by Gary Lovisi
“Is it some kind of secret, Ryan?” she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Yes,” he replied mysteriously.
Arabella Rashid smiled her most winning smile. It was delightful to see, except Ryan could not see it. She said, “Ryan, I really like secrets.”
“I figured you would.”
“So how many people know about it...?”
He didn’t say another word. He pressed the time and coordinates code that showed her where and when they were to meet.
Then he broke the link.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THROUGH THE MARTIAN DESERT
She was there early. Naturally. Waiting. Looking impatient, a bit tense, perhaps somewhat angry. But she softened when she saw him approach. Angry at herself that she had made it evident she was so happy to see him. Upset especially that she had made her feelings transparent to Ryan. But that was okay. Ryan returned the feelings, returned the smile. His eyes drinking in her loveliness and warmth and reveling in it.
She was a vision, he thought.
“So how many people know about this secret place, Ryan?” she asked him as they walked through the Mall and over towards the North Gate. There they’d suit up, get a land buggy and drive out to the crater.
“Not many. It’s a secret, like I told you.”
“What kind of secret, Ryan?” she insisted. She knew she was being difficult but so was he. Nevertheless she was enjoying baiting him.
“A very big secret,” he laughed.
She smiled, he was playing with her. Yet, instead of making her mad it made her happy. She was also playing with him. So the feeling was mutual.
She just looked at him and shook her head. He guided her to the North Gate. She acted obstinate, but wasn’t. She was more curious than any cat ever could be at that point. She knew Ryan knew something about what was going on here on Mars. Now, for some reason, he had decided to show her.
Of course, she knew it could all be a trap. He may have discovered her true identity and was taking her outside the port to eliminate her. In fact, she knew that this Ryan might not be a Marsman at all. He could be a DOC agent acting on orders from someone back on Earth to eliminate her. She’d just have to wait and see. But there was something unique about Ryan. She liked him. She felt she could trust him. And then there was the other thing, she thought she was beginning to fall in love with him. The thought surprised her but also delighted her, she had to admit. She was quite astonished, but found out she actually liked the feeling.
“So where are we going, Ryan?”
“You’ll see, soon enough.”
She said, “I guess we’re going outside?”
He nodded as she tried to keep up with him.
“Where?”
He directed her to Joe’s Place. They rented suits and helmets, as a precaution. Then they rented a land buggy.
They got dressed fast. Got in the small vehicle and drove out of the North Port Gate into the Martian desert. They drove on the bleak red, pock-marked surface, on dry rock and around small craters.
They were quiet for a while. He was thinking. Nervous.
She looked thoughtful as well, apparently looking over the arid lonely landscape.
There was a lot on their minds.
Paramount was which one of them might end up killing the other.
He noticed that in her pocket was an old Pocket Book edition of The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. He’d given the book to her to read the other day. It made him happy to see her with it now, to see that she cared enough to read it and to have it with her today.
“How is it?” he said, pointing to the book.
She looked at him like he’d spoken some incomprehensible language. She’d obviously been in some very deep thought, on a world a million miles away from him. And from Mars. Far away. On Earth and back at her desk at DOC most likely. That was not a good sign he thought....
“The book,” he asked again. “How do you like it?”
She gave him a short laugh. “I just finished it while I was waiting for you.”
“And?”
“What a great story!”
He said, “Did you like the ending?”
She said, “Yeah. I really understood it. When you have a job to do, you just have to do it. Isn’t that right, Ryan?”
He thought that over a moment. A very short moment. It didn’t take him long. It was a no-brainer. He knew how it was. She knew the score too.
He shrugged. “Sam Spade’s a lot tougher guy than I am.”
“But he’s not at war with the world like you are, Ryan. He’s not at war.”
“I’m not at war. I just want to be left alone. I want to be free. I can be free here on Mars. I want to stay free, that’s all. Is that too much to ask for? And we don’t need no DOC to come out here and try to control our lives.”
“Nor any Arabella Rashid, either?”
He looked at her sharply then. He’d said more than he’d ever intended, but she’d said too much as well. She’d mentioned her real name, dropped her trump card.
So it was her.
It had to be!
It was a fact! An incredible fact that she was here on Mars. Here now with him!
Now she had admitted to him that she was here on Mars! It had to be her, unless she was lying to him and playing some kind of game. He didn’t want to think about that and had no idea what that might imply. It was the first time she’d ever mentioned her true name to him. She’d all but given him her secret identity. On purpose, it seemed. But why?
He knew that he should have killed her right then and there. It would have been the by-the-book thing to do. Even according to Old Earther rules and DOC rules for this sort of thing. But this was Mars. Mars was not Earth. Thank God! He did not ever want it to become like Earth. Mars was different. And it should stay different. Always.
He said, as calm as could be, “Actually, I figured you for her all along.”
“But you weren’t sure. Were you, Ryan? Not one hundred percent sure?” she asked confidently.
“No. It was all too unbelievable,” he sighed.
She said, “Ryan, are you all right? You look a little pale. You’re not going to faint on me, are you? Do you want me to get you a doctor?”
He smiled, said, “No, I’ll be all right. It’s just a shock. The Department of Control here on Mars. Really here! And you, so open about it all. You are Arabella Rashid, here with me. You’re her! I can’t believe it. I’ll be all right. I don’t need no doctor. I need a reality check. I’m just wondering how come I’m still alive, that’s all.”
“I might ask you the same thing,” she replied, a sparkle in her eyes surrounded by hardness.
He just shook his head.
She said, “You really do look like you need a doctor, or else you sure need something.”
“I need some of that old number 7 Jack Daniels Tennessee sipping whiskey. A lot of it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
MARS AIN’T JUST A STATE OF MIND
Mars does things to your mind. It forces reality and it’s real tough, that is what it really is. Real nasty too. It takes a real long time to get out there from Earth. The trip out takes almost an entire year. A long solid time of loneliness and solitude and thinking. All kinds of thinking. There is also the very real danger of death alone out in space. That means there is a lot of time for reflection, thought, planning—for reevaluation of your life up to that point. It’s a very natural human reaction to the time and stress factors involved.
Mars was a new beginning for most. People who left Old Earth left all the old problems behind. It was a new world. And if they were smart, they left a lot of the crap learned on Old Earth behind them too when they came to Mars.
Mars changed people.
Most people.
It had changed James Ryan for sure.
Now Ryan hoped it had changed Arabella Rashid.
It was in one of his dreams.
The fact that she had t
old him her true identity was a start. The fact that open warfare had not broken out between them, quite astonishing actually, was another check on the positive side of the ledger to his way of thinking. Sure, they were in love with each other. They must be. That had to be it.
But so what?
Love was not everything. To some people love meant nothing.
When you were the type of people Arabella Rashid and James Ryan were, too often love was just another useful weapon in the arsenal of warfare to be used against your enemy. Sometimes even being your most effective weapon.
Or so it had always been down on Earth.
* * * *
The vehicle approached the crater now. The place was unmarked, not on any of the charts. It was in a desolate area, but there was a road of sorts that lead into it. Most strange, Arabella thought, and she asked Ryan about it.
“You ain’t seen the half of it,” he replied with a smile and she was sure of that.
“Are we there yet?” she asked, as if an eager child on a family trip.
“Yes, just about. It won’t be long now. A short walk outside, we have to get to the turbo, go down, then de-suit. Then I’ll show you something that Earth has not seen the likes of for over a hundred years.”
She said, “I can’t wait, Ryan.”
“There’s just one thing you have to promise me, Arabella,” he said, using her real name for the first time. He decided he liked the sound of it, and she decided she liked the way her name sounded when spoken by his voice.
She said, “What’s that, James?”
“This is a secret. So you have to promise me not to tell anyone. All right?” he asked, not smiling now, stone-faced, calm but unreadable to her. He was dead serious.
She just watched him in amazement.
“It’s like the honor system,” he added. “Do you promise?”
She said, “Yes, James, I promise.”
“No matter what it is?” he asked incredulously, wondering already if she was lying to him. She probably was, after all. Was this the big betrayal he’d expected, what he’d been waiting for? Or was she being true? Had she changed? Mars could do that. Mars could perform miracles on the human soul and spirit. He knew that was true.
“Yes, James, I promise. No matter what it is.”
He smiled at her. He did not move his hand toward his gun. He knew he could never take up a weapon against her now.
Arabella smiled back, but she knew he was armed now. So was she. She relaxed a moment. She knew now he would never take action against her. She did not want to think about what she would have done were she in his place. At least what she would have done if she were back on Earth. But Ryan was correct. On Mars things were different. She forgot about her own weapon, and instead concentrated on the man walking next to her. Dreaming wonderful dreams with him as he spoke to her.
Ryan said, “Come on. We go in through here. Then down six levels. The place is all hollowed out. It was said to have been the home of some pre-human aliens. They’re long dead and gone now. Early astronauts did some archaeology long ago but DOC closed it down once they took over on Earth. Then it was to have been a secret missile base. In fact, that is just what the DOC and the Earth Authority think that it was originally. A secret missile base built by aliens, later to be used as a secret missile base by The DOC. But we’ve put it to better use.”
Arabella Rashid was impressed. She’d struck the mother lode all right. The inner-secret of Mars and the rebel Resistance. And Revolution. It was here and thriving all right. She realized now, “revolution” was exactly the correct and proper word for it. Subversion and revolution. Just the thing The DOC hated and strove so hard to crush. They would crush it in every way, shape, manner and form in which it appeared. Wherever it reared its ugly head.
On Earth! Crush it!
And now, here on Mars as well.... Crush it!
She sighed sadly, it was all so inevitable.
“Are you all right?” Ryan asked her.
“Yes,” she looked back, wondering why he was showing this all to her, knowing who an what she was.
“Then come on, it’s right over here,” he said, leading her toward the opening.
The building was enormous, a huge underground cavern, reinforced against all manner of attack, hermetically sealed and with fully functioning cyber security, ventilation, and climate control.
This had to be it! The secret base of the rebels!
They de-suited in an outside chamber before they entered the main hall and then Arabella Rashid had her breath taken away by what she saw.
“It’s our secret. This is it.”
“What is it?” she gasped.
“The secret Library of Mars,” Ryan said, proudly. “I’m the, ah...Chief Librarian.”
The hall was enormous and it was flanked by row upon row of shelves, all packed tightly with every kind of book. Mostly all paperbacks. It was incredible. She realized almost breathless, it was even quite lovely. Beautiful and wonderful.
Arabella Rashid looked at Ryan incredulously. “Chief Librarian? And to think, I thought you were just the leader of some...Revolution?”
Ryan blushed, “Actually not a Revolution, a Resistance. There is a big difference. We are resisters. We resist Earth’s ways, ideas and interference. We’re resisters.”
“And some day revolutionaries,” she said confidently, “and eventually... enemies....”
Ryan took a deep thoughtful breath and replied, “Perhaps. Some day.”
She shook her head like it was all so crazy.
And Ryan knew that it was, but he wouldn’t let that stop him.
“Come on, let’s go inside and I’ll show you around. I’m sure even Arabella Rashid of the DOC has never seen anything quite like this before.”
* * * *
Once inside, Ryan proudly explained to her, “The thing is, the books here are in a hermetically sealed, and preservation-secure environment. Here they can be protected for centuries. They were each plastisealed back on Earth before being sent out here. In fact, the books, I just got and all others were also plastisealed for a hundred years before being shipped to me. That is how they were able to stay in such good condition after so many years. They came from secret private collections. These books are the real treasure of Mars. This is the treasure Earth decided was too dangerous to keep on Earth. And yet, they are too important to destroy totally. Knowledge is treasure after all, but the greater treasure here is truth that comes from human stories.”
Arabella Rashid nodded, amazed at all the books shelved so neatly. It seemed there were miles and miles of books everywhere she looked.
Ryan continued, “Of course almost all the books here are non-fiction. History, politics, biographies, philosophy, so much more. Those are the most important books we need, the crucial ones, books with information, all published LastCen. Even before the Authority came to power. Before the DOC took control of everything. Real books in original hard copy, undoctored, unabridged, uncensored, and not subject to any PC monitoring whatsoever. There is no reevaluation, no reinterpretation, no revision of any of the text. What was written was printed, just as it was written. What was printed, has not been changed in any way. Not at all like what’s in the digital record, which is changed, updated and rewritten every day to conform with current fad, fashion, political policy, agenda, and propaganda.
Arabella Rashid let her eyes rove over the seemingly endless rows of high shelves. It was awesome. She’d never seen anything like it. Never had she imagined something like this could even exist....
Ryan continued, “The books here are the information storage devices of human truth in print, at least the truth as it was originally written by the original authors, without any changes to their words. The hard copy form is unchangeable without tell-tale signs of that change. They’re from the unpolluted old days, before brain programming, from days when such things were unethical and unlawful. It was a time when the control we take for granted today was in its infa
ncy. A time when disinformation, reevaluated facts, and revised conclusions were not PC. In those olden days it was believed to be wrong, unethical, certainly immoral to even think of doing such things. It was book blasphemy.”
Arabella Rashid listened to his words but she thought her own thoughts and he could not tell what they were. What they might be or mean for him and Mars.
Ryan continued, “That was the old days, when for the most part, results were based on facts and evidence. Not when facts and evidence were used to ensure pre-ordained results. Today our sources of information are constantly changed, doctored, corrected, revised by the government on Earth—or by the DOC!”
She nodded, she knew all about that. It was all true. Ryan had even left out a lot of the more horrendous ways the government and The DOC controlled the masses. Mind-altering drugs in the food and water supply, hidden messages in disks and manipulated software, subcutaneous implants that most people did not even know they had imbedded within their body. VRB-Virtual Reality Brainwashing. Nanotech monitors capable of triggering subject death once that subject thought the wrong thought! Of course The DOC controlled all forms of all media, and in doing so controlled all forms of thought on Earth.
But not here on Mars!
Ryan added, “There are no disks here, no brain implants, or mind-computer links. Nothing that could be doctored or changed. Here we only have the original hard copies, only books. It is just pages, paper, covers, words printed on paper. A book you can hold in your hands. Real. Full of facts. They may not always be correct, but at least they’re a galaxy away from the lies and distortions of your controlled media, links, implants, and everydamnthing!”
“Calm down, Ryan!”
“I’m calm,” he said tersely.
“You’re not like any librarian I’ve ever heard of. Even in the DOC. They’re usually kind of....”
“I know. Meek. Mild-mannered.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like, what the hell happened to you?”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
She just laughed, “Don’t be sorry, baby.”