their now causing him so much needless anxiety and threatening his prospects of promotion.

So Munred sat sideways on to his desk and, though he was deliberately not looking directly at it, was acutely aware of the message’s insistent flashing. The day before the message had been updated to ‘Priority Happiness.’ Tomorrow afternoon the police ship returned from its regular patrol. The ‘priority’ signal gave Munred the authority to dispatch it immediately to Happiness. The round trip would take four days. Two days to reach there, a day to get the transmissions restarted, seven days for those transmissions to reach XE2 and cancel what would be by then the ‘Urgent Happiness’ signal, leaving him just five days to get to the interview. A
tight schedule. And nothing he could for another nineteen hours but wait.

Folding his body out of the chair, he stood, grunted once at the ‘Priority Happiness’, and went home.

Petre Fanne lay on the floor, one foot held close to her face. To the count of three she pressed her big toe against her cheek, released it, then arched herself into a bridge and, flipping her legs over her head, landed on her feet. Arms spread she rocked back on her heels, then did a a forward flip. This was as much gymnastic tumbling as the apartment would allow.

Two of her previous apartments owned dented walls where she had missed her footing. Nevertheless Petre Fanne exercised daily in the privacy of her apartment. Because Petre Fanne was as ambitious as Munred Danporr. Indeed it had been her ambition that had led her to form an official liaison with Munred Danporr. And it was ambition, or the habits born of ambition, that had Petre Fanne daily on the floor contorting herself in painful exertions — to maintain her figure, to remain attractive.

Petre had met Munred nine years before, nine stations out. (For the purpose of this narrative ‘in’ is towards this city, ‘out’ is away from this city; until, in the far reaches of space, the dominion of this city touches the influence of other cities and ‘out’ starts to become ‘in’ again. ‘In’, when Petre Fanne had met Munred Danporr, was towards this city, was where she had wanted to come.)

Petre’s ambition had been born when she had been but ten years old. As part of her station’s gymnastic troupe she had come to this city to take part in a festival of gymnastics. The sheer size of this city, its abundant variety, had entranced her. Having to leave so much of it unexplored had been the saddest, the most traumatic moment of her young life.

Back on her station the boys and girls who had accompanied her had boasted of their having been to the city, of the wonders and oddities they had seen here. Petre, however, saw their boasts as parochial: she had wanted to belong to this city, to be a part of its largeness, to be as familiar with it, to take it as for granted as those of us who have lived here always, not crow over having once visited it. And, after that one visit, everything about Petre’s home station had seemed small and unsatisfactory, unworthy of her. So was sown in her the desire and the determination to return to this city.

Having already found passage once to this city as a gymnast, she at first believed gymnastics to be the route whereby she might gain adult passage. The hard nose of her ambition soon saw, though, that she was not a particularly outstanding performer, was not even considered the best on her small station; and to be invited back to this city as an individual she would have had to have been the supreme gymnast in her corner of the galaxy. The only other possible route through gymnastics lay in her becoming a coach. But to become a noteworthy and sought after coach she would first have had to have been a champion gymnast. And
she was decidedly not championship material.

Instead she devoted herself to her schoolwork and, because it pleased the teachers who would decide her grades, she kept up her gymnastics. But no matter how much she swotted, no matter how sycophantic she was to those teachers, she was gradually made aware that she was not considered intelligent enough to apply even for Technical School let alone University. And without attending either of those she would gain no specialist knowledge and, therefore, no career to take her to the city.

The only other option left open to her was that she could join a freighter crew, call occasionally at the city. But that wasn’t good enough: she had to be a part of this city, to be one of the many mysterious figures on its streets. And the prospect of failure so early in her life so depressed her that between the ages of fourteen and sixteen she twice secretly attempted suicide. Fortunately also without success. During that period, because of her sudden and utter indifference to her schoolwork, her doting mother had her several times examined by a psychiatrist.

Then, at sixteen years old, Petre began to notice that men of all ages were attracted to her. Besides the flushed skin of youth she had a gymnast’s poise; and, although not tall, she owned an alertness, a smoothness of movement that gave her an alluring grace. She saw men speculatively eyeing her supple movements. And here, she realised, was a talent that she could exploit, that could be her ticket back to the city. Because, unlike Munred, she cared not in what capacity she returned to this city, providing that return she did.

Her first liaison was with a police constable. (Police personnel, too, are promoted inwards.) However the police constable proved to be impressed only by her gymnastic contortions in bed, did not once mention taking her with him to his next posting.

Her second liaison was with a freighter skipper who had a regular run past the station and who lived in the city. To him, however, she was but a welcome diversion on his boring route; and he had other diversions in the city.

After a couple more equally unsuccessful affairs she came to realise that men were more generous in word and deed before sex than after it. And, no sooner had she come to that realisation, than she met Munred Danporr at a Service function. (She assiduously attended such functions in the hope of meeting someone like Munred Danporr.)

He was attracted to her: her seductive talents were cultivated. She was attracted to him: he owned a lofty and solemn charm. She, however, withheld her sexual favours until he proposed taking her with him to his next posting. Then, and only then, did she saturate him with her new-found sexual expertise.

Munred had known that an official liaison with Petre would do no harm to his career. In Service eyes a man with a stable liaison is considered less likely to shoot off in pursuit of an ideal, either in the abstract or in the flesh, is regarded as more trustworthy. Whereas, for a woman in Service, the opposite holds true: in the absence of other commitments a woman is seen as more likely to devote herself to Service. Be that as it may, in the case of Petre Fanne and Munred Danporr, so began a formidable partnership.

If Munred had formed a permanent liaison with someone less ambitious than Petre he, like many another ambitious young man, would probably have — eventually — compromised his ambition for the sake of his beloved, have reconciled himself to life on some far off station near her family, have become dopily enmeshed in happy domesticity. Like others before him, with the passage of time, he would have come to see that all dreams are illusory, especially in their attainment, so what’s the point? Petre, though, invigorated the dynamism of his ambition.

Although not academically bright, Petre had the advantage of knowing exactly what she wanted. So, learning from the tactics she had employed in seducing Munred, she put those same talents to work on his colleagues and his superiors. The promise of sexual excitement being a more powerful inducement than the easy gratification of sexual advances, she led men by the nose, acquired the art of making men want to give her something so that she would think well of them. So, to please her, even though by pleasing her they might never see her again, those men recommended Munred for promotion.

If Munred’s colleagues happened to be women Petre won their friendship by the exchange of confidences, charmed them with her intimacy, sought their opinions and left their men alone. And because both men and women enjoyed her pretty ways, and because that enjoyment assisted her ambition, Petre religiously twisted her small body into peculiar shapes. And she did this alone in her apartment, because to have made a public display of her devotion to her daily exercises might have detracted from her attractiveness. (When we know how an effect is created we are no longer so impressed by it.) Consequently Petre secretively exercised within her apartment, presented her small public with the finished product.

After only two promotions Munred was in no doubt what an asset Petre was to his ambition, and he pitied his single-handed competitors. Thereafter, in their partnership, Petre became the power. It was she who was the impatient pusher, she who was the busy socialite, she the eager opportunist. Without Petre, Munred was well aware, his career would have proceeded at a less hectic pace. Indeed it was Munred who had suggested that they succumb to the financial inducements to have children; and it was Petre who had resisted. She had seen what an unnecessary tie a child would have been, how Munred’s superiors would not have wanted to too often disrupt the child’s upbringing.

“The city first,” she told him. “Then a child.”

To paint Munred and Petre as a scheming pair of self-seekers cynically plotting their every small advance would, though, be far from the truth. Theirs was not a single-minded overpowering monomania. Their ambition was, of course, central to their life; but it did not dominate their personalities. True, when alone together and dreaming, their dreams took shape with the words,

“When we’re in the city we’ll...”

When Petre reached the city she had solemnly promised herself, if not Munred, a child. Although, in regard to this, it must be said that, having acknowledged in herself a proper and natural maternal instinct, also entering her thinking was that if she and Munred should happen to part in the city then, as the mother of a child born in the city, she would be entitled to remain in the city.

That aside the city was not always at the forefront of their minds. And their ambition was perfectly in keeping with their position, was considered natural by their Service colleagues and, as such, was rarely acknowledged. Certainly Munred Danporr and Petre Fanne did not see themselves as two emotionless slaves to ambition. Neither thought of themselves as anything other than two reasonable, normal people. Their ambition was apart from their many dealings with colleagues and neighbours, many of whom they had met with on the simplest terms of friendship. Bearing in mind, of course, that most of their socialising took place within Service and that Service has been variously described, in certain near slanderous satirical articles, as a creepocracy, a toadiarchy, Sycophantia, etcetera.

That aside Munred and Petre were excellent company, courteous hosts, considerate guests. They both made friends regardless of rank, irrespective of influence; indeed they still corresponded with people they had left, and had regretted leaving, billions of kilometres behind. Naturally neither would gratuitously slight anyone capable of furthering Munred’s career; but nor would either consider allowing a blatant injustice to be perpetrated without voicing their opposition to it. (That such an occasion had never arisen to test them does not diminish their theoretical resolve.)

Indeed many of Munred Danporr’s ex-colleagues will probably wonder why so much emphasis has been placed, here, on his and Petre’s ambition, rather than on their more genial sociability. But wheretofore their bluff social ability? The answer can only be their ambition. It paid Munred and Petre, in career terms, to get on with people. And, in light of the events to be related here, Munred’s reactions, or lack of them, can only be satisfactorily explained in terms of his ambition. For neither Munred Danporr nor Petre Fanne were without intelligence; nor can Munred be accused of wanton indolence. Indeed city cynics among us maintain that it is solely because they have so very little to do that eager Service types are so excessively diligent in the little that they do do. The only explanation for both their actions can be their ambition.