Waypoint Kangaroo

by Curtis C. Chen

  The vial of plasma goes into the zipper pocket on the upper left arm of my souvenir zero-gee jumpsuit, just below the round Dejah Thoris logo patch. Everything else that’s touched my blood goes into a biohazard bag. I start to unstrap the centrifuge, then decide to try Jessica one more time, just in case I’ve done something wrong.

  Still no answer. I pack up the centrifuge and put it back into the pocket.

  Now, where am I going to find some booze that absolutely everybody will want to drink?

  * * *

  There’s some kind of a very loud parade going through the Promenade, complete with dancers in colorful outfits and performers in animal costumes with giant heads. Very unsettling. I ride the elevator past that deck, get out near the casino, and look for the nearest bar.

  It must be happy hour or something right now, because the first five bars I visit are bustling with literal barflies. Passengers are hanging off every surface, herded by uniformed crew members, and apparently having a great time. I wonder if people get intoxicated more quickly in zero-gravity for some reason.

  The sixth bar, a lonely outpost near the Barsoom Buffet—currently closed until dinner service opens, I mean what is even the point of having this here?—has attracted only a few patrons. I approach the bartender, who has his back turned.

  “Excuse me. What’s the most expensive bottle you’ve got?” I ask.

  He turns around. It’s Ward again. I cannot believe my luck.

  “That is an excellent question,” he says, smiling like I imagine Satan would. “Are you looking for liquor or wine, sir?”

  I attach my feet to the stick-strip under the bar and extend a hand. “Call me Evan.”

  He shakes my hand. “Ward.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I have to admit, he was right about me seeing a lot of him this week. “How many jobs do you actually have on this ship?”

  Ward shrugs. “I’m paying off some student loans.”

  “Right,” I say. “Anyway, I’m thinking wine. Something to enjoy with dinner tonight.”

  “I see.” Ward turns to his bartop computer and taps at the screen. “Tonight, the dining room is offering a variety of pasta entrées—”

  “Actually, we’re eating at that Silk place tonight.”

  “Fête Silk Road?” Ward purses his lips. “I see.”

  “Table for two. Seven-thirty. You can make that happen, right, Ward?”

  He smiles. “I’m sure I can work something out, Mr. President.”

  It’s nice to know we’re on the same wavelength. “Good. Now about the wine. I want the most expensive bottle you’ve got on board. Price is no object.”

  Ward taps his screen a little faster. “Our best wines would exceed the daily charge limit on your account. You’d have to make a separate purchase. Cash or credit.”

  I hold up my platinum credit card. It’s the one that Paul issued from his personal accounts, the one that won’t be declined by any merchant in the Solar System, the one I’m only supposed to use for emergencies. I’ve already decided to worry about my debriefing later. Much later. Or maybe I’ll just run away from home. I’m honestly not sure which choice will be less excruciating.

  Ward raises an eyebrow, then nods. “Just so you know, this is going to run into the low five figures.”

  “That’s not a problem.” I lean forward. “Here’s the situation, Ward. I really want to impress a lady friend, and nothing but the absolute finest will do. I want the most interesting thing you’ve got. Something that is so rare, so unique, that it’s guaranteed to impress anybody. Something that even a teetotaler can’t resist taking a sip of, just for curiosity’s sake.”

  “What’s a ‘teetotaler’?” he asks.

  I frown. “Really?”

  “Nah. I’m just pulling your leg. You want the Red Wine.”

  I can’t tell if he’s still joking. “What kind of red wine?”

  “No. The Red Wine,” he says. “From Meridiani Planum.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Dejah Thoris—Deck 3, Barsoom Buffet

  6 hours before my outrageously fancy dinner with Ellie

  Ward has to call his supervisor, one of the ship’s sommeliers, for approval to sell me the bottle. Even after seeing my platinum card, the sommelier seems hesitant. He arches an eyebrow as I repeat my weaksauce cover story. I really should have come up with something better.

  “I thought it would be a nice treat for dinner tonight,” I say. “You know, fine wine, zero-gravity, doesn’t that sound like a magical experience?”

  “Certainly,” the sommelier says drily.

  “And the fact that this is wine from prewar Mars, well, that’s just icing on the cake. So to speak. Sorry, I’m bad with metaphors.” I appear to be bad at many things. “You know what I mean.”

  “I understand, sir,” the sommelier says. “If I may, just to clarify: you wish to purchase our single bottle of Meridiani Planum Cabernet Mitos?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you understand this is the price of that bottle?” He raises his display tablet.

  “I do.” Why do I feel like he’s about to make me sign a contract in blood?

  “And you wish to purchase just this one bottle.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Of course not, sir,” the sommelier says. “Perhaps you and your companion would like to enjoy the wine with a meal. I can arrange for you a table in the observation dome. Tonight we offer a special prix fixe menu—”

  “We’ve already made dinner arrangements,” I say, giving Ward a glance. He gives me a discreet nod. Good man. “At Fête Silk Road.”

  The sommelier only pauses for a second. “Very good, sir. But if I may, their cuisine may not be best suited to this particular vintage. I could recommend a cheese pairing. Or some seafood. We have a special today on raw oysters—”

  “Just the wine, thanks.” Would you please shut up and take my money?

  The sommelier stares at me for a moment, then nods. “Very good, sir. If you’ll just wait here, I need to verify your credit with the issuing bank. It will take a few minutes, due to lightspeed transmission delays. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “No worries,” I say. “You can’t change the laws of physics, right?”

  “That is not my job, sir.”

  “You know, that wine’s aging inside the bottle as we speak.”

  He turns and disappears through a service door. Ward and I look at each other.

  “Is he always like that?” I ask.

  “Only on days ending in -AY,” Ward says. “Make you a drink? On the house.”

  “Sure.” I look over his shoulder at the backlit wall of liquor bottles. “Surprise me.”

  Ward starts assembling a cocktail. “Anyway, don’t take it personally. Abdi’s just doing his job.”

  “I thought his job was to sell wine.”

  “It is,” Ward says, squirting clear liquid from a squeeze bottle into a transparent shaker. “But he’s selling to everyone. The drinks are as much for show as they are for personal enjoyment.”

  He adds another clear liquid to the shaker. In zero-gravity, the air bubbles stay suspended, making the mixture look like a gelatinous ooze. Ward rattles the shaker, and the gel swirls around. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “And no offense, Evan,” Ward says, “but you don’t seem like the kind of guy who regularly drops five figures on liquid refreshments.” I wonder how he’s going to get that liquid out of the shaker. “There’s been some crew chatter about you. Federal employees aren’t exactly known for their deep pockets.”

  “I’ve actually been saving up for a long time. You only live twice, right?”

  Ward frowns at me. “I think the saying is ‘You only live once.’”

  “No, I’m pretty sure it’s twice. One for sorrow, two for joy?” Or am I thinking of something else? I’ve never been good with poetry.

  “Well, in any case. I hope you’re enjoying the cruise.”

  “Best v
acation of my life.” It’s not a lie.

  Ward stops agitating the shaker and holds it up between us, one hand at each end. He twirls it on its long axis. The liquid inside becomes a cylindrical vortex. Ward plucks off the shaker lid, and the liquid spirals out of the container. He puts down the lid and picks up half of a drink bulb, placing it opposite the open end of the shaker to catch the liquid as it crawls sideways. With his other hand, he pulls away the shaker and picks up the other half of the drink bulb. He lines up both halves of the bulb with the ends of the floating liquid, then brings them together, sealing the cocktail inside the transparent sphere.

  “Nice trick,” I say as he pokes an olive and then a straw through a valve in the bulb.

  “It’s all for show,” Ward says, handing me the drink. “The company wants you to see other passengers enjoying the various amenities aboard and then wanting those things for yourself. If you order a fancy drink, we make sure everyone around you knows about it. Cheers.”

  “I get it. That’s why Sour Grapes wanted me to take the wine up to the observation dome.” So I could advertise the existence of ridiculously expensive fermented grape juice, and hopefully entice others to shell out for their own bottles. I sip my mystery beverage. “What am I drinking here?”

  “Vodka martini.”

  I’ve never had one before. “It’s good. Thank you.”

  Ward nods. “It’s about advertising luxury. Do you know the history of the Red Wine?”

  Probably better than you do. “Yeah. One of the first viable vineyards on Mars.”

  “The first,” Ward corrects me. “The Yarrow family built their habitat dome in Airy Crater specifically to grow wine grapes. The soil was already rich in iron oxides and volcanic basalt, but the vines also needed the right atmosphere and bacteria to thrive. It took them years to get the environment just right, but when they finally produced, it wasn’t just drinkable. It was revolutionary. The Yarrows pioneered techniques that influenced not only vintners back on Earth, but also farmers and gardeners everywhere.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I say. “You have a degree in botany.”

  “Molecular biology, actually,” Ward says. “I minored in botany.”

  If that was a joke, it’s terrible. “And you’re working odd jobs on a cruise ship because…?”

  “I told you. Student loans.”

  Oh no you don’t. “Green Sky has been hiring botanists like crazy for the last decade. You could pay off an Ivy League education after two years with any of their asteroid belt subsidiaries. And you wouldn’t have to sell things to drunk people.”

  Ward shrugs, not looking at me. “I like selling things.”

  That’s when it hits me. “It’s Mars. You wanted to go to Mars. That’s it, isn’t it? And working a cruise liner is the easiest way to get there, if you have more time than money.”

  He picks up another drink bulb and wipes it with a rag. “I wouldn’t call it easy. But it’s at least possible to get through customs to the surface with the cruise line vouching for us.”

  I realize I don’t know Ward’s full name. “Your last name wouldn’t happen to be Yarrow, would it?”

  “No,” he says, splitting the empty drink bulb open. “My cousin’s was.”

  “Your cousin.”

  “Matthew Yarrow.”

  Well, this just became really awkward. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “What happened during the war was horrible,” Ward says. “The loss of life alone would have been bad enough, but to also lose all those cultivars, and all that research—that was the real tragedy.”

  If he tells himself that enough times, he might even start to believe it.

  My martini is very strong and very dry.

  I know who the Yarrows were. I know because I researched them during the war. The agency assigned me to write up threat analyses and tactical assessments for Arabia Terra and bordering settlements. Paul kept me on Earth as long as he could, but he needed me to be useful. And I’ve always been a good spotter.

  Probably less than twenty people ever saw the raw footage from the final battle in Airy Crater. I’m one of those people. I was assigned to review the vid from Earth troops’ helmet cameras and summarize it for the agency’s report to the Joint Chiefs. I wanted to erase the worst of those recordings, so nobody would ever have to see or hear any of it again.

  Meridiani Planum is where the NASA rover Opportunity landed in the early twenty-first century to collect rock and soil samples. The Yarrows staked a claim there during the second wave of Martian settlement, when living in a dome was no longer life-threatening on a daily basis. The new colonial government wanted businesses to exploit the unique opportunities available on Mars. They wanted to show that Mars could be a better home than Earth.

  Some people say they succeeded too well. Some people say that’s what started the war. Some people are idiots.

  In the fourteenth month of the war, an Earth troop transport went off-course and landed in Arabia Terra, just north of Airy Crater. Martian infantry boiled out of the Chaos regions to the west and overran the invaders. The battle turned into a siege that lasted for weeks.

  Airy Crater is larger now. The ground is irradiated to a depth of fifty meters, and nothing will grow there for several hundred years. The popular myth is that the Yarrow vineyard workers welcomed the first wave of Earth soldiers into the dome, then killed them with poison gas. It’s a good story, but it’s not true. I know how those soldiers died. I saw their helmet vids.

  I also know exactly when and how Matthew Yarrow died. I wish I could tell Ward, but he doesn’t really want to know. Knowing doesn’t make it any better.

  It’s a mystery how many bottles of Meridiani Planum wine still exist. Most of the Yarrows’ records were destroyed during the war. Rumors still circulate about the family having a secret underground cellar somewhere in the polar regions, but nobody’s been able to find it, of course. The only thing we know for sure is how to identify a genuine bottle of Meridiani Planum Red Wine—by verifying the integrity of the seal over the cork and confirming the cryptographic hash in the holo code on the label.

  It’s not just a bottle of wine. It’s a piece of history. Nobody would refuse to at least taste it, and that’s all I’ll need to deliver the nanobots and save their lives.

  “So,” I ask Ward, “have you ever tasted this Red Wine, yourself?”

  “No,” he says. “I prefer whites.”

  I can’t tell if he’s joking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Dejah Thoris—Deck 6, stateroom 6573

  5 hours before my nanobot-flavored dinner with Ellie

  As soon as I get back to my stateroom with the Red Wine, I lock the door, activate the comms dish, and call Jessica again.

  This time she answers. She’s wearing an olive-green, ribbed, wool pullover with patches on the elbows and shoulders. The room around her is dark except for a couple of computer displays and a few blinking lights on her medical instruments.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she asks. “I’ve been trying to contact you for—” She shakes her head. “Never mind. Please confirm that you’ve secured all the equipment. Over.”

  “Affirmative.” I pull the vial of plasma out of my jumpsuit and hold it up, transmitting vid from my eye. “I spun down a sample of my blood and separated out the plasma to extract the nanobots. By the way, why are you wearing an SAS commando sweater? Over.”

  “We can discuss my fashion choices later. Give me a wideband radio spectrum view of that vial. I need to make sure the nanobots precipitated correctly. And please verify that you’ve kept the vial within half a meter of your body at all times. Over.”

  I wiggle my fingers to adjust my eye’s sensors, and a series of glowing outlines appears over my arm and hand. Tiny bright circles blink at the bottom of the vial. I pull it closer so Jessica will get a good picture. “Let me know when you’ve got enough. Over.” I leave the channel open, streaming data back to Earth.

&
nbsp; Jessica nods at her display. “Serum nanobots look good. I’m uploading their new firmware now. Do not disconnect, repeat, do not disconnect your receiver until I say so. Over.”

  I tuck the vial back into my jumpsuit and wait. After a couple of minutes of staring at the side of Jessica’s head, I open the box containing the Red Wine, pull the bottle out of its tissue paper wrapping, and turn the label so we can both see it. “So will this do for the expensive booze? Over.”

  She turns her head back to face me and says something in Mandarin. “Please tell me you did not steal that! Over.”

  “Of course not,” I say. “I’m on a cruise ship. Everything’s for sale. I paid with the platinum card.”

  Jessica makes a fist, raises it as if she’s going to slam it down on her desk, then slowly opens and lowers her hand. “Just in case you’ve forgotten. Let me remind you that we are trying to hide what we’re doing. Is there some reason you think Lasher will not notice a ten thousand dollar purchase and demand an explanation? Over!”

  “Relax,” I say. “He’s got bigger fish to fry. If he does ask, I’ll say I felt like having some fun on my vacation. That’s what he told me to do, right? I’ll tell him I was trying to impress a girl.” It’s not a lie. I sure hope Ellie appreciates this outrageous wine.

  “And how will you explain all these long-distance comms with me? Because he’s going to notice that, too. And I am the one who gets court-martialed for running illegal medical experiments! Over.”

  “You know about fancy wines, right? And … women … things? Yeah? I wanted to ask you for some guidance before my big date. There we go.”

  Jessica glares at me. “Nobody is going to believe that.”

  “Trust me, I can sell Lasher. Asking you for relationship advice wouldn’t be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  She turns and looks offscreen. After a few minutes of her silent treatment, I put the bottle away and decide it might be good to change the subject while we wait.