Martian Dictator

by Øyvind Harding

  And finally, the revelation of a camera embedded in Erasmus, the little good luck charm she had given them. Where it was? He had no idea, but the idea of not being alone in his knowledge of the murder had almost made him spill it all. His sense of self-preservation had stopped him. She could see it in him, the struggle, the need to not be alone, and she had taken his hand and promised him freedom if she could prove that the captain had been murdered. So he had relented, just a tiny bit, and walked her through the exact steps he had taken out there, as well as the last time he had seen Erasmus, standing on the wagon beside the Billionaire, staring out at a field of broken metal and plastic. He would not say more. It had been enough. She would go out there and retrieve it, as soon as the Billionaire was thoroughly distracted.

  Nadia was in labor. The Billionaire was attending. Anna was off with Robert to find evidence of murder most foul.

  And Roger was stoned out of his skull.

  ◆◆◆

  I paced the corridor outside the infirmary, refusing to give in to the temptation to step inside. Time seemed to have no meaning, and it wasn’t even my baby being born. But it sure felt as though it were. For several months I had built an expectation and a belief, almost religious in its nature, that the birth would herald a new era for our meager population, a proof that the life many of them envisioned here was possible. That baby was to be my protégé, my legacy, and I would form him, or her, to be the leader of a world. I could feel the tension coming in waves from inside the room, in lockstep with the ever-decreasing interval between the contractions. Ten seconds now. I could hear Nadia’s moaning as each contraction grabbed hold of her and squeezed and squeezed until she finally got a few second’s respite. It was taking too long. She had been in labor now for more than seven hours. The baby was bound to be weaker than normal due to the lower gravity. Every minute, every contraction, every second that passed without that baby being free of the womb increased the danger for both it and Nadia. It was taking too long.

  I resumed my pacing.

  ◆◆◆

  Robbie let his gaze sweep over the field of broken metal. Nearly every globe had had a visitor in the previous months, taking inventory and scavenging for useful parts. Tracks crisscrossed the field as far as he could see, creating a mosaic of broken dreams. Or a scavenger’s wet dream, depending on your view of life.

  “So, where do you want to start? As you know, I’ve been over every square inch around the lander where the captain died with a fine-toothed comb.” He glanced over at the small figure standing at his side.

  “According to Roger, they stopped on top of a small hill on the edge of the field to take in the view, just as we are now. But look at the tracks here, they’ve been straight as an arrow for the past mile, at least. No way two guys dragging a wagon weighing a metric ton with a dead guy strapped to the top could have managed something like that, planting pingers all the while.” Anna turned and looked behind her at what was now fast becoming the first highway of Mars. The tracks of people walking, wagons being dragged, and belt tracks from the digger formed a perfect line to the much-too-close horizon. “And I’ve checked with a few of the guys from the scavenging crew, they moved the pingers from their original position to form a more optimal road after the first few trips. No. Roger, the Beast and Captain Reinholts came in from a slightly different direction. We just need to find that first hill.” She turned back and faced Robbie.

  “Finding a hill in a hill-stack, eh? Piece of cake!” Robbie turned and surveyed the rolling landscape.

  ◆◆◆

  Roger poured his first honest-to-god cup of coffee in what felt like a lifetime. He had perfected the ritual in anticipation of this moment. Putting the water to boil, the grinding of the beans (done with a hammer inside a bag so as not to waste a single ounce of the black gold), the mixing, the waiting, and finally: the pouring. The smell wafting from the cup was indescribable. He closed his eyes and inhaled the aroma, letting it mix with his still substantial buzz, savoring the moment. Then he took his first sip. He settled back in his makeshift lawn chair and gazed out over his kingdom. The crops were providing a steady yield now, with the seeds from his (yes, his) expedition proving to be perfect for the environment, almost as though they were made specifically for being grown in a greenhouse on another planet. He let out a soft giggle at the thought, since they had, in fact, been made specifically for that very purpose, and drank his coffee. He had done well for himself. Even after every setback, after every failure and every monumental hurdle he’d had to climb, even after witnessing a murder, he had still ended up exactly where he had dreamed that he would. Even the smell of manure didn’t bother him anymore. In fact, he could no longer even tell the difference between the air in here and the air in the other modules.

  He reached down and grabbed a handful of lentils from a bowl and munched them down. Anna would’ve had a fit had she seen him right now, treating their hard-won food with such easy abandon. But he was justified in his increased share, no doubt about it. Wasn’t it he who had grown it all? Wasn’t it he who had, with severe risk to his own life, gone out and fetched the seeds that allowed them to grow their lifesaving vegetables? And besides, it had all turned out even in the end. Roger did not eat meat. As the only member of their closed society, he alone was not a cannibal. He knew several of the others would’ve loved the opportunity to trade in their hunk of flesh for some lentils and some broccoli, but the yield was not high enough to let others in on the secret ways of the vegetarian. Yet. He mused on the concept of being high priest of a secret vegetarian sect, with beautiful women and strong henchmen at his beck and call. His thoughts wandered briefly to Nadia and her imminent delivery, before drifting to more important things.

  Roger rolled another joint.

  ◆◆◆

  The weak cry of the newborn baby was drowned out by the cheering of those attending the birth. The first extraterrestrial human being had been born. Nadia felt her breath shudder as she held her arms out for her son. She had been pregnant before, but she had always terminated it at the earliest opportunity. In this moment, she regretted them all. To be able to hold her own child was the greatest gift she had ever been given, and she dearly wished she had not waited this long for it to happen. The midwife of the moment quickly finished drying off the baby and settled him carefully in her waiting arms. Such a perfect fit for one so small. Nadia held him carefully as he settled down, exhausted after hours of hard labor. Downy black hair covered his head, courtesy of his father. Blue eyes, for the moment. Even though he was likely to eventually have his father’s deep brown eyes, she also knew that the baby would keep the crystal-clear blue color for life. Screw genetics, this was his mama picking up a vibe. Everybody knew mothers were the greatest force of precognition in the universe.

  She leaned back and felt the coolness of a sponge carefully wiping her forehead. The room was packed. During the birth it had been crowded, with everybody with anything resembling a medical degree vying to pitch in. Now, it was fair game. A bottle with suspicious contents circled the room, probably courtesy of Robbie’s illegal or at the very least unethical use of their first crop of potatoes. Everybody knew, of course, and everybody silently approved. The powers at hand knew that taking away the only source of hard liquor from a starving, depressed, and in general terrified population was a bad idea.

  Speaking of powers at large. She let her eyes wander the room, searching. Everybody was chatting, and the level of noise was slowly climbing. Inhibitions were lowered in perfect tandem with the decreasing amount of alcohol left in the bottle. Everybody was wearing a huge grin. Everybody except one. The Billionaire stood apart, looking at them both with a calculating look in his eyes. No smile on his lips. No matter. Nadia knew that his calculations included protecting her and her baby with everything in his capacity, and that was all that mattered. Their relationship was purely platonic, each serving the others needs perfectly. Protection for power.

  She leaned back and closed her
eyes, feeling the soft breathing of her baby against her chest.

  ◆◆◆

  Anna held the small black figure up to the setting sun and slowly rotated it between her gloved fingers. Two small eyes were looking at her behind a large nose, with a stout body bereft of arms and legs. Erasmus. Missing for nearly seven months now. She had been out here searching for the small figure several times, but it was hard to justify going out here herself with the amount of work she at any given time had on her desk back at the camp. She had not wanted to risk the Billionaire even suspecting she was off searching for something. So Robbie had done the honors and had come up short. Until now. With the new descriptions of their route that Roger had provided, they had finally found the small hill where the expedition had stopped on that first, fateful trip. They searched the mound without finding anything, so they carefully backtracked Roger’s route around the lander and found the spot where he, in his own words, “had a brief mental breakdown and ran for the horizon.” And on that spot: Erasmus. The glassy black stone man was buried in the red sand, with only the tip of its nose poking up. Luck. Or Providence, if your beliefs ran in that direction. She carefully placed it inside a pouch at her belt and turned from the vista of broken ships.

  Time to see what they could see.

  ◆◆◆

  I allowed myself a sip of alcohol. The first one since I had vied for the attention of the late Captain Reinholts in a bar a lifetime ago. Nadia had fallen asleep with the baby at her breast, and the congregation was slowly trickling out of the room to allow them some much-deserved rest. The baby was healthy. Alive and healthy. I passed the bottle to one of the women leaving the room and walked over to the bed. I brushed some stray strands of hair away from Nadia's forehead and settled on the edge of the mattress. She stirred and mumbled something incomprehensible, but did not wake. It had been a hard labor, insofar as what I knew of the subject. In my previous life, I had not attended the birth of my children, preferring to run about doing whatever it was I was doing at that time. I could not remember what it was, and neither did I care. Live in the moment, plan for the future, learn from the past. I looked down at the sleeping baby, and I could feel the mental gears turning, slotting him into the grander scheme of things, planning for a future where I controlled his upbringing. No love, no paternal impulse, no desire to reach out and hold him. Something was broken in me, I knew that. But what was broken also made me not care that it was broken, so it evened out in the end.

  I rose and left to find Dr. Stokes.

  24. The Concession

  Concession, to concede. The act of conceding or yielding, as a right, a privilege, or a point or fact in an argument. Anna let the definition of what she had decided to do run through her mind over and over again. She sat slumped in her chair, staring numbly at the screen in front of her. She was not surprised. Not angry. Not even disappointed. She had known what the tape would show, the only unknown factor in her head was whether or not it had managed to capture anything at all. It had. The grainy black-and-white video showed, in detail, the Billionaire jumping down from the wagon, Roger tentatively following, the captain surveying the area. Then the search for an entrance, the Billionaire straying off to the side, tossing his knife in the air and catching it, occasionally throwing it as much as forty yards ahead of him at random targets of opportunity. Roger, returning at a brisk pace, having miraculously recovered from his bout of intestinal inferno. The flash of a practice throw with the knife, the sauntering of a murderer in the making. Roger, rocking the wagon as he stashed something on it, dislodging Erasmus, but not overturning it. Not yet. Anna’s knuckles tightened on the armrests of her chair as the wagon slowly crept around the final bend. And stopped. She could feel ice crawling down her back as she witnessed two hands reaching from inside the darkness of the lander, grabbing the still-twitching Captain Reinholts, dragging him into the abyss. Roger turned and ran. Erasmus fell down and found its final resting place in the sand, the video recording a running documentary of the weather patterns of Mars for the next three weeks until the batteries had died.

  Conceding. It was the only logical thing to do. She could not fight this head-on, she could not stand against a man who would casually murder at first opportunity, who would plan for the death of an honest man so he could eat him.

  She could not stand, so she would lie. There was a knock at her door.

  ◆◆◆

  I knocked at the door of her office and waited. Not something I usually did, but I was feeling elevated after the birth. True, it was not my blood heir, but it was close enough. The captain’s son would have to do. I had considered other options, other women, but it was good to have some distance from the offspring, just in case I needed to set an example at some point during the coming years.

  I heard the familiar click of the lock being turned and turned back again, and counted in tandem with the soft sound. At eleven, the doorknob was depressed, then released. And again. Eleven times for this one as well before the door opened and Anna stood before me. Her OCD had stabilized during the past few months, with daily rituals that needed to be performed for her to be able to function. Without them, she was a nervous wreck. With them, she was a machine capable of perfect observation of her environment. Anna Stokes, my one remaining obstacle to complete control. Small, brown, slim, so unassuming that you would never expect her to stand for a second against any kind of resistance. Until you saw her eyes: hard, unyielding, projecting a force of will made of steel. She would never back down, not this one. I carefully changed the angle of my body, readying myself for a lunge, still undecided whether or not to strike.

  Then she lowered her eyes, her body lost its defiant stance and she took a step back and to the side, opening the door.

  ◆◆◆

  Anna opened the door fully to let the Beast enter her home. It might have been her imagination, but she had caught a slight movement just before she stepped back. A movement reminding her of a documentary she had once seen about predators. The crouch before the strike, the tensing of the body before the lunge. So she backed down. Caved in. Gave Him what He had always wanted. Total control.

  ◆◆◆

  She stepped to the side to let me in, and I took two long strides into the room. A large office, about nine feet to each side, with a Murphy bed in the corner. A desk with a chair behind it, five or six tablets on the table with varying reports displayed. I recognized a few of them as reports on water extraction, food consumption, and progress reports for the new greenhouse. A budding tomato plant on a table in the corner left the room warmer than it should have been.

  Anna closed the door behind me, and I could hear the soft click of the lock turning. Once. No more. I turned with a frown and fixed her with a stare. For her to ignore her OCD something very intense had to be turning in that oh-so-very organized head of hers.

  She came closer.

  ◆◆◆

  Anna ignored her instincts to turn and run and took a step closer, her eyes on the floor. The presence in front of her loomed over her, but still she stepped closer. Like a computer with a particularly difficult problem to solve, she partitioned off the part of her mind that wanted to resist, to run, that wanted to scream and fight. Like she had learned to do with the effects of her mental disorder, she chose not to let that part of her mind affect her. She closed it off, executed the motions and let the rest remain.

  And the rest had already conceded.

  ◆◆◆

  She stopped so close to me that it almost felt as though I could feel the heat of her body. She stood there, breathing softly for a few heartbeats before she raised her head and looked at me. And I saw the defeat in her eyes. It was over, she was giving herself to me. Body and soul, she was mine. The eyes do not lie.

  Her hand moved to the zipper of her jumpsuit.

  ◆◆◆

  Anna carefully unzipped her jumpsuit and let it fall to her ankles. She wore nothing underneath, anticipating this moment. She raised a foot and kicked
off first one boot, then the other, her suit coming off with them.

  She tentatively took his hand in both of hers and carefully led him to the bed in the corner.

  ◆◆◆

  I allowed her to lead me to the corner bed, completely naked. The situation had changed, and for once I was surprised at how events had turned out. Surprised, but pleasantly so. She pulled down the bed and lay down, still holding my hand. She let my fingers slip through hers and settled down on her back, waiting. Her eyes showed complete submission.

  I reached for the zipper on my own suit.

  ◆◆◆

  Anna never took her eyes off the Billionaire as he zipped down his own suit, kicked it off and bent over her. A part of her mind screamed when he parted her legs and entered her, but it was a part well buried. A part functioning on its own, shut off from the rest of her. The Anna that was in control was submissive, not taking her eyes off the man on top of her, letting him know that he was in total control. A small moan of fury escaped from the hidden part of her mind, and she closed her eyes so he would not see any change in them.