by C. J. Nash
The host seated Mason at a booth near the entrance. A man that Mason recognized as a tourist from the ship slapped him on the back and said, “Mason. It is Mason, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name.”
“It’s Tim. Come over here. No reason for you to eat here alone. Come and join me and my family.”
“That’s okay,” explained Mason. “I’m not eating here. I’m getting take-out.”
“Take-out? You can get take-out from this fancy restaurant?”
“Special circumstance.”
“Well, come and join us anyway. No sense in sitting alone while you wait.”
Mason followed Tim to his table. Tim slapped Mason’s back again. “You all remember Mason from the ship.” After Tim’s wife (Mason remembered her name, Wanda) and two adult children (Mason could not remember their names) nodded, he continued. “We haven’t seen much of you since we landed. Usually see you hanging out with a local. Who’s the girl?”
“Her name’s Janet. She works for the governor.”
“Works for the governor? I guess that gets you some special privileges.” Tim turned to his wife. “Did you know that Mason came here to get take-out?”
Wanda smiled. “Well, Mason, it sounds like you’ve got connections. Maybe you can help us.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Mason replied.
Tim said, “We have been unable to obtain any domestic help since we’ve been here. Whenever I ask anyone about how I go about employing domestics, they are outright rude. I went to the governor, but he said that his assistant usually handled that type of complaint. Do you think this Janet person can help put me in touch with the governor’s assistant?”
Mason chuckled. “Janet is the governor’s assistant.”
“Then you can help us,” Wanda exclaimed.
“Well, I can talk to her but I don’t really think it will do any good,” said Mason.
Wanda lay down her fork. “I suppose we could get by with just one domestic servant while we are here, but tell Janet that if we can get two, we will make it well worth her time.”
“What do you need domestics for?” asked Mason.
Wanda gave Mason a look similar to what would have been expected if he had suddenly grown a second head. “We have to put our own clothes in the LaundryMate. And the LaundryMate is apparently broken because it takes forever to process our clothes. And it makes them smell funny.”
Tim added, “We don’t have anyone to cook for us. We’ve been eating in this restaurant ever since we’ve been here. The food’s good here, but sometimes I would like to eat at home. I’ve even tried to get take-out but they say that they don’t do that. How did you manage take-out?”
Mason shrugged.
Wanda again: “We can’t possibly entertain without someone to serve our guests. And we really want to entertain. You’d be invited, of course.”
“Why me?”
“You’ve got to miss being around your own kind. I want to throw a big party for everyone who was on the ship with us—the scientists, too.” Tim waved expansively. “I doubt that the scientists ever get a chance to rub elbows with real society, but even they would have to be more fun than those cold colonists. They act as if they don’t even want us here.”
“Maybe they don’t,” Mason ventured.
Tim laughed. “Are you kidding? Without our money their economy would collapse. The cost of living here is insane. They’re lucky that we come here at all. But they act as if they don’t appreciate us one little bit.”
“Well, they have different ideas about what is important.”
“That’s why you need to spend more time with your own kind.”
Mason slid his chair back. “That’s twice you have said that I should be around my own kind. Exactly what is our kind?”
Tim answered, “People like us. People with class and breeding. The scientists are all working folk but even they are far superior to these colonists.”
“What makes us superior to the colonists? Is it the mere fact that we live on Earth?”
“It’s not just that we live on Earth. It is the kind of people they chose for the colony. Inbred, the lot of them. They are like animals—they breed like animals. Did you know that over half of them were under the age of fifteen when they got married? It’s no wonder they were sent here.”
Mason stood. “I’ll let Janet know that you are looking for domestic help. I think I’ll see if my food is ready.”
Later, when Mason related the events of the evening, he confided to Janet, “Now I understand why the locals don’t like the tourists. Do they all think like that?”
“Not all, but most. Damned tourists think they are coming to visit a zoo. But the thing about our ages is half true. The colonists in the first wave were all adults, well established in their fields, people who were necessary to set up and maintain the colony. The second wave were mostly the,” Janet made quotation marks in the air, “undesirable. We were, for the most part, orphans that nobody wanted. Mars was a place to dump us. The religious right was in power and it was considered unethical to send a bunch of unsupervised teenagers to live in sin on Mars, so one of the requirements for colonization was that it could only be married couples.
“Did you know that I was only fourteen when I came here? My husband was fifteen. We were children. We weren’t ready for marriage. We weren’t ready for the hardships of carving out a colony on a planet that was never meant for humans to inhabit. A few of us died.” Tears welled in her eyes. “But the ones who did survive made this our home, and I’ll be damned if we are ever going to give it up!
“Originally, they had planned on sending hundreds of thousands of undesirables to Mars. Then the Fiscal Conservatives came into power and they decided that it was too expensive to send any more colonists. Too many of us are relatives. They sent entire families of orphans to the colony. We aren’t inbred but we do need more genetic diversity. And now the Liberals are in power. They want to do the colonists a big favor and bring us all back home to Earth. They have to do something for all those poor colonists who have to recycle their own piss just so that they can have drinking water. We’re political pawns and no one on Earth believes that we have the right to decide our own fate.”
Mason brushed the hair back from Janet’s face and put his arm around her shoulder. “I believe you have that right. When I get back to Earth, I’ll do what I can to help the colony.”
“One island of reason in a sea of prejudice. I would like to believe that you can help but I have to live in the real world—this real world. And you have to live in your world where you will be the one person out of ten billion that actually cares about the colony. We were never meant to survive you know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Unlike the ship that brought you here, the colonial ships had inadequate shielding. There was far too much radiation. Women have a difficult time getting pregnant and one in five pregnancies has to be terminated because really important genes are missing. We don’t tell the colonists how bad the damage is; only the geneticists and a few others know the extent.
“The women were the best protected from the radiation, but still it wasn’t much protection. Do you know how the colonists were shipped to Mars?”
“I assumed they were on a ship like mine—just bigger because it had to accommodate one hundred colonists along with the crew.”
“Actually, it was smaller and there was no crew. The colonists were hibernated. They drugged us and put us in boxes and shipped us to Mars. The women were placed in the center and we were partially shielded from radiation by the human bodies that surrounded us.
“They convinced us that we were going on a great adventure to colonize this planet. But to them, we were just a science experiment. Send them to Mars and see if they can survive. They probably placed bets on the outcome. At first, survival was nearly impossible. We all hoped that the day would come when we were taken back home to Earth. I would
have given anything just for a chance to leave the hell that I had been placed in.
“There were only two caverns when we arrived and living space was cramped. It must have been far worse for the first wave—they started with nothing.
“There were times when we nearly ran out of food. Water had to be rationed—we all stank because we couldn’t waste water even on a sponge bath. The air turned bad. But then we stumbled upon the only solution that could have possibly saved the colony. We appointed a Farmer. Eddie…Damn! I can’t even remember his last name anymore. He’s been Eddie MacDonald for that many years. Eddie didn’t want the job; he didn’t want to be the one person who was responsible for every single life in the colony. But he accepted the position and the responsibility. It was sort of a joke—we all started calling him Old MacDonald and the name stuck. Old MacDonald, Eddie, is the one person who saved the colony. The NAU thinks that the governor rules the colony, but in actuality, Eddie holds the ultimate authority. He watches over the air and the water and the food and the chickens and the potatoes and the people. It is a great responsibility and we all respect him for accepting it.”
Mason said, “I guess Eddie MacDonald has taken over the role that would normally be filled by a god.”
Janet laughed, “Somebody had to. I don’t think that God has even realized that we left Earth. Maybe someday He will find us here and Eddie will be able to retire.”
After a long silence, Mason kissed Janet’s forehead. “I’m going to go to bed. Do you need me to get you anything before I go?”
“Stay.”
“What?”
“Just stay. Spend the night with me. I’m not offering sex; I don’t think my ribs could take it if I were. What I am offering is a warm body to sleep beside. I don’t care if you lie on your back and snore the entire night; I still want you to stay. If you wrap your arms around me and hold me while we sleep, be careful of my ribs and I won’t object. Mars can be a lonely place and I am so damned tired of sleeping alone. Stay. Please.”
Mason stayed.
Chapter 12
THE MISSING EVIDENCE
It took a minute for Mason to realize where he was. He was snuggled up against the backside of a very soft, very warm female. His left hand cupped a firm breast. Mason attempted to move his hand, but Janet caught it with her own and pressed it firmly back into place. Mason could feel the nipple pressing into his palm through the thin fabric.
“Umm,” sighed Janet, sleepily. “You snore.”
“I’m sorry. Maybe I should have spent the night in my own bed.”
“No. I told you I wouldn’t mind if you snored. I don’t mind. It feels good being held while I sleep. It feels good to not be alone at night. You feel good.” Janet pressed his hand tighter against her breast and pressed her bottom against his already swollen member.
Mason kissed her neck. “It does feel good to wake up with the most beautiful woman of two worlds in my arms. I’m not hurting you, am I?”
“No. My ribs feel better this morning. Do they feel okay to you?”
Mason kneaded the flesh beneath his palm. “They feel pretty good to me. Do you want me to go and get breakfast?”
“Later. Right now I want you to just stay here and hold me.”
“I don’t believe it,” Mason quipped. “You’re turning down food!”
Janet ground her bottom against Mason’s groin. “We’ll eat when I get ready to eat. Now just hold me.”
Mason snuggled in close and closed his eyes. He whispered in a voice so quiet that no one was supposed to hear, “I love you.” Mason slept.
****
Janet shook Mason. “You’re snoring.”
“I thought you said that it was okay for me to snore.”
“Not when I’m hungry.”
“But you’re always hungry.”
“Get out of those wrinkled clothes and take me to the cafeteria. I’m starving.”
Mason made to remove his clothes. Janet pointed to the door. “Change in your own room.”
“You’ve seen me naked before.”
“But not while you were sober. Mason, I don’t really know what I expect will happen between us. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you to spend the night. I was lonely last night—and vulnerable. I like you—a lot. But don’t try and rush me into anything. Right now I’m confused and I don’t know what I want to do. Like I said, I like you, but there is no future for us. I’ll never leave the colony and you can’t stay. I can’t allow myself to get too close to you because it would hurt when you have to leave. And if you allow yourself to get too close to me, you will be the one who gets hurt.”
Mason went to his own room and dressed in silence. His heart knew that he had already allowed himself to fall in love with this most beautiful woman of two worlds. He knew that when he did return to Earth, there would be such emptiness in his heart, a void that could never be filled.
****
They ate in silence for a time. Mason broke the silence by observing, “It is really difficult to make small talk on Mars. Back home, if we can’t think of anything else to say, we talk about the weather.”
“We can talk about the weather,” Janet replied. “It was sunny yesterday. It is sunny today. It will certainly be sunny tomorrow. It’s colder than a witch’s tit outside on the surface, but it is a nice, comfortable seventy-five degrees inside the colony. It is sunny every day and dark every night, except on the farm. The Farmer controls the oxygen levels by how much sunlight gets to the grass during the week. But it is always sunny on Sunday. See, we can talk about the weather if that’s what you want to talk about.”
“No. I don’t really want to talk about the weather.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know. Us, maybe.”
“I’d rather talk about the weather.”
“Okay. You know, you aren’t eating as much as you normally do. Are your ribs hurting?”
“Not really. They are a lot better than yesterday.”
“But still, you’re not eating. I think I ate more than you.”
“I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Maybe you should enter into a temporary marriage contract.”
Mason looked into Janet’s eyes. Janet shook her head. “I don’t mean with me. I’ve never entered into a contract with a tourist. I have too much respect for myself and no respect for the tourists.”
“I’m not a tourist,” Mason countered.
“I know you’re not a tourist. You and Beth are the only people from Earth that I have ever respected—and liked.”
“Beth? The governor’s wife?”
“Yes. Well, I like her daughter, too. But she may turn into an asshole when she grows up—I hope not, though.”
“How about the governor?”
“I work for the governor. And I actually believe that he wants to be fair. He wants to help the colony, but he has his own ideas about what is good for the colony and can’t be swayed by mere reason. So I halfway respect him, but we could never be friends.”
“Okay, I’m not a tourist. And you respect me. And you like me. Why wouldn’t you consider a contract with me?”
“I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“I’m afraid that you actually are as nice as you seem to be. I’m afraid that I might start liking you more than I should. I’m afraid that I could fall in love with you and…Damn it, Mason! I said that I didn’t want to talk about us.”
“Okay. No more us. But I have no intention of entering into a marriage contract with anyone who wants me just for what I can contribute to the gene pool. I have that much respect for myself.”
Janet fought back a tear. “Sure is beautiful weather we’re having.”
“Yeah. Weatherman said it’s going to be sunny all the way through the weekend. They say it’s going to be a beautiful day at the farm on Sunday. Janet, I don’t really feel like working today. Can we just go back to my apartmen
t and watch some old movies? I feel like watching some real tear jerkers.”
“Don’t tell me you actually cry when you watch a sad movie.”
“Yeah, but don’t tell anyone.”
“It will be our secret,” said Janet.
****
That night, Janet requested, “Stay.”
Mason stayed.
****
Mason was awakened by the touch of tender lips pressed against his forehead.
“Wake up sleepy head.” Janet’s voice was barely louder than a whisper.
Mason opened one eye. “What time is it?”
“Hurry and get dressed. I want breakfast before we go to the farm.”
Mason closed his eyes and rolled over onto his side. “It can’t be Sunday. Why are we going to the farm?”
“Eddie is going to meet us there so that we can search the desiccation chamber. I talked to him yesterday and he asked us to meet him around oh nine hundred. So hurry up. I don’t intend to skip breakfast and I’m starved.”
Mason slid out of bed and called over his shoulder as he was leaving the room, “When are you not starving?”
****
The Farmer led the way into a small room and turned on a dim light. “This is the desiccation chamber. It’s not used much—in fact, it probably hasn’t been used since Mr. Echols came for a visit. We use several methods of reducing water content on the farm. The method used depends on whether we are treating waste or drying food. It also depends on just how dry we need in the final product. This is a specialized facility that removes one hundred percent of the water content without damaging the specimen—well with the least amount of damage possible.
“To achieve one hundred percent desiccation, we use vacuum. At around thirty millibars pure water will boil at seventy-five degrees, the standard temperature of the colony. By lowering the pressure to ten millibars we can be certain that not a single drop of water remains in a specimen. But this is done slowly over a period of time.