The Empress of Mars (9 page)

“Here!” yelled a woman at Mary’s elbow, making for the exit straightaway. One by one the squares went green, until at last:

“Sector 74, Brick in Big Waltzer! Acknowledge, Brick!”

“Got it!” the Brick roared. Mary turned to what she thought was the exit, but she had gotten turned around in the shifting mass of Haulers and ran into the crowd from Clan Morrigan, who had edged in behind them. The Brick fielded her and towed her after him until they emerged from the depot. Mary spotted the quaddy, looking ridiculously tiny amid all the big rigs, just arriving with its freight of food and drink for the returning searchers.

Back in the cab, rumbling away to Sector 74, and Mary shuddered as she watched the screens. She had only been this far out a few times; she had forgotten how immense the desolation of the far plain was. Somehow the double line of boulders marking out the edges of the road only made the wasteland beyond seem lonelier, mocked human conventions of order and safety.

“What was his job?” she asked the Brick.

“Pushing boulders into straight lines,” said the Brick. “You wouldn’t think a man could get lost doing that, could you?”

“Was he not especially bright?”

“He was bright enough,” said the Brick. “You want more than brains
out here, though, sweetheart. You want luck. Didn’t you know the kid?”

“Not really,” said Mary. A whirlwind spun slowly across the starboard screen, throwing scarlet sand out in transparent drifts. “Which is pathetic, isn’t it, since he was the one knocked up our Alice.”

“I had heard something like that, m’dear,” said the Brick.

“And if he didn’t have family Down Home . . .” And so many people up here didn’t. People with nothing left to lose had come to Mars; people desperate and foolish enough to throw themselves at the absolute Unknown. People who wanted to lose themselves came here and were astonished—but only once—to discover just how easy it could be. “If the boy had nobody else, then we’re his only family.”

They hurtled along. The Brick punched in some music: something classical, Vaughn Williams’s
Sinfonia Antarctica
. Mary thought it sounded like Mars, beautiful and somber, ice cold, heartbreaking. Now and then they passed distant pink dust clouds where others were searching of-froad, and the Brick signaled with blares on the horn; they blared back.

“Why aren’t you talking?”

“No communication out this far, doll. Who’s going to build the relay towers?”

“Not the British Arean Company, I suppose,” said Mary resentfully.

After a couple of hours they came to the end of the posted road. Here the double line of boulders stopped; this was as far as the boy had gotten before whatever had happened, and beyond it was up to landmarks and any navigational software you might have to plot a course to the ice quarries or red eternity. Anyone accustomed to a satellite offering friendly directions was bound to be disappointed up here and, in short order, dead.

Sand had drifted over the road in the storm, obliterating the boy’s prints, now freshly marked by tread tracks from searchers going out. The Brick grunted, changed gears and rolled away for Sector 74.

When they got there they saw a gentle depression of smashed rock, long-ago sea bottom where a meteorite had landed in some lost epoch, hurtling down in green flame to strike with a scream, the insulted
water writhing upward in columns of steam. It was flat and sad and silent now, all drama over long ago. There was no sign of any disabled Mahindra, but the Brick punched in a quartering autopattern and leaned back, watching the screens intently. Mary studied the fractured landscape as it crawled past.

“Think he might have dropped something out here? Something fallen off his rig to show where he’d passed?”

“You never know,” said the Brick. “It was a Mahindra. Look for something red.”

“Oh, that’ll stand out on Mars, won’t it?”

The Brick shrugged. After a while he said: “You’re by way of being his mother-in-law. Assuming the worst, what’ll you want us to do with his gear? Usual is to auction it off and the money goes in the Hauler’s Fund. Seeing as he’s got a kid on the way, though, I expect you’d want the proceeds.”

“Indeed we would,” said Mary. “We can raise the little thing well enough; at least, I can. But it would be nice if there was some sort of inheritance. Alice never looked to be a widow so soon, I’m sure. Not that she actually married him.”

“It was three times with you, wasn’t it?” The Brick leaned forward to peer at a fossil crustacean.

“Only widowed once,” said Mary. She thought back to another world, another life, where there had been a green park with a view of the blue sea and a row of swings, in one of which Alice had perched, demanding bright-eyed to be pushed
again
.

And Mary had been so tired, what with the second job that was paying well enough to keep Alice out of the Federation orphanage, that the big strong stranger who had stepped forward and offered to swing the child had looked like a very god in mortal shape.

And Dylan-the-stranger had been so dashing, and had such romantic notions as he’d courted Mary, and Alice had adored him. He’d been an actor. He’d come from money; his family owned four farms in Gwynedd. He had a trust fund. He played the piano. He was a poet. He bought them a house to live in.

Only the part about him having been an actor had turned out to be true, sadly, as Mary found out after he’d disappeared when Rowan was a month old and the house’s owners showed up on her doorstep, very much surprised to find Mary living there. It had taken two years’ hard work for Mary to get out of debt, paying off the fancy things Dylan had bought in her name.

And then life had been secure for a while, with a good job at a prestigious research and development place, and there Mary’s coworker Eamon had worshipped her, forever telling her how brave he thought she was, how wise, how practical. He had asked her advice on all possible subjects. He was considerate. He was clever and funny and loved to take her dancing. Rowan had liked him; Alice hadn’t, which had given Mary the only reservation she had had about accepting his marriage proposal. Mary had kept firm control of the household accounts this time, but Eamon was no swindler.

No, the problem with Eamon started on the day Mary had discovered she was pregnant again. Eamon took the news smiling, and they went out for a celebration. That night she woke to hear him sobbing quietly. He never slept with her after that, explaining that her comfort during such a difficult time was his chief concern. He came out during her third trimester, ever so apologetic, and took a flat five long blocks away with a Turkish waiter he’d met.

He was with her for Mona’s birth; he and Bayazit had brought round armloads of stuffed toys afterward, and a potted pink geranium, and exquisitely tasteful baby clothes from the most expensive catalogs. Then they had been obliged to move to Turkey—something to do with Bayazit’s father being ill—and the postcards had come for a while, and finally trickled off, and stopped.

Alice had sniffed and said, “Men! I hope you’ll have more sense than to get married again to one of
them
.” Mary had slapped her.

And now here Mary sat in the cab of a rig on Mars, looking for the boy Alice had treated with such contempt.
It’s all connected, isn’t it?
Mary thought to herself wearily.
Holy Mother, forgive us our sins
.

She was startled from her recollections by a distant blast that went on and on: someone over the edge of Sector 74 was leaning on their horn, signaling and signaling.

“Whoops,” said the Brick, and canceled the autoquarter and cranked the wheel around. He took them barreling up over the rise. On the forward screen Mary saw a rig stationary before an expanse of fox-red dunes, and the long dust trails of two other rigs and a Jinma making tracks toward it.

Neither she nor the Brick spoke until they were close enough to see the Haulers working with shovels, with their gauntleted hands, with anything they could grab up to scoop the sliding sand away from a bit of red machinery sticking out of a dune.

“Damn,” said the Brick, which might have meant anything. “You stay in the cab.”

Mary slipped her mask on as he popped the hatch, and through it caught a brief glimpse of the Shifting Sea as the Brick slid out and slammed the hatch again. On the screens, she saw him run toward the others with a sand shovel grabbed from his cabside rack. It was a long wait as the Mahindra appeared, bit by bit from under flowing sand.
Sinfonia Antarctica
repeated itself, bleak trumpets and uneasy strings, an elegy for lost men at another South Pole.

At first the Haulers, and the two clansmen, were grinning as more and more of the Mahindra came into sight. They pounded on its fenders, they beat and signaled with their fists. After a while they stopped, though. Mary watched the screens, biting her lip, as they freed the hatch and got it open. It took effort. The inner seal was frozen.

Time seemed to slow down as the foremost Hauler looked inside. He crawled in a little way. He backed out.

Holy Mother, forgive us our sins
, Mary repeated. The music rose in a stark melody for cathedral organ, bitter and majestic.

When she saw the Brick walking back to her, Mary popped the cab and climbed out. He looked at her, his gaze unreadable behind the mask, and shook his head.

“Life support cut out,” he said, through his speaker. “Looks like he got turned around in the storm and buried. Probably a blocked vent. Overheated the unit.”

Tears stung her eyes. She looked up and saw them bringing out the body. It was frozen blue in a fetal curl. It was clutching something in its blue hand: a plaquette. Someone stooped down to wrest the plaquette free and peered at it briefly. There was some discussion.

Mary walked close.

“. . . She was his girl at the Empress, I reckon—”

“Hold on, that’s Mother—”

They turned to stare at her. The Hauler with the plaquette handed it to her, with an apologetic shrug. She looked down at the dead boy. Dunstan Wilson. No. Johnson. She didn’t recognize the face, with the lips drawn back from the teeth. His eyes were still open. He looked small. She wondered if the baby would turn out small.

She lifted the plaquette, slippery with frost, its little screen still glowing brightly. He had left a message.

Luv U Alice 4evr. So soori bout this. Yrs 4evr & evr. Ples dnt 4git. Luv U Alice
.

Mary saved the message and tucked the plaquette under her arm, already seeing the incandescent anger on Alice’s face.

Holy Mother, forgive us our sins
.

She wanted to have the body brought back to be thawed out and washed, but the Brick shook his head and steered her away.

“They’ll take care of him, m’dear,” he told her. “It’s traditional.”

She was too numb to ask him what he meant, but let him hoist her back into his cab without argument. They were halfway back to Settlement Dome when she finally inquired: “Will they retrieve the Mahindra for us? The girl will want the money now.”

Alice did rage when she heard the news, and wept extravagantly in Mr. De Wit’s arms. She cursed Mars, she cursed Mary, she cursed the Goddess, she cursed the dead boy himself.

Dunstan Johnson became a road marker. The Haulers carried his body to the last boulder he’d placed, and scratched a shallow hole next to it and sort of interred him. Then they piled the bloodred stones over him in a cairn, with a great flat stone at the top with his name carved in it and the date of his death.

Every Hauler passing that way afterward sounded his horn on passing the marker. Sometimes a mug of beer would be brought and poured foaming over the stones, where it flowed and became pearly ice.

For five years there had been one shuttle from Earth every three months. They might have come more often; technological advances over the last couple of decades had greatly trimmed travel time to Mars. There just hadn’t been any reason to waste the money.

The change came slowly at first, and was barely noticed: an unaccustomed muffled thunder of landing jets at unexpected moments, a stranger wandering wide-eyed into the Empress at odd hours. More lights glinting under the vizio dome of British Arean Company headquarters after dark.

Then the change sped up.

More shuttles, arriving all hours, and not just the big green British Arean Company ships but vessels of all description, freelance transport services competing. More strangers lining the bar at the Empress, shivering, gravity-sick, unable to get used to the smell or the taste of the beer or the air but unable to do without either. Strangers losing or abandoning all manner of useful odds and ends in the red desolation, to be gleefully salvaged by the locals.

Mary’s back bar became a kind of shrine to the absurd items people brought from Earth. Displayed there were a digital perpetual calendar geared to 365 days in a year, a pair of ice skates, a ballroom dancing
trophy, and a snow globe depicting the Historic Astoria Column of Astoria, Oregon.

There was no place for the newcomers to live. The British Arean Company didn’t especially want them there, and so it withheld the offer of its facilities. The clan took in one or two who were willing to join and take their oath. The rest squatted in an unclaimed area off the Tubes, some in little BioDomettes around which they built protective circles of stones, most in the cabs of the vehicles they had brought up with them. They ate and drank at the Empress. They slept in the camp. They were men and women from everywhere: some Europeans, a few Americans, a few Chinese, and a couple of Lunatics, as the Lunar expatriates were fond of calling themselves.

Someone put up a rickety-looking Areomotor tower to run a communal generator for life support. Someone else coaxed the loan of a drill rig from the High Road crew to sink a well, and installed a hand pump. They pooled their money and bought a prefabricated shithouse, which paid for itself handsomely in no time, for they were scrupulous about pulling out its frozen block of sewage every week and selling it to the clan.