The First Poet Laureate of Mars

by T E Olivant

  At least he wouldn’t have far to go. The Tower was only a short shuttle ride away. But poetry? Since when had the Augment Council given a crap about poetry?

  He jumped onboard the shuttle trying to concentrate on what he had seen on the survey of the dark spot. But for some reason his mind kept returning to poetry. He had told very few lies to his superiors when he had accounted for his time during his quiet decade. But he hadn’t told them about the old book of poetry that had kept him sane in the emptiness between planets. Poetry was not something an Augment was meant to appreciate. Which was what made the idea of a Poet Laureate of Mars so ludicrous.

  It’s unexplained, but it doesn’t concern me so it is unimportant, the Augmented part of his brain told himself. And yet…

  Before he realized it, he was at the Tower. He stepped out into a crowd of h-men, all chattering and making tedious conversation. He spotted the Council immediately and was about to join them when he realized who they were talking to and stopped dead.

  Merchants. A small guild by the looks of them. What were the Council doing meeting with Merchants? And in a public place like this?

  He gave himself a calming hormone cocktail. This was politics, pure and simple. Only one of the problems of an extremely long life was that it was hard to keep up with the political affairs of the solar system. Weren’t the Merchants officially enemies of the Augments? Or was that last century?

  It didn’t matter. What he had to tell the Council couldn’t wait. He moved through the crowd towards his fellow Augments.

  “Attention everyone. Let me introduce someone very special…”

  The room went quiet and Tolly turned to face the stage. The poet was about to speak.

  * * *

  Hester cleared her throat and winced at the noise that came out of the speakers. Do or die, she thought. Do or die.

  The Second Coming of Mars

  Turning and turning in the widening gyre

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

  Hester looked up from the lectern. Big mistake. Somehow in the sea of faces her eyes were drawn to only one. It was the strangeness of it that drew her in. Because it was an Augment face. And it was grinning.

  Mars falls apart; the center cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-tinged orb is loosed, and everywhere

  The sands of difference are found;

  While she read, Hester’s eyes strayed to the Augment she had spotted. He was wearing the uniform of a Cartographer, so he didn’t seem to be part of the Council. But what concerned her now was that he seemed to be shaking.

  * * *

  At first Tolly couldn’t remember what this particular set of hormones meant. Cortisol and epinephrine were down but dopamine and endorphins were at maximum levels. Laughter, that was the word he couldn’t remember. This girl with her terrible butchering one of the greatest poets of Old Earth was making him laugh!

  The rock lacks all particulation, while the dust

  Is full of specific granularity.

  “Particulation!” Tolly wheezed out the word, earning him worried glances from the h-men around him. He pushed his palm over his mouth and frantically tried to get his brain under control, but it was no use. Specific granularity nearly killed him.

  * * *

  Oh god, he knows! Hester could see the man practically mouthing along. Well, not with the parts of the poem that she had… adapted. But whenever she reached some of Yeats’s original words this Augment stranger knew them all.

  What could she do? She looked out at the crowd and took another deep breath. The Professor gave her an encouraging grin. There was nothing to do but to keep going to the bitter end.

  Surely some revelation is at hand;

  Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

  The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

  When a vast image of Syrtis Major Planum

  Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

  A ship with metal body and the head of teflon,

  A viewscreen blank and pitiless as the sun,

  Is moving its propulsion thrusters, while all about it

  Reel shadows of the Augment desert probes.

  The darkness drops again; but now I know

  That twenty-four centuries of stony sleep

  Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

  And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

  Slouches towards Old Earth to be born?

  She gasped as she managed to squeak out the final line. Her devil in the crowd had his head in his hands, but everyone broke into a round of applause. Hester wondered if she might actually vomit over the lot of them, but she managed to stagger off the stage.

  “Great reading,” the Professor said as he downed a glass of wine, “you really packed it with emotion.”

  “Uh huh,” Hester had to keep moving, she had to get out of there. “I’m just going to the ladies’ room,” she called back to Creighton as she scurried away from the crowd and the Augment who knew every word of the Yeats poem. How long before he told his friends on the Council that she was a fraud and, worse than that, a plagiarist? She might only have a few minutes before she was exiled from Mars. There was no time to think. Instead, she let her feet take her away from the crowd and her disastrous inauguration. The First Poet Laureate of Mars and she had only lasted five minutes.

  Chapter 14

  By the time Tolly had recovered from his first laughing fit in a century, the girl onstage had disappeared. He wiped his eyes, well aware of the strange glances he was getting from the h-men around him.

  What’s the matter, he thought, haven’t you ever seen an Augment laugh before? He checked his hormone levels but they were still all over the place. There was no way he was going to be able to bluff this one out with the Supervisor. Oh well, it had been worth it. What was that bit about propulsion thrusters again? He had to bite down on another laugh. Enough. The so-called poet had been an interesting diversion, but he had to get back to the matter at hand.

  The Augment Council were still huddled at the back of the room deep in discussion with the h-men Tolly had spotted earlier. Just what exactly did they have to talk about? Tolly made his way towards them but made sure he was still hidden by the crowd. He turned on his augmented hearing and vision and tried to make out what they were talking about.

  “The relocation has been made,” one of the Merchant’s was talking to a female Augment that Tolly had once met on Sat Four. Jaks, was that her Augment name? He remembered her when she was still fully human, when she was being trained for the augmentation process. Tolly had a flash of vivid memory, the young girl who had cried for her mother just before she would undergo the operation that would mean she never had to cry again.

  Tolly frowned. He checked his vitals but they all seemed normal. So why was he spending time lost in memories of the past when he should be considering the meeting taking place in front of him?

  Too old, a voice whispered in his head. You are getting too old.

  Impossible, he told himself, and administered a little dose of what he thought of as the happiness cocktail: dopamine and serotonin. Augments were meant to avoid this particular set of neural uppers but Tolly had found they were sometimes necessary.

  Thus fortified he turned his attention back to the Council, but they had left the Merchants and were heading for the exit. He lengthened his stride to intercept them.

  The other Augments had almost reached the waiting shuttle when their heightened senses kicked in and they turned as one to watch him approach.

  Tolly didn’t bother trying to read their faces to see if they were irritated by his presence: these were Council members so they were just as good at keeping their thoughts to themselves as he was.

  “Augment.”

  If Tolly hadn’t been doped up with his happy cocktail he might have shuddered when he recognized the speaker. His Augment name was Rowhan and if he had ever had a hum
an name it had been so long ago that even Tolly couldn’t remember it. Rowhan was as perfect and incorruptible as crystal. And just about as flexible. Tolly and Rowhan had despised one another for more than a century. It might be technically forbidden, but Augments could certainly hold grudges. Let’s face it, they had the time.

  The other Council members were just as familiar, especially the Augment Cybill who was Rowhan’s chief acolyte. When Tolly had last been on Mars, Rowhan had been in a junior position. Now it seemed that he had taken over Mars and filled the Government with his own supporters.

  Tread carefully, Tolly reminded himself even while a small, neglected part of him felt like starting a fight.

  “Council. I have urgent news concerning the survey that you asked me to complete. Perhaps you could find somewhere to discuss it.”

  “We are required back at the Council Chambers,” Rowhan said with a light, airy voice. “You may send your report to the Supervisor as requested.”

  “Unacceptable,” Tolly replied and was pleased to see a flicker of dismay cross one or two of the Augments’ faces. There was nothing worse than breaking protocol for an Augment, and Tolly was doing that just by refusing to go away quietly. “The results of the survey are significant and possibly dangerous.”

  Rowhan looked around. They were far enough from the crowd that normal h-man hearing would not be able to listen in to their conversation, but the Head Augment still gestured to an alcove.

  “Hold the shuttle,” he said to the others.

  Tolly withdrew to the private space with Rowhan. He noticed with a flicker of annoyance that Cybill had trailed after him.

  “Your vitals are elevated, Augment,” Rowhan observed.

  “I am compensating for them,” Tolly said, not rising to the bait. “I need to discuss what we found on the survey.”

  “You mean where your h-men crew witnessed something we had explicitly forbidden you to show them?”

  News travelled fast when an Augment had made a mistake.

  “There were unforeseen factors at play,” Tolly said. Yes, like the h-men looking out of the window. “But the result has not changed. I was able to obtain the data that you were looking for.”

  “The subterranean levels?”

  Tolly nodded. “Due to the disturbance in the layers of Martian rock, I can confirm that there has been significant mining. The dunes have shifted significantly, even for miles around. The surface buildings are mere props for your drones. A mirage covering up for kilometers of underground engineering.”

  Rowhan digested this news with a single nod. His face did not react in the slightest. Had Tolly ever been that adept at controlling his emotions? Certainly not after his quiet decade.

  “This is not a small Merchant outpost as you were led to believe. It is a substantial structure that may go even deeper than the colony itself.”

  “You will file this report tonight?”

  “Of course.”

  “Not through the web. Use a datastick.”

  Tolly almost raised an eyebrow. A datastick? Why would Rowhan want to use something so unsecure. Unless he didn’t trust the web?

  “If that is the Council’s preferred method.”

  “In this case yes. And after you have done that you are scheduled for a memory erasure by seven o’clock tonight. The erasure will start from the point of your arrival on Mars.”

  For a moment Tolly thought his augmented senses had shut down as his mind went blank. But then he identified the feeling as astonishment.

  “You… I am to be brain wiped?”

  “We do not call it that anymore, Augment. I am afraid you are a century out of touch. The process has moved on. It is entirely painless. None of your other memories will be affected.”

  “I would rather…”

  “It is an edict of the Council. For the security of our race.”

  Tolly felt his anger overcoming his brain’s frantic attempts to compensate him. “I am not some first century child, Rowhan. I do not need to have my memories erased to keep your secrets. Damnit, they let me keep the memories of Venus, surely…”

  “This is not Venus. This is Mars.”

  A chill ran down Tolly’s spine.

  “And if I won’t submit to your procedure?”

  “Then you will be on the first shuttle back to the adjustment center.”

  “Of course.” Tolly’s jaw was so tense he could barely speak the words. You bastard, he thought, you total bastard.

  “Until next time,” Rowhan said and Tolly was sure that he detected a slight sneer on the man’s face. There was definitely a smugness behind Cybill’s eyes who had been silently watching the entire exchange.

  Tolly didn’t reply. He didn’t trust himself. And that was a problem, because it looked like he didn’t have anyone else to trust. He had never exactly been one of the team when it came to other Augments, but he had never felt personally targeted by them. Now he sure as hell did.

  A brain wipe. Despite having made his fair share of failures over the years he had never had one. Painless? Probably. But afterwards how would he know exactly how much of his memory they had stolen. Would they stop at the last week? Or would they have a good sort around, maybe have a good look into the past. That was something he simply couldn’t risk.

  Tolly watched as the Augments boarded the shuttle. What the hell was going on? He needed space to think. He needed to…

  If all the Augments had left then why did his enhanced hearing still detect breathing? He took a few paces and slowly rotated three hundred and sixty degrees. There was a small gap next to the alcove he had been using to speak to the Augments. And he could just see the tip of a black shoe.

  Tolly calculated his options at augmented processing speed, then he reached in and pulled.

  The so-called-poet from earlier tumbled out, her eyes wild.

  “I was just…”

  “Shh!” Tolly dragged her into the alcove. She was in a typical h-man panic, her hands twitching by her sides.

  “Listen, I think we should talk.”

  “I really don’t have the time.” He should dispose of her. The Council would not have hesitated. This wasn’t like the spaceship crew. He didn’t have his tranquilizers and besides, people would come looking for her. But if he killed her now and put the body back into the gap, he would be long gone before she started to smell.

  “I saw you when I was reading the poem. You were mouthing the words. You… you had heard it before.”

  Tolly clicked his tongue with frustration. “Of course. W.B. Yeats, not very artfully plagiarized. Some truly awful metaphors.”

  The girl looked horrified, but instead of running away she just stood there, mouth open.

  “You… you do know!”

  How much had she heard? Was she a Merchant spy? Most likely. In which case she deserved to die, and it would be a kinder fate than turning her over to the Council. Or she might be working for the Augments, and that would be an even better reason to kill her. What was she? Not a poet, that was for sure. He simply did not have the time to find out. If he didn’t show up for the brain wipe today then Rowhan would be after him.

  Tolly’s thoughts converged in a fraction of a second. Augmented brain function kicked into overdrive. He calculated all the variables, then shrugged and grabbed his console bag. He waited until she looked away and then… Thump. He knocked the girl out.

  Chapter 15

  Hester woke up with a bag over her head and a rag stuffed in her mouth. She would have flailed about in a total panic if she hadn’t been thinking how much this was just like ten different movies she had seen. Plucky heroine captured by the villain. Well, if it was anything like the movies then a dashing young hero would come and rescue her. Any moment now.

  The only sound was the irregular drip that comes from an old tap.

  You can rescue me any time now, she thought. She twisted her hands around and felt some sort of plastic cuff dig into her wrists. Yep, definitely no way she could wriggl
e out of these herself.

  She started to breath more quickly but that just made the bag suck in at her nose. Between that and the gag, there was a real chance she could suffocate.

  And now she did panic. She threw herself around on the floor, trying to scream even though it just came out as a sort of pathetic grunting.

  It didn’t take long before was exhausted. She lay with her head on the cold floor feeling stupid. Time to use her brain. Groaning at her aching body she managed to wriggle herself into a semi-sitting position against the wall. That was better. She felt a lot less vulnerable than lying on her back.

  Hester had never been afraid of the dark, but the blindness the bag imposed was terrifying. Was she on her own? Or was there someone out there just watching her.

  The Augment! He had hit her with something. She remembered his cold, calculating expression then blackness as she lost consciousness. Bastard. Just because he didn’t like her poetry.

  She snorted a half laugh. Ok, there was probably more to it than that. Even the harshest literary critics rarely resorted to physical violence. But then he was an Augment. Who knew what he was thinking with the human part of him stripped away?

  He was probably going to hand her over to the Council, Hester thought and the certainty of this settled in her stomach like a block of ice.

  A door opened and closed. Footsteps. Hester tensed her muscles even though she was totally defenseless.

  I won’t go easily you bastard, she thought.

  “You have awoken,” the smug voice said close to her ear. Hester was flooded with rage. She slammed her head to one side and felt it connect with something soft.

  “Shit!”

  She screamed something that would have been a threat if it wasn’t for the bag. Sadly her momentum had already flipped her onto the ground and she pushed desperately with her feet to try and get upright.