the mixing of regolith with the humidity released by the water treatment plants. It is not unpleasant — it doesn't coat the tongue or clog the nose — but it does take some getting used to. It reminds me of the smell of the art room in my school, where we used to make pots.
There are those who will tell you the tang is a sinister thing, caused by drugs fed into the air supply by the government, a necessary measure to keep the populace docile. I pass a small group of protestors as I walk to the conference centre. They are tall and willowy, the tell-tale sign of Mars-born, raised in gravity less than half that which their genetic heritage designed them to inhabit. They carry placards and banners, which look quaintly old-fashioned beneath the huge advertising screens of the retail district. There is a booming market in air filters — customisable units that you attach to your wall. They claim to 'purify' the air and although their marketing materials make no mention of the spurious claims of the clean-air protestors, they are profiting from the paranoia the protestors foster. Better safe than sorry, seems to be the watchword of most Martians.
If I believed in conspiracies, I might suspect the protestors were funded by the manufacturers, but concluding that one bunch of conspiracy nuts are actually fakes funded by another conspiracy leads down a very deep rabbit hole indeed.
The air is the subtlest of the differences between Mars and Earth. Tourists or short-term
visitors are encouraged to wear weighted boots and belts, to simulate Earth gravity. You are scanned when you arrive and then issued with custom weights tailored to your mass, height and weight distribution. But while they make walking easier, they lull you into a false sense of security, leading you to forget when sitting on or rising from a chair that the rules have changed. On my first day I managed to sit easily enough, but upon pushing myself back into a standing position I shot upright at an alarming speed, lost my balance and collided with the table.
Then there is the sky. Mars may look red from Earth, but from its surface the sky is a rich butterscotch that fades into dark caramel as the sun sets, small and distant. It's counterintuitive, but the warm colour of the sky somehow conjures up a feeling of cold; to look up at the heavens, through the diffraction of the dome, is to remind yourself that the rarefied atmosphere outside this bubble of hot air is 60 degrees below.
The city itself, huddled beneath a diamond sky, is beautiful. Likhachyov, who won the commission to plan and design it after a long winnowing process and a public vote, has used the latest organic construction techniques to force-grow a kind of ground-level skytown; despite the low gravity, the dome restricts the height of buildings, preventing the kind of towering forest effect conjured in the newer cities near the equator. The influence of Gaudi is apparent everywhere, his evocation of nature's fluidity in solid structure now recreated with nature itself. When you look out of the dome towards the horizon, all you see is dust, but the city is an oasis of green, rich and verdant in its very bones. The only thing that betrays its nature is the lack of chlorophyll in the tang of the air — these buildings, though grown, are dead now, their development halted at the appropriate moment, freezing them in place, solidifying their beams and buttresses. They still photosynthesise, but their energy is siphoned away to supplement that provided by the nuclear power stations that lie beyond the horizon, their brutal simplicity hidden from the green gaze of the sinuous city.
I cannot speak to the culture of Barrettown. My press pass restricts my movements to the affluent zone at its very centre. Here, where the bureaucrats and politicos rub shoulders with the representatives of those corporations who have a stake in the Mars project, there is little trace of the melting-pot mentality that reigns outside this enclave within an enclave. Like all cities, Barrettown can be roughly broken into districts with their own personalities. But there are areas where the law is more negotiable, and tourists like me would be at risk. At least, that is what the authorities tell me and since they prevent me exploring 'for my own protection', I must take their word for it. I could speculate there are things occurring in the city proper that the authorities do not wish journalists such as myself to witness, but that is another rabbit hole down which I demur to plunge.
So I come and go between my hotel, the conference centre that is preparing to host the peace conference and a collection of briefing rooms and offices. This is the domain of the unimaginative, the bean-counters, the ambitious and the diplomatic. Everything is bland and efficient. The carpets are plush, the seats are all leather, the fruit plates opulent. In the political heart of this city, everything conspires to make you feel like you are back on Earth, safe in the arms of the old order. Everything feels drearily, dispiritingly familiar.
Everything except the tang of the air and the butterscotch sky.
'Is that what he said?5 asked Kaz.
'Verbatim.'
'What a jerk.'
'You didn't mention the problem with sleeping,' said Dora.
'What problem?' asked Kaz.
Jana took another bite of kiwi, enjoying the sharp sweetness that was leavened, as everything was on Mars, with a subtle undertone of clay. Her stomach protested as she swallowed. She flashed Dora a look intended to communicate 'Shut up and stop embarrassing me', but which apparently communicated 'Go ahead and blab my bedtime secrets'.
'She is a very restless sleeper,' said Dora, gleefully spilling the beans about her room-mate. 'Last night she turned over in bed so violently that she took off! I woke up because she was screaming, and when I looked over at her bed, she was three feet up in the air, tangled in the sheets, waving her arms around like she was fighting off a swarm of bees.'
Jana glared at Kaz. 'Don't crack a smile,' she warned sternly.
Kaz adopted his most serious face. 'Wouldn't dare,' he said.
'So is this the end for Carolyn Geary, travel writer?' asked Kaz.
'Reckon so,' replied Jana. 'The conference starts tomorrow, so that was probably my only shot at getting an article published before it all kicks off. A month getting my cover in place, then a month spent recycling press releases for the BBC, and not even a crappy travelogue piece to show for it.'
'So, wait,' said Dora. 'Do you really want to be a writer?'
Jana squirmed inwardly. She told herself it was the fruit. 'Um, I dunno,' she said. 'Maybe. Kinda. I mean, look, have you thought about what we're going to do if and when we can stop running from Quil? We're in a completely unique position. We can travel in time, people! Think of the books we could write!'
Kaz looked surprised. Dora looked amused.
'No, seriously, think about it,' Jana continued. 'You could write the most realistic historical epics ever. It would be amazing if I could, say, write a book set in Ancient Rome while actually living in Ancient RomeV
'Huh,' said Kaz.
Jana rounded on him. 'What does that mean?' she snapped.
'I just, um, never pictured you as an author. That's not. . .' he trailed away, quelled by Jana's 'shutupshutupshutup' stare.
'So what are you going to do?' she said curtly, folding her arms.
'Win the lottery, buy an island, a Ferrari and a plane, watch a lot of movies and maybe become some kind of spy,' said Kaz.
'A spy?' Jana crammed as much scorn as she could, which was a lot, into her response.
'Yeah,' he said. 'If I needed to get some blueprints or something, I could pop back to before they were put in the supervillain's impregnable safe and take a picture.'
Kaz's face was impassive, so Jana couldn't tell whether he was winding her up or not. She thought about it and decided that she did not believe his answer. This is what he would have told her before Beirut - a boy's dream of being James Bond - but since he had lived through the loss of his mother for a second time there was a weight to him, a seriousness that had not been there before. She didn't call him on it, though; she tutted and muttered 'Boys', before turning to Dora and cocking her head by way of asking the same question.
Dora didn't hesitate. 'I have already been a sp
y, Kaz, and it is less fun than you might think. And I have no artistic ambition, Jana. If you had asked me five years ago what I wanted, I would have said a quiet life, a herd of goats, a husband and children. Now . . She shrugged. 'I would settle for somewhere safe to live, with no one hunting me, looking after my parents as they grow old.'
Jana could think of no rejoinder to that, so she nodded and reached for a plum.
'Ooh, turn it up!' said Kaz, pointing over Jana's shoulder at the screen that dominated the far wall. Jana waved her hand in the gesture that told the TV to unmute, and the sound kicked in to accompany the news footage.
Jana recognised the arrival hall of the Phobos elevator, the place where people and materials disembarked after travelling down from low orbit in a car tethered to a massive carbon nanotube fibre. Despite the size of the fleet that she commanded, which even now hovered above the planet, Quil had been refused permission to land so much as a shuttle, so the elevator was her only route to the conference.
The arrival hall was immense, the size of a cathedral, with rows of thickly twined wooden columns leading into a canopy of interleaving branches.
On the screen Jana could see the rows of dignitaries lined up to receive Quil's delegation. They stood on both sides of a long carpet - blue, not red - that ran from the huge doors of the elevator carriage. Behind the dignitaries were row upon row of soldiers, standing to attention, weapons holstered but noticeable, dressed in orange and brown camouflage kit designed for combat. The message was clear - we may be diplomats, it said, but we have formidable backup in case it's needed.
Jana did not expect Quil to be intimidated.
The elevator doors slid open and a phalanx of Godless soldiers stepped out, marching in formation, rifles held across their chests. These men and women all wore simple black uniforms and an expressionless dull metal face mask. The masks were customised; each displayed a different design - some painted, some etched, some covered in stickers or slogans. Each was unique to the soldier beneath it, the only indication of individuality amongst the otherwise uniform soldiers. The men were all the same height and build as each other, the women likewise, with only the masks to differentiate between them. They stood in stark contrast to the Earth Force soldiers who lined their pathway, impassive but distinctly diverse in terms of height, colour and facial features.
T know I'm not supposed to pick sides, but the Godless freak me out,' muttered Kaz.
'Don't use that word,' snapped Jana without looking at him.
He muttered something that she couldn't make out and chose not to query.
'I wonder if they have blue tattoos under their masks,' said Dora.
Jana shook her head. 'No. The goons we met in 1645 and 2014 were Celts, I'm sure of it. They came from the past; Quil's retro-engineered creations. These are the original models.'
Once the first wave of masked soldiers had passed, a smaller group of people emerged from the elevator. Although their clothes were the same as the foot soldiers who had preceded them, they wore stripes on their shoulders to denote rank and were not marching. Despite these differences, they were similarly uniform in physical type - all the men cut from one cloth, the women from another, and all with customised masks. In the middle of them strode Quil, who did not fit the physical pattern of the soldiers she commanded; she was lithe and tall where they were solid and short. Like her underlings, she also wore a mask, decorated with simple swirls of black, like a monochrome version of Van Gogh's Starry Night. She was a striking figure amid the conformity of the delegation, literally standing head and shoulders above the rest.
The camera zoomed in on her, picking out the brown eyes that stared from behind the metal, and the tumble of black hair that spilled behind it. Quil did not glance left or right, merely carried on walking, sandwiched in between her cohorts, down the long carpet to the doors, out of the building and into the waiting tram. The Earth delegates seemed unsure how to respond to being blanked by the person they stood in line to greet. After a few moments they broke ranks and began to mill about in muted confusion. The soldiers who had stood behind them remained immobile. The camera caught a tram pulling away, heading for the hotel.
'She's here,' said Jana. 'Now the fun really begins.'
She reached for an apple and took a loud, crunchy bite.
Dora greatly disliked her uniform. In keeping with the old- world aesthetic of the hotel, she was required to dress in the manner of a very traditional maid. She had not wanted to be a maid in 1640, and she certainly did not want to be one now, but domestic staff had one thing in common whatever time they lived in - they were practically invisible to the people upon whom they waited. The plain black dress and white pinafore aided anonymity, and she was glad of that. The level of alert in this hotel was as high as it could be, and she didn't want to draw attention to herself.
She had been working in the hotel for a month, and although it was the last thing she wanted to do, she had allowed herself to sink into the rhythm of it. She was good at her job, polite with the guests, did not rise to the outrageous bullying of her line manager and smiled freely and often. She had become the perfect maid - discreet, non-confrontational, patient to a fault, slightly boring but full of goodwill. She was going to be so glad when she could drop the mask and start hitting people again.
Since they had arrived on Mars, Dora and her friends had worked tirelessly to find out about Quil, her war and the situation in which they found themselves. Annoyingly, access to information on Mars was tightly controlled. They had a kind of intranet - a Mars-wide network connecting the four major cities and the smaller outposts - but information coming from Earth, or the colonies and ships further out in the solar system, was tightly policed. A shield of satellites surrounded the planet, with only approved communications passing between Mars and the rest of the system. From what they had been able to glean, the opportunity to construct a new internet from scratch here on Mars had allowed the government to build in controls at the most granular level - while Earth's system remained chaotic and decentralised, Mars's was regulated, centralised and entirely transparent to the authorities. Subversive voices were few, so Dora did not completely trust the information they were able to uncover. Nonetheless, after disregarding the most obvious propaganda, the bare outlines of the war were discernible, and they fitted with the facts Kairos had given them, and those she had established herself some years previously.
Quil was the leader of an army of workers from the outer edges of the solar system. Her army was exclusively composed of corporate clones, specially bred to work in the hostile environments of the asteroid belt and the various stations set up on assorted moons and dwarf planets. Cloning was, if you believed the official line, a simple and uncontroversial matter. Men and women were force-bred and quick-grown to work as miners and asteroid jockeys. They were treated fairly and equitably by the corporations who had given them life, but they had no rights as such. Dora recognised legal slavery when she saw it, but the government stance was that the clones were ungrateful and uppity. There were dark hints that maybe there was some inherent mental instability caused by the cloning process, that they were some hideous swarm of Frankenstein's monsters accidentally unleashed and now good for nothing but extermination. They were creations, property, no different to a tool or a spaceship.
The madness of the clones, their design flaw, was the only explanation offered for the onslaught of the clone army, but Dora didn't believe it. It didn't take much imagination to work out the kind of treatment and conditions these non- people must have received at the hands of their owners, far out in space, away from the prying eyes of do-gooders.
In 2156 Dora had seen Quil's videos, read the revelations she had unleashed via the Earth press. But here on Mars, two years later, she could uncover no record of those reports at all. Maybe they had never reached Barrettown, or maybe history was being rewritten.
A revolution of some sort had probably been inevitable, and almost certainly doomed. The corporations would
have had strong measures in place to keep the clones quiescent, they weren't stupid, they would have known the risks. Dora guessed Quil was the wild card, the element in the mix that the corporations hadn't seen coming. Somehow she'd persuaded the clones to unify behind her, had provided leadership and tipped the balance. But how, and why?
Quil was an enigma. While all the other soldiers in her army were iterations of the same basic male or female templates, identical in all ways, Quil was not. There was no indication that she was a clone at all, so there was great confusion about why the clones would follow her, and why she would want to lead them. The clones had begun to wear masks, individualised to enable distinction, and Quil had followed suit. There were no pictures of her - at least, none in the public domain. Although she claimed it was a gesture of solidarity with her troops, speculation was rife that she was hiding her face for other reasons. Conspiracy theories abounded - she was a famous master criminal who had been set for execution ten years previously, orchestrator of a miraculous escape, gender-reassigned and out for revenge on the government that had sentenced him; she was an alien, softening up the solar system by inciting civil war preparatory to a full-blown invasion; she was a time traveller from the far future, sent back in time to change the past. Dora kind of liked that one, and briefly wondered if this whole adventure would get so tangled that she or Jana would end up travelling back in time and playing Quil's role to fix some terrible reality-threatening paradox.
Dora hoped not. She was having a hard enough time keeping track of things as it was; she wasn't sure she could cope if things got any more complicated.
The only thing that was certain is that nobody knew who Quil was, where she came from, or why she was leading this army. Her objectives were obscure, her endgame unfathomable. Dora was certain the Earth authorities knew far more than they were telling the populace, but there was no way for her to get to the truth via a screen.
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