“I don’t know. But other people are trying to collect them, and if they get put back together, we’re all dead.”
“Us?”
“Earth, for sure. Mars, and anywhere else anyone runs to. Eventually, the entire solar system,” Fergus said. “I was told ‘probably not beyond the heliosphere,’ but I think that was meant to be reassuring.”
Arelyn laughed and set the fragment down on her plate next to a piece of pickle. “You’ve got to be joking,” she said, and when Fergus just stared steadily back at her, she shook her head. “You’re not joking?”
“Wish I was,” Fergus said.
“Where did you get this?”
“I found it while hiking, totally by accident.”
“And how do you know it’s dangerous?”
“You know your friendly neighborhood terrifying aliens across the Gap? Even they are afraid of this. Enough to send a messenger all the way to Earth to warn me.”
Arelyn frowned, pursing her lips, and studied the fragment silently for a few moments. Fergus waited. The air in the gazebo was fresh but cold, a heater overhead in the rafters of the gazebo cycling it through enough to keep them at least on the edge of comfortable. Outside the dome, the sky was still hazy with dust that was slowly settling, but there was only the faintest taste of it in the air, just enough for nostalgia and sadness to settle, in turn, in him.
“I don’t like the idea of the Asiig being afraid of anything,” Arelyn said at last as she poked at the piece with her finger, then reluctantly picked it up again. He appreciated that she hadn’t accused him of lying. She was turning it back and forth as if to either dispel the illusion or cement the uncomfortable reality of it. “Something like this shouldn’t exist. And that level of danger is, like, fantasy-level implausible.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve got no other proof, nothing else to help me make my case. I wouldn’t blame you at all for not believing me, and I know for certain you don’t trust me.”
“True,” Arelyn said. “I shouldn’t, and I don’t. But you know what you do have going for you?”
“What?” Fergus said.
“You, Fergus Fucking Ferguson,” Arelyn said, and dumped the piece in front of him with a dull clang. “Only you could get yourself and all the rest of us in that much trouble, totally by accident.”
* * *
—
Arelyn kicked them out of the gazebo so she could make some calls in private. Isla took the opportunity to head back toward the hotel with room key in hand to take a shower and a nap. Fergus and Mari took a stroll along the perimeter of the hotel’s dome shield, and it would have felt unbearably vulnerable all on its own if the herd of antelope hadn’t also slowly congregated behind them and were tailing them across the sand.
“A lifetime of wanting off the farm but being told if I left, it would be the end of everything and everyone I loved, and now here I am on Mars again, and I miss home,” Mari said. “Some sort of lesson in that, I suppose.”
“You and Arelyn patched up your friendship, though,” Fergus said. “That’s good.”
“It’s a different friendship now,” Mari said. “Maybe better, in the long run? But the total trust is gone. And maybe that’s just part of growing up.”
“Could be,” Fergus said.
She and Arelyn had grown up together in Cernee’s Wheel Collective, Mari’s family lichen farm on one side, and Arelyn and her father on the other. The same aliens who’d wired him up with his electrical gift had also messed with Mari’s grandmother, Mattie Vahn, except the nature and extent of the modification were both unclear and hereditary. Mari had never confided that secret to her lifelong best friend, but Fergus had stumbled on it on his own. Arelyn had reacted exactly the way Mari had feared, leaving them both hurt and angry, and Fergus stuck right in the middle.
He was glad they had worked things out.
“One of the problems here is that while the deep Free Marsie communities are mostly self-sufficient, this is still Mars. Margins are slim. Stuff breaks. Emergencies happen. It’s not all that different from Cernee, really,” Mari said. “One way the MCA keeps the resistance in check is by throttling supplies outside the big cities. Anyone wanting to sell certain parts and supplies has to either be a government contractor or they have to pay ridiculous tariffs on any imported merchandise sold for profit.”
“Yeah,” Fergus said. He’d experienced that when he’d first arrived on Mars from Earth as a clueless teen wallowing in his own drama, and immediately picked up on how desperately thin the line between life and death was. “And Arelyn has found a way around that? Or has the MCA just not caught up to her yet?”
“Right, so, this is where it gets good,” Mari said. “It turns out that one of the very few things on Mars that isn’t taxed, for centuries-old Earth historical reasons, is tea. Some of the finest tea in the known universe is grown by the monks of Fadsji, who, as it also turns out, think that a very particular strain of gen-mod lichen has curative properties.”
Fergus had to stop in his tracks, he was laughing so hard. When he could catch his breath again, he said, “So, Arelyn sells parts at cost, thereby avoiding any taxation on profit, while—”
“We trade lichen to Fadsji for tea and sell the tea here either at a huge markup to upper-class dome dwellers into it for the status who would be very upset if their supply dried up, or to the outlying Free Marsie towns at just enough of a markup to cover the costs of the operation and future expansion.”
“That’s beautiful,” Fergus said.
“Yeah,” Mari said. “Arelyn’s father provided initial contacts and bankrolled a lot of the startup, but otherwise, it’s all Arelyn’s deal. Half a standard and she’s already got the beginning of a network set up all the way from Ares One over to Ares Three by Elysium Mons, with two surface buggies running the delivery routes, and half of what she’s carrying is information and news off the planetary networks.” Mari laughed. “Her grades are shit for the first time in her life, and if she doesn’t get kicked out of university at the end of the year, there is no justice in the universe.”
Fergus had to admit, in the short time since he’d last seen her, Arelyn had become someone to be reckoned with. Well, she reckoned with you just fine when she hit you in the head with a pipe the very first time you met, he thought. Now she’s just added range.
“Yeah, well, I’m just hoping this doesn’t drag on long enough to get Isla in trouble with school,” he said. “It’s a lot more important than hanging around with me, no matter how much fun it seems like it could be.”
“Fun? Oh, right, like that time I was huddled down inside an asteroid while it got the shit blasted out of it by dozens of armed warships,” Mari said. “That kind of fun?”
“Exactly,” Fergus said, not taking the bait nor pointing out that it had been her idea to start with. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced back, over the heads of the antelope herd, to where Arelyn was now standing in the gazebo doorway, waving at them.
They headed back, and Fergus felt his optimism at leveraging Arelyn’s distribution system fading as he got close enough to read the tight-lipped, slightly smug scowl on her face. “Uh-oh,” Fergus muttered.
“You have a backup plan, right?” Mari asked, then shook her head. “What am I saying? Of course not.”
“They’re always better when I pull them out of thin air in a full panic,” Fergus quipped, and Mari snickered. It was a better response that he would have gotten to the only backup plan he’d come up with so far, which was make the first plan work anyway.
Arelyn moved aside so they could step back up into the gazebo, then she took her seat and picked up her cup of tea as if there had been no interruption at all to their lunch. Her handpad sat dark on the table. When she’d ignored them just long enough to make Fergus consider upending the entire table, Mari cleared her throat. “Ari,” she
said.
Arelyn gave a small shrug. “Do I really need to tell you what you already know?”
Fergus sat down in his earlier seat and leaned forward. “Yes,” he said.
“Look, I vouched for you as a reliable source—and don’t you dare ever mention that again—but the entire scenario, no matter how I tried to spin it as plausible, just isn’t,” Arelyn said. “You must have friends somewhere else. Go dump your problem on them.”
“Ari,” Mari said again, more sharply, and this got Arelyn’s frowning attention.
“What did you honestly expect?” Arelyn protested. “It’s not like I’ve got a lot of facts to make a convincing argument. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to establish mutual trust here, but if I’d pushed any harder, the only thing I’d’ve convinced them of was that I’m unstable. You’ve met Kaice, Mari! Does she seem like the type to buy into random—”
“Kaice Gorri?” Fergus interrupted. “A little older than me? Big scar just under her right eye?”
Arelyn blinked. “Yes,” she answered.
“Call her back. Tell her it’s Fergus that’s asking.”
“What? Why? There is no way—” Arelyn started to protest.
“Ari!” Mari kicked the table leg, shaking everything. “Can you just do it?”
Arelyn grimaced, then picked up her handpad angrily. “If Kaice actually knows Fergus, she’ll be even more likely to run the other way than have anything to do with him,” she said. “But for you, Mari . . .”
“For all of us,” Fergus said, and the look Arelyn shot him could have bored a hole through stone.
Arelyn kept the handpad upright so that neither Mari nor Fergus were in view. “Sorry,” she said to whoever was on the other end of the connection. “I’ve been asked to tell you that the person wanting the favor is named Fergus, but I’ve—”
Whatever was said was not something Fergus could hear, but Arelyn stared up sharply at him. “Yeah,” she said, and then, more defeated, “Yeah. Okay.”
She set the handpad down on the table as the connection closed. “Well,” she said.
“Well what?” Mari asked.
“She’s coming here.” Arelyn shook her head, then squinted at Fergus as if he was some sort of misbehaving lab specimen. “What is it about you?”
Fergus spread out his hands. “What can I say? People like me,” he said.
Arelyn picked up one of the leftover sandwiches and took a bite. “Can these kill me?” she asked. “Please tell me yes.”
* * *
—
“Bright Ares, it is you,” Kaice said, when she and a small cohort of fellow Free Marsies arrived, on foot, several hours later. The pink-haired girl at the desk earlier had been replaced by an elderly man, who took one look at the new visitors and heaved a world-weary sigh as if to announce his expectations that trouble was imminent. He did not bother to make them sign in.
They retired to the gazebo once again, in time to watch the beginnings of the Martian sunset, and Fergus set the fragment down on the table in front of everyone without a word.
Kaice picked it up first, examining it at length before passing it along the table to the two others that had arrived with her. Chu was a middle-aged woman, probably Martian Lakota from the red-and-blue bead string along the collar of her exosuit, and she silently appraised the fragment in turn before passing it to Polo, who was young enough that Fergus had already mentally dubbed him “the kid” before introductions had been made.
Polo turned the piece over in his own hands, swore, and dropped it on the table. Chu chuckled.
“Now, that’s alien alien,” Kaice said. “So, your intention is to collect the rest of these pieces and hand them off to my people to sequester around the planet, hiding them from potential adversaries until you’re ready to . . . do something with them?”
“Destroy them, we hope,” Fergus said.
“And there’s a reason you can’t destroy them one at a time as you acquire them?” Kaice asked.
“We haven’t figured out how yet. The pieces survived the Drift.”
Kaice whistled, then leaned back in her chair and poured herself a glass of lemonade from the pitcher Goom had left them. Fergus contemplated how much more serious she’d become over the years, and wondered if it was responsibility or just life on Mars that had etched itself in fine lines on her face. His own, he was sure, reflected no such wisdom or commitment.
“Okay,” she said at last.
“What?” Arelyn spoke up. “Just like that? Why?”
“Ms. Harcourt, do you know what I’m most known for?” Kaice asked her.
“Recovering Sentinel, of course,” Arelyn said. “And then for—”
“Sentinel,” Kaice interrupted. “Nereidum Montes. Damn, but that was cold. I don’t know that I’ve ever been that cold since then, or as foolish, but we won, we stole Sentinel back from the MCA before they could use it as a bargaining chip. I lost a toe to frostbite on that mission. You, Fergus?”
“Three,” he said.
Arelyn stared, then finally shook her head, as if letting reluctantly go of something. “I guess I know the answer to what it is with you,” she said.
Chu patted her hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “Your father left secrets with us, too.”
While Arelyn visibly struggled to process the possibilities of that revelation, Fergus poured another glass of lemonade for Isla, then the last few drops of it for himself.
“What’s Sentinel?” Isla asked.
“Originally, it was the name of the first colony ship to arrive carrying permanent settlers,” Chu answered. “There were temporary mining towns, a few science bases, but not much else at the time. The gutted, poisoned, spent, and abandoned grasslands of North America were burning, and much of what was left of the old United States was at war with itself. A number of Lakota and Nakota Sioux families contracted with a private space carrier who was offering good rates to build its reputation. Together with a handful of other families and individuals fleeing similar disasters and despair elsewhere on Earth, we pooled our resources and came here. The ship survived the landing intact enough not to kill everyone, but not much beyond that.”
“It’s amazing how often that’s the story with first colonies,” Fergus said. He could think of four others off the top of his head that had effectively crash-landed at their destination and survived, at least partially or at first. The numbers that didn’t get that far were much, much larger.
“Part of the contract was to bring us resupplies in half an Earth year, but with the loss of one of their ships and, as it turns out, no insurance to cover it, the carrier company folded,” Kaice said. “Out of necessity, the ship was torn apart for materials to expand our original shelter plans to last as long as possible. The only thing left was one eight-meter section of wing, which was mounted upright as either monument or memorial, and every member of the original colony etched their names into it, hoping that the luck by which it survived the crash intact would pass to them, and if not and the worst happened, they would be remembered. That is Sentinel we speak of now.
“Two-thirds of the colonists survived the next five years, with a lot of good luck and some help and bartering from the mining companies. Then more people came—my own ancestors among the second and third waves to arrive—and Mars became a great, free land. Not easy, not thriving, but living.”
“And then Earth came and took it back,” Fergus added.
“We persist, nonetheless. So, they stole Sentinel to break our hearts,” Chu said.
“And we took it back,” Kaice said. “It was a dangerous, impetuous, ill-conceived plan, as only a bunch of teenagers could have concocted together.”
“But the plan worked,” Fergus said.
Chu smiled. “It did. They still haven’t found it, you know. It ended up being a morale blow to the MCA instead of us, an
d it is now a doubly powerful symbol: of the struggle to survive, and the fight to be free.”
Kaice nodded. “And so, Fergus is one of us. Even if he sneaks on-planet now and then without bothering to say hello. And if Mars is truly in danger too . . . it is not such a difficult request versus the unimaginable cost of saying no.”
“So, now we have a way to hide the pieces,” Isla said. “But how do we find them to start with?”
Kaice laughed. “If they’re all on Earth, that is not our problem,” she said. “Your brother, though . . . I trust that he will find a way, if anyone can.”
“Yeah, how did you put it? A ‘dangerous, impetuous, ill-conceived’ way,” Arelyn said.
“Maybe. Sometimes, that’s all that will work,” Kaice answered. She smiled. “Just watch out for your toes.”
* * *
—
Kaice and her crew left on foot as soon as night fell, and invited Fergus to walk along with them for part of the way. Even though his heart felt suddenly squeezed tight, he took them up on it and retrieved his suit from the old man at the desk.
They crossed through the shield out into the dark of Mars, and Fergus was suddenly fifteen again, remembering how it felt to be giddy with the idea of his own invincibility. “The others . . .” he started to ask, because he knew that was what Kaice was waiting for.
“Tophe is somewhere out on Utopia Planitia, running a project I know very few details about, and can’t tell you even those. They’re well,” Kaice said. “Abhi has made quite a name for herself teaching oboe at the symphony school in Ares One; you’d be amazed how much good intel comes back to us through things overheard there. And she’s happy.”
Kaice fell quiet, as they made it to the top of a small dune and could just make out the dark silhouette of Arsia Mons against the starry skies behind. There was one person left, of the original five of them, that neither of them had mentioned, and the fist around Fergus’s heart gripped tighter. “And Dru?” he asked, because he had to.
The Scavenger Door Page 9