The Mars Shock

by Felix R. Savage

  They did not exchange a word until they were well out of Alpha Base’s wireless range.

  “Did you see that?” Hawker said.

  “Did I see what?”

  Loose sand squirted from the Death Buggy’s wheels. They rounded a butte, and lost sight of Alpha Base.

  “When we were leaving the garage.”

  “All I saw and all I see’s this ugly fucking planet.”

  Drudge knew people back home in San Diego who didn’t believe Mars existed. Some of them thought the UN had invented it to cover up an invasion by aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy. Others didn’t even know Mars existed. All they knew was the location of the Guaranteed Basic Income machine, and the alternate universes that they simmed on their cheap BCIs.

  Drudge had volunteered for Star Force to get away from all that. He hadn’t regretted his decision for one minute. But Mars sure was one ugly piece of real estate. This rocky desert made southern California look like the Garden of Eden. He remembered the NASA terraforming model in Conurbation 243. Trees covering these red slopes, no more dust clouds boiling down off them, but waterfalls … Those medieval dudes had been smoking some sick shit, if they had truly believed they could make that happen.

  Hawker’s voice jolted him back to the present.

  “He was climbing the catwalk.”

  “Who was?”

  “Kristiansen. He was going up to the refugee center.”

  “Ain’t he seen enough of those muppets yet?”

  “They’re not muppets, Drudge. They’re people.”

  “Whoops.” Drudge glanced uncomfortably down at his bundle. “People,” he repeated. “Yeah.”

  “Kristiansen was probably going up there to take piccies for his next presentation. His outfit is going to bid for the contract to build a refuge in the Belt. That’s what it’s all about, Drudge. What it was all about from the start. Money, money, money.”

  “True that.”

  ★

  Kristiansen cycled the airlock of the refugee center. Breathing his suit’s air supply, he watched clean—but unsafe—air jet out white from the pressurization vents in the chamber. The airlock had been fixed overnight, the born-agains caught and herded back in.

  The children were asleep, sprawled on top of their sleeping-bags, a jigsaw puzzle of mostly-naked brown limbs. Stephen One was making the rounds, checking on each child, singing snatches of their song, like a lullaby. He didn’t acknowledge Kristiansen’s presence until Kristiansen turned up his external speaker. “It’s me, Kristiansen.”

  “Doch?” [And?] Stephen One gave him a frosty look.

  “Are they OK?” Kristiansen stooped over the nearest child, peering at its closed-off sleeping face.

  “You might tell them to turn down the heat. It’s too hot in here.”

  The temperature in the refugee center was a comfy 25 degrees.

  “Noted,” Kristiansen said. Of course, it made sense that the Martians were used to spending most of their time in a sub-zero environment. No one had thought of that. What else hadn’t they thought of? He knew he should inquire further, but he was in too much of a hurry. “Stephen One, I need you to do something for me.”

  “What?” Stephen One threw himself down on an ergoform and tore open a packet of gorp. He sang softly: “Stephanus, vir sanctus …”

  “That.”

  “What?”

  “Your song.”

  “Yes?”

  Kristiansen tapped his external mic. “I’d like to record it.”

  ★

  A hundred kilometers from Alpha Base, the Third Division of the Second Army of the China Territorial Defense Force ambled across the Miller Flats. They were heading for the town now known as Archive 394—the first place on Mars to be known by its Martian number, rather than one picked by humans—which was now occupied by a Chinese reconnaissance unit, parachuted down from orbit at great risk and expense. The ground forces were in a hurry to reinforce their colleagues before Star Force arrived to challenge their claim on this prize.

  Right now, however, they weren’t hurrying anywhere. They had reached the muddy bit. Although the flood had dried up three days ago, it had washed a great deal of sand and rubble down onto the plain, and the ultra-fine Martian sand still held moisture. The CTDF’s mobile operational bases found it hard going. One of these ovoid eighteen-wheelers now stood at a precarious angle, stuck. EVA-suited figures swarmed around it.

  “When it dries out, it’ll be like concrete,” Hawker said. “Their mistake was trying to get through before it dried out.”

  He drove towards the Chinese force, beaming out hellos.

  A lone tank separated from the mass of vehicles and drove towards them. Hawker stopped the Death Buggy near a ravine full of dark mud. “I’m not crossing that.”

  The tank stopped on the other side of the ravine.

  “Go on.”

  “Just me?”

  “You’ll make a better impression. Innocent, fresh-faced, full of good intentions.”

  Drudge climbed out of the Death Buggy. Carrying his shrinkfoam bundle, he walked down to the ravine. He tested it with one boot. Sticky, but he wasn’t heavy enough to sink in. He crossed the ravine and scrambled up to the tank. Mud caked its treads solid. The crew were digging the mud out of the bogeys with loose rocks.

  One of them turned to him. “Come to help?”

  “Not likely,” Drudge said. “I’ve come to trade.” He held up his bundle and swung it like a hypnotist’s pendulum.

  Commander Sun Jin-Wei—for it was he—let his rock fall. He gazed in the direction of the scarp that sheltered Archive 394. “We survived the destruction of the dam by taking refuge in the silo. We had a look around while we were there. But there was nothing worth taking. Maybe some of the furniture.”

  “What about the data?”

  “We have a team working on it now. But all we’ve recovered so far is information from old medical textbooks and user manuals.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “It’s the truth. If the archive held anything else, the St. Stephen virus deleted it. To obtain the secrets of the PLAN’s advanced technologies, we’ll have to go elsewhere.”

  Drudge felt the presence of Olympus Mons lurking in the haze. He lifted one shoulder, warding off a shiver. “About that virus,” he said.

  “It’s gone. It deleted itself at the same time as it scrambled the information on the server.”

  “Yeah, but you have its source code. Don’t you?”

  “Who said that?”

  “I have my sources,” Drudge said, meaning Hawker. “I’ll trade you for it.” He held up his bundle again.

  “What’s that?”

  “This,” Drudge said with mixed enthusiasm and regret, for he had planned to sell his trophies on the internet, “is your retirement fund. Looky, looky.”

  He slit a corner of the shrinkfoam. A Martian face, shiny with splart, peeked out.

  Sun recoiled slightly. Then— “May I?” He widened the slit with his gloves and took the splart-preserved head out. Holding it up, he turned it to catch the fading afternoon light as if it were made of solid platinum. “This is a fantastic idea. I can’t believe I never thought of it.”

  “It’s not as easy as you might think, getting an even coating, and keeping the dust off until it dries.” Drudge lowered his voice confidentially. “I’ve got six. And they’re the only six that will ever exist. Now the whole solar system knows about the warblers, and everyone’s like, Aw, they’re so cuuuuute!, no one will ever do this again. Not even me. So … I’d be asking six figures. Each.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “However, I’d also agree to an in-kind trade.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The source code of the St. Stephen virus. I’ll give you three of these in exchange for a clean executable.” He started low, planning on raising his offer to all six if necessary.

  “You’re asking for highly sensitive military information.”

/>   “Hawker says you’ve got contacts in Beijing.”

  “I do. And that is why I can tell you with 99% certainty that we don’t have the source code.”

  “You don’t have it?”

  “Bullshit,” said Hawker, betraying that he was listening in on their conversation. “It was a Chinese cyberweapon.”

  “It was not. And we don’t have it. Now I’ve given you information that is worth a lot of money.”

  “Aw, crap, man,” Drudge burst out. “We need it.”

  “What for?”

  “Because!”

  “If this was an official approach, they wouldn’t have sent you two. What do you need it for?”

  “My platoon leader is sick. She’s got the nanites. She needs the St. Stephen virus to get better.”

  “That’s terrible. But I think you’re misunderstanding what the virus does. It’s aggressive malware—”

  “I know!”

  “—that destroys control interfaces. It can’t actually destroy the nanites. It just renders them non-functioning.”

  “Either way, man!”

  Commander Sun tilted his head quizzically. “Who is it that’s been infected? Do I know her?”

  “Sure you do,” Hawker said. “It’s Jennifer Colden. The telepresence operator who sealed the bunker, giving you time to blow the dam.”

  “Ai-yah. I’m truly sorry to hear that. Roland, believe me: if we had the source code, I would give it to you. But we don’t have it.”

  Drudge turned on his heel and walked away. Tears of rage and disappointment blurred his vision. He walked back to the ravine. Halfway across, he tore the shrinkfoam off his trophies. He hurled them down on the mud and stamped on them.

  “People,” he muttered. “They were people.” A wisp of cultural memory came to him. “People should be buried.”

  He danced up and down on the mud, grinding the trophies into the Martian muck, until all that could be seen was a few shreds of shrinkfoam, like rubbish.

  ★

  “That won’t work,” Stephen One said, regarding Kristiansen with his best condescending air.

  “I acknowledge it’s a long shot. Your mother told me the music file was only a dropper. I have no cause to believe the music on its own has any power to help her. But I can’t think of anything else.” Kristiansen’s voice broke, betraying the emotions that were raging in his chest.

  “You are a Sitzpinkler,” Stephen One said, impassively issuing his favorite judgment.

  “Verpiss dich,” Kristiansen shouted at him. “Fuck you! I have tried and tried and tried to help you! I’ve given everything for your people. I almost lost my life, and now she’s going to lose hers. And you just sit there, enjoying our food, our air, and you call me a man who pisses sitting down. Look in the mirror.”

  Stephen One tilted his head on one side.

  The children giggled.

  “This woman. Why is she important to you?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “You don’t understand family. You don’t understand friendship. You can’t possibly understand the concept of love.”

  “What is love?”

  Kristiansen blew out an angry breath. “It’s in your damn song. I’ll translate from the Latin: ‘But mark how Stephen, for the love of Christ, was ready to die …’”

  “What is Christ? I have been wondering about this.”

  Kristiansen was no Christian, but his education had included the study of the Bible as a historical text. He looked around at their audience of half-naked Martian ragamuffins. “When someone is in need of our help, we’re meant to help them. The way you helped these children …”

  “The children are mine.”

  “All right, then Colden is mine.” He could only imagine what she would say if she heard that. “I love her.”

  ★

  Colden could feel her brain.

  It was a shocking sensation, composed of physical pressure, an itchiness inside her skull too deep to scratch, and a moment-by-moment awareness of her own neural activity. She could actually feel neurons firing off, sending signals throughout her body, telling her cells: Change.

  She appeared to be sedated. Her muscles did not respond to the nanites’ commands. When it wore off, she would have to see about getting out of here.

  The god could not talk to her through all this shielding.

  And the god had so much to say to her, the nanites promised. It had the answers to all her questions. More than that: the god would listen to her. The electric light show in her head was not meant for her to witness alone. The god wanted to share it with her.

  And with her new kindred, all over the planet.

  This transformation she was going through wasn’t just a biotech miracle. It had a meaning. The god would tell her what that meaning was. It would tell her what to do with her life.

  She struggled against the sedative. Dim signals began to penetrate from the world outside her body.

  “Careful! She’s wounded!”

  Didn’t she know that voice?

  No, the nanites said. The only voice that matters is the god’s

  “I am BEING fucking careful.”

  “Are you sure you disabled the cameras?”

  “Hombre, the techs that run this joint are my brahs.”

  “Your brahs are going to be neck-deep in the shit. But not as deep as we will be.”

  “Not if it works.” There, again, was the voice that she … didn’t know. It meant nothing to her. Meaning was the exclusive property of the god.

  She felt herself being dragged, lifted. Disoriented and numb, she tried to struggle, but knew her limbs weren’t obeying her. Heavy folds snugged around her body.

  “Quick! Hurry up!”

  She was being carried, jouncing and bumping.

  And then, suddenly, her brain roared to life. The new bolt-on module the nanites had built in her skull interfaced with her BCI. And now her BCI was receiving the god’s signal, a vastly multiplexed whisper broadcast and amplified by every nanite crawling in the dust of Sulci Gordii, all the way from Olympus Mons.

  (Oh, thought a suppressed remnant of the old Colden. So that’s how they do it. The whole freaking planet is an EM transmitter.)

  RESIST! the god told her. RESIST TO YOUR LAST BREATH! THEY ARE ENEMIES OF PROGRESS!

  She kicked and writhed. Energized by the nanites’ cellular-level stimulation, she fought off the lingering effects of the sedative. Her captors lost their grip on her. Their curses crackled in her cochlear implants, mere squeaks in comparison to the god’s bellowed orders. She hit the floor hard, and tried to crawl away, but this heavy bag they’d put her in constricted her movements. They caught her. She was lifted again and carried, slung over someone’s shoulder. Her head bounced hard against his back.

  “Let me go,” she screamed. The god told her what to say, and even gave her the name she’d forgotten, fishing it out of her BCI’s email archives. “Kristiansen, you’re hurting me!”

  He let her go.

  At the same moment, she lost the god’s voice. It cut out completely, as if it had been switched off.

  She’d been talking on, explaining how she felt just fine, but when she lost her connection with the god, she lost the thread. Her voice, too, went silent, as if switched off.

  “See, Faraday cages work,” said one of the voices from earlier.

  “What Faraday cage?” said Kristiansen.

  A new voice said, “The one shielding this module.”

  “Oh … crap. I mean, sir.”

  “Sorry, sir, we. Uh. Yeah.”

  “You aren’t in trouble. I may be, if this doesn’t work. But I agree it’s worth trying. Let’s get her inside.”

  She felt herself being carried again. Only a short distance, this time. By the time they lowered her to the floor, she had a name for the new voice: Squiffy Jackson.

  “EM shielding doesn’t block quantum comms, but it blocks everything else,” J
ackson said. “We know these little guys have lost their quantum comms functionality, but it was considered possible that they might try to communicate with the PLAN electromagnetically. Hence the Faraday cage.”

  “So the god can’t locate us?” This was a new voice, speaking strangely accented English.

  “That’s correct,” Jackson said.

  “It’s a bloody shame Colden didn’t know that last night,” muttered the first voice.

  “I don’t want to hear about it, Captain Hawker.”

  So she now had names for three of them: Jackson, Hawker, and Kristiansen.

  She tried to decide which one she would kill first.

  Hawker, she recalled, had mocha skin and curly hair. He displayed distinctive cultural mannerisms categorized as FUKish, but FUKish individuals were thought to be on the high end of the human potential scale. Recruit, don’t kill.

  Commander Jackson probably possessed quantities of useful information. His genetic heritage appeared to be more-or-less pure Anglo. But he displayed no culturally unique traits. His loyalty to Star Force could be bent to serve the god’s purposes. Recruit, don’t kill, by a hair.

  They pulled the bag off her. Sounds took on an echoing quality, as if she were in a large, mostly empty space. She breathed in gulps of sterile air and blinked up at yet another face she knew: the rat-like mestizo visage of Danny Drudge. Her records indicated that he had enormous potential.

  Recruit, don’t kill.

  My, my, Star Force was a rich pool of potential recruits. It was almost like they’d been preselected according to the god’s criteria.

  Blinking innocently, she turned her gaze to Magnus Kristiansen.

  The wealth of information she had about him on her BCI enabled her to categorize him with ease.

  Kill.

  She braced herself to spring—and a fifth man caught her eye. His flat-cheeked, broad-nosed face seemed weirdly familiar. It was like looking in a mirror, except this mirror showed her what she was inside. Not the competent, jokey woman her colleagues knew, but a frightened little girl who’d never got over being abandoned, first by her biological parents and then by her adoptive parents. Part of her was still stuck in that terrible room in the Congo, alone. His gaze said that he knew how lonely she was, how few dopamine pathways she possessed, how easy the nanites had had it.