by Paul Preuss
“Doesn’t Mars have some natives?”
“Twenty-three kids born on Mars, at last count,” Lydia said. “Not exactly a population explosion, and what’s it been, ten years now? I’m not saying there aren’t good marriages, good companionships, just that they’re pretty rare. But so is jealousy.”
“Jealousy is rare? That’s not the impression I got–the guys in the ’Pine looked ready to take my head off if I looked cross-eyed at a woman.”
“You’re not one of us,” Lydia said simply. “A stranger has to watch his step. Or her step–same goes for a strange woman. Besides, we all thought you were a fink.”
“All of you?”
“Just about everybody in the Porkypine had you pegged for trouble, even if they weren’t sure what kind. We weren’t wrong, either.”
“I’m not admitting anything.” He nodded toward Khalid, who had gotten to his feet and was making his way back to the cab. “Not in front of a witness, anyway.”
Lydia smiled. “Neither would I. They don’t pay you enough to cover the damage you did.”
Khalid’s voice sounded over the suitcomms. “You two seem to be having a lively conversation for this late hour.” He waited outside the truck while Lydia pumped the air down.
“We were talking about an explosion in the motor pool fueling depot a couple of days ago,” said Lydia. “Destroyed some vehicles.”
“Oh?”
Blake could see Khalid outside the cab, eyeing him knowingly through his faceplate. Blake cleared his throat. “There seems to be an odd notion that I had something to do with it.”
The cab door popped on Blake’s side and Khalid climbed in, maneuvering past Blake’s legs.
As he settled himself into his harness Khalid smiled, his perfect teeth gleaming in his dark face. “Remember what fun we had, Blake, that summer in Arizona? Smearing our faces with black shoe polish and blowing things up?”
“Let’s not bore Lydia with tales of our school days, buddy,” said Blake.
“I’m far from bored,” she said.
“We’ll give you the gruesome details later.” Inside his helmet, Blake had turned pink with embarrassment.
All three ran out of words. Lydia revved the big turbines and threw the tread motors into gear. The truck rolled.
Khalid coughed and said, “I didn’t intend to interrupt . . .”
“Yes, please finish what you were saying, Lydia,” Blake said. “About what happened . . .” When he ran out of words again, Khalid gave him an inquiring glance. “. . . the night the plaque was stolen.”
Lydia looked at Khalid. “I was saying that Dare and I were in love. That was pretty obvious to everybody, wasn’t it, Khalid?”
He nodded judiciously.
But she caught his reticence, his hesitation. “Okay. Maybe not so obvious. The truth was that I always loved him more than he loved me,” she said. “He was an independent guy, a lonely guy, and I knew him well enough to know that I couldn’t do more than put a patch on what ailed him.” She fell silent, choosing her words. “But as long as he needed me at all, I put up with it. But in the last week or so before . . . he was murdered . . . it was different. He started avoiding everybody. He was edgy all the time. I took it personally. Because I was insecure, I guess. Anyway, I knew he was working late–he’d been working late every night since that creep Morland showed up–so I went to see him at work. I suppose I had some stupid idea that I was going to give him an ultimatum. As if either of us had a choice . . .”
She was quiet even longer this time. Meanwhile the air pressure in the cab was back to Earth normal. She opened her faceplate, and the men did the same. When she didn’t resume her story, Blake finally broke the silence. “What happened?”
“Dare didn’t want to talk. He apologized for the way he’d been acting, said he’d talk to me later but he couldn’t right then. There was something about the other guy, Morland. He talked as if something about the guy wasn’t right. Anyway, he practically threw me out.”
“And you went?”
“Sure, what else? I sealed up and went outside. I hung around Town Hall awhile, but I couldn’t see Dare inside.” She looked at Khalid and almost said something, but changed her mind. Did he know she’d seen him that night, at that moment?
Lydia sighed. “Anyway, I went out to the port and drank a lot of beer at the ’Pine. I’d been there half an hour or so when somebody told me the news.”
“Do you remember what Dare Chin had against Morland?”
“No. He wouldn’t say.” She stared out at the packed dunes, crosslit by the setting sun. “I’d better concentrate on my driving.”
Blake nodded. The turbines rose another octave in pitch and the tractor leaped ahead, charging the dunes.
Khalid turned thoughtfully to Blake. “Do you know anything about this man Morland?”
“Not a thing, except the official resume. I don’t even know what he looks like.”
“He was an unpleasant person. An arrogant and insincere character. He had a taste for the high life. A heavy drinker.”
“Is that prejudice talking, Khalid?”
“You know me better. I have no objection to the moderate use of alcohol, although I do not use it myself. Morland, however, was an addict. And something else, my friend . . .”
“Yes?”
“I am not convinced that Morland was really the expert on Culture X that he pretended to be. He played his role with great panache–indeed made a spectacle of it. . . .”
“His role?”
“The role of a typical xenoarchaeologist concerned for the preservation of the natural treasures of Mars. Yet when I made reference to certain specific finds–anything that did not directly concern the Martian plaque–his replies were vague.”
“You think he wasn’t an archaeologist?”
“He was an archaeologist, but his interest in Culture X was superficial. Or so it seemed to me.”
“A new interest for him, perhaps.”
“Perhaps,” said Khalid. “Do you know what killed him?”
“Sure, it’s common knowledge, isn’t it? He was shot.”
“With . . . ?”
“A target pistol, a twenty-two.”
“Did you know that Morland bragged of being an excellent pistol shot?”
“Interesting. Does Ellen know that?”
“Our conversation was interrupted. . . .” Khalid paused and abruptly changed the subject. “How far away are we from the target area?” he asked Lydia.
“From the estimated position you gave us, we’re still fifty kilometers away,” she said. “You can read it on the screens.”
“She’s already been out there two days,” Blake said.
“She’ll be all right, Blake,” Khalid said.
“I wish I was as much of an optimist as you.”
“If she regained consciousness, she’ll be all right.”
* * *
Maybe she was all right. They wouldn’t know right away.
Under moonlight, Blake and Khalid stood on the saddle between the lava cones. The wind had been light all day. Sparta’s footprints, and the depressions where the wings and fuselage had rested, were still visible in the sand-dusted ash.
“She is an ingenious person,” said Khalid.
“Lucky, too,” said Blake.
“I’m sure she will be safe.”
They avoided each other’s gaze as they trudged back to the tractor. Lydia had kept the turbines turning.
PART FOUR
PROTT’S LAST CHIP
XIV
Noon in Labyrinth City. The sun was high and the wind was strong out of the west.
The lost marsplane sailed in gracefully and kissed the sandy runway. It rolled a few meters to a stop in front of the Terraforming Project’s hangar. Within moments, ground crew in pressure suits were swarming over it. Sparta pointed at her helmet and shook her head to indicate she had no radio communication. The hangar’s outer doors slowly opened and the crew dragg
ed the plane out of the wind.
Inside, Sparta climbed from the cockpit and ran in loping strides across the expanse of hangar floor. Inside the lock of the ready room, she yanked her faceplate open.
“Khalid is somewhere in the desert,” she said to the startled operations officer behind the counter. “We’ve got to go after him–he’s been out for more than three days. I’ll show you where he left the plane.”
“Dr. Sayeed is safe, Inspector,” the ops officer replied, relaxing a bit. She said, “He was picked up yesterday by a marstruck going to the pipeline head. He told us what happened.”
“So he did find help,” Sparta murmured.
“The people in the truck went looking for you and found that you’d already left.”
Sparta took a moment to pull her helmet all the way off. “Frankly, I didn’t think he could make it.”
“You did the right thing. But if we were in the habit of giving out medals, Khalid would get one. We’ll just throw him a party when he gets back.” The woman smiled at Sparta. “You’re invited.”
“Thanks. Accepted with pleasure.”
The officer had been studying Sparta intently. “We’ve heard stories about your luck, Inspector Troy. What you did, most of us would have said was impossible–over two thousand kilometers without holo, without radio link, without even a compass–and three days ago you’d never flown one of these things at all.”
Sparta shrugged. “I’ve got a knack for machines,” she said huskily.
“Some knack. A knack for navigation, too.”
“No, just a good memory. I’ve been studying maps of Mars for the last two weeks.”
“I’ve been studying maps of Mars most of my adult life. I couldn’t have done what you did.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Sparta said irritably. “It’s amazing what you can do when you have to–look at Khalid.” She fiddled with her suit straps. “Well–I’ve got rather pressing business. Do you need me here?”
A clerk who had been staring at her in admiring awe now suddenly guffawed. The ops officer grinned and pointed at a flatscreen. “See all the blanks on that incident report? If I let you go before they’re all filled in, the locals are liable to arrest me.”
Sparta sighed. “All right.”
The pressure lock had been constantly popping and sighing; the hangar office was crowded with mechanics and other men and women from the ground crew who were eager to get a look at the luckiest woman on three planets.
“What’s the damage assessment?” the ops officer asked one of the men who’d just entered.
“Every unshielded electronic system in the thing is fried, like Dr. Sayeed reported,” the man replied. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Dr. Sayeed said he found something in the autopilot,” the ops officer told Sparta. “A steel sphere about thirty millimeters in diameter. He took it with him.”
“It’s a pulse bomb,” Sparta said.
“What’s a pulse bomb?”
“A very expensive device designed to do just exactly what it did–destroy microcircuitry. Somebody wanted the plane to disappear off the screens, to lose itself in the desert and never be seen again.” And that somebody knows how I’m made and wanted to give me a severe tummy ache, she thought, but she kept it to herself.
“So, this blank that says ’cause of incident’–what do I put in there? Sabotage?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Prott has been trying to reach you for two days,” said the breathless young man at the hotel desk.
“Really?” Sparta thought that a bit odd. “I’ve been away.”
“He hopes you will join him for dinner. Perhaps tonight?”
Sparta needed to see Prott, too, but dinner? Her stomach leaped. The fire in her belly was banked but not dead. “Tonight will be fine.”
“At six-thirty? Mr. Prott will meet you in the Phoenix Lounge for an aperitif.”
She was too weary to argue. What she needed above all was sleep. “All right.”
She pulled the drapes closed and turned off the lights. She stripped off her pressure suit and all her clothes and fell facedown onto the soft bed. Within seconds she was unconscious.
Two hours later she forced herself awake. Dazed and groggy, she dressed herself in her one of her two outfits of civilian clothes. They did not soften her appearance. While she had yet to go into battle in real armor, the yellow net stuff the Space Board issued in case of a fire fight, her slick black pants, tight black top, and high-collared shiny white tunic were armor enough for the social world; they broadcast a blunt message: noli me tangere.
As she sealed the seam of her tunic, the fire under her breastbone seared her again, so severely that she cried out and stumbled to the bed. Within half a minute she knew she could not ignore the persistent attack. She leaned over and reached for the bedside commlink. “I need to talk to somebody at the hospital.”
The ruptured structures in her abdomen were poisoning her. Whatever the risk to her safety, she had to get help from outside.
“You say this was tissue replacement for trauma?” The doctor was peering at a three-dimensional graphic reproduction of Sparta’s guts, concentrating his attention on the dense layers of foreign material spread beneath her diaphragm.
“That’s what I told you, didn’t I?” Sparta had spent a lot of time in clinics and hospitals, and although they were hardly the torture chambers they’d been a mere century before, she hated them.
“What sort of trauma?”
“I was in a ‘ped accident ten years ago. I was sixteen. A drunk driver ran me into a light pole.”
“Your abdomen was punctured?”
“I don’t know that. All I know for sure is that some of my ribs were crushed.”
“Yeah. You’ve got a big staple right in your sternum. Not exactly elegant work, but at least it doesn’t show.”
Sparta grunted. Maybe she wasn’t the nicest patient a doctor might wish for, but this young doctor needed to brush up on his bedside manner, and as for the staple in her sternum, it was elegant enough considered as a microwave oscillator, which is what it really was.
“Well, I don’t know what the hell these people had in mind, but whatever it was it wasn’t such a bright idea,” said the doctor. “That stuff is deteriorating. Your pH is so low it’s practically falling off the scale–no wonder you’re complaining of stomach aches.”
“What can you do?”
“Best thing would be to excise it. We can replace it with modern tissue grafts, if you really need them. Probably you don’t. I’d guess your abdominal structures have already healed themselves. In fact you look in damn good shape except for that foreign gook in there.”
“No operation,” she said. “I don’t have the time.”
“I’m telling you what you’re going to have to face sooner or later. For now we can give you local implants to balance the pH.”
“Good, let’s do it.”
“But I want you back here within two days. You’ve got a complex internal environment. I don’t feel comfortable letting it go unattended.”
“Whatever you say.”
The procedure to insert the subcutaneous implants took ten minutes. When it was over Sparta shivered as she closed her tunic. She tightened the plastic sheath of her jacket around her torso and left the clinic, feeling an irrational attack of loneliness.
Irrational, or merely submerged? As she walked along the wide, green-glass pressure tube that led to the hotel she tried to bring to consciousness a thought, a feeling, that was playing at the edge of her mind.
There was no doubt her implanted polymer batteries were ruptured; she’d been able to interpret the scan with less confusion than the doctor, who didn’t know what he was seeing. The structures were not natural tissue; they would not heal themselves; they were long dead, long gone. They had never been truly alive.
She should have the stuff removed, as the doctor urged. Those gooey battery implants were part of wh
at she resented most about what had been done to her; they were part of what made her other than human, a prisoner of what others had wanted to do with her body.
But lately she had begun to master the arcane power they conferred upon her, the ability to beam radio signals within a wide band of frequencies, which she could use–among other things–to control remote machinery. Action at a distance. Some part of her wanted not to remove the batteries but to have them repaired, replaced.
She was unsettled to recognize this temptation in herself–instead of resentment, a desire–to be more than human. Some controlling, power-seeking part of her did not wish to relinquish the ability to command the material world by fiat, by merely taking thought.
But at the cost of her humanity itself?
This was not the time for these thoughts. She snugged her plastic armor about her and walked faster toward the hotel.
“Mr. Prott? I’m afraid he’s not here just yet. I’ll be happy to show you to a table.”
She looked the place over. The far wall was a sweep of hardened glass looking out upon the Labyrinth, its otherwise sublime view spoiled by reflections. To her right was a long glass bar and glass tables, lighting the customers greenly from below. To the left, in a corner under spotlights, a woman with stiff black hair sat at a synthekord keyboard, crooning smoky old favorites in a fetchingly hoarse voice. The enchanting Kathy.
“All right,” said Sparta.
The waiter took her to a glowing glass table for two with a good view of the entertainment and the scenery. When he asked what she wanted to drink she said water.
She endured the cool and curious glances of the other patrons while she waited for Prott. Approximately every two minutes the waiter reappeared, inquiring if she would care for something else. A drink from the bar? A glass of wine? Another glass of water, perhaps? Would she like to see the hors d’oeuvres tray? Nothing, mademoiselle? You are sure? Certainly . . .
