by Gary Lovisi
Arabella Rashid watched it all with the most evident detachment and analytical interest. To all intents and purposes she was just another viewer, as all the DOC specialists, researchers, division directors, sector heads, Board members, executives, commissioners, and other big shots who watched. Calm. Curious. Evaluating. Collating data. Without any feeling inside them at all for the helpless victim. Dead souls with dead spirits viewing with fascination the dying of the only real human being in the room. They were deader than Marsman Iron Mike would ever be once his brave heart stopped beating. They had been long dead before Mike would ever be buried deep in the ground.
All of them were like that, except Arabella Rashid.
She was calm as ice on the outside, just like everyone else.
But she was crying like a child on the inside at what she was forced to witness.
Her spirit was bleeding on the inside with what she saw them doing to that poor man.
But she played her part well.
Her goddamned part!
And she gave the DOC what it wanted.
What it needed most.
What all totalitarian systems need most.
An enemy.
A victim.
A reason to exist.
And Marsman Iron Mike played his part brilliantly.
Like the true hero he was.
He’d studied his script.
Knew it well.
Iron Mike played it all with an energy, a rage, a strength that could never be mere acting. It was, like real, actual truth and undeniable. It was like all of mankind, the very spirit of the human race was pulling together, to push the damned boot heel of totalitarianism off the face of humanity. Then to shove it up its owner’s own damn ass!
Marsman Iron Mike!
Sure, they could hurt him.
They could even kill him.
But they could never win against him.
Marsman Iron Mike was a man in a long line of fighters.
Not all were always heroes.
Not all were always winners.
But they could be. They might be. Surely they were sometimes.
He was like those heroes in the paperbacks on Mars.
Arabella Rashid and James Ryan had read about so many of them.
And now there was Marsman Iron Mike.
Sure, the DOC could hurt him.
Hurt him bad.
And the DOC could kill him.
Any time it wanted.
But the DOC could never win against him.
Because he saw through the DOC and all it was. He saw that plain and simple. Marsman Iron Mike would never give in.
He would fight them always!
The DOC could never win against such a man.
And the thing that drove all the specialists and planners and executives at the DOC so crazy was that they each began to realize it too!
They were just relieved their plan had worked and they had stopped him before it was too late. King of Mars, indeed!
* * * *
More days passed.
The grim work proceeded.
They took him apart piece by piece now. Psychologically, emotionally, and physically. But still, they kept him alive, probing deeper for more information.
Arabella Rashid forced herself to watch it all. To remember it all. Iron Mike deserved that much. It was important that at least one person who was on his side, someone whose heart was breaking for all his suffering, should be there. To see it all. To remember. To be there for him. So that Mike knew, that of all the hundreds of cold and evil faces watching and analyzing and questioning and surmising, there was one there...who cared.
They’d been so thorough. So perfectly bestial. Rohm had actually shone. There would certainly be a promotion for him in this. Maybe others as well. Careers were being made.
They’d pumped Mike full of drugs and later nanotech implants. Drained his mind. Synapse by synapse. Cell by cell. Like cleaning out the rooms of some big old dusty mansion. Bit by bit. Byte by byte. So methodical. Finally there was nothing left. His mind was sterilized. Like before a baby in a womb. Empty.
Except for the fear.
They left him with the fear. And they left him with the brother of fear. Pain.
And when they’d taken all he had in him, all that was left for them to do, there was simply the end. The execution.
DOC scientists administered the lethal injection. It was slow. And very painful. They wanted it that way. Even here his end was being monitored and recorded and simultaneously broadcast over the worldwide Net. It had garnered a stupendous 90% ratings share over the popular month-long series. Education and entertainment for the masses of Earth, par excellence. There were even toys produced, action figures, torture tie-ins. For the kids.
Meanwhile, Mike was dying. It was happening slow, on purpose. After all, there might be the possibility of a death-bed confession. Perhaps some grand pre-death panic, or recriminations, begging, crying, denouncements, something good the media could use. The digital record was ensuring that it was all preserved for later use. Rohm thought that some tears now would certainly be appropriate, or maybe even some good old-time religion, with prayers and all. Calls for mercy, rage, or forgiveness from The Almighty would be a nice touch. It was all good for the show. Grist for the mill.
None of it—none of it!—was to be gotten out of Iron Mike!
And then, just before Mike’s noble heart beat for the very last time, when the torrents of pain and suffering he’d been forced to endure for so many days finally seemed to be over, he looked up at Arabella Rashid and implored her with his eyes.
She went over to him. She bent down to put her face close to his, placing her lips in front of his eyes. She did it so none of the cameras and vids could see. So there was no way for anyone to read her lips. And she silently mouthed the words to him.... “Mars is free!”
It had been their code to let him know he had been successful.
Then before Marsman Iron Mike died, he silently mouthed the words back to her, “...and so are we!”
He died then with a soft smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
GO YOUR OWN WAY
She was one of the new émigrés to Mars. She’d come out legally with the latest group of wives and she sure had a lot of boxes. It took her a full year to get out there. The boxes were all full of old paperbacks. Hard-boiled crime and private eye stuff mostly. All of it from LastCen. She’d liberated a case of delightfully tough James M. Cain, W. R. Burnett, Thomas B. Dewey, Gaylord Dold, and James Hadley Chase paperbacks.
It was her final trip out to Mars. She was there to rejoin her husband. She had come home. Finally.
She was here now as a new settler.
James Ryan met her at the port.
She stood at attention, with her hand over her heart as old man McGregor made sure the Mars World Anthem was played. Loudly. Proudly.
She saluted the Mars Republic flag.
It blazed with stark warning, “Don’t Tread on Me!”
It proclaimed with bold pride, “I’d Rather Starve Than Eat Your Bread!”
It said harsh truth, “TANSTAAFL”—There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch!
That last she had learned was a phrase made popular by a LastCen science fiction writer, of all people. Some guy named Robert A. Heinlein. A man whose work she’d discovered was hard-boiled in its own very special way. She’d brought copies of his Farnham’s Freehold out with her to Mars. A kick-ass book! She saw that the spirit of his work all came together in the Mars Republic flag, which told her boldly, you can go your own way.
That phrase she knew now was the title of an old song by a LastCen Earther rock band known by the curious name, Fleetwood Mac. Whatever a ‘Fleetwood’ or a ‘Mac’ might be?
She passed the new monument to Marsman Iron Mike, it flashed upon the screens. It said, “The King of Mars, we hail our beloved king!”
There was a moment of touching silence.
Then Arabella Ras
hid saw James Ryan and cried as she ran over to embrace him.
They held each other for a long time. Each luxuriating in the warmth of the contact of their flesh, and the burning of their love.
Finally she stopped kissing him and said, “You look good. It’s so good to see you, James.”
“You too,” he murmured between kisses.
“I read a lot of great books on the way out. And you gotta see the paperbacks I brought out, James. You’ll never believe what I got in these boxes.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, James, paperbacks like you would not believe, I mean, I know Mars still needs books, right? Well I brought plenty. I also have something else very special for you, baby. And it ain’t in any of these boxes either.”
She was lovely. He smiled and said, “Well let’s get on home and see what it is. “
Arabella Rashid said with a wink, “Yeah, baby, let’s do just that.”
* * * *
The news came to Michael in ultra-secret digital scramble. As new Director of the Department of Control, he looked at the warning carefully and in alarm. This could not be happening! It simply could not be happening!
The message flashed:
Top Priority! DOC Director! Eyes Only!
Then:
DOC Rebels, under the leadership of the treasonous non-human replicant Moses Sage, have overthrown the Directorship of the Australia Sector and have now come into de facto control of that entire security area....
Authority shock troops have been sent to quell the uprising, but many are in open mutiny....
Untrustworthy! Untrustworthy....
All space platforms have been alerted and targeted strongholds of rebel resistance for immediate destruction. However, the space platforms have become inactive. No reason for this malfunction has yet been determined....
Authority Leadership will take immediate action to regain control but it appears a general planetary uprising has begun and the rebel forces are....
YOUR TRANSMISSION HAS BEEN INTERUPTED.
THERE IS NO FURTHER INFORMATION....
D.O.C. SECURITY CENTRAL....
OUT....
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Lovisi is a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award nominee and Western Writers of America Spur Award winner. His latest books include Bad Girls Need Love Too (Krause), a lovely hardcover showcasing the art of the wildest sexy paperback covers and their outrageous blurbs; Ultra-Boiled (Ramble House), which contains twenty-three of his hardest crime stories; Driving Hell’s Highway (Wildside), a hard surreal noir about a lone man driving the back roads of darkest America; More Secret Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Ramble House), collecting three new longer Holmes pastiches; Gargoyle Nights (Wildside), in which a horrid monster roams the halls of Oldearth’s dead; and Murder of A Bookman (Wildside), where Detective Bentley Hollow investigates murder in the rare book collecting world. Lovisi is the founder of Gryphon Books, editor of Paperback Parade and Hardboiled magazines, and is the sponsor of an annual paperback book collectors show in New York City, now in its 23rd year. To find out more about him his work, or Gryphon Books, visit his web site at www.gryphonbooks.com.
BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY GARY LOVISI
Driving Hell’s Highway: A Crime Novel
Gargoyle Nights: A Collection of Horror
Mars Needs Books!: A Science Fiction Novel
Murder of a Bookman: A Bentley Hollow Collectibles Mystery Novel
