The First Poet Laureate of Mars

by T E Olivant

The doors to the Council slammed open. Twenty Augments including Rowhan and Cybill stared at Tolly as he strode into the middle of the room.

  “Hello,” Hester said as she shuffled in behind him. “I’m just going to seal this door shut so that no unnecessary guards turn up. Hope that’s ok.”

  “What are you doing here, Augment?” Rowhan said, his face ashen.

  “I’ll get to you later, former Head of the Council,” Tolly snarled. “Now, you others, I have one question for you. Do you know me?”

  There was a general murmur.

  “I said: Do. You. Know. Me?”

  “You are Tolly,” a brave voice picked up from the back.

  “Thank you! And do you know what I am?”

  Cybill took a step towards Tolly, leaving Rowhan on his own. “You are the oldest Augment.”

  There was a louder murmur at that.

  “Good guess. But it is more than that. I chose you! None of you would exist without me! I am the first Augment. The first to be augmented. And I was once the leader of all Augments, until I decided I didn’t want the job. Well, I have come here to take it back. Behold my second coming!”

  Hester gave out a little groan. Testosterone, that was always the problem.

  “It took a terrible poetry plagiarist to show me that I needed to face my demons and take responsibility for my actions. All is changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty has been born!”

  Hester looked around the Council chamber. The other Augments seemed more bewildered than concerned.

  “This is my second coming! I am the rough beast being reborn! It’s time you listened to your lord and master!”

  “Oh dear,” Hester said.

  “What is he talking about,” Cybill whispered, reaching Hester’s side.

  “I think he’s gotten high on Yeats. He’s not well.” She went over to Tolly and put a hand on his trembling arm.

  “A little more facts and a little less poetry, perhaps?”

  The Augment reeled for a second, then his expression sharpened.

  “Right. For too long there has been a corruption at the heart of this Council. Your so-called leader there is part of it, but he is not all. It is us; we are the problem.”

  “Look around you. I’ve lost a hundred years of memory and barely anything has changed. Technology is the same. People are the same. You Augments with your conservatism, your preservation of the status quo, you are killing off humanity.”

  “We are preserving humanity,” Rowhan interjected. He seemed determined to fight Tolly to the last. “Ever since we left Earth the survival of the species has been on a knife-edge. It is the Augment’s job to protect humanity. And then we can recruit the best h-men to become our next generation.”

  “We were meant to die out,” Tolly said. “That was one of the things you made me forget. We agreed that we had lived for too long. We wanted to die and let the humans take back their lives.”

  “I never agreed!” Rowhan shouted. “A majority vote on our own death sentences! Condemned criminals at least get a trial. You were going to murder me.”

  “No. Just let you die. No more augmented life span, when death comes then learn acceptance.”

  “Hypocrite! You who have taken more life for yourself than anyone get to decide how long the rest of us have? How dare you.”

  Rowhan stormed out of the room. Tolly sagged, and Hester worried that he was about to pass out, but he stood up straight once more.

  “Who here knows about the power transfer from the mining colony.”

  A female Augment whose scars were almost as old as Tolly’s stepped forward.

  “I was in charge of researching the transference, Augment. I’m sorry –”

  “Save the apologies for later. How is it going to happen?”

  “They… they are going to do it today. The cables are all lined up. They will simply connect the two structures and the power will be transferred.”

  “What will happen to the mining colony?” Hester asked.

  The female Augment swallowed. “It will shut down.”

  “What about the people.”

  “They are going to release a gas.”

  “To poison them?” Hester was horrified.

  “No! It’s harmless. It will give the impression of a mechanical failure. Then they will have a full hour to evacuate.”

  “An hour.” Hester remembered being in the miner’s base. It had a tiny shuttle port. There was so many people that they were sleeping in hammocks on the stairs.

  She stepped up to the woman and slapped her across the face. The Augment reeled backward, but Hester caught her arm.

  “How about you do some math for me, hmmn? You can use that wonderful augmented brain of yours. How many miners and families of miners are currently living on the base.”

  “I…”

  “There are seventeen thousand miners on the base!” Cybill shouted from the other side of the room.

  “Ok. Seventeen thousand. The shuttle bay can take only two small shuttles at once. How long will it take them to evacuate? If say, you somehow manage to send a shuttle every ten minutes.”

  “Nine hours,” the Augment whispered, still trying to pull free from Hester’s grip.

  “How soon after you shut down the power will the base lose the ability to support life?”

  “Around fifteen minutes.”

  Hester raised her arm to hit the woman again but stopped when she saw the flush of fear on the woman’s face. She turned instead to Tolly.

  “Here’s what your Augments think of the h-men that built this place. They didn’t even think to do the math.”

  Tolly had been watching this silently. He walked over to the Augment and prized Hester’s fingers from her arm.

  “Your name is Orora,” he said to the Augment. His voice was almost gentle.

  “That’s right.”

  “I know because I chose you out of a hundred potentials to become the tenth Augment ever created. Do you remember?”

  “No.”

  “That’s because we made you forget your past. We thought it was for the best, for all of you. But what we didn’t realize was that along with our past we were also forgetting our humanity. If we cannot learn from our mistakes, we simply make them again and again.”

  A viewscreen on the wall suddenly lit up.

  “What is that,” Tolly asked.

  “An incoming call from Utopia.”

  Fisher’s face appeared on the screen.

  “That’s the head of the Merchants, Hester hissed to Tolly. “The one who arranged the whole thing.”

  “I see there has been a change of leadership while I’ve been away,” Fisher said with a tight smile. If he looked surprised to see Hester and Tolly alive, he didn’t show it.

  “Stop the transfer,” Tolly said.

  “Can’t do that. You see, the Augments have promised that they’ll make me one of them. Three hundred new Augments and I will be right up there with them. I’ve already released the gas. In just a few minutes the power transfer will start.”

  “There’s not enough time for the miners to get out!” Hester yelled.

  “That is unfortunate. Now please find Rowhan and tell him –”

  There was a thump and Fisher’s face disappeared from view. Everyone in the Council chamber stared at the screen as a group of burly men covered in tattoos flooded in. Hester recognized the face of Ai, and someone else too.

  “Thought I’d better wake up and help you out, Hester!” A grinning Derek said from the center of the screen.

  “Who is that handsome human?” Cybill asked.

  “Don’t you start,” Hester rolled her eyes. “Ai, they’ve released a gas into the mine to make everyone panic. Can you get the message out that it’s harmless?”

  “Will do,” Ai nodded then disappeared offscreen.

  “Did you warn the miners?” Tolly asked Derek.

  “Yeah. Before I took you to be swapped for Hester – sorry about that, by the way – I l
et my friends in the mining colony know what was happening. They decided that Utopia would be much better as a replacement home for their people rather than the Augments.”

  There was a collective twitching as the Augments in the chamber upped their happy hormones, but no one said anything.

  “Can I trust that you will control the rest of the Merchants? And any Augments you find over there.”

  “Sure,” Ai grinned. “I want to have a word with them myself.”

  Tolly nodded satisfaction.

  “Does anyone know what happened to my shoes?” Derek asked the screen.

  Hester stepped forward. “Never mind that. Fisher said he was about to start the power transfer. Is there any way to stop it?”

  Derek looked around at the control panels around him. “There’s a lot of buttons and switches here but I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  Cybill moved forward. “I can talk you through it from here.”

  As Cybill began talking, Hester noticed that Tolly was swaying on the spot. She hurried over and took his arm.

  “Are you all right?”

  “It is nearly over. But what if I’ve missed something?” Tolly suddenly turned, his face a look of horror. “Where did Rowhan go?”

  “On the next ship out of here, I would think. Don’t worry, we can track him down later.”

  “No. Rowhan would not give up that easily. I should know. I made him.”

  Hester bit her lip.

  “Then where would he go?”

  Chapter 45

  Rowhan stood in front of the endless waterfall. He had designed it himself. Tolly had done the original designs for the one at the Venus colony, but it had been a child’s toy compared to this one. He put his fingers under the stream of water, then touched them to his mouth. Had the water tasted like this back on Earth before it had all turned to ice.

  A sound made him turn.

  “You didn’t bring the h-man?”

  Tolly sat down on a rock next to Rowhan.

  “I didn’t think Hester needed to hear this,” Tolly said. In fact, he had told the girl he was going to the medical center. As if they could do any good. A leaf fell from one of the trees and landed at his feet. He stared at it, noticing the moisture droplets that clung to its vibrant green surface. Did all humans feel this heightened awareness of life just in the last minutes before death? Or was it a last gift from his augmented senses? He wasn’t sure.

  “Tell me how you are going to start the transfer remotely,” he said with a voice that held all of his nearly four centuries of time.

  Rowhan hesitated, then held up a small black device. “Don’t try and take it off me. It’s a palm reader, so it wouldn’t work for you anyway. I just have to touch it, and the sequence starts.”

  “Many h-men will die.”

  “Many Augments will not. Alcedine is failing. There are irreparable cracks in the substructure. If we do not find a new home for the Augments it will die within ten years.”

  “There are places you could go.”

  “What, the colony? Sleep in bunks alongside the h-men with their tiny lives and their insignificant worries? We are like gods to them, and we should be treated as such.”

  Tolly shook his head, and this seemed to enrage Rowhan. The other Augment grabbed Tolly by the shoulder.

  “Look around you. This is Utopia, just as we always dreamed it could be! Don’t the Augments deserve this? Don’t your children deserve this?”

  “Don’t…” Blackness was creeping over Tolly’s vision.

  “You made me, Tolly. We have lived together for centuries, and now you want to sacrifice me on the alter of your precious h-men?”

  With what was left of his vision Tolly saw Rowhan hold his hand up to the control.

  “No!”

  A last great burst of strength and Tolly threw his body into the other Augment. They hit the barrier and went tumbling into the waterfall.

  Water hit them and pulled them apart. Cold liquid filled his mouth and his vision blurred. Tolly tumbled and he reached out for the blackness.

  Epilogue

  Hester jumped out of her seat when the door opened to the medical room.

  “How is he?”

  “A little better,” Derek said.

  “Good.” She pushed past the actor before he had a chance to say anything else and then shut the door firmly behind her.

  “Good morning,” Tolly said.

  “Morning. You look like you’ve been thrown down a waterfall.” She couldn’t keep the smile from her face. Five days in a coma that Cybill had thought he would never come out of. But living was something Tolly did rather well.

  “Tell me the news.”

  “The miners are squabbling with the Augments. They formed a new Council immediately, you won’t be surprised to hear.”

  “We are a conservative people. I don’t think that will ever change.”

  “You might be surprised. It’s a joint Council, half Augments, half h-men.”

  “Maybe there is hope for us yet.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And how is Rowhan.”

  Hester picked a bit of lint from the blanket. “He died this morning. He was under the water for longer than you were and there was too much brain damage.”

  Tolly looked down at the bed and said nothing. Then he reached out and patted her hand. It was a touching gesture, especially coming from an Augment.

  “You should speak to Derek.”

  “Are you serious?” Hester seethed. “After everything he did?”

  “Look, I’m not suggesting you sign a marriage contract. But maybe let him take you out for a drink. He’s only human, Hester. And there’s something to be said for that.”

  “We’ll see.” Sometimes it was easy to remember the Tolly was nearly four hundred years old. “When are they letting you out of this place?”

  “When I’m fixed up as good as they can get me.”

  Hester couldn’t help but look down at his left arm lying awkwardly by his side.

  “The doctors say that I’ll never use it again. Impossible, according to them. But what do they know? I’ve got three centuries more experience than they do. I’ll be fine in no time.”

  “Will you join the Council? They could learn a lot from you.”

  “Are you kidding? After what I told them? They would feel they had to do everything I say, and it’s that kind of thing that got us into trouble in the first place. No, I think I’ll leave them to it. I’m going to head for the Earth Sats. Now that I know the technology used for the Venus station was not the reason for the disaster, I can get work started on improving the existing satellites. No reason why we can’t recreate Utopia up above the Earth.”

  “That would be something.”

  Tolly tilted his head to one side and gave her a searching look. “And what will you do now? I’m guessing you can’t go back to your old position.”

  “Not really. I’m not sure the University are very happy about the whole ‘not really a poet’ thing, but I sent Doctor Devay my movie script and she said it shows promise. I’ve got some meetings lined up with studios next week. And if that doesn’t work out the new Martian Council have asked me to fix all the holes in their network. That should keep me busy for a while.”

  “You’re really quite adaptable. For an h-man.”

  “And you’re a snarky bastard. For an Augment.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, Tolly.”

  “Take care of yourself Hester Dousainy, the First and definitely worst Poet Laureate of Mars.”

  Author’s Note

  The perceived wisdom when writing novels is to make sure you write a book that there is actually a market for. But I have never been especially good at doing that. This book in particular turned out stranger than I had ever imagined. If you got this far you fall into that well-known market of Irish poetry and futuristic science fiction fans. You sound like my kind of person!

  The novel started off w
ith one idea. There are poet laureates of different countries and cities all around the world. What would happen if you were made the Poet Laureate of Mars? How many times would you have to make a rhyme with the word dust? What if, in fact, you were actually a terrible poet?

  And we’re off! Sometimes all it takes is one concept to take you on a very strange ride, in this case to Mars and back. Thank you for reading!

  P.S. Apologies to W.B. Yeats, who truly was a marvellous poet and didn’t deserve such ill treatment.

  If you liked this book why don’t you give the Moon Colony Series a go? It’s set in the same Universe, only a couple of hundred years earlier. You can find book one here.