Rufus stared daggers into the camera on his end, but then the muscles of his face relaxed. “You can stand around doing nothing all you like. We’ll just run a live feed of poor, grieving Lori Ridgway, 24/7.”
“You’ll want to check that feed, too.”
The satisfied smirk drained from Rufus’s face when he switched to the cameras in Women’s Bunk 1. Rufus yelled at someone beyond his camera’s range. “Find them!”
“Looking for April and Lori?” Mark cleared his throat and shifted his feet beneath him. He didn’t like that he was enjoying this humiliation. “We know precisely where every camera is located, and how to avoid them. It took some time, because they’re hidden rather well, but we have some tools and resources inside the dome that perhaps you hadn’t counted on.”
Rufus’s jaw tightened. “Yes, well, we have ample tools and resources outside the dome as well. Or had you forgotten how easily we cut your power? Keep pushing me, and we’ll do it again.” The producer stretched his lips into a tight smile. “As I said, back when everyone was being reasonable, we are happy to set up a video link between Lori and her mother—”
Mark slid his hands into his jumpsuit pockets. “I know that power switch quite well. So it was a simple thing, really, to direct one our own to disable your kill switch. That’s where Guillermo Costa is right now, by the way. On his way back from that particular operation, while April takes the added precaution of dismantling your third lines inside. All while you were distracted talking to me.”
“Guillermo had a panic attack in his suit!” Rufus spluttered. “He couldn’t possibly—”
“Redeem himself? Sure he could. And has done.” Mark paused, enjoying the view of Rufus blinking hard on the screen. “So our batteries are working just fine and storing the excess energy we’ve got coming in through the solar panels. Our life support and recyclers are operating at maximum efficiency. And your team did a fine job stocking the habitat with coffee, protein paste, and other stores. We can live quite happily on all of that for a good long while. After that, well, we’ve got the crops coming up in the grow unit, don’t we?”
“You’ll miss your launch window,” Rufus said flatly.
“No, you will miss your launch window. And you’ll have voided your contracts with every one of your corporate sponsors and with the Mars Colony Project. The MCP will still take us, I have no doubt about that. But all that money you’ll have to give back. You’ll have to shut down your production company, Rufus. Good luck renewing those contracts for future seasons. If there are any.”
Rufus took a long, slow breath. His hands lay flat on the desk as he glared at Mark. “What do you want?”
“You know what we want.”
“And then you’ll comply?”
Mark stepped closer to the screen. “I promise we’ll play nice from here forward.” He waited a beat. “Unless you try anything else stupid. Or callous. Or dangerous. Or—”
“I get it.” Rufus lifted his hands in defeat. “I’ll make the arrangements.”
Rufus cut the connection with a huff, and Mark found himself staring at a blank screen. His smile broadened for a long, satisfied moment, but then he thought of Lori. How white her face had been, her breath ragged. It had taken both April and Leah to keep Lori on her feet as they escorted her back to their bunk room.
Nothing Mark did could heal the blow she and her family had taken, but maybe the threatened strike would ease some of the pain.
14
Lori felt the dull thud of her boots on the black linoleum floor, but the only sound in her helmet was her pounding heart, the slow rhythm of her breathing, and the steady whoosh of her suit’s life support system. The rest of the world was silent.
She glanced around at the hastily assembled room—little more than a theater set separated from the production studio by heavy fabric stretched across rolling metal frames. Young, harried-looking people in blue jeans and black Mars Ho t-shirts murmured into sleek headsets as they darted back and forth. They adjusted the studio lights, added colored filters, and spooled out lengths of silver duct tape to hold down snaking electrical cords.
Lori held up a gloved hand to shield her eyes as one of the massive light trees got swung around in her direction. But then her face shield automatically darkened, and Lori nearly laughed at the sheer absurdity of the scene: ensconced in her pressure suit, breathing recycled air, standing in the middle of a production studio in the Arizona desert. If anyone wanted to fake a Mars landing, this would be a good start.
But beyond the plastic sheeting that hung in overlapping layers from more metal frames, Lori’s mother was waiting.
“Come on.” April, wearing her own pressure suit, reached for Lori’s elbow and guided her forward. “I’m right here with you.”
Lori had a vague recollection of being helped into her suit. Then she had been outside, and she’d walked, slowly, across the dessert toward The Ranch. Someone had been talking to her, guiding her. April? And maybe Hannah?
Her thoughts buzzed dully in her head. She felt the pressure of April’s fingers on her arm, so Lori lifted her feet and moved.
A pair of production assistants raced around from behind her, stopped at the plastic sheeting, and pulling the curtains apart for her. Lori paused a few meters from the threshold.
“She’s in there,” Lori said to no one in particular.
“Yes, she is,” came April’s reply over the comms.
Lori sucked in her breath. “How is she going to hear me? How am I going to hear her?”
April kept one hand steady on Lori’s shoulder, and used the other to adjust a dial in the hard plastic of Lori’s helmet, just below her right ear. The production studio sprung to noisy life, and Lori cringed at the abrupt intrusion of overlapping voices, the shuffle and squeaks of equipment being moved, and the sharp clang of a metal pipe hitting the ground somewhere behind her.
“There you go.” April’s voice was still coming in over the comms. She glanced at the plastic curtains, held aside by the production assistants. “Want me to go in with you?”
Lori tried not to imagine what her mother would look like, in these last days of her life. Even if Lori got eliminated from Mars Ho, chances were high this public meeting would be her last with her family.
Lori wiggled her fingers inside her multilayered gloves. Her mother wouldn’t even be able to feel the touch of Lori’s hand—only her slightly tacky, synthetic finger pads.
April was waiting for an answer. With the studio lights and the production assistants and the cameras, what was one more witness to her personal tragedy?
Lori nodded. April squeezed her elbow, and they moved through the plastic sheeting together.
It was dimmer in the small vestibule that had been cordoned off. A nod to the comfort of Lori’s mother, but there was still enough light for the cameras to pick up every detail.
Her mother was sitting in an adjustable hospital bed, covered by the thick quilt Lori’s grandmother had made a lifetime earlier. Her brown-and-silver hair was thin on her scalp and was pushed back by a wide, pink headband. Her skin was practically translucent.
“Lori! Oh, Lori.” Her mother’s eyes filled with tears as she reached for her daughter.
Lori hesitated. She looked around for the cameras.
“It’s okay.” April said. “They’re not recording this. Mark made sure of that.”
“Mark?” Lori looked around for him, but there was no one inside the staged room with her but April and Lori’s mother and sister. Lori blinked a few times, trapped somewhere between sleep and waking and unable to make progress toward either.
“It’a okay,” April said again.
Lori’s sob exploded out of her without warning. Her breath came in spasms as the tears streamed down her cheeks. She felt April grip her arm, but then there was someone on her other side, too. Marcia, her sister.
“Hey, hey, there.” Marcia sounded tinny over the speaker in Lori’s helmet. “It’s okay. Well, no. It’s
not okay. Not really. But it’s going to be all right. You’re here. We’re all here.”
Lori coughed and tried to get control of herself, but when she studied her mother sitting in the bed and looking incongruously fragile and bright, the sobbing started all over again.
“Careful there,” April’s voice sounded in her ear. “Remember that with your helmet on, you can’t wipe your nose.”
Lori glanced at April, saw the smile on the tiny woman’s face, and started laughing. Then she swallowed hard and made her way across the black floor to her mother’s side. She tried to sit on the edge of the bed, but the extra bulk of her suit made it difficult to balance.
“Here.” Marcia brought over a generic plastic chair. Lori noted her sister’s haggard appearance, her tousled hair and rumpled clothing, and wondered when Marcia had last gotten decent sleep.
When the producers released the backlog of Marcia’s messages, Lori had been hit with the awful details about her mother’s advanced and aggressive cancer all at once. What Marcia had learned over the space of three weeks, Lori had absorbed in less than an hour. But Marcia had endured it alone, without even emails or video calls from Lori to bolster her.
“Oh, my brave girl!” Lori’s mother reached for Lori’s gloved hands and squeezed her fingers. Lori was surprised by the strength in her grip. “I knew you’d find a way. I knew you would come.”
“But we came to her, Mom,” Marcia said. “Because she can’t leave. Remember, they brought us here on the special plane?”
Mom waved her away. “Of course I remember.” She beamed at Lori and didn’t seem to mind the barrier of her suit. “I’m so proud of you, Lori-lu.”
Marcia rested a hand on Lori’s shoulder. “She’s been forgetting things. The doctors said that might happen, toward the end.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Mom insisted, her eyes never leaving Lori’s face. “I’m so glad we can have a few minutes together. One last time.”
Lori felt the sting of tears again but remembered April’s warning. She already need to blow her nose from her previous crying fit. Having to wear the stupid suit so she wouldn’t break her isolation was bad enough, and Lori decided there was no way her mother’s parting image of her younger daughter would be marred by a river of snot running down her face.
“Mom.” Lori sat and and squeezed her mother’s hands gently, afraid of crushing fragile bones.
Mom pulled her closer. “Listen to me now, because I know we don’t have long. You probably don’t think I need to say this to you, to either of you.” Mom lifted her chin to include Marcia. “Because you’re so close to having your dream become real! Oh, my Lori-lu, I am so, so happy for you. And afraid for you. And thrilled for you, on this dangerous adventure you’ve chosen for yourself.”
“I, I’m just doing my best,” Lori stuttered. She glanced back at April, standing just inside the barrier of plastic, and could have sworn she saw tears rolling down April’s cheeks beneath her visor.
“Of course you are! And that’s my wish for you.” Mom made a gesture for Marcia to sit down on the bed. “This is what I want to tell my girls, and I’m so lucky I get to do it face to face.” She patted Lori’s gloved hand. “Or the closest we can get to it.”
Lori scooted her chair closer.
Marcia cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, but Lori? Aren’t you worried? About what happened to the Chinese? And what they’re saying about Mars Ho and the way they’re running things?”
Lori opened her mouth to speak, but her mother beat her to it.
“A life lived beyond fear is a marvelous thing,” Mom said, looking between her daughters. “Whether you’re pursuing an ambitious quest or opening your heart to love.”
Mom looked pointedly at Lori, sending an uncomfortable prickle across the back of her neck. Her mother would have seen every Mars Ho episode. She knew about the kiss with Mark. She’d seen Lori’s ridiculous giddiness during the food printer challenge. She knew about Charlie’s betrayal, too, and what Mark had risked to keep Lori inside the dome. And she’d seen the confrontation in the fitness room, and all of Lori’s stupid, strategic flirting.
“Both can be just as frightening, and just as rewarding.” Lori’s mother took a painful breath and winced. She released Lori’s hands as she coughed and pressed her palms against her chest.
“Mom.” Marcia stood and braced her mother’s shoulders against the racking cough. For a few tense seconds, Lori was afraid her mother would start spitting up blood or have a seizure, But then the coughing subsided and Marcia sat back down.
Mom laid her hand on Lori’s wrist, her earlier vigor now absent. “Remember that, Lori-lu. You can’t have courage, real courage, without being true to your heart.”
“I’ll remember, Mom.” Lori nodded and reached out to hold Marcia’s hand, too.
Mom’s face broke into a wide, beaming smile, and Lori could almost see the vital, beautiful woman she had been a few months earlier, back when Lori expected they’d be exchanging holiday and birthday greetings across the millions of kilometers between Earth and Mars. She’d had every reason to believe her family would carry on and thrive without her while the Mars colony prospered and flourished. Before she knew it, her family would come to visit her on the Red Planet. It was a daydream, the rationalized optimism she’d needed when she left her family to enter the competition.
But this was their final goodbye.
“I’ll make you proud, Mom.” Lori couldn’t stop the fresh tears. “I promise you.”
Her mother shook her head. “Don’t make me proud. Don’t you dare worry about what I or anybody else might think about where you go or what you do with your head or your heart. You’ve worked so hard, and made so many sacrifices. And I’m telling you, you can have both. You don’t have to choose.”
Marcia rose to her feet. “Okay, Mom, you need to rest now. You’re starting to not make sense.” Marcia glanced at Lori. “This trip has really drained her. What little energy she has these days. I’m afraid . . .”
Marcia’s words caught in her throat, and she started to sob. Lori pulled her sister into a strong if awkward embrace, stymied by the many layers of her suit.
“She just needed to see you,” Marcia wept on Lori’s shoulder. “I’m sorry it had to be like this, to do this to you when you’re in the middle of, of everything.”
“It’s all right.” Lori stroked her sister’s back, wishing she could feel the fabric of her sweater under her fingers. “I’m sorry that I didn’t know, that I couldn’t help.”
Marcia pulled away. She looked Lori up and down and laughed. “You’re a proper Martian now, aren’t you?”
“Almost.” It felt good to smile. “We’ll see what happens.”
“You’re going, and you know it.” Marcia reached up to pat the top of Lori’s helmet. “Isn’t that right, Mom?”
The sisters, still holding each other, looked down at their mother in the hospital bed. The frail woman beneath the thick quilt had fallen into a deep sleep.
Lori walked briskly across the kilometer of Arizona desert separating The Ranch from the Mars Ho Candidate Habitat. She’d refused the ride offered by the production team following her final visit with her mother and sister. She needed to move.
April hustled to match her pace and panted a bit over the comms. Otherwise, she remained silent.
The sun was sliding toward the Western horizon and painting the sky in brilliant pinks and oranges with hints of purple and red. Lori felt the crunch of desert soil beneath her boots, and she tried to imagine, again, that she was crossing a similar expanse on the Red Planet, far away from the blue skies of home and millions of kilometers removed from this crushing grief.
And suddenly, Lori was talking. She wasn’t sure when she’d made the decision to open her mouth but once she had, so much came pouring out of her that she wasn’t sure she could stop.
“. . . And I’ve been little more than a caricature of myself these past . . . days? Weeks? I can’t eve
n keep track any more. One day—sorry, one sol—bleeds into the next around here.” Lori took a breath, uncertain as to what point she was trying to make. What had she said already?
“I think we’re all pretty disoriented,” April replied.
“It’s all about keeping people entertained, right? Well, obviously, that’s not all it’s about. But if you want to remain in contention, you have to be conscious of that. That’s what I thought. Now, I’m not really sure.” Lori was embarrassed that she was babbling, but April didn’t seem to mind.
“Do you think people know that I have real skills? You know, like solid talents that would be useful on Mars?” Lori slowed her pace so she could catch her breath. “Do you think that’s coming across when they put together the episodes for broadcast?”
“I think so,” April replied. “That’s supposed to be crucial information. Even if we’re not allowed to really talk to each other about it.”
Lori strode onward in silence a few paces. April reached for Lori’s elbow and they both slowed to a stop.
“About feeling like just a caricature of yourself?” April asked. “Well . . . You know my spreadsheet?”
Lori laughed. “I thought you were nuts when you first showed me that thing, but it’s brilliant. Really brilliant.”
“Yeah.” April lowered her voice, even though she’d already put them on a private channel. “The whole thing is a game. Not wanting to go to Mars. That part’s real, and it’s important. But the rest of it? Rating potential partners? Sampling the merchandise or whatever?”
“Angling to be The Mars Ho?”
The corners of April’s mouth turned downward. “It’s not real.”
Lori glanced toward the domed habitat, a few hundred meters away. She blew out a long breath and watched the inside of her faceplate scarcely fog up before her suit’s scrubbers regulated the humidity inside her helmet.
Lori flexed her fingers inside her gloves. “It feels pretty real to me.”
“Right, but . . . Lori, you have to know I never had any designs on Mark, right?”
Mars Ho! (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 1) Page 19