Vengeance on Venus: Epilogue (Half Decade)

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The wall of Tharsis Spaceport was bare. There had once been a mural there, during the Insurrection, depicting the Martian workers feeding Terra with crops and fruit grown on Mars. The federal government had it removed shortly after the end of hostilities, and had subsequently filled the place with Terran-owned burger joints.

It had been six months.

She was nameless, now. Any time someone asked her, she gave a new name. She had no need to tell the truth. Evan Fleuri, as far as anyone was concerned, died when Big Time fell to Venus, along with everyone else in the house. Cerpin’s name was only spoken now as a synonym for “coward”, or “terrorist”. It was perhaps fitting that his name meant, in her native French, “Cerpin the Fool”. It described perfectly a manchild who, in a tantrum against the mere fact of his birth, had ended the existences of some four hundred guests, among them one Lieutenant Evandra Fleuri.

It had been strange to read of her own death on the AnsiNet, but, she supposed, no stranger than the fact that she had already died once. How many people could say that they had died twice?

Joking aside, she had accepted a certain undeniable truth about herself: That the line between herself and Evan Fleuri was more blurred than she had at first assumed. Though she still thought of herself as Evan, she couldn’t shake the feeling, try as she might, that she was merely something pretending to be poor, dead Evan. That perhaps she was another body without a soul, and everything she assumed to be “thought” was mere mechanical impulse. And in that case, what differentiated her from Cerpin’s dolls, whom she had killed so mercilessly? Did she have an ego, or was it cunning illusion, so sophisticated not even she knew that she was playing a trick?

So she felt little connection to the name of Evan, now. Perhaps she simply didn’t have a name. She was the “I” of Whitman, just a self in a body, a passive observer with no physical attributes.

She thought of Caitlin: both Eve – built of man’s body and blamed for his mistakes; and Venus – built of man’s body and doomed to exist for his lusts.

Nameless she, on the other hand, was neither Eve nor Venus. She was wretched, misunderstood, cursed Lilith. Built of clay and rejected by God.

She still dreamed of Portia and her lizard. Portia’s eyes came to her in moments of idleness. She had resolved to always be moving. If she kept moving, she reasoned, perhaps eventually she would outrun her own memories.

She wished more than anything that she had been able to save them.

She had spent six months taking anonymous and unlicensed courier jobs, ferrying illicit goods from place to place. They called her all kinds of names: “Redhead”, “Martian Lady”, “Spranto-sprek”. After one too many close calls she’d remembered what Caitlin told her. She had to find her truth. She decided to get out of the business as quickly as she got in.

The ship was undamaged and in working order. She’d decided to sell it, put together a retirement consisting of whatever she could get for it and what she had saved up. She’d sell it to anyone willing to pay enough, with the stipulation that they were Martian and intended to fly the damn thing. Hell if she was going to get a pittance for a Martian frigate, and hell if she was going to sell it to another goddamned Cerpin.

She’d found a guy on the AnsiNet. He was willing to pay hard cash. It was better that way. Damned if she was paying another penny to a government that showed her nothing but contempt. She had four and a half years left to live. So to hell with them and their tax schemes. She was getting the rest of her life in a brown paper envelope, and that was that.

She was sitting not far from where her ship was docked, eating a sandwich she’d bought from the food court: Martian tunafish on whole-grain. (Martian-grown.) She scanned passers-by, wondering which one was her buyer. Was it that woman with the Chinese dress? Perhaps that man in the shirt and shorts, wearing a pair of blue teashades? Or was it—

For a moment, she saw a face in the crowd, high-cheekboned, blond-haired and amber-eyed, staring at her with a blue Pierrot-smile. She blinked twice. Then the face was gone.

She looked down at the sandwich. She had lost her appetite. She wrapped it in the greasy brown paper in which it had been given to her, and laid it flat on her lap.

She felt a disturbance in the air as a man sat down next to her. He was holding what appeared to be a piece of cardboard, on which had been printed an image of light shining into a triangular prism, splitting into rainbow. There was a sticker identifying it in the top right corner: “PINK FLOYD – DARK SIDE OF THE MOON”, and below that a fluorescent yellow sticker with the word “REPLICA”. She recognised it as a record sleeve, though it must have been old music of the last millennium, as she had never heard of this Pink Floyd person. A jazz musician, perhaps, they had been popular in the twentieth century.

“You the one sellin’ a frigate?” the man said, quietly, just audible over the crowd, while carefully studying the back cover of the record sleeve so as to not attract attention. He spoke the guttural Spranto of the American enclaves.

Jes,” she responded, in her own French-accented Spranto. “How much are you offering?”

“A hundred thou,” the man said, coolly. “Most of my severance.”

“Christ, really?”

“Saving up to get into Terran space,” the man said. “Need a ship to do that. No point applying for a Terran visa without a ship. I want a Martian ship. Will a hundred thou do it?”

“Hell yeah, it will.”

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. It was actually white. She had been expecting it to be brown, for some reason.

She opened the envelope. There was a hundred thousand quids in five-hundred-quid notes, each bearing the face of the first President of the Terran Federal Republic.

“This is perfect,” she said, tucking the money into her jacket. “It’s in Bay A2X.”

“Pleasure doin’ business with you,” the man said. “She got a name?”

“Only a unique identification number,” she said.

“That being?”

A8223PP.”

“Huh,” the man said. “That’s a mouthful.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’m gonna rechristen her.”

“Do what you like,” she said. “It’s your ship now.”

“Gonna name her California Dreamin’,” the man said. He said the name in English. “You ever hear that song?”

She smiled awkwardly. “I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar.”

“Ah,” the man said. “My wife’s favourite song.”

“Oh,” she said. “And is your wife…”

The man looked at her, and she saw his face for the first time. He was probably of similar age to her, which was to say in his mid-thirties, perhaps slightly older, but his face was creased and aged well beyond what was natural. Written into every line of pain in his face was his life story. She didn’t have to ask, or know what had happened to him, because his face said it all. She wondered for a moment if her android face told something similar.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Ain’t war hell?” the man said. He changed the subject. “Planning on doing anything nice with the money?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m going to settle down somewhere on Mars. Someone told me to find my truth. So I’m going to do that.”

Find your truth,” the man repeated. “I like that.”

“Enjoy your new ship,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

The man smiled and looked down at the ground.

“Kowalski,” he replied. “Ralph Kowalski. And you?”

She sighed. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’ve been telling people my name is Evandra Fleuri for a long time. But now I’m not so sure. Maybe I just don’t have a name.”

Ralph laughed. “Man, they weren’t kiddin’ about kooks in spaceports.”

She mock-scowled at him.

“I’m just busting your balls,” he said, or at least, the relevant analogue in Spranto, vulgarity and all. “It was nice meeting you, whatever-your-name-is.”

“The same to you, Ralph Kowalski,” she replied. “I hope that ship serves you well.”

Ralph smiled in a way that made it seem that he hadn’t smiled in a while, like the muscles of his face weren’t sure quite how to make it all work.

“I hope you find your truth,” he said, after a long, thoughtful pause.

She looked at him. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

“I hope you find your truth,” she said, softly. She wiped her eye. “Sorry. I’ve had quite a difficult five years.”

He patted her shoulder.

“See you around,” he said. “And thanks for the ship.”

“Likewise,” she replied. “A pleasure.”

He stood then, and began to walk in the direction of the bay where the soon-to-be-rechristened California Dreamin’ waited for him.

“One more thing, Ralph,” she called after him. He turned back to look at her.

She looked from left to right to ensure nobody was watching, then reached into her jacket, and pulled out a revolver. For a moment he seemed to flinch, so she held it by the barrel to show that she meant no harm with it.

“I got it from an old friend,” she explained. “But I have no need for it any more. Too many bad memories attached to it. I thought you might find a better use for it.”

Ralph took it from her, gently, and turned it over in his hands. He smiled strangely.

“Yeah,” he said, cryptically. “I’ll find a use for it.”

With that, he straightened up his brown leather jacket and placed the revolver gently in a satchel around his shoulder, nodded to her, and walked away.

She watched him disappear into the bustling crowd, then breathed out. In her lap, the sandwich had grown warm, but she placed it into the pocket where the gun had been nevertheless.

She stood and walked a short distance to a set of windows overlooking Mars. From up here, you could just see the curvature of the planet, and the cities and settlements that peppered its surface between miles of forest and farmland, and above them, little fluffy clouds.

Perhaps Caitlin was right. Perhaps death really was nothing to fear. After all, death simply does not exist for the living. It’s a transformation, nothing more. She had died twice already. What was the harm in dying again? What is a person, but a tiny soul bearing about a corpse?

She had one-hundred-thousand quids in her pocket, four-and-a-half years, and a planet before her. She thought, for a moment, that she could buy a home, perhaps, somewhere back in Noachis, but no, sitting still would let her past catch up to her. A better idea, she thought, would be to walk the surface of Mars. To know every inch of that surface before she ceased to be.

One day, perhaps, she would return to Noachis. She would find a nice tree out by the irrigation farms and sit watching the sun set as the birds sang their evening chorus, and smell the sweet, floral air.

It would be a good place to die.


End.


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