Mars Needs Books!

by Gary Lovisi

  “Ah, yeah, certainly. Damn Alvy, we got scholars and bibliophiles here now!” Ryan said with a laugh.

  “Oh, shut up, Alvy,” someone barked to a general chorus of more laughter.

  Alvy smiled. It was always like that when Ryan got a shipment of paperbacks. It always drew in the hard cases and old coots that hadn’t seen another human being face to face in months. Some, even for years. And most of them liked it that way just fine. Others wouldn’t speak more than a dozen words a month while working—but when it came to the books and the stories within them, they became damn chatter boxes. Then it could be impossible to get them to shut the hell up. Mars was rough on men. It hurt them. Serious hurt. It was hard on their bodies but worse on their minds and spirit. Unrelenting. Like the stories of the old American West. Far worse, though. Too many of these men had been hurt much worse when they’d lived back on Earth. Emotional cripples, social misfits, loners and paranoids that extended the meaning of the word “individualist” to sometimes foolish, if not insane, excess. There were political theorists of all kinds, capitalists, free traders, entrepreneurs, right-wingers, Trotskyites, old-time commies, with loads of nihilists, anarchists, socialists, libertines and bohemians. Also just a lot of people who just did not trust anyone or anydamnthing.... They were often cranky, sometimes religious, gun-toting as could be, generally anti-crime, pro-drink and anti-drug. Too many were fools, knaves, cretins, hardheads, and hard cases. Some were even glorious madmen. They were all readers. Readers, thinkers and dreamers, to a man. Mostly they dreamed about being free and staying free. Mostly they read the old paperbacks to remember what freedom had once been like. The life of freedom, the feel of freedom, the very taste of it.

  Alvy smiled, it was always like that on Mars. A glorious family of misfits, but a true kind of family, nonetheless. Survival dictated the terms. Paperbacks and their hard-boiled, tough, individual, violent, truthful words made it all understandable. They made Mars a bit easier to deal with.

  Alvy and Old Manny were the first ones in line. They stood fidgety and anxious. They presented their chits to Ryan. Alvy picked up the copy of Box Nine by Joe O’Connell, a first paperback printing of this fine tough female private eye novel from the early 1990s. Dark noir in a made-up town a hell’s drive south of Boston. Whatever “Boston” had been.

  Old Manny walked away on a cloud with a rare copy of Chester Himes’ The Real Cool Killers—Coffin Ed and Gravedigger’s best and most brutal adventure. Two tough African-American or Black detectives plugging away in an ancient ghetto called Harlem. The book had them fighting the bad guys as well as their own bosses. White bosses. Sometimes back then, the worse guys could be other cops. Himes’ two cops were some of the best of the best. Rough stuff but so true for its time, delving deep and hard into the dark racial mood of the era. Most Marsmen couldn’t believe that color had even been an issue once on Earth long ago but apparently it had been. Sometimes. Sometimes too often. Paperbacks with Black heroes by Gar Anthony Haywood and Gary Phillips were popular with readers. Older books dealing with race and crime by Iceberg Slim, Odie Hawkins and Donald Goines were also much sought after, but those old Holloway House paperbacks were just so damn scarce.

  Little by little the paperbacks were parceled out. Trades were made. Ryan took the five Paperback Price Guides and did a quick grab of an ancient 1950s Pocket Book edition of Rogue Cop by William P. McGivern. That guy was so underrated. Then there was the B. Traven novel, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, so cool, so good Bogart made the film of it. And all the great James M. Cain noirs—that man understood noir and femme fatales in classic novels like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and even with Mildred Pierce. Ryan also grabbed up a set of Hank Janson crime novels written apparently, by old Hank himself, said to be a tough Yankee newspaper reporter whose cases took place in the post-World War II era. In reality the series had been started by a UK lefty author name of Stephen D. Frances, who actually self-published the first rare books in the series—in, of course—paperback. Simply amazing! Ryan looked over these carefully. They were British, and old, but they had some of the best sexy bad-girl covers anyone had ever seen, all by a guy named Reginald Heade. These were, of course, the later UK Telos Books reprints from far back around 2004. No one had ever seen any of the original 1950s British Hank Janson paperbacks these had been reprinted from, but the introductions by a guy named Steve Holland explained it all. These were even rare. These books would sure be treasured here on Mars. Ryan could already see guys dying to get their grubby fingers on these as soon as they came within reach.

  “Come on guys! Move back! Give me some breathing room!” Ryan barked, then smiled to himself. They gave him a few more precious inches of space now. “These old paperbacks are waiting—hard-hitting, hard-boiled masterpieces of murder and mayhem from the past. You guy’s ready?”

  “Yeah, Ryan! That’s good to hear!” Ernie Cigarettes chanted. “So good to hear!”

  Ah, Ryan thought, true pulp fiction!

  Then Ryan saw it! The book he’d wanted for so long. It had been on his “want list” since he’d come out to Mars. At first he wasn’t sure what the title might mean, it proclaimed it all so boldly in black print on the cover. Then he knew. One Lonely Night by Mickey Spillane! Hard-boiled private eye Mike Hammer fights a cabal of deadly and devious communist spies and undercover agents in the Old America of the 1950s United States. Over one hundred years ago! The book that got Spillane hated by the Left of his era because he dared have his hero enter the fight against the evils of Soviet imperialistic Communism. Reagan’s “Evil Empire” incarnate! More importantly these days, the book was still very much forbidden because it chronicled Mike Hammer’s personal fight against agents of what was looked at as an earlier manifestation of a worldwide “totalitarian authority.” That rang too close to the truth of the present-day worldwide governmental Authority, which was as totalitarian as could be. The result was obvious. The book had been banned for almost a hundred years.

  This one book epitomized the struggle that Ryan and all Marsmen were fighting today against the Department of Control and the Earth Authority. It was hard, stark poetry by a master craftsman of pulp action from a past age singing out boldly to free men everywhere. It was even more valid today, here on Mars. It was a gorgeous old Signet paperback edition in the rare first printing, with cover art by Lou Kimmel showing Hammer tied up and menaced by a gorgeous bad-girl femme fatale with a gun. She was luscious but deadly. It was a reversal of most cover art images of those old times. Here the girl had the masculine hero tied and helpless. Usually on the covers it was the other way around. Ryan quickly stuffed it in his pocket without saying a word to anyone. He’d sneak away tonight and try to read a few pages.

  It just didn’t get any better than looking through all those old paperbacks. The guys back then really knew how to write, they knew how to tell a story full of action and meaning. No, they weren’t great literary stylists, they never said they were. For the most part they never tried to be either. They were pulp writers, telling a pulp story of action and adventure—and often deeper meaning. But they knew how to do that with perfection. They did it so well, that sometimes it even approached art. The old paperbacks oozed pain and hardship and the heroes in them spoke the truth as they had lived it back then, today spoken to a future that had lost all hope and truth decades past.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MARS NEEDS WOMEN!

  When Ryan got home to his place he took out the copy of One Lonely Night, and as he did with each copy of any Spillane book sent to him from his brother on Earth, he turned to page one hundred, and delicately extracted the tiny microdot. It was all so very low tech, so entirely obsolete, but still effective. The kind of thing the enemy would think much too old hat to be of use any longer. Ryan set the dot down on a slide, then put the slide under the microscope and took a look.

  Now Ryan smiled. It seemed his brother was on the ball. As usual. This was invaluable information to the Resistance. On the
face of it, it was just a list of the new pioneers, settlers, émigrés, sent out to Mars from Earth. However, it also told which of these new émigrés were spies and paid agents, informers, sleeper cells, assassins. Who was working for what Earth government department or agency. Which secret police, espionage outfit, organized crime cartel, underground cult, or various political groups of every stripe they were affiliated with. All men that Mars did not need. Men that Earth kept on sending out to Mars nevertheless. Men who could now be watched once they got here. Men who would discover they had no input to the system here either.

  Some of these men would have sudden and very fatal accidents after they got here. Hey, Mars was a dangerous place! The accident rate could be high, sometimes. Others were guys who would just disappear. It happened, men often were detailed to work in remote areas that caused them to lose touch with Earth once they got out here. These men who would be Earth’s eyes and ears on Mars—spies—were now known before they even got here. They would immediately be confounded and controlled from the minute they landed. Of course, their holo image would always dutifully send back a report in their name created by the Resistance. A report full of phony, misleading, useless information. There would be enough lies, distortions, garbage, and dangerous disinformation to make even an old-time Soviet apparatchik gag in dry-heave disgust.

  Ryan knew the main thing though, was the names on that list. It wasn’t the usual list of men only. Though gender specific names had not been in vogue since LastCen, there were still enough first names listed to indicate that most, if not all, the new émigrés had to be female! That was unheard of! It was glorious, yet Ryan was immediately suspicious. It appeared the men on Mars were getting something that they had wanted for decades. Not only books, but women!

  Mars was getting women!

  Mars needed women!

  Ryan could hardly hold back his joy, his sheer delight and whooped aloud, knowing how happy the men would be when they heard the news.

  Then he saw the last name on the list.

  He immediately froze with fear and a sense of dark doom overtook him.

  The name was listed in a special amendment. It said that one of the new émigrés could be this person. It was the one name he never wanted to see again.

  It was a name that could not be compromised or controlled by the Resistance like any of the others.

  It was someone who could never, ever have an “accident,” be bought, or turned over.

  It was someone on a mission no Earth agent had ever had the guts or desire to go on.

  Ryan realized that it was her!

  It had to be!

  She had actually come out to Mars!

  A cold chill took control of him. Why? Why was she of all people coming out here?

  Obviously to see things for herself.

  That was not good. Not good at all. It placed them all at terrible risk. It placed everything at risk. All his plans....

  It placed hope itself at risk.

  Ryan felt a cold chill roam throughout his body. A deep chill that went right into his bones and froze him into stillness. His eyes looked at the name on the bottom of the list once again.

  It had not gone away. He had hoped the name would just disappear. Like an illusion. Like it had not really been there at all and he’d only imagined it.

  It had not.

  It was still there.

  The name taunted him with fear.

  It was the name, Arabella Rashid.

  It was her.

  Herself.

  The Supreme Director, of the Department of Control and the most dangerous and deadly person that there ever was.

  Arabella Rashid was The DOC’s most effective and most vicious leader. She was responsible for extending the powers of The DOC to heretofore unexpected and unexcelled lengths and into many non-traditional areas.

  “Tightening the noose” the men on Mars called it. And most shivered involuntarily as they thought of the bestial organization they’d thought they’d left behind them on Earth. Paramount in its activity was media control, mind and thought manipulation, truth re-interpretation—as they called it. Re-education of social and political misfits—all for their own good, you understand. Tyranny with a smiley face—which could get as steel hard and deadly as it needed to be very fast. All to extend tighter control of every citizen

  Under her leadership, the DOC rewrote, or revised everything on the digital record. It had all been changed. It was all suspect now. Memory and history under the DOC had become the least truthful, the least knowable of events. Truth did not exist any longer. Freedom was forgotten and had dissolved.

  She was the hand behind it all.

  Ryan tried to reconfigure his thoughts on the matter. It was not good that she, of all people, had come out here. She’d come out to Mars, of all places! What the hell did she want? What the hell was she after? An historical analogy to the situation entered his thoughts. It was tantamount to the Spanish Inquisition coming to the New World in the 1500s back on Old Earth. Evil entering the Garden. Ryan shuddered at that thought. He knew what that meant, and what it could mean to the men of Mars who were his friends and brothers.

  Ryan looked over the list his brother had sent him. There was a coded asterisk at the bottom indicating that all the names were female.

  Women had finally come to Mars!

  It was a wonderful, glorious event. Ryan, and every man on Mars had waited so long for this day. Earth government had held back for decades on sending women, the reason supposedly being that it was for safety concerns. Bullshit! As if women were too delicate to go to Mars! What utter rot! The real reason was that Earth knew that with women, what naturally followed was children. Then a sense of community, a sense of society, perhaps even a sense of “country”? Something the Earth government—and The DOC—definitely did not want to see begin on Mars.

  Or did they?

  Why the drastic change now?

  And why now, Arabella Rashid?

  Earth had never wanted the Marsmen to be too independent. Oh, it was kind of all right for them to be a bit on the kooky side, in their own funny male-pioneer-type way. However by Earth holding back on women, they also were able to hold back on the sons and daughters that would have normally come from these men. Mars would remain barren in more ways than one. Thus Earth could control their future, in the ways that mattered. It had worked successfully for many decades.

  The Resistance had understood this since the beginning also. Ryan and his associates; his agents and fellow travelers, on Mars and on Earth, had done all they could to make sure every impression Earth received of Mars was of an inhospitable pioneer world full of crazy men who were fanatically loyal to Earth. Men who wanted more than anything else to recant the terrible mistake of their immigration here and return home to the loving and beloved bosom offered to all by the blissful Mother Earth government. Then they could once again enjoy the blessings of a benevolent paternalistic system that truly cared for them—and told them all what to do.

  Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth.

  The cover-up of what was really happening on Mars had been a difficult accomplishment at first. The tricking of Earth’s agents, the false reports, misleading and planted news items, all the phony programs. Then there were thousands of bogus emails and phone calls sent back to Earth relatives and hard-copy letters and photos sent in returning supply ships all full of lies and propaganda. There was an entire office in Marsport that did nothing but do all this 24/7. The Mars Resistance knew The DOC and its agents and co-lateral investigative agencies could not fail to monitor and study this data. The bottom line was that Earth was fed the greatest line of pure, unadulterated bullshit the Universe had ever seen. It was wonderful, consistent and cunningly done, and it made perfect sense. So the Earth masters believed all was going according to their plan—when in fact nothing at all was going according to their plan!

  Nothing was safe or secret on Earth anymore. There was no such thing as privac
y. Certainly not where Earth was concerned. Even residential view screens in the private homes of citizens had the power to enable special watchers to look in on the people watching the screen. But who was watching the watchers?

  The DOC! They watched all.

  The DOC heralded it as a great breakthrough in humankind. They called it Thinking Made Easy. The worldwide government held “Thinking Made Easy” events and offered free software. Everyone who was anyone, plugged into it and joined the fun.

  Now it seemed that Earth was changing the game.

  Ryan wondered, had the plan by the Resistance worked? Perhaps it had worked too well? Or been found out? So many years of hard work, so much effort and expense to mislead Earth about the richness and beauty of Mars. This wonderful elaborate plot, all done to cover up the fact that Mars was a place where men could live free. A place where self-sufficiency—the lack of need for anyone, anything, and especially some Earther big-brother, know-it-all government Authority—shone forth. A place where the absence of, “we’re doing it for your own good” by government, made them truly free.

  Earth people said they loved freedom—but they hated freedom.

  The Authority on Earth always stressed “cooperation,” however their definition of cooperation was obedience while their true aim was dependency.

  Mars saw self-sufficiency as the antidote, and saw it as a human right. It was the only true road to freedom for the individual in this bleak world that had become their future.

  Obviously, there was a serious difference of opinion.

  Tyrants always desire to be needed. Tyrants need to be needed. If you do not need them, they’ll kill you, or have you killed, or create your need for them. Ryan and Mars had played a very tricky game. He just wondered if the cat was out of the bag now?

  Ryan also knew if a society is lucky enough not to need a tyrant and able to remain free of a tyrant’s grasping clutches, there will still always be tyrants in-waiting. A Tyrant will be there in whatever guise, laying in wait, ready to lay claim to you as his own. It was important for each man on Mars to stand on his own two feet—as a free man—with a free mind and his own ideas. The tyrant Earth government did not want that. Under the tyrant’s thumb you become controlled. Eventually, you become only...property!