Empress of Mars

by Kage Baker

  In her house her family might have been frozen in their places from the moment she'd left, and on her entry came to shamefaced hurried life again, resuming their various household chores as though they'd been hard at work ever since she'd left and not standing around discussing the clan's offer.

  Mr. Morton came stalking up to her, knotting his fingers together.

  “Er—Ma'am, we've been talking, and—”

  “Here, Mama, that's too heavy for you,” said Manco, scuttling close and relieving her of the bucket. “You sit down, huh?”

  “Very kind, I'm sure,” Mary said sourly, looking around. “I'll bet not one of you started the oatmeal stout brewing like I asked, have you? Take that out to the ball mill,” she added to Manco, pointing at the bucket. “As long as we've got all this damned clay, let's put it to good use and make something out of it.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Here, you sit down—” Mr. Morton gestured her toward a chair with flapping motions of his long arms.

  “I can't sit down! I have too much to do. Holy Mother, Alice, that heating unit should have been turned on an hour ago! Do I have to see to everything around here?”

  “Water's heating now, Mum,” Alice cried, running back from Tank Three.

  “Well, but I wanted to tell you about our ideas—if it would be all right—” said Mr. Morton.

  “I'm sure it will be when I'm not so busy, Mr. Morton,” said Mary, grabbing a push broom and going after the sand again. “Rowan, did you and Chiring reinstall the filter the new way we discussed?”

  “Yes, Mum, and—”

  “See, I thought we might raise four thousand pounds easily if we put on a sort of cabaret in here,” Mr. Morton continued earnestly. “Like a dinner show? I could sing and do dramatic recitals, and—”

  “What a very nice idea, Mr. Morton, and I'm sure I'll think about it, but in the meanwhile I need you to get that sack of oats out of the storage locker.”

  “And I thought I could do a striptease,” said Mona.

  Three broom-pushes before the meaning sank in, and then:

  “Striptease?” Mary shouted. “Are you mad? When the BAC already sees us as a cesspit of immorality and substance abuse? That'd really frost the cake!”

  Mona pouted. “But you said when you were at University—”

  “That was a long time ago and I needed the money, and—”

  “And we need the money now! We never have any money!”

  “Ladies, please—” said poor Mr. Morton, his face pink for once.

  “The oats, Mr. Morton. Mona, you will keep your clothes on until you come of age and that's all that will be said on the subject, do you understand?”

  “What's this?” said Manco, emerging from the utility area and holding out something in his hand. He had an odd look on his face. “This was in the bottom of the bucket. The clay cracked apart and—”

  “It's a rock,” said Mary, glancing at it. “Pitch it out.”

  “I don't think it's a rock, Mama.”

  “He's right,” said Chiring, squinting at it. “It looks more like a crystal.”

  “Then put it on the back bar with the fossils and we'll ask one of the geologists about it. What was that?” Mary looked up suspiciously. “Who's that? Who just threw up?”

  “It was me,” said Alice miserably, emerging from behind the bar, and Rowan ran to her with a bar towel.

  Mary ground her teeth. “Food poisoning. Just what we all needed. That devil-worshipping looney—” She started for the kitchen with blood in her eye, but was stopped in her tracks as Rowan said quietly:

  “It's not food poisoning, Mum.”

  Mary did an about-face, staring at her daughters. There was a profound moment of silence in which she continued staring, and the three men present wondered what was going on, until Alice wailed:

  “Well, I didn't think you could get pregnant on Mars!”

  * * * *

  So in all the excitement the crystal was stuck on the back bar and forgotten until that evening, when the Brick came in from his polar run.

  The Brick was so named because he resembled one. Not only was he vast and tall and wide in his quilted Hauler's jumpsuit, he was the color of a brick as well, though what shade he might be under years of high-impact red dust was anybody's guess.

  There was red grit between his teeth when he grinned, as he did now on emerging from the airlock, and his bloodshot red eyes widened in the pleasant evening darkness of the Empress. He lifted his head and sucked in air through a nose flattened as a gorilla's from years of collisions with fists, boots, steering wheels and (it was rumored) Hospital orderlies’ foreheads. He had been on Mars a long, long time.

  “Damn, I love that smell,” he howled in English, striding to the bar and slapping down his gauntlets. “Beer, onions and soygold nuggets frying, eh? Give me a Party Platter with Bisto and a pitcher of Foster's.”

  “I'm afraid we don't have Foster's, sir,” dithered Mr. Morton. Mary elbowed him.

  “It's what we call the Ares Lager when he's in here,” she murmured, and Mr. Morton ran off at once to fill a pitcher.

  “How's it going, Beautiful?”

  “Tolerably, Mr. Brick,” said Mary, sighing.

  He looked at her keenly and his voice dropped a couple of decibels when he said, “Trouble over something? Did the BAC finally get that warrant?”

  “What warrant?”

  “Oh, nothing you need to know about right now,” he said casually, accepting his pitcher of beer and drinking from it. “Not to worry, doll. Uncle Brick hears rumors all the time, and half of ‘em never pan out. As long as the Ice Haulers want you here, you'll stay here.”

  “I suppose they're trying to get me closed down again,” said Mary. “Bad cess to them, and what else is new? But I have other problems today.”

  She told him about the day's occurrences and he listened, sipping and nodding meanwhile, grunting occasionally in agreement or surprise.

  “Congratulations, m'dear,” he said. “This'll be the first human child born on Mars, you know that? Any idea who the father is?”

  “She knows who she hasn't been with, at least,” said Mary. “And there'll be tests, so it's not as though we'll be in suspense for long. It's only a baby, after all. But where am I going to get four thousand punts, I'd like to know?”

  Brick rumbled meditatively, shaking his head.

  “'Only a baby', she says. You know they're not having ‘em Down Home any more, don't you?”

  “Oh, that's certainly not true. I had three myself,” said Mary indignantly.

  “The birth rate's dropping, all the same,” said the Brick, having another sip of his beer. “That's what I hear. Funny thing for a species to do when it's colonizing other planets, isn't it?”

  Mary shrugged. “I'm sure it isn't as bad as all that,” she said. “Life will go on somehow. It always does. The Goddess provides.”

  “I guess so,” agreed Brick, and his voice rose to a genial roar as he hailed the Heretic, shuffling out from the kitchen with his Party Platter. “Hey, sweetheart! You're looking gorgeous this evening.”

  The Heretic blinked at him and shuffled closer. “Hi,” she said, offering him the food. He took it in one hand and swept her close for a kiss on the forehead.

  “How've you been?”

  "I saw the living glory burning. A bright tower in the icy waste," she said.

  “That's nice. Can I get just a little more Bisto on these fries?”

  “Okay.”

  The Heretic went back to the kitchen and fetched out a little saucepan of gravy-like substance, and as she larded Brick's dinner, Mary went on:

  “If you could see that twenty acres! It was as rich as pudding, probably from our very own sewage we sold them, and green as anything on Earth. Where I'm going to get the cash for it I simply do not know. Chiring makes forty punts a week from his column in the Kathmandu Post, of which he has kindly offered me ten per week toward the land, but I've only got a month
. If one of my people was a brilliant artist we might sell some folk art out of clay, but all of them protested they're quite talentless, so bang goes another good idea, and I'm running out of good ideas. Just when I thought everything had settled down to some kind of equilibrium—”

  “What's that new thing on the back bar?” inquired Brick, slightly muffled because his mouth was full.

  “Oh. That? Wait, you were a mineralogist, weren't you?” Mary paused, looking over her shoulder at him as she fetched the crystal down.

  “I have been many things, m'dear,” he informed her, washing down his mouthful with more beer. “And I did take a degree in Mineralogy at the University of Queensland once.”

  “Then you have a look at it. It was in some clay I dug up this afternoon. Maybe quartz with some cinnabar stain? Or more of the ever-present rust? It's a funny old thing.” She tossed it over and he caught it in his massive hand, peered at it for a long moment.

  Then he unflapped his transport suit, reached into the breast and brought out a tiny spectrometer mounted in a headset. He slipped it on with one hand, holding the crystal out to the light with the other. He stared through the eyepiece for a long moment.

  “Or do you think it's some kind of agate?” said Mary.

  “No,” Brick replied, turning and turning the crystal in his hand. “Unless this gizmo is mistaken, sweetheart, you've got yourself a diamond here.”

  * * * *

  Nobody believed it. How could something that looked like a lump of frozen tomato juice be worth anything? A diamond?

  Whatever it turned out to be, however, everyone agreed that the BAC must not be told.

  Cochevelou offered to trade the glorious twenty acres for the rock outright, and in fact proposed to Mary. Smiling, she declined. But terms of sale for the land were worked out and a deposit of ten punts was accepted, and the transfer of title was registered with the BAC by Mr. Morton, who as a Briton seemed less likely to annoy the authorities.

  And on the appointed day the rock was sewn into the lining of Finn's thermal suit, and he was seen off to the spaceport with much cheer, after promising faithfully to take the diamond straight to the best dealers in Amsterdam immediately on arriving Down Home.

  The next they heard of him, however, was that he was found drowned and smiling on the rocks at Antrim not three weeks after his homecoming, a bottle still clutched in his hand.

  Mary shrugged. She had title to the land, and Cochevelou had ten punts a week from her. For once, she thought to herself, she had broken even.

  TWO: THE RICHEST WOMAN ON MARS

  It was the Queen's Birthday, and Mary was hosting the Cement Kayak Regatta.

  Outdoor sports were possible on Mars. Just.

  Not to the extent that the famous original advertising holo implied (grinning man in shirtsleeves with football and micromask, standing just outside an airlock door, captioned: “This man is actually STANDING on the SURFACE of MARS!” though without any mention of the fact that the holo had been taken at noon on the hottest day in summer at the equator and that the man remained outside for exactly five seconds before the shot was taken, after which he leaped back inside and begged for a bottle of Visine), but possible nonetheless, especially if you were inventive.

  The cement kayaks had been cast of the ever-present and abundant Martian grit, and fitted at one end with tiny antigravity units. These, like so many other things on Mars, did not work especially well, but enabled the kayaks to float about two feet above the ground. Indoors they bobbed aimlessly in place, having no motive power; once pushed out an airlock they were at the mercy of the driving winds.

  But it was possible to deflect or direct the wind with big double-bladed paddles made of scrap pipe and sheet metal, salvaged from the BAC's refuse tip. It was then possible to sail along through the air, if you wore full Outside kit, and actually sort of steer.

  So Cement Kayaking had become a favorite sport on Mars, indeed the only outdoor sport. An obstacle course had been set up in Dead Snake Field, and four kayaks lurched about in it now, fighting the wind and each other.

  “Competitive sport and the pioneer spirit,” Chiring was announcing into his handcam, a solemn talking head against a background of improbable action. “Anachronisms on Earth, do they fulfill a vital function here on the final frontier? Have these colonists fallen back on degrading social violence, or is cultural evolution an ongoing process on Mars?” Nobody answered him.

  The Tube was blocked with spectators, crowding around the transparencies to watch. They were also shouting, which dried their throats nicely, so the beer was selling well.

  “LEFT, RAMSAY!” howled Cochevelou, pointing vainly at the hololoop of Queen Anne waving that served as the mid-point marker. “Oh, you stupid little git, LEFT!”

  “A Phobos Porter for you, Cochevelou?” Mary inquired cheerily. “On the house?”

  “Yes please,” he growled. Mary beckoned and the Heretic trudged back along the line. She turned to display the castware tank she bore in its harness on her back, and Mary selected a mug from the dangling assortment and drew a pint with practiced ease.

  Cochevelou took it, lifted his mask and gulped it down, wiping the foam from his moustache with the back of his hand.

  “Very kind of you, I'm sure,” he said bitterly. “Given the amount I'm losing today. YOU'RE A DISGRACE TO FLUFFY'S MEMORY!” he bellowed at Ramsay. Fluffy had been the python's name.

  “We buried evil on Mars,” said the Heretic in a dreamy little voice, and nobody paid any attention to her.

  “It's not really his fault,” said Mary. “How can the poor man hope to compete with our Manco? It's all those extra blood vessels in his fingertips, you know, from being born in the Andes. Gives him better control of the paddles. Selected by Nature, as it were.”

  “You must have bet a packet on him,” said Cochevelou, staring as Manco swung round Fluffy's Cairn and sent Ramsay spinning off to the boundary with an expert paddle-check.

  “Bet? Now, dear Mr. Cochevelou, where would I get the money to do that?” said Mary, smiling wide behind her mask. “You're getting every penny I earn for Finn's Field, so you are.”

  Cochevelou grimaced.

  “Speak no ill of the dead and all, but if I could ever get my hands on that little bastard's neck—” he said.

  “Beer please,” said one of the BAC engineers, shouldering through the crowd.

  “A pint for the English!” Mary announced, and he looked around guiltily and pulled up the hood of his suit. “How nice of you to come down here to our primitive little fete. Perhaps later we can do some colorful folk dancing for your amusement.” She handed him a mug. “That'll be one punt Celtic.”

  “I heard you'll take air filters,” said the engineer in an undertone.

  “What size, dear?”

  “BX3s,” replied the engineer, drawing one from the breast of his suit and displaying it. Mary inspected it critically and took it from him.

  “Your gracious patronage is always appreciated,” she said, and handed it to the Heretic, who tucked it out of sight. “Enjoy your beer. You see, Cochevelou? No money in my hands at all. What's a poor little widow to do?”

  But Cochevelou missed the sarcasm, staring over her head down the tunnel.

  “Who's this coming?” he said. “Did they bring a passenger on the last transport up?”

  Mary turned and saw the newcomer, treading gingerly along in the cat-step people walked with before they became accustomed to Martian gravity. He was tall, and wore a shiny new thermal suit, and he carried a bukecase. He was peering uncertainly through his goggles at the crowd around the transparencies.

  “That's a damned solicitor, that's what that is,” said Cochevelou, scowling blackly. “Five'll get you ten he's come to see you or me.”

  Mary's lip curled. She watched as the newcomer studied the crowd. He swung his mask in her direction at last, and stared; then walked toward her decisively.

  “It's you, eh?” said Cochevelou, trying not to
sound too relieved as he sidled away. “My sympathies, Mary darling.”

  “MS. GRIFFITH?” inquired the stranger. Mary folded her arms.

  “I am,” she replied.

  “ELIPHAL DE WIT,” he said. “I'VE HAD QUITE A TIME FINDING YOU!”

  “TURN YOUR SPEAKER DOWN! I'M NOT DEAF!”

  “OH! I'M sorry,” said Mr. De Wit, hurriedly twiddling the knob. “Is that better? They didn't seem to know who you were at the port office, and then they admitted you were still resident but unemployed, but they wouldn't tell me where you lived. Very confusing.”

  “You're not from the BAC, then?” Mary looked him up and down.

  “What?” Mr. De Wit started involuntarily at the crowd's roar of excitement. The English kayaker had just swung past the midway marker. “No. Didn't you get my communication? I'm from Polieos of Amsterdam.”

  “WHAT?” said Mary, without benefit of volume knob.

  “I'm here about your diamond,” Mr. De Wit explained.

  * * * *

  “And to think of all the dreadful things I said about poor dear Finn, when I thought he'd failed in his sacred trust! And I thought you were a solicitor at first!” Mary babbled, setting down a pitcher of batch and two mugs.

  “Actually, Ms. Griffith, I am one,” said Mr. De Wit, gazing around at the inside of the Empress. “On permanent retainer for Polieos, to deal with special circumstances.”

  “Really?” Mary halted in the act of reaching to fill his mug.

  “And I'm here as your counsel,” he explained carefully. “There has really been no precedent for this situation. Polieos feels it would be best to proceed with a certain amount of caution at first.”

  “Don't they want to buy my diamond, then?” Mary demanded.

  “Absolutely, yes, Ms. Griffith,” Mr. De Wit assured her. “And we would prefer to buy it from you. I'm here to determine whether or not we can legally do that.”

  “What d'you mean?”

  “Well—” Mr. De Wit lifted his mug and paused, staring down at the brown foam brimming. “Er—what are we drinking?”

  “It's water we've put things in, because you wouldn't want to drink Mars water plain,” said Mary impatiently. “No alcohol in it, dear, so it won't hurt you if you're not a drinking man. Cut to the chase, please.”