The supper had been incomparable. Now the two of them sat in the Dice Room of the tower, warmed by a green and orange blaze in the huge fireplace, and smoked the sweet, strong, foot-long cigars that are produced only in the Hadriacum Lowlands of Mars. Beyond the double-thick glass of the window-wall, the sun was setting behind the fantastic dunes of the Aeolia Desert.
Around them in the dim-lit room, the air was thick with cigar smoke, haunted by the aura of legend. The tales of the founding of West o' Mars were vague: Peache had heard the vast wealth that built it had been won on a single throw of the dice, that Britt had been driven to build it by the hatred of a woman he loved, that he had built it above the bones of a man who had stolen his wife, that it was a memorial to his wife. While he was here, Peache hoped to sift truth from fancy, for he was a man of romantic bent.
Below them the tower dropped down the side of the cliff to a clear dome on the now-shadowed lowland of Lacus Lucrinus. The dome enclosed most of the majestic building and its exotic gardens from the thin, oxygen-poor Martian air. It was a daring conception, nowhere duplicated—an air-tight building that projected high above its plasticene dome.
Peache inhaled a long sweet draft of smoke and blessed the fact that his product was the latest in weather-control units. Only for such a major purchase would Samlaan Britt have invited him here.
"You aren't married, Mr. Britt," said Peache when the conversation provided him with an opening. "Don't you get lonesome out here, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, with no one around but robots?"
"I have many tapes and films, Mr. Peache," replied Britt, smiling. He was a short, slight man with close-cropped gray hair and round, guileless eyes. "I have my gardens, and the lowland of Lacus Lucrinus, and the desert."
"Even so, I'm surprised you haven't found a woman to share all this beauty and wealth with you. I'm sure there are many of them who'd be willing."
"No doubt," replied Britt drily. "But I am a man of peculiar tastes. I enjoy my own thoughts, and generally I prefer my own viewpoint unalloyed by the differing outlook of someone else. I find your company interesting for an evening, Mr. Peache, but few women could share this isolation without becoming bored and, consequently, a nuisance."
Then Peache told Britt of his theory: that behind the accomplishments of every successful man, somewhere, lies the influence of a woman. It might be that his mother babied him far into puberty, and he achieved things to prove his integrity as an individual. It might be that he reacted to an unhappy love affair by proving himself a better man than his more fortunate rival.
"In my case, I was the only boy among eight children," said Peache. "I chose the freedom of traveling about through space, I think, through an unconscious desire to escape from a female-dominated society. I think achievement in any field is a sublimation of the sex drive, and I understand you did not inherit any of your wealth, Mr. Britt, but amassed it all yourself."