Empress of Mars

by Kage Baker

  Between the beard and the forge-soot, there wasn't much of Cochevelou's face to see; but his light eyes had a shifting look to them today, at once hopeful and uneasy. He watched Mary pour him a shot of Black Label, rubbing his thick fingers across the bridge of his nose and leaving pale streaks there.

  “It's like this, Ma'am,” he said abruptly. “We're sending Finn home.”

  “Oh,” said Mary, filling another glass. “Congratulations, Mr. Finn.”

  “It's on account of I'm dying without the sea,” said Finn, a smudgy creature in a suit that had been buckled tight and was still too big.

  “And with the silicosis,” added Cochevelou.

  “That's beside the point,” said Finn querulously. “I dream at night of the flat wet beach and the salt mist hanging low, and the white terns wheeling above the white wave. Picking dulse from the tidepools where the water lies clear as glass—”

  There were involuntary groans from the others, and one of them booted Finn pretty hard in the ankle to make him stop.

  “And, see, he goes on like that and drives the rest of us mad with his glass-clear water and all,” said Cochevelou, raising his voice slightly as he lifted his cup and saluted Mary. “So what it comes down to is, we've finally saved enough to send one of us home and it's got to be him, you see? Your health, Ma'am.”

  He drank, and Mary drank, and when they had both drawn breath, she said:

  “What's to happen to his Allotment?”

  She had cut straight to the heart of the matter, and Cochevelou smiled in a grimacing kind of way.

  Under the terms of the Mutual Use Treaty, which had been hammered out during that momentary thaw in relations between England and the Celtic Federation, every settler on Mars had received an Allotment of acreage for private terraforming. With the lease went the commitment to keep the land under cultivation, at the risk of its reverting to the BAC.

  The BAC, long since having repented its rash decision to invite so many undesirables to settle on Mars, had gotten into the habit of grabbing back land it did not feel was being sufficiently utilized.

  “Well, that's the question,” said Cochevelou. “It's twenty long acres of fine land, Ma'am.”

  “Five in sugar beets and fifteen in the best barley,” said Finn.

  “With the soundest roof ever built and its own well, and the sweetest irrigation pipes ever laid,” said Cochevelou. “You wouldn't mind drinking out of them, I can tell you.”

  Mary became aware that dead silence had fallen in her house, that all her family were poised motionless with brooms or trays of castware to hear what would be said next.

  Barley was the life of the house. It was grown on cold and bitter Mars because it would grow anywhere, but it didn't grow well on the wretched bit of high-oxidant rock clay Mary had been allotted.

  “What a pity if it was to revert to the BAC,” she said noncommittally.

  “We thought so, too,” said Cochevelou, turning the cup in his fingers. “Because of course they'd plough that good stuff under and put it in soy, and wouldn't that be a shame? So of course we thought of offering it to you, first, Ma'am.”

  “How much?” said Mary at once.

  “Four thousand punts Celtic,” Cochevelou replied.

  Mary narrowed her eyes. “How much of that would you take in trade?”

  There was a slight pause.

  “The BAC have offered us four grand in cash,” said Cochevelou, in a somewhat apologetic tone. “You see. But we'd much rather have you as a neighbor, wouldn't we? So if there's any way you could possibly come up with the money...”

  “I haven't got it,” said Mary bluntly, and she meant it too. Her small economy ran almost entirely on barter and goodwill.

  “Aw, now, surely you're mistaken about that,” said Cochevelou. “You could take up a collection, maybe. All the good workers love your place, and wouldn't they reach into their hearts and their pockets for a timely contribution? And some of your ex-BACs, haven't they got a little redundancy pay socked away in the bottom of the duffel? If you could even scrape together two-thirds for a down, we'd work out the most reasonable terms for you!”

  Mary hesitated. She knew pretty well how much her people had, and it didn't amount to a thousand punts even if they presold their bodies to the xenoforensic studies lab. But the Lady might somehow provide, might She not?

  “Perhaps I ought to view the property,” she said.

  “It would be our pleasure,” said Cochevelou, grinning white in his sooty beard, and his people exchanged smiles, and Mary thought to herself: Careful.

  But she rose and suited up, and fitted her mask on tight, and went for a stroll through the airlock with Cochevelou and his people.

  * * * *

  The Settlement was quite a bit more now than the single modest dome that had sheltered the first colonists, though that still rose higher than any other structure, and it did have that lovely vizio top so its inhabitants could see the stars, and which gave it a rather Space-Age Moderne look. It wasted heat, though, and who the hell cared enough about two tiny spitspeck moons to venture out in the freezing night and peer upward at them?

  The Tubes had a nice modern look too, where the English maintained them, with lots of transparencies that gave onto stunning views of the Red Planet.

  To be strictly accurate, it was only a red planet in places. When Mary had come to live there, her first impression had been of an endless cinnamon-colored waste. Now she saw every color but blue, from primrose-curry-tomcat-ochre to flaming persimmon-vermilion through bloodred and so into ever more livery shades of garnet and rust. There were even greens, both the subdued yellowy olive khaki in the rock and the exuberant rich green of the covered acreage.

  And Finn's twenty long acres were green indeed, rich as emerald with a barley crop that had not yet come into its silver beard. Mary clanked through the airlock after Cochevelou and stopped, staring.

  “The Crystal Palace itself,” said Finn proudly, with a wave of his hand.

  She pulled off her mask and inhaled. The air stank, of course, from the methane; but it was rich and wet too, and with a certain sweetness. All down the long tunnel roofed with industrial-grade vizio, the barley grew tall, out to that distant point of shade change that must be sugar beet.

  “Oh, my,” she said, giddy already with the oxygen.

  “You see?” said Cochevelou. “Worth every penny of the asking price.”

  “If I had it,” she retorted, making an effort at shrewdness. It was a beautiful holding, one that would give her all the malted barley she could use and plenty to trade on the side or even to sell...

  “No wonder the English want this,” she said, and her own words echoed in her ears as she regarded the landscape beyond the vizio, the low-domed methane hell of the clan's cattle pens, the towering pipe-maze of Cochevelou's ironworks.

  “No wonder the English want this,” she repeated, turning to look Cochevelou in the eye. “If they own this land, it divides Clan Morrigan's holdings smack in two, doesn't it?”

  “Too right,” agreed Finn, “And then they'll file actions to have the cowshed and the ironworks moved as nuisances, see and—ow,” he concluded, as he was kicked again.

  “And it's all a part of their secret plot to drive us out,” said Cochevelou rather hastily. “You see? They've gone and made us an offer we can't refuse. Now we've broke the ground and manured it for them, they've been just waiting and waiting for us to give up and go home, so they can grab it all. The day after we filed the papers to send Finn back, bastardly Inspector Baldwin shows up on our property.”

  “Didn't his face fall when he saw what a nice healthy crop we had growing here!” said Finn, rubbing his ankle.

  “So he couldn't condemn it and get the lease revoked you see?” Cochevelou continued, giving Finn a black look. “Because obviously it ain't abandoned, it's gone into our collective's common ownership. But it wasn't eight hours later he came around with that offer of four thousand for the land. And if w
e take it, yes, it's a safe bet they'll start bitching and moaning about our cattle and all.”

  “Don't sell,” said Mary. “Or sell to one of your own.”

  “Sweetheart, you know we've always thought of you as one of our own,” said Cochevelou soupily. “Haven't we? But who in our poor clan would ever be able to come up with that kind of money? And as for not selling, why, you and I can see that having the BAC in here would be doom and destruction and (which is worse) lawsuits inevitable somewhere down the road. But it isn't up to me. Most of our folk will only be able to see that big heap of shining BAC brass they're being offered. And they'll vote to take it, see?”

  “We could do a lot with that kind of money,” sighed Matelot, he who had been most active kicking Finn. “Buy new generators, which we sorely need. More vizio, which as you know is worth its weight in transparent gold. Much as we'd hate to sell to strangers...”

  “But if you were to buy the land, we'd have our cake and be able to eat it too, you see?” Cochevelou explained.

  Mary eyed him resentfully. She saw, well enough: whichever way the dice fell, she was going to lose. If the Clan Morrigan acreage shrank, her little economy would go out of balance. No barley, no beer.

  “You've got me in a cleft stick, Cochevelou,” she told him, and he looked sad.

  “Aren't we both in a cleft stick, and you're just in the tightest part?” he replied. “But all you have to do is come up with the money, and we're both riding in high cotton, and the BAC can go off and fume. Come on now, darling, you don't have to make up your mind right away! We've got thirty days. Go on home and talk it over with your people, why don't you?”

  She clapped her mask on and stamped out through the airlock, muttering.

  * * * *

  Mary had been accustomed, all her life, to dealing with emergencies. When her father had announced that he was leaving and she'd have to come home from University to take care of her mother, she had coped. She'd found a job, and a smaller apartment, where she and her mother had lived in an uneasy state of truce until her mother had taken all those sleeping pills. Mary had coped again; buried her mother, found a still smaller apartment, and taken night University courses until she'd got her doctorate in xenobotany.

  When Alice's father had died, Mary had coped. She'd summoned all her confidence, and found a prestigious research and development job that paid well enough to keep Alice out of the Federation orphanage.

  When Rowan's father had deserted, she'd still coped, though he'd waltzed with most of her money; two years’ hard work taking extra projects had gotten her on her feet again.

  When Mona's father had decided he preferred boys, she had coped without a moment's trouble to her purse if not her heart, secure in her own finances now with lessons hard-learned. And when the BAC headhunters had approached her with a job offer, it had seemed as though it was the Lady's reward for all her years of coping.

  A glorious adventure on another world! The chance to explore, to classify and enshrine her name forever in the nomenclature of Martian algae! The little girls had listened with round eyes, and only Alice had sulked and wept about leaving her friends, and only for a little while. So they'd all set off together bravely and become Martians, and the girls had adapted in no time, spoiled rotten as the only children on Mars.

  And Mary had five years of happiness as a valued member of a scientific team, respected for her expertise, finding more industrial applications for Cryptogametes gryffyuddi than George Washington Carver had found for the peanut.

  But when she had discovered all there was to discover about useful lichens on Mars (and in five years she had pretty much exhausted the subject), the BAC had no more use for her.

  The nasty interview with General Director Rotherhithe had been both unexpected and brief. Her morals were in question, it had seemed. She had all those resource-consuming children, and while that sort of thing might be acceptable in a Celtic Federation country, Mars belonged to England. She was known to indulge in controlled substances, also no crime in the Federation, but certainly morally wrong. And the BAC had been prepared to tolerate her, ah, religion in the hopes that it would keep her from perpetuating certain other kinds of immorality, which had unfortunately not been the case—

  “What, because I have men to my bed?” Mary had demanded, unfortunately not losing her grasp of English. “You dried-up dirty-minded old stick, I'll bet you'd wink at it if I had other women, wouldn't you? Bloody hypocrite! I've heard you keep a Lesbian Holopeep in your office cabinet—”

  Academic communities are small and full of gossip, and even smaller and more full of gossip under a biodome, and secrets cannot be kept at all. So Julie and Sylvia Take Deportment Lessons From Ms. Lash had been giggled at, but never mentioned out loud. Until now.

  General Director Rotherhithe had had a choking fit and gone a nice shade of lilac, and Sub-Director Thorpe had taken over to say that It was therefore with infinite regret, et cetera...

  And Mary had had to cope again.

  She hadn't cared that she couldn't afford the fare home; she loved Mars. She had decided she was damned if she was going to be thrown off. So, with her final paycheck, she'd gone into business for herself.

  She'd purchased a dome from the Federation colonists, a surplus shelter originally used for livestock; and though the smell took some weeks to go away even in the dry thin air, the walls were sound and warm, and easily remodeled with berths for lodgers.

  Chiring, who had had his contract canceled with the BAC for writing highly critical articles about them and sending the columns home to the Kathmandu Post, came to her because he too had nowhere else to go. He was a decent mechanic, and helped her repair the broken well pump and set up the generators.

  Manco Inka, who had been asked to leave the BAC community because he was discovered to be a (sort of) practicing Christian, brought her a stone-casting unit in exchange for rent, and soon she'd been able to cast her five fine brewing tanks and ever so many cups, bowls and dishes. Cochevelou himself had stood her the first load of barley for malting.

  And once it was known that she had both beer and pretty daughters, the Empress of Mars was in business.

  For five years now it had stood defiantly on its rocky bit of upland slope, the very picture of what a cozy country tavern on Mars ought to be: squat low dome grown all over with lichen patches most picturesque, except on the weather-wall where the prevailing winds blasted it bald with an unceasing torrent of sand, so it had to be puttied constantly with red stonecast leavings to keep it whole there. Mary swapped resources with the clan, with the laborers, with even a few stealthy BAC personnel for fuel and food, and an economy had been born.

  And now it was threatened, and she was going to have to cope again.

  “Holy Mother, why is it always something?” she growled into her mask, kicking through drifts as she stormed back along the Tube. “Could I count on You for even one year where nothing went wrong for once? I could not, indeed.

  “And now I'm expected to pull Cochevelou's smoky black chestnuts out of the fire for him, the brute, and where am I to come up with the money? Could You even grant me one little miracle? Oh, no, I'm strong enough to cope on my own, aren't I? I'll solve everyone's problems so they needn't develop the spine to do it themselves, won't I? Bloody hell!”

  She came to a transparency and glared out.

  Before her was Dead Snake Field, a stretch of rock distinguished by a cairn marking the last resting place of Cochevelou's pet ball python, which had survived the trip to Mars only to escape from its terrarium and freeze to death Outside. Initial hopes that it might be thawed and revived had been dashed when Finn, in an attempt at wit, had set the coiled icicle on his head like a hat and it had slipped off and fallen to the floor, shattering.

  There in the pink distance, just under the melted slope of Mons Olympus, was the sad-looking semicollapsed vizio wall of Mary's own few long acres, the nasty little Allotment she'd been granted almost as a nose-thumbing with her re
dundancy pay. Its spidery old Aeromotors gave it a deceptively rural look. With all the abundant freaky Martian geology to choose from, the BAC had managed to find her a strip of the most sterile clay imaginable; and though she was unable to farm it very effectively, they had never shown any inclination to snatch it back.

  “There's another joke,” she snarled. “Fine fertile fields, is it? Oh, damn the old purse-mouth pervert!”

  She stalked on and shortly came to the Tube branch leading to her allotment, and went down to see how her own crops were doing.

  Plumes of mist were leaking from the airlock seal; now that needed replacing too, something else broken she couldn't afford to fix. There were tears in her eyes as she stepped through and lowered her mask, to survey that low yellow wretched barley, fluttering feebly in the oxygen waves. The contrast with Finn's lush fields was too much. She sat down on an overturned bucket and wept, and her tears amounted to one scant drop of water spattering on the sere red clay, fizzing like peroxide.

  When her anger and despair were wept out, she remained staring numbly at the fast-drying spot. The clay was the exact color of terracotta.

  “I wonder,” she said, “whether we could make pots out of the damned stuff.”

  She didn't need pots, of course; she could stonecast all the household vessels she needed out of Martian dust. What else was clay good for?

  Sculpting things, she thought to herself. Works of art? Useful bricabrac? Little tiles with SOUVENIR OF MARS stamped into them? Though she had no artistic talent herself, maybe one of her people had, and then what if they could get the Export Bazaar to take pieces on consignment? The Arean Porcelain sold pretty well.

  “What the hell,” she said, wiping her eyes, and standing up she righted the bucket and fetched a spade from the tool rack. She dug down a meter or so through the hardpan, gasping with effort even in the (comparatively) rich air, and filled the bucket with stiff chunks of clay. Then she put on her mask again and trudged home, lugging the latest hope for a few pounds.