Remains

by Mark W. Tiedemann

  “If you were to guess?”

  “I’d say they’ll finish it. We’re already halfway around the globe, from Helium to Lowell to Sagan to Burroughs to whatever mythic name they’ll pick for the next station. Halfway. Too far to go back, not far enough to stop.”

  “Spoken like a true booster.”

  “Answered like a true cynic.”

  Mace increased his pace to move ahead of Hawthorne.

  The harsh halogen light made the scattered drifts burn brightly, like pools of molten sulphur. Faintly through the tenuous air came the grind and whir of the diggers, sounding as though they were far away even while they rolled right beside him. Nearly half a kilometer in, well beyond the point where sand had reached, Mace saw the unsteady flicker and track of handheld lamps.

  Several rescue workers gathered in a rough circle, lamps aimed at the ground where two of them knelt on either side of a disconcerting shape. Their stillness and attention, enclosed by the cathedral vastness around them, seemed almost ritual and solemn. Mace walked around the perimeter till he found an opening.

  The shape resolved into a body. It lay on its back, arms spread, one leg outstretched, the other folded sharply with the foot tucked under the buttocks. The head was cocked at an odd angle, neck broken. Mace squatted by one of the two kneeling people studying it.

  “Has it been moved?” he asked.

  “This is how we found it, Mace,” Oxmire said. “We’re a 180, 190 meters from the edge of the drift we dug out... say, 500 meters in from the entrance, give or take.”

  Mace carefully eased his hand beneath the broken neck, feeling along the ground for something hard and sharp that might have caused the injury in a fall. Nothing. He studied the surrounding floor. The original drilling had left a solid, nearly smooth surface. He saw a scattering of footprints—mostly those of the rescue workers—too few complete enough to form a readable pattern.

  “Imaging?” he asked.

  “We’re waiting for the recorders. Mace, you don’t have to do this personally.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Oxmire sighed and nodded. “Where’s Hawthorne? I thought you brought him with you?”

  Mace stood and scanned the circle of workers. “Damn.”

  “Clanton, Lors, go find Mr. Hawthorne. And when you find him, escort him back to ops.”

  Two people left.

  “Any other bodies?” Mace asked.

  “A few caught in the drift near the entrance. This is the first one in this deep. We’re still looking for more.”

  The circle opened then to admit the technicians with their recording equipment. Mace watched anxiously as they extended the imaging frame out above the corpse. Everyone stood back a little further when they signaled. Lights glowed around the rim of the frame.

  “Okay.”

  Mace knelt beside the body and worked the mask loose. Its neck resisted, stiff with morbidity. His pulse quickened until the mask came free and he saw that it was not Helen. Not Helen. The eyes were locked open in surprise. Mace shined his lamp close and saw the ugly purple and green around the neck. He turned the body slowly, conscious of the ongoing imaging.

  The bruising on the neck darkened as it crossed the very back, except for one clear circle of skin about four centimeters in diameter, directly center below the base of the skull.

  “Shit,” someone hissed.

  Mace looked around at the crew, but none of them spoke again. He examined the clear disc, pressing the livid, unpliant flesh.

  “An implant,” he said.

  “A ramhead,” another voice said, answered by a smattering of soft laughter.

  Ignoring them, Mace found the release, a centimeter out on either side of the small nodule. The dead, unyielding tissue made it difficult to operate, but he managed to pop the button out. He dropped it into a pouch on his belt and stood.

  “Finish the imaging, then have a med team pick it up.” He looked from masked face to masked face. “Are we ready now to continue on in a professional manner?”

  Most of the crew nodded silently.

  Several meters further on Mace and the crew came to a surface access. None of the accesses had yet been fitted with airlocks up top—in fact, a meter or so cap of rock had been left intact—only down here, in the tunnel. The pressure door stood open. A narrow, rough-hewn passage ran about fifteen meters straight into the rock to open onto a wide platform in a circular chamber. Directly opposite, another passage led to the stairs that ascended all the way to the surface, a hundred meters above.

  Another body lay sprawled face down in the center of the platform, feet aimed at the stairs. In the sharp light of their lamps, Mace saw that it wore no mask and that its hair was pale and thick. Before he thought, ignoring Oxmire’s order to wait, Mace knelt beside it and turned it over.

  For several seconds all he saw was a tattoo on the left cheek, an ornate mandala that said very clearly “Not Helen.” He swallowed hard and let out a heavy breath that sounded close to a sob. Carefully, he lowered it back down, stood, and stepped away. He began to feel embarrassed at his loss of control, of damaging the site before imaging could record it.

  Oxmire patted his arm briefly, then went to examine the body.

  “Neck’s broken on this one, too,” he said.

  “Is it normal?” someone asked.

  Mace glared at the workers huddled by the entrance. “Meaning?”

  “Not a ramhead,” Oxmire said.

  “Since when,” Mace asked slowly, “have we had a roster of bigots working for us?”

  “Mace—”

  “I don’t care, Cliff. These people were coworkers. You will talk about them respectfully.”

  The silence stretched until a few of the workers retreated. Oxmire cleared his throat.

  “Mace,” he called. “Look.”

  “What?”

  “Footprints. Someone went out this way.”

  Mace stared at the clear prints. Two sets, heading for the stairs.

  “I thought none of these had been drilled through to the surface yet,” he said.

  “None should’ve been. But—”

  Mace took Oxmire’s handlamp and followed the footprints, heading up the stairs.

  “Mace, wait—”

  He took the steps three at a time. The passage was tight, almost claustrophobic, and the treads cut steeply in the Martian fashion. His lamp danced over the rock, giving him quick, broken impressions, one side to the other, up and down. He came to the first landing expecting to find another body, but it was empty. Without pausing, he bounded up the next flight.

  At the second landing he slowed, the lamplight bouncing off details that seemed out of place. The wall to this left was scarred near the floor. The footprints, nearly gone, suggested that they had paused here, worked on something, their angle and direction all wrong for a continuous ascent. But he hurried on. He wanted to make sure Helen was not lying on any of these stairs or at the opening to the surface, even though surface survey already would have told him that and had shown nothing.

  A wire, maybe, or something less substantial, or even a set of rocks placed just right—there were so many ways to set a booby trap. His foot slid, stuttered, caught, and he became aware that the wall to his left moved. He only heard it move for an instant before seeing the flash and bending to take the impact that sent him tumbling back down the stairs, the lamp clattering and spinning before him, the light strobing frantically end over end as he followed, end over end, until the light, along with all feeling, was cut off.

  Two – Mars, 2115

  “I HAVE A PRESENT FOR YOU.”

  “I’ve got what I want.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you do. But you don’t have what I want you to have.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Me.”

  Mace watched Helen open a small case, silk-lined, and take out a pendant. Five or six centimeters in diameter, the silvery disc bore an engraved HC, and hung on a delicate chain.

  “Wha
t’s this?” Mace asked as she handed it to him.

  “Me. From now on you’ll have me with you even when I’m gone.”

  “You’re leaving again?”

  She nodded, snapping the case closed. “Long trip. Ganymede. About fourteen months. That is my persona encoding. Recently updated.”

  “I promise not to open it till you get back.”

  “Just promise to open it if I don’t.”

  “How do you feel, Mr. Preston?”

  “Where am I?” Light stabbed through a gummy film that obscured his vision, so he kept his eyes closed. The dream receded into a confusing mélange of memory.

  “On a transport back to Burroughs.”

  The voice was familiar, but he could not place it yet. “Burroughs... well, turn us around. I’m not finished.”

  “Four broken ribs, a cracked femur, sprained left wrist, bruises over most of what isn’t broken. Remarkably, no concussion, but Oxmire attributed that to a thickened Martian skull and an evident lack of damageable brain.”

  Mace felt himself begin to laugh. His chest constricted and the ribs hurt just enough to stop him. “So put me in a body brace and turn the transport around.”

  “Can’t do that, Mr. Preston.”

  Mace forced his eyes open. He blinked vigorously and the haze broke apart. Smooth blue-grey arched overhead. To his right he saw monitors glowing dimly. Beneath everything came the rumble and vibration of the transport engines and the whisper of circulating air. His mouth felt cottony and he breathed in the tepid-water smell of sterile sheets. A woman sat near his left hip. He stared at her for several seconds.

  “Ms. Guerrera.”

  “And your memory seems intact. Is there anything I can get for you?”

  “I wasn’t finished.” He worked his tongue against the inside of his mouth. “Water.”

  Cambel Guerrera leaned forward and pulled a tube down and inserted it into his mouth. He drew on it automatically and cool liquid flowed.

  “There’s nothing left for you to do, Mr. Preston. No other bodies were found, the tunnel is being recorded in excruciating detail, and your second, Specialist Cavery, has everything securely in hand. With your injuries, any further work you have to do can be done at a workstation.”

  “Did they—?” He stopped. He wanted to know but he wanted to see for himself.

  “We’ll be in Burroughs in less than two hours,” she said, standing. “You should sleep. I’ll be nearby.”

  “How did I—what happened to me?”

  “You tripped a mine. Damn near sealed the shaft, it took nearly three hours to get you unburied.”

  “A mine.”

  “Sleep, Mr. Preston.”

  The proteins, pseudo-viruses, amino-steroids, and other therapies the pathic facility at Burroughs administered to him were all variations on the adapt treatments that had enabled him to walk and breathe normally on Aea with its one standard g. The anaesthetic worked only so well, though, as if unable to keep pace with the pain from the accelerated healing. Mace tolerated it because it meant less time in pathic.

  By the fifth day of treatment he could walk unsupported and sit up without his ribs driving him back down. He ordered a slate and a connection to the Hellas site database.

  ACCESS DENIED scrolled across the screen. He reentered his code and watched the words appear again. Calmly, he began entering other codes, but with each new string of digits, access remained denied. He started contacting people, asking, then demanding explanations, until abruptly the only thing he could call up on the slate were public access posts. PolyCarb had shut him out.

  He walked out of pathic on the eighth day to find Cambel Guerrera waiting for him at reception. She wore a plain blue suit, collar sealed high against her throat. Mace studied her while he went through all the releases. She seemed on edge, the sharp angles of her face even more pronounced by the tension in her eyes.

  “Ms. Guerrera,” he said quietly.

  “Cambel, please.” She tried to smile. “We—I—have things to discuss with you. Can we walk?”

  “So the pathologists tell me.”

  Mace kept his pace restrained, though he wanted to stride along to dispel pent up energy. Cambel clasped her hands behind her back and leaned slightly forward, as if walking up an incline. The corridor curved to the left, then began a gradual descent.

  “You’re curious,” she said finally, “why your access has been closed.”

  “Putting it mildly, yes.”

  “The... irregularities... of the recovery operation have precipitated questions regarding your performance and possible connection to the incident.”

  “Connection...?”

  “There’s been a conference of the principle management and oversight, field oversite, engineering, security—”

  “I’m security”

  “Winston Cavery represented security”

  Mace thought about that. Cavery had been thoroughly resentful at being displaced as head of site security “All right.”

  “There were lapses in procedure—”

  “Any operation of that size, there will be lapses, Ms. Guerrera.”

  “—which compromised the final integrity of the rescue operation.”

  They emerged from the corridor into a crowded interchange. The round chamber contained kiosks and patches of plant life, benches and public access terminals. The thick smell of cooking and chlorophyll mingled heavily with the odor of people and ozone in the chill air beneath the low dome. Eight other interchanges like this tied Burroughs together with its thirty-five thousand residents and the turnover of visitors—small compared with Helium and its quarter million inhabitants or Lowell with nearly two hundred thousand. People lived in the open here, under the ground. Habitable space was expensive, it had to be dug out and modified; privacy was found in small, closeted places.

  Mace let Cambel lead him around the rim of the chamber and into another, quiet, artery.

  “So what’s gone missing?” he asked abruptly, gratified by her startled look.

  “Three items. A recorder salvaged from the southeast corner which you personally took to ops. And a cyberlink augment that was found on one of the bodies in the primary tunnel. I’m told you secured that as well.”

  “I turned the recorder over in prep. In fact, I did that just before I met you.”

  “The record indicates you brought it in. The recorder itself is missing.”

  “A carryall isn’t that big. Space is allocated very efficiently, there’s nowhere to hide something like that.”

  “It wasn’t found.”

  “The augment—”

  She stopped and turned to face him. “Mr. Preston, it doesn’t matter what you tell me. You violated several protocols. You were not assigned duty to that site, you came in and took over from the properly assigned officer, you flouted safety regulations, you openly questioned everyone’s performance, and you disregarded a strong suggestion from the site supervisor. You injected yourself into the midst of an ongoing recovery operation for personal reasons and consequently failed to perform a job that wasn’t yours to begin within a professional and competent manner.”

  Mace felt his hands curl into fists. “And what specifically am I being charged with? Dereliction of duty? Sloppiness? Sentimentality?”

  “Sarcasm is hardly the response—”

  “I did my job as competently as any other assignment. If things are missing someone else took them.”

  “If that was a demonstration of your competence, you would have been dismissed long ago.”

  Mace glared at her.

  She raised a hand. “First, this wasn’t your assignment. You broke regulations to go there. Secondly, the data trail for the missing items ends with you.”

  “So? It often does end at one point, only to reappear somewhere else.”

  “Mr. Preston, it is beside the point.”

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” He studied her. “You said three items.”

 
Cambel hesitated. “There is some question concerning the circumstances of your wife’s disappearance.”

  “Not her death?”

  “Not now. According to the company, she was never there.”

  “What?”

  “Helen Croslo never went to that site.”

  Mace turned away from Cambel Guerrera, his breath coming quick and irregular for a few seconds.

  “She’s not dead.”

  “She hasn’t been declared so, no. Not yet.”

  He looked at her. “What do you mean, ‘not yet’?”

  “There are irregularities—”

  “You like that word, don’t you? What do you mean? I spoke to her, there’s bound to be a log of the call. She sent word to me on Aea that she’d been diverted here. If she hadn’t been sent—” He stopped. “Oh, I see. The alternative is that she’s the saboteur?”

  “We’re not really prepared—”

  “I’ve worked for PolyCarb long enough to know that a suspicion like that might as well be an accusation. You’re looking at the wrong possibility—”

  “Mr. Preston.”

  “Someone is working to falsify the log—”

  “Exactly, Mr. Preston.”

  “Then—” He studied her narrowly. “Me.”

  Cambel tilted her head. “The evidence is inconclusive. Your record with the company has been excellent and nothing in your history suggests any connection that might be taken advantage of by an enemy. People have argued in your favor.”

  Mace grunted. “That’s reassuring. You said I tripped a mine?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why was a mine placed in a shaft that wasn’t bored all the way through?”

  “It had been. A stone cap had been placed over the surface opening.”

  “Any evidence of someone leaving by that route?”

  “No, but the storm would have covered anything up. Since we have incomplete records, we have no way to tell who might have been missing. We’re going through personnel logs, but...”

  “I’m not going to be allowed to investigate.”

  “What do you think?”

  “So what happens next?”

  She resumed walking and he automatically kept pace. “Two options. The first, presuming that you are connected to those missing items, you can make a good faith gesture by returning them.”