Empress of Mars

by Kage Baker

  “I can't think why you advised me to leave,” Mary said to Mr. De Wit, as he sat at the bar. “We've never done so well!”

  Mr. De Wit shook his head gloomily, staring into the holoscreen above his buke. “It's all a matter of timing,” he said, and drained his mug of Ares Lager.

  “Let me pour you another, sweetheart,” said Alice, fetching away the empty. Mary watched her narrowly. To everyone's astonishment but Alice's, Mr. De Wit had proposed marriage to her. As far as Mary had been able to tell, it had happened somehow because Alice had been the one delegated to collect his laundry, and had made it a point to personally deliver his fresh socks and thermals at an inappropriate hour, and one thing had led to another, as it generally did in the course of human history, whether on Earth or elsewhere.

  He accepted another mug from her now with a smile. Mary shrugged to herself and was about to retreat in a discreet manner when there was a tremendous crash in the kitchen.

  When she got to the door, she beheld the Heretic crouched in a corner, rocking herself to and fro, white and silent. On the floor lay Mary's largest kettle and a great quantity of wasted water, sizzling slightly as it interacted with the dust that had been tracked in.

  “What's this?” said Mary.

  The Heretic turned her face. “They're coming,” she whispered. “And the mountain's on fire."

  Mary felt a qualm, but said quietly: “Your vision's a bit late. The place is already full of newcomers. What, did you think you saw something in the water? There's nothing in there but red mud. Pick yourself up and—”

  There was another crash, though less impressive, and a high-pitched yell of excitement. Turning, Mary beheld Mr. De Wit leaping up and down, fists clenched above his head.

  “We did it,” he cried, “We found a buyer!”

  “How much?” Mary asked instantly.

  “Two million punts Celtic,” he replied, gasping after his exertion. “Mitsubishi, of course, because we aimed all the marketing at them. I just wasn't sure—I've instructed Polieos to take their offer. I hope that meets with your approval, Ms. Griffith? Because, you know, no one will ever get that kind of money for a Martian diamond again.”

  “Won't they?” Mary was puzzled by his certainty. “Whyever not?’

  “Well—” Mr. De Wit coughed dust, took a gulp from his pint and composed himself. “Because most of the appeal was in the novelty, and in the story behind your particular stone, and—and timing, like I said. Now the publicity will work against the market. Those stones that were stolen out of your field will go on sale at inflated prices, you see? Everyone will expect to make a fortune.”

  “But they won't?”

  “No, because—” Mr. De Wit waved vaguely. “Do you know why they say A diamond is forever? Because it's murder to unload the damned things, in the cold hard light of day. No dealer ever buys back a stone they've sold. It took a fantastic amount of work to sell the Big Mitsubishi. We were very, very lucky. Nobody else will have our luck.”

  He stooped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. “Now, please. Follow my advice. Take out a little to treat yourself and put the rest in high-yield savings, or very careful investments.”

  “Or I'll tell you what you could do,” said a bright voice from the bar.

  They turned to see the Brick in the act of downing a pint. He finished, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said: “You could sink a magma well up the hill on Mons Olympus, and start your own energy plant. That'd really screw the BAC! And make you a shitload of money on the side.”

  “Magma well?” Mary repeated.

  “Old-style geothermal energy. Nobody's used it since Fusion, because Fusion's cheaper, but it'd work up here. The BAC's been debating a plant, but their committees are so brain-constipated they'll never get around to it!” The Brick rose to his feet in his enthusiasm. “Hell, all you'd need would be a water-drilling rig, to start with. And you'd need to build the plant and lay pipes, but you can afford that now, right? Then you'd have all the power you'd want to grow all the barley you'd want and sell it to other settlers!”

  “I suppose I could do that, couldn't I?” said Mary slowly. She looked up at Mr. De Wit. “What do you think? Could I make a fortune with a magma well?”

  Mr. De Wit sighed.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have to tell you that you could.”

  * * * *

  The only difficult part was getting the drilling rig.

  Cochevelou looked uncertainly at Mona, who had perched herself on one of his knees, and then at Rowan, who was firmly stationed on the other with her fingers twined in his beard.

  “Please, Mr. Cochevelou, my dear dearest?” Mona crooned.

  Mary leaned forward and filled his glass, looking him straight in the eye.

  “You said we might rule Mars together,” she said. “Well, this is the way to do it. You and me together, eh, pooling our resources as we've always done?”

  “You staked claim to the whole volcano?” he said, incredulous. “Bloody honking huge Mons Olympus?”

  “ Nothing in the laws said I couldn't, if I had the cash for the filing fee, which being the richest woman on Mars now I had of course,” Mary replied. “Nothing in the tiniest print said I was even obliged to tell the BAC. I had my fine lawyer and nearly-son-in-law Mr. De Wit file with the Tri-Worlds Settlement Bureau, and they just said Yes, Ms. Griffith, here's your virtual title and good luck to you. Doubtless sniggering in their First World sleeves and wondering what a silly widow woman will do with a big frozen cowpat of a volcano. They'll see!”

  “But—” Cochevelou paused and took a drink. His pause lost him ground, for Mary shoved Mona out of the way and took her place on his knee, bringing her gimlet stare, and her bosom, closer.

  “Think of it, darling man,” she said. “Think how we've been robbed, and kept down, and made to make do with the dry leavings while the English got the best of everything. Haven't we always triumphed by turning adversity to our own uses? And so it'll be now. Your ironworks and your strong lads with my money and Mary's own hot heart itself beating for us in a thunderous counterpoint to our passion!”

  “Passion?” said Cochevelou, somewhat dazed but beginning to smile.

  * * * *

  “She's got him,” Chiring informed the others, who were lurking in the kitchen. Mr. Morton gave a cheer, which was promptly shut off as Manco and the Heretic clapped their hands over his mouth. Chiring put his eye to the peephole again.

  “They're shaking hands,” he said. “He just kissed her. She hasn't slapped him. She's saying ... something about Celtic Energy Systems.”

  “It's the beginning of a new world!” whispered Mr. Morton. “There's never been money on Mars, but—but—now we can have Centres for the Performing Arts!”

  “We can have a lot more than that,” said Manco.

  “They could found a whole other city,” said Chiring, stepping back. “You know? What a story this is going to be!”

  “We could attract artistes,” said Mr. Morton, stars in his eyes. “Culture!”

  “We could be completely independent, if we bought vizio and water pumps, and got enough land under cultivation,” Manco pointed out. A look of shock crossed his face. “I could grow real roses.”

  “You could,” Chiring agreed, whipping out his jotpad. “Interviews with the Locals: What Will Money Mean to the New Martians? By your News Martian. Okay, Morton, you'd want performing arts, and you'd develop Martian horticulture.” He nodded at Manco and then glanced over at the Heretic. “How about you? What do you hope to get out of this?”

  “A better place to hide,” she said bleakly, raising her head as she listened to the rumble of the next shuttle arriving.

  * * * *

  It was still possible to ride an automobile on Mars, though they had long since become illegal on Earth and Luna.

  A great deal of preparation was necessary, to be sure: one had first to put on a suit of thermals, and then a suit of cotton fleece, and then a suit
of bubblefilm, and then a final layer of quilted Outside wear. Boots with ankle locks were necessary too, and wrist-locked gauntlets. One could put on an old-fashioned-looking aquarium helmet, if one had the money; people at Mary's economic level made do with a snugly-fitting hood, a face mask hooked up to a back tank, and kitchen grease mixed with UV blocker daubed thickly on anything that the mask didn't cover.

  Having done this, one could then clamber through an airlock and motor across Mars, in a rickety CeltCart 600 with knobbed rubber tires and a top speed of eight kilometers an hour. It was transportation neither dignified nor efficient, since one was swamped with methane fumes and bounced about like a pea in a football. Nevertheless, it beat walking, or being blown sidelong in an antigravity car. And it really beat climbing.

  Mary clung to the rollbar and reflected that today was actually a fine day for a jaunt Outside, considering. Bright summer sky overhead like peaches and cream, though liver-dark storm clouds raged far down the small horizon behind. Before, of course, was only the gentle but near-eternal swell of Mons Olympus, and the road that had been made by the expedient of rolling or pushing larger rocks out of the way.

  “Mind the pit, Cochevelou,” she admonished. Cochevelou exhaled his annoyance so forcefully that steam escaped from the edges of his mask, but he steered clear of the pit and so on up the winding track to the drill site.

  The lads were hard at work when they arrived at last, having had a full hour's warning that the Cart was on its way up, since from the high slide of the slope one could see half the world spread out below, and its planetary curve too. There was therefore a big mound of broken gravel and frozen mudslurry, industriously scraped from the drillbits, to show for their morning's work. Better still, there was a thin spindrift of steam coming off the rusty pipes, coalescing into short-lived frost as it fell.

  “Look, Mama!” said Manco proudly, gesturing at the white. “Heat and water!”

  “So I see,” said Mary, crawling from the car. “Who'd have thought mud could be so lovely, eh? And we've brought you a present. Unload it, please.”

  Matelot and the others who had been industriously leaning on their shovels sighed, and set about unclamping the bungees that had kept the great crate in its place on the back of the CeltCart. The crate was much too big to have traveled on a comparative vehicle on Earth without squashing it, and even so the Cart's wheels groaned and splayed, though as the men lifted the crate like so many ants hoisting a dead cricket the wheels bowed gratefully back. The cords had bit deep into the crate's foamcast during the journey, and the errant Martian breezes had just about scoured the label off with flying grit, but the logo of Third Word Alternatives, Inc. could still be made out.

  “So this is our pump and all?” inquired Padraig, squinting at it through his goggles.

  “This is the thing itself, pump and jenny and all but the pipes to send wet hot gold down the mountain to us,” Cochevelou told him.

  “And the pipes've been ordered,” Mary added proudly. “And paid for! And here's Mr. Morton to exercise his great talents building a shed to house it all.”

  Mr. Morton unfolded himself from the rear cockpit and tottered to his feet, looking about with wide eyes. The speaker in his mask was broken, so he merely waved at everyone and went off at once to look at the foundations Manco had dug.

  “And lastly,” said Mary, lifting a transport unit that had been rather squashed under the seat, “Algemite sandwiches for everybody! And free rounds on the house when you're home tonight, if you get the dear machine hooked up before dark.”

  “Does it come with instructions?” Matelot inquired, puffing as he stood back from the crate.

  “It promised an easy-to-follow holomanual in five languages, and if one isn't in there we're to mail the manufacturers at once,” Mary said. “But they're a reputable firm, I'm sure.”

  “Now, isn't that a sight, my darling?” said Cochevelou happily, turning to look down the slope at the Tharsis Bulge. “Civilization, what there is of it anyhow, spread out at our feet like a drunk to be rolled.”

  Mary gazed down, and shivered. From this distance the Settlement Dome looked tiny and pathetic, even with its new housing annex. The network of Tubes seemed like so many glassy worms, and her own house might have been a mudball on the landscape. It was true that the landing port had recently enlarged, which made it more of a handkerchief than a postage stamp of pink concrete. Still, little stone cairns dotted the wasteland here and there, marking the spots where luckless prospectors had been cached because nobody had any interest in shipping frozen corpses back to Earth.

  But she lifted her chin and looked back at it all in defiance.

  “Think of our long acres of green,” she said. “Think of our own rooms steam-heated. Lady bless us, think of having a hot bath!”

  Which was such an obscenely expensive pleasure on Mars that Cochevelou gasped and slid his arm around her, moved beyond words, and they clung together for quite a while on that cold prominence before either of them noticed the tiny figure making its way up the track from the Empress.

  “Who's that, then?” Mary peered down at it, disengaging herself abruptly from Cochevelou's embrace. “Is that Mr. De Wit?”

  It was Mr. De Wit.

  By the time they reached him in the CeltCart he was walking more slowly, and his eyes were standing out of his face so they looked fair to pop through his goggles, but he seemed unstoppable.

  “WHAT IS IT?” Mary demanded, turning her volume all the way up. “IS SOMETHING GONE WRONG WITH ALICE?”

  Mr. De Wit shook his head, slumping forward on the Cart's fender. He cranked up his volume as far as it went and gasped, “LAWYER—”

  “YES!” Mary said irritably, “YOU'RE A LAWYER!”

  “OTHER LAWYER!” said Mr. De Wit, pointing back down the slope at the Empress.

  Mary bit her lip. “YOU MEAN—” she turned her volume down, reluctant to broadcast words of ill omen. “There's a lawyer from somebody else? The BAC, maybe?”

  Mr. De Wit nodded, crawling wearily into the back seat of the Cart.

  “Oh, bugger all,” growled Cochevelou. “Whyn't you fight him off then, as one shark to another?”

  “Did my best,” wheezed Mr. De Wit. “Filed appeal. But you have to make mark.”

  Mary said something unprintable. She reached past Cochevelou and threw the Cart into neutral to save gas. It went bucketing down the slope, reaching such a velocity near the bottom that Mr. De Wit found himself praying for the first time since his childhood.

  Somehow they arrived with no more damage done than a chunk of lichen sheared off the airlock wall, but they might have taken their time, for all the good it did them.

  The lawyer was not Hodges from the Settlement, whose particular personal interests Mary knew to a nicety and whom she might have quelled with a good hard stare. No, this lawyer was a Solicitor from London, no less, immaculate in an airlock ensemble from Bond Street and his white skullcap of office. He sat poised on the very edge of one of Mary's settles, listening diffidently as Mr. De Wit (who had gone quite native by now, stooped, wheezing, powdered with red dust, his beard lank with facegrease and sand) explained the situation, which was, to wit:

  Whereas, the British Ares Company had operated at an average annual loss to its shareholders of thirteen per cent of the original estimated minimum annual profit for a period of five (Earth) calendar years, and

  Whereas, it had come to the attention of the Board of Directors that there were hitherto-unknown venues of profit in the area of mineral resources, and

  Whereas, having reviewed the original Terms of Settlement and Allotment as stated in the Contract for the Settlement and Terraforming of Ares, and having determined that the contractment of any and all allotted agricultural zones was contingent upon said zones contributing to the common wealth of Mars and the continued profit of its shareholders, and

  Whereas, the aforesaid Contract specified that in the event that revocation of all Leases of Allotment was d
etermined to be in the best interests of the shareholders, the Board of Directors retained the right to the exercise of Eminent Domain,

  Therefore, the British Ares Company respectfully informed Mary Griffith that her lease was revoked and due notice of eviction from all areas of Settlement would follow within thirty (Earth) calendar days. She was, of course, at full liberty to file an appeal with the proper authorities.

  “Which you are in the process of doing,” said Mr. De Wit, and picked up a text plaquette from the table. “Here it is. Sign at the bottom.”

  “Can she read?” the solicitor inquired, stifling a yawn. Mary's lip curled.

  “Ten years at Mount Snowdon University says I can, little man,” she informed him, and having run her eye down the document, she thumbprinted it firmly. “So take that and stick it where appeals are filed, if you please.” She handed the plaquette to the solicitor, who accepted it without comment and put it in his briefcase.

  “Hard luck, my dear,” said Cochevelou, pouring himself a drink. “I'll just quell my thirst and then edge off home, shall I?”

  “Are you a resident of the Clan Morrigan?” the solicitor inquired, fixing him with a fishy eye.

  “I am.” Cochevelou stared back.

  “Then, can you direct me to their current duly-elected chieftain?”

  “That would be him,” said Mary.

  “Ah.” The solicitor drew a second plaquette from his briefcase and held it out. “Maurice Cochevelou? You are hereby advised that—”

  “Is that the same as what you just served her with?” Cochevelou demanded, slowly raising fists like rusty cannon balls.

  “In short, sir, yes, you are evicted,” replied the solicitor, with remarkable sangfroid. “Do you wish to appeal as well?”

  “Do you wish to take a walk Outside, you little—”

  “He'll appeal as well,” said Mary firmly, and, grabbing the second plaquette, she took Cochevelou's great sooty thumb and stamped the plaquette firmly. “There now. Run along, please.”