Martian Dictator

by Øyvind Harding

  ◆◆◆

  As the congregation broke up, Anna took a deep breath to calm herself and let her eyes traverse the room. The smell of cooked meat lingered heavily and seemed to permeate her very soul. There was no going back after this, not for any of them. The way to salvation was paved with the flesh of dead friends. She shuddered and forced herself to think in practical terms. Democracy on Mars was dead. Buried by the man who had just cooked his opposition and cemented his role as The Man with The Plan. She shook her head. Focus on the next step, eyes and head down, and she might just escape notice. Be the brown mouse that people always mistook her for, and start laying the foundation for a plan. Every good action was built on careful consideration for the costs and benefits involved, inspection of opportunities presented and most important of all: how it fit the grander scheme.

  Now was the time to figure out what that grander scheme was to be. As she walked out the door and made for her quarters, a small smile played upon her lips and she had a renewed vigor in her step that had been lacking since Captain Reinholts had been brought back on a stretcher.

  ◆◆◆

  Roger slowly gained consciousness. He had a jacket under his head, bunched up to form a makeshift pillow. His legs were propped up on an aluminum chair and he had a second jacket on top of him. All told, he felt quite comfortable. Then the realization of where he was and what he was doing hit him. With a panicked jolt, he pushed off from the floor and was rewarded by nearly flying to his feet. Here on Mars he weighed only 50 pounds, and even though his muscles had atrophied after the long trek through space and the subsequent months on Mars, he still had more than enough power left to hurt himself if he didn’t take care when moving around. A hand grabbed his flailing arm and steadied him.

  “Careful now, we don’t need another accident like the captain had. Yet.” He could feel his blood freezing as he realized who had grabbed him. He half turned and forced a smile to his unwilling lips. The Billionaire stood before him, still holding his arm, Nadia hovering at his shoulder. “How are you feeling?” One could almost mistake the tone of his question for true concern.

  “I’m all right, thank you for asking. No problem here, it must’ve been something I ate.” Or didn’t eat. Before he could help himself, his eyes flickered over to the now empty pan. The Billionaire did not miss the quick glance.

  “You ought to take care of yourself, Roger. These are trying times, and you need your strength. Unfortunately, you missed our little picnic here while you were out cold on the floor. I do worry for you, you know. Out of all of us, you are one of those hit hardest physically. You need proteins to function and maintain your health.” He released his grip on Rogers arm, patted down his rumpled sweater and took a step back. “There, feeling better?”

  “Uhm, yes, thank you. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll retire to my quarters. My shift for the bed started a little while ago, and I’d rather not bunk down here again.” Especially after what had just occurred not two paces away, he did not add.

  “Sure, sure, good rest is just as important as good eating when you’re trying to be at your best.” As the man turned around and walked away, Nadia gave Roger a withering look and turned to follow. He could almost hear her thoughts as she stalked off: Pathetic.

  Be that as it may, he was still alive. He desperately prayed that he was not as easy to read as Nadia was. After all, he knew what had really happened to the captain, and if the Billionaire ever found that out, well, then he had no doubts about who would be the next volunteer for the frying pan.

  His shoulders slumped and he made his way toward his quarters to catch a few hours of much-needed sleep.

  ◆◆◆

  Nadia did not think. Or rather, she tried not to think. The taste of vomit and cooked meat lingered in her mouth, and the combination was more than enough to induce another wave of nausea. Gritting her teeth against the bile rising in her throat, she followed the Billionaire out of the meeting room and down the hall. The walls were grey, the doors were grey, and her mind was grey. The greyness was only broken by the red dust in the corners that never seemed to go away, and now and then the yellow or blue insulation jackets that most of the crew favored. It seemed as though everybody wanted at least a token reminder that greener pastures existed. Or had existed. None of them knew how bad it was down on Earth, but by all measures it had to be pretty bad. The greenhouse helped the overall psyche of course, but the smell in there was enough to send her reeling these days. She counted off the days since the landing, the days since the habitats were finished, and finally the days since the captain had died. Two months since that last one now. Two periods. Two missed periods. She pressed her hand flat against her stomach, clenched her teeth against the now-familiar nausea and marched on. She would survive. She had a new captain now.

  ◆◆◆

  I kept a brisk pace through the corridors, Nadia trailing behind me. I wasn't entirely sure, but I had my suspicions. She was pregnant, had to be. I knew the symptoms well enough, having fostered two children of my own before my life turned inside out. She didn't know it, but I had passed by her room a couple of times when she thought she was alone, and I had caught the unmistaken sound of morning sickness more than once. So. One of the last deeds the good Captain Reinholts had done in life was to ensure the continuation of his line, and also provide the nourishment needed for a growth spurt. Not bad for a dead man. His death had proved to be quite the stroke of fortune for me, considering he was the loudest voice of resistance against the steps I had taken for us as a community. He wanted to go back. I did not. Anna still opposed my plans as often as she could, but she had no bite in her bark. I would deal with her when the time was right, but for now all I had to do was let time work in my favor.

  However bad it was down on Earth, none of them appreciated just how bad it would be. In theory, we could build a launch ship down here on the surface, somehow pop it up into space, latch on to the remains of the Wayfinder in orbit and make our way home. In theory, we could contact NASA, or what remained of the organization at this point, state our intentions, and have them be ready with an entrance vehicle once we arrived. In theory, we could wake tomorrow to the sight of Santa Claus in his sleigh, high above us, raining gifts of whisky, warm clothes, and chocolate with a mighty “Ho, Ho, Hooo.” In theory, we could go back. In all practicality, we were fucked, and so was Earth for an unknown measure of time.

  So! We had to build our own future, our own society, we had to orchestrate our own survival. And while group consensus was well and good in a stable society, democracies never got anything done. And we needed shit to get done. Nadia’s weak little baby would cement her to the planet, making sure that her loyalties always and forever lay with the existence of food, water, and shelter right here on Mars. Her future child would never survive exposure to the harsh gravity of Earth. She would fight for every decision that protected her baby, and she would inadvertently influence the mindset of the others. But there were no guarantees. This was a first in many ways, and any number of things might wreak havoc on my best laid plans. I needed that baby to live, I needed to show the sheep that lambs could be born healthy on this planet. Nadia’s survival and well-being had thus suddenly become one of my top priorities.

  I hummed as I walked, a spring in my step, a smile on my lips and a thousand paths to be forced into a single highway.

  18. The Butchery

  Nadia and I entered the room where the captain was laid out. Privately I had started to refer to it as “The Butchery,” and even though it carried certain risks to be perceived as a monster in the eyes of the crew if I ever uttered the phrase aloud, it also gave me great leeway, since they would fear me even more than they did at present. Fear was good. If they feared me, it was more likely that they would do as I said, thus increasing the chance of survival for all of us. I glanced over at the blonde at my side and wondered when I had started to think of her only as “the blonde.” I had been doing that a lot lately, giving the crew nickna
mes that distanced their humanity. The blonde, the scientist, the captain, and the organizer. I had been doing the same thing with our quarters, meager as they were, since we first landed, but lately I had been mentally referring to all of the crew as objects. I figured it would help if (when) I was forced to do something unpleasant to one of them.

  It also helped to distance myself from my actions, something I did with increasing frequency these days. Every time I did something calculated that was both monstrous and necessary, I could hear my inner self howling in frustration and pain. Usually I just forced my moral self into the depths where it belonged and went ahead with my plans anyway, but lately it had become harder and harder to do so. I would feel myself hesitating, unsure if what I was doing was indeed the right thing to do, even when it was clear that it was the only way forward. As when I last stood in this room and spent an unacceptably long period of time making the initial cut in the captain. I could not afford to hesitate or doubt. I needed a release valve, some action or purpose that would alleviate the pressure I was under.

  I glanced over at the blonde again, and put the thought from my mind before it had time to bloom. The time might come when I took advantage of her obedience, but it was not now. I might be a monster, but my actions were all geared toward having as many of us survive as possible. If I took advantage of my hold over this girl I would cross over into a brand-new territory of monstrosity, and I was not quite there yet. I might get there eventually, but for the moment my humanity and I walked hand in hand, albeit with a slippery grip.

  I reached out, picked up the cleaver I had made ready earlier, raised it high over my head and brought it down right at the wrist of the thawing corpse on the table.

  ◆◆◆

  Nadia flinched as the Billionaire brought the cleaver down with a wet chunk. The hand separated cleanly from the arm and slid a bit on the table before settling down with all five fingers slightly curved, palm down. It almost seemed as if it was ready take off running, like in one of her brother's old comedy monster films he had been so fond of. Melancholy settled upon her at the thought of her brother, followed shortly by a sharp intake of breath as she recalled the reason for his murder. Meat. Stealing meat from the wrong butcher. It had been ruled as self-defense, the butcher claiming that her brother had attacked him when confronted with the theft in the store. Her protests that the cut from the cleaver clearly showed that he was struck from behind had been ignored. Court trials in Russia in those days were expensive and usually a waste of time, and the butcher was held in high regard since he had connections that brought fresh food into the village on a semiregular basis.

  She had left her home that very night, hitchhiking all the way to St. Petersburg without stopping to think or to rest for a single minute. Exhausted, she had finally collapsed in a shelter for refugees from the conflicts in Western Europe, and she had made the shelter the starting point for her new life while struggling her way up through an increasingly demanding system of education. In her mind, the cleaver was the ultimate symbol of pain and change, and here she was, a cleaver changing her life again. She steeled herself and picked up the scissors the Billionaire was holding out to her.

  “Everything must be removed. Pressure suit, clothing, personal effects. Everything.” He was eyeing her as he handed her the scissors. “Can you do it? I don’t want you throwing up again.”

  “You worry about the cleaving and I’ll worry about the cutting.” She was determined not to let any weakness show, and she was equally determined to do her part in her survival. Her background lent her strength as she blocked out all emotion and got to work cutting and tearing. It was slow going, both because the body was still half-frozen and because the blood had boiled shortly before death. The atmospheric pressure on the surface of Mars averages about 0.6 percent of that of the Earth, and while this is just fine while wearing a pressure suit, it constitutes a whole different level of problems if you ever expose naked skin.

  The captain had not died a good death, and while his face was still covered by the facial plate, she could imagine his expression all too well: horror as the near-vacuum imposed upon his world of oxygen and positive pressure, anger that this should happen after he had survived so much, and regret that so much was left unfinished. She was glad he had never learned of the baby she carried; at least his last thoughts were spared that loss.

  She fixed her eyes away from the hidden face and bent to her task of cutting and tearing.

  ◆◆◆

  Roger could not sleep. He had just a little over four hours left on his shift for the bed, and after that it was back to the farm for another mindless day of trying to make things grow. He was so sick of it that all he wanted to do was rip it all up, roots and shoots and every little green bit of it and just scream. He made a fist and punched up in the metal framing above him, and immediately stuck his fist in his mouth and bit down to stop himself from yelling. Punching metal bed frames was obviously not the way to go, and neither was ripping up all of his work so far. Waking up the others before their allotted bedtime was over was also probably not a good idea. He sighed and tried to move his pillow into a better position so that it blocked off most of the snoring from above him. Currently there were six people sleeping in a room originally intended to hold two, in either two single beds or one large one. Now the room held two three-story metal beds, one crudely made locker with six shelves in it, five men and women sleeping off another hard day on the surface of Mars, and Roger, wide awake and hating every second of it.

  He had the bottom bunk in one of the three story beds, and he was not scheduled to rotate up to the middle bunk until the end of the week. In the coming weeks he would slowly work his way up the ladder (both figuratively and literally) and end up in the bed in the upper left corner, close to the air ducts where the air was fresh and the heat wafting up from the others made for an easier night. The temperature in the habitat was a constant ten degrees Celsius, occasionally fluctuating down a couple of degrees before the heaters caught up with whatever had caused a shift in the enclosed environment. Ten degrees Celsius was about fifteen lower than what Roger would have liked, and twenty below what he considered a nice day, back when he still had nice days. The snoring stopped for a second, and Roger held his breath and said a prayer to the Martian goddess of nightly sounds that the source of the mayhem would die peacefully in his sleep. A mighty grunt later the snoring continued unabated. Robbie Johanson was not a peaceful sleeper by any stretch of the imagination.

  He gave up, rolled over, and wormed his way out of his little world of misery. He would not get any sleep tonight, and he might as well get up and see if there was any coffee left over from last night. Each crew member had a small ration of coffee they could spend as they wished, but Roger had drunk all of his before the two-month mark. Now all he could hope for was to salvage some forgotten dregs before one of the other caffeine addicts got to them. Occasionally he managed to trade off some favor or equipment for a small cup, but those times were few and far between and getting rarer by the day.

  However, he had a nice plan for rectifying the coffee crisis, and if all went as planned, he would soon be a permanent resident of Upper Left Corner Bed. He smiled as he put on his blue thermal jacket and thought of the small green and red coffea arabica plants currently nestling comfortably amongst the slightly larger cannabis sativa leaves. Life would be better when those two strains matured enough to be grafted, harvested, and dried out. Coffee and drugs—he would be the king of black market recreation and relaxation, all he had to do was keep it under the radar.

  He left his quarters with renewed vigor and immediately bumped into one of the few persons on the entire planet he would have preferred to avoid.

  ◆◆◆

  Anna banged her head into Roger’s midsection and in surprise dropped the clipboard she had been studying, having nearly bent over double trying to read it in the ambient lighting.

  “Roger! Just the man I wanted to talk to. Do you have a minute
? Come, walk with me, I’m on my way to the cooler. The Man and his new lackey called me a couple of minutes ago and asked for help, and I’m way too busy trying to sort out the new nutrition tables to walk around indulging his every whim.” She bent over, picked up the tablet, and started off at a brisk pace, not even checking to see if Roger was keeping up. “I need those figures for the potatoes and the tomatoes, Roger, and I need them right now. I can’t do this without having full control of how much consumables we’ll have available once the crops are matured.”

  Anna glanced over at the stumbling man trailing slightly behind her. He seemed exhausted and bewildered, and not for the first time she wondered how he got through the psych evaluation before they left Earth. Of course, she herself had passed with flying colors, and she had a long history of mental illness. It’s amazing what a cocktail of medication can do to suppress even the toughest OCD symptoms, and though she hated to admit it even to herself, her life had improved drastically after she started taking them. She was cutting back on the meds now, though; she only had a limited supply of them, and she felt it was important to be at her most efficient in the times to come. The only side effect she had noticed so far was an increased tendency to triple-check that the airlocks were secure, and that was far from a useless habit to have on this planet.

  “I’ll have the numbers for you later this week, Anna, just as I said yesterday and the day before that.” Roger fidgeted with his navy-blue jacket and tried to get it zipped up. He didn’t have the numbers, and he seriously doubted that he would ever have them. The greenhouse floor was covered with potatoes, broccoli, and carrots interspersed with ranks upon ranks of tomatoes, soybeans, peas, and oranges, and in a sheltered corner: six small plants of caffeine and addiction. It was the most important building in the habitat and the first one to be completed when they finally got around to assembling permanent shelters. And Roger was in charge of it all.