The Ethics of Silence

by C. J. Nash

  Copyright

  The Ethics of Silence is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE ETHICS OF SILENCE: A NOVEL

  Copyright © 2021 by C. J. Nash

  All rights reserved.

  Editing by KP Editing

  Cover Design by KP Designs

  - www.kpdesignshop.com

  Published by Kingston Publishing Company

  - www.kingstonpublishing.com

  The uploading, scanning, and distribution of this book in any form or by any means—including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions of this work, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  ARRIVAL

  With a loud CLUNK the ship settled into its berth. Mason Turner had a mental vision of people rushing out and kissing the earth after the completion of an extended voyage. But kissing the earth beneath his feet was more than impractical—it was impossible. He exited the ship inside an artificial cavern whose ceiling, walls, and floor were covered with a thick grey polymer. And even if the polymer had not been underfoot, kissing the earth would still be impossible; Mason was not on Earth—he was on Mars.

  The vision of kneeling down and kissing the ground faded, but still Mason was grateful to be on a surface that wasn’t constantly spinning. Although he knew that Mars rotated on its axis just as Earth did, like Earth, there was no feeling of motion. The surface beneath Mason’s feet gave every impression of being fixed and immobile.

  The voyage from Earth to Mars had been on a ship that rotated to simulate artificial gravity. The ship had only spun at a rate of four revolutions per minute—a slow, lazy spin that was barely perceptible—at first. At a distance of only 20.7 meters (68 feet) from the ship’s axis of rotation, the Coriolis Effect nags at the subconscious. And that is 20.7 meters at the point where one’s feet are firmly planted at 0.376 Gees—Mars normal. That places the inner ear about 19.2 meters from the axis when standing. Making a complete revolution once every fifteen seconds was something that can be ignored completely for a few hours. It becomes mildly irritating after a few days. After a few weeks, one begins to think that the spin will cause him, or her, to become totally insane.

  But then one gets used to it. Like a gigantic zit on the tip of the nose, a person is always aware that the rotation is there, but the spin becomes something that can be tolerated for the remainder of the journey. After eight and one-half months—two hundred sixty very long days—the rotation suddenly ceases. The constant turbulent swirling in the inner ear halts, but the spin is gone!

  Mason resisted the temptation to kneel down and plant a kiss on the unmoving surface beneath his feet and scanned the terminal for any sign of a welcoming party. A young woman with long auburn hair and steel grey eyes pointed at Mason and waved. He separated from the group of other passengers, twenty-seven in total, and staggered in the direction of his greeter. When Mason finally arrived at her side, the woman was laughing openly with no attempt at concealing her mirth.

  Mason offered his hand as he stood swaying before the attractive female. “Mason Turner. And, for the record, I don’t always walk this way.”

  One hand grasped Mason’s extended appendage while another reached for his shoulder, preventing him from toppling. “I’m Janet Edwards, personal assistant to the governor. Give it a day or two and you’ll be walking normal again.” Janet nodded toward the other passengers who apparently were also experiencing difficulty staying on their feet. “Everybody walks funny when they stop spinning.”

  “I assume you’re here to take me to the governor’s office, Ms. Edwards?”

  “Tomorrow. Today, I’m going to get you settled into your apartment. And we’re very informal here. Just call me Janet. Do you mind if I call you Mason?”

  “Sure. Mason’s fine.” He reached into his pocket and produced his electronic notepad. He tapped the screen which remained blank. He tapped it again. “Something’s wrong with my notepad.”

  Janet reached for Mason’s notepad. “It won’t work on Mars. I’ll get you one that is linked to our system. It may take a couple of days though.”

  “It worked on the ship.”

  “The ship has an Earth relay. Also, the ship caches huge amounts of data so that it usually seems like you have an immediate link to the Earth network. Didn’t you ever experience some really long delays when accessing data on your notepad?”

  “Yeah, but not too often.”

  “The shipboard system stores a lot of data. And it is also pretty good at predicting what data you may want to access based on past requests. But if you request something really unusual that the ship doesn’t already have in its database, the wait can be ten to twelve minutes when you get near Mars orbit. We use a totally separate network on Mars. We’ll get you a notepad in a couple of days and, in a week or two, we’ll sync your data.”

  “A week or two? That’s insane. I have orders on my notepad to report immediately to the governor. I’d show it to you if my notepad worked.”

  Janet rolled her eyes. “Immediately! So, you jumped on that ship yesterday and rushed right here?”

  “Not exactly…”

  “By my estimate, you probably spent two hundred fifty something days on the ship.”

  “Two hundred sixty.”

  “I was thinking in Mars days, but they’re almost the same. Add to the fact that after you received your orders, you had to wait for a ship from Earth to Mars. How long?”

  “About a month.”

  “That means that the governor made the request for an investigator about a month before you were given your orders. And I’m sure that he used the word immediately. He’s not a colonist and he still thinks that you can hurry everything. It doesn’t work that way on Mars.” Janet stepped away from Mason. She stood on her toes and held his notepad as high as her arm could reach.

  Janet released the notepad and Mason shouted, “What are you doing?” but he didn’t trust his wobbly legs well enough to race forward and rescue the device. There was no need since the notepad drifted in dreamlike slowness and landed on the toe of Janet’s shoe. With a skilled kick, the notepad was transferred from her toe and back into her hand. “Lesson one. Things move slowly on Mars. Your notepad took well over a second to fall eight feet. On Earth, it would have taken about half that time. Our gravity is slower, our days are longer, our years are longer and there isn’t any way you can get from Earth to Mars in less than five months. And, even at that, you may have to wait
over two Earth years for a launch window. Nothing happens immediately on Mars.”

  “Is there a lesson two?” Mason asked.

  “Yeah. Lesson two is that no one on Mars likes you, so don’t expect a whole lot of cooperation from the colonists.”

  “You don’t like me? Why not?”

  “I don’t dislike you as a person. I don’t know you. What I don’t like is what you represent.”

  “What do I represent?”

  “Earth, or more specifically, the NAU.”

  “What do you have against the North Atlantic Union?”

  Janet shook her head. “You’re just like the governor. You really don’t have a clue. If I decide that I don’t dislike you as a person, then I might be persuaded to tell you why I dislike the NAU.”

  “Fair enough. So, how do I get to my apartment?”

  “We walk.”

  “How far?”

  “About five miles.”

  “Could you give me that in kilometers?”

  “On Mars, we use the old standard measures. I could convert it to meters but you might as well get used to the local units of measure. It’s five miles.”

  “No transportation?”

  “We’ve got transportation. We walk. Lesson three. Travel on Mars.” Janet began walking.

  Mason followed closely behind while rubbing the two days’ growth of stubble on his chin. “What about my luggage?”

  “It will be sent to your apartment tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.”

  “Why not today? Why can’t we just take it with us?”

  “What’s the hurry? What do you have in your luggage that you can’t live without for a couple of days?”

  “All I have is my clothes and not many of them. Did you know that they only allowed me to bring 11.3 kilos and that included the clothes I was wearing? That’s insane.”

  “Not insane. Every kilo that you brought with you meant that a kilo of something that the Mars colony desperately needs was left behind.”

  “Okay. I’ll buy that. But why 11.3? Where did they come up with that number?”

  “Twenty-five pounds. We don’t use kilos on Mars.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because a pound is a more useful unit of measure than a kilo.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Janet stopped and took a good look at Mason. “Tell me, how much do you weigh?”

  “On Earth, I weigh about ninety kilos. So on Mars, I guess I weigh about thirty-five?”

  “Wrong. On Mars, you’re still ninety kilos. Grams, and therefore kilograms, are a unit of mass. It doesn’t matter if you are on Earth, on Mars or floating in space, your mass is ninety kilos. You still have the same inertia as any ninety kilogram mass either here or on Earth. But I would guess that you weigh about seventy-five pounds now that you are on Mars.”

  “What does it matter whether you use pounds or kilos?”

  “To be honest, it really doesn’t matter. I guess the reason we decided to use pounds was because the Mars colony wants to distance itself from Earth. We don’t appreciate the NAU telling us what we can and cannot do. We considered creating our own system of measures, but we decided to adopt the ancient English system. It is both convenient and useful. And it seems to piss off the NAU.”

  “Why do you hate the NAU so much?”

  “Ask the governor.”

  They walked in silence until they entered a tunnel. The pale grey polymer of the cavern continued seamlessly onto their new smaller path. Janet said, “The Mars colony consists of eight large natural and man-made caverns connected by tunnels. Can you ride a bicycle?”

  “What? I rode one when I was a kid.”

  “I’ll see if I can get you one to use while you are here. Most colonists use bikes to get around. It’s faster than walking.”

  “The entire colony is underground? Nothing on the surface?”

  “We have solar collectors on the surface, lots of solar collectors. We are further from the sun than Earth is, but we don’t have any cloudy days. Inside this tunnel, we have artificial lights, but we use fiber optics to pipe in actual sunlight to illuminate the caverns. We live underground because Mars doesn’t have the benefit of a magnetic field to protect it from radiation. A solar flare on Earth causes beautiful Northern and Southern lights. On Mars, a solar flare can be lethal.”

  When the tunnel opened up into another grey cavern, Janet pointed to a large cube-shape. “That’s the governor’s office. I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

  “The governor’s not there today?”

  “He’s there.”

  “He doesn’t want to see me today?”

  “He would see you today.”

  “Then why don’t we go there right now?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “Why do you get to say so?”

  “Because, besides being the governor’s personal assistant, I also represent the interests of the colony. Don’t be in such a damned hurry. Remember lesson number one.” Janet paused. “And lesson number two.”

  “Well, can you at least tell me why I’m here?”

  “No. The governor requested an investigator. He will explain what he wants you to investigate.”

  “But you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you won’t tell me?”

  “No.”

  “Lesson two?”

  “Lesson four. The colonists and the governor don’t always agree on what is best for the colony. The colonists didn’t want him to drag someone here to investigate what should have been handled locally. There are a lot of things that the Mars colony needs, but instead the NAU sent us two hundred pounds of something totally useless. Two twenty-five counting your luggage.”

  “I wasn’t the only passenger.”

  “Yeah, about that. We don’t like the scientists either. If they would send just the instruments, the colonists could perform the experiments and observations. Instead those geeks get to go on the ultimate field trip.”

  “They weren’t all scientists.”

  “Those are the ones that we resent the most. Fourteen passengers. Three families. The ultra-rich who can afford to vacation on Mars. They actually believe that they are doing us a favor by coming here and spending an exorbitant amount of money. Money that we can’t use to buy the things that we really need, because the tourists are overloading the ship with their useless mass.”

  More silence. They entered another tunnel that led to another cavern, and another and another. Janet led Mason to a cube shaped building that appeared to be identical to so many other cubes. She handed him a tiny slip of paper that read:

  005:019:003:021

  Janet pointed to the numbers. You are in cavern number five. This is building nineteen. Your apartment is on the third floor, number twenty-one.” She faced a camera and stated, “Janet Edwards authorizing building entry for Mason Turner. Effective immediately, expires in one year.” And then to Mason, “Face the camera and state your name.” When Mason did so, Janet continued, “The building will now recognize your face. Touch the door and it will open for you.”

  They climbed the stairs to the third floor and found apartment Twenty-one. The face recognition procedure was repeated and Mason was admitted into his new living quarters. The apartment was huge, much larger than any Mason had inhabited on Earth. He made a low whistle. “It’s enormous. Are there others sharing this apartment?”

  Janet chuckled and shook her head. “It’s tiny compared to most. And no, you have the place to yourself.”

  “Is your place this big?”

  “At least twice this size.”

  “Why so large?”

  “We’ve got lots of space. The surface area of Mars, not that we actually live on the surface, is larger than the usable land area on Earth. Earth Population is approaching ten billion. The entire population of Mars is only about six hundred. About two hundred fifty are adults—almost all married couples. One hundred twenty-five households give or take. We
’re not crowded.”

  Mason wandered through the furnished apartment. The family room was larger than his entire apartment on Earth. There were three very spacious bedrooms. The combination kitchen and dining area was even larger than the family room. Mason opened the refrigerator—empty. He opened a cupboard. Inside were stacks of nutrient bars. “Yuck! Don’t tell me that you live on this stuff.”

  “Not as a rule, but it will keep you alive until you can go shopping. We’ll set up your credit…”

  Mason spoke the words in unison with Janet, “…in a couple of days.”

  Janet laughed. “Nothing happens quickly on Mars.”

  “And a couple of days for my luggage. I don’t have a change of clothes to wear when I see the governor tomorrow.”

  Janet opened another door revealing what appeared to be a LaundryMate, or automated laundry system. “Toss your clothes in here. In about four hours, they will be clean and dry, ready to wear.”

  The LaundryMate that Mason had in his apartment back home did the job in only fifteen minutes, but he was beginning to understand that everything takes longer on Mars. “What do I wear while I’m waiting four hours for my clothes to be cleaned?”

  Janet laughed again. “Just run around naked. It’s unlikely that you are going to have any visitors and, even if you do, you and I are the only people who can open your door.”

  “Shouldn’t I be the only one who can open my door?”

  “Probably. But I’m not ready to give you the ability to lock me out. Not just yet.”

  Mason frowned but changed the subject. “What time do I see the governor tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be here to pick you up around oh nine hundred. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to procure you a bicycle that quickly, so we’ll have to walk to the governor’s office.”

  “What time is my appointment?”

  “You don’t have an appointment. The governor will see you when you get there. He’s not a busy man. But in the unlikely event that he is busy when we arrive, we’ll kill some time in the commercial district.”

  “He is expecting me, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he knows that you will be in to see him tomorrow. Or the next day. At the very latest, a week from now.”