Mars Needs Books!

by Gary Lovisi

  “Come on, then, there’s more to see in the Fiction Section.”

  “How the hell did you get all these books out here?”

  Ryan shrugged, “A few at a time. I have a contact who buys them up by the ton on Earth. No one seems to care much about them anymore. He gets them usually in more backward third-world districts and sectors where people have been using them for fuel for the last few decades.”

  “Fuel, you mean they burn them?” she said, shocked.

  “Yeah. They need to keep warm, so they burn them. They can’t read. They don’t know or care about books. They don’t understand what they really are. Some people are scared of them. And the Sector and district governments, the DOC, all encourage them to burn them.”

  She looked at him, “It’s all right, I know all about it.”

  “...The DOC, the leaders, keep everyone uneducated and illiterate except the elite. Most Citizens on Earth can’t even read anymore. Oh, they recognize a few words and symbols here and there, but they can’t actually read a complete book. They’re even scared of them now. They think books are dangerous. It is an idea given to them by The DOC. People are terrified of the ideas in books that they don’t understand. But that fear doesn’t stop them from putting any kind of government-approved software into the slot in their head. Or taking the latest fad-drug. They’ll do that and love it as they get themselves more deeply programmed and controlled than the reading of any mere words on paper could ever do, and they don’t even know it. But they’re scared of books. Imagine that? You have no idea how it was out here twenty years ago. The literacy program, I had to begin from scratch....”

  “Did it work, James?”

  “Too well. Now I’ve got a damn planet full of know-it-all scholars and cynical literary critics, avant-garde political theorists and cranky social engineers who argue bibliographic theory. Damn annoying—and damnit—it’s just great!”

  She smiled.

  “So many books!” she said in awe.

  “Yeah, it is a lot. Over a million. We smuggled them out here shipload by shipload. Crates that say ‘vids’ and the latest ‘brain-implants’. What crap! Instead the boxes were full of old paperbacks from LastCen. Paperbacks were sent because they are much lighter to transport than heavier hard covers and much more common. We took all the great old stuff, all genres, and all the non-fiction and fact books we could find. The entire knowledge of our species. The history of our race, Arabella—the human race! It’s all here, at your fingertips just for the asking to be looked at.”

  “How do you access it all?”

  “Computers. Yeah, we’re not Luddites here on Mars. But we use the computer as a tool, it is a productive servant like it was intended to be and like it was used LastCen. It’s not the master on Mars, like it is on Earth now. It has its limited uses as a file system, a roadmap to where any book on any topic by any author could be found anywhere in here. Title, author, subject, and more, all indexed and cross-referenced a hundred ways.”

  She said, “It’s all pretty impressive, James. You’re right, there is nothing at all like this on Earth.”

  “Not anymore,” Ryan said, remembering. “Once there had been thousands of such libraries worldwide in a hundred different languages.”

  Arabella Rashid looked at Ryan carefully.

  Ryan looked back at her and thought, how sad she looked. She looked so very sad. She knows. He thought: She’s going to do it. She’s going to sell me out. I’ve failed.

  Suddenly Ryan felt very tired. The gun in his pocket weighing heavier and heavier in a physical sense, but also in a mental and emotional sense. Meanwhile the seconds passed into minutes quietly. Slowly. Both of them savoring the time. Savoring being with each other. And thinking. What would they do next?

  They stayed there the rest of the day and slept over that night. The library had accommodations for visiting scholars and researchers. A large and fully automated cafeteria, stocked with the latest in pre-processed and hi-tech manufactured foodstuff. It even tasted like the real thing if you weren’t too particular. Scholars on a research bender weren’t that particular about food anyway, they just wanted it to be hot and substantial enough to keep them going. They usually had better, bigger things on their minds than food.

  Ryan understood; still and all, he enjoyed his meal with Arabella Rashid.

  After they’d eaten, they went to bed and made love all night, then slept in exhausted slumber. They slept late to wake next day and shower in the mid-morning.

  Ryan figured he’d done what he came out here to do, shown her what he wanted to show her. She’d seen what she had come to see. The Secret Library of Mars.

  Big deal!

  It would probably all be blown up with tactical nukes soon enough, if Ryan knew the DOC like he knew he did. But he’d done what he’d set out to do. He proved to her that he trusted her. He had foolishly opened himself up to betrayal.

  For her.

  Now it was all up to her.

  “We might as well get an early start back to the port,” he said softly.

  Arabella surprised him when she said, “James, we don’t really have to go back right now, do we?”

  “I guess not. What do you want to do then?”

  She looked back at him almost as if he were a simpleton, “I’ve done a lot of thinking. I don’t want to leave here. I want to stay. And...look around with you. Can we do that? Look around? Together? Read some of the books? Maybe read some of them to each other?”

  Ryan was astonished but very pleased, she seemed genuinely interested. He’d expected secret shock troops from some hidden DOC battleship orbiting the planet to burst in and arrest him any minute. Or perhaps some kind of action taken against him by Arabella herself. Like a bullet in the head. She was certainly capable of such action.

  “What do you want to do? Really?”

  “Look up some of the books in the file. There are some things I’d like to read about. Some truths I want to discover. Or rediscover. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “You want to stay here for a few more hours, I guess. “

  “Well, yeah, but actually I was thinking, why don’t we make a day of it. I wouldn’t even mind a day after that, or even a week out here. But only if you want, baby.”

  Ryan nodded. She had called him ‘baby’ again. He smiled. He liked that. No woman had ever called him that before. He said, “Sure. What’s another day or two, or three....”

  Arabella Rashid said, “A day or two, or maybe three, James. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Yeah, Arabella, it’s no big deal now.”

  “Thanks, James.”

  He put the doom that was hanging over them out of his mind for the moment. They had two-three days—and they’d make the most of it damnit!

  He smiled, “Come on, then, I’ll show you how the files are configured. I set it all up myself years ago. You’ll be able to find anything you want and the servo-robots will bring you the correct book every time. They’ll bring the book right to your desk, room, or even to your bed if you like. Or you can go hunt for it on the shelves yourself. Sometimes that’s even more fun, but I warn you, it’s easy to get sidetracked.”

  Arabella said, “That’s real service, Ryan. Come on. Let’s take another look around first.”

  He thought he had to be dreaming it all. She was back downstairs now, looking up essays on “Noir” and the originators of hard-boiled crime fiction, of all things.

  * * * *

  He’d just showered, shaved, and was getting dressed. He took the gun and deposited it in the waste chute. Goodbye, weapon. He had to take his chance. He’d taken that chance. It looked like he had won. It looked like Mars might win too. A lot of things looked good to him at the moment. But that’s the way things always look, just before things turn bad. He wondered about that. Mars ain’t no state of mind, it’s a real place and ugly reality has a nasty habit of reasserting itself at the oddest moments.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

 
MEMORY WILL ALWAYS PLAY YOU

  It was cool. Arabella Rashid and James Ryan at the secret library. Talking and enjoying themselves, looking through and reading all kinds of fascinating things during the day—having all kinds of fascinating fun and games at night.

  The days passed wonderfully.

  It was a good time for both of them.

  A free time.

  Away from it all.

  Away from politics.

  Away from duty.

  It was too short a time of course, but neither of them would ever forget it.

  They talked a lot about books. She wanted to see one of the rare book rooms. The one with all the hard-boiled vintage era paperbacks.

  “Come on, James,” she said, leading him down the hall, hand in hand. She wore a short mini- dress, she’d told him it was the latest rage-style back on Earth. All very sexually and politically incorrect these days. “You like the way I look?”

  He loved the way she looked. The fact that she’d dressed that way for him was almost too much for him to believe. He didn’t say much about it, but he thought a lot about it. Her. Finally he said, “It’s very nice. You look great.”

  She smiled, she knew it only too well. She said, “You know, it’s not on any of the approved clothing lists.”

  Ryan laughed, “Only on Earth would they have approved clothing and unapproved clothing. Of all the damn stupid things. Do they actually have...?”

  She nodded back to him, “Oh yes. There are laws and they enforce them. Rigorously. It’s been the law for a long time almost as far back as LastCen. Today it’s become mostly custom and fashion. Approved fashion, of course. Unapproved fashion is dangerous, it can lead to a prison term. Or worse. You could be labeled a trouble-maker or an “incorrigible.” That can lead to a Brain-wipe. Reprogramming.”

  Ryan shook his head.

  She told him, “There was this girl, she was a low-level secretary in one of the hundreds of DOC agencies. I didn’t know of her. I certainly did not know her, but I heard it all afterwards. She’d been involved in some kind of clandestine sexual relationship. Actually, it was worse than that, it was a secret marriage! Can you believe that? And in The DOC with another DOC worker. I mean, the guy wasn’t just a Citizen—he was DOC. I think he set her up for a promotion. Then he betrayed her!”

  “Marriage is still outlawed?” Ryan asked.

  “Official DOC policy, and it’s frowned on in the general culture also. And we all know the general culture always follows the lead of the elite’s,” she said in a matter of fact tone.

  He nodded, not surprised at all.

  She continued, “But back to this secretary. She ended up getting secretly married. Some of that kind of thing goes on among citizens and lower-level workers. They know they’ll never rise high no matter how hard they work, so nothing matters to them. They flout the rules. Of course, with good sense, only up to a point. This girl went too far.

  “She was found out, betrayed. She talked of having children. And raising them herself! The general Earth culture frowns on sex. Except for procreation only by the elite, of course. Citizens are the workers and they’re job is to work. And obey. They’re not allowed time for children and raising families. The girl was taken away. Never seen again. I heard later she’d had a complete brain wipe. But the process didn’t work right, it fried her mind. Killed her. Such a waste.”

  Ryan asked, “Did you have anything to do with her disappearance?”

  Arabella Rashid sighed, said, “No, darling, she was so far below my level, you know? I never come into contact with those people. But it was taken care of under my watch. I was essentially responsible.”

  He said, “But could you have done something?”

  She said, “What? Even if I had known. What could I have done?”

  He repeated, “You could have done something to stop it, to help her. To save her. Maybe change the rules?”

  She looked at Ryan, “Darling, I’m the one who makes the rules. I am there to ensure these rules are carried out. DOC’s function is to ensure obedience to those rules from all citizens.”

  “I know,” he said, “I just thought I’d ask.”

  She looked at Ryan closely. She saw his disappointment. Her face was a mask. But inside, deep inside her she felt pain. Such hurt. She was so sorry.

  * * * *

  They reached the Rare Book Room and a sign that said: “Hard-boiled Paperbacks.” It was the biggest RBR in the secret library. Ryan had made it the best of the lot. It was his personal thing. It had one copy of every damn paperback he could find, buy, beg, borrow, steal, smuggle, transship, grab, grope, get, weasel, intimidate, or cajole for his library. Here he displayed, filed, researched, stored, shelved, or collected as much of the classic hard-boiled fiction from LastCen as he could find. Old Baxter Moneybag’s collection simply paled by comparison. Had Baxter but known....

  There was a lot to look at.

  “It’s very impressive,” Arabella Rashid said, looking over a near complete run of rare 1950s Lion paperbacks. There seemed to be only a couple missing, one was #99, and allowed a wry grin. She knew that book well, but she stayed mum about it all for now.

  The books lay shelved with their colorful, garish spines shown in all their wondrous glory. Many were also displayed face-out so the covers could be viewed. “They’re really beautiful books, James. Little pieces of art, like posters. The women.... They’re so....”

  “Vibrant, vivacious, alive,” he said. “Like you.”

  She smiled, actually blushed. He could barely believe such a thing was possible. Or was it just an act? Even now?

  She said, “And the men, they are so strong, so hard, so intent. Just like you.... Just like you were last night, baby.”

  Ryan smiled, said, “You keep talking like that and I’ll end up keeping you awake all night and we won’t get any sleep tonight either.”

  * * * *

  Memory really can play you. Sometimes Ryan wondered what was real and what was fake. What was a lie and what was true? These days it was impossible even to ask those questions. You’re bombarded with government lies and propaganda, your mind and thoughts influenced, if not downright controlled. Sometimes brain implants full of syntha-prop begin in the womb. Inputs are surgically implanted into the fetus. The baby is plugged into supposed “education” software while still in the womb. They don’t waste any time. By the time an Earth child is born he or she is not brainwashed actually—one would wish their techniques were that primitive! By birth the newborn’s mind has already been so conditioned and programmed, charted and controlled, that they are made into the perfect Citizen. Brain dead, accepting, harmless. And helpless, just the way The DOC likes them. And if there’s ever a flaw or problem, bio-link implants and neural chips filled with government approved reinforce womb programming kick in.

  It works only too well.

  Ryan shuddered. That had never existed on Mars and never would while he was in charge. He saw to it that all of that stuff had been reversed and deprogrammed over the last twenty years here. Mars was an entire planet of self-sufficient, in-your-face, angry, independent, free-thinking, incorrigibles with bad attitudes!

  It was wonderful.

  It offered hope.

  But the mind could still play you. The DOC was all-powerful. They played mind games that were mysteries to all. Sometimes Ryan wondered if he really was on Mars at all. Maybe he was lost in some secret DOC virtual program. Was there really a secret library or was it just a thought, a fantasy, from the corner of his mind that Arabella Rashid and The DOC had caused to be brought up to play him? Was there even space travel to Mars yet? Wasn’t he really still back down on Earth? Back in solitary confinement. Naked and alone in the dark. Mumbling to himself. Clutching a copy of that old paperback to his stinking hide and trying to read the words printed on the old dirty paper.

  Now what the hell had been the title of that book?

  He remembered it now.

  Mars Needs Books. />
  Yes, that was it. Macky had told him once that hard-boiled fiction held in it the true seed of American individualism, culture and freedom much like the earlier era represented by western fiction did. That mirrored the attitude that made a country and people great once.

  Ryan had laughed then and told Macky, “There is no America anymore.”

  It was long gone by then.

  A memory now, but Ryan could hardly remember it.

  America had been cut up, divided, walled off. Some states had seceded, other states secluded themselves, cities became Security Districts. The Underpeople, the refuse of the Earth who were too poor and useless to society to bother to brainwash, came to be eventually led by some replicant. Not even a human-being truly, but some pseudo-robo-bio cyborg. His name was Moses Sage. Ryan remembered what Arabella had told him about it. The secret war back on Earth. Moses Sage, and nanotech warriors that he had thought had only been a rumor. Like The DOC was a rumor. The interesting thing was the revolt. It seems that some of the nanotech government knights had defected and had joined Moses Sage in a scheme to free the Underworld.

  Was it true?

  Could he trust Arabella Rashid?

  Or was he being set up?

  Of course.

  It had to be a set-up.

  But why?

  More importantly, by whom?

  If it was not Arabella, if it was not The DOC, then who the hell was behind it?

  Ryan had an ally on Earth. His only ally. His brother.

  Was his own brother the person setting him up?

  Ryan’s brother—who was not his bio-brother, not his true brother at all who had died in the war—shipped him boxes of paperbacks, or so the story went. Over the last twenty years hundreds, if not thousands of boxes of paperbacks had been sent out to Mars. Ryan would trade them with the miners and other men of Mars. There had been many huge crates with tons of paperbacks marked “mining supplies.” These were separate and had been the basis of the secret library.

  They—and Ryan was not sure who they might be—seemed to be allowing him to indulge his paranoia and fantasy here. But why? It seemed that they didn’t really want to destroy the old books, the old knowledge, the truth it all held. Maybe what they really wanted was to get it all off-planet. Off Earth. To keep it safe. Somewhere else. Away from the people who would destroy it. To keep it all somewhere where the masses couldn’t get at it. Where only the elite could get at it. Like on Mars, or maybe where the government and The DOC wouldn’t get at it? Which was it? Why the secret library?