The Malcontent of Mars — Chapter III: Cities In Dust
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This chapter contains discussions of trauma, suicide and self-injury.
She woke up.
Christine stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling. She was in a room with grimy greenish-brown walls, not the clean hospital ward she had been expecting. Immediately she tried to sit up and felt a pain in her arm. There was an intravenous drip attached to a bag of very slightly yellowish, though otherwise transparent fluid. Her entire body ached. Her white dress was covered in dried bloodstains.
“Is anyone there?” she called out, timidly. Her voice reverberated in the metal compartment.
There was silence for a few moments, then footsteps down the hall. The door came open. It was the Martian.
“Hey there, kid,” the Martian said. “How are you holding up?”
“Everything hurts,” Christine said.
“Well, you had a pretty nasty fall,” the Martian said. “But I fixed you up.”
Christine looked at the IV line. “I thought that I was dead.”
“So did I, at first,” the Martian said. “It’s a good thing I still had some Nanocea packs stored away.”
“Nanocea,” Christine said. “I think I know what that is. It’s made of nanorobots, right?”
“Well, the technically correct term is noocytes,” the Martian said. “But yeah, that’s more or less what they are. Tiny robots. They read your body’s DNA and work out a way to return it to its normal state of functioning at the cellular level, and they remove anything that shouldn’t be there. When their job is done, they die and leave through your kidneys.”
“Will they make a mistake?” Christine said, a little nervously.
“Sometimes, but the others will correct for it. Your body should be back to normal in a few hours.”
“How long was I out for?”
“About sixteen hours,” the Martian said, nonchalantly.
Christine sat up and leaned forward. “Six – sixteen hours?!”
The Martian cleared his throat, as though he had been expecting the reaction, and continued. “You’re lucky that you’re a kid. Extremely resilient body. If I’d been in the condition you’d been in, I’d have been in a medically-induced coma for at least a month.”
“I need to get out of here,” Christine said, trying to remove the drip from her arm.
“Whoa, whoa!” the Martian said, trying to settle her down. “Careful, you’ll hurt yourself.”
“No,” Christine said. “No, no. I need to get back home. Just drop me off somewhere in London. I feel better already.”
The Martian scratched the back of his head. “That’s…going to be kind of difficult,” he said.
Christine looked at him. “…why?”
“Uh,” the Martian said. “Because I shot a man, and I’m now fleeing to the asteroid belt to lay low for a while in order to avoid being arrested by the Terran authorities.”
Chrstine blinked twice. “I beg your pardon, I think I misunderstood – you’re what?!”
“You’re on board my ship. We’re in Martian space,” the Martian said. “I need to go to Mars and do something, then we’ll go to the asteroid belt.”
“I – you – kidnapped me?”
“‘Kidnap’ is a strong word,” the Martian said. “I didn’t really have time to think about things. I had to get off the planet. And I didn’t want you to just leave you in your condition, so I’m sorry.”
“I just wanted to read my book!”
“You still can,” the Martian said, pulling an object out from under the bed. “I saved your device and your messenger bag,” he continued, opening the bag and revealing the scuffed, though functional reader.
“How is that supposed to make me feel better?!” Christine said, her voice becoming increasingly shrill. “I’m miles away from home! What is wrong with you?!”
The Martian sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you’re sorry?!”
“I promise I’ll get you back to Terra eventually, once I’ve figured things out.”
Christine tried to fold her arms but the drip got in the way. “I should hope you do,” she said, quietly, clasping her hands over her stomach.
“So,” the Martian said. “You got a name, kid?”
“My name is Christine,” she said. “And I’m not a kid. I’m seventeen.”
The Martian laughed a little. “Okay,” he said, in a way that made her blood boil. “My name’s Ralph. Ralph Kowalski.”
“Okay, ‘Ralph’,” Christine huffed. “You’re from Mars. How come you don’t speak Spranto?”
“They only speak Spranto in the cities,” Ralph said. “I’m from one of the rural enclaves. They speak English where I’m from.”
“You say your Rs strangely,” Christine said, bluntly.
“I’d say much the same of you,” Ralph replied.
There was an awkward pause. “I’m sorry,” Christine said.
Ralph seemed surprised. “What for?”
“I said a stupid thing, like usual.”
“Well, I’m not offended,” Ralph said. “I don’t suppose you’ve met any Martians before, or that you’ve ever even been to Mars.”
“No,” Christine said, quietly.
“Well, you’ve met a Martian. How’d you like to visit Mars?”
*
Kowalski sat in the California Dreamin’s galley, playing Solitaire with an old deck of cards.
“Hey,” Kowalski said to the compartment. “Thanks for saving me. And the kid. Opening the emergency escape was a good idea.”
There came no response.
Kowalski sighed and removed a card from the deck. “She could have died if you hadn’t done that.”
It was still silent. Kowalski placed a card down.
“Don’t place it there,” Callie’s quiet voice said. “You’ll lose in two moves.”
Kowalski inspected the cards. “Mm.” He removed the card.
“So,” Callie said. “Is the girl okay?”
“She’ll recover,” Kowalski said. “She was half-dead when I managed to get on board. The landing smashed her up. Had to infuse her with a lot of Nanocea.”
“Uh-huh,” Callie said. “And you?”
“Broke my arm,” Kowalski said, coolly. “If I’d had more time to get prepared I might have been able to save her the injury.”
“I’m glad,” Callie said. “And now I want you to listen to me very carefully.”
“Okay,” Kowalski said. He knew what was coming.
“Don’t ever tell me to kill myself again,” Callie said. “I swear to God, Ralph, if you pull shit like that again I’ll damn well leave you to fix your own mess. I’m not a goddamn object.”
“I understand,” Kowalski responded.
The lights momentarily flickered and went out, and there was a soft hissing sound. A red light came on next to a sign reading “LSS CRITICAL”.
Kowalski had enough training to know what that meant.
“Callie—”
“I am not playing around, Ralph,” Callie said, angrily.
“Callie, the—”
“I want you to say sorry and mean it,” Callie said, sounding as though she was on the verge of tears.
“Callie,” Kowalski said, starting to wheeze. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise,” Kowalski said, feeling light headed. “Now will you turn the life support system back on?”
“Will I…oh, shit!” Callie said. The lights came back on and there was another slow hiss. “Jesus, I didn’t realise,” she said.
“It’s fine,” Kowalski said. “You made your point, at least.”
“I don’t know what came over me. Damn it.”
Kowalski shook his head. “Well, you taught me a lesson. So there’s no hard feelings.”
“God, are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Kowalski said. “I’m sure.”
Callie was silent for a few moments. “Ralph,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Please don’t keep secrets from me any more.”
Kowalski nodded quietly, and left the compartment.
~
Christine woke up to find that the drip had been removed from her arm. The door in the makeshift hospital room was unlocked and open. She climbed off the bed for the first time to find that it was little more than a wheeled stretcher that had a few cushions laid on it. The hard metal floor was cold against her bare feet. She stepped through the door and left the room. She noticed that the door and the wall next to it were labelled “CARGO HOLD”. Clearly this ship had no sort of med-bay. In fact, the whole thing seemed rather ramshackle, like it might fall apart at any moment. A yacht this was not.
She decided to walk to the main bridge, following the signs that had been hastily stencilled on to the wall. It occurred to her momentarily that those stencils could possibly be older than her, judging by the ship’s apparent age. She had been born right in the middle of the Insurrection, when all that was solid had melted into air – an ideological orphan, born into a time of turmoil and chaos where there were no certainties. She noted also that that feeling had never really left her.
She walked through the blast door into the main bridge and saw Ralph, gazing out of the porthole on what she assumed was the ship’s right-hand – or, she supposed, starboard – side. She knocked lightly on the door and he turned to face her.
“You’re up,” he said.
“Yes,” Christine replied, stepping into the compartment. “I feel better.”
“That’s good,” Ralph said, turning back to the view out of the porthole.
“What are you looking at?” Christine asked, walking over. Ralph looked over at her, then beckoned her with his right hand.
She walked over to the porthole and looked out at Mars, dizzyingly large and blue and green.
“Mars,” she said, softly. “It’s even more beautiful than the photographs made it seem.”
“That’s why we fought for it,” Ralph said, quietly. “Sorry,” he added, hurriedly, fearing the subtext of what he had said.
“It’s fine,” Christine said. “I don’t think you’re the reason my parents disappeared.”
Ralph nodded. “Do you know Martian geography well?”
Christine pointed to a large greenish-brown blotch. “Well, that’s Tharsis,” she said. “But I don’t know what that big red spot is.”
There was a great red scar, so many hundred kilometres across, visible from space, like a great wound cut deep into an otherwise pristine, greenish-blue landscape.
Ralph nodded again. “Yeah. They probably don’t put that in your history books.”
“What is it?”
“Officially, it’s called Crater Ten Degrees North Two Hundred and Forty Degrees East,” Ralph replied. “They say it was caused by a munitions accident.”
“What do you call it?” Christine asked, tentatively, innocently.
Ralph smiled a sad smile. “Where I’m from, we call it the Well of Blood in Vain,” he said. “Nothing lives there.”
Christine paused. “What…happened?”
Ralph laughed a little. “I’ll tell you later,” he said.
~
Tharsis was green. Architecturally, it was a mixture of the organic and the constructed. Every building was covered in plants and algal organic water purification systems, and the air smelled like flowers. Birds flitted from building to building. It was like a forest, intermittently interrupted by steel and glass. Christine watched a small sparrow fly past a large glass façade, its reflection temporarily shattering in the many distortions of the individual panes, before it came to rest in a small shrub some stories up.
“What an amazing city,” Christine said. She was wearing a brand new dress and brand new sandals, which Ralph had bought for her after she had, naturally, protested about having to walk around barefoot and in blood-stained clothing. “I’ve always wanted to visit Mars. Can you speak Spranto? I only know a little, from books.”
“Of course,” Ralph said. “But we don’t speak it much where I’m from.”
“Really?” Christine said. “I always assumed all Martians speak Spranto.”
“Ass, you, me,” Ralph said, with a small laugh. Christine didn’t quite understand.
Ralph stopped and walked into a small footway between buildings.
“We’re here,” he said.
There was an old-looking building with a plastic sign outside, reading “H. WEN STOKADO-SOLVOJ” in blue text over white, under which the name was given in Mandarin, Russian and lastly English: “H. Wen Storage Solutions”. Ralph walked up to the front door and went inside. In the window there was a little golden maneki-neko, with its arm waving back and forth.
A young Chinese woman sat at the front desk. “Saluton,” she said. “Kiel mi povas helpi?”
“Saluton, mia nomo estas Ralph Kowalski,” Ralph responded, as though reading from a script. Christine didn’t quite understand what he said next, but he followed it with “Referenco nombro tri-kvin-nulo-unu-du-kvin-du,” which she was, for the most part, able to understand through the use of cognates.
The woman pulled out a book from under the desk, opened it and used a tab to open the K section, then looked for Ralph’s name. When she found it, she nodded and wheeled her chair around to a board on which there was an arrangement of hooks, hanging from which were keys. She took one off and handed it to Ralph. “Jen,” she said.
“Dankon,” Ralph responded, nodding. He beckoned Christine to follow him down a small corridor to the right of the desk.
“What did you say?” Christine asked him, following him down the corridor.
Ralph hushed her. “You need to be careful,” he said. “You sound Terran. Look it, too. People ‘round here don’t like hearing Terran accents any more than Terrans like hearing Martian accents.”
Christine folded her arms. “Alright,” she whispered. “But why are we here?”
“I rent a storage lockup here,” Ralph said. “Keep a few personal effects out of harm’s way. I’ve come here to grab a couple things before we head to the asteroids.”
He stopped at a locker with a little paper label reading 3501252.
“Here we are,” Ralph said, putting the key in the lock.
He pulled out a small round object that looked like a make-up compact, a manila envelope, and a small cardboard shoebox, marked with a logo of a stylised initialism: “OMS”, beneath which were the words “Olympus Manufacturing Syndicate”. He dutifully placed them into his satchel as though they were very precious and fragile artefacts from some ancient tomb. “Okay,” Ralph said. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going now?” Christine asked.
“Out of town,” Ralph said. “I need to show you something.”
~
The area around the Well of Blood in Vain had been fenced off years ago by the Terran authorities. For miles, there was a chain link fence all around the edge of the crater, with signs reading, in Spranto and English alternately: “DANĜERO – NEEKSPLODITAJ MUNICIOJ – ĈESU!” and “DANGER – UNEXPLODED MUNITIONS – KEEP OUT!”
One could peer through the chain link fence and see the entire crater, in whose basin a small amount of rain water had collected, stained a rusty reddish brown. The crater lay in the shadow of Olympus Mons, which loomed vast over the entire desolate landscape some miles northwest of the crater. It was accessible via vactrain, though no station actually stopped immediately outside of it. At the vactrain terminus on the outskirts of Tharsis, one could pay a fare of a few quids to a shifty-looking man with a beat-up truck and he would drive you out there.
That was how Ralph and Christine made it there. Christine followed Ralph across the hot sand, over to the fence, and she looked out there. The sun was fiercely hot, so Ralph had bought Christine an overpriced bottle of water from a barely-functioning cooler in the back of the man’s truck. She sipped at it.
Christine walked over to the chain-link fence and looked out at it. “My God,” she said. “It’s enormous.”
“Yeah,” Ralph said. “When I was your age, this didn’t used to be here.”
“What was here?” Christine asked, looking down into the middle of the crater. It was very far away, but towards the crater’s epicentre she could see glinting crystals.
Ralph took his leather jacket off and sat down, crossing his legs. He patted the ground to get Christine to sit down next to him, and then he pushed a button on his watch.
The watch beeped quietly. All Christine could hear was the wind blowing through the crater, the distant wingflaps of flocking birds, and the moan of a glider overhead.
As they waited for the watch to connect, Christine took a chance to properly look at Ralph. It was the first time she had seen him without a jacket on. His skin was darker than hers, more tanned, and his face seemed prematurely hardened and aged. Ralph was definitely over twice her age, but he looked older than he probably actually was. His arms were hairy. As he raised his wrist to speak into the watch, Christine saw something – several flashes of milky white on Ralph’s forearm, like lightning bolts, that ran from his wrist all the way to the inside of his elbow. She looked away. He didn’t notice.
Christine heard a small voice from the watch. “Hello?”
“Callie?” Ralph said. “It’s Ralph. I’m at the Well of Blood in Vain with Christine.”
“Okay,” said the voice. It was a woman’s voice. Christine recognised it. She had heard Ralph talking to her, but hadn’t seen her.
“And what’s that got to do with me?”
“I want you to hear this,” Ralph said. “No more secrets, right?”
“Right,” Callie said. “No more secrets.”
Ralph turned to Christine, then looked out at the crater. He reached into his satchel and pulled out the little device that looked like a makeup compact. He opened the lid on it with a small plastic-metallic click, and a small hologram manifested. It was an image of a woman. She was a very beautiful woman. She was smiling, looking directly at the holographic laser-recorder, so that she appeared to be staring at nothing. Her hair was blowing softly in the wind.
“Who is that?” Christine asked.
Ralph looked up at the sky, as if trying to find a way to answer the question. “That’s Claire,” he said, quietly. “My wife.”
“She’s beautiful,” Christine said.
Ralph laughed a little. “Yeah. She really is something, isn’t she? She saved my life.”
“How did you meet her?” Christine said, looking at the hologram. She flapped her hands a little in a panic. “I mean – not that you’re not – you’re very – I mean – I’m sorry.”
“I know what you mean, don’t worry,” Ralph said, laughing. “We met at school. She didn’t like me at first. She used to call me Barf Kowarty.” He laughed at the memory.
Christine laughed, also. “That’s funny.”
“Yeah,” Kowalski said. “But as we got older, we got closer. You know, I always liked some of the guys and the girls in my class, but, man, Claire was…something else.”
“So what did you do?” Christine asked.
“Got my diploma,” Kowalski said. “I specialised in warp physics and irrigation engineering. Always found it kinda boring, but it guaranteed steady work.”
“Okay,” Christine said. “But then what did you do? Did you marry Claire?”
“Well, of course I married her,” Ralph said. “She’s my wife! I was getting there.”
“Sorry,” Christine said.
“That’s okay,” Ralph said. “You know, it’s funny. I haven’t really told anyone this story ‘til now.”
“What happened next?”
“I was able to find work. Me and Claire moved in together in a little place. Wasn’t much, but it was enough for us,” Ralph said, reminiscing. “I got a job working in grain irrigation, working out solutions for growing, like, rice and wheat, stuff like that. Terra has always been pretty desperate for food. The Great Catastrophe basically wiped out Terra’s food production capabilities. So we Martians had to feed Terra.”
“Really?” Christine said. “I only ever ate these algae bars.”
“That was the thing,” Ralph said, sadly. “See, we Martians were responsible for feeding Terra. But after an election one year, a new party took control of the Federal Diet, who elected one of their own as Prime Minister. They had this ‘Terra First’ policy. They wanted Martian food production laborers to work twice as hard for half the pay, or face losing our jobs, even imprisonment.”
“Well, what did you do?”
Ralph laughed. “We decided to go on strike.”
“Strike?” Christine said. “But then where would the food come from?”
“That’s kinda the point of a strike,” Ralph said. “We didn’t want to do it, but our hand was forced. And we found out, like you said, most people on Terra were just eating those algae bars. We were being fooled into thinking that most Terrans were eating Martian fish, Martian wheat, Martian meat. But it was a lie. You get what I’m saying? Almost none of the food we were manufacturing actually went to the people. Most of it went to the politicians and their rich friends. And the rest was thrown away.”
“So you refused to work until it was fixed?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Ralph said. “My wife was worried about money. We had a baby on the way. Martians look out for other Martians, though, so the unions banded together and pooled a strike fund to last us out a while as we fought with the government. And we thought that would be the end of it.”
“What happened then?”
Ralph laughed a little. “Well, that’s the part of the story where things get complicated and messy. The strike went on for months and the Diet refused to back down. Eventually the Terran Federal Republic sent in the military to squash the strike, and with them two shipments of scabs from Terra. We were outraged. So we demanded they leave and take their scabs with ‘em.”
“And they didn’t?”
“No,” Ralph said. His until-that-point jocular tone was now becoming grave, and his gaze hardened and unfocused. “So there was only one course of action left. We formally declared independence from the Terran Federal Republic.”
“But wouldn’t that leave thousands of Terrans to die?”
“Well, possibly. But as far as we knew, most Terrans were already not seeing the majority of our labor. So our goal, really, was to set the balance straight. We’d become independent, then hold the TFR to a trade agreement. That was the idea, anyway.”
“And the government didn’t like that?” Christine asked.
“No,” Ralph said. “So, with our options exhausted, we went to war.”
“You joined up.”
“Yes,” Ralph said. “I did.”
Christine sipped at the water bottle and looked out at the crater.
Ralph pulled out the shoebox and opened it up. Inside were bundles of photographs, held together with elastic bands. He pulled one bundle out. It was of Ralph, younger, smiling, with Claire beside him, laying in a hospital bed, her hair all messy. She looked exhausted. In her arms she clutched a bundle of blankets.
“My baby daughter,” Ralph said. “My little girl. Michelle.”
He pulled out a few photos and went through them one by one. For Christine it was like she was watching this baby grow up – here was her first time eating solid food, here was her first word, here were her first steps. Her hair was growing longer and her body was stretching out.
“She looks so much like her mother,” Ralph said, and Christine silently agreed.
“So what happened?” Christine asked. “With the war?”
Ralph sighed. “Well, I signed up. Joined the Insurrectionary Forces as a Marine warp engineer. Had to figure out tactical trajectories and things like that. Wasn’t too different to school, I guess, except instead of working out how to get food to Terra quickly, I was figuring out how to limit casualties in my platoon. And I was pretty damn good at it.”
“The war went on for many years,” Christine said. “I remember it, a little. Mostly I remember hearing about fights around this far away place called Mars. And I remember the Martians seizing control of Luna, a little. I kind of remember the day after the Martian surrender. There was a party. I didn’t know why, though. The Martians just sort of gave up. That’s what it seemed like.”
“Yeah, that’s what they told you,” Ralph said, resigned. “Do you know why I brought you here?”
“No,” Christine confessed. “I’ve never heard of this place before. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it mentioned on Terra.”
“They airbrush it out of photos,” Ralph said. “And when they’re presented with undeniable evidence of it, they say it was a munitions accident. Do you see those signs?”
“Yes.”
“They’re lies.”
“What?” Christine interjected.
Ralph looked at Christine, now, very seriously.
“There are no unexploded munitions.”
“What?”
Ralph pointed across the crater. “There was a weapons factory a few miles that way,” he said. “But that wasn’t what they were aiming for. You know what that crater was?”
She didn’t answer him.
“It was a city.”
Christine’s hand went to her mouth. “A cit—”
She looked at the wasteland. “But there’s nothing here. Not even…not even plants.”
“This is where Olympus City once stood. Nine million people lived here.”
“But—” Christine couldn’t believe it. “But how—”
Ralph sighed. “You really want to know?”
“Yes,” Christine said, reluctantly.
“Okay,” Ralph said. “So, the war had been going on for about ten years or so. And we’d made some gains. We’d taken control of the warp gate, and captured Luna. We had no intentions of taking Terra, but we wanted to be just close enough to scare the government into calling it off. So we captured Luna, raised our flag over Tranquility. We’d had control of it for about three months while trying to draw up a treaty with Terra, when this small force attacked us. Nothing we couldn’t handle. It seemed a little crazy – they sent in a few frigates and destroyers and a command ship. We went in and we took ‘em down, same old, same old. They didn’t seem to put up much of a fight. But they kept sending ships, that was the weird thing. Their tactics clearly weren’t working, but they were sending in ship after ship. Eventually we took down their command ship, mission accomplished, all go home. I remember joking with my buddies about how the war would be over in less than a month. What I didn’t know was that I was about to be proven right.”
“So, what happened?” Christine asked, uneasily.
“We were all celebrating our accomplishment when a distress call came in. It was coming from Mars, through the warp gate. Months ago we’d managed to repel Terran forces and held them pretty firm in Terran space, so this came as a shock.” Ralph sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And this next part is hard to talk about.”
Ralph fell silent. Lines of pain creased his face.
“What happened, Ralph?” Christine asked, desperate to get him to finish the story.
Ralph shook his head. “So, it transpired, the enemy was out of options. What they needed to do was deliver one last punishing blow to the Insurrection. Couldn’t nuke Mars – that would damage the food supply-chain. So they had to look for alternative solutions. They hired mercenaries. Recruited moles. And, somehow, taking advantage of our fear and our fatigue, they got control of one of the warp gates back, and set one of their command ships, unmanned, on a very specific trajectory through it.”
“What do you mean?”
Ralph looked at the sky. “They turned off all the oxygen, all the gravity, everything that wasted energy, and diverted it all towards the engines. Nothing could stop it. It was like a fuckin’—” He took a deep breath. “It was like a freight train with no brakes. And it was on a collision course with the Martian command module, in orbit at that particular time over Olympus City.”
Christine’s hand shot up to her mouth. “Oh my God…”
“They collided at such a speed that both were destroyed instantly. The command module was manned. Knocked out of orbit. Fell to Mars.”
“But – the people in the city – they didn’t do anything!”
Ralph continued, flatly, as if he were reading from an encylopaedia, as if trying to dissociate himself from the horrible truth of what he was describing. “The command module crashed couple miles north of the city center. The city was totally levelled. Turned to dust, and the dust to glass. It only took a couple minutes, from what I heard.” He looked angry, broken, impotent. “By the time we managed to get our shit together, all that was left was this crater.”
He looked at Christine and saw that tears were in her eyes. “But – your wife – your daughter,” Christine said, “They got out, right? They survived, right?”
Ralph looked at her. He didn’t say anything.
“Oh no,” Christine sobbed. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Ralph said.
“It is my fault, Ralph,” Christine said, between tearful gasps. “I’m…a Terran. I hate myself for it.”
Ralph sighed.
“Don’t talk like that, kid. You weren’t behind it. But I know who is.”
“Maxwell,” Christine said, softly, tears dripping down her face.
“You don’t have to think it’s right,” Ralph said. “But I need closure. When we get to the asteroids, I’ll find a way of getting you back to Terra. You can forget about me. I just have to finish this.”
Christine put her head in her hands. “Please take me away from here,” she said. “I can’t bear it any longer.”
“Okay,” Ralph said, switching off the ansible, and they started walking back to where the shifty-looking man with the beat-up truck was waiting.
“Girl okay? Ĉu ŝi bone?” the man in the truck asked when they arrived, climbing into the back.
“Jes,” Ralph said. In Spranto, he asked the man to take them back to Tharsis.
The man in the truck nodded, thought for a second, then reached into an ice cooler he had on the front seat. He pulled out an ice cream bar coated in chocolate and handed it to Christine. “Free, free,” he said. “No pay, knabino. You take. Good.”
“Dankon,” Christine said, softly. The driver smiled, nodded, turned back around and started the engine.
It was one of the nicest things she had ever eaten.
*
Kowalski ignited the stove and placed some generously-seasoned balls of ground beef in to a well-oiled skillet. He had a stained white apron tied around his waist. Immediately the meat began to sizzle and smoke. Kowalski turned on the extractor fan above the stove, then he got out a spatula and pushed down on the meat to smash it down into the skillet.
“What are you making?” asked Callie.
“Hamburgers,” Kowalski replied. “Pretty good if you get the seasoning and ingredients right.”
“It looks good,” Callie said, which Kowalski supposed was just a formality, since Callie had no need to eat. “You like to cook,” she observed.
“Yeah,” Kowalski said. “Helps keep my mind off things. Plus, someone’s got to eat all this stuff.”
“I heard your conversation with the girl earlier,” Callie said. “With Christine.”
“Uh-huh,” Kowalski said, flipping the patties, which were forming a brown Maillard crust.
“I didn’t say anything,” she said. “I didn’t want to interrupt. I’m glad you let me listen, though. I learned a lot about you.”
“Well, I thought it was best you knew,” he said. “I didn’t want to withhold any more information from you.”
Kowalski placed a sesame seed bun in the skillet and began to toast it.
“Ralph,” Callie said. “You mentioned photographs, but the ansible connection was audio only. Would it be all right if I could get a look at them?”
“Sure,” Kowalski said. “Let me just finish these up.”
After a few minutes, he plated up the hamburgers with slices of Swiss cheese, leaving a couple on the counter for Christine, as he walked over to the galley’s table with some for himself. He squeezed a little ketchup and mustard on one, barbecue sauce on the other, then placed the plate on the table.
Before he started eating, Kowalski reached into his satchel and pulled out the miniature holograph projector, the shoebox and the manila envelope. He switched on the holograph projector and removed some of the photographs he had shown Christine from the shoebox. Then he sat down and started to eat.
“Such a beautiful family,” Callie said, after a while. “I’m sorry about what happened to you, Ralph.”
Kowalski shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s okay.”
“Is it, Ralph?” Callie asked, pointedly. “It doesn’t seem that way.”
“What do you mean?”
Callie hesitated. “I noticed your arms.”
Kowalski realised he hadn’t put his jacket on before getting back on board the ship. He glanced at his wrists, both scarred with milky-white lightning bolts that ran all the way up to the crook of his elbow.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Well, that was years ago.”
“It looks like you really hurt yourself.”
Kowalski sighed. “I don’t really want to talk about this, Callie.”
“I’m sorry,” Callie said. “I’m just…worried about you.”
“Honestly, I’m fine, Callie,” Kowalski said. “All that is in the past now.”
“Okay,” Callie said.
Kowalski took another bite.
“What’s in the envelope?” Callie asked.
“Hmm?” Kowalski said, mouth full of patty. He swallowed. “Oh, that’s just my discharge notes.”
“Can I see them?”
Kowalski hesitated. “No.”
“Ralph.”
“What?”
“No more secrets, remember?”
Kowalski sighed. “Okay,” he said. He washed the grease from his hands in the sink and removed the documents from the envelope, laying them on the table for Callie to see.
There were a series of printed notes commending Kowalski on his military accolades and achievements during the Insurrection, followed by a form giving a reason for discharge. Kowalski had been honourably discharged, but the reason given for discharge was probably what interested Callie the most.
It was written in Spranto, but it read, simply, in small, yet bold and black letters: “REASON FOR DISCHARGE: PSYCHIATRIC.”
“Oh God, Ralph,” Callie said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” Kowalski said. “I was sent home, but I had no home to go back to. So I just bought this old ship with my severance. I’ve lived in space ever since.”
“You didn’t tell the girl that.”
“Christine didn’t need to know that,” Kowalski said. “I said I wasn’t keeping secrets from you, not from her.”
“Well, is there anything else you didn’t tell her?”
Kowalski sighed again. “Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t tell her the whole story about the end of the war.”
“And what’s that?”
Kowalski got up and walked out of the galley, up to the bridge.
“Ralph?” Callie asked.
Kowalski walked over to the porthole and looked out. He pointed. “Do you see that tiny black dot, in low orbit, just above Hellas?”
“Yes,” Callie said. “There’s no answer when I try and ping a signal at it.”
“Uh-huh,” Kowalski said. “There’s a reason for that.”
“Well, what is it?”
Kowalski looked out at the angry red scar that had once been his home. “They call it the ‘Leviathan system’,” he said. “But on Mars, it’s known by a different name.”
“What’s that?” Callie said.
“We call it the Killing Moon.”
“Why?”
“It’s an orbital kinetic superweapon, they call it. A deterrent.”
“What’s that?” Callie asked.
“It’s never been publicly acknowledged by the government, so the kid probably isn’t even aware of it. The victor writes history, you know. Nobody knows for sure, but it’s thought that it contains hundreds of titanium rods. Even one of them is enough to devastate a city, but unlike a nuclear weapon, it won’t damage the food supply. Almost everybody in the federal government knows about it.”
“Holy shit,” Callie said.
“And you know something else?” Kowalski said.
“What?”
“Everyone on Mars knows about it, too. They made sure to let us know just enough about it through well-timed ‘leaks’. Just enough to keep us scared of what might happen if we don’t submit. Never officially confirming it, of course. Plausible deniability. They can just dismiss any rumors as conspiracy theories. So we shut our mouths, and we get on with our lives, and we don’t dare to get ideas above our station.”
“God…” Callie said. “That’s rough.”
“There is one thing almost nobody on either side knows, however,” Kowalski said. “Except me.”
“What’s that?”
“The name of the bastard who designed the thing.”
“And who might that be?”
END OF ARC ONE
The Malcontent of Mars — Chapter II: London Calling – C R E Mullins
6 July 2019 @ 10:19 am
[…] To be continued… […]