by Jude Fawley
There were two people that fought between themselves to tell him more about their society, perhaps both hoping that the other would give in and find someone else to recruit. The first one, who Hardin took for a woman only by the tonal quality of her voice, said, “You look a little young to be asking about joining. You wouldn’t even know what it was like to be an active member of the old Karma regime.”
“I didn’t get to participate very much, but I did just made the cut,” Hardin replied. He parted the hair at the back of his head, although he knew that the scar was only barely visible there. “I was one of the very last.”
The two became much more interested, which seemed to confirm Hardin’s suspicion. “Very good. And what made you want to join our cause? There’s plenty of other societies around here,” the girl continued.
“You seem to be exactly the kind of people I’m looking for, the kind of people that have ambitions for Mars.”
“We don’t care so much for Mars, really,” the other member said, a short, squat man who probably would have been bald anyway, without shaving his head.
“Indirectly we do,” the girl said, “insofar as we care about everyone. And there’s people on Mars now.” The people that lived on Mars were the former top echelon of society, those members that had been a part of the former Government. Darcy had taken quite a few of them with him, and left all of the underprivileged people to try to survive on the dying Earth.
“I’m interested in getting to Mars,” Hardin said, directly.
The girl looked at him flatly. “Well you wouldn’t be the first, now would you. We’re not getting there anytime soon, so if that’s what you came for you best just turn around.”
It was an interesting tactic for recruitment, telling Hardin to leave. It took the bald man somewhat aback—even though he had just expressed his indifference for Mars, he said, “Don’t tell him that, Lucretia.” And to Hardin, he said, “There’s some people that are working on it. If that’s what you’re interested in, there’s plenty for you to do.”
“Good,” Hardin said. “What all would be expected of me?”
Mars 3
A New Life
CHARLES DARCY’S MANSION on Mars was the largest privately owned building in the solar system, although he had not intended it to be when the construction started. When the Martian ground was first broken, it was only supposed to be a large house, with its only excesses being room for a conservatory for his plants, a study for his books, and a billiards room for when he was entertaining guests. The more practical portions included a large bedroom for himself, a few guest rooms, a kitchen large enough to serve both him and his staff, and then a decorous conference room for business matters.
Every room had its purpose, even the luxurious ones, and he had managed to be just efficient enough with the layout to be a few square meters smaller than the largest houses of the magnates back on Earth. But then a paranoia had overtaken him halfway through the construction process and he had large, fortified walls built around the premise, and crenellations along the top of the house, and then another room for a large garrison of sorts that was adjacent to the billiards. The houses for the guards and the servants were included within the outer walls, along with special rooms for men of his Order, but to retain a degree of separation from them he had smaller but still considerable walls built around just his own house.
And, a slave to his tastes, he fitted it out with a multitude of classical art—Greek sculptures at all of the focal points, brilliant tapestries along the hallways, an original Monet hung on the wall of his study, and furniture built from the finest Martian wood. He compulsively filled his house with so much opulence that, in the end, from every perspective it looked like he had created his own little feudal system.
He couldn’t quite explain where the paranoia had come from that had caused him to turn his simple house into a castle. He reflected deeply, and the only thing he could come up with was that he was slowly becoming an old man, incapable of defending himself with sheer force of will, as he had done when he was younger. He was only in his early forties, but already he was becoming more sedentary—it was getting harder and harder for him to put in a full day at the fields, he had severe back pain, and his skin was losing its youthful luster, in favor of an unhealthy, corrugated texture. His auburn hair was thinning and losing color, and, if he didn’t shave, his facial hair was almost entirely gray. So he shaved every day, and looked younger while he still could.
Jumping off of a building had most likely provoked him into his decline. If he had known that it would take so many years from his youth, he might have found some other way down from the top of the Karma Tower. But it was in the past now. For the last month, Darcy had become more and more enraptured in contemplating his past, how it was and how it should have been. It started when he decided that his next political maneuver would be to have his own biography written and distributed widely to the people on Earth.
There was the matter of who would write the biography—Darcy had considered writing it himself, but it would have taken a lot of his valuable time, and furthermore it would have seemed more self-serving than a third-party composition would be, even if the writer he chose ended up being more pandering to Darcy than Darcy would have been to himself. He knew that perception was more important than content. To that end, he started devoting a bit of his time every day reading through contemporary fiction writers, of which he had many volumes stacked in piles around his study.
He was looking for a clear, guileless style, from a man of good repute. And when he found a writer that fit those qualifications, he would give an order for them to be brought to Mars, as an official commission of the government. As busy as the writer might be, he would have to set aside time for Darcy. He would be well compensated—simply being brought to Mars was compensation enough for most people. And so Darcy spent three entire months, reading questionable books in the evening and contemplating his options while he worked in the fields during the day.
The person he ended up selecting was a man in the prime of his youth, recently burst into the literary scene with the publication of a compilation of piercing essays he had written during his education at the University of Tokyo. Darcy told his head of staff about his intentions, that the man would be staying with them for a week, and that someone needed to arrange for the writer to be transported to Mars on the next available space shuttle, after he was informed of his selection.
A week sounded about right to Darcy. He had to put an arbitrary length to the synopsis of his entire life, and had eventually decided that there would be five sessions on five consecutive nights, for two hours each. And then there would be two spare days, a weekend of celebration if things had gone well and more time for work if they had not. And hopefully, by the end, they would make it to Darcy’s present.
What was interesting about the project was that Darcy was one of the first high-profile figures to have a biography written since the fall of Karma, meaning that the facts he gave, and the stories he told, couldn’t be checked against the recordings stored by Karma, which was formerly the common practice when a biography was Government sanctioned. Darcy was free to say anything he wanted about his life. In a sense, he was back at the beginning again, with infinite possibilities, except they all had to converge to his spacious house on Mars. He spent the days before the writer arrived thinking of what he would say.
Two weeks after the decision was made, the writer was at his doors. A member of Darcy’s staff escorted him through the house and to the study, while Darcy was brought in from working in the fields. Darcy let him wait while he washed off the sweat and dirt of the fields, and changed into a clean, formal pair of clothes. When he was ready, he went to join the writer in the study.
The young man seemed polite enough. He stood when Darcy entered, from where he was sitting in one of the stuffed leather chairs that littered the room. Darcy had five chairs, three ottomans, two sofas, a grandfather clock, and a large oak table, arrang
ed seemingly at random in the center of the large room. Their arrangement was not, in fact, random—sometimes Darcy wanted to know the time when he read, sometimes he wanted to be confronted by the softness of Monet, and sometimes he just wanted to see innumerable books when he lifted his head from whatever he happened to be reading. Bookcases lined every wall except where the door led in, which was incidentally where the Monet was hung. The bookcases were three meters tall, and the vaulted ceiling was another meter above them at its lowest point, giving the room an exceptionally spacious feeling.
“Rex Darcy, a pleasure to meet you,” the writer said.
“And a pleasure to meet you,” he responded.
After they had shaken hands, Darcy broke one of the other leather chairs from their esoteric arrangement so that they could face each other from a reasonable distance. Darcy offered the writer a drink from a wet bar by the door, and the offer was accepted. Drinks in hand, they settled into the deep cushions of the chairs, and sat for a moment in silence, before Darcy said, “Well, I’ve never done this before. The whole thing seems strange.”
“Neither have I,” the writer responded. “And maybe it is.” Nevertheless, he took a pen and paper from a small shoulder bag that was to the side of the chair, and made as if to begin taking notes.
“Pen and paper? That strikes me as rather archaic,” Darcy said, his tone more curious than critical.
“I like to do things the old way,” the writer said, “even if it costs more. Paper’s really hard to come by these days. At least for the less fortunate of us.” He made a lighthearted gesture to the millions of books that they were surrounded by, all of them paper.
“I’m afraid none of my paper is blank, or I would offer you some. Perhaps before you go back to Earth we can cut down a tree, and see how hard paper-making really is.”
“I’m sure everyone would be disappointed in the end,” the writer said.
The pen the writer held was strangely intricate, as if it served some other function than just to write with. Darcy decided not to ask. He said, “Have they informed you of our itinerary? I didn’t intend for us to start until tonight. I figured that would give you a little bit of time to decompress—the world is so much larger, here on Mars. Plenty of room for a person to expand into. On Earth, you live your entire life trying to comfortably force yourself into the smallest box possible, but not here. I thought maybe you would want to walk around my courtyard for a while, or take a look at the farms, perhaps see the room you will be staying in…”
The writer nodded, and said, “And I will do all of that, here shortly. I wouldn’t want to upset our schedule. We don’t have to talk about the historical facts of your life, not yet. But I would like to get to know you a little bit before we start, if it isn’t too much to ask. I think it will help with the whole process, if my questions can be directed by a knowledge of the person I am asking them of. Just a few things for me to consider, as I walk around this beautiful house of yours, to get me oriented.
“I tried researching things about your life, while I was waiting for the launch date of my space shuttle, and believe it or not there’s hardly anything about you, out there in the world—the quality of journalism has deteriorated astoundingly since Karma died, and it just so happens that there isn’t much written about your life before Karma died either, with the exception of your sainthood, which… no offense, but no one really attempted to provide much supporting evidence for.
“Obviously, the numbers spoke for themselves. Your wealth, the amount of Good Works that you performed, all of those things were properly recorded and reported. But the human aspect, the saintly qualities of old, no one wrote too much about those, beyond speculation. And it was no fault of your own, you were busy—you only gave one public interview that I am aware of, and it was limited in breadth insofar as the television station had to fit it into a prime-time slot. It was the world’s fault that they didn’t feel like performing a deeper analysis of the truth.”
The writer spoke carefully, Darcy noticed. He didn’t say anything that was directly objectionable, but his message was still a dangerous one—he was calling into doubt Darcy’s magnanimity, or at least implying that it could use a ‘deeper analysis.’ Perhaps Darcy had chosen the wrong writer after all. Too much insight into his life could go the wrong way. But then Darcy thought that no matter what the writer learned from careful observation, or trenchant questions, he wouldn’t dare publish something that Darcy didn’t himself endorse. And if he did try, Darcy would just counter with force.
Darcy said, after the writer was done, “What kind of questions do you have in mind? I’m willing to answer anything.”
“First of all,” the writer said, “I was wondering why it was that you go by Rex Darcy, instead of the more traditional President Darcy. You would think that the reason would be public knowledge, that everyone would know, but I looked and looked and found it nowhere. Even Karma went by President, in the beginning of his regime. Are you intending to indicate a break with tradition?”
“If you can believe it, you’re the first person to ask. Everyone else just went with it. President Darcy. It’s not that I have any disrespect for the title, and it’s not necessarily that I intend to break tradition—there were many illustrious men who went by the name of President, all of them worthy of emulation. It’s just that I like to think that, in a way, we’re moving on from the past, in a different direction. And not as a rupture from the past, or a counterargument, but as its logical continuation. To commemorate this new movement, a new title seemed appropriate. When the first Americans left Europe, they were wary of the name King, even though they still believed, deep down, in the necessity of a supreme leader. They signified their ambivalence with a new word. I’ve taken the liberty of doing this myself, only my new word is an old one—it’s the title the Romans used to like. And with the exciting annexation of an entirely new planet, we do seem more and more like an empire, don’t we? The empire of humanity. Does that answer your question?”
The man wrote on his pad of paper, angled in a way that Darcy couldn’t see what was being written. He said, “Yes, very good. Just one other question, and then we can leave the rest until our appointed time. And it’s a question that I just came up with—how deep would you say your attachment to classical antiquity is? I couldn’t help but notice the sculptures you have around the place, and you’ve just explained the inspiration for your ‘rex’ appellation. I also seem to recall you comparing yourself to Cincinnatus, at the famous speech you gave right after Karma died. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that you make so many references to that time period, in your speech and in your decoration. Obviously, the Monet doesn’t fit that pattern, but I’m not accusing you of a perfect obsession, of course.”
Darcy thought for a moment, before responding. “It’s just all really old. Yet still markedly human, still markedly us. I think we all like to look in the past and see ourselves. It’s a promise of the longevity of our beliefs, our values, everything that we are. It’s somewhat self-deprecating to say so, but maybe it’s just a moral crutch to make me feel better about myself. To get me through the days. Or I just like it—one of those things.”
The writer said, “It isn’t fair of me to ask questions of matters so close to the heart so soon, I know. Those are always the hardest to answer. But you wanted a biography written, didn’t you? And the better that we can answer those hard questions, the better the book will be that we write. I’ll leave the rest until tonight.”
They both stood up, and, when Darcy opened the door for them to leave the study, he passed the writer off to one of his attendants and went to play billiards for a while, since there wasn’t much work he could get done in the fields before it was evening anyway.
Billiards on Mars was almost entirely different than billiards on Earth, although Darcy had never really played in his former life. Even the simplest of Terran games didn’t translate well to the smaller planet—a billiards shot that would have been pe
rfectly acceptable millions of kilometers away sent the cue ball flying through the air on Mars. The gravity was just that much more different. On Mars, billiards became a game of soft cajoling, delicate taps and simple combinations. Darcy found it relaxing.
Decay 8
In One Ear
JACKSON, A LONGTIME member of Charles’ Order, sat at a bench in the City Park, waiting for a man to sit down next to him. Even though the sky was grey as always, it was agreed that the man would be wearing sunglasses, so that Jackson could identify him. He had almost given up waiting when the man appeared from around a copse of withered trees, following one of the main paths that honeycombed the Park. Without acknowledging Jackson in the slightest, he sat down next to him.
Jackson waited a minute or two before asking, “Damon? Is that your name?”
“Yes, yes it is,” the man answered, nervously.
“And you’re sure that you want to do this? You’ve weighed your options?”
“I can’t afford the Tax, I don’t have any other options. I’m joining. Now can you tell me what’s going on? I still don’t know what it is I’m doing, really. No one has told me.”
“It’s still too early for that,” Jackson said. “But if you’re sure that you’re committing, the answer to that question isn’t too far off. I’ll just need your help with a few things first.”
“With what?”
“Just say that you will help.”
“I will.”
“Okay. Stand up. You’re going to go straight to a medical supply store. You’re going to buy some gauze, painkillers, and some anesthetics. Like you cut your leg pretty bad or something, those kinds of things. Buy the good stuff for the anesthetic, you’ll be glad you did. You’re going to steal a scalpel. Now I know that’s illegal, and that you’d get caught eventually, but don’t worry about it. Do it. It’s very important that you do. And then you’re going to go to a hardware store, and buy a saw. Don’t ask why. And then you’re going to go straight to your apartment, and then to your bathroom. Leave the door to your apartment ajar, but don’t look back at it while you’re doing it. Bring all the stuff into the bathroom with you, don’t just leave it on your counter or the whole thing is going to be ruined, got it? And when you’re in your bathroom, don’t leave, no matter what happens. I will be there shortly, and then I’ll tell you the rest. Got it?”
