Year of the Child

by R L Dean

  Why she would smile at such an ugly man no one understood, least of all him. He hadn't dared to ask until the next year, when they were married. Her answer had been, I knew you were the one when I saw you. So, I couldn't help it.

  Sitting at the table across from her now he found it difficult to imagine her smiling. He wondered if she would still say he was 'the one'.

  "I hear they're having a flower arrangement contest in the park on level four," he said. It was something he overheard Bingbing talking about in the office. Itsumi had dabbled in floral design for a few years, attending classes and contests. More for the social experience, he suspected. Gardening was more her interest. "You should take a look," he added.

  "Okay," she replied, in her soft voice.

  That evening he sat on the couch and went through the team dossiers. The department's structure was the same as TA's. A Superintendent, section leader, and three officers that handled specific types of crimes and coordinated with patrol officers and the UNSEC contingency as needed. What he read in the dossiers revealed some details on each team member's education and background, and he concluded that everyone was in the right position. He had met each of them in the course of his job, and at Division meetings, and they all displayed a certain reluctance to work with him. Though, Baldwin seemed to despise him more than the others.

  The disparity between them was a consequence of details being leaked from the inquest. He thought it unseemly for detectives— for policemen in general— to operate on rumors and half-truths, but a voice in the back of his head whispered that even if they knew all the facts— what he had done, and why— they wouldn't treat him any different. He found that thought disappointing.

  Tetsuya set his handcomm aside, rubbed his eyes, and listened to the sounds of Itsumi in the kitchen. She was fussing with her potted plants. He could hear snipping and the sounds of pots being moved. After a moment he turned the main room's screen on and lay his head back, watching through slitted eyes as a newsfeed played out on the bulkhead.

  "... reports escalating violence in out-system, as hauler crews refuse to leave ore drop-off points until UNSEC establishes more frequent patrols on flight paths back to the Moon. There was an altercation between the crew of a Martian supply freighter and haulers at Three Juno. Let's go to Ann Sawyer at UNSEC Regional Headquarters in New York City for the story ..."

  The screen changed to show the well-known Sawyer in a heavy overcoat, standing in front of the blue, marble walls and reflective windows of the UNSEC Regional Headquarters. It had just rained, the lawn and building were wet.

  "What can you tell us, Ann?"

  "Diane, it appears that the Martian crew members were being accused of piracy. UNSEC authorities could find no evidence ..."

  He turned it off, Itsumi might hear. She lived every day fearing for their daughter's safety, and the first time she had heard reports of hauler crews being targeted by pirates she had a panic attack. For Tetsuya, seeing his wife trembling in fear, wide-eyed, and gasping for breath, desperately clenching her handcomm to her chest, had caused a sense of powerlessness to settle in his loins and form a knot in his throat. To compound his daughter's unwise decision she had done so at a dangerous time, and it was eating at his wife's soul. And he could do nothing.

  Yet he was hiding something worse. A secret that he kept from Itsumi because it had produced no fruit, and then when it did, it was too terrible to reveal.

  The day that Kaori left, Tetsuya used his authority as a TA Superintendent and access to the UN network to initiate a Citizen Tracking Bulletin. He knew that it would be weeks before he heard anything. The solar system was vast, and the orbital mechanics of celestial objects made the travel of haulers and miners a cadence of flipping and slowing, adjusting course, and accelerating. Time was not written in stone out there in the big black.

  The weeks stretched with no word from Kaori, and no results from the CTB. It was as if his daughter had vanished, with only her personal things; her clothes, a collection of hair ribbons, a jewelry box, left behind to remind them that she was ... somewhere. Then, two months ago, as he and everyone on his team stood in shocked silence watching a screen show repeating footage of Harmony dome's destruction, his handcomm beeped with an alert. It was a particular sound that he would recognize. It wasn't his wife calling, nor Administration. Kaori had used a retinal scanner. In that instant his breath turned shallow, and he tore his eyes from the newsfeed, taking one long step he swiped his handcomm from his desk. The CTB notification he setup months before was faithfully flashing ... Kaori had passed the checkpoint at Harmony dome three hours ago. The newsfeed playing on the screen was thirty minutes old. And so, Tetsuya couldn't tell his wife about the CTB.

  The detective in him detached itself from the father in him and began to reason out what had happened. The hauler, being what it was, had left Butte bound for the Moon, where the crew intended to drop their canisters of ore and take on empty ones, and then return to Butte. It was a repetitive, if lengthy, cycle. However, the hauler arrived and the crew disembarked at Harmony dome and then it exploded. And, as there was no second retinal scan to indicate that Kaori had passed back through the security checkpoint the logical conclusion was that she had perished in the explosion.

  A week passed and a family member called to tell them the news that Ben's body had been found. Tetsuya had access to the growing list of fatalities before it was posted on the public advisory boards or released to the media, and had already known about Ben. And Kaori ... he received no further CTB notices. Yet, searching that list daily he hadn't found her name.

  Objectively there was no evidence that his daughter had died in the explosion, just a lack of evidence that she escaped the dome's destruction, the detective in him reasoned. The father in him felt— again— powerless.

  Late that night the handcomm on the nightstand flashed and buzzed, and Itsumi's eyes snapped open. He knew, because he lay awake watching her sleep. One pale arm lashed out and grabbed the handcomm. She studied the screen, then took a heavy breath and set it back down. An ad, probably. As his wife's eyes closed again, under the blankets Tetsuya took her hand and squeezed.

  6 - Shultz

  Shultz stood at his office windows with his hands on his hips looking up at the burrow's concrete ceiling and rows of daytime lights a hundred meters overhead. Beyond Capital Burrow's concrete encasement, through the ice and frozen mud that made the underside of Acidalia Planitia, twenty thousand kilometers over Mars, on Deimos two hundred Martian construction workers labored to build the new Apex Mining plant and refinery.

  Two hundred Martians had jobs that didn't have them a month ago.

  "MarsBuilt and New Vallas have laid the foundation for their joint factories," Jung was saying from the sofa in front of Shultz's desk. He was reading the daily reports from his handcomm.

  Shultz looked down for a moment at the sprawling burrow below ... the sprawling city ... the maze of streets and buildings. He turned and walked to his desk. "That's good news," he said, picking up his own handcomm and looking at the screen. MarsBuilt was a small company that manufactured machine parts. For the last year it subsisted off of retooling worn parts or in some cases— Shultz knew— purchasing refined metal for small projects from one of the few FMN illegal refineries hidden out in the Martian wastes. New Vallas was a fifty year old company that helped build the first burrows on the planet, they were used to big money, but like all of Mars they suffered under the embargo of raw ores. They survived by laying off seventy-five percent of their employees and going dormant, shifting their investments to Earth businesses and waiting out the economic winter caused by Secretary-General Modi's greed.

  "Omnis-Mart finalized their business application this morning," Jung continued. "The Business Office believes they can move into Sol-X's old spaces, rather than any new construction. That will give them twenty-two ready-made stores and two offices."

  Jung set his handcomm aside and leaned forward, taking a cup of coffee from the ta
ble. "And, we're starting to see some kickback from PermaTech and AgraSource."

  With Sol-X's pull out the 'Big Three' had become the 'Big Two', and they saw an opportunity to expand their marketing potential by adding items to their inventory that Sol-X carried in their department stores throughout the Martian burrows. Shultz suspected that the clothing, plastic furniture, and toys were actually purchased from Sol-X in some sort of deal and simply re-branded.

  The Sol-X problem had been one of their own making. The Free Mars Now resistance cells that he and Jung were supporting targeted Earth businesses, and in their zeal they made Sol-X a particular focus of their endeavors. After their shipments of merchandise and warehouses were repeatedly blown up or set on fire, Sol-X's CEO and board of directors finally had enough and ended their contract on Mars. As a result a lot of Martians lost jobs.

  Jung thought that they had given their FMN friends too much leeway in their acts of resistance, or terrorism, he supposed was the correct word. But Shultz still felt like it had been the right decision. Modi and his constituents would only listen when money came into the picture, and they had lost a substantial chunk of it in now nonexistent kickbacks they received from the backroom deals that gave Sol-X the charter to sell on Mars.

  Yes, a lot of Martians lost their jobs when Sol-X left, and now Shultz had a chance to give those jobs back. He didn't care how much dust PermaTech and AgraSource threw in the air.

  "Let them yell," he told Jung. "I don't care what we have to do, get Omnis-Mart here."

  "What do you want to do about our friends in the resistance?" Jung asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

  Shultz sat down in his chair. "The Apex plant changes things. Letting them hit Earth businesses so hard was the right thing, at the time. But now, we should stop feeding them information. After that stunt Compton cornered us into going along with, they're not being very daring anyway. Unless there's something you're not telling me."

  Jung shook his head and took a heavy breath, letting it out through his nose. "No. After that mess at the depot they've stuck to vandalism and provoking college protests into riots. Compton has them nervous."

  No doubt under pressure from his superior officers to get Mars in hand now the Colonel showed up at the office with a plan to capture the terrorists. He had somehow pieced together in his head that the government comms had been hacked, and that the terrorists were getting information about their targets directly from Shultz's office. He hadn't been far off the mark. Jung had some way of passing information to several of the FMN cells that he trusted, and while Shultz didn't know the details he knew that it involved the comms. Compton wanted Shultz's permission to set a trap by planting false information in the comm systems, something that would lure a cell out into the open.

  He had sent Compton away with assurances that he and Jung would discuss it, but there had really been nothing to discuss. The Colonel wasn't stupid, he would be suspicious if Shultz refused to go along with his plan. They had to risk being exposed, because if the trap worked that's exactly what would happen. If Compton's soldiers managed to capture a resistance cell, then an interrogation could lead them to Jung, who met with cell leaders on occasion as well as recruited new members into the movement. Jung's association would point to Shultz.

  On the day that Compton gave Shultz the false information to plant in the comm systems he entered it himself, and later that evening Jung let it slip out to his resistance cell leaders. It had become a waiting game, then. Compton's people set an ambush at Cydonia Depot, an old shuttle repair station in a crater hundreds of kilometers east in the Cydonia Colles. And Shultz and Jung went about their daily routine, but spent a lot of time sitting in the office wondering if Compton was going to show up with soldiers and arrest them.

  Three days later Compton didn't show up with soldiers, he was by himself, and carrying an after action report. He was frowning. Sitting on the sofa beside Jung the Colonel summarized his report in broad strokes. The terrorists used high-grade military explosives to blow the crater wall, killing seven of his soldiers and eight of their own people. In the ensuing chaos that followed a rover used by the terrorists escaped the area. They managed to pull one terrorist alive from the rubble of the wall, but he died on a shuttle en route to the closest medical facility.

  It was an unmitigated disaster.

  Compton further admitted that while they had no problems identifying the bodies they recovered from the blast site they had produced no leads. Three were college students, one a professor, and so forth ... the everymen of Mars. Seemingly normal people with no evident connections to the terroristic FMN.

  The Colonel was taking heat from his superiors now, because of the body count. And of course, those same bodies made it impossible to hide from the media. Families had questions, some even suggested that Compton staged the whole operation because of pressure from his superiors to catch the terrorists— any terrorists. There was simply no way their husband, sister, uncle, or cousin was involved with the FMN. It was truly a testament to Jung's skill at recruiting the right people. The kind that could live double lives.

  "I fielded another message from General Hague," Jung said.

  "Oh?"

  Jung frowned and continued. "He just keeps asking the same questions, in different ways. I don't know if he's trying to find a reason to court-martial Compton or exonerate him."

  Shultz hmmed, then said, "Whatever they're doing, it seems like they're not concerned with us. That's a good sign. Anyway, do we have the numbers on the small business ventures yet?"

  Jung picked up his handcomm and flipped through the screens. "Capital Bank and Trust reports seven new small business loan applications were filed this month ... of which they approved six. The other major banks are slowly opening up the coffers. It'll happen in the larger burrows first."

  "Alright. We've got to schedule a meeting with Alice and Drake. The Apex plant will get things going, but we'll need the mom-and-pop shops to keep the life-blood flowing in the local neighborhoods. It's time to open up our own coffers and develop some incentives for the banks that are willing to provide those loans."

  Alice and Drake were the head of the Treasury Office and Business Office, respectively. They kept Shultz's administration alive much the same way that New Vallas had kept itself alive, and they would reject his plans for the money out of habit. He was going to have to pry their fingers open to get it. But, they were good people, and good at their jobs. In the end they would fully support him as they always had.

  He suddenly realized that Jung was staring at him.

  "What?" He asked, setting his handcomm down and looking at his friend.

  "You're making plans for when the economic bubble bursts," Jung said. "There's no reason for us to offer tax breaks or incentives to banks that are already willing to make loans to entrepreneurs. Not now. What are you worried about?"

  Shultz sighed heavily and leaned back in his seat. He really needed a drink to have this conversation.

  "It's like we talked about," he told Jung. "The UN has no plans to develop Mars, and it never will. When Modi leaves office, he'll be replaced with someone just as corrupt and greedy, and Mars will be no better off. The Apex plant will kick-start our economy, but eventually the UN will find a way to siphon off the money and keep us dependent on Earth businesses long after the colonial lease has ended. So, we need to do something ... set the economy up to be self-sustaining— jobs, taxes, keeping the money here, on Mars. The incentives will speed things up."

  Modi and his UN cronies were content to let Mars rot in poverty. Shultz thought it was almost personal for the Secretary-General, as if the colony ... the planet ... had done something to him, and this was his revenge. Because of the legal loophole that allowed Apex to build a new plant on Deimos, he had been forced to acquiesce to Shultz's demands that the embargo on raw ore sales be lifted before he, as Governor of the colony, would allow any form of construction on a moon of Mars. Deputy Secretary-General Saddler had been livid in
the negotiations. Shultz tried to get mineral rights so they could mine their own ore and refine it, but Saddler had drawn the line at lifting the embargo.

  "Okay," Jung said, frowning. "That will sound nice in the meeting with Alice and Drake. Now, what's really bothering you?"

  He thought for a moment. Since the day that Compton showed up at his office with the plan to capture FMN terrorists Shultz was reminded of something.

  "Our days are numbered," he finally answered Jung. "That whole thing with Compton and the FMN out at Cydonia ... eventually he is going to find a connection to us. And if not him, then somebody will. They will find the money trail, or get their hands on someone that can point to you, and then it all ends."

  Jung didn't respond immediately. He turned his head and looked at the wall, blinking. The room fell into quiet, with just the ever present sound of air passing through the vents in the ceiling. Shultz knew that Jung understood how this would all end. In the early days of his career this kind of ending never occurred to them. They were so excited, so busy, so full of themselves. But as the years began to roll by and the trench work of being in office set-in and they moved to greater extremes to create a future for the colony, at some point— even if they shoved it into a dark corner of their minds— they both knew that there was likely only one outcome to the path they had chosen. Compton and the mess at Cydonia was just a reminder that they were on a time table.

  When Jung spoke again, there was a heaviness to his voice, like a yoke settling on his shoulders. "I still think I can shield you from the worst of it. Our contacts only know my face ..."

  "Bill, you know that won't work."

  Again, the room went quiet. After a moment Shultz picked his handcomm back up and flipped to his endless queue of messages.

  "Have you ever wondered why Apex is helping us?" Jung suddenly asked.

  "No," he said. "That sounds like one of those life questions that I'll get the answer to when I die."