Losing Mars (Saving Mars Series-3)

by Swanson, Cidney

  She took the coffee and kifli and departed. The kávé smelled much better than tea, Jess noted. It smelled intoxicatingly good, in fact. She held the small cup just below her nose, inhaling the scent as she searched for a place to sit. Finding a small opening in the long wall opposite the hospital, Jessamyn settled herself on a stair tread after brushing away a few pebbles. She balanced the kifli upon her knees and held the coffee with both hands, breathing the rich aroma.

  Unfortunately, its taste did not exactly match with its wondrous smell, at least in Jessamyn’s estimation. She took a few swallows of the bitter brew before abandoning it in favor of the dry ration. The crescent was still warm, she noted as she tore a small piece of kifli. Powdered sugar (she’d had to ask what it was) spilled like snow across her pant-legs. Annoyed, she swiped at the mess. Just then, the door of the hospital swung aside.

  Jess watched as a man and woman exited the building. One of them seemed to remember something—Jess couldn’t quite hear their words from across the street. The woman returned to the building while the man waited. She didn’t scan in. Jessamyn felt relieved. The building wasn’t secured against visitors, then.

  For the next hour, no one else came to the door or exited the building. Beside Jessamyn, a sort of evening ration café opened as the sun set. She wished it had opened earlier. Her backside had gone all pins-and-needles several times from sitting on the hard stairs. She grabbed a table along the sidewalk and continued her surveillance of the hospital building. But there was nothing to be seen. The sky faded into a purply color and then grew dark, and no one came to or went from the clinic in all that time.

  At last a threebody exited the building. He hesitated before the door for several seconds before turning and walking briskly away. She caught enough of a glimpse to be sure she’d just seen Dr. Ruchenko, the head of the clinic’s hospital staff. Pavel had shown her his picture before she’d left Yucca. Ruchenko kept late hours. He might have been placing some kind of lock in effect as he’d paused at the door.

  The café waitress was circling in a way that suggested to Jess she was no longer welcome to remain at the table without making further purchases. Jess had seen this sort of hovering behavior at the New Houston Fountain during peak hours, and she rose to depart. But as she paused to slip her hands inside a pair of light gloves, Jessamyn saw the clinic door push open again. A fourbody, dashing out, ran toward the entrance of a nearby park.

  As Jessamyn looked on, the fourbody came dashing back carrying what looked like a child’s stuffed animal. It was the woman’s gait that made Jessamyn lean forward, her breath held tight. There was no mistaking the soldierly fashion in which the woman moved. Oncoming headlights caught the fourbody’s face. Jessamyn gasped. Those eyes! Jess knew those eyes just as she knew the long-legged stride, the military bearing. The door latched shut, closing off from the street the sound of a wailing child or two.

  Could it be her captain? Or was this merely someone in Kipper’s body?

  21

  CANDY TO CHILDREN

  Gaspar Bonaparte was no fool. He’d waited ‘til the cool of three o’clock in the morning to depart Yucca. Inside the old woman’s body, he wandered far from the enclave of dissenter-Terrans before calling for a ship to retrieve him. The ship brought not only a means of escape but also Gaspar’s own body and a competent transfer surgeon so that Gaspar would be able to present himself to the Chancellor from within his own skin. The transfer went well. When the physician asked what ought to be done with the old woman’s body, Gaspar shrugged and thought for a moment.

  “Locate a pack of jackals and return the body to the desert. It’s what she would have wanted.”

  Within six hours of his transfer, the skilled impersonator was received once again into the Chancellor’s office.

  “Please keep in mind,” began Gaspar, “that this initial visit was only to locate a person who has excellent access to both the persons in whom you have such an interest.”

  “And have you located such a person?” asked the Chancellor.

  Gaspar beamed. “I have. Oh, yes, I have! A young man who has not only befriended the Martian, but who spends large portions of each day with your, ah, nephew.”

  Lucca felt a scowl forming upon her face. Everything inside her ached to bring Pavel in now and interrogate him—to make him suffer as he’d made her suffer. How could he abandon her so easily, after all she’d done for him? The Chancellor took a calming breath. She would have all the time in the world to deal with her nephew, presently. But right now, she needed accurate information from the Martian interloper. And Gaspar could provide this. She felt herself calming and turned once more to her operative.

  “This is most welcome news,” said the Chancellor. “I would like you to focus upon three main avenues of inquiry.” She outlined for Gaspar those things she was most eager to learn about Mars and its condition, its plans for the future.

  “Simple as offering candy to children,” he said, winking at the Chancellor.

  She considered him for a long, silent moment. “We are not friends, Mr. Bonaparte. I am your employer. I am the person who holds your petty life in the palm of her hand. You will refrain from such familiarities as winks. Am I understood?”

  Gaspar’s face drained of all color as he stammered out a request for forgiveness. “In preparing for an anticipated role, I sometimes begin too early. The young man I am going to impersonate winks and grins frequently.”

  Lucca chose to forgive the useful man before her. “Very well. You’ve chosen your identity. May I assume you have a plausible means of luring the young man away for unbodying?”

  Gaspar Bonaparte smiled, stopping himself before reaching a grin. “Everything has been set in motion already.”

  22

  LOVELIEST NAME

  Jessamyn spent the night restless. Her mind told stories as to why Kipper might have awakened from a coma or been abandoned by Lucca or have altered her features or have died and had someone else placed in her body. The rationalizations, the fears, the possibilities rolled in one after the other, like ocean breakers. Sleep was an impossibility, even though she’d stayed awake through her body’s “night” to get here. When the first stars began to wink out in the east, Jessamyn gave up trying to fall asleep and rose, walking to the same café, hoping it would open early.

  It did open early. And Jessamyn was not the only one seeking Budapesti kávé and kifli to start the day. She shuffled forward through the line, half of a mind to simply stalk the building around the corner on an empty stomach. But in addition to feeling hungry, she was also perilously tired. She’d heard Brian Wallace sing the praises of coffee in relation to alertness. She needed to be alert today. She stayed in the line.

  “You see?” remarked the girl at the check out. “You are converted from tea drinker to kávé drinker, yes?”

  Jess felt exposed: the girl recognized her. Reflexively, Jess tugged her hood forward to conceal her visage. She didn’t respond to the cashier who had already moved on to assist the next customer.

  Shoving past the still-growing line outside, Jess made her way to the stairs where she’d rested yesterday. But as she was about to seat herself, it occurred to her that someone from yesterday might recognize her as had the girl at the café. She moved farther down the street, seeking a different location from which she could observe the clinic.

  The door of the hospital pushed open, disgorging an elderly man—no, Jessamyn reminded herself—a twobody man. He emerged from the structure with a group of ten children trailing behind him. All clutched a rope attached to the twobody’s waist. He carried one small child. A fourbody trailed behind him, carrying another child whose head lolled precariously to one side. Was it the same fourbody from yesterday? The woman adjusted the child upon her hip. The fourbody was rail-thin. Marsian-thin. Even the wiry citizens of Yucca had bodies more substantial than those from Mars.

  It had to be Kipper! Jessamyn felt certain of it as she watched the fourbody from behind. Many
things could be disguised, Jessamyn knew, but the way a person walked was not one of them. That fourbody walked like Captain Kipling. Well, like Kip with a toddler on one hip. Jess swallowed a snorting sound that tried to escape and shoved the rest of the kifli into her mouth. It was too sweet and she almost gagged. She took a swift drink of coffee, noting that the drink’s true virtue was its ability to combat the effect of a too-sweet ration.

  Rising, Jess followed the chain of two adults and ten children from the opposite side of the street. How long would it take for Kipper to recognize Jess if she approached? Jess knew her clothing would make her appear just another Budapesti Terran. She would need to make eye contact in order to be recognized.

  It was Kipper, wasn’t it? Jessamyn tried to come up with scenarios whereby the woman inside Kipper’s body, who walked just like the captain, was not in fact the captain. She couldn’t come up with any such scenarios. Of course, she was sleep-deprived and full of caffeine. And she wanted it to be true so badly.

  Watch and wait, she told herself.

  The small party trundled around a corner and Jess crossed the street to keep them in view. They were heading to an area of green grass enclosed all about by an ornamental fence made of a dark metal. Wrought iron. Jessamyn’s mind supplied the phrase from some book she must’ve read.

  Taking another sip from her coffee cup, she decided it improved upon acquaintance. Jess entered the grassed-in area—a park—and strolled past the group of children, now seating themselves in an uneven approximation of a circle. Finding an ancient tree whose girth was many times her own, Jess leaned against it, seating herself on the soft cushion of grass.

  Watch and wait, Jaarda, she repeated.

  The children played a game which involved tossing a small red ball from person to person. Occasionally a child would throw the ball too far and Kipper—Jess grew more and more certain it was her—would rise to retrieve it. When this game concluded, the children’s circle tightened and Jess saw Kipper reaching for a sort of wafer. She was going to read a story, it appeared.

  “We want Something Wicked This Way Comes,” called one of the older children, a boy of perhaps six annums.

  Eleven or twelve years, Jess corrected herself.

  “Hush,” said the twobody.

  “That one gave you all dreadful nightmares,” said the fourbody woman. “Dr. Ruchenko was very upset with me, and I promised him I would not read any more scary stories.”

  “I didn’t have nightmares,” declared the boy who’d asked for the tale.

  A chorus of, “I did!” followed his statement, although several of those who’d been scared added that it had been worth it.

  Jess smiled from behind her tree. The Ray Bradbury novel had terrified her as a child as well, and she’d read it again and again to enjoy the shivers of horror late at night.

  The children continued to insist upon another scary story and the woman finally shushed them all with a promise to read something by the same author. Jessamyn’s ears pricked as she heard the opening lines of one of her favorite short stories, The Rocket. It held no terror, as Jess recollected, but it painted perfectly the deep longing for stars and space travel which nestled in the human heart—or at least in her very human heart.

  She had to wipe away several tears as Kipper (Jess couldn’t help but think of her as Kipper) read the final lines, and it might have been her imagination, but she thought her captain’s voice shook just a bit when she read the eloquent section that described the rocket’s journey.

  The children clapped and began to play another game where they threw a disc shaped like a flat ring instead of the red ball. The disc hovered across greater distances when the children threw it, and their circle had been enlarged accordingly. Once again, if a child threw the disc outside the circle, the children had to wait for the adults to retrieve it.

  And then it happened. The boy who’d begged for Something Wicked threw the disc so hard that it sailed to a spot just beyond Jessamyn’s tree. Jess’s breath caught as she saw Kipper striding toward the tree to retrieve the lost disc.

  When Cassondra Kiplinger’s body stood only two arm-lengths from Jessamyn’s, Jess cleared her throat and spoke.

  “The story was lovely,” she said, hoping to attract Kip’s attention.

  Kipper, intent upon the object, aware of the children urging her to hurry, merely grunted in agreement. But something made her glance up as she walked past Jessamyn on her return.

  And then Kipper’s eyes flew wide.

  Jess nodded very slightly. It could have been a nod of greeting. It could have been a confirmation of her identity: Yes, I am who you think I am.

  A child who’d grown impatient broke from the circle and ran to snatch the disc from Kipper’s trembling hand.

  “You’re a skinny-bones,” said the child to Jessamyn. “Just like her.” The child pointed to Kipper. “Your hair matches your eyebrows. I think your eyebrows are ugly. You’re as old as my grandmother and she’s oldy-moldy-as-dirt.”

  Jess giggled. Kipper scolded. The child continued talking to Jess.

  “I’m Mischka. Who are you?”

  Jessamyn knelt beside the dark-haired little boy. “I’m Jessamyn,” she said softly. “Jessamyn Harpreet Jaarda.”

  “That’s a stupid name,” said the boy, seizing the disc from Kipper’s hand and dashing back to the circle with much victorious crowing.

  “It’s not a stupid name,” stuttered Kipper. She put a hand to her temple and seemed to lose her balance momentarily. “It’s the loveliest name I’ve heard in a very long while, in fact.” She held Jessamyn’s eyes in a brief and fierce glance before turning her eyes back to the waiting circle of children. “I have to get back … please, wait here,” she broke off uncertainly. “Please wait. I’m thinking—I’ll think of something.”

  A howl rose from the circle of children. Kipper looked over her shoulder and then back at Jessamyn. “Don’t leave!” she whispered. Then she dashed back to the howling child who had crumpled to the ground.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” said Kipper. She reached for one of the child’s small hands and with her own hands traced soft circles along the tiny palm. The child’s howl subsided to a squeal and then a moan. Kipper continued running a thumb round and round the child’s palm. At last the little girl seemed to fall asleep.

  “Take her back,” Kipper said to the twobody beside her. “She just needs to sleep it off. Get her hydrated.”

  Jessamyn saw the furrow in her former captain’s brow. Was Kipper worried about the child? Was it for show? Or was the worry on Kip’s face because she didn’t know how to arrange the chance to speak with her first officer?

  Jess stepped forward. “Looks like you could use some help,” she said, gazing at the milling children.

  The boy who’d called Jessamyn names now stuck out his lower lip and glared at her.

  “It’s time for giving back,” said Kipper to the children.

  Jessamyn raised an eyebrow. Giving what back?

  Several of Kipper’s small charges groaned but two dashed off to where Jessamyn’s coffee cup lay forgotten beside the tree.

  “It’s mine!” cried one child.

  “I saw it first!” shouted the other one.

  As they argued and tugged at the cup, the covering lid detached and drifted toward the ground. A third child dashed forward and snatched the lid, causing the first two to give chase.

  “Seven,” murmured a small girl as she squatted to gather a crumpled bit of paper from the grass. This, she shoved inside a small satchel strung over her shoulder. “Eight.”

  “They’ll be at it a few more minutes,” said Kipper, who now stood beside Jessamyn. “Some of them have figured out they can extend park-time if they pretend they can’t find a tenth bit of trash to clean up.”

  Jess nodded. She wanted to ask, “Is it really you?” She wanted to demand tangible proof that Cassondra Kiplinger stood before her. But all she said was, “Oh.”

  “Why h
aven’t you left? Hades, Jaarda, do you know how long it will take to get home now? People could be starving while you and I stand here.”

  Jessamyn’s face flamed red. There was a chance she wasn’t speaking to Kipper, but it sure sounded like the Kip she knew.

  Jess snapped back, “No one’s starving. I did my job.” Then she glared at Kipper and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Skinny-bones!” called Mischka as he ran past the two.

  “You did?” asked Jess’s captain. “Oh.” Jessamyn saw a flicker of hope behind Kipper’s tired eyes. “You came back.” Moisture gathered in Kipper’s eyes and she blinked it back. “The Secretary—she sent you back for me.”

  Jessamyn didn’t see the point in disabusing Kipper of this belief at the moment.

  “Are you alone?” asked Kip.

  “Harpreet and Ethan are here. On Earth, I mean. We’re hiding out in a dissenting community along with Brian Wallace and some others.”

  Several of the children now stood in a line grasping the rope that had led them to the park chanting, “Ten, ten, ten, ten.”

  “They want their ice cream,” murmured Kipper. “I have to take them back now.”

  “Wait,” said Jessamyn. “You’re leaving me here? We have plans to make.”

  The captain frowned, pressed two fingers to her temple, massaging it in slow circles. “Here,” she said, slipping off a back pack. “There’s a child’s blankie inside. Come to the hospital at seven this evening. Say you found the blanket in the park. Ask for me.”

  “Ask for you, how?”

  “Just ask for Cass,” replied Kipper. “I’m known as Nurse Cassondra now.”

  With that, Jessamyn’s captain turned to jog back to gather the stragglers and lead the group back to the hospital. Jess shook her head. “What kind of plan is ‘bring a blanket’?” Was this the behavior of her former captain? Kip seemed so … lost.