Another Girl, Another Planet

by Lou Antonelli

  Book Description

  Dave Shuster has been confronted by secret government agents over a photo taken by a Mars lander of a graveyard, complete with crosses, on Mars. Shuster claims that, in an alternate timeline, he was a low-level bureaucrat in the administration of a joint U.S.-Soviet Mars colony when he was caught up in a murder mystery involving the illegal use of robot technology.

  In that timeline, the Cold War took a very different turn—largely influenced by Admiral Robert Heinlein, who was allowed to return to naval service following World War II.

  When Shuster is thrown into a power vacuum immediately upon his arrival on the Mars Colony in 1985, he finds himself fighting a rogue industrialist, using his wits and with some help from unlikely sources in a society infiltrated by the pervasive presence of realistic androids.

  Lou Antonelli

  Smashwords Edition – 2016

  WordFire Press

  wordfirepress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61475-495-4

  ANOTHER GIRL, ANOTHER PLANET

  Copyright © 2017 Lou Antonelli

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover painting by Duong Covers

  Cover design by Adobe Stock

  Art Director Kevin J. Anderson

  Book Design by RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire, Inc.

  PO Box 1840

  Monument, CO 80132

  Contents

  Book Description

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  The End

  About the Author

  If You Liked …

  Other WordFire Press Titles

  Dedication

  For Patricia:

  The only time I’m ever at a loss for words

  is when I try to describe how much you mean to me.

  Acknowledgements

  It is impossible for an author to credit at one time and in one place all the people who helped or inspired his work over the course of many years, but in this case—my first published novel-length work—I would like to thank a few people, including Gardner Dozois, who published my first professional short story in Asimov’s Science Fiction; Jayme Lynn Blaschke, who published my first story, period; John Teehan of Merry Blacksmith Press, who has published two of my short story collections; Ian Randall Strock and Warren Lapine of Fantastic Books, who published the other two collections; and Howard Waldrop, who has been such an inspiration as well as a friend for so long.

  I would like to thank Dave Butler, the acquisitions editor of WordFire Press, and WordFire Publisher Kevin J. Anderson for green-lighting this work.

  Thanks also go to my beta readers: Stoney Compton, John “Lou’s Number One Fan” Husisian, and Gabe Smith, who read this in its early stages and assured me I was on the right track. Thanks, guys!

  Finally, I thank my loving wife Patricia “Neglected Spouse” Antonelli for her patience and support; and my “kids”—Millie, Sugar, and Peltro Antonelli—for putting up with being ignored while I sat glued to the computer, pounding away at the keyboard. Peltro, a Catahoula, was the one usually sitting at my feet and so earns the title of “Faithful Pet.”

  Thanks to everyone for everything.

  Lou Antonelli

  Mount Pleasant, Texas

  Nov. 13, 2016

  Prologue

  There is a small valley ten kilometers from the joint Mars colony, not visible from the surrounding desert, in the heart of the Melas Chasma in the Valles Marineris. As you approach it you will see three crosses—one a traditional Latin cross, and two Celtic crosses. One of the Celtic crosses is next to the Latin cross. The other Celtic cross sits off to the side. It’s obviously a small graveyard. And you’re the first person to see this lonely place since I was there in 1985. You want to know what I know about it?

  I know everything. I dug those graves. By hand.

  Do you want to know why?

  Sit down; I’ll tell you.

  Chapter One

  I’m sorry, I’m not smiling. I’m grimacing.

  Yes, I’m nervous—anxious, really. After all these years, to have someone believe my story—to come and ask me about it. I’m practically in pain. I can’t believe it; after so many years!

  Let me take a deep breath and try to calm down and get it out. It’s quite a story, and all true.

  Oh, first and foremost, just let me go through it once without a break. No questions or interruptions, please?

  Okay. Hmmm …

  I guess you could say it all happened because I wanted too much, too soon. I was only 27, and I asked for the Moon. They gave me Mars instead. I had it coming. Hubris, I suppose.

  It was a bitterly cold winter night when I left Manhattan to catch the shuttle to the Moon. You could see your breath. I had a long scarf on, but no hat or cap, and the cold air made my hair stand on end.

  I hoped I wouldn’t have to wait long. My apartment building was eleven stories tall and had a hover cab stand on its roof. None of the buildings at the Broadway and 110th Street intersection, strangely enough, were even ten stories tall, so the sky taxi stand for that intersection was atop my building.

  So far uptown, it wasn’t a particularly busy location, and I had to wait a good quarter of an hour for a cab to come down from the sky. I had 15 long minutes to ponder what I had gotten myself into.

  The taxi stand was only an open shelter, so I was freezing as I looked toward midtown. I could see the RCA Building with its bright red logo at Rockefeller Center, and farther south, the Empire State Building with its illuminated set-backs. At the tip of Manhattan, the twin towers of the World Trade Center—which were over 1,100 feet tall themselves—flanked the mile-high Space Trylon. It was clear as well as cold, and as I looked toward Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece, it seemed to be pointing to the stars. This, of course, was the idea, since it embodied the joint American-Soviet space exploration program that settled the Moon in 1955, and, twenty years later,
Mars.

  I rubbed and pounded my hands together, trying to keep warm, and shifted around on my feet. I kept messing with my scarf, because of my nervousness, I suppose, and that only made me colder. One good thing about the cold, though, was that it stifled some of the worst city smells. The air atop my apartment building was crisp to the point of being almost electric.

  When I fumbled with my scarf again, I thought that maybe I wasn’t as steady or ready for my new job as I thought I was. Self-doubt was stalking me like a bump-and-grab mugger. I ran my hands through my hair, which made me even colder.

  Yeah, I had hair back then, over thirty years ago.

  I was all alone up there, and I had some time to think. I realized I was facing such a long journey to such a strange place because I was young, cocky, and too ambitious. Getting a full scholarship to Columbia University had contributed to that. And why I was freezing my ass off atop 545 West 111th Street. I still lived in the apartment I’d had in college.

  Being a well-spoken and energetic foot soldier for the ruling political regime since graduation, I had expected bigger rewards than I probably should have. I had worked as a clerk for Senator Javits for six years, but that meant nothing, and I’d made no career progress. I didn’t move in the right social circles. I’d grown up in a poor working-class New England family. Every time I passed a restaurant and smelled a whiff of spaghetti sauce or the aroma of pork sausages, I still smiled.

  I suppose I made an unlikely Republican candidate for Congress in 1984. But the Manhattan Republicans, a small group to begin with, had trouble finding a candidate in the neighborhood. This was Bella Abzug’s old seat, and impossible for a Republican to win.

  I was old enough to run, and lacking any better alternatives, the party gave me the nomination. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I quit my job and spent a year campaigning.

  1984 proved to be a better year for Republicans than expected. John Anderson was as popular a President as ever and easily trounced both the Democrat Walter Mondale and the American Party candidate Ronald Reagan. There had been some talk that Reagan, coming from California instead of the old Confederacy, would be able to expand his party’s base beyond what George Wallace had established, but that scenario fizzled.

  That “feel good” election—and my hard work—allowed me to garner a solid 48 percent of the vote. I made the race competitive. But the morning after Election Day, I was unemployed and needing a job. I looked over a pantry full of Italian spices, and realized I had no sausage, meatballs, or pasta to go with them. My stomach grumbled like a wolf at the door.

  Looking back, I realize I’d had over-zealous expectations about how much I deserved from the party. I was still a loser, and only 27. There were a lot of people ahead of me in seniority and experience.

  But every so often you catch a lucky break. The Manhattan Republican party chairman, Senator Greenman, had sent out a survey to defeated candidates for their feedback and asking how the party might help them. I asked for an administrative posting on the Moon colony. I knew Greenman had close personal ties to the Battery Gang at the World Trade Center and the Space Trylon, where the joint U.S.-Soviet administrative offices were located. I thought he might be able to find something for me. He did, but it wasn’t what I expected.

  I was still a bit of a youthful dreamer, I suppose.

  There were a few days after the election when the air over Manhattan was clear and crisp, and when I looked up at the Moon I thought of how interesting it would be to go there. The colonial settlements had spread to the point that you could make out its pattern and, if you squinted just right, the connecting train lines rights-of-way etching their tracery across the pale landscape.

  Finally, one day I got a call from Republican Headquarters in the Roosevelt Hotel that Senator Greenman wanted to see me. I practically skinned myself alive shaving, and then winced when I splashed on a dash of aftershave. I used just the slightest amount of Vitalis on my hair, to hopefully hold it in place—adding more would make it obviously visible. I was self-conscious of the stereotype about Italians with greased up hair.

  I put on my most respectable blue blazer—there was no way I could compete with a rich grocery store heir in suits—and headed off.

  The noises and smells of the city somehow seemed more alive that day, like I knew I would be heading into a new and exciting world. Or at least I hoped. The sidewalks and gutters didn’t smell of piss and puke, like they so often do—Mayor Costikyan kept hundreds of public welfare recipients busy sweeping and cleaning the streets.

  As I walked, I thought, in hopes of lessening the inevitable stress of what was essentially a job interview, I’d splurge and take a hover cab. They cost five times what a ground-level Checker did, but it was worth it. That was only the third time I ever paid for a hover cab, and that day I also paid the twenty percent premium and “went high”—flying at 1,000 feet.

  Now, on that last night in New York City, waiting for the ride out of town, I thought I’d take in the high view of the city one last time.

  As I waited on the cold rooftop, I recalled that meeting at the Republican Party headquarters and how I suckered myself into the proposition I was embarking on. I realized, in retrospect, that my high spirits and hope had led me to charge into something I was probably completely unprepared for. But the air was lucid, and the sunshine danced on the East River as we flew downtown. While in the back seat, I sniffed a little, and realized I had not overdone either the Vitalis or the aftershave.

  Thanks to going high that day, I got to the hotel to meet with Senator Greenman with plenty of time—which was great; I certainly didn’t want to be late.

  The Manhattan Republican Party office looked like the admissions office at an Ivy League school, a setting I was somewhat familiar with since I had attended Columbia. The anteroom smelled of leather and wood polish, with a hint of dust baking on the old light fixtures.

  The setting reminded me that I had lucked out when I had applied to Columbia. I wasn’t typical Ivy League material. In the wake of the student protests over the draft and American involvement in Czechoslovakia—during which Columbia wound up with its campus occupied for a number of weeks—the university stretched further afield to get students with less radical backgrounds. I was a first generation Italian-American Catholic, and I received a full scholarship.

  The Senator himself came out to usher me into his office. He smelled of hotel barbershop shaving cream, and I couldn’t help noticing how neatly manicured his nails were when I shook his hand.

  A rather thin, middle-aged man with black swept-back hair, his round glasses made him look like the preppy he was rather than a New York City politician. A Republican in genes rather than sentiments, he fit in well with the moderate Anderson administration in DC.

  He directed me to my seat, and sat back down behind his desk.

  “You asked for a posting on the Moon colony,” he said. “You really don’t have the résumé for anything currently available there. You certainly have chutzpah, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It shows self-confidence and drive. The Republican Party needs young people like you.”

  His dropping of the word “chutzpah” seemed jarring, given his level and cultured accent—the result, I was sure, of his prep school and Ivy League education—but still showed he was a good native New Yorker.

  He leaned forward as if to impart a secret. The light on his desk glinted off his glasses. “By 1988 we will have held the White House for 20 years. We need new blood in the party, and we need to reach out to new people if we are to hold on much longer. People will be looking for a change. To some extent, we’ve been lucky. If George Wallace hadn’t split the Democratic Party down the middle in 1968, Nixon wouldn’t have been elected. If Nixon hadn’t been forced out as soon as the burglary at the Democratic headquarters was discovered, he probably would have dragged the party down with him running for re-election in 1972.”

  He smiled. “Thank God Mark Hatfield stepped up to run for Pre
sident, and now John Anderson is doing the same fine job. But we’ve been lucky. Nixon only won because of the Democrat-American Party split, and who knows how Hatfield would have done if he faced either McGovern or Wallace, or McCarthy and Maddox,” he continued.

  I shifted in my chair, which squeaked rather impertinently.

  “Is there really any cause for concern?” I asked. “President Anderson seems incredibly popular.”

  “The American Party is finally fading away after contesting so many elections and not winning any,” the Senator said. “The Democrats are gaining back control of border states, such as Virginia and North Carolina, and western states like Texas and Nevada. If Senator Bentsen runs in ’88, we’re in big trouble.”

  He looked at me seriously. “We will need young, hard-working, and energetic party loyalists, and with a little seasoning, you could be very useful after serving a few years in the hustle and bustle of the space program administration. And I’ve found a job for you.”

  I started to get a little excited—and then came the letdown.

  He smiled in a way that signaled he had good news but somehow he wasn’t personally happy. A pleasant professional smile.

  “I know you’d love to have a posting to the Moon, but really, after 30 years it’s become as settled as Locust Valley. There’s a lot of competition for joint program jobs there, and quite frankly, I’m not the only county chairman in the country. I do have a little extra oomph because of being the local chairman here, where the international headquarters are. Which is why I was able to find something for you.”

  He smiled that smile again.

  “Mars is a small, relatively new, colony, and a position has just opened up—just today, as a matter of fact. I called Admiral Heinlein’s office already and put a hold on it, since I knew we were meeting today. It’s a small job in the colony’s administration, but it’s still admin, not support staff. Do you want to hear more?”

  “Of course,” I said, being careful not to appear obviously disappointed. I held my breath.