THE MARTIAN EL DORADO OF PARKER WINTLEY

by Lin Carter

Parker Wintley came to Mars in '67 with just enough Colonial scrip in his pocket to pay for a cup of neocoffee
and a pack of Parkchesters in the spaceport cafe. Languidly draped over a stool at the grease-flecked counter, Parker
dispiritedly sipped the vile brew, smoked his stimulette, and stared with a disapproving and fastidious eye through the
armor glass panes at his first view of romantic, mysterious Mars.
It was, in all candor, a Hole. The thriving young metropolis of Dry Wells was naught but a huddle of hovels, a
clutch of quonsets. Rusty sheetmetal biodomes; one or two dirt streets; a lonely and antiquated phosphor sign
forlornly blinking forth into the cold dawn its pathetic legend: Joe's Eats. Above, against a sky like faded velvet, the
silver splinter of the dilapidated "liner" on which he had just spent an uncomfortable two weeks, glinted besides the
smaller of the two moons. Moons! All his life, Parker had read of the Twin Moons of the red planet; he'd not realized
they were so small, so faint, so positively mundane...
Pushing aside the undrinkable neocoffee, Parker lit another stimulette, and thoughtfully reviewed his current
situation and his personal resources, with an eye towards applying the latter towards the relief of the former. Surely,
the renowned Wintley ingenuity could supply the wherewithal to relieve his chronic case of empty-pocket!
Yet on review, the situation was indeed dire. Even dismal. His one-way ticket to Mars (the grudging but fore-
sighted gift of a choleric parent whose nubile and susceptible daughterheiress to the Barony of Detroithad found
the famous Wintley charm irresistible) left him stranded in impecunious circumstances. Otherwise, he might even
now be wallowing deliciously amid the gilded joys of Industrial Feudalism. As it was, he did not even know where he
was going to spend the nightpresuming this dreary, bone-dry slagheap of a planet had nights!
On the other hand, his personal resources were, to say the least, considerable. He mentally totaled them, with a
certain forgivable complacence. Item: a lean, athletic figure, tall and aristocratic, immaculately clad in a shaped-suit
of the latest mode (beige twill with fluorescent mauve piping and the newest electrostatically-compensating cuffs).
Item: a mellow, rich baritone voice whose persuasive smoothness of timbre could have made the fortune of the
salesman lucky enough to possess it. And, lastly, an impetuous smile, appealingly lopsided, which revealed a superbly
even row of snowy molarsa smile whose warmth was such as to dissolve the marrow of even the iciest female
spine within eye-shot.
Surely something could be done with this sort of capital!
Exhaling a pungent cloud of aromatic vapor, Parker allowed his agile wits to wander about, alert to any means or
method whereby a tall, darkly attractive and winsome young man of such talents might relieve his impecuniosity
without stooping to any mundanity such as actual labor.
For, if lacking in monetary wherewithal, Parker was wealthy in ideas. In point of fact, and putting aside his above-
noted physical characteristics, he possessed wit, charm, ingenuity, and intelligence of an extraordinary caliber. His
fatal flaw (as the more keenly witted of my readers may, by this juncture, have already ascertained for themselves)
was simply that he held firmly to the mistaken conviction that the worlds owed him a living. He derided the futility of
investing his many fine points of character in any so dreary an occupation as (if I may employ a three-letter word) a
job. No, the 10 to 4 routine of formal employment was not for the likes of Parker Wintley! Not for such as he, the
humdrum tedium of office or factorythe servile kowtowing to dull-witted supervisors born with a silver timeclock in
their mouthsthe hurried and unwholesomely brief two-hour lunchthe grim realities of the 30-hour work week!
Herein lay the vulnerable heel of my Achilles: for had he employed these personal resources in normal means of
gainful job-holding, and applied them with perseverance and ambition, could not such as Parker Wintley have gained
the sumptuous pinnacles of worldly success where-for his heart yearned? But alas, Parker persisted in his belief that
anyone so ferociously intelligent and attractive as he should not have towhat was the depressing phrase?"work
for a living."
Parker shuddered delicately at the thought. And, in mid-shudder, his eye caught the headline of the Syrtis Major
Sentinel left on an adjacent stool by a bewhiskered countermate. He caught up and perused the sleazy newsprint,
giving special scrutiny to the featured article beneath the screaming banner headline which had been the one to first
catch his eye. As his eye raced down the column, a slight smile creased his firm but mobile lips. Luck (it seemed) had
not yet deserted her favorite son...
Now this was '67, as you may remember; this was rugged, Colonial Mars of the frontier, long before the Water
Riots and the "No Representation Without Taxation!" uproar that immediately preceded the 20-minute revolution and
Independence. Mars was in the middle of what Earthside SV newscasters were wont to call, with their usual glib
mastery of the catchy phrase, "The Great Diamond Rush." Only a month or two before Parker was packed off to Mars
by the aforementioned irate parent, diamonds had been discovered north of the Lacis Solis region. In no time,
Martian diamonds (albeit, of small, almost undiscernable difference from their earthly counterparts, or at least to the
callow, untutored eye) were the rage. In furious demand, the gems commanded prices so high-pitched as to be
positively hysterical. What career diplomat from the Associated Nations would dare appear with his lady at an
embassy romp, unless Martian diamonds glittered on her white throat and fingers? What nouveau riche stereovision
star would dream of risking a guest spot on "What's My Orbit" without their fashionable scintillance at earlobe and
sternum? What newly promoted advertising executive, winging his daily way home aboard commuter-jet to the
suburbs of Greenland or the Sahara, but bore in his attache case a gem from the ruddy planet in a case from Cartier,
Tiffany & Gimbel's?
An unholy exuberance gleamed in the roguish eye of Parker Wintley. All was not lost! Like the domesticated
feline in the familiar adage, Parker too, once dropped, landed on his feet!
For, dear reader, although Parker's college years had been largely given over to the social whirl, and although he
had spent more time studying the Dun, Bradstreet and Moskowitz ratings of the fathers of the several girls to whom
he became simultaneously engaged than in pouring over course texts, Parker had gained at least one item of useful
information during his tenure in the Halls of Ivy. He had taken several snap courses in Martian Geology to bolster a
sagging average. And one item of data had somehow stuck to his agile wits: the areologies of the Sun Lake City area
and the Erebus Canal district just south of Dry Wells were identical in soil stratification and geological circumflexion.
Hence, if the one region were gloriously diamantiferousso should be the other!
If the college books were true, as he had been given to understand, just a few miles south of where Parker
Wintley stood at this second was a gigantic, untapped diamond-field.
Parker acted with his usual alacrity when on the trail of the semi-honest dollar. It took him about five minutes to
locate the Syrtis Major claims office, where his stunning charm won him a quick glance at the recent claims
registration. As he had hoped, no one had staked a claim in the entirety of the south Erebus locale. Every prospector
on Mars who could scrape together the merest modicum of a grubstake was high-jetting it north to Sun Lake City to
make his fortune.
In other words, it was a clear field for Parker Wintley.
His first need was to acquire desert rig. To a man of lesser resource, this obstacle might have seemed
insurmountable due to impecuniosity. Not so, Parker. He repaired upon the instant to the nearest crawler-rental
agency. And luck was still with him, for the rental agent was of the female persuasion.
The sign said "PETRA WEATHERWAX, PROP." Smoothing back his straight dark hair, adjusting the marrow-
melting Wintley smile, and turning on the Wintley charm to its fullest possible wattage, our brash young entrepreneur
pushed open the air-trap double door and entered, to find the proprietor's posterior in prominence. The young lady
obviously of ample charms, if of rumpled habilimentswas bent over adjusting the reciprocating gears on a sand-
tractor engine.
Parker voiced a polite ahem.
She turned to receive the full battery of the Wintley magic. Before this salvo of irresistible radiations, her cheeks
pinked and her eyes (of an exquisite blue, he noted) widened. She brushed a dangling lock of watermelon-pink hair
out of one eye and rubbed absently at the fleck of grease adorning her small, pert, ever-so-slightly-tilted nose.
"Ahhhyes?" she asked, without notable eloquence.
Parker entered the breach.
"Miss Weatherwax, I believe? Miss Petra Weather-wax... Ah, what a divine name! What romantic connotations
are conjured by those melodious syllables! What visions, what mirages of nights on the desert, redolent of spice and
cinnamon, under the Oriental lamp of the Eastern moon! What mystic splendor, what barbaric mystery! Surely you
must recall those haunting lines of that matchless poet, the immortal John William Burgon...?
"Match me such wonder, save in Eastern clime
A rose-red city, half as old as Time..."
"Ummmwhat?" was Petra's flustered response.
Girding his loins (in a verbal sense), Parker unleashed the full floods of glib persuasion. Breezily representing
himself as the blacksheep heir of B.B. "Stoker" Wintley the Antarctic Real Estate mogul, and thus scion to Earth's only
quintillionaire fortune, Parker swiftly blarneyed the bedazzled Colonial girl out of a crawler (as the Martian sand-
tractors were called), together with respirator, conservation-suit, heater, maps, compass, and a week's rations to boot.
The miraculous transfer of goods was so swiftly accomplished, that the flummoxed young female failed even to
procure Wintley's signature as surety on the rental papers. In fact, thirty minutes (Syrtis Standard Time) from the
moment he had swaggered through the double doors, Parker was chugging out of the rusty, dusty little spaceport
town en route to a dazzling fortune in diamonds.
 The air of Mars is thin, cold, unsatisfying. Breathing it without a portable respirator can be hazardous, and if you
must do so, be certain your monthly Blue Crescent and Blue Star premiums are paid up, for oxygen-starvation, ozone
poisoning, lung dehydration and sandthroat-fever are a few of the illnesses to which Martian flesh is heir.
Then there's the question of water. On Mars, there is none. Wellvery little. The town of Dry Wells gained its
cognomen as the result of a costly and extended drilling experiment. After spending a fortune in Colonial scrip and
penetrating halfway to the planet's lukewarm core, the end result was negligible. Wells they had, but where was the
water?
Hence, to cross the bone-dry waste of the Jemmisar (as the native Martians called this extratelluric version of
Death Valley), it's wise to carry sufficient supplies of oxygen and drinkables. Parker had both.
But for the sheer monotony of the trip, no precautions could be taken as preliminary measures. For three of four
days, the air-tight tractor slithered on its balloon tires over an endless succession of rust-colored sand dunes, each
precisely identical to the last About twice a dayfor sheer varietyan outcropping of stone hove into view. Rust-
colored stone, of course.
Parker became so wearied of the view he decided, that should he ever be lucky enough to return to civilization,
he might never be able to look a rose in the face again.
He began to entertain serious curiosity about what he would do should the second-hand tractor break down in
the midst of this interminable wasteland. Whenever moody thoughts like these arose, he sternly put them by, and
turned his mind to diamonds.
After four days of bumpy, spine-jarring travel, Parker Wintley pulled into a native village with an immense feeling
of relief. After four days of red sand and red stone, what a delight to the eye were the yellow-faced natives in their
loose brown robes! What color; what variety! And Parker dismounted from the dusty crawler in his glittering alumifoil
desert suit, and began to establish friendly relations with the Martians. If anyone hereabout could be expected to
know about diamonds, it would be them!
Nor did it prove difficult Indeed, friendly relations are the mainspring and key-gear of the Martian way of life. To
"The People" (as they call themselves), politeness is almost a religion, as it used to be among the pre-Mao Chinese.
Their entire social system was built around the host/guest relationship. This proved an obvious blessing for any
visitor save the most extreme eremite, but it also proved a bit trying to the visitor's patience.
You see, for the past forty million yearsgive or take a dozen millennia or sothe Martians have had nothing
whatsoever to do. The ultimate in science, art, philosophy, literature, political theory, religious theologizing,
sculpture, town-planning, mathematics, musical composition, basket-weaving, drama, historical compilation, or what
you will, they already reached in days when our ancestors, back on Earth, were squatting atop a flint heap scratching
fleas and dully formulating the theoretical basic for The Wheel. They have had nothing on which to spend thought,
artistic endeavor and imaginative fertility in all these ages, except for politeness.
Saying "Howdy, Stranger," or its colloquial local equivalent, had been elaborated into a formal ritual which took
about seven hours to accomplish, and involved thirty-seven changes of ceremonial dress, a full-scale ballet, the
employment of a fantastic variety of feather cloaks, ornate robes, national costumes, paper-mache masks and poetic
exercises extempore.
It was a trifle fatiguing, Parker found. However, he had come prepared. He had read up on Martian customs in
the liner's small but well-chosen tape library, and had taken the precaution of mastering the native tongue thoroughly.
After all, there had been a new model Hypnopedia in the library lounge, so why not use it? Now he was glad he had
used foresight.
He settled down for a long siege of listening. The welcoming ceremonial sequence should take about five days. It
was certainly colorful enough. After a day or two, he began to wish he had brought along a camera: surely, he could
have edited some footage and sold an article to the International Geographic!
Five or six days later, Parker was still in there pitching, albeit a bit groggily. The endless succession of metrical
speeches, dramatic interludes, ritual dances, ceremonial masks and robes, festivals and feasts was over at last, and
they got down to the actual business of trading.
Of course, with the flowery elaborate speech the Martians used, you would have to be an utterly callous boor to
simply come out and say, "Hey, Mac, ya got any diamonds?" Instead, you must approach your subject with the
discursive grace of a mating flamingo, who circles and circles about the female, ever gradually drawing nearer and
nearer, until at lastBAM!he pops the question.
In fact, so elaborately embroidered had become the Martian language in the course of a dozen million years or so
of linguistic evolution, that it was considered rudely abrupt to actually call a thing by its own name. Instead, a florid
variety of metaphors and poetic synonyms were employed, which made it harder than ever to get to the point.
Luckily, Parker Wintley was the past master of hyperbole. Still, this kind of suggestive metaphorical speech did
grate on his nerves. Take, for example, the Chief Elder of the clan, the Chastoomiphontif Diabolshnibaliphontiphonf
or "Boss" of the local yokels. (Parker mentally called him "Chastoom" for short). He was a stately, dignified old
yellowface, so stiff and formal he looked as if a good healthy smile would crack his cheeks, and a real bust-out laugh
would snap him in two. Well, each time in the course of their bargaining when he had chance to refer to Parker as
party of the first part or whatever, he came up with a different phrase: one time it would be "Honored and
Resplendent Lord-Sir of the Respected Sons of the Noble Green Star," and the next, "Distinguished and Generous
High-Born Visiting Brother of the Sky-Descended Ancestor-Proud Flying Men." A little of this, as you can see, would
go a long way. But a fortune was at stakehis fortune-so Parker had to grin and bare it.
Then it was his turn again, so Parker got up and made the longest, dullest, most flowery and effusive and boring
speech flesh and blood could endureinterrupted at the antiphonal points of his discourse by a ritual series of song
and dance (and let me tell you, Martian singing sounds like somebody torturing a sick cat; Martian dancing is slow
and formal, like a Noh play filmed in slow motion and run backwards; the combination of the two makes
impecuniosity almost desirable).
Despite these intervals of caterwauling, Parker made his offer. It was veiled in poetic allusions, and Med with
digressive asides during which he complimented the clan on their costume, architecture, cookery, on the wit of their
elders, the beauty of their women, the cuteness of their kids, the weave of their garments, the taste of their foods, and
on just about everything within eye-reach. He ended with some standard guff about the Poor, Low-Quality, Tasteless
and Dishonorable SALT he would like to give them.
Now salt is just about the only thing on Mars rarer than decent oxygen or drinkable water, and it delighted his
soul to see the way their ears pricked up at his mention of the word. You've got 'em now, Parker m'boy! he thought
gleefully to himself.
The old Chastoom creaked to his feet again, paid ritual homage to the thirty-seven cardinal directions and the
ninety-one principal planets in the Martian zodiac, inquired after the health of each of Parker's esteemed ancestors
going back about thirty-five grandpa's or so, and politely inquired what Parker wanted in return for his Priceless,
Tangy, Exquisite Salt?
Diamonds sparkled in Parker's hot little eyes. He burst into a soaring rhapsody concerning the exquisite purity
and unearthly beauty of the clan's supply of the "Most Rare and Precious Sparkle-Lovely Shining Treasure-From-the-
Ground"... about how he would be happy to unload packets of salt for a few canisters of the good old "Glitter-
Gorgeous-Pure Light-Beauty stuff" otherwise known as the "Transparent Priceless From-Under-Dirt Flashing," or
more commonly, as the "Limpid Sweet-Sparkling Rare-Bright Glassy" and so onand onand on, far into the night.
With dawn's early light Parker was happily chugging his way home over the jolly red wastes again. This time, in
place of every neat little packet of dime-store table salt he had fetched hither, there stood a great squat round ceramic
canister of Martian goodies. He recalled, with a fond smile, how the saffron hands of the old geezer had quivered with
eagerness as Parker solemnly handed over the little packets one by one. How the old beggar had longed to rip open
the plastic wrapping and actually taste some of the precious salt! But politeness ruled in this, as in everything else
Martian. They could hardly be so rude as to taste the salt in his presence, for that would be distrustful, impolite,
implying it might be the old phonus-balonus. Nossirany more than could Parker rip the lid off one of those
deliciously heavy canisters and feast his eyes on the glittering diamonds within.
Although, come to think of it, now that he was out of sight of the village/ there was no reason why he should
have to wait any longer for the delectable sight.
He switched off the motor with a crisply decisive gestureand then all hell broke loose. Or broke down, anyway.
Yes, sitting around in the corrosive Martian sand for five long, weary days and five long exhaustive nights had worn
down Parker Wintley's constitutionand you can imagine what it did to the old second-hand crawler. With a
throttled gasp, the aged and fragile carburetor expired and the crawler setting down on her rusty haunches in the
dune, never to rise again.
There was nothing Parker could do, the engine choked with ferrous dust, the diesel mixture like poor-grade mud
from the sand that had filtered in the fuel-line. He was marooned on foot amidst the trackless wastes of the limitless
Jemmisar....
For a while Parker cursed, employing an extensive vocabulary of expletives culled from the far corners of the
earth. Then he decided it would cheer him up to take a good long look at the diamonds. So he cracked open the
nearest canister... and... well....
It seemed he wasn't as cussed-out as he'd thought, for he soon plunged into new depths of verbal profanity. Then
for a while he sobbed like a little boy whose favorite teddy bear had just bit him on the calf. Eventually he realized he
was only dehydrating his innards. Philosophically resigning himself, he loaded up the damnable canisters and began
trudging on foot across the trackless series of dune after dune after dune.
It took him a lot of trudging and thinking and thinking and trudging, before he began to realize the old Chastoom
hadn't actually meant to cheat him. Actually, it wasn't the stiff-necked old buzzard's fault at allit was that (un-
printablely sulfurous) Martian language! So florid and finicky, always beating around the bush and never calling a
spade a garden implementno wonder the poor old Chastoom misunderstood what Parker had been afterno
wonder they gave him something he wasn't in the least looking for!
Actually, it all worked out for the best. Luck had been working for Parker Wintley all the while. Three days' trek
on foot across the Jemmisar without a well for a thousand miles aroundin that dry Martian air, Parker would have
ended up like a mummy, totally dehydrated, a veritable walking sponge. No, it was in fact a lucky thing the Martians
made their error. For what good would diamonds have done poor Parker, hoofing it wearily across the dead sea-
bottoms of desert Mars?
Yes, it worked out for the best, and Parker crawled home to the sympathies of Miss Petra Weatherwax with his
faculties unimpaired, if a little foot-weary. He bore no grudge against "The People." It wasn't their mistake the vital
facts got lost in the translation, as it were. After all, to a Martian, diamonds weren't "Pure Shining Precious From-
Under-Ground Stuff" at all... diamonds were just rocks they dug up while looking for what was REALLY precious on
their dry and dusty little world. Yes, trekking across the Jemmisar with all those canisters strapped to his back, Parker
was really quite glad the natives had filled them to the brim with pure, clear, shining, sparkling, crystal-colored...
water.