“I need to buy socks,” said Bill.
“Whatever you want, bookworm. Socks, boots, buy out the whole shop.”
“I just need socks,” said Bill. They were on the last stretch of the High Road, rocketing along under the glittering stars, and ahead of them he could see the high-up bright lights of Mons Olympus on the monitor. Its main dome was luminous with colors from the neon signs inside; even the outlying Tubes were lit up, from all the psuit-lights of the people going to and fro. It looked like pictures he had seen of circus tents on Earth. Bill shut down his Gamebuke and slid it into the front pocket of his psuit, and carefully zipped the pocket shut.
“Time to put your mask on, Dad,” he said. If Billy wasn’t reminded, he tended to just take a gulp of air, jump from the cab and sprint for the Tube airlocks, and one or twice he had tripped and fallen, and nearly killed himself before he’d got his mask on.
“Sure thing,” said Billy, fumbling for the mask. He had managed to get it on his face unassisted by the time Beautiful Evelyn roared into the freighter barn and backed into the Unload bay. Father and son climbed from the cab and walked away together toward the Tube, stiff-legged after all those hours on the road.
At this moment, walking side by side, they really did look like father and son. Bill had Billy’s shock of wild hair that stuck up above the mask, and though he was small for a Mars-born kid, he was lean and rangy like Billy. Once they stepped through the airlocks and into the Tube, they pushed up their masks, and then they looked different; for Billy had bright crazy eyes in a lean wind-red face, and a lot of wild red beard. Bill’s eyes were dark, and there was nothing crazy about him.
“Payday, payday, got money on my mind,” sang Billy as they walked up the hill toward the freight office. “Bam! I’m gonna start with a big plate of Scramble with gravy, and then two slices of duff, and then it’s hello Ares Amber Lager. What’ll you do, kiddo?”
“I’m going to buy socks,” said Bill patiently. “Then I guess I’ll go to the public terminal. I need my next lesson plan, remember?”
“Yeah, right.” Billy nodded, but Bill could tell he wasn’t paying attention.
Bill went into the freight office with his dad, and waited in the lobby while Billy went in to present their chits. As he waited, he took out his Buke and thumbed it on, and accessed their bank account. He watched the screen until it flashed and updated, and checked the bank balance against what he thought it should be; the amount was correct.
He sighed and relaxed. For a long while last year, the paycheck had been short every month; money taken out by the civil court to pay off a fine Billy had incurred for beating up another guy. Billy was easygoing and never started fights, even when he drank, but he had a long reach and no sense of fear, so he tended to win them. The other Haulers never minded a good fight; this one time, though, the other guy had been a farmer from the MAC, and he had sued Billy.
Billy came out of the office now whistling, with the look in his eyes that meant he wanted to go have fun.
“Come on, bookworm, the night’s young!” he said. Bill fell into step beside him as they went on up the Tube, and out to Commerce Square.
Commerce Square was the biggest single structure on the planet. Five square miles of breathable air! The steel beams soared in an unsupported arch, holding up Permavizio panes through which the stars and moons shone down. Beneath it rose the domes of houses and shops, and the spiky towers of the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. It was built in an Old Earth style called Gothic. Bill had learned that just last term.
“Right!” Billy stretched. “I’m off to the Empress! Where you going?
“To buy socks, remember?” said Bill.
“Okay,” said Billy. “See you round, then.” He wandered off into the crowd.
Bill sighed. He went off to the general store.
You could get almost anything at Prashant’s; this was the only one on Mars and it had been here a whole year now, but Bill still caught his breath when he stepped inside. Row upon row of shiny things in brilliant colors! Cases of fruit juice, electronics, furniture, tools, clothing, tinned delicacies—and all of it imported from Earth. A whole aisle of download stations selling music, movies, books and games. Bill, packet of cotton socks in hand, approached the aisle furtively.
Should he download more music? It wasn’t as though Billy would ever notice or care, but the downloads were expensive. All the same …
Bill saw that Earth Hand had a new album out, and that decided him. He plugged in his Buke and ordered the album, and twenty minutes later was sneaking out of the store, feeling guilty. He went next to the public terminal and downloaded his lesson plan; that, at least, was free. Then he walked on up the long steep street, under the flashing red and green and blue signs for the posh hotels. His hands were cold, but rather than put his gloves back on he simply jammed his fists in his suit pockets.
At the top of the street was the Empress of Mars. It was a big place, a vast echoing tavern with a boarding house and restaurant opening off one side and a bathhouse opening off the other. All the Haulers came here. Mother, who ran the place, didn’t mind Haulers. They weren’t welcome in the fancy new places, which had rules about noise and gambling and fighting, but they were always welcome at the Empress.
Bill stepped through the airlock and looked around. It was dark and noisy in the tavern, with only a muted golden glow over the bar and little colored lights in the booths. It smelled like spilled beer and frying food, and the smell of the food made Bill’s mouth water. Haulers sat or stood everywhere, and so did construction workers, and they were all eating and drinking and talking at the top of their lungs.
But where was Billy? Not in his usual place at the bar. Had he decided to go for a bath first? Bill edged his way through the crush to the bathhouse door, which was already so clouded with steam he couldn’t see in. He opened the door and peered at the row of psuits hung up behind the attendant, but Billy’s psuit wasn’t one of them.
“Young Bill?” said someone, touching him on the shoulder. He turned and saw Mother herself, a solid little middle-aged lady who spoke with a thick PanCeltic accent. She wore a lot of jewelery; she was the richest lady on Mars, and owned most of Mons Olympus. “What do you need, my dear?”
“Where’s my dad?” Bill shouted, to be heard above the din.
“Hasn’t come in yet,” Mother replied. “What, was he to meet you here?”
Bill felt the familiar stomach ache he got whenever Billy went missing. Mother, looking into his eyes, patted his arm.
“Like as not just stopped to talk to somebody, I’m sure. He’s friendly, our Billy, eh? Would start a conversation with any stone in the road, if he thought he recognized it. Now, you come and sit in the warm, my dear, and have some supper. Soygold strip with gravy and sprouts, that’s your favorite, yes? And we’ve barley-sugar duff for afters. Let’s get you some tea…”
Bill let her settle him in a corner booth and bring him a mug of tea. It was delicious, salty-sweet and spicy, and the warmth of the mug felt good on his hands; but it didn’t unclench the knot in his stomach. He sipped tea and watched the airlock opening and closing. He tried raising Billy on the psuit comm, but Billy seemed to have forgotten to turn it on. Where was his dad?
II
He was the second boy born on Mars, and he was six years old.
In MAC years, that is.
The Martian year was twenty-four months long, but most of the people in Mons Olympus and the Areco administrative center had simply stuck to reckoning time in twelve-month-long Earth years. That way, every other year, Christmas fell in the Martian summer, and those years were called Australian years. A lot of people on Mars had emigrated from Australia, so it suited them fine.
When the Martian Agricultural Collective had arrived on Mars, though, they’d decided to do things differently. After all (they said), it was a new world; they were breaking with Earth and her traditions forever. So they set up a calendar with twe
nty-four months. The twelve new months were named Stothart, Engels, Hardie, Bax, Blatchford, Pollitt, Mieville, Attlee, Bentham, Besant, Hobsbawm and Quelch.
When a boy had been born to Mr. and Mrs. Marlon Thurkettle on the fifth day of the new month of Blatchford, they named their son in honor of the month. His friends, such of them as he had, called him Blatt.
He disliked his name because he thought it sounded stupid, but he really disliked Blatt, because it led to another nickname that was even worse: Cockroach.
Martian cockroaches were of the order Blattidae, and they had adapted very nicely to all the harsh conditions that had made it such a struggle for humans to settle Mars. In fact, they had mutated, and now averaged six inches in length and could survive outside the Tubes. Fortunately they made good fertilizer when ground up, so the Collective had placed a bounty of three Martian Pence on each insect. MAC children hunted them with hammers and earned pocket money that way. They knew all about cockroaches, and so Blatchford wasn’t even two before Hardie Stubbs started calling him Cockroach. All the other children thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
He called himself Ford.
He lived with his parents and his brothers and sisters, crowded all together in an allotment shelter. He downloaded lesson programs and studied whenever he’d finished his chores for the day, but now that he was as tall as his dad and his brother Sam, his dad had begun to mutter that he’d had all the schooling he needed.
There was a lot of work for an able-bodied young man to do, after all: milking the cows, mucking out their stalls, spreading muck along the rows of sugar beets and soybeans. There was cleaning the canals, repairing the vizio panels that kept out the Martian climate, working in the methane plant. There was work from before the dim sun rose every morning until after the little dim moons rose at night. The work didn’t stop for holidays, and it didn’t stop if you got sick or got old or had an accident and were hurt.
The work had to be done, because if the MAC worked hard enough, they could turn Mars into another Earth; only one without injustice, corruption, or poverty. Every MAC child was supposed to dream of that wonderful day, and do his or her part to make it arrive.
But Ford liked to steal out of the shelter at night, and look up through the vizio at the foot of Mons Olympus, where its city shone out across the long miles of darkness. That was where he wanted to be! It was full of lights. The high-beam lights of the big freighters rocketed along the High Road toward it, roaring out of the dark and cold, and if you watched you could see them coming and going from the city all night. They came back from the far poles of the world, and went out there again.
The Haulers drove them. The Haulers were the men and women who rode the High Road through the storms, through the harsh dry places nobody else dared to go, but they went because they were brave. Ford had heard lots of stories about them. Ford’s dad said Haulers were all scum, and half of them were criminals. They got drunk, they fought, they made huge sums in hazard pay and gambled it away or spent it on rich food. They had adventures. Ford thought he’d like to have an adventure someday.
As he grew up, though, he began to realize that this wasn’t very likely to happen.
* * *
“Will you be taking Blatchford?” asked his mum, as she shaved his head.
Ford nearly jumped up in his seat, he was so startled. But the habit of long years kept him still, and he only peered desperately into the mirror to see his dad’s face before the reply. Yes please, yes please, yes please!
His dad hesitated a moment, distracted from bad temper.
“I suppose so,” he said. “Time he saw for himself what it’s like up there.”
“I’ll pack you another lunch, then,” said his mum. She wiped the razor and dried Ford’s scalp with the towel. “There you go, dear. Your turn, Baxine.”
Ford got up as his little sister slid into his place, and turned to face his dad. He was all on fire with questions he wanted to ask, but he knew it wasn’t a good idea to make much noise when his dad was in a bad mood. He sidled up to his older brother Sam, who was sitting by the door looking sullen.
“Never been up there,” he said. “What’s it like, eh?”
Sam smiled a little.
“You’ll see. There’s this place called the Blue Room, right? Everything’s blue in there, with holos of the Sea of Earth, and lakes too. I remember lakes! And they play sounds from Earth like rain—”
“You shut your face,” said his dad. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking like that to a kid.”
Sam turned a venomous look on their dad.
“Don’t start,” said their mum, sounding more tired than angry. “Just go and do what you’ve got to do.”
Ford sat quietly beside Sam until it was time to go, when they all three pulled on their stocking caps and facemasks, slid on their packs, and went skulking up the Tube.
They skulked because visiting Mons Olympus was frowned upon. There was no need to go up there, or so the Council said; everything a good member of the Collective might need could be found in the MAC store, and if it couldn’t, then you probably didn’t need it, and certainly shouldn’t want it.
The problem was that the MAC store didn’t carry boots in Sam’s size. Ford’s dad had tried to order them, but there was endless paperwork to fill out, and the store clerk had looked at Sam as though it was his fault for having such big feet, as though a good member of the Collective would have sawed off a few toes to make himself fit the boots the MAC store stocked.
But Prashant’s up in Mons Olympus carried all sizes, so every time Sam wore out a pair of boots, that was where Ford’s dad had to go.
As though to make up for the shame of it, he lectured Ford the whole way up the mountain, while Sam stalked along beside them in resentful silence.
“This’ll be an education for you, Blatchford, yes indeed. You’ll get to see thieves and drunks and fat cats living off the sweat of others. Everything we left Earth to get away from! Shops full of vanities to make you weak. Eating places full of poisons. It’s a right cesspool, that’s what it is.”
“What’ll happen to it when we turn Mars into a paradise?” asked Ford.
“Oh, it’ll be gone by then,” said his dad. “It’ll collapse under its own rotting weight, you mark my words.”
“I reckon I’ll have to go home to Earth to buy boots then, won’t I?” muttered Sam.
“Shut up, you ungrateful lout,” said his dad.
They came out under the old Settlement dome, where the Areco offices and the MAC store were, as well as the spaceport and the Ephesian Church. This was the farthest Ford had ever been from home, and up until today the most exotic place he had ever seen. There was a faint sweet incense wafting out from the Church, and the sound of chanting. Ford’s dad hurried them past the Ephesian Tea Room with a disdainful sniff, ignoring the signs that invited wayfarers in for a hot meal and edifying brochures about the Goddess.
“Ignorance and superstition, that is,” he told Ford. “Another thing we left behind when we came here, but you can see it’s still putting out its tentacles, trying to control the minds of the people.”
He almost ran them past the MAC store, and they were panting for breath as they ducked up the Tube that led to Mons Olympus.
Ford stared around. The Tube here was much wider, and much better maintained, than where it ran by his parents’ allotment. The vizio used was a more expensive kind, for one thing: it was almost as transparent as water. Ford could now see clearly across the mountainside, the wide cinnamon-colored waste of rocks and sand. He gazed up at Mons Olympus, struck with awe at its sheer looming size. He turned and looked back on the lowlands, and for the first time saw the green expanse of the Long Acres that had been his whole world until now, stretching out in domed lines to the horizon. He walked backwards a while, gaping, until he stumbled and his dad caught him.
“It’s hard to look away from, isn’t it?” said his dad. “Don’t worry. We’ll be
going home soon enough.”
“Soon enough,” Sam echoed in a melancholy sort of way.
Once past the airlock from the spaceport, the Tube became crowded, with suited strangers pushing past them, dragging baggage, or walking slow and staring as hard as Ford was staring: he realized they must be immigrants from Earth, getting their first glimpse of a new world.
But Ford got his new world when he stepped through the last airlock and looked into Commerce Square.
“Oh…” he said.
Even by daylight, it glittered and shone. Along the main street was a double line of actual trees, like on Earth; there was a green and park-like place immediately to the left, where real flowers grew. Ford thought he recognized roses, from the images in his lessons. Their scent hung in the air like music. There were other good smells, from spicy foods cooking in a dozen little stalls and wagons along the Square, and big stores breathing out a perfume of expensive wares.
And there were people! More people, and more kinds of people, than Ford had even known existed. There were Sherpa contract laborers and Incan construction workers, speaking to one another in languages Ford couldn’t understand. There were hawkers selling souvenirs and cheap nanoprocessors from handcarts. There were Ephesian missionaries talking earnestly to thin people in ragged clothes.
There were Haulers—Ford knew them at once, big men and women in their psuits, and their heads were covered in long hair and the men had beards. Some had tattooed faces. All had bloodshot eyes. They talked loudly and laughed a lot, and they looked as though they didn’t care what anyone thought of them at all. Ford’s dad scowled at them.
“Bloody lunatics,” he told Ford. “Most of ’em were in Hospital on Earth, did you know that, Blatchford? Certifiable. The only ones Areco could find who were reckless enough for that kind of work. Exploitation, I call it.”
Sam muttered something. Their dad turned on him.
“What did you say, Samuel?” he demanded.
“I said we’re at the shop, all right?” said Sam, pointing at the neon sign.
The Very Best of the Best Page 27