Mars Needs Books!

by Gary Lovisi

  Ryan looked at the men, he knew they were waiting for his words. He took a deep breath and began, “Arabella Rashid is another matter. We have no lead on her whatsoever. No one knows what she looks like. In fact, there are no records on her at all. We can’t even be sure if she is really a she, or if that is in fact, her true name. I kind of doubt it. But she’s dangerous. We don’t want the Earthers to figure out our plan here, especially now when we are finally getting what we want most, women on Mars!”

  There was a glum nod and moan from the men. They were scared now.

  Ryan continued, “We now have women, for wives. We can have families, children, build ourselves a real society, still free of Earth, but now it can live and grow. Women! Wives! My friends, the women will ensure these good things happen. We need the women, we need them to join us, but we have to be very careful. Arabella Rashid is blood poison to our ideas, a danger to our most sacred hopes and dreams. We’ve worked so hard for so long to deceive the Earthers. We have them believing we are eagerly sucking in all their lies and propaganda. Fooling them into believing that we are totally under their power, even so damn very happy to be. Well, Earth has no power here! Never did! Never will! We are freer than they will ever know. We will be even more free of them some day soon!”

  There was applause and shouting. It grew from anger and fear. Members of the audience held up their paperbacks shouting, barking, growling out a mouthful of words, cheering, yelling, chanting over and over again: “We Are Free! Don’t Order Me! We Are Free! Earth Don’t Mean Nothing to Me!”

  Ryan wondered how long it would all last.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MARS DON’T NEED NO GUNS!

  Arabella Rashid sat alone in her private quarters immersed in a horrendous propagandistic virtual reality news show from her small personal VRPod. The blood and bullets whizzed by her like she was in the thick of the action, the charred flesh smell assailed her nostrils. It was disgusting and she soon turned it off. She opted to watch the room vid panel instead. Interestingly, there was no direct link with Earth, or the official government stations, from back home. It was strange. The signals were certainly beamed to Mars, reception was indicated back on Earth. However she now realized the shows were never actually shown on Mars. They were never seen here at all! In fact, it seemed absolutely nothing was shown on Mars. She was astonished to find that the vid screens here were all blank. At first, she thought it was just her luck that she’d received quarters with a malfunctioning vid. However, she soon realized the truth. Even as reports and surveys by her agents through other DOC means, all indicated that these vid shows were always very heavily watched. Ratings were reported to be very high. Surveys said Earth programs were very popular and influential, and actually loved by everyone on Mars.

  “Bullshit!” Arabella Rashid said out loud.

  She turned off the blank vid. She picked up a paperback and began reading where she’d left off.

  She stared at the cover of the paperback she’d been reading. It was something she couldn’t get out of her head, something called, Only The Dead Know Brooklyn by some guy named Thomas Boyle. It was an oldie from way back in 1980-something. Far in the past. Way before she’d ever been born.

  Cloned, she corrected.

  Arabella Rashid thought about her own past. Thinking back on it now was difficult. Strange. She recalled how at such a young age she’d become the mistress of Simon; the 100-year-old bio-reconstructed Director of the DOC who had been dead now for twenty years. She remembered when at just thirteen years of age she’d set up the Director for the long hard fall, then took over the entire organization. How just hours later, Arabella Rashid was fully ensconced with all the power, privilege, and fear of the Directorship of the dreaded DOC. Back then, no one knew anything at all about her, other than her name. It was a name that caused very real fear. She was the person—rumor had it, a mere slip of a girl just entering her teens—who had taken down the evil Director, Simon the Monster. Then she had taken his place to destroy the world. Or bring it screaming down to its knees.

  Arabella Rashid smiled. She remembered Simon. She thought of his old hard hands touching her, the evil ways he’d used her. Then she thought of the book she’d just been reading. The DeSales crime novel by Thomas Boyle. Part of the story concerned children at something called a “Halloween festival” in somewhere called The Neathermeade in a place called Prospect Park, in a long-ago city called Brooklyn. It had been somewhere in Atlantic coast Old America, Eastern Security District, she knew. The book sang to her soul about abused children. It made her think back, on how Simon had used her. Ill-used her. And all his other children. All those he called his “special children.” Most of them were dead now. She couldn’t remember any of the names. Except she did remember two of them, even after all these years. Vague memories of them stood out. They were the two brothers. They had been clones also.

  It was all so distant and vague now. At least one of the brothers was still alive. It was rumored that he might even be working somewhere in The DOC, of all places. He was said to be under secret orders. No one could ever know who he was. As with herself, all agents and officers were forbidden to know anything at all about the Director. And the Director knew little about members of the Board and other areas of The DOC which were under secret orders. No one knew of the existence of anyone else. They were not supposed to know. Everything was secret. Erased. Or never existed in the first place.

  Then there was the other brother. Lost. Probably killed and long dead by now. Arabella remembered him. He was smart, and good, and bold, but so long gone now his face had drifted into the dust of her forgotten memory. He could be anywhere, of course, even out here on Mars for all she knew. Another of the children Simon had collected, to be trained to become his next generation of agents. Killers so stone cold nothing could stop them. Agents of evil and oppression Simon had specifically created for his needs. But like her, they had been used by Simon. Or so it was rumored. Nothing could ever truly be known for sure.

  Arabella remembered reading another book. The title of this one was, Nineteen Eighty-Four. A LastCen horror novel. Actually, political horror. She realized that if George Orwell, the author, saw Big Brother as a big black boot upon the face of man—forever—then Simon’s children were the people the Director had in mind to carry out that evil upon the human race. Forever. Personally trained and raised by Simon and The DOC, they would take over the world someday and make it scream.

  Arabella smiled at the fact that Simon was no more. He had looked so good dead. Better than when he had been alive, she mused. At least in death the monster was harmless. But his creation, the DOC, went on without him. She had tried to control it, make it less brutal and deadly but this Frankenstein’s monster had a mind and will of its own. It ran rampant, an out of control juggernaut of pain, fear and death.

  Arabella still remembered the surprise on Simon’s old face when she set the beam on kill, and then fried his old plastic body to molten slag on the floor of his so very exclusive high security office. Or so she wished. She had an implanted memory to that effect. But it was false.

  Actually, she had stabbed him in the neck when she was kissing him. It was just like one of those femme fatales on the covers of the old paperback crime novels. Was that mere coincidence or something more?

  She felt Simon would understand, if anyone would. She had, after all, achieved his goal. She’d taken over The DOC, as he had told her he wanted her to do some day. She’d just done it a few decades earlier than Simon had anticipated.

  Or had she?

  After Simon’s demise, the ‘War for Control’ lasted only a week. Arabella and most of Simon’s teens easily killed off the old pros, quickly rearranging the department structure as she saw fit. It was a new order. It became worse than ever!

  Of course, they took over in secret, in this most secret of places. Consolidating power and position until they could not be removed and they were in complete control. Even a hint of resistance or
opposition meant instant removal. Quite a few key people simply vanished. They were declared persona non grata and never spoken of again. Their names instantly erased from all files and the digital record. They not only disappeared; they had never existed in the first place!

  Arabella Rashid couldn’t remember the name of the two brothers. She’d accessed her infobank before she’d left Earth and found out that the file had been wiped clean many years ago. That was certainly strange, but not out of the ordinary at The DOC. Most personnel files had been deleted or “revised” during the War for Control. A lot had happened since those days. She knew now that her own memories were not her own and she feared for what Simon had planted in her mind. It was obvious to her now that at least one of the brothers must still be alive and was hidden deep somewhere within The DOC bureaucratic infrastructure. Somewhere in the never-ending snake-like bureaucracy and hierarchy. Somewhere. But where? And why? Who was he? And did this have anything to do with Mars and...paperbacks?

  * * * *

  James Ryan said, “No guns. We don’t need them.”

  “Come on, Ryan, we got no choice here,” Manny said, egging on the crowd. He pulled out a copy of The Godfather by Mario Puzo. “Now this guy knew his stuff. What we need here is a Luca Brazzi.”

  Ryan smiled, what he needed was a few Tom Hagens. Guys with brains. Good and true consigliori.

  “Listen, guys,” Ryan said. “I know how you feel, but there’s no way in hell we can go up against them shot for shot. More guns won’t help us. More brains will. You know what I’ve always said, and it’s damn true and it has worked. The only way we can beat the Earthers and The DOC is to be smarter than they are. We can never out man them, never out spend them, never out gun them. The way we win is if they do not suspect even for a moment that there is a Resistance. As far as they know, it does not exist. Don’t let them suspect any hint of what we are really doing. What we are really about. We can do it! It has worked for over twenty years!”

  “Yeah, Ryan, but that was before this Arabella Rashid witch stepped foot on Mars!” Alvy said. ‘The Witch’, as she was called by those in the know. Those who had serious reason to fear her and The DOC. She scared the hell out of Alvy and most everyone else in that room. She was said to have been just a slip of a girl when she’d taken over DOC, but she had grown into a totally unprincipled amoral monster with unlimited power. It was a devastating combination of ruthlessness and power that spelled danger any which way you looked at it.

  “Why’s she here, Ryan?” Manny asked nervously.

  Alvy said, “I been digging around all over the Net on her, and what I see is all the expected crap, and a lot of propaganda. More lies of the Earthers, the usual PC party line bullshit! You know, you really gotta read between the lines with them. She is very bad news. Puta! Mala loca! A crazy evil. Bitch! Whore!”

  “I agree,” Ryan said with a bit of a smile. He wouldn’t have put it exactly that way but the truth was the truth. He’d never seen Alvy so riled up before.

  “Then what do we do, Ryan?”

  Ryan sighed, “We do what we’ve always done. We wait. We work. We be patient. We plan.”

  Faces fell. They were expecting something more. Action. A fight. Something grand they could all sink their teeth into. Something stupid that would feel good, but get them all killed.

  Ryan looked intently at each and every man there. A thousand faces hungry for freedom, champing at the bit, dying to stand up tall and shout: “Dammit! I’m a man! I will fight for my freedom!”

  Ryan smiled, he knew what they wanted but he knew the truth too. They’d all be cut down so fast they’d never know what hit them. And they knew it as well.

  Alvy repeated more softly, “So what do we do now, Ryan?”

  Ryan looked at him, then into every face there. Finally he said, “We do what we have always done, gentlemen. We go our own way!”

  It was the words from their anthem.

  But they were not mere words.

  Those words had meaning to each man there.

  The crowd looked up. They nodded. They were determined. They wore grim smiles. These were serious men after all. Fists were being raised. Eyes grew sharp, angry, focused, more determined than ever.

  “We go our own way!” Alvy shouted.

  “We go our own way!” a thousand voices repeated.

  “We go our own way!” Ryan barked, drowned out by the throng.

  “We go our own way!” a thousand gruff voices repeated, standing tall, raising arms with clenched fists—determined, strong, united, willing now—to play it the right way. The smart way.

  The only way they could play it.

  And win.

  Their way.

  * * * *

  Arabella Rashid put away the old paperbacks in a secret hiding place. Carefully. Almost lovingly. She realized that she loved this stuff, these old crime and police novels. The murder mysteries. The private cops and detectives. The attitude. The down-right guts of the people in these books. The men and the women. You didn’t meet people like that anymore. It was such a pity.

  Arabella smiled sadly about that. So be it. Earth, she realized now, was doomed. On the road to being a brain-dead sewer inhabited by mindless sheep. Mars? Mars was different. Strange. Difficult to pin down. Inexact. A little lonely. Somewhat sad. Dangerous for sure. Cruel. But also bold, and full of life. Exciting. There were real possibilities here. And there really was freedom. You could feel it. Taste it. It was like medicine, it made you feel better, made you strong and healthy. Just like in the world of the old paperbacks. Just like the old paperbacks said it should be.

  It was about a little thing called hope.

  Arabella Rashid realized something else as well. It was amazing, incomprehensible, unthought of, but there was real resistance here to Earth. Serious resistance. And it had been successful! Quiet, oh for sure it was so very, very quiet and absolutely undercover, but very successful nonetheless. Quite amazing, actually. It was an organized resistance. It was at the gut level. Instinctive. Deep. In fact, the more she thought about it, she realized this Resistance was actually the controlling force on Mars—not the Earth Authority, and not The DOC!

  Now, that was serious. What was she going to do about it?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  PAPERBACKS AND FREEDOM!

  Ryan said it plain but true, “Loyalty, people, goes from bottom to top, but it also must go from top to bottom. When there is no longer any loyalty from those at the top to those at the bottom—when loyalty is expected only from bottom to top—then there is no loyalty at all. There is only tyranny, or slavery. Then rebellion can never be far away.”

  As Ryan said those words, he realized they seemed to come to him from so long ago it was like it was from another life. Perhaps it was.

  Ryan told them all again. “We don’t need them any longer, my friends. Earth, the Earthers, all their damn rules and laws and orders. The DOC! It’s all no good—NG!—from today on. And admitting we do not need them, or anybody, or anything—is the freedom we crave.”

  Alvy stood up, shouting, “I would rather go hungry than take the scraps they leave us. I would rather starve then eat their bread!”

  There was a cheer, growing into a chant.

  It was time.

  Alvy unfurled the banner. It was the secret flag of the new independent Mars Republic. A red circle in a field of black stars, and surrounding the planet like the rings of Saturn were the words “We’d Rather Starve Than Eat Your Bread!”

  There was an uncoiled snake that ran across the bottom of the flag, thin, lean, menacing. The words written upon the coils of its sinuous body in serious warning proclaimed: “Don’t Tread On Me!” On the top of the flag were the words, “Go Your Own Way!”

  Alvy waved the red flag of Free Mars and the men cheered themselves hoarse. They embraced as warriors, hugged and cried as brothers, shed tears of anger and pain, and then as planned beforehand, they each left to their appointed duties.

  T
he Revolution had begun.

  Ryan watched, waited.

  Wondering when it would come.

  The betrayal.

  Who would sell them out? Would it be his best friend? Or his supposed brother Michael back on Earth? The brother he did not remember. Or maybe himself, even? Ryan knew he was not above caving in at the right pressure. The DOC knew nothing if not how to apply proper “pressure” to get what it wanted. Then what? Would DOC storm troopers swoop down on them and kill them all? They’d done so on other Earth cities before. Many times. He’d seen it in the Old Earth vids. They made no secret of it. They were proud of killing enemies of The Authority. Ryan figured he was sitting pretty high on that list right now. So must his brother. So were Alvy, Manny, Ernie and all the others. And what about Arabella Rashid? Who was she? Where was she? What was she doing here? What was she doing right now?

  Ryan sighed, it had been a good twenty-year run out here. A hard life, to be sure, but to live as a free man meant everything to him. It was especially important if you’d never lived like that before. And the paperbacks were a joy to read. Such wonderful stories and heroes.

  It was all so delightfully strange.

  So unreal.

  And yet that’s the way freedom should be.

  * * * *

  Ryan thought about the message he’d received from his spies. The Resistance was everywhere on Mars. It was everyone on Mars. People told him things. One of the things he heard was about the woman on the President William Jefferson Clinton with the old paperbacks in a box under her bed.

  She’d been seen reading hard-boiled crime fiction. She had a box of paperbacks. Apparently, she had also been reading them on the trip out to Mars from Luna.

  Ryan knew the books were not hers. They just could not be. He wondered where she’d gotten them. He thought about it a while. It was most interesting. He seemed to see his brother’s hand in this. Somehow. He couldn’t quite figure it, but it was the only thing he could come up with.