Red Planet Blues

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “I work for the head office on Earth,” I said. “I stopped by your place, but you weren’t home.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Lacie never mentioned that.”

  “Anyway,” I said lightly, “you were saying the person who brought the explosives aboard the Traven was . . . ?

  But it was too late. Berling was on his feet. He didn’t have enough to justify attacking me right there—but he certainly had his suspicions. “I knew I shouldn’t trust you, Lomax,” he said and stormed out.

  I downed the rest of my gin. Dirk, wisely, didn’t say a word.

  SIXTEEN

  Igave Dirk the twenty solars I’d promised him, and we exited The Bent Chisel and went our separate ways. I did not, however, give him back the switchblade I’d taken from him, even though I had it with me; it looked like it’d be a useful thing to carry, along with my phone, my tab, and my revolver.

  I was sorry not to have gotten the information Berling had, but if this writer-in-residence fellow was doing a book about the Traven, he might know who had brought the land mines onboard. I decided to head out to see him; a little culture never hurt anyone. I took a hovertram since Shopatsky House, the writer’s retreat, was way up by the north airlock station.

  I’d expected the writer-in-residence to be a mousy academic, like Pickover. But when the green door slid open, it revealed a statuesque biological woman in her late twenties with flawless chestnut skin, sexy brown eyes behind long lashes, and a gorgeous mane of brown hair tumbling over her shoulders. The only thing remotely writerly about her appearance was that she wore honest-to-goodness eyeglasses, something I don’t think I’d seen on anyone since leaving Earth.

  “Hi,” I said, smiling broadly. “I’m Alexander Lomax. I hear you’re writing a book.”

  “I’m trying to,” she said, without warmth. “I came here for peace and quiet.” She crossed long arms in front of a lovely pair of breasts. “But people keep disturbing me.”

  “Sorry. I wanted to call ahead—but there’s no listing for Shopatsky House in the directory.”

  “That’s rather the point.”

  “You’re writing about the B. Traven, right?”

  She warmed a little at that. “Yes.”

  “I’m a private investigator. I’m looking into a matter that involves the Traven.”

  “I really do jealously guard my time, Mr. Lomax. But as a writer, I often impose on others for help with my research—professors, doctors, scientists, what have you. And so, to keep the karmic balance, I’m always willing to help others who are looking for information, if they’ve done their homework.” She peered at me over the top of her glasses; it was a look that was sexy when I’d seen it in old movies, and it was sexy here, too. “It’s rude to just waste somebody’s time asking them questions you could have answered on your own. So, let’s see if you’ve done your homework. Why was that ship called the B. Traven?”

  There’s a pub trivia league that meets at The Bent Chisel. I used to make fun of its members—why bother to remember stuff, when your phone could tell you the answer to any question? But the name did faintly ring a bell, and—

  And those who said I spent too much time watching old movies can suck it. “After B. Traven,” I said, “who wrote the novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the basis for the movie of the same name.”

  Luscious lips curved in a smile, and we both spontaneously said in unison, “‘Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!’” She was grinning broadly now, and I added, “Of course, that’s a misquote. What Gold Hat actually said was, ‘Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!’”

  She nodded. “Just like no one actually said, ‘Play it again, Sam.’”

  I did my best Bogey—an impression that hardly made an impression on anyone these days. “‘Play it, Sam. You played it for her, you can play it for me. If she can stand it, I can stand it.’”

  “Mr. Lomax,” she said, stepping aside and gesturing, “won’t you come in?”

  It was too early to say, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” so I didn’t—but I thought it.

  Shopatsky House looked very comfortable. Most furniture on Mars was printed here, rather than shipped in from Earth, but a couple of these pieces looked like real wood—including the . . . the . . . I dug through my memory for the term; I’d only ever seen such things in movies before: the roll-top desk. Sitting on it was a red cube about ten centimeters on a side; a household computer. Damn things didn’t have to be that big, but people tended to lose them if they were smaller.

  There was also another piece of furniture I’d never seen in real life: a filing cabinet. If I had one, I’d keep bottles of booze in it; I didn’t know anyone who had paper files.

  I realized I’d lucked out with her little test. I’d seen that movie a hundred times, and back when it was made, it was normal for only a few names to appear on the credits, instead of every damn catering assistant and holography technician. The author’s name had caught my eye because it had included just a single initial: “B. Traven.” That film—about the quest for gold in Mexico—did have interesting resonances for the hunt for fossils on Mars.

  But if this gorgeous writer’s trivia question had been a more prosaic one—“What’s my name?”—I would have failed. My detective skills quickly came to the rescue, though, because there was a third piece of furniture I’d never seen used for its intended purpose before: a bookcase. Every set of boxed-in shelves I’d ever encountered simply displayed curios, objets d’art, or—here on Mars—interesting rocks or fossils. But this one, made of reddish brown wood that had a warmth to it that none of the reddish things native to this planet had, was partially filled with real printed books—doubtless the single biggest repository of such things on all of Mars.

  The first two shelves contained volumes by Stavros Shopatsky with lurid titles like The Wanton Savior, The Shores of Death, and Pirates in the Wind. The subsequent shelves had books grouped by authors—but not alphabetically. First Hayakawa, then Chavez, then Torkoff, then Cohen. “Are these the other writers who have been in residence here?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” she said, nodding that lovely head of hers. “We’re each supposed to bring at least five kilograms of our own books as part of our personal mass allowance. If our books are only in e-editions, we’re to have leather-bound copies produced to bring with us.”

  My eyes tracked to the second shelf from the bottom, which was partially full. An odd little L-shaped thingy pressed against the last book to keep them all from toppling over. The name on the spines of the last three books was Lakshmi Chatterjee. I reached down and extracted the final volume; its title was Lunaport: Valor and Independence.

  “And now you’re writing about the B. Traven?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m trying to find out who smuggled the explosives aboard the Traven.”

  “Ah, yes,” she said. “The land mines.” She headed into the living room and motioned for me to sit down. I’d hoped she was going to take the green couch, meaning I could move in next to her, but she took the matching chair instead.

  I leaned into the corner of the couch and swung my legs up, leaving my feet projecting off the cushions into the air. “How much longer will you be on Mars?” The question had nothing whatsoever to do with the investigation.

  “Another seventy-one days.”

  I smiled. “Not that anyone’s counting.”

  “The next writer is coming in then; I go back on the ship that’s bringing him.”

  “You looking forward to going home?”

  “Somewhat. I like it here.”

  “Where is home for you?”

  She crossed her long legs. She was wearing tight-fitting pants that looked like black leather and a tight-fitting black top. “Delhi.” She looked at a wall clock—an analog wall clock; it always took me forever to decode those. But the point was plain; I should move thing
s along. “Do you know who brought the land mines aboard the Traven?”

  “Sure. It was Willem Van Dyke—the same guy Weingarten and O’Reilly had taken along on their second voyage.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve seen the passenger manifest. He wasn’t on the Traven, at least not under that name.”

  “He wasn’t a passenger,” Lakshmi said. “He was crew.”

  “You mean—you mean he was the monster? The one who thawed out passengers and terrorized them?”

  “No, no. He was the backup bowman; the spare. He was supposed to be kept on ice the whole voyage, and only thawed out in an emergency.”

  “Ah,” I said. “And do you know what became of him?”

  “Of course. I’m covering that in my book.”

  I looked at her expectantly. “And?”

  She tilted her head and brushed lustrous hair out of her eyes. “I’ll send you an invitation to the book-launch party.”

  I smiled my most-charming smile. “Please, Lakshmi. I’d really like to know.”

  She considered for a moment, then: “I don’t know how much you know about the history of human space flight.”

  “Some. What they taught in school.” Except on Fridays.

  “Well, did you know that some space scientists used to say it was impossible for humans to safely come to Mars, or live here?”

  “When did they say that?”

  “From the 1970s to, oh, say, 2030 or so.”

  “Why?”

  “Radiation.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup. Earth’s magnetosphere and atmosphere protect people on Earth’s surface from solar and cosmic radiation. And they argued that without those shields, you’d get too big a dose coming to Mars or staying on its surface.”

  I smiled. “Shall we turn off the lights and see if we glow?”

  “Exactly. It was a risible contention. The scientists who were making it were either talking outside their field of expertise or were deliberately misleading people.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Why?”

  “A turf war. Sure, here on Mars we get more radiation than people on Earth do—enough for each year living under the dome to increase by a whopping one percent your chance of getting cancer sometime in the next thirty years. The scientists saying cancer was a showstopper were all either in the business of unmanned probes or wanted to spend forever hanging in Low Earth Orbit.” She paused. “You know anyone who smokes tobacco?”

  “My grandmother used to.”

  “Yeah. Well, if she’d moved to Mars but left her cigarettes behind on Earth, she’d have reduced her chances of getting cancer.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So?”

  “So, getting cancer via space travel or while living on Mars is a vanishingly slim chance. But, then again, so is striking it rich finding fossils here. That happens, and so does the cancer thing—just very, very rarely. Well, Willem Van Dyke didn’t discover fossil riches—Weingarten and O’Reilly did that, and they just brought him along for the ride. But he did win the other lottery, poor bastard: he’s the one in a thousand who got cancer by traveling in space.”

  “And then what?” I asked.

  “I’m still trying to find out. There are references thirty years ago to him having a terminal diagnosis, and I haven’t turned up anything after that. Of course, he knew where the Alpha mother lode was, and even though Weingarten and O’Reilly ripped him off, he probably kept a few good fossils. I suspect he’s long dead, but with the money those fossils would have fetched, he probably went out in style.”

  “Could he have transferred?”

  “He might have possibly had enough money, yeah, but I doubt he’d have done that. This was decades ago, remember. Van Dyke was very religious. He believed he had an immortal soul and didn’t believe that soul could be transferred into an artificial body. There were a lot of people like that back then. Even today, there are still some who want to overturn Durksen v. Hawksworth in the States.”

  I’d been all of twelve when that case had begun. A crazed gunman had shot President Vanessa Durksen. There had been no way to save her body, but Howard Slapcoff had successfully urged the president’s chief of staff to have her mind transferred, and have the transfer serve out the rest of her term, instead of having the vice-president, who everyone agreed was a disaster, sworn in as her successor. Durksen had been well into her second term then, so there was no way she could stand for re-election, but a lot of pundits said the transfer could have won if she’d been eligible to run again. It had been a brilliant coup for Howard Slapcoff. Durksen had been scrutinized minutely by the whole planet—her every word, her every decision—to see if she’d changed in the slightest after transferring, and most people (except a few ideologues in the opposing party) agreed that she hadn’t; mainstream acceptance of transfers really still being the same person began with that.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks. I appreciate the help.”

  She unfolded her long legs and rose. “Now, was there anything else? I really do have to get back to my book.”

  “No,” I said. “But thank you.” I tipped my nonexistent hat and, with considerable regret, left her and headed out into the dreary world under the dome.

  * * *

  I spent the rest of the day searching for information about Willem Van Dyke. Although the Privacy Revolution of 2034 had made it a lot easier for people to not leave tracks wherever they went, most people still had pretty extensive online presences. But not Willem Van Dyke—or, at least not the Willem Van Dyke in question; it turned out to be an irritatingly common name. He really did seem to go off the grid thirty years ago, just as Rory Pickover and Lakshmi Chatterjee had said. I suppose he could have just headed out into the wilderness to die—but there was no death notice that I could find.

  Once night fell, I went to see Rory Pickover at his apartment at the center of the dome. After he’d let me in, and we were seated in his yellow-walled living room, I dove into what I wanted. “You promised to take me to see the Alpha.”

  Pickover looked at me unblinkingly. I stared him down as long as I could, but his acrylic peepers weren’t affected even by direct exposure to the desiccated Martian atmosphere, so he won. But I wasn’t going to give up. “Seriously,” I said. “I need to see it.”

  “It’s nothing to look at,” he replied.

  Pickover himself was nothing to look at either, at the moment; most of the skin was still gone from his face. “I understand that. But I’m having no luck tracing Van Dyke—and there may be a clue to his whereabouts there.”

  “All right,” Pickover said, surprising me; I’d expected the argument to last longer. “Let’s go.”

  “Now?”

  “Sure, now.” He stood up. “It’s dark out—that’s my first line of defense in keeping you from recognizing landmarks. Second line of defense will be having you polarize your surface-suit helmet for the journey, meaning you’ll barely be able to see out of it in the dark. Third line of defense will be my taking a circuitous route to get us there. Fourth line of defense is that by this late you must be tired, meaning you might even fall asleep on the journey—indeed, you’ll want to, since it’ll take hours, and we won’t be able to accomplish much until dawn.”

  I’d kind of hoped to make it over to The Bent Chisel tonight to see Diana, but at least he was agreeing to take me. “All right,” I said, getting up as well.

  “Great. Bathroom’s down there, old boy—better avail yourself before we head out, and . . .”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. Haven’t used it myself in months—not since I transferred. I hope I remembered to flush.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Since the episode with Joshua Wilkins, I’d researched ways to kill a transfer, just to be on the safe side. Sadly, except for using a broadband disruptor, there didn’t seem to be any reliable method. That made sense, of course: the bodies were designed to cheat death—they were highly durable, with vital components encased in protective armor.
I’d tried to find a way, but it seemed kryptonite was hard to come by on Mars.

  Even so, Pickover made me leave my gun in a locker at the western airlock station—I guess he was afraid I might try to do him in once he’d shown me where the riches were located. He didn’t know I’d acquired a switchblade from Dirk, though, and he was too naïve to give me a pat-down before we headed out, so I kept that in my pocket.

  My detective’s brain was hard at work trying to figure out precisely where he was taking me. First clue: we’d exited through the western airlock, and this was the one bit of information that couldn’t be misdirection for my sake, since it was where he’d parked his privately owned Mars buggy when he’d last returned from the Alpha.

  Thank God Pickover had bought the buggy prior to transferring, because it was the expensive kind that had its own life-support system. If he’d been buying one today, he’d doubtless have opted for the cheaper—and more reliable—ones that simply provided transportation.

  Pickover rented me a surface suit. He paid for it directly, since he would have ended up being expensed for it, anyway—but I didn’t have to wear it for the long drive, although he did make me put the fishbowl over my head. On Earth, that would have been uncomfortable—normally, the suit’s collar bore the weight of the helmet—but the thing wasn’t heavy enough here to be bothersome. Pickover did make it opaque, though, before we started tooling along.

  A planitia is a low plain, and just like their counterparts on Earth, they tended to be nothing but miles and miles of miles and miles. We chatted a bit at first, but having to listen to Rory’s voice echo in the fishbowl was unpleasant, and after a time we both fell silent. I confess I wiled away the hours thinking about Diana, Lacie, and Lakshmi, separately and in various permutations.

  I possibly did doze on the trip—tough guy like me doesn’t often think about his childhood, but when my mom wanted me to sleep and I wouldn’t, she used to take me for a drive. Pickover had also made me leave my tablet computer and phone behind; I had no tools that might help me calculate our location. But by the time we got to where we were going, the sun was rising in the east. I’d been hoping it would be coming up over jagged peaks or broken crater walls that I could match to topographical maps, but the illuminated part of the horizon—and, as I saw as the sun climbed higher, the horizon all the way around—was just more smooth ground, with one exception: to the west, there was the crumbling wall of a small crater.