“Manipulating the truth was too easy. That fat cow is no match for me when it comes to womanly wiles. She doesn’t even deserve to be called a woman.”
“What are you talking about?” murmured Andrew with his tongue flicking around Angie’s erect nipples.
“That clumsy Ackerson left lots of compromising reports on an unprotected computer, in the cornfield offices.”
“And you read them?”
“Flicked through them...”
Andrew stopped.
“I see that you’re a... bad girl. Very, very bad,” he said, biting her neck.
“Ouch, be careful – you’ll leave a mark!” she said, barely putting up a struggle.
“So, it was you who sent those reports to the Arabs...”
“It was easy when you have friends to do the dirty work for you.”
“You must have given them a reward.”
Angie lapsed into memories.
“Those boys demanded too much in return – but it was worth it.”
Then she noticed Andrew’s manhood, which lay dormant between his legs.
“Is something wrong, Andrew? It’s not... hard.”
Andrew sighed and, with a mischievous grin, became himself again:
“Gorgeous,” he said, changing his tone of voice. “If you were called Angelo instead of Angie, this would be an orgy of lust and passion, and not this pantomime we set up.”
“And... cut!” exclaimed Claudia, coming out from behind the curtain.
Angie got a good fright.
“What? How?”
Andrew got up off the bed.
“How was it, Claudia?” he asked. “Was I good?”
“A little exaggerated, maybe? Although there was a moment when I almost thought that you were straight.”
“You know yourself, too long spent in the canteen – I have enough examples to copy.”
“James will love what we’ve done for him!” exclaimed his sister.
“Hey, hey! I’m still here!” said Angie, shaking her hands in the air.
“Not for long, Angie Dickinson. I’ve recorded your confession.”
“What? What confession?”
“You see, Claudia? When they’re with me, they lose their memory, they lose consciousness...”
“Get over it, Casanova...” said his sister. “Miss Dickinson, you are guilty of industrial espionage.”
“Nobody will believe that kind of confession – with a man on top of me!”
“I remind you that the only judge on this planet is my mother and her eternal menopause,” said Claudia. “And, if you get her on a bad day, you’re dead.”
Angie shivered thinking of the consequences. She thought of making a break for it, but where to?
“Don’t be stupid, Angie. If you want, we can record the second part while we’re waiting for the police to get here,” joked Andrew. “Ah, by the way, it’s not so ‘odd’ to be homosexual. What’s odd is that there are straights who can put up with you.”
Angie resigned herself, caught between fear and anger.
Meanwhile, in the Stafford mansion, news arrived of seismic activity on the Tharsis plateau. James didn’t take long to check where the epicentre was:
“Mount Olympus... the prison... Mary!”
Suddenly, his father appeared behind him.
“James...”
“I know, Father, I’ve just seen it!”
“I have something to tell you...”
“Speak, please – speak quickly!”
“Well... the prison – it’s collapsed.”
“What?” he exclaimed in anguish.
“There don’t seem... to be any survivors,” declared his father.
James couldn’t speak. He ran downstairs, leapt into his car and accelerated so fast that he was lost on the horizon, amongst the tears that he couldn’t stop falling from his eyes.
Chapter 27
“What am I going to do without you, Mary? I can’t live without you by my side. I’ll never find anyone like you. I don’t want to find anyone like you! I want you, just you! My hands need to touch you again. I want to kiss you, have you next to me, wrapped up in our own heat. I can’t believe that anything bad has happened to you – that something bad has separated us – after everything we’ve been through to be together again. I know you’re alive because my heart is still beating – and that’s a good sign, a very good one.”
James spoke, yelled to himself. He cried as he had never done before. No wounds or physical pain had ever made him feel like this. Without her, he was alone, unprotected, raging and intolerant with life, which he despised so much that he could only think of dying if that meant he could be by her side. But something inside pushed him to search for his beloved Mary, even under the very rubble of the prison.
Far away from the destroyed building, Mary dragged her weary legs. The infinite, red desert was the scene of her approaching death. Soon night would fall and the cold would invade that kind of Siberian steppe. She struggled to find someone to save her from her undoing because Mount Olympus, although it had seemed near, was very far away from her.
Then, with little hope left, she turned on the message recorder on her own spacesuit and spoke:
“James, it’s me, Mary. I hope that this is recording properly... I don’t know how much oxygen I have left but this isn’t looking good. I’m walking towards Mount Olympus but it’s very far away and I don’t think I’ll make it... Well, James, I just wanted to say that I don’t want to die without telling you how much I’ll miss you. So much that not even death will lessen my pain. This crazy idea of trying to cross the plateau was only to try and see you again... just to see you again.”
A sound warning indicated that oxygen was at its lowest reserve level.
“Did you hear that? It’s the countdown...” she said between her tears. “James, I love you... I love you and I’ll always love you. God... it scares me so much to think that I’m never going to hear your voice again. Your skin – although I can still feel it in my memory... I need to touch it again, your lips kissing me like only you know how. I’m so scared of forgetting you when I die... that I can’t think of anything but you. James, I’ll be a little more than a pebble on the track: I’ll be a pebble with a heart beating for you.”
Mary knelt down, worn out, suffocating, with barely any air left to breathe.
“James, I have to turn off the recorder, I don’t want you to hear... any more. I love you; I love you with all my soul...”
The recording stopped and Mary collapsed. She felt how the oxygen slowly ran out, leaving her lungs. She closed her eyes waiting for her body to shut down. It wouldn’t be a sweet death.
Before she lost consciousness, she thought she heard something far off coming closer, but all her senses were melting into black.
Suddenly, someone blew oxygen into the spacesuit. Life penetrated into Mary’s helmet but, nonetheless, she remained unconscious.
“Mary, Mary! My God, it’s you! Wake up, it’s me – James!”
Mary spluttered:
“Ja – mes?”
Immediately, Mary lost consciousness again – weak, lifeless.
With no time to waste, James took Mary in his arms and put her into the car. He started it as he glanced at the vehicle’s windows.
“Damn leaks! Mary, listen to me: I’m with you – I’m going to take you to a place where you’ll get better instantly. You just need pure air... Hold on, please!”
James’ hand searched for Mary’s, covered by its glove, and he held it tightly. Although she was unconscious, she felt protected.
James drove the vehicle over the cracked ground to their love-nest. Their best-kept secret would now be their salvation.
Once inside Mount Olympus, he dragged Mary out and took off her helmet.
“She’s not breathing,” thought James. He began giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Her pulse was so weak that he seriously feared for her life.
“C
ome on, Mary, I don’t want to lose you! Breathe!”
Everything seemed lost. Tension and terror invaded James’ body although he didn’t give up his efforts to save her.
It was then – at the last oxygenated kiss – that the miracle happened. Mary, after exhaling gently without pulling apart from James, searched for his healing lips again.
“Hello...” stammered Mary, separating her mouth slightly from his. “Why... are you... crying?”
“Hello,” laughed James amid his tears.
They hugged each other.
“Am I dead?”
“No, Mary, you’re alive...”
“I thought that... I’d never see you again.”
“Me too... I was told about the earthquake and I was terrified. Just thinking that I might have lost you...”
Mary tried to get up.
“No, no, relax – you’re worn out. You have to rest.”
James lay her back down gently.
“Relax, I’ll look after you.”
Mary rested in his arms. Suddenly, a phone rang in the vehicle. James called an order to the machine:
“Pick up!”
Claudia and Andrew could be heard shouting from the car as, between childish bickering and laughter, they told the story of Angie’s confession. James and Mary looked at each other in surprise, laughing, incredulous, but overflowing with happiness.
“You’re free, Mary.”
“No, James. We’re free. We’re one.”
James, moved, said the words that Mary had hoped to hear from his lips one day:
“I know it’s not the best moment but I don’t want to wait any longer.”
“James...”
“Mary Ackerson, will you marry me?”
Mary remained silent as she let those most-longed-for words settle in the lake of her dreams.
“Yes, James, of course I’ll marry you.”
They both smiled.
“But...” Mary begged, “promise me that I’ll be married in a pretty dress, not this damn spacesuit.”
“It suits you, silly.”
“I’d hit you if I could, but I only have enough strength to kiss you at the moment.”
Their lips melted into each other, while Andrew and Claudia continued laughing and bickering non-stop in the distance.
Chapter 28
James was as nervous as he was elegant. From her seat, Claudia exchanged knowing looks with him and with Andrew, who was busy sketching scenes from the wedding in a notebook. That improvised church in the greenhouse was special. The palm-trees were the columns and the domes were their wide leaves, which in unison painted the sky green. The passage of flowers and tropical plants adorned the walk from the entrance to the altar, where James was waiting with his mother.
“I’m sorry about my behaviour, my son.”
“Mother...”
“No, let me. I know perfectly well when I’m wrong – mostly because I’m very rarely wrong. I thought that Angie would be a better match for you and I looked down on Mary Ackerson for a thousand reasons that had nothing to do with what’s important: love.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
Mrs Stafford was left speechless by the sweet way her son had called her ‘Mum’. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Don’t cry, Mum – it’s a happy day.”
“The happiest one of my life, my son, the happiest one...”
At that moment, music filled the humid air. The ‘father of the bride’ accompanying Mary was not Mr Stafford (who was acting as priest), but Loja, who was dressed up for the occasion and carrying her on his back. All the guests gazed in awe at the angelical beauty of the woman. Gwyneth, completely radiant beside Thomas, secretly envied her friend. Her white skin, dotted with a universe of freckles, glowed in the wedding-dress that had been worn decades earlier by Mrs Stafford, and which Mary was delighted to wear because it was pretty, sober and, besides... it was her size.
“It looked better on me...”
“Mum...”
“Okay, I’ll be quiet.”
Loja approached the altar and Mary got off the horse with the help of her fiancé.
“You look beautiful, Mary.”
“Thanks – you too. Has no-one ever told you you’re more gorgeous when you shave?”
James caressed his chin with a mischievous smile.
“It’s a joke – you’re gorgeous anyway.”
The ceremony was happy and relaxed. It was the first wedding held on that planet. Without realising it, they were taking part in an historical moment for the human race.
Soon they got to the high point.
“James Stafford, do you take Mary Ackerson to be your wife, and do you promise to cleave to her and her alone, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, and to love and cherish her for as long as you both shall live?”
“Here and anywhere else in the universe: I do.”
“Mary Ackerson, do you take James Stafford to be your husband and do you promise to cleave to him and him alone, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, and to love and cherish him for as long as you both shall live?”
“I do,” she said, letting a little tear escape.
Silence covered the greenhouse. The rings linked the couple’s fingers, forming an invisible union that was impossible to break.
Mr Stafford, already thinking about the banquet, said the words that everyone was waiting to hear:
“I pronounce you man and wife. My son, you may kiss the bride.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
James kissed Mary with the same sweetness and passion as the first time and their first meeting crossed their minds. James remembered her eyes, her cheeks, her wild hair like the lava from Mount Olympus cooling over her skin. And Mary remembered those penetrating eyes, able to make love to her with just one look of desire.
Later, they pulled their lips apart and the congregation exploded with happiness, bringing them back to reality – which, for once, was like the nicest of dreams.
The party went on until well into the night. That day there were no class distinctions. They were all Mars. A planet that would now have nothing to fear. Mount Olympus spared their lives when the Stafford family understood that it was not a good idea to make the same mistakes as their ancestors, and many others, had made on Earth. Mary’s research was no use to the Arab corporations, who didn’t understand what business there would be in terraforming a planet as apparently inhospitable as this one. They didn’t understand that life itself has priceless value. And it would be even more valuable if it was also accompanied... by love.
Love was something that was now in abundance on Mars.
The planet, grateful, shook its tectonic plates a few more times to seal the doors of rock leading to the cave where the murderous virus was born. It knew that, while Mary and James were looking after things, that place would be in very good hands.
As the prison was being rebuilt, Angie couldn’t be put behind bars. However, the Stafford family suggested an even worse prison: the canteen. From that day, the tables were turned and the exuberant Angie became the most felt-up waitress on Mars. Besides, she would never escape from there because, until the air on Mars was breathable, who would dare breathe argon if their name wasn’t James Stafford?
Some time afterwards, Gwyneth accepted the position of secretary that Mary offered her – to get out of the canteen. At first, the young blonde didn’t have much faith in her possibilities, but Mary knew she’d be capable. She just needed to make a little effort to learn everything she needed to know. Thomas was so proud of her that he was worried she’d run off with another man if he didn’t ask her to marry him as soon as possible. So, secretly, he stole and polished a kind of mineral that looked like a diamond, which he mounted on a humble brass ring. Gwyneth was so moved when he asked her that she didn’t say ‘yes’ – she yelled from the rooftops: “Yes, of course I will!”
Andrew, on the other hand, continued alone in his studio, finishing a painting
that he had had pending since he met Mary. No sooner was it finished than he left it at the foot of Mount Olympus, where the newly-weds had been living for months.
James picked it up when he came home from work. He waited for Mary to get home from her job too so that they could open it together, snuggled under a rug next to the lava hearth. It was Andrew’s personal wedding present, which was a little late:
“I don’t believe it... It’s us,” said Mary, surprised. “But...”
“Yes, it’s us,” he said, copying her face. “But you...”
“Andrew just knows everything. There’s no doubt that he has premonitory imagination...”
“Premonitory?”
“Yes, James. I wanted to wait a little longer to be sure but Andrew has spoiled my surprise,” she said between giggles.
“What?”
Mary looked at James without blinking.
“I’m pregnant. We’re going to be parents.”
James was stuck for words. A smile crept over his lips.
“Are you happy about it, James?”
“How can you ask if I’m happy about it? Mary, I’ve been waiting for this moment for ages!”
“Really?” asked Mary emotionally.
“A baby, a baby... A BABY! Isn’t it marvellous?”
“It is, James, it is!”
They hugged tightly, their hearts melting together. After loving each other in silence, they looked at the picture of Mary looking lovingly at James, who was caressing his beloved’s incipient belly with the same look of love.
“I love you, James.”
“And I love you, Mary. I’ll always love you.”
“Me or my freckles?”
“Don’t force me to choose...”
Mount Olympus seemed to start erupting again. But no, it wasn’t that: it was the love living inside it.
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