by Devin Hanson
He wasn’t a fool. Growing crops required water, no matter how you looked at it. On a planet where nothing was more valuable than water, bringing his own supply had been the only way he could think of to guarantee his plan’s success.
He didn’t have time for a second chance if his first attempt failed. His medical prognosis was clear: he had three months at most to receive the first treatment of the Womack Process or he would die.
CHAPTER
TWO
Federal Case Number 3:43-CR-1092-CA
Exhibit N
The following list of equipment and items was found at a clinic suspected of supplying the nucleonic therapy of the Womack Process:
DNA sequencing computer
Surgical tools: scalpel, forceps, scissors, spreaders
Tissue sample container
Liquid nitrogen cryogenic chamber
…
9mm Smith and Wesson handgun
Silencer for above weapon, attached at time of discovery
Box of ammunition containing 11 cartridges
Angeline Nueva de Vita was going to play hooky from school. Evading the teacher wouldn’t be easy; Angeline was a seventh-generation Martian, and even though she had just turned fourteen, she was nearly six feet tall. Like her parents, Angeline had a very narrow build, with long, delicate hands. The low gravity didn’t require her to have much lung strength to breathe and her chest was narrow, giving her a spindly look.
Mr. Borden raised his hands, patiently waiting for silence to fall upon the class. Angeline kept her face turned down and her mouth shut. She knew from experience that it would be harder to sneak away if the teacher was looking for her.
Eventually the room grew quiet. “Today we’re going on a field trip,” Mr. Borden announced. “We studied about the algae vats that process our expired breath into usable air again. Now we’re going to see them in action.”
“Again?” a boy complained. “We went last month.”
“Oh, my mistake,” Mr. Borden said dryly. “You must be an expert already! Since you’re so familiar with it, Thomas, can you explain to the class how the photosynthesis cycle sequesters carbon dioxide into sugars?”
“I dunno what that even means,” Tommy muttered.
“Well, then I suppose there might be something left for you to learn after all.”
Tommy glared back in sullen silence.
Despite herself, Angeline was curious. She found the biology she had studied so far fascinating. A trip to the vats would be almost more exciting than what she had planned.
“Hey!” someone whispered, and Angeline turned to see her friend Jasmine leaning toward her, a conspiratorial smile on her face.
“Stop, Mr. Borden will see you,” Angeline hissed back, but she couldn’t help but smile in response.
“Don’t worry. My mom says Mr. Borden only has eyes for the boys,” Jasmine giggled.
Angeline covered her mouth and glanced up to the front of the class where Mr. Borden was writing on the chalkboard. She didn’t understand what Jasmine meant by that, but if the teacher wasn’t going to be watching her closely, it would make it easier to slip away.
Jasmine was a third-generation Martian. She was tall for her age by Earth standards, but she was still a full foot shorter than Angeline. She was a year and six months older than Angeline and was already starting to look like a woman. Angeline knew she would never develop breasts as large as Jasmine had already, and sometimes she was terribly jealous.
Angeline’s mom called Angeline beautiful, but beside her friend, Angeline felt like a freak of nature. Still, she felt lucky that Jasmine wanted to play hooky with her. Jasmine could be friends with anybody, even the boys.
“Ms. de Vita,” Mr. Borden called, “care to share with the class what is so funny?”
Angeline blushed and hung her head, turning in her seat until she was facing the front of the class again. “No, Mr. Borden. Sorry.”
“Pay attention,” the teacher chastised her. “If you don’t listen now, you won’t understand what is happening when we visit the vats after lunch.”
“Sorry, Mr. Borden.”
Jasmine giggled and Angeline carefully kept her eyes pointing forward. After a moment, Mr. Borden turned back to the chalkboard.
As Mr. Borden lectured on the process of algae converting carbon dioxide into sugar, Angeline found herself drawn into the science of it. She almost regretted the plan to play hooky. The trip to the vats sounded interesting.
The day passed quickly, and soon they were lining up to leave. Jasmine cut in front of Angeline in line and giggled. Suppressing her irritation, Angeline stepped back to make room for her. It was the nice thing to do, she told herself. Jasmine was so much shorter. If she had to stand behind Angeline, she wouldn’t be able to see anything.
Mr. Borden did a last headcount down the line, verified all the students were present, and led the line out of the classroom. Mrs. Chan was outside waiting for them. The elderly woman often volunteered to help escort the students on their field trips.
Like Angeline, Mrs. Chan came from a long line of colonists, except where Angeline was dark haired with olive skin, Mrs. Chan had white hair that drifted about her head in a fine halo and her skin was pale, nearly translucent. Rumor had it that Mrs. Chan hadn’t visited the sun rooms since her childhood, and if she was exposed to the bright light now, she would burn alive on the spot.
The presence of Mrs. Chan made giving the class the slip much more difficult. Mr. Borden was short, barely taller than Angeline was. It was easy to hide from him, since anyone passing by, blocked his vision. Mrs. Chan, though, was over seven feet tall, and her ability to spot a student trying to escape was legendary.
“Great, the old bat is here,” Jasmine said sourly as they made their way through hallways and out of the school.
“Do you still want to play hooky?” Angeline asked. “The vats don’t sound so bad. We can ditch some other time.”
Jasmine shook her head. “I’ve seen the vats,” she said dismissively. “I want to have fun today.”
Resigned, Angeline nodded. Without a distraction of some sort, Mrs. Chan would see them trying to escape. Angeline found herself hoping that nothing would pull away the older woman’s attention, and Jasmine wouldn’t have an opportunity to run.
Traveling around Cydonia was done by foot, for the most part. Calling the colony a single city was something of a misnomer. The colony was broken up into clusters, separated by long tunnels. The city clusters were ten to twenty layers deep, and each was separately viable, with their own atmosphere processing plants and food production. The tunnels connecting the clusters were traversed by high-speed trams. In the case of a catastrophic surface breach, each cluster could be isolated from the others with heavy airlocks on either end of the tunnels.
The individual clusters were not large. They occupied roughly a square mile, with escalators running between levels. Someone traveling on foot could easily reach any point in a cluster in less than half an hour. A cluster might have a population of between fifty thousand and several hundred thousand, depending on the number of levels and size of the floors.
Cydonia was a network of forty-eight clusters, with new clusters being dug out all the time. Angeline’s home, the Vastitas Cluster, lay under the northern slopes of Olympus Mons. It was a larger cluster, as things went, with seventeen layers and a population of one hundred and eighty thousand. Angeline’s school was on the fifth layer, counting down from the top.
As Angeline rode the escalators upward toward the first layer, she kept an eye on Mrs. Chan. The assistant teacher never took her eyes off them. Jasmine fidgeted in front of Angeline. She couldn’t look back at Mrs. Chan without being obvious about it.
The number of people about them increased dramatically when they stepped off the escalator on the first layer. It was just after the lunch hour, and though the usual meal rush had dropped away, people still clogged the corridors.
Jasmine turned around far enough to give Angeline a
smile. “Follow my lead,” she whispered.
In Angeline’s experience, those words usually came before something that ended up getting her in trouble. Still, her heart raced with excitement. She had only been to the first layer market with her parents. The thought of having the whole afternoon to explore it with Jasmine was worth the trouble she knew she would be in afterward.
Angeline kept one eye on Mrs. Chan, but the market fascinated her. There were so many things for sale, and so many people. Where Angeline lived on the twelfth layer, almost everyone was from a long line of Martian colonists. It was rare to see an adult under seven feet tall. In the market, though, the majority of the people were like Jasmine: closer to Earth-human, with more muscle bulk, and, in the case of the women, curves.
She even saw a group of wujin, their skin and hair pale. They all wore sunglasses, but she didn’t need to see their red eyes to recognize the albinism genes. It gave her a shudder, seeing the wujin. They didn’t often come to Vastitas, preferring the newer, more prosperous clusters. She had never met one in person, but her parents had been clear in their repeated instruction to leave them alone.
The high shriek of an air horn startled her, and then suddenly Jasmine grabbed her hand and yanked her out of the line of students. Angeline stifled a surprised cry and let her shorter friend pull her into the press of the market. A last glance back showed Mrs. Chan shouting down a lorry driver.
For a few seconds as they ran through the crowded market, Angeline expected to hear Mrs. Chan behind them, cursing them in Chinese. But as the seconds dragged on into minutes and there was no sign of pursuit, Angeline’s fear turned into elation. They had done it!
Their absence would be noted eventually, and there would be hell to pay later, but for the next few hours she was free to explore the market with Jasmine.
“What do you want to buy first?” Jasmine asked her, skipping sideways with her black curls wafting around her head.
“Buy?” Angeline shook her head. “I don’t have any money.”
“No problem.” Jasmine produced a credit chip with an air of studied nonchalance then broke into giggles. “I lifted it off my baba this morning.”
“You stole it?” Angeline was aghast.
“He has more,” Jasmine brushed off Angeline’s concern with a wave. “Come on, I know where there’s a sweets shop!”
Later, as Angeline was licking the granules of chili sugar off her fingers, she forgot to be worried about getting in trouble. She had never had so much fun. They wandered the market, buying snacks that caught their fancy and window shopping. In a trinket shop, Jasmine bought Angeline a beautiful glass sculpture of a bird, its wings a rainbow of brilliant hues.
After an hour of wandering the market, Jasmine was starting to get bored. Angeline would have been happy to wander and look at all the things that were for sale, but the novelty had worn off for her friend.
“I’ve seen all this stuff before,” Jasmine said finally, pulling Angeline away from a booth that sold toy robots. “I want to do something exciting.”
Angeline looked back at the booth. The robots had been plenty exciting to her. She felt the weight of the bag in her hand with her carefully wrapped bird figurine. Jasmine had been extremely nice to her so far. She felt obligated to follow the other girl’s lead.
“Okay,” Angeline agreed. “What is there to do here that’s exciting?”
“Have you ever gone dancing?”
The question took Angeline by surprise. “No, I don’t think I know how.”
“It’s easy. I’ll show you how.” Jasmine grabbed Angeline’s hand and started pulling her through the market. “My ma and her friends go sometimes.”
In truth, Angeline didn’t need much convincing. Going dancing sounded like something adults did. She was thirteen now, a teenager. She wasn’t a little kid any more.
She eyed Jasmine, envious again of the other girl’s curves. What would it be like to have boys pay attention to her all the time? Maybe if she learned how to dance really well, the boys would treat her the same way they treated Jasmine.
They passed from the open market into a section that Angeline had never been in before. The hallways were more cramped between the stalls, and many of the shops had curtains hanging in front of them, giving the shoppers privacy.
Glimpses inside the curtained shops showed things for sale that Angeline had no knowledge of. There were a lot of smooth plastic shapes, garments made of black synthetics, and more. She tried asking Jasmine what some of the shops were selling, but the other girl couldn’t get more than two words into a sentence before dissolving into gleeful giggling.
Eventually, her face burning with embarrassment, Angeline stopped asking questions. There were other things to catch her attention, anyway. Besides the curtained shops, there were stalls selling imported items. These stalls had multiple grim-looking guards in front with stunrods crackling in their hands. There were bottles of colored liquids for sale, expensive-looking foil packets, and once she passed by a store that sold leather goods. Angeline lingered in front of that one, breathing in the novel aroma of leather until the guard threatened her with his stunrod.
Jasmine led the way to one of the rare permanent structures in the market, the nucleus around which the more exclusive stalls had gathered. From the outside, the structure was featureless poured concrete. Even the largest stores were never larger than the gap between two pillars, but this structure spanned three gaps on a side.
Placed dead center in the concrete wall, a polyresin door offered entrance. Over the door, a twisted neon sign proclaimed it to be the Redstone Lounge. Unlike the rest of this section of the market, there were no guards outside the door.
Angeline slowed to a stop. There was something about the structure that worried her. The distinctive oily appearance of the polyresin door told her the door was armored. It would take the marines or the marshals to break it down with high explosives. The complete lack of windows or other openings in the concrete gave her an odd feeling of being trapped, even though she was outside the structure.
“What are you waiting for?” Jasmine said, a teasing smile on her face. “You’re not scared are you?”
“No, that’s not it,” Angeline lied. “I’m just excited.” Her stomach was twisting with excitement, but there was a tinge of fear too.
Jasmine grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the polyresin door.
“Are we allowed…?”
“There’s nobody to say we aren’t,” Jasmine pointed out with another smile. “Besides, places like this, it’s money that gets you in, nothing else.”
Angeline didn’t ask how Jasmine knew that, but trusted her friend. Jasmine seemed so much more experienced than she was. She knew what those mysterious shops were selling, and she knew how to enter the Lounge.
As the girls approached the door, it slid open smoothly, revealing a dimly lit foyer, one wall of which was frosted glass lit from behind. Angeline gave one last look out at the market then let Jasmine pull her inside.
A man who towered over Angeline stepped forward as the polyresin door slid shut behind them. He was wearing an expensive suit, the fibers of which seemed to be individually reflective so gleaming ripples seemed to run across him as he moved.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” he said in a deep, smooth voice. “Do you have anything to check in?”
Timidly, Angeline offered her bag with the bird figurine in it. The man accepted it without comment and offered a fingerprint tablet. Angeline pressed her thumb against the reader and a small deposit box swung open on the far wall.
“It will be kept safe until you are ready to leave,” he assured her gravely.
“Thank you.” Angeline stared at the man, trying not to blush.
Jasmine declined to store anything, and the man gave a sort of half-bow, directing them toward a door leading further into the structure. As they walked toward the door, vague shapes shifted behind the frosted glass, tracking them as they went. Angeline swallo
wed a burst of fear and fought it under control. It was just a scanner, she told herself, probably making sure they didn’t have any weapons.
Then the inner door swung aside and Angeline forgot her fear. A quiet thump of music washed over her, along with a complex odor. It smelled of leather, imported perfume, tobacco smoke and old oak. The walls were paneled with a dark resin, cast to look like wood, that gleamed in the filtered light.
The room was open, divided into roughly three sections. To Angeline’s left, tables set between low privacy walls offered a secluded dining area. In the center, more seating surrounded a section left open for dancing. On the far right, an expansive bar stretched nearly the full width of the room. Real oak barrels were set high on shelves behind the bar, along with a bewildering array of polished glass bottles.
The floor beneath Angeline’s feet was carpeted with a deep pile that dragged at her feet. The pillars in the room were sheathed in more of the resin paneling. The room was thick with opulence. One of the leather dining seats was worth more money than Angeline had ever even heard of. The bar was made of real imported mahogany. Just one of the barrels behind the bar was worth more than Angeline’s parents would make in a year, not to mention the contents of the barrel.
It was early afternoon, but there were people scattered about, mostly talking quietly in the restaurant section, though a few were at the bar.
“Oh, this is amazing!” Jasmine said, walking forward into the room and breaking Angeline from her shock.
Angeline was frozen with indecision. Part of her was screaming at her to leave. She did not belong here. Her family would never have the kind of wealth that the patrons of this place had. The rest of her wanted to stay and take advantage of Jasmine’s generosity. She might never have another chance to be in a place as rich as this.
Reluctantly, Angeline followed Jasmine over to the bar. She had never seen such a large piece of real wood this close. It seemed to have a depth to it, a complexity of detail and refracted light that could never be duplicated by synthetics.
