by Ted Mayes
“Is that all that will happen? Are there no other alternatives?”
“Alternatives? Such as?”
She stared down at the floor briefly. “The empire accepts people, under probation, for potential Latins. Is that a possibility for ex-slaves?”
“By Imperial law, there is no such thing as an 'ex-slave.' If you are no longer a slave, then you are foreigner, Latin, or whatever you were before.”
“So, if I were interested … ?”
“Then, I would suggest you write a letter, appealing to the emperor for the chance to become a Latin. In fact, you might even want to appeal to the empress. I have a feeling she might take an interest.”
“Thanks, I'll think about that.” Silently, they returned to the paperwork. Some minutes later she had another question. “You know, I see kids around Ostia all the time, but I don't think I've heard or seen anything about schools below the level of the university.”
Michael sat back and looked thoughtfully at her. “You probably haven't heard anything about what’s called K-12 education because I don't have anything to do with it.”
Amanda looked at him, puzzled. “But aren't you the highest ranking government official except for the emperor?”
“True, but ….” Michael broke off speaking as a message came to him. “Thanks, centurion. Samuel, display on the wall the scene at the gate.” A picture appeared of a small crowd, waving signs and moving toward the gate.
“What in the world...” Amanda began saying.
“It looks like a protest of some kind. Samuel, enlarge the display so we can see the signs.” There were a wide variety of messages. Some said 'Free Amanda.' Others said 'Space belongs to everyone.' Still others read 'Down with Facism.'
“Who are those idiots?”
Michael smiled gently. “I think that we can assume that they are foreigners and not Latins.”
“What is going to happen to them?”
“The marines on duty will move them off imperial property. What the Kansas City police do with the demonstrators is up to the KC police.”
“Is that all?”
“For now. If they keep trying to come back on imperial property, they could be permanently banned from the empire, or sentenced to hauling rocks. Whatever happens, they're not important, except in their own eyes.” He watched as the Marines moved out from the gate, and using their batons, herded the protesters away. Michael told Samuel to remove the display and then returned to the conversation that had been interrupted. “True, I'm the top government official, but, you see, in the empire, schools are not a part of the government.”
Amanda looked confused at that. “You're going to have to explain.”
“As I understand it, in those countries where schools are part of the government, they become propaganda centers, instructing children in the ways and thoughts that the government wants to instill in people. The emperor, and the empress, decided quite early that they didn't think schools should be used that way. So, imperial schools are free of government control and are more along the lines of independent businesses. Some schools are approved by the empress, but it's up to the parents to provide an education for their children, and they are expected to be involved in their child's education.”
“And this works?”
“Well, I have my doubts about how well it would work in the general population, but in the empire it seems to be working. I suppose you'd have to check with the empress' clerk for more information.”
* * * * *
The two weeks since getting back together with Jon had been hectic. There had been final exams at school, although the tests were nowhere near as hard as she had expected. Being one of the liaisons between the Foreign Department and international scientists was much more difficult than she had expected. Most of the scientists were decent people, although there were some who were convinced that the universe revolved around them.
The biggest part of the problem with the scientists was that she was being forced to deal with people and ideas way beyond her training. She had just finished a semester of high school physics, but she was having to deal with some internationally known scientists – scientists who seemed to want to discuss all sorts of things that she had never heard of before – tachyons, quasars, string theory, dark energy, anti-matter and a host of other things.
She'd survived that, though, and was actually doing a pretty good job. At least, everyone seemed to be happy with what she'd been doing. The UN scientific station at Copernicus Station was settling down to get their research done. They'd requested a tunnel connection into Capitol, which was being built. Beth wasn't surprised, on her trips out to them, to see that they were trying to study Imperial technology along with other lunar fields of research.
Based on what intelligence was reporting, the Foreign department was going to have to set up a separate lunar section to deal locally with new colonies. Russia, China, Israel and India were only some of the countries that were considering outposts or colonies on the moon. In the US, while there was strong official interest in such a step among government agencies, the discussion seemed to be centered on how the government should react to the half-dozen or so private companies and organizations that were clamoring to develop ‘private’ outposts on the moon. It would probably be a few months before anything really developed, but Beth was under orders to keep an eye out for talented people who would be able to handle the liaison role.
The good part about the last two weeks was the habit of nightly calls to Jon. She eagerly looked forward to 2000 each day. They had continued sharing what went on in their lives each day. She enjoyed that sharing more than she could say, hearing what Jon had been doing so far away and seeing how interested he was in what she was doing. The only thing that really bothered her was the fact that he was so far away. They had even ‘invented’ the dating rings, but now there was no possibility of any kind of physical closeness.
It was even worse this Friday evening, Christmas Eve. Beth was spending the evening with her parents in the apartment over the coffeehouse. She’d already stopped by at the Harrison’s house to wish Jon’s parents and family a Merry Christmas. The fact that Jon wasn’t there only made her feel sad that he was so far away, so she looked forward to talking to him before going to Christmas Eve service.
She was in the guest bedroom at 2000 and she could only smile when she saw Jon’s face on her portfolio screen. “Merry Christmas, Jon.”
Smiling back, he replied, “Merry Christmas, Beth. How was your day today?”
“Not too bad, for the first part of the day. It looks like a real good possibility that there will be a number of lunar colonies in the works before I graduate, which means Mary Chen will have more work in that area next year. Thankfully, most of the scientists seem to have headed home for the holidays. And Eloise and I had a planning meeting, because you, or rather your expedition, has been causing a rush of new scientific comments and demands.”
“Oh, what have my guys been doing?”
“Just being too efficient at discovering things and providing information. As just one example, when your guys reported the survey satellite around Mars indicated an almost non-existant magnetosphere, that caused two problems – a large increase in the request for access to the data, which we could handle, and a larger request for survey satellites to be placed around every planet, most of the moons of the planets, some comets and asteroids, and the sun. I’m surprised we haven’t had requests for survey satellites at Alpha Centauri yet.”
Jon chuckled. “Don’t say that too loudly, because I’m sure those requests will be coming in at some time in the near future. I heard from … a source I have … that there will be some changes happening soon that will raise the level of scientific discussion significantly.”
Beth cocked her to one side and considered Jon’s odd expression when he mentioned his ‘source.’ “Augustus?” she said very quietly. When he gave her a small nod, she thought for a moment. It was hardly surprising that Jon had acc
ess to Augustus, but the fact that he was also getting information from Augustus definitely indicated that the emperor had his eye on Jon. She nodded back to him thoughtfully. “I’ll keep that in mind as we do some contingency planning. Anyway, State knocked off at noon. I spent the afternoon playing with Brent and Sophie, because Larry and Becky came down from Capitol to celebrate with Mom and Dad. We’ve just been sitting around and talking about all the things that have gone on during the past year. We’re going to Christmas Eve service later, but, actually, I’ve been worried about you most of the day.”
“Me? Why?”
She sighed in exasperation. “Jon, you’re millions of miles away from everyone else in the universe on a planet with basically no atmosphere. I know that you’re as safe as anyone can be with imperial technology, but allow me to be a little worried about you, okay?”
He sighed. “Don’t worry too much about it, because Mom is doing her share of worrying, too.”
“Well, what did you do today?”
“I started off taking over for the duty officer so everyone else could have part of today off. I managed to coordinate all the delivery of reports and mail for the expedition and arranged for the expedition to create a ‘Christmas card’ to be sent to earth. I kept my name and face out of it, but I wanted to show it to you before it got sent off to the news media of earth, so here it is.” Beth’s portfolio began playing an image of the Martian terrain, from high up at first, but gradually getting closer to the surface. She guessed Jon had used a floater to record the scenery. As the floater grew closer to the ground, a mound, too regular to be natural, appeared in the center of the screen and grew larger. As the mound seemed to expand, the floater passed over the brow of the hill, revealing the opening to an above-ground hanger and the Mars expedition, drawn up in ranks, in pressure suits. The Marines were in one group, standing at attention and saluting, the civilian scientists in another group, waving.
The outside scenery then dissolved into a shot of the colony’s common area, with the expedition standing around a Christmas tree and partying. After that, each member of the expedition, except Jon, had the chance to say hello to their family and friends. Jon stopped the playback after the first couple of greetings and Beth looked at him closely again when he came back into the picture on her portfolio. “Why didn’t you send a greeting to family and friends?”
“I’m just temporary here, and I don’t want anyone to think that I’m really the first governor of the colony here. Besides, I’ve been ordered to keep a low profile here.”
She looked at his face and made a guess who had ordered that. “What does ‘our mutual friend’ want you to do while you’re there?”
“Outside of keeping things going and making recommendations about the men here? I’m supposed to report on my view of the long-term viability of a colony on Mars.”
Beth pursed her lips and whistled silently. “That’s quite a job. What have you seen so far?”
Jon looked thoughtful for a moment. “I think there’s definite potential here. It’s an interesting place – low gravity and you have to wear a suit like on the moon, but it looks so much more like the Earth or at least like deserts on Earth. There are times you get a feeling that just by changing a few things you could make things bloom. Of course, it isn’t anywhere near that easy, but you get that feeling some times, and you’d never get that feeling looking out of the windows on the Broadway at Capitol.”
“That feeling leads people to think different things. There are two types of people here right now. There are ‘visitors’, the people who are only here for a while and then plan on returning to Earth to teach or publish or whatever. And then there are the ‘locals’, the people who are already thinking of Mars as their home. One of the ‘locals’ has set up a part-time business, while a couple of others are making calculations and plans. Those guys are already planning how much air pressure is needed up here on the plains to get the air pressure at the bottom of the canyon, four miles down, up to Earth standard. The idea is to have a ‘national forest’ where Martians can wander around without suits and without worry.”
“Can they even do that?” she asked.
“Two answers,” he replied. One is ‘yes’ because it’s certainly theoretically possible. The other answer is ‘no’ or ‘maybe’, because it depends on what the emperor wants to do. Anyway, it’s something that the first real governor here is going to have to be aware of and deal with.”
“Which of the two groups do you fit into?”
“Oh, definitely the ‘visitor’ group. I’m looking forward to getting back to Ostia. You’re the most important reason for getting back, but there are a bunch of other reasons as well.”
Beth smiled, tucking that ‘you’re the most important reason’ into her memory to think about later. “What are some of those other reasons?”
“Well,” Jon said, “it’s possible for the loneliness, the realization of how far away you are, to really get to a person, and I think it’s starting to affect me. If you’re out here, and you think about where you are – and getting out here forces you to think about it sooner or later – you can go crazy thinking about how small things are around you compared to what looks like the emptiness of space. One of the civilian scientists set up a scale model of the Solar system in the main tunnel here, almost a mile long. He took great delight in demonstrating to everyone how far away from everything we are. It was a little spooky until an imperial technician gave me a very basic course on imperial astrophysics. Thankfully the empire has a better understanding of what is going on in the system than that civilian scientist had.”
“None of that is secret, is it?”
“I asked about that. The answer was ‘sort-of-secret’. I gathered it hadn’t been decided yet how much of this basic elementary imperial stuff, which I’ll be getting at the university in the next year or two, is going to be made available for general knowledge. Don’t worry about it, it was all cleared by higher-ups. Moving on to other things, though, did you get the package I sent?”
She held it up. “It says it’s Christmas presents – where did you get them?”
“It’s all stuff we had up here that we were able to use in one way or another. Go ahead and open it.” Beth did so and found at first a number of other packages. One was a sample bag similar to the one she’d picked up on the Moon. When she looked curiously at Jon, he said “I knew you liked to give samples to your science teacher, so that’s rock, soil and air samples from Mars – and somewhere in that box is documentation stating when and where I picked it up from the Martian surface.” He chuckled. “It’s sorta funny – that present started a trend. Some of the other Marines saw what I did and decided to do the same thing. And the civilian scientists had been so focused on the data they were gathering from the low altitude survey that they had completely forgotten about samples – at least until I picked up that stuff for you. However, the civilian rocks won’t be ready to be shipped for a while, so your teacher should be the first scientist on earth to have Martian samples.”
While it wasn’t exactly what Beth had expected, it was nice to think that Jon was really trying to think of things that she would like. She pulled out the next box and opened it to find a hemispheric glass case containing soil and rocks. Attached to the glass case was a bronze plaque that read ‘Soil and rock from Melas Chasma, Mars, 10°S, 73°W, recovered on December 15, 1993 by Jon Harrison.’ She looked at Jon with surprise on her face. “Well, you had already started your collection of samples from the Solar System, so I thought I’d add to it. Keep going, there’s one more present in there.”
It took Beth a moment or two to start moving again. The gifts weren’t what she had expected, but on the other hand, she wasn’t sure what she had expected Jon to give her, especially considering where he was. His gifts were certainly unique, though, and she did appreciate them.
Shaking her head she looked through the paper in the rest of the package and found a small box. Opening it, she found a
stylized solid silver heart on a chain. On the back of it, the Morton Jewelry logo was engraved, the words ‘Mars silver’ and the number 1. She gaped at it, thinking how lovely it was, and how she really hadn’t expected something like that. When she had recovered enough, she looked at Jon and said, “It’s not fair – you shouldn’t give me something so lovely and yet be so far away that there’s no chance of me hugging you.”
“That’s okay, Beth,” Jon said softly. “We’ll handle all of that when I get back.” Obviously trying to change the subject, he went on. “I did want you to know that that heart is historic for a number of reasons. First, the material ...”
“The ‘Mars silver’?”
“Yeah – on the survey, several deposits of precious metals were discovered and there were volunteers to dig out the silver and gold. I got to make the decision, pending approval by the emperor, about what to do with the deposits.”
“And what did you decide to do?”
“The deposits that were laying on the surface were removed, so we now have our own little version of a money pit. Other deposits that lie below the surface are temporarily claimed by the emperor. The precious metals will remain on Mars, except under certain conditions.”
“Which are…?”
“Residents of Mars – and we’re not including the civilian scientists in that category – may purchase some of the precious metal for the production of jewelry or art, which are also to remain on Mars unless permission is granted to export them. I got permission to send enough silver to Greg Morton for him to make two hearts. The first one you hold in your hand. The second one will be on display in Greg’s jewelry shop – the emperor, and others up here, are interested to see the public reaction. The idea seems to be that something so rare might become desirable and very high-priced. I’m supposed to pass along the suggestion, from that source I mentioned before, that you might want to consider that wearing the heart too openly may not have a good effect on your privacy.”