by Tim Sullivan
The carrier slowed as it approached the compound. Johnsmith was surprised to see that the two other carriers were already docked.
The engines shut down, and the carrier rocked gently as the prisoners got to their feet. Alderdice had been sleeping. He seemed confused as his eyes opened wide and then blinked against the glare.
Once inside the compound, those who were not wounded were permitted to go directly to their barracks. They limped in, exhausted. But no sooner had Johnsmith crossed the threshold than he was beset by a jubilant Felicia. She leaped on him, arms and legs encircling him and almost knocking him down.
"Oh, Johnsmith!" she sobbed. "Thank God you're all right. When the other carriers came back without you, I was so worried. I didn't know which one you were on."
Somehow, he managed to keep his balance, even though Felicia squirmed and covered his face with wet, hot kisses. "I'm okay, Felicia."
"They wouldn't tell me what had happened to your group," she said, her feet finally touching the floor.
"We ran into trouble," Johnsmith said. "There were a lot of casualties."
"Oh, my poor Johnny!" Felicia buried her face in his chest. Though he was tired, Johnsmith didn't mind. He was rather touched by Felicia's unabashed relief to see him alive and well. Ronindella had never been like this, even in the best of times.
As he lay down on his bunk, Felicia still clinging to him passionately, he wondered why he was thinking of Ronindella now. She hadn't entered his mind in weeks, months.
Kissing Felicia deeply, he recalled with grim satisfaction that his wife was in his past. He would never see her again.
FIFTEEN
"MY GOD!" RONINDELLA shrieked in a decidedly unevangelical fashion. "Your father's a hero!"
Smitty II smiled. He had always known that his Dad was a hero, but he felt good that his Mom finally saw it too.
She was looking at Pixine, and the moving images on the page depicted a series of action sequences within the bowels of Mars. Wait until the kids at school saw this, Smitty thought gleefully. Dad was shown wiping out a gang of anticap thugs in these caves under a gigantic volcano. It was just about the neatest thing Smitty had ever seen in his whole life!
"At first I thought this was some kind of mistake," Ronindella was saying. "But there can't be two people named Johnsmith Biberkopf on Mars, can there? And besides, there he is, right there in three dimensions and enhanced color. He never looked so handsome when he was here."
Smitty thought his Dad had always looked pretty good, but he didn't say so. He had seldom seen his Mom so happy. Why rock the boat?
"Look at him in that paper uniform," Ronindella said. "He's so trim and athletic looking."
"Mom . . ." Now was the time to bring up something they hadn't talked about in weeks.
"What is it, honey?"
"Remember that contest I won?"
"Mmm." She obviously wasn't paying attention to what he was saying.
"You know, the one where I won the trip to Mars."
"Mars?" She dropped the copy of Pixine. "It was a trip to Mars? I thought it was Luna . . ."
"Yeah, you remember. You tried to trade it in for cash, or a new car. They said I could only have the trip to Mars, because I'm a minor."
"Oh, yeah." She turned to Smitty with wonder in her eyes. "Well, honey, why don't we just go to Mars, then?"
"Really, Mom?"
"Really." She had that look on her face that only appeared when Dad's money arrived every month. Only this was a lot more intense. "Why should we waste an expensive trip to Mars? After all, only a few thousand civilians get to go every year, right? It's wonderful that you won this contest, isn't it?"
"It sure is."
"And ordinarily people have to pay through the nose for a trip like this, right?"
"Right."
"So let's go and have a good time."
"And see Dad?" Smitty asked. He wasn't sure if she wanted to see him or not.
"We'll visit your father." She smiled at him.
"Great!" Smitty couldn't remember feeling this happy in a long time. A very long time. They were going to be together again, on Mars.
"We'd better start planning this right away." She closed Pixine and got up. "The Church will give me a leave of absence, since I'm still legally married to your father. If we can just get some—"
The phone rang. Looking distracted, Ronindella went to answer it.
Ryan Effner's handsome face came into focus. "Hi, hon," he said. "Are you getting ready for our session with Madame Psychosis?"
"No, I'm not," she said with a note of satisfaction.
"You'll be late." Ryan said, evidently oblivious to the change in Ronindella.
"I'm not going to see Madame Psychosis."
"Aren't you feeling well?" Ryan frowned, beginning to see that something was wrong.
"Never better."
"Well, then, would you mind explaining why you're not going today?"
"I'm not going today, Ryan," Ronindella said merrily, "or any other day."
"What?"
"You heard me. You might have tricked me into going to that cybershrink, with her New Age nonsense and that drugged gas, but this is the end of it."
"But I thought . . ."
"I'm going back to my husband, Ryan. Johnsmith needs me."
"What in the name of God are you talking about?" He laughed aloud. "He's on Mars, for Christ's sake. How can you go there?"
"Smitty's won a free trip for two."
"But that was weeks ago. I thought you weren't interested."
"I suggest you pick up the current issue of Pixine."
At that she signed off, leaving a gaping image of Ryan on the screen for a moment before it faded to a dull gray.
"All right, Mom!" Smitty yelled. "I guess you told that scumbag where to get off."
"Smitty . . ." But Ronindella couldn't bring herself to scold him. Smitty had never liked Ryan, and the boy's intuition had turned out to be more accurate than hers. Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways, she told herself.
"We'll be with Dad before you know it," Smitty said. "Right, Mom?"
"Well, it takes quite a while to get there," Ronindella said. "But it'll be interesting, I'm sure."
"It's like those miracles they're always talking about at Church," Smitty said thoughtfully.
Ronindella grinned. "You know, it really is."
"When do we go to Mars?" Smitty asked.
"Oh, I hope the offer is still good."
"Yep, it's good for a whole year."
"Wonderful, honey." She went to Smitty and embraced him. "Our family will be back together again." And Johnny's pension would make them a lot more comfortable than they ever could have been on Ryan's teaching salary. But that wasn't something to discuss with a child.
What the hell was going on? Ryan sat at the phone, completely mystified by the conversation he had just had with Ronindella. He had thought that she was completely wrangled, and now this . . . .
Well, he'd straighten this mess out in a hurry. The first thing to do was contact Madame Psychosis. She'd know what to do. There was a secret code to contact her on the phone. It was to be used only in case of emergency, of course, but it seemed to Ryan that this situation qualified.
"Let's see . . . ." He had written down the code somewhere. He opened his desk drawer to search for it. Duplicates of his credit cards, receipts, bills, but no code. Where the hell had he put that thing?
He got more and more upset, his stomach hurting, as he pored through the drawer. Finally, he became so frustrated that he pulled the drawer out and dumped its contents on the desk top.
A piece of paper fluttered to the floor like a sick moth, lighting on the pile of cards and notes. He pushed his squeaking office chair back and bent to pick it up. He noticed that his hands were trembling. He hadn't been this angry in years. No, it was more than anger. He was hurt. Badly hurt. How could Ronnie do this to him?
"This will straighten things out in a hurry," he sai
d, certain that the fallen slip of paper was where the code was written.
But it was only a notice about his low job performance. It had been sitting on his desk a couple of mornings ago, but he hadn't bothered to look at it, thinking that it was nothing more than a routine job evaluation.
"Shit!" he said, loud enough for heads to turn in the neighboring cubicles. He crumpled the evaluation slip and tossed it in the wastebasket.
Goddamn it, if he couldn't find the code, he would go to see Madame Psychosis personally. It was probably better to do it that way, anyhow.
He got up and started to go toward the door. His face felt hot and he hardly noticed the people staring at him as he walked. He couldn't have talked to Madame Psychosis here, he realized. His next evaluation would reflect the tortured conversation he had just had with Ronnie, and following that call with another one to his cybershrink would be disastrous for his career. This had to be worked out at the New Age Building, and later in private with Ronnie. She would have to understand that she couldn't go back, only forward. She was denying her karma by going to Mars.
Getting into the elevator, he pressed the button for the roof parking lot. He had forgotten to put on his protective headgear, and cursed his stupidity for it. But he didn't go back inside the building to get it. Instead, he dashed recklessly across the hot concrete roof as soon as the elevator door opened.
The flyby's engine failed to start on the first try. He cursed it and tried it again. It caught, and he lifted off the roof, heading downtown.
What had she been talking about, something about the new Pixine? Maybe he should take a look at it before he went running off to Madame Psychosis. Well, there was a viewstand only a block away from the New Age Building. He could just park and run over there to see what she was so excited about.
He brought the flyby down into a slot. He didn't wait to see if the license plate was scanned correctly. Let them overcharge him. He had more urgent things on his mind at the moment.
By the time he got to the viewstand, he was almost delirious from the raw UV beating down on him. Luckily, there was a sunshield over the stand. Sweating and gasping, Ryan made his way past a Fuckbook dumpbin display and the flyzines shelf. He stopped for just a second to glance at the tiny section with text magazines. Johnsmith had always stopped to look at these little insignificant zines that barely sold enough copies to keep their publishers in business.
Pixine, the most popular periodical in the solar system, was stacked by the creditier. Ryan grabbed a copy and ran it over the creditier plate, stuffing his card in the slot.
"Thank you," said the creditier.
Ryan thumbed through the zine, his eyes smarting from the brilliance of the imagery. There were the usual stories about 'gram stars, celebrity affairs and marriages, Kwikkee-Kwizeen ads, and one piece with a stentorian voice that announced: "Heroic Conglom Troops Rout Rebels on Olympus."
He was about to pass the article by, and in fact had turned the page to shut off the obnoxious voice, when he realized that one of the brave troopers was none other than Johnsmith Biberkopf.
"Holy Gaia!" he shouted.
Ryan looked around in embarrassment, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him. It was probably customary for people to shout here, especially in the Fuckbook section. He flipped back to the offending page.
" . . .was the courageous act of team leader Johnsmith Biberkopf, a former University professor who has sought a new life on the Red Planet."
Ryan couldn't believe this bullshit, but he kept listening, and watching the impossibly muscular, idealized figure of Beeb blasting away at unshaved guys with faces like rodents.
" . . .singlehandedly killing a dozen of the enemies and rescuing an entire squad of freedom fighters from a batallion of violent malcontents whose goal is the usurpation of the entire social structure of the solar system . . ."
Ryan wondered briefly why he had never heard of such a vicious bunch of cutthroats, if they were so dangerous.
" . . .the brilliant Conglom strategy to save our worlds for freedom and . . ."
Ryan slapped the zine shut. He almost bumped into a skinny man reading a copy of Fuckbook as he hurried to get to the New Age Building down the block. As soon as he got into the lobby, he headed for the elevator to the thirteenth floor without even stopping at the drinking fountain.
He was already in the elevator when he realized that he had left his credit card in the viewstand slot.
"Jee-zus!" Well, there was nothing to do but go back and claim it. He pressed the lobby button, but the elevator continued to move majestically upward.
When it got to the thirteenth floor, he punched the lobby button repeatedly with his index finger. It seemed to take forever for the door to close, but at last he started down . . .to the twelfth floor, where a thin man wearing vacutites got on. Ryan wanted to strangle him, but there was nothing he could do.
The elevator ride finally came to an end, however, and Ryan sprinted to the door. His mouth was dry and he was sweating horribly, his shirt stuck to his back, but he ran all the way back to the viewstand.
Panting, he stopped at the slot, relieved to see that the same people were standing around looking at zines. His fingers felt around the slot, which he could not see clearly after coming in out of the blazing sunlight.
There was nothing in the slot.
He turned around and shouted: "Did any of you see who took the credit card I left here?"
A couple of Fuckbook browsers turned, their head gear obscuring their expressions. None of them replied.
"Somebody must have seen it!" Ryan screamed. "You were all standing here five minutes ago, when I left. Now who was near this goddamn slot?"
The viewstand customers turned away. Ryan had the uncomfortable feeling that they thought he was crazy, or was trying to pull a scam, or was unwound from too many onees.
Furious, he clutched the nearest browser by the shoulder. "Was it you?" he demanded. "Did you steal my fucking credit card?"
The guy shook himself loose and backed away.
"Which one of you took it?" he screamed. "I need that card. I'm gonna call the police if I don't get it back in ten seconds. Do you hear me?"
They all heard him, of course, but most of them just shrugged and turned away. One or two even laughed.
"Fuck you!" he shouted. "Fuck the whole bunch of you!"
He stalked off, thinking about really calling the police. But if he did, he would have to hang around while they filed a report. Fuck it, he would call in the stolen card later. He had other cards, but his credit was overdrawn on all of them. He would pay them off later. Right now, he had to get back up to the New Age Building and see if he could persuade Madame Psychosis to bill him for this visit next time. Surely she would do it. After all, he had been coming here for years; she owed him that much.
He tried to calm himself as he entered the lobby for the second time today. It was hard to do—his breathing was ragged and he felt sticky and itched all over—but he tried.
On the way up to the thirteenth floor, he counted each breath he took, from one to ten, and then he started at one again. It was the ancient Zazen training that he had learned from Madame Psychosis in one of his early visits. It served to calm him very effectively, usually. But not today.
He burst into Madame Psychosis' parlor in a fit of pique that could not be soothed by the cosmic strains of synthesized music. No psychedelic gases could contain his anxiety. No philosophical discourse could soothe his battered spirit.
"What the hell is that woman trying to do to me?" he bellowed.
Madame Psychosis smiled serenely as her credit slot snaked up from nowhere. "Please insert your credit card, in order to begin your session."
"I lost the only card I had with me," Ryan explained. "But I've been coming here for years. Can't you please bill me for this visit later?"
"Your file can't be reached without your credit card number. Can you recite it?"
"Oh, shit. I don't t
hink I can. Isn't there some other way?"
"I'm afraid not." Madame Psychosis looked concerned. "But would it be so difficult for you to get the card? I'll still be here until you return."
"Until five o'clock, right?" Ryan looked at his watch in desperation. It was already four thirty-eight. He would never get home and back in time with a duplicate card. "Look, I can't make it, and my card's been stolen. Can't you help me out just this one time?"
"I'm afraid that there can't be any exceptions." Madame Psychosis made a compassionate gesture with her hands. "We must take responsibility when we are unprepared."
"I wasn't unprepared," Ryan said, from between clenched jaws. "I had a card when I left home. But I bought a Pixine, and accidentally left the card in the viewstand slot. I went back to get it, and somebody had stolen it."
"Tsk, tsk," said Madame Psychosis.
"Is that all you can say?" demanded Ryan Effner. "Is that all you can say to me after the years of analysis I've put in here?"
"You're reverting to infantile behavior," Madame Psychosis admonished him. "Your accusatory tone is inappropriate and irresponsible."
"Fuck you!" Ryan cried. "I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars here. How dare you brush me off with that line of bullshit?"
The celestial music swelled up powerfully, and the psychedelic gas issued forth from its ducts copiously. Ryan inhaled it as he raged against the cybershrink, but it didn't serve to calm him down, as intended.
"Mr. Effner," the cybershrink said calmly. "Please calm yourself."
"Ah, ha! So you do know my name! Pretended you couldn't tell who I was without the card, right?"
"Mr. Effner, please."
Ryan smacked his right fist into his left palm with a resounding crack. "Goddamn you, I want to see some action right now," he said grimly, "or I'll . . ."
"Or you'll what, Mr. Effner?"
Was she challenging him? This fucking fake human piece of shit who had been robbing him blind for years? Who had just messed up his life beyond belief in a single day?