The First Poet Laureate of Mars

by T E Olivant

  “Stay still!” The voice commanded, but that only made her wriggle more. Perhaps she could knock him against the wall?

  A hand closed around her neck and she was unable to breathe.

  “This is stupid. You are trapped. I will take off the bag if you do not attack anymore. Do not waste both our energy any more than you have to.”

  Hester managed a tiny nod. It seemed sensible to capitulate, if only so that she could experience the joy of oxygen once more.

  The bag was ripped away and he stared into the pale eyes of the Augment.

  “I know you’re not stupid enough to scream if I remove the gag, right?”

  Hester nodded again, thinking, I’ll scream my lungs out, but I’ll wait until the right moment you condescending shit. The Augment removed the gag and moved about a foot away, resting on his heels.

  She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she stared at the Augment instead. She needed to find his weakness, something about him she could use to escape. Information, that was what was important right now.

  The first thing that struck her was that he old. Really old. And he was trying to hide it. From her research, she knew that the pattern of scars on the side of his face would suggest he had been augmented just over a century ago. But those weren’t lines that had been around for a hundred years. They were too fresh. So, he had added them recently.

  Something an Augment would never normally do. After all, you only needed to be augmented once. The scars then were a case of misdirection. Hester resisted a smile. There was only one logical conclusion. He had deliberately scarred his face more recently. To cover over the older scars that were underneath. Hester could just see the edge of some of these and their ragged edges meant that this guy had been created a long time ago. He could be heading for two-hundred and fifty years old, but he was trying to look like he was a century younger. Bingo.

  “You are thinking ‘why am I here?’” the Augment said, his cold eyes on her face.

  No, Hester thought, I’m thinking why are you here.

  “Uh huh,” she said.

  “I will not detain you for long. I simply need to know why you were spying on me.”

  “Spying?”

  The Augment’s eye twitched a little and Hester knew he was spiking some hormone or other straight into his brain.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I guess technically the planet Mars. As the official poet laureate, I think that’s my ultimate authority.”

  “Let us not get distracted by your terrible poetry. Clearly it is just a front for your real reason to be on this planet. I need you to tell me what that is.”

  “Do I honestly look like a spy to you?”

  A slight crease appeared on the man’s brow.

  “I… The evidence suggests that you are.”

  Hester grinned. It was nice to see an Augment experiencing uncertainty.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Tolly.”

  “But everyone calls you Auggie, right?”

  The Augment shrugged.

  “That’s because we want to remind you of what you’ve given up. You don’t have a right to a name anymore. Human beings have names. Augments don’t. We dehumanize you because you dehumanize us. You treat us like nothing. Like a piece of space dust. And then you hit us over the head, tie us up and leave us to suffocate.” Hester took a ragged breath. “So I’m not going to answer any of your stupid questions. I don’t owe you that. Let me go. I am nothing to you.”

  The Augment just stared at her for a long moment.

  “Why would the Augments appoint a Poet Laureate?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Why did they pick you?”

  “Because I stole the Yeats poem. Which you know.”

  “There has to be another reason. Why did you apply?”

  Hester tried the wrist restraints again but they were as solid as ever. “Ever been to Sat Three?”

  “Not for a few decades.”

  “Trust me, it’s gone downhill. I needed a place to go and Mars seemed as good as any. I applied for the Poet Laureate position and I got the job.”

  “There must be more to it.”

  Hester groaned. “Why would I lie?”

  The Augment rubbed his palm across his brow. Was he sweating? “Because you are trying to infiltrate the Augment Council. Working on behalf of the Merchants.”

  “What would the Merchants want with the Augment Council?” Hester asked. Despite her position, she was kind of interested in what this Tolly creature had to say. Although she hadn’t been deliberately spying, when she was hiding next to the alcove she had overheard some of the conversation. If the Merchants were up to something bad on Mars Hester wanted to know about it, even if it was just so she could stay the hell out of their way.

  Tolly’s eyes flickered again and a ripple of tension passed across his shoulders. For an Augment, this guy’s control was slipping.

  “No games. Tell me everything you know.”

  “Or you’ll kill me?”

  “No. I will not kill you, although the Council might prefer if I did. I just want to know what you know.”

  “Are you seriously telling me that you kidnapped me just so we could have a chat?”

  “Well…”

  “I could have died!”

  “Elevated blood pressure and adrenalin but no lasting injuries.”

  “Feel free to shut up and let me go any time.”

  “You must tell me what you know!”

  Hester raised her chin and looked the Augment straight in the eyes. “I am not a spy. I have no idea what the Merchants are doing on Mars. I am a terrible poet and I just want you to let me go.”

  Chapter 16

  Tolly knew just what to do. He needed to dispose of the girl and protect the Council. But he was having some difficulties. The sort of difficulties that would send him straight to the adjustment center. He kept thinking of Rowhan’s face and whether the Augment’s long life spent in furthering no one but himself should be placed higher than that of this h-men girl. And he kept coming up with the wrong answer.

  The other problem he was having was that he was starting to think she might be telling the truth. Surely a spy would have written better poetry, purely to avoid suspicion.

  “Well? Are you going to let me go?”

  “Possibly.”

  The non-poet – Hester, was that her name? Gave him what she probably thought was a threatening look. He ignored it. Mind you, she had proven more stubborn than he had imagined and if she’d hit him any harder when she was tied up she might have broken his nose. Probably best to leave the restraints on for now.

  “I really think you should let me go. And if you want to chat, next time maybe just call me or something. Don’t nearly kill me.”

  Tolly felt his mouth twitch into an almost smile. He quickly flooded some more hormones into his synapses. “I have been having some difficulties with my hormonal interface. There is a chance it is affecting my decision making.”

  “No. Shit.” He didn’t need his augmented senses to know that the girl was seriously pissed off.

  “I was hoping you could give me some information. Tell me something that the Council wanted to keep from me. But you really don’t know anything, do you?”

  “Nope. I’m… well, I guess I’m an opportunist. I always knew that pretending to be a poet would come back and bite me on the ass. I must admit though, I didn’t think I’d be kidnapped and tied up for my sins.”

  Tolly felt the adrenalin leak out of him. What was he doing interrogating this girl? He was only wasting his own time. And if she was a spy or not it hardly mattered. In two hours’ time he would have forgotten all about it anyway. Reaching a decision, he moved towards her and pulled apart the restraints.

  She stood up and quickly put another three feet between them, rubbing her wrists. He expected her to bolt out the door, but instead she just looked at him warily.

  “You can go. J
ust, don’t tell anyone, especially the Council.”

  “Right. You’re happy for me to just leave. You’re not going to whack me over the head on the way out.”

  “No. You are not clever enough to be a spy. I should have seen that straight away.”

  “Thanks.”

  “In a couple of hours it will make no difference anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they will wipe my memory. I won’t remember you or anything that happened in the last week.”

  “The Augments are going to erase your memory? Why would they do that?”

  Tolly shut his eyes. He had overloaded his augmented hormones and there was nothing left. For the first time in years he was reverting to his human neurology. It was not a pleasant experience.

  “They don’t trust me to keep their secrets.”

  “Even though you’re an Augment?”

  “Right. They are going to wipe my brain clean. Just the last week, or so they say. But the problem is how will I know?”

  “Can’t you run away? Leave Mars?”

  “No. I have to have my memory erased in two hours.” Tolly suddenly realized he was telling this stranger far too much. If she was a Merchant spy then he would be a laughingstock. “You should go now. We’re on a maintenance floor just below where you read your terrible poem. There’s a stairwell on your left.”

  “And that’s it? I mean, you’re just going to let them mess about in your brain.”

  A smile broke free. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  The girl – Hester, he should probably try to remember her name now that he was spilling his secrets to her – bit her lip.

  “I wouldn’t let them get away with it.”

  “I told you. I don’t have a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice. You just can’t see it yet.”

  And at that moment, staring at this stranger he saw it. He saw the choice.

  Chapter 17

  Hester should have left as soon as the Augment called Tolly had set her free. But there was something about him that made her stay. She didn’t need to analyze it. He reminded her of past mistakes, and maybe she wanted a chance to make up for them. But the guy had been staring at her without saying anything for nearly a minute and now she was wondering if he had had a mental breakdown, or whatever the equivalent was for an Augment.

  “Are you ok?” she asked, just wanting to break the silence.

  Then Tolly did a very weird thing. He grinned. Not the almost-smile of someone trying to suppress their emotions, but the genuine beaming look of the incredibly happy or the totally deranged.

  Hester took a step towards the door.

  “How would you like to learn about Mars?”

  She turned back. “I’m sorry?”

  “In less than two hours I’m going to forget everything that’s happened in the last week. I could write some of it down, but the Augments aren’t stupid, they’ll check my files. But I could tell someone what happened.”

  Hester’s shoulder blades twitched. “Hang on…”

  “It is the best choice. I will tell you everything I have learned in the past week. The Augments wipe my memory. Then you just have to find me and tell me what I told you. Nothing is lost.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you are here. Listen, I haven’t trusted an h-men for a century. Not because you are weak-willed, although that is often the case. But because your lives are so short. It never really seemed worth the effort when you’ll be dead soon anyway.”

  “That was kind of offensive.”

  “Was it? I forget. And that’s the problem. When they brain wipe me I’m going to forget all about this conversation, and everything that’s happened in the last week.”

  “They would really do that to one of their own?”

  “Of course. I was foolish to think I might be an exception. A century ago they would never have dared. But times change.”

  “Not for you.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. And they’re sure as hell going to change now.”

  Hester shivered. “I could just record you on my datapad?”

  “No. Impossible. Do you think the Augments don’t monitor datapads? It would be too dangerous.”

  “Won’t it be dangerous for me anyway?” Hester’s mouth had gone dry. “I mean, I feel sorry for you that you’re going to be lobotomized and all, but won’t the Augments come after me?”

  “Of course not,” Tolly replied. “Why would they suspect me of confiding in someone like you? We will confound them with h-man irrationality.”

  “You know that h-man is kind of offensive to people, right?”

  “Be quiet. I’m doing biological thinking now and it’s infernally slow. How do you h-men cope?”

  “Best not to antagonize people when you’re asking for their help, Augment.”

  Tolly looked a little queasy all of a second. “I am… I am asking for help. I have not done that for a long time. I’m sorry.”

  Hester gasped. An Augment who could apologize? Maybe Tolly was different. Something special. In which case… didn’t she have to see this through?

  “Convince me,” she said, her voice a little firmer now. “Tell me why I should help you.”

  “Because Mars is in trouble. The Merchants have been building a base not far from the Colony. The Augments allowed this, but they didn’t tell anyone. Only the base that the Merchants have built is about a thousand times bigger than it should be. And I think it can only mean one thing.”

  “What?” Hester whispered.

  “War is coming to Mars.”

  Hester had a brief moment where she understood what it would feel like to be an Augment. She was aware of the hormones rushing into her brain, the hairs on the back of her neck starting up, the pause in her heartbeat.

  “There hasn’t been a war in the solar system for three generations.”

  “There may be one by Friday.”

  And despite what she had told Tolly earlier about choices, Hester discovered that when it came down to it, there was only one. She nodded to herself.

  “How long until the brain wipe?”

  Tolly checked his datapad. “Eighty-five minutes.”

  Hester sat down on the floor and crossed her legs. “Ok. Let’s get started.”

  “Right.” The Augment looked suddenly unsure.

  “Any time now?”

  “I wasn’t really expecting you to say yes.”

  Hester rolled her eyes. “Then go and find someone else to tell your story to.”

  Tolly seemed to consider it, then shook his head. “I need someone to trust. And you’re a plagiarist and a fraud, but it turns out that the untrustworthy person might be the only one I can trust.”

  “For the record, I only plagiarized a teeny little bit.”

  “Let’s get started.” Tolly’s face had taken on a new quality. It almost seemed haunted. “I’m going to tell you everything.”

  Chapter 18

  Tolly wasn’t going to tell Hester everything. His augmented brain sensors might be overloaded, but he wasn’t suddenly stupid. He just had to work out exactly how much she needed to know, or rather, how much he would need to know. And that was a little tricky.

  “It started when I arrived on Mars.” That was at least true. “I had been given a new assignment after I returned from…”

  “From?”

  “Not important. I’m a Cartographer. Do you understand what that is?”

  “Something to do with maps?”

  “That’s where the term came from. Cartographers on Old Earth created pictures of the landscape in a 2D form. As the technology advanced, the position changed. And of course, once the h-men started to explore space it wasn’t just Earth that needed maps. Planetary cartographers came along and made sense of alien worlds, translating their features so that they could be understood by the human brain. Then the Augments came along.”

  “The first Augments.”

  “Ye
s. They expanded the abilities of the human brain.”

  “They mutilated it.”

  Tolly shrugged. “If you like. Mutated it, maybe. But the human brain is the best wetware processor ever invented. What the augmentation process allowed was for that processors to be plugged into more efficient sensors. So a Cartographer takes the most advanced data that a survey ship can collect and uses the augmented brain to create a map that is exponentially better than a virtual reality simulator.”

  “Can we hurry this along a little?”

  “I am a Cartographer. The best there is, and that is why they brought me to Mars. Three days ago I joined a survey ship that had been tasked with collecting data from the dark spot called Syrtis Major Planum. The crew were told the survey was to determine a possible site for a mining operation. This was not true. The morning I arrived on Mars I received a message from the Council. They told me that they had leased a small area of Mars to the Merchants.”

  “This is what I don’t get,” Hester said, “I thought the Augments hated the Merchants.”

  “It is not that simple. The Merchant group is really just a collection of different h-men gangs. The Augments need to work with the section of the Merchants that control the movement of goods.”

  “The smugglers.”

  “And the legitimate ones. Trade between all the different outposts of humanity is what keeps the species going all the way out in space. If any part of the solar system became isolated, it would die.”

  He was rambling too much. Tolly checked his datapad. Twenty minutes gone already, and he had barely told her anything. But how was he meant to know how much the Council would erase? He had to make sure that Hester had all the information he would need when he woke up, he just needed to be faster.

  “Ok, so the Augments need the Merchants.”

  “And vice versa. Everyone knows that Augments control the movies, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But that was almost by accident. The Augmented brain doesn’t cope well with creativity. It’s the one thing we could never quite figure out. So instead we bought up all the creatives we could. The Council didn’t want there to be any weaknesses within the organization. Part of that process meant that they invested in Entertainment. People were trapped on those tiny satellites spinning around in eternal blackness, how else were they going to spend their time?”