CZM Book Club: "Virgin Ground" by Rosel George Brown

and then I explain this every week. Anyway, I've been on a classic sci fi kick, and because classic sci fi is kind of like what got me, and I mean, of course it's what got me into sci fi, right, It's the older stuff, and so it's the stuff that I was reading when I was younger. But I think I mentioned before on the show at one point one of the first books that I ever read was this or that got me into science fiction anyway, was this book of like all of the greatest science fiction stories

from before nineteen sixty four or whatever. And I've just always had a soft spot for that era. But it's usually all these men, and so I was like, you know what I'm going to read you all this week A story from nineteen fifty nine written by a woman, and it's about gender and it's like one of the queerest stories in a world where you like kind of can't have queer science fiction, but it's still this like Golden Age science fiction thing where no one I'm sure

people do. It's we less and less see science fiction. That's just like and we're off to go explore the galaxy and set up little Wild West colonies in space, you know. So here's a story more in that vein, but it's strange, and it's by Russell George Brown, who was a school teacher and a Greek student, a study of like her area of specialty was like fifth century Greece.

She's from New Orleans. She died when she was forty one years old of lymphoma and so and she was like everyone was like really excited about her and science fiction, but then she died tragically, young, said the forty one

year old who doesn't want to die this year. This story is called Virgin Ground by Russell George Brown, and it was published in Worlds of Science Fiction in February nineteen fifty nine, and Gutenberg says extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the US copyright on this publication was renewed, so that's it's good enough for Gutenberg. The like little thing in the that's like, here's what you're about to read. That's from the magazine. Is Annie signed

on to a bride ship from Mars. There were forty brides, and when she got there, thirty nine men were waiting. Dun, dun, dum. The pilot shoved open the airlock and kicked the stairs down. Okay, girls, carry your suitcases, and I'll give each of you an oxygen mask as you go out. The air has been breatheable for fifteen years, but it's still too thin to newcomers. If you feel dizzy, take a whiff of oxygen. The forty women just stood there and looked at each other.

Nobody wanted to be first. Annie moved forward, her bulky suitcase practically floating in her hand. She was a big woman, with that wholesome expression which some women have to substitute for sex appeal. She'd make a great senior leader at summer camps. I'll go first, she said, grinning confidence into the others. I'm not likely to bring out the beast in them. She waved herself out, letting the grin set and gel. It was odd to feel light. She'd felt

too heavy as far back as she could remember. Not fat, heavy, bone heavy. The sweat on her face dried suddenly, she could feel it like something being peeled off her skin. Arid climate, it was cold, but she had the warmth to meet it. There they were forty men that were supposed to be forty. What if one of them had died? Who would go back? Not me? Annie prayed to herself, Dear God, not me. She tried to count them, but they moved around, so they were looking at something, not Annie.

The girl coming down the ramp behind Annie. It was Sally with the blonde hair on her shoulders. That's all they'd be able to see from there, the blonde hair. But a man was coming forward. He had a tam like hat pulled low to good humored eyes and an easy stride. Wait, Ben, one of the other men said, see the others. I pulled first, didn't I? Yeah, but you ain't seen but two yet. I want that blond one. Let Gary see the others, and he led Sally away. He didn't feel her muscles, or look at her teeth

or measure her pelvic spin. After Sally came Nora. Nora giggled and waved, making a shape under the shapeless clothes wasn't that just like Nora? Okay, so she was cute. Second man took Nora. He didn't wait for the others. Third man took Regina. Regina looked scared, but you could see those big cow eyes a mile off. Regina obviously needed somebody to protect her. The other girls came out. Annie counted, and her heart hit bottom. Someone was going to be left over. Four women, three men. They all

felt embarrassed. It was the kind of thing the colonists would talk about for years. Who was last, who was second to last? Spiteful people would remember, and in a tight little community, spite took root and throve on the least misinterpreted expression. Or but then this wouldn't be a

tight little community. Annie remembered. The lichen farms were spread out over the whole temperate belt of the world because the lichens were grown only on hills where the sand would not cover them, and because they did a more efficient job of oxygenating the atmosphere when they were spread over a wide area. One man, hat in hand, even in the cold, A little shriveled man with a spike of dust colored hair, but kind looking all he drawled

an embarrassment he clicked his tongue. You're both probably too good for somebody like me. I don't know both fine women. The two women stood in silence. What's your name, Annie, Mary? Mary? My sister's name, Mary, fine woman? He took Mary's hand. No disrespect to you, Annie. They were all gone. I could take you out my venus run, the pilot said, He too was embarrassed. But I'm afraid I'll have a full ship after that unless you buy the weight in space.

I'd be glad to take you free, but the company. Annie's eyes were full, but she wasn't going to let them spill. Sally brought Ben by, already looking self consciously married. I'm sorry, honey, she said. Look, Annie, if you want to come stay with us until another shipment of pioneers come to break ground, you're welcome. Maybe you'd find one of them you liked. It was a gesture of kindness, of course, but it made Annie's eyes spill. She turned her head away toward the red hills red and the

cultivated one's green Christmas colors. Sure Ben said, swell, Anni, friend of Sally's is a friend of mine. And the way they looked at each other made Annie's heart lurch. Thanks, kids, she said, but I don't believe. I'll try, and don't worry. This isn't the first time I've been stood up. Are you coming, the pilot shouted across the field. Hate to rush you, but I've got a schedule to meet. Was she coming? What else could she do? What happened to him? Ben?

Annie asked the other man that should have been here? Ben worried a hole in the sand with one foot and cleared his throat. He stayed home. You mean he's alive here? Well, yes, but he didn't. Never mind, I don't need anybody to strum a guitar under my window. If he couldn't get away from the farm today, I can certainly go to him. I've got a pair of legs that'll walk around the world. You coming, the pilot shouted, No,

Annie cried, I live here. The spaceship took off a phoenix rising from the flames, much like these ads arrive naturally from the narrative and then interject themselves like a gout of flame, or like the gout. Here's ads, and we're back. Ben was shuffling his feet, hands in his pockets. We'd be proud to have you stay with us. Annie, Oh, cut it out, Ben, I'm no hot house Rose. Just tell me which way and I'll find my own farm. She paused, trying to guess his thoughts. You think he

might be disappointed when he sees me? Is that it? Ben? I know I'm no pinup girl, but I'm a worker and a breeder. He'll see it in the end. That's what's going to count. Ben was still making holes in the sand with his feet, trying to say something. Please, don't worry. Annie went on, your friend won't be sorry if he doesn't want to marry me right away. Okay, I can understand it, but I can give him a chance to watch me work. That isn't it? Ben said, finally,

I think you look fine. Annie. It's any woman. He told them not to send a wife for him, any woman. But that's ridiculous. He knows the laws. Five years and then a wife. Why did he stick out in the first place? That was before Ben answered, oh what, Oh, it's not for me to say. Why don't you just forget Bradman. He's a good enough guy, but not for you. You come which way and how far? Ben looked at her hard. Okay, on Mars. Your life is your own, he pointed, second farm bubble you come to, and you'd

better hurry. It ought to take eight hours and night falls like a ton of bricks. Here Annie made it in seven easy. She went up to the transparent hemisphere. He was inside working, she shouted, but if he heard her, he didn't look up. She went to the flap. That must be the door. There wasn't anything to knock on, so she opened the flap and walked in. There was nothing in the room but a cot, kitchen equipment, and lichen growing on a number of tables. The air was

richer than outside, and Annie breathed it thirstily. I'm Annie strugg she said, smiling and wishing it wasn't such an ugly name. He glanced up, angry blue eyes under a growth of black hair. He didn't say a word. Annie set her suitcase down and looked out at the green growth on the hills. Look, mister Bradman, she cried, suddenly, pointing a spatulate finger to the western horizon. What in the name of Heaven is that? There was just a

catch of fright in her voice. We don't say, mister on Mars, he said, reluctantly, Brady, but you don't have to call me anything because you're leaving, Sue. He was a big, arid man with a sandy voice, but his hands, as he stripped the lumpy, brown fruits from a giant lichen, were surprisingly delicate. What is it, Annie asked, turning instinctively to the big man for a reassurance and protection she

had no reason to expect. Bradman straightened and moved away from her, looking at the black giant growing up from the earth in the distance and moving straight toward them. It's a sandstorm, he said. It'll be here in ten minutes. Annie let out there she'd been holding. Oh that doesn't sound so bad. I don't know what I thought it was. I was just frightened. She smiled, shyly and apologetically at Bradman. Bradman grimaced at her, his agate eyes frozen in a

pallid face that should have gone with red hair. The sand blown lines in his face were cruel. Sister, you've got a smile like a slab of concrete. Don't try it again. You didn't have to say that, Annie said, quietly, closing her eyes against the winds of her anger. You didn't have to come here, he replied, goodbye. I'm not leaving, she said, still holding tight the doors of her anger. I am. He paced heavily over the sand floor and pulled back the flap of the door. Where are you going?

Annie glanced back at the towering giant, now glowing red in the sunlight like some huge, grotesque devil into the storm cellar. Nobody lives through a Martian sandstone. Annie ran after him. For God's sake, take me with you. You can't leave me. Mine's built for one, he said, and pulled the top end over him. As he disappeared into the hole. Annie broke her fingernails, pulling at the cover. The wind was blowing sand in her eyes. She saw blood staining the rim of her index finger. She pounded

with her fists. Let me in, she screamed, in the name of God, but all she heard was the keening sand in the wind. She looked around. The devil was closer, malignant and hungry. It wanted to eat her alive. He made her angry. I'll fight it, she screamed. By God, I'll fight five minutes, she guessed, maybe five minutes left. She ran into the house, ripped open her suitcase bundles of nylon marriage clothes. She began to sob somewhere with lace. Fight,

She shouted to herself. There was her oxygen mask. How much oxygen anybody's guess. It was made for maybe a few whiffs a day over a period of several months. Swell, but it wouldn't keep the sand from tearing through her eyeballs and flaying her alive. Wrapping nylon nightgowns, ridiculous spacesuit. Annie went through the one room house as fast as she could. No spacesuit, why should he have one? Three minutes left, sand was blowing under the hemisphere, piling up

at one end and oozing out beneath. It was possible she would simply be buried the refrigerator that wasn't a refrigerator, only a cabinet loosely joined, much like this ad transition is loosely joined into the narrative of the text, interrupting your narrative pleasure, where now you get to learn about things like maybe there'll be an ad for colonizing Mars. I hope not. I'm actually totally fine with going places that there aren't people who are living things to go

live there. But the problem is that it would probably be a tesla ad and that would make me very sad, because well, I want him to go on a spaceship to Mars that he built himself, because it'll blow up and he'll die and that'll be nice. But here's the other ads and we're back. Annie went outside, on the side where the field of lichens grew up a smooth stone hill. The Red Devil was whistling at her, now a low, insinuating whistle. Something rattled faintly against one steel

rib of the hemisphere. It was a shrub about five feet tall, and he began to laugh hysterically. Brady had protected the shrub with loving care. It was tied to the steel rib through gromined holes in the hemisphere and covered with its own plastic bag to shield off the wind. One minute the Red Devil was shouting, now laughing with triumph. He ran his sandy fingers through her hair and blew his gritty breath in her eyes. She pulled the zipper at the bottom of the polyethylene bag that covered the

shrub and yanked the bag off. It was heavy, almost oily, plastic, slippery, impliant. There was no time to decide whether it be better inside or outside the house. She pulled the bag over her head inside out so the zipper would close completely. She folded the zipper part under once and wedged herself as far as she could go into the space between the shrub and the hemisphere, holding the oxygen mask in her teeth with infinite care, though she was not likely

to split the heavy bag. She pulled off her shoes and her heavy woolen walking socks. She put the shoes back on, her slacks covered her legs. Only her ankles were bare. She unraveled one sock and stuffed the yarn in her ears. There was a sudden, remarkable quiet. Then even through the yarn came the roar of the storm, for it was upon her. She looked through the milky plastic into a wild red inferno, spitting at her in furious frustration. Then she bound the other sock over her eyes.

She was in a blind, muffled world, now buffeted against the shrub and the wires and the steel rib, but not painfully because of her heavy clothing. It was as though suddenly all her senses had been switched to the last pitch before silence. I might live, Annie thought, I might. There was sand in the bag now. Annie could feel it sifting under her collar and blowing up her ankles. Not much. It was coming from the bottom of the bag. Probably the end of the zipper had worked over just

a little. Was that the dull roar of the storm through her stoppered ears, or the rushing of her own blood? If sand were seeping in, the storm must still be on. How did Bradman breathe in his storm cellar? Would the storm last long enough for the air to go bad? It would go bad fast in an enclosed place on Mars, Bradman. What sort of monster would walk off and let another human being die without a glance backwards? Did the cold desert wear out the humanity of a man? How did

a human being get like that? You've got a smile like a concrete slab? Is that what you say to a person when you know you're about to leave them to die? Unmarried women between ages of twenty one and thirty good health, well adjusted marriage on arrival Mars transports leaves oct one good health, well adjusted. She could see the printed words, red stereo words reaching out from the paid Unmarried women between they came and went in her mind,

and there was a roar in her ears. The words were gone now, only a redness that came and went, no, a blackness. Annie snatched the exhausted oxygen mask off her face and gulped a pallid, sandy breath of air. It wouldn't do. She took the sock off her eyes and bounded around her nose and mouth. It would filter some of the sand out. She opened her eyes briefly and closed them. The grit stayed in. She didn't dare open them again, but the storm looked weaker, or was it

her imagination. She groped for the zipper. Foul air would kill her quicker than sand. She couldn't find it hell with the zipper. She pulled her little mending kit out of her pocket and slashed the bag with the scissors. The storm sounded louder now with the bag gone. The sand blew under her eyelids, ripped her face, tore a burning circle around each ankle. Annie put her face in her hands, breathing through her nose and the sock. She held herself stiffly. She didn't want to cough. The whole

world was a blind, gritty pain. There was no end to think of, only pain, grayness, blackness. Finally, a voice, Bradman, you ruined my shrub? Did you have to slash the bag too? Annie opened her eyes. They felt red and ruined. They were watering so much her cheeks were wet. She could hardly see. She was having a coughing fit. She dragged herself upright. All she could see was sand. The plastic bubble had blown off the girders, and if the furnishings in her suitcase were there, her eyes were still

too dim to see them. Do you know what that shrub's worth? On Mars, Annie found the yarn had fallen out of one ear, and she pulled it out of the other. Do you know what that bag's worth? Gall ran in her veins. She spat it out of her mouth. She backed up to the steel beam and braced her feet against it. Light in the Martian gravity, I told them not to send a woman out here. She pushed off and sank her fist into his teeth. He went down. She was too light, but he was too light too.

It evened out. She turned his face and held it in the sand. Her strength was insane. Do you know what a human life is worth, she screamed. He struggled, but she fought his bucking body, kept his face buried in the sand until he was dead, and a long time after an age passed. Annie was frozen and a world rhymed over with white starlight sequined with frost. Then the cross eyed moons came up. She found an edge of the plastic bubble, rumpled and limp and half buried

in the sand. She pushed off the heaviest hills of sand with her hands and pulled it out. She climbed up the anchored girders with it, and then she slept the rest of the night in her own home. The next day she dug out her household supplies from the sand. The day after, she cleared the sand from the lichens on her farm. On the fourth day, she called a few neighbors in, and late in the evening she buried Bradman. No one questioned her. It had been after all self defense.

She kept the farm as well as any man better. She worked how she worked, She kept herself numb with labor, her mind drunk with the liquors, a fatigue. After five years, he came. He just appeared inside the door flap, looking a little nervous but grinning. I'm Jack Hamstrong, he said, his voice full and wholesome, like Iowa corn I. You weren't at the spaceport, so I figured, what the heck? I just want? This is my farm, Annie said, My hands are on every inch of it. Hamstrong's ruddy face

turned on itself a little. I know, I know the story. I didn't come to take anything away. I came to good Lord. Didn't you know you'd be sent a husband? Annie's eyes went queer like a cat's a husband if they told her she hadn't heard go away, she said. She looked around at her farm, the fruits of her travail alone, the virgin birth. No, he said firmly, it's yours and mine legally, I am not a mean man. Annie. You'll find me patient but stubborn. I can wait. Annie sighed,

or was it a shudder. She looked up again at the puckering edges of the evening sky. She put down the knife she'd been peeling a giant lichen with. She wiped her hands on her apron and lifted the doorflap. All right, then, she said, Wait for what the sand storm? She said, and she got into the storm cellar and pulled down the weighty lid, locking it behind her. That's the end of the story, because she killed one husband

and she's about to kill another. I like this story so much, and I like some of the well I found it subtle, but maybe it's not subtle at all, like the insinuation that the sandstorm represents like marriage and men right, because it like multiple times like the sandstorm is like wolf whistling at her right, and the sandstorm is like running its hands through her hair and all this shit, and she's just like, I just got to survive it. I'm not gonna let it kill me, and

then then I'll be all right, you know. And that's some science fiction from seventy years ago for you all. I hope you like. And if you don't, well, why'd

you listen to the whole thing? Are you just stuck driving and you're like, uh, I don't want to take my eyes off the road, And maybe you're driving through a storm right now and you're like, oh no, there's a storm, and I'm stuck listening to this because I don't want to go get my phone from where it's giving me directions to the storm and I don't have a co pilot with me, and if so, I'm sorry that you've been stuck with me as your copilot this

whole time. It's pretty tragic, but you'll you'll make it through the storm of marriage. The storm is marriage, and I will talk to you all next week with another episode of cool Zone Media Boom Club. It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at

coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening