The First Poet Laureate of Mars

by T E Olivant

  “What’s that?”

  There was genuine enthusiasm on his face now. “I’m making a real movie. Something that means something. I met this guy from one of the Mining families, you heard of them? Well, we actually met at a support group. And he told me what a shitty deal those guys were getting. And we decided to make a movie. A real action-fest, but set in the old mining base so that we can show what it’s like. It’s taken a year to get the miners to give me permission, and a ton of my own money, but we finally started filming.”

  “Well, I never thought you would surprise me. That’s great, I hope it does well.”

  “Me too.”

  Hester looked down at her empty glass. She didn’t feel the need to order another. Besides, the previous drinks were already threatening to revolt out of her stomach. But what was there left for her to do? Go home to her tiny apartment? Forget about Tolly? Or go home with Derek, obliterate the terrible day with some fantastic sex. The idea was not without appeal.

  Then something Derek had said made its way through the gin to her brain.

  “Did you say you were filming in the mining station? Do you think you could get me in there? There’s someone I need to find.” Persus, that was the name Tolly had given her. If there was a chance that this woman could help the Augment then surely Hester had to take it. At least then she would know she had given it everything she could.

  “Sure. When were you thinking?”

  “How about now?”

  Chapter 22

  The stars whirled as Tolly floated through space. The silence was infinite. He stared upon a hundred million suns and their light burned his eyes.

  A tiny human boy cried as his mother led him up a metal gangplank onto a shining space shuttle.

  A thousand voices screamed as the moon of Venus died –

  Tolly sat up, fully awake. Somewhere something was beeping.

  The panel next to the door was turned on and he could see the slim figure of an Augment waiting outside. He ran a hand over his forehead and it came back wet with sweat. The side effects were to be expected. A hundred years slipping away…

  What did I do?

  The door beeped again. He forced himself upright and managed to stagger over to the viewscreen.

  “Yes?” His voice sounded like someone else’s.

  “Supervisor Copper. I am here for your debrief.”

  He moved towards the door to let her in but then a glint of metal caught his eye. On the floor, just in front of the door, was a metal stick with green plastic around it. Some sort of data device? The technology he knew was a hundred years out of date. He reached down to pick it up.

  Yes, some sort of datastick. The connection was slightly different, that was all. He had no console to plug it into. And how had it got there? He was almost sure it hadn’t been on the floor when he went to sleep.

  The door beeped again. Tolly glanced up. He should hand this over to the Augment. And yet… this might be his only connection to his past. He wasn’t quite prepared to just let that go. He hurried back to the bed and slipped it under the covers. Then he pressed the button to open the door.

  He went and sat down on the bed, the datastick hidden under his right butt cheek. He left the uncomfortable metal chair for his guest.

  “You look unsettled, Augment,” Copper said. “I suggest you make an adjustment.”

  Tolly checked his vitals. Blood pressure and heart rate were both erratic. Mood was low and responses were sluggish. He did as the woman suggested and allowed the cocktail of soothing hormones to enter his brain. The dizziness abated, for the moment at least.

  “Good. Tell me your symptoms.”

  “Brain chemistry is still adjusting.”

  “Any pain?”

  “No.”

  “Any rogue memories?”

  Tolly thought of his dreams. “No. Some… emotional remnants, nothing more.”

  Augment Copper gave him a long stare. A light flickered on her datapad and that let him know that she was recording the conversation.

  “It is imperative for your recovery that you do not try to uncover the memories that have been erased. This could result in a fatal outcome.”

  A sudden vision: the screaming children of the lost moon…

  “I do not want to remember.”

  Augment’s do not smile, but Copper’s expression displayed the tiniest hint of satisfaction.

  “That is the optimal result. A transport has been arranged for tomorrow morning. You are to be sent to the colony at Satellite Six. You will find that removal from Mars expedites your recovery.”

  “Thank you.”

  Copper rose. “You are advised to remain in your room until tomorrow. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye.”

  He waited until ten minutes after the Augment had gone before he took out the datastick. Now he just had to decide what to do with it.

  Chapter 23

  If Hester had been expecting dirt and darkness when she arrived at the mining complex, she was wrong. The active part of the mine was deep under the ground. The area that was used for habitation was a riot of color and life. And people. A lot of people.

  “You can see the problem with overcrowding,” Derek said as they shuffled past a group of kids playing a game with ball bearings on a stairway. Hester didn’t have to reply. She turned sideways to allow a group of women with studs inserted along their brow lines. Every person there had tattoos and she wished she knew what they all meant.

  Hester had grown up on Sat Three. She thought she knew what it was like to live in an overpopulated colony. But this was something else. The main concourse was filled with stalls selling cheap food, clothes, metalwork. But the stalls were clearly also people’s homes, so babies yelled and couples bickered right along with the sounds of trade. Men with hallow cheeks stared at her from dark alleyways. The ceiling was low, but somehow people had managed to split the height so that beds had been crammed along the wall, bunk style, and people seemed to be actually sleeping amid all the noise.

  “Was it always like this?”

  Derek shook his head. “No. When the mine was making the Augments money they kept it maintained. Then when the main supply of permafrost was exhausted they stopped bothering. There are still a few smaller mines running, mainly bringing up mineral ore, but they hardly employ anyone anymore. They tried to send the miners to the other colonies, but this has been there home for generations.”

  A group of women pushed past Hester. They had red streaks etched into their arms and they chattered in a language she couldn’t understand.

  “What language was that?” she asked, pressing up against Derek as more people elbowed past them.

  “Franco-Arabic. Almost as many people speak it down here as English. The miners came from the Old Earth regions of North Africa.”

  “I had no idea,” Hester replied. She hadn’t realized any of the old languages were spoken any more.

  “No one does. This place is so isolated no one knows anything about it.”

  “And you want to change that?”

  “Not exactly. The people here are quite happy on their own. But the Augments want to shut the whole place down. It’s too expensive and there are too many people. I just want to help them get some recognition.”

  And what’s in it for you, Hester wondered. The gin had worn off and been replaced by a hard sobriety. She wasn’t entirely convinced by Derek’s good guy act. Still, he was proving useful.

  “And you think you can help me find this Persus woman?”

  “My friend knows everyone here. Now we have to take the stairs down. Watch your step.”

  He didn’t have to warn her. The metal stairway was only eight feet wide, but people had still managed to set up home there, stringing hammocks from one side to the other. It stank of old sweat and the air was so thick it seemed to settle on her chest. Hester nearly stepped on a piece of cloth that turned out to be a long woman’s dress, and a baby on the woman’s lap cooed at her. An old man
muttered under his breath, his eyes milky blue. Everywhere she looked eyes stared back at her, not hostile, but not friendly either. They just watched her, waiting to see what she would do next.

  After three winding levels Derek led Hester out onto another level. The air here had an unpleasant chemical quality that reminded Hester of Sat Three. It meant that the aircon wasn’t working properly and it was propelling pollutants into her lungs.

  They walked past some sort of all-day club that was pumping out music with a low beat that Hester couldn’t even follow. Inside she could see the odd glimpse of a glowing tattoo, before a fierce-looking bouncer stepped in front of the door.

  “Try not to stare,” Derek said and she dropped her eyes. The actor led her past the club and then turned into a small alcove. He knocked on a rusty yellow door that had a symbol painted on it that reminded Hester of the miner’s tattoos.

  A man opened the door and they squeezed inside. The ceiling was so low that Derek had to stoop, but the room was actually a decent size. There were two low, well used sofas and a screened off area that might have been a bed. Judging from the rest of the mining base, that meant that this guy was pretty high status.

  “This is Ai. Like the letter.”

  “Hi,” Hester said holding out her hand. She realized too late that the Ai’s right arm was damaged, stopping at just below the elbow.

  He squeezed her hand with his left instead. “Welcome. I’ve got to say, I didn’t realize we would have such an illustrious guest as the Poet Laureate of Mars.”

  Hester’s face went red but Derek just looked confused.

  “What?”

  “Did you know the Augments live-streamed the Commencement Ceremony?”

  “Oh no.”

  Ai’s eyes sparkled with humor. “Nice poem.”

  Derek looked from one to the other. “You want to explain what you’re talking about?”

  “I’m the Poet Laureate of Mars,” Hester said. “But as your friend here knows, I am a terrible poet.”

  “I was going to say… innovative.”

  “Thank you. It’s a long story.”

  “And you’re in a hurry right,” Ai smiled. When his face moved the black tattoos shimmered in the half-light. “Hawk said you wanted ask me about someone.”

  “I only have a name. Persus. A… friend of mine needs to see her. He said she was working out of the mining base to avoid coming to the attention of certain authorities.

  “Sure, I know her.” The humor was gone from Ai’s face, replaced by something else. Regret maybe? “But I think her days of spying on the Augments are pretty much done. Come with me and I’ll take you to Persus.”

  Chapter 24

  Tolly’s first bad decision was to turn off the cocktail of augmented hormones that was keeping him happy. He picked up the datastick and stared at it. He needed to find a console or whatever they used in this century so he could access it.

  As soon as he left his room he felt exposed. Were the Augments watching him? Last thing he could remember – a hundred years ago even though it felt like yesterday – was the new elections to the Council. They had asked him to attend, even though he had little interest in events in the Council chambers in Alcedine. He might have still refused, but there had been some worrying trends in his recent communications with other Augments. They were becoming even more secretive and more paranoid. The more the Augments isolated themselves from the h-men the more they seemed to lose their way. Or at least that was what he had believed.

  Had he been wrong? If the Augments of today were telling the truth then sometime in the last hundred years he had become a danger not just to his people but to humanity. And although part of him wondered if they were lying, there was enough residual memory left to know that he had done something terrible. Something that he had wanted desperately to forget.

  The datastick bit into his palm. Would it give him answers? What if the answers weren’t anything he could stand hearing? The Augment Copper hadn’t been exaggerating the risks of the brain wipe. He had seen it happen before, a long time ago when the technology had been new. Augments lost their minds trying to recover memories that had been erased. Those that challenged the process never lasted long enough to regret it. And yet knowing all this he couldn’t let it go.

  He found a seedy little bar that was crammed in between two massive metal girders. He shuffled in past two men who were dealing in whatever substance was this century’s form of illegal high. He enlarged his augmented pupil so that he could see in the near-darkness and walked to the bar.

  “I need to borrow a console. Something not connected to the web.”

  The woman behind the bar, a skinny girl who had miners’ tattoos that curled around her eye and wound down her neck, said nothing but held out her hand. Payment.

  Tolly reached into his pocket and took out the strips of metal he kept for just such an emergency. He handed one over and she nodded, satisfied. She disappeared into the back and returned a second later with a battered metal slab.

  “Will it take this?” He held up the datastick. The girl looked at him as though he was a child, then pointed to the slot on the side of the console.

  “Thanks.” Tolly took his hardware over to a quiet corner. He had to move quickly. He had no doubt that word of an Augment in a bar like this would spread fast.

  It only took a few seconds to work out how to turn on the console and insert the datastick. The technology had barely changed over the last hundred years, but that was hardly surprising. Since the human raise had splintered and spread across the solar system they tended to keep using things that worked. It was much simpler than making anything new, especially when resources were so precious.

  He was not sure what he’d been expecting, but he certainly hadn’t thought he’d been sent a picture of his own face. A series of pictures, in fact, all featuring him. He clicked on them one after the other. They were clearly taken over a number of years: decades even. He couldn’t remember any of the places in the pictures which made one thing clear. This was from the last century, the erased part of his memory.

  A jolt of pain hit him just behind his right eye. A coincidence? It went away pretty quickly, just leaving a dull throb in its place. Well, he knew the possible consequences of his actions. Perhaps if he simply threw the datastick away he wouldn’t do any more damage. Instead he scanned through a few more pictures.

  One of them made him pause.

  He was standing on the deck of a ship. He was part of a group of Augments and the photograph had been taken into the light so that the others were half silhouetted and impossible to recognize. He could tell from the constellations in the background that he was standing on some sort of space deck somewhere near Venus. But he had never been there. At least, not that he could remember. So that must mean…

  The pain was enough to make him shudder this time. He felt his mouth twitch into a smile. The damage he was doing to his brain meant he had to be getting close.

  He kept looking through the pictures, but he felt like he was trying to map out a planet in the dark. Sometimes he felt a ghost of a memory slip by, but nothing he could grab hold of. Then he reached the last slide and a blade of sheer agony slipped into his brain.

  Unlike the others, this one was recent. In fact, it was so recent that Tolly was wearing the same clothes he had on right now. And there was someone else he recognized. The h-man girl from before. The one that had tried to convince him he was meant to only lose a week. In the picture she was smiling at him. She knew him.

  Tolly stared at her face until the pain was so great that the world went black and he hit the floor.

  Chapter 25

  While Ai had disappeared to arrange the meeting with Persus, Hester took a moment to check her messages on her datapad. She had one from Dr Devay.

  I’m sure you are busy but would it possible to share a few lines from something you are working on? It’s for the students of the Entertainment degree. You did promise me this yesterday but per
haps you forgot.

  Nice and passive aggressive, Hester thought. She pressed her lips together so hard they went white. She would have to plagiarize again, but her books were back at her apartment. And she could hardly explain to Devay that she was busy tracking down a miner to help an Augment get his memory back.

  But wait… some of the Yeats poems she knew off by heart. How about that bit from the Lake Isle of Innisfree?

  And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

  Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

  There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

  And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

  It just needed a little adjustment. She made a few changed and sent the following message:

  Sorry, forgot yesterday! Here’s my most recent, still needs some work…

  And I shall have some peace here, for peace will come with dust

  Dropping from the extinct volcanoes of Mars to where the Earthman sings,

  There midnight stars all glimmer, the land of red rust,

  And evening full of Augment’s things.

  Hester read it back and thought, not too bad! Either that or she was so far past the point of no return she had lost her grip on her sanity.

  “What are you working on?”

  She had almost forgotten about Derek and his perfect face.

  “Oh, poetry stuff.”

  He came and sat next to her, the metal sofa shifting with his weight.

  “Still think you’re a fraud?”

  Hester grinned. “I know it. But it helps to know that other people have bigger problems than I do. It’s good to get a bit of perspective.”

  Derek was about to reply but that moment Ai returned.

  “We can go and see Persus now.”

  There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in the miner’s voice, but Hester felt her heart lift. All she had to do was explain to this Persus woman what had happened to Tolly and it would no longer be her problem.