“You believe that?”
Her husband settled in his chair as the filtration system began its cycle. “I know the fever for trade with Earth has abated for now—”
“Thank Phobos and Demos,” murmured Lillian. In a funny way, fear and panic were responsible for the cessation of the so-called “Terran Fever.”
“But,” continued Geoffrey, “that just means we need to find a new use for that M-class ship they started building. Once things are back to normal.”
“There’s always Raiding,” said Lillian, lacing her tone with sarcasm.
“There would be,” acknowledged her husband, his own tone calm as always, “if a certain botanist in Plan Ag wasn’t a certified genius who is going to finally crack the code on edible Mars-grown food.”
Lillian shook her head. “I can’t do it alone.”
“That’s why we’re moving to your office instead of mine. You need to get to know all your colleagues the way you know your partner from Aphrodite Lab.”
“Hmmph,” grunted Lillian. But she agreed. It was time Plan Ag started functioning as a single team instead of as individual units prevented from sharing information with one another out of some ridiculous notion that someone might actually influence someone else’s research. “Are you sure you want to live with a bunch of green thumbs?”
“No,” said Geoffrey. “But I’m sure I want to live with you. And Planetary Agriculture has the highest levels of humidity of any enclosure on Mars. It will do your lungs a world of good.”
Lillian ran a hand absently across her chest. Her dry lung flare-ups would decrease, living twenty-four hours, thirty-eight minutes a day surrounded by green stuff.
The cleaning cycle spun to an end, but neither of the two made any move to leave.
“Do you think it’s serious, with this Pavel fellow?” asked Lillian, changing the subject.
“I think he’s completely smitten.” Geoffrey grinned. “I mean, what’s not to love?”
“So what happens if MCC sends a ship back for them in a few annums’ time?”
Geoffrey shrugged. “I think the boy gets on that ship and learns to live like a Marsian.”
“You think she’ll ask him?”
“To marry her?”
Lillian nodded.
“She might. Stranger things have happened.”
Lillian smiled. “Like you asking me.”
“I never claimed to be a conventional Marsian.”
No, thought Lillian. If Ethan got his quirks from one of them, it was definitely Geoffrey.
“You still glad you asked me?” she asked.
“You still glad you said yes?”
The two smiled at one another across the room that had seen dozens of birthdays, anniversaries, festivals — the room they were about to leave for who knew how long.
“You know,” said Lillian, “Crustegard turning me down was the second best thing that ever happened to me.”
“And the best?”
“The best was you asking me to start a family.”
“Let’s start the next phase of our lives together,” said Geoffrey.
Lillian nodded, but she looked around her home, eyes blinking rapidly.
“Hey,” said Geoffrey, his voice soft and reassuring. “A hab isn’t where the memories live.” He tapped his chest, pointed to hers. “Here, in our hearts, that is where our memories live. Wherever we may wander, we carry those memories, and by extension our kids, along with us.”
“Okay,” said Lillian, her breath hitching on the single word. She took a slow breath. In. Out. Then she rose and crossed to the front airlock. “Okay.”
The two suited up, ran the airlock cycle one final time, and walked outside together to the generator that powered their hab.
“To new beginnings,” said Geoffrey, authorizing the shut down of all systems except those required to keep Mars’s low atmospheric pressure from crushing the hab.
“New beginnings,” said Lillian, nodding.
6
Madeira, Earth
If Brian Wallace was to be believed, quiet, studious Kazuko Zaifa, PhD, had uttered no more than a dozen sentences on the isle of Madeira since Ethan’s departure. But it was Kazuko who suggested a way forward in the ongoing effort to thwart Chancellor Lucca Brezhnaya. The islands of Madeira were under a sort of military rule at present, courtesy of the Chancellor. The Clan Chief, Cameron Wallace, did what she could to make life difficult for the government personnel now swarming Funchal’s harbor. Unfortunately, Cameron’s threats could not keep Lucca’s soldiers entirely out of the Clan Wallace castle.
“They’re a festering nuisance,” grumbled Cameron over a breakfast of smoked fish and porridge in the castle’s Great Hall.
Harpreet, Kipper, Brian, and Kazuko had joined Cameron for the meal, as they did whenever the soldiers were absent.
“I believe it may be possible for us to push back against the Chancellor,” announced Kazuko.
“I’d like to bloody push her off a high cliff,” muttered Brian.
“Daughter,” said Harpreet to Kazuko, “pray tell us your idea.”
“It has to do with you, actually,” replied Kazuko.
Harpreet raised her brows, curious.
“I was not the only friend you made in New Timbuktu,” Kazuko said to Harpreet.
Harpreet sighed. “I think often of those we left behind in the Chancellor’s private jail. I’ve even considered returning to bring them the balm of encouragement.”
Brian shot a dark glance at Harpreet, perhaps in hopes she would admit she was joking.
She didn’t appear to be.
“A visit would be possible, in theory,” said Kazuko, who took Harpreet seriously. “But I wouldn’t recommend it. It should be feasible to arrange communication from here.”
The Marsian woman nodded as she placed her fork and knife carefully on her plate, her meal of two tiny smoked fish completed. “Much as we’ve done with our Lunar friends,” she said. “Your ability to encrypt comms is impressive, daughter. We are fortunate you have not chosen to return to work for the Chancellor.”
“I value my life too much for that,” said Kazuko, not realizing Harpreet was joking. It was a trait Kazuko shared with Ethan, whom she missed more than she cared to admit to herself. Kazuko continued. “I believe renewing old friendships within the compound at New Timbuktu would be prudent. Lucca doesn’t leave valuable assets within the jail indefinitely—”
“Kills ‘em or frees ‘em, ye mean,” muttered Brian Wallace, helping himself to the last of the smoked fish.
“Indeed,” agreed Kazuko. “And many of them intend to quietly work against the Chancellor and her government should they be returned to civilian life. These, we should approach.”
“Aye,” said Brian, chewing thoughtfully. “A bit like taking out a writ of insurance.”
“It would be a kindness as well, to renew our friendship with those both in and out of New Timbuktu’s walls,” replied Harpreet. “And of no small benefit to our souls.”
“Of course,” agreed Cameron. “But I hope ye’ll allow me to regard things from a more practical perspective: any enemy of Lucca Brezhnaya is a friend of mine.”
Brian chimed in. “A friend who may, should they find themselves one day free and able, be willing to do us a good turn.”
“Assuming ye can confirm they’re worthy of trust,” said Cameron.
Kazuko laughed softly, a rarely heard sound.
Harpreet, smiling, assured Lady Wallace. “It was child’s play to determine which individuals were trustworthy and which were not during my time in New Timbuktu.”
“We need friends,” said Kipper, rising from her breakfast. “Mars is a long, long way from here.”
“Indeed, Cassondra,” said Harpreet, addressing Kipper by her given name. “Well, then, Kazuko, let us, you and I, see if we can find some old friends from our days of incarceration. And let us see if they would like to assist us in, as you said, pushing back against the Ch
ancellor.”
~ ~ ~
Jamie, the sergeant-at-arms for Madeira’s Clan Chief Cameron Wallace, was able to assist Kazuko and Harpreet in discreetly re-establishing communication with several old friends, some of whom were no longer in jail but had been placed back into active service under the Chancellor.
“Not all of those who serve Lucca do so willingly,” observed Kazuko, after finishing an encrypted comm-call with one of her former acquaintances.
“It is good to have friends,” said Harpreet, smiling. “You never know when they’ll be the saving of you.”
7
Tranquility Base, the Terran Moon
The Ghost was a fairly sanguine being. He was able to do what he liked, mostly. In fact, there was really only one thing the Ghost didn't much care for, and that, he declared from time to time in the hearing of his friend Jumble, was living. Toward other aspects of his existence, he was favorably disposed. Only living bothered him. Jumble raised his brows and shook his head when the Ghost spoke like this. Had the Ghost shared his actual age with Jumble, perhaps Jumble would have been more understanding. Almost anyone would be tired of living after three hundred years of it. Anyone except Sister.
There were, of course, subcategories of “living” that the Ghost found distasteful. For instance, he did not like to sleep. “A colossal waste of time,” he would say to Jumble. The Ghost claimed he’d trained his last several bodies to get by with less than three hour’s rest per day. If Jumble knew anything different as concerned the Ghost’s actual sleeping habits, he kept what he knew to himself.
In addition, the Ghost found eating distasteful. “All that mastication,” he muttered to Jumble. “It's disgusting.” He had settled upon ration bars as the most convenient way to keep eating to a bare minimum. Consequently, he had several lifetimes’ supplies of ration bars on his Lunar base, where, unlike aboard a space station, storage was ample. He kept telling Jumble he didn't need more rations, but Jumble shrugged and sent deliveries every couple of months regardless.
The Ghost cared deeply for humanity, something he shared in common with Sister, and this was the reason he forced himself to soldier on with living. Assisting those who needed help was deeply satisfying. It was, quite literally, what he lived for. This was not to say that the Ghost valued interactions with individual humans; he didn’t. Sister, he was fond of. Jumble he tolerated. And while the Ghost had often intoned that a friend of Jumble's was a friend of his, he had yet to interact with any of these “friends.”
He was contemplating making a change to that condition.
The latest of these friends had all but taken over the Ghost’s cozy little nest on the Moon’s Tranquility Base. They slept away a prodigious amount of their lives and, at this rate, they would lose years of their total lives to sleep. And the Ghost suspected none of them had a sister who insisted they re-body every eighteen years even when they’d outlived their requisite four re-bodies.
The Ghost considered suggesting they refrain from sleeping and losing all those years. This, he supposed, would have been the action of a friend, but it would additionally have meant establishing communication with the group, and the more he thought it over, the more he really didn’t think he was ready for that.
The Ghost had Jumble, and the Ghost had Sister, and that had always been enough for him. It had been over half a re-body since Sister had spoken with him, but the Ghost knew very well that speaking wasn’t a true measure of closeness. The two had shared one womb, dozens of bodies ago, fraternal twins alike in little else save their origin. Well, both brilliant, of course, and both dedicated to saving humanity.
Sister kept herself busy on Earth, caring for those who would otherwise have suffered untold difficulties, and the Ghost kept himself busy in space, caring for Earth’s concerns from afar. That was the way he liked it. Besides, his most important task, preventing an attack from the bellicose Martians, could be better accomplished from space.
The Ghost took very seriously his duty to warn Sister when a ship from the red planet made an incursion into Terran space. But of late, the Ghost had begun to wonder if she received the reports he filed at all. There were so many layers of people between the two of them, nowadays. Or it might have been the case that she received the reports but doubted their veracity.
“Just another Terran who doesn’t believe Martians exist anymore,” he said of Sister during his gloomier moments. Nonetheless, he reported the visits, which came nearly every forty years.
Until this year.
The Ghost had reported two visits from Mars this year, about a decade ahead of their usual forty years. It did not bode well. Moreover, his warnings to Sister of these incursions had gone unanswered, a sure sign his messages weren’t getting through any more. Was she not the one who had first warned him about the hostile nature of the Martians?
It was almost enough to make him pay a visit to Sister planet-side. Almost, but not quite.
When the Martians sent their armada of death, he would certainly make haste to pay Sister a visit. Until then, he would bide his time above the blue and white planet, ever watchful. The invaders would not catch him napping.
Occasionally, this or that distracted him from his watch duty. Most recently, there had been that troublesome mess of station 92-AE for him to put right. In a rare occurrence, Sister had commed him personally about it. She’d been in a bit of a rage, even. The Ghost had had to calm her down. Fortunately, he had completed the needed repairs just hours before Sister had contacted him.
The Ghost stared in the direction of the sleeping crew of friends-of-Jumble. Perhaps he should zip back to the space station and avoid all potential encounters. But that would mean leaving Tranquility Base in the care of the careless ones.
Besides, he found himself more than normally curious about these guests who were neither spacers nor harvesters and yet chose to live off-planet. Which was more than Jumble had ever done. Perhaps they were more like the Ghost. Perhaps they were soul-mates.
He would stay and find out more about them. Maybe even greet them one day. Jumble was always saying you couldn’t have too many friends. Perhaps the Ghost could even recruit these guests to assist him in watching out for the Martian invasion. He wasn’t planning on living forever, after all, whatever Sister said to the contrary.
8
Tranquility Base, the Terran Moon
Jessamyn walked silently along the corridor leading from the sleeping quarters. Or, rather, she bounded silently. She was as adjusted to life on the Moon as she ever expected to be. The crew of four fugitives was using a shift rotation that gave her lots of alone time with Pavel. In fact, she was actually craving a bit of alone time alone, which had driven her to rise earlier than usual today. If only she had a planet hopper to take out on a quick flight. A familiar ache crawled through her belly.
Her mind ran through the message she planned to send to her parents if all went well for the upcoming window of transmissions to MCC. The Raiders would send messages that had been pre-composed, of course, but Jessamyn was additionally budgeted a precious five minutes to speak with her parents, assuming they had survived the satellite attacks. Assuming anyone had survived. Jessamyn was determined to act as though they had until a comm told her otherwise.
She was deep in thought of Mars and its red valleys, its golden plains, when she turned a corner and found a stranger seated at her work station in semi-darkness.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
“Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.”
Jessamyn’s eyebrows rose. The answer itself was odd. But the cracked voice uttering it was completely unfamiliar. The possibility of encountering a stranger caught her off guard. “Huh?” she said.
“No,” replied the stranger. “You should say, ‘Long live the king,’ next.”
“Why would I say that?” asked Jessamyn. Whoever was in this room with her, he didn’t seem dangerous. Or entirely intelligent, for that matter.
The stranger sigh
ed heavily before speaking. “You weren’t quoting Hamlet?”
“Hamlet?”
“Yes. The play. Will Shakespeare. You weren’t quoting from it?”
Jessamyn peered into the darkened room. “No, as a matter of fact.”
“It would have been more interesting if you had been,” said the stranger. “I assumed you were.”
“Sorry.” Jessamyn wasn’t sure an apology was necessary, but the strange man seemed so downcast with her answer.
“You’re probably not very interesting to begin with. I’m sure it’s not your fault,” said the stranger. “I saw Hamlet on your desk, so I thought….” The stranger didn’t complete his sentence.
Jessamyn’s eyes flicked to her desk. There was, indeed, a copy of Hamlet at the work station. What else had the stranger been looking at?
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Friend of Jumble’s,” came the response. “Thus, a friend of yours. Because, you know, any friend of Jumble’s.…” The stranger broke off as if uncertain he had spoken with accuracy.
“Jumble is my friend. Well, he’s Pavel’s friend, anyway.”
“And Pavel is your friend?”
“Yes.” Jess felt her cheeks flushing with warmth. Friend was a bit of an understatement.
“Well, then, we’re friends. You. And me. On friendly terms.”
“Okay,” said Jess. And then, feeling confused, she asked her question a second time. “So, what did you say your name was, exactly?”
“I didn’t say. Not exactly. Nor precisely. Nor in any way at all.”
Feeling a flash of impatience with the odd man, Jess channeled her inner Harpreet. “I’m Jessamyn. What may I call you?”
“Yevgeny is my given name. No one calls me by that anymore. Not for ages and ages.”
“What does Jumble call you?”
“The Ghost.”
The name was spoken in so forlorn a tone that Jessamyn felt she ought to offer condolences or sympathy of some kind.
“I’ve heard of you,” was all she said. Then she added. “We’ve spoken, actually. It was me and my friends you let stay on the space station.”
Striking Mars (The Saving Mars Series-5) Page 3
