Science fiction; Short stories; Space travelers -- Fiction; Spouses -- Fiction
"This is Mary Collins," he told me, and I kept on looking, not saying
anything. She smiled, and shook hands, and I could tell by her
expression that she knew exactly what I was thinking.
Unfortunately, I couldn't say a word about it to Garrity. There was
always the faint possibility that I might be wrong, in which case I
could make a lot of trouble by saying a few words. The words were
there, though, straining to get out. When he said, "Mary Collins," what
I wanted to say was, "No, it isn't. It's Katha."
Because it was. After I watched the girl long enough, all the way
through the marriage ceremony, then down in the elevator and out into
the street, I became dead certain.
There was a brown mole on Katha's arm. Mary had it, too. And there was
a look about the eyes--well, there could only be one Katha.
What I could not understand was why Garrity didn't see it. After all,
he'd been _married_ to Katha.
But when I tried to say something to him, he brushed it off.
"Sure, Mary looks a little like Katha," he agreed with me. "But there
are all kinds of small differences. Things a man finds out as he goes
along. Look, I'm very fond of both of them. I know the difference.
You're just confused by the slight resemblance."
The clincher was the problem of how Katha had reached Terra City ahead
of Garrity, to begin with, and whether there was still a Katha in
Serco. I asked a man off a ship fresh from Serco and he told me Katha
hadn't been there for some time. No one knew where she'd gone, but she
had said she'd be back.
So Mary _could_ be Katha, given a fast passenger ship.
And Arnel could be Katha, too. Arnel had a mole in the right place. So
did Lillian. And Ruth. And Virginia.
* * * * *
Yes, Garrity married every one of them. Six girls, six planets. It took
him a while, and by the time he got as far as Ruth, he was going to a
lot of trouble to arrange his shipping runs so he could make the full
circuit. But every so often I'd hear from him, or run into him, and
there would always be a new one.
The Garrity plan was going fine, but it lacked that one ingredient he
had counted on--variety. Every one of those girls was Katha.
_He_ didn't think so. He could call off the differences between them
by the hour. To listen to him, if you hadn't actually seen them, you'd
have believed every word he said.
Each one of them gets a share of Garrity's pay--a big share, from the
looks of it. Each one of them keeps a nice place for Garrity and,
when he comes into port, he eats and sleeps as well as any honest
groundwalker. And each one of them has a small fat baby boy, of whose
exact age Garrity never seems to be quite sure. Two or three of the
kids seem extremely advanced for their ages and they were all born
fairly close together, which was enough to make Garrity as proud as a
rooster.
And Garrity seems to be the only one who can't tell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account