“Gwyneth, you really love him. And he loves you too. Sometimes life stops us from seeing something as basic as that. And we blame ourselves for the situation, or we end up blaming the other person, instead of realising that, sometimes, relationships have victims instead of guilty parties. Victims of schedules, of a lack of words, of misunderstandings provoked by the confusion of the moment. But, what has all of that got to do with true love?”
At that moment, a man who was accompanying them in silence, drunk and half-asleep, began to cry in front of them.
“Angela, Angela!” he exclaimed between tears. “I want you back. We’re not to blame – we’re the victims!”
The man got up and ran to the exit, blinded by love. A strangled cry ended his life without anyone noticing.
A few minutes later, the canteen door opened. Gwyneth turned to see her beloved come in. But instead of him, two uniformed men came in. They took off their helmets. Little by little, they made their way towards them, removing anyone who got in their way with authority.
“What’s wrong, officer?” asked Gwyneth looking worried. “Don’t tell me you have something to tell me about Thomas. No, no... I already know what happens in these cases...”
“Gwyneth, relax, these men haven’t opened their mouths yet,” said Mary, trying to calm her down. “Isn’t that right, officers: you’re not here to tell us anything about any Thomas?”
Mary looked calm. However, Gwyneth was trembling, expecting bad news.
“Are you Mary Ackerson?” asked one of them.
“I am.”
“You must accompany us.”
“Can you tell me why? Is there a problem?”
“Put on your spacesuit, please.”
Mary said ‘goodbye’ to Gwyneth with a look of surprise. The latter remained rooted with fear. Once her suit was on, the officer handcuffed her, to the surprise of the whole canteen.
“You are under arrest for industrial espionage.”
“What? Espionage? What are you talking about?”
“We’re following orders,” answered one of them, inviting her to leave without the use of violence.
“But I have a right to a lawyer or a call! Don’t I? At the very least!”
The agents gave her a little push towards the exit.
“Mary...” wailed Gwyneth, running towards her, and getting trapped in that forest of seats, tables and drunks.
Chapter 24
Mary walked from side to side in her cell, while she waited for James to arrive and get her out of there. Time passed and nobody said anything to her. She knew she was innocent but she also knew that she was being accused of something very serious, and she wasn’t even being given the chance to explain herself.
Suddenly, a door opened. Mary pressed herself against the railings. She heard some steps coming closer. Then she saw him:
“James, James, thank goodness, it’s you! These men took the wrong person and locked me in here...”
“Silence!” ordered an officer.
Mary went quiet. James spoke:
“Can you leave me alone with her? Just for a few minutes.”
The officer, knowing who he was, agreed with no problem.
“We’ll be at the door if you need us, Mr Stafford.”
“She’s not dangerous,” pointed out James. “Don’t worry.”
The bars moved slowly back and James went in. Behind him, the door to the cell closed again.
Mary, about to cry, hugged James. He – putting on a show – wasn’t quite so effusive.
“I knew you’d come, James. When will you get me out of here?”
“Mary,” confessed James. “I’m afraid it’s not going to be that easy.”
“What? Why? But I haven’t done anything.”
James accompanied her to her bed to sit down beside her.
“Mary, I know you haven’t done anything, but the proof says exactly the opposite.”
“Proof? Proof of what?”
“They’ve detected massive amounts of documents being sent to the competition.”
“What? That’s impossible. There’s no competition on Mars.”
“They’re not being sent to Mars... but to Earth.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. What good would doing all that do me?”
“There are Arab companies that are very interested in everything relating to exploring new energy resources. All those plans and reports are very valuable to them. They’d be capable of coming here and starting a war just to get a few hectares of Martian soil.”
“But James, you know that I’d never do anything like that. I’d never betray you.”
“They were sent from your mailbox...”
“My password could have been stolen.”
“But they were your reports!” he exclaimed in a whisper. “The ones you were doing up to show the areas for getting useful compounds or minerals for the Terraforming.”
“My work? Are you saying that the work I’ve been doing secretly all these months has been stolen and sent to the competition?”
“That’s your version of the facts. Theirs is very different.”
“Whose?”
“My family’s, the board of directors’, the witnesses’...”
“What witnesses?”
“Maids, servants, some miners, computer traces...”
“I see: ‘Mars against Mary Ackerson’,” she said with sad irony.
James tried to get her to relax.
“And you, James: do you think I’m guilty?”
“If you’re guilty of anything, Mary,” he said with a long pause, “It’s of having stolen my heart.”
Their lips met in a silent kiss.
“Don’t worry: I’ll get you out of here. But give me time.”
Mary smiled.
“I’ll try to put up with it. I’ll take it as a holiday,” she said resignedly. “Although the room is nothing like it was in the catalogue.”
James took her joke as a breath of hope and left the cell.
“I love you,” James whispered to her.
Mary copied the movement of his lips to declare her love too.
James’ footsteps disappeared, leaving the cell in silence and Mary alone with her uneasy thoughts.
Chapter 25
Weeks went by and James found he was unable to make any progress. Mary, due to an absence of judges and lawyers, was taken to a provisional prison on the Tharsis plateau. From her cell, she could see Mount Olympus in all its glory. Its backdrop of the night-sky housed the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos – a poetic metaphor for the intimate but long-distance love that James and Mary professed for each other.
James’ visits couldn’t be as frequent as they both would have wished due, above all, to his responsibilities in the company, his legal and bureaucratic struggle to get her out of there, and the huge distance he had to travel to see her. Mary, nonetheless, didn’t want to reproach him for anything and made an unforgettable affair of every little meeting, although all they had to celebrate was being able to look each other in the face. He asked her to forgive him for taking so long to come and she quieted his words covering his skin in kisses. They could hardly touch each other as the visits were short and, unfortunately, watched by other eyes.
Later, the nights were eternal for each of them alone in their rooms, making love without company, with only the image of each other in their imaginary meetings. They wished each other ‘goodnight’ a thousand miles away and they must have heard each other because the stars twinkled happily as tears of joy ran down their cheeks.
The mornings were much more difficult to get through. James wrapped himself up in his work, in the search for ideas to resolve the situation. His family, on top of it all, were not supportive.
“How was your day, James?” asked Mrs Stafford, cutting her steak.
“The same as always, Mother.”
“That’s good, don’t you think?”
“Not when you have an open wound.”
“Mother,” said Claudia. “I don’t want to bother you with my ravings but do you never think that Mary Ackerson might be innocent?”
“Leave it, Claudia. They know exactly what to do in these cases,” declared James.
Mr Stafford only opened his mouth to eat.
“We all know that that woman was not above board,” said the mother. “I’m basing that on proof. There isn’t just one or two, there are lots of people who have testified against her or have provided clear proof that she was trying to destroy us, if she hasn’t already managed to do so.”
James was fuming inside.
“Besides, darling, there are women that are much more appropriate for you, James.”
“I don’t want to argue about the same thing again, Mother.”
“Who said anything about arguing? I’m just saying that, of all the women that have fallen in love with you, you picked the worst. But you’re young, and you still have time to get your life back on track.”
Claudia was scared that James would get up and throw their mother out the window because there was pure fury burning in his eyes.
“...Angie – Angie Dickinson, for example,” continued Mrs Stafford, after taking a drink. “A person with talent that you kicked out of here without consulting your mother.”
“I was the one who kicked her out,” confessed Claudia.
“All the more reason to bring her back amongst us. Women controlling women – a bad idea.”
Claudia had to bite her lip so as not to answer her mother back.
Andrew, who was also at the table with his family, looked up and nudged Claudia under the table.
“Really, Mother? Angie Dickinson is coming back? I’d love to meet her,” said Andrew.
“You, Andrew, want to meet her?” asked his mother. “That’s a strange...twist.”
“I’m bored of pictures and being alone really. If James doesn’t want her, here’s another Stafford ready to woo her.”
James felt those words like a knife in the back.
“I don’t want her,” admitted James. “If you want to take a woman like that to bed, that’s your business.”
“James, I don’t like that sort of talk at the table!” spat his mother.
“Mother, but James is right,” said Claudia. “That woman is the devil.”
“Devil or not, she’s beautiful and intelligent, isn’t she, Andrew?”
Andrew nodded a couple of times, smiling.
“I think that she deserves the chance to form part of our family,” said Mrs Stafford. “After having treated her so badly.”
Claudia was dumbstruck. James preferred to ignore it all but she couldn’t control her rage at such an unfair situation:
“The men in this family are just really stupid beings! And you, Mother – I find it incredible that you are teaching us to be so cold and emotionless!” she exclaimed angrily as she got up. She threw her serviette at Andrew and stormed out.
Old Mr Stafford glanced quickly at the clock.
“It’s time for her pill, isn’t it?”
“Don’t you worry, dear,” said his wife.
Andrew was thoughtful, with a strange kind of look of repressed perversity on his face. James, nonetheless, stared into the infinity of his glass of wine, absent-mindedly.
Days went by and the time between visits grew longer and longer. From inside her cell, a worried Mary questioned the men who were guarding her.
“Relax,” one of them said to her laughing. “If you need a man so much, hit your cup off the bars tonight and I’ll come and satisfy you.”
Mary was repulsed by that pig on two legs with his greasy, several-day-old beard.
“To start with, Clever Clogs, if I hit anything, it wouldn’t be the bars exactly, it’d be what you have between your legs – so you’d wouldn’t be able to do what it is that you think makes you a man.”
The guard turned around furiously. With a gesture, he called a colleague.
“Did you hear what she said, Perk?”
“Loud and clear, Radley.”
“She looks sad and angry, Perk. Do you think she looks sad and angry?”
“Very sad and quite angry.”
“Do you think she deserves a little affection, Perk?”
“Of course I do, Radley. They all deserve that...”
Mary feared the worst. She picked up her food tray. Her legs were trembling. Those men, their faces distorted with lust, opened the cell.
“Two men against one woman – there’s nothing more cowardly,” said Mary tensing her muscles. “Well, actually there is: you have weapons...”
She instantly flung herself at them, but she couldn’t do much. She got one with the tray but the other managed to get her only form of defence away from her. Between them both, they tried to hold her to take her in the dirtiest and vilest way, with the bars and walls of the cell as accomplices to the rape.
But, suddenly, Mount Olympus roared. The Tharsis plateau shook as it had never done before. The prison moved on its foundations. The aggressors fell against one of the walls. The bars bent until the lock broke. The door was open – it was the perfect moment to get out of there. Mary gathered her strength and leapt into the corridor. The volcanic eruption continued. Like a savage Apocalypse, the sky darkened and the plateau creased like the bellows of an accordion. Mary searched for the way out, like everyone else there. Inmates and guards were victims of the same earthquake. They all ran without worrying about who was who, looking for salvation. Rubble fell, walls collapsed, fire fighting systems spat out water, everything shook to the sound of the Martian drum.
The most priceless treasure was finding a spacesuit and enough oxygen to survive outside. Luckily for her, a man dressed in his protective suit was hit by a column that collapsed at just the wrong moment for him. With great effort, Mary managed to get her key to freedom off him.
Once she had the spacesuit on and the helmet covering her head, she ran outside terrified. She ran past rubble, dead bodies, blood, fire... but she couldn’t stop. At the last moment, she managed to grab an extra bottle of oxygen that she flung over her shoulder as she ran out of the prison.
Just as she touched Martian soil, the prison collapsed, silencing the screams of everyone still inside.
Suddenly, the volcano went quiet. It seemed impossible that this was happening. What was it? A shout – a warning? She took it to be that, and she began walking towards the only place she would be safe: Mount Olympus.
Chapter 26
Andrew had a new guest in his rooms. His little studio now had a new muse to sketch... and woo.
“Your paintings are wonderful!” exclaimed Angie as Andrew pushed aside her hair, searching for her neck.
“You can call me Andrew.”
“Andrew... I’ve heard that, of all the children, you’re the odd one of the family...”
“The odd one? They’re confused about me. I like being alone, being free to do or not do whatever I like...”
“So, it’s not true what they say about you... that you don’t like women?”
“It’s pretty clear that they’re confused, isn’t it?”
Andrew gently cupped Angie’s breasts.
“Andrew...!” she exclaimed, pretending to be taken aback.
“I took you out of the cornfields for a little more than showing you my private collection.”
Angie looked at Andrew, who was leering at her, undressing her with his eyes.
“Is it a long time since you’ve been with a woman?” she asked him sensuously.
“Too long,” he confessed.
“And if I said ‘no’ now, what would you do?”
“Possibly... force you.”
“There’s nothing I like more than being dominated by a man. A man like you. Take me.”
Andrew kissed her neck and then kissed her lips. He took her to the bed driven by a strange passion. She was so excited that she writhed unde
r the artist’s hands like a snake just caught by a desert fox.
“I didn’t think that you were as manly as...”
“...my brother. That brainless idiot doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
“Of course not. He’s more used to sleeping with his cows, whether they be human or not.”
“Exactly,” he said groping her. “His taste for women began to wane the moment he began to breath argon.”
Angie forced out a laugh at this idea.
“Aren’t you going to undress me?” she asked.
“Hold on...”
“Come on, don’t you want to feel my skin under your lips? My breasts are dying for your mouth. Kiss me.”
Andrew caressed her thighs, separating them, blinding Angie’s thoughts – who could only think of being taken as soon as possible. They exchanged few whispered words.
“Do it to me now. I’m on fire...”
“Relax... Slowly.”
“I’m impatient when I have a man like you on top of me.”
“As you wish... I thought that the preliminaries were important...”
“Preliminaries? Go for it, cowboy!”
Andrew slowly undressed Angie.
“My mother was right to get you out of there. A woman like you doesn’t deserve that.”
“Thank you, Andrew. But you know that, in your family, James is at the top of the pyramid.”
“Not for long...”
“What are you talking about?” she mumbled, helping Andrew remove her underwear.
“He’s seriously depressed, like Claudia. He won’t be running the company for much longer now. Which, obviously, I don’t regret.”
“What? I thought your life was exclusively about art.”
“I didn’t have anything better to do while that creep, James, wouldn’t let anyone have a piece of the cake.” .
“I see... yes, touch me, touch me.”
Angie’s senses were overcome with sexual fire. Andrew kept talking:
“Besides, Mary Ackerson put her foot in it doing what she did – big time. Industrial espionage... too risky on a planet that barely has laws.”
Angie smiled and, between spasms of pleasure, she spat out a few words.
Love On Mars Page 11
