A Perfect World


Chapter 13



Exactly one Martian month later, Slurry was sitting behind her desk on the
59th floor of the Martian capital building. Her office was small and did not
feature a view, or even a window for that matter, but it was hers, 36 square
meters of real estate, equipped with a plastic desk and a computer terminal
and featuring her recently bestowed title on the door: DR. SLURRY FRAZIER -
HISTORIAN. She was as proud of that title as she was of the office itself.
Slurry was deliriously happy these days. She was about to start a family
with the man she loved and, professionally, she was doing exactly what she
had always wanted to do with her life, not teaching, for she didn't have the
necessary patience for that, but researching. She loved looking up facts,
ferreting out details from the endless stream of information on the
Internet, loved the thrill that came with the discovery of each
corroborating or dissenting notation or memo uncovered. She thought she
could happily spend her entire first career in this office doing exactly
that, and maybe even her second career as well.



Of course being the new kid on the block-and one of the youngest ever
accepted into the ranks of the elite Martian Historical Advisement
Department-the official research she was assigned was not all that important
yet. In fact, it was quite mundane. Her first two weeks had been limited to
learning the computer system and the procedures to be followed in
referencing and checking facts. She had then been given her first
assignment-cross checking minor points in the new edition of the ninth grade
History texts the Martian school system would be using for the upcoming
school session. The facts in question were those relating to her area of
expertise-the mid-twentieth to mid twenty-first centuries-and mostly had to
do with non-controversial subjects such as price-indexes, crop growing
methods, land use, and specific dates and times of certain events. Anyone
but a dedicated historian would have been bored to tears by now but Slurry
found it exhilarating work, especially when she considered that she would
eventually be assigned to more important research.



What was most fascinating about her new job was not the research she was now
assigned or would some day be assigned but the method used to compile that
research. Since she was now a part of the MHAD she had been given a security
clearance-something she had been unaware the Martian government ever did.
Now that she was cleared and had agreed not to discuss the methods by which
information came her way, she had the full power of the Martian computer
hacking technology at her fingertips and, as she had discovered, that power
was almost omnipotent when it came to penetrating both the EastHem and
WestHem networks. The Martian government was able to see just about anything
stored on any Earth computer database anywhere and from any time period. No
birth record or death record or inter-department memo or photograph or text
message or email or financial transaction was out of her reach if she knew
where to look for it. And with the ability of the Martian computers to
cross-reference millions of individual databases, it wasn't difficult to
find where to look for things. She had access to information the Earthlings
themselves didn't even know had been stored, and could read the most private
thoughts of people throughout the timeline from when computerization of data
became standard. This ability to read and examine the most secretive records
of the time period was a historian's greatest dream, allowing the ability to
discover what had actually happened in the past instead of what the corrupt
and biased media sources said had happened.



Though her official duties did not often require her to dig very far into
this vast sea of data-at least not yet-she was allowed, even encouraged, to
browse it for her own pleasure and curiosity on her breaks and during her
lunch period or after hours. This was something she did with relish, with a
compulsiveness that was almost addictive in nature. She spent her lunch hour
every workday at her desk where she would eat a cold cafeteria sandwich and
delve into the secret files of WestHem and EastHem history. On at least one
of her days off each week-usually when Ken was working-she would come in on
her own time and spend six to eight hours doing the same. She had been able
to uncover so many things during these free-lance periods, and had dug up so
many covert deals and blatantly deliberate historical inaccuracies.



Most of the things she discovered had long been known by the Martians and
were already noted in official Martian history. The pharmaceutical industry
corruption she had told Ken about on their first date was one such thing. It
was a well-known fact that such corruption existed. Martian high school and
college students were taught about it as part of the curriculum on how their
parent society operated. Specific examples-such as the suppression of
medical research into diseases like the common cold and influenza because of
the fear of losing the profits treating symptoms of those diseases
generated-were cited as well. But now, with her omnipotent computer access,
Slurry could actually see the discussions and negotiations that led to that
corruption, that had set it in motion and maintained it for generations.



She had spent the greater part of her last day off examining financial
transactions, secret memos, and personal text messages from a period
spanning almost a hundred years. She had tracked how money had flowed from
the pharmaceutical CEOs to politicians and members of both the Food and Drug
Administration and the American Medical Association-which, by the turn of
the twentieth century had become nothing but corporate tools of these drug
companies with little interest in the health and well-being of the populace.
She had read memos discussing how certain avenues of viral research needed
to be shut down, either by cutting off their funding or discrediting the
teams that were performing the research. She had seen how politicians owned
by these companies made sure to appoint only "reliable" people to the
FDA-which meant they would do what they were told by their political
masters. She had seen how the AMA members had been appointed in a similar
manner.



Eventually, the corruption spread beyond research suppression into
out-and-out profiteering. She read memos from pharmaceutical CEOs ordering
the AMA to change diagnoses and treatment guidelines for certain diseases
such as hypertension, depression, and attention deficit disorder so more
doctors would be forced to prescribe pills to treat them. She had seen how
this same body had basically fabricated new diseases, such as fibromyalgia
and chronic fatigue syndrome, that doctors could diagnose hypochondriacs
with and the pharmaceutical companies could then sell pills to treat. She
had seen memos ordering the FDA to fast-track approvals of these and other
drugs of questionable safety and effectiveness for real and imaginary
maladies so they could hit the market and start bringing in the profit. She
had seen how the FDA would refuse to certify other pharmaceutical remedies,
such as herbal drugs, that did not come from the companies that sponsored
them. It was a look into the evolution of the corporate mindset that was
both fascinating and horrifying.



By no means was this sort of corruption and single-mindedness confined only
to the pharmaceutical industry. On the contrary, it permeated every national
corporation to one degree or another and grew worse as time went by. She was
able to see the actual memos that led to the suppression of cold fusion
technology by the energy corporations. She was able to see the transactions
that led to the suppression of alternate fuel technology by the oil
corporations. She tracked illicit connections between tobacco companies and
the Western Cancer Prevention Association charity. She tracked similar
connections between gun manufacturers and a national anti-crime group,
between a feminist healthcare corporation and an anti-abortion group,
between a homosexual rights group and the Catholic Church. She found that
even during the darkest days of World War III, when the Asian Powers were
pushing southward down the west coast of the North American continent and
the fate of the entire free world was in peril, the deals were still going
on. Arms manufacturers were bribing politicians to choose exclusive
contracts instead of allowing every factory capable of producing war
materials to churn them out. The big auto manufacturing conglomerates were
trying to out-bribe and undercut each other to see who would be allowed to
produce battle tanks and APCs. The aircraft industries were doing the same
to see who could exclusively produce specific warplanes. There was no end to
it and it was a process that was still going on in both EastHem and WestHem
to this very day. Slurry thought it astounding that they had managed to
carry on with this contradictory economic and political system as long as
they had. In any other society the citizens would have risen up and smashed
the ruling class down long ago, but the complete control of the sources of
information-namely the media-had so far kept this from happening.



"How much longer can they keep going?" Slurry had asked Rigger Johannesburg,
the senior twentieth century historian assigned to train her in her duties.
"At what point will the common people finally decide enough is enough and do
what we did here on Mars? Will it ever happen?"



"It has to happen at some point," replied Rigger, who was 44 years old and
close to final retirement. "It's as inevitable as the yearly dust storms.
They simply cannot go on like this indefinitely before the pressure becomes
so great an explosion will occur. Both WestHem and EastHem realize this on
some level but refuse to acknowledge it on another level. They continue to
try to deal with the problem the way they always have-with the cycles of
alternating permissiveness they are perpetually locked in. WestHem is
currently using fear as their anti-revolt weapon. They demand conformity
from their citizens according to a rigid set of behavioral rules and enforce
it by excessive surveillance, oppressive laws, and encouragement of betrayal
of each other. EastHem, on the other hand, has already run this weapon to
the point where it was about to blow up in their face so they counter the
revolt instinct by liberalizing their society, granting new freedoms of
sexuality and dress, by repealing the old laws and giving their citizens the
illusion that reform is taking place. When these freedoms begin to have the
opposite effect intended and encourage demands of greater reforms, such as
nationalization of industries or the legalization of non-corporate owned
businesses, the pendulum will swing in the other direction and their
conservative cycle will start back up again. At about the same time, WestHem
will have reached the point where their oppressive cycle has reached the end
of its effectiveness and they'll start to liberalize. That's how it's always
been on Earth but it is the belief of most of us here that this may be the
last cycle they get away with before the collapse finally comes. The common
people-from which revolution stems-simply aren't responding to it as easily
and as deeply as they have before. A lot of that has to do with our
successful revolution here on Mars. We have shown it is possible to break
free of that system for good and no matter what lies they tell in their
media, no matter how evil and decadent they portray us to their people, they
simply cannot deny the fact that we are, in fact, free and that we are, in
fact, productive enough under our system to supply them with the bulk of
their food. If we ignorant greenies can break free and form our own
government, than they could do it too, if they so desire."



"But the powers-that-be won't let it happen without a fight," Slurry said.



"No," he said, shaking his head sadly. "And as they realize more clearly
what a predicament they're in, they're liable to do anything in response.
Absolutely anything."



That thought was often in Slurry's head these days as she realized just how
important she and her more experienced colleagues really were to the Martian
government, how important and vital their historical advice was, how
critical it was that they uncover every last detail of how that perverted
capitalistic system operated and what excesses they were capable of. This
made her become all the more fascinated and obsessed with her work, all the
more dedicated to the mission statement she had vowed to uphold when
inducted into the ranks of the MHAD.



On this day, however, as the end of her official office hours drew near, her
thoughts were on more mundane matters of history. She had just received a
data-dump from the WestHem system in response to a request made earlier and
she was sorting through a batch of search results one by one, looking for
the exact figures she needed. It concerned the corporate takeover of the
American farm industry in the 1980s, when the majority of the country's
independent farmers were forced to sell out under threat of foreclosure. The
WestHem history books and official historical sources naturally did not give
any explanation of how this takeover had come to pass. They didn't mention
it at all. They just pretended Agricorp and Marks Foods Corporation and
Proctor Agriproducts Corporation had always owned all of the farmland. The
Martian textbook, on the other hand, required a detailed synopsis of just
how the takeover had been accomplished and which particular pre-merger era
corporations had set it all in motion. And they wanted this all in
chronological order with cross-references. The previous edition covered how
the takeover came about. The corporations in question used their political
influence to lower crop prices so the independent farmers could not possibly
sell enough of what they grew to cover the mortgage payments on their land,
and then followed up by pressuring the banks to foreclose. What was lacking
was the timeline of the who and when. This was Slurry's assignment for the
week-to research and write such a chronology so Rigger could verify it and
have it printed up in the next edition. She spent the remainder of her day
back-checking through old memos and money transfers, matching them together
to confirm the first known instance of the plan being put into place.



At 1500 she received a com from Rigger, startling her out of the maze of
computer records and data-base entries. "Time to call it a day, Slurry," he
told her. "I checked over what you sent me today and it's looking good. You
have a real flair for this kind of work."



"Thanks, Rig," she replied, rubbing her tired eyes and stifling a yawn. "I'm
glad you liked it."



"Can I walk you down to the tram station, or are you staying late again?"



"I'm gonna stay just for a little while," she said. "Ken is working today
and won't be home until 1730 anyway."



"You newbies and your enthusiasm," he said affectionately. "Just don't burn
yourself out."



"I won't, Rig," she promised.



"Truth in history," he said companionably. This was the motto and prime
directive of the MHAD, and was often used as both a greeting and a farewell
between members of the department.



"Truth in history," she returned. "See you tomorrow."



Rig broke the connection and her computer screen returned to her database
index. She looked at it for a moment, debating finishing up a few more
entries, but finally decided to put it aside until tomorrow. She was on her
own time now and there was something of a personal nature that she had
wanted to look up. Now was as good a time as any.



"Computer," she said. "New search. WestHem Internet."



"Fuckin' aye," the computer replied. "Gimmee the shit."



"Cross reference the Martian Internet and get a digital image of Kenneth
Frazier. Any one taken in the last year will do."



"Are you down with this one?" the computer asked two seconds later.



A picture of Ken appeared on the screen. It was the official identification
photo that had been taken of him when he'd been hired at his current job.
Like bureaucratic issued photos throughout the history of the solar system,
it was not the most flattering likeness. His hair was out of place and the
camera had caught him with a goofy, fake smile on his lips. But that didn't
matter for Slurry's purposes.



"I'm down with it," she replied. "Perform facial recognition analysis and
search the WestHem Internet for all pictures that match those analysis
qualities." What she had just ordered was for Ken's digital image to be
"fingerprinted," or broken down into more than a hundred distinct points
that were unique from person to person. The computer would then look for
matches of Ken's face in the vast sea of WestHem data. In theory, this would
return every picture of her husband that had been stored in any database
anywhere from the time Ken was an adolescent to the time when he last
appeared in a newspaper article several years after his shooting in 2003.
Slurry was primarily interested in the younger pictures of her
husband-pictures that could only be found by this method since they likely
would not be referenced in the database with his name or any other
identifying information.



"Fuckin' aye," the computer said, and then, a second later, "Request sent.
Awaiting reply."



The reply, she knew, was going to take about sixteen minutes. This was not
because of the time needed to search through the databases-Martian computer
technology made this sort of search almost instantaneous-but rather because
of the biggest inconvenience the MHAD and other governmental offices based
on Mars faced in their hacking duties, that of the light speed barrier. Mars
and Earth were currently 146 million kilometers apart and the speed of light
was just under 18 million kilometers per minute. Her request was digitized,
encrypted, and sent through a secure communications system out into
interplanetary space, heading toward a civilian communications satellite in
geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Ocean. It would take eight minutes to
get there and another eight minutes to get back.



While she waited, she paged through other entries she had pulled in during
her lunch break. She quickly lost herself in the flurry of secret memos and
transactions between the United States government and the various oil
corporations just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. This was one of
the more fascinating case studies for historians because it was a textbook
example of how easily the majority of a populace could be swayed to support
a war of conquest by being told it was something else. People wanted to
believe so badly that their government was acting in their best interests
instead of in the best interests of their corporate sponsors that they would
rally behind even the most ludicrous of explanations as long as the
explanation was presented to them properly and as long as even the differing
points of view within their media seemed to agree with the underlying
reasoning. The Iraq conquest of 2003 had been the first major test of this
theory after the consolidation of the media companies under corporate
ownership had begun. It had been somewhat rough going, particularly in the
aftermath, but could only be counted as a success by the corporations
because the majority of the American population had enthusiastically cast
aside what Occam's Razor should have told them was nothing more than a grab
for the second largest oil reserves in the world.



"Yo, Slurry," the computer said, interrupting her perusal. "The shit you
asked for is here. We're talking 648 photos found. Of these, 336 of them
were not labeled with name, and 211 of them were not labeled with the date
taken. Of the undated ones, a notation has been added telling the date the
photo was digitized and put in the database as well as what database it was
found in. You down with it?"



"I'm down with it," she said, pleased with the amount of gold her little
prospecting mission had uncovered. "Store everything in my personal file
under Ken Photos WestHem Internet and set me up a menu to access with a
thumbnail on each entry."



"Fuckin' aye," the computer told her. A second later, "Done."



She looked at her watch, seeing it was now almost 1530. She only had another
thirty minutes or so to look at information. It was her day to cook dinner
and she needed to get home by 1630 if she wanted the filet mignon she was
cooking to be ready when Ken arrived home from his job. She wished they
could afford to hire a bitch to take care of dinner and cleaning but they
had opted to use their dual income to pay for a nicer apartment instead of
domestic help. So, with the short time she had, should she continue to look
at the secret Iraq War correspondence or should she start looking through
the photos she'd brought back? Her logic told her she could never even begin
to look at every one of the photos and should put them aside until her next
day off, when she could come in and peruse them for hours. But her logic was
overridden by her curiosity. She really wanted to see some shots of her
husband in his younger days. It wouldn't hurt to look at just a few of them.



She quickly stored the Iraq information in another section of her personal
file and called up the newly created menu of Ken's photos. Each entry
consisted of a tiny representation of the photo that had been found and a
line of text explaining where it had been found-or at least when it had been
stored. The entries were in chronological order, starting with the earliest.
She looked at the first one and smiled, suppressing a giggle. It was a shot
from 1983, when Ken had been fourteen Earth years of age-which would be near
the lower limit of when his facial features would be close enough to what
they were as an adult for a match to be made. The notation stated the shot
had been found in what had once been a Web site maintained by John and
Darlene Frazier, Ken's parents. It had been put onto the Web site in 1996,
seven years before Ken was shot. She touched her finger to the thumbnail and
a larger version of the photo instantly appeared on her screen.



"My Laura," she giggled, looking at it. He was so young! And so cute! It was
apparently a family vacation photo taken at Yosemite. Ken was tall and
skinny, his hair long, almost down to his shoulders. He was standing at the
base of a waterfall-she wasn't sure which one it was-and wearing shorts and
a long T-shirt that had the name of something called "Judas Priest" printed
upon it. His expression was one of bored contempt, as if he were just barely
tolerating the indignity of being photographed by his parents-an expression
universal to the adolescents of the solar system, even here on Mars.



She marveled over the image for a minute or two and then moved onto the
next. It was another one taken from the same database although it was dated
about a year later. In this one Ken was dressed up in a suit and posing with
his mother and father, who were also dressed up. The occasion was apparently
a wedding ceremony of someone named "Lisa Gillian". His hair was a little
longer in this one, although neatly styled. The facial expression of pained
acceptance was the same.



Slurry spent the next twenty minutes looking at photo after photo of her
husband's past, sticking primarily to the early portion of the menu since
those were the shots she'd been mostly after. She saw him at fifteen when
his family took a trip to Hawaii. She saw his first driver's license photo
at sixteen. She saw a shot of him dressed up for the junior prom at
seventeen and another shot of him at the senior prom the following year. She
saw graduation photos-the last taken with the long hair-and then photos
taken during his early college years. Next came the photos from his army
days-during basic training, his head now nearly bald-and then a shot of him
in a flight suit standing next to a training helicopter. By the time she
worked her way to his stint in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, she knew it was
about time to shut things down for the day and get on home.



Out of simple curiosity she scrolled the photo menu downward, just to see
what kind of shots had been gathered in the later years. Here things grew a
bit more grim since the entire last section of photos were mostly posthumous
newspaper images that accompanied articles dealing with his shooting and its
aftermath. These were somewhat depressing and she did not call any of them
up for examination. Her mouth was opening to tell the computer to shut down
for the day when her eyes happened across the very last image pulled from a
database. She stopped, staring at it, puzzled.



"Must be a mismatch," she said to herself as she looked at the accompanying
explanation line. Although the Martian governmental computer did not make
many mistakes-and those it did were always due to human originated
programming errors-that was the only possible reason for what she was
seeing. To confirm this she touched her finger to the thumbnail.



The photo filled the screen and her breath caught in her throat as she saw
it. There had been no mistake. A security camera at some place called the
Bull Valley Indian Casino and Bingo Parlor had taken the image. It was
undoubtedly a picture of her husband. But how was it possible? And what did
it mean?



"Impossible," she mumbled, feeling goosebumps break out on her flesh. "This
is just impossible."



All thoughts of getting home in time to make dinner left her. There was no
way she could just walk away until she got to the bottom of this, until she
figured out just how what she was seeing had happened.



"Computer," she said, her voice now trembling a little, "New search. WestHem
Internet."



+++++



Ken was in a good mood as he rode the elevator up to the 86th floor of the
upper class housing building he and Slurry lived in. It was 1730 and he was
anticipating a nice steak dinner with all of the fixings, a few glasses of
good red wine, and, afterward, a long session of lovemaking to help the food
settle. Perhaps they would be prudes tonight and actually do it in the
bedroom instead of in the hot tub or on the kitchen floor or on the
playground slide up on the serenity level. After all, there was a lot to be
said for the missionary position in an actual bed, wasn't there?



The elevator doors opened and he stepped out into the hallway, turning right
and heading toward the door marked 8613. On the way he passed several of his
neighbors-most of them married couples or triples with children-who were
either returning to their own homes after work or heading out for a night on
the town. He greeted them by name as they passed-knowing one's neighbors was
a common and traditional thing on Mars-even stopping to chat with Colander
Globosely outside her door for a few moments. Colander and her husband were
the owners of Globosely's Kick-Ass Meats, the butcher shop in the lobby of
the building. Both were in their late twenties, the butcher shop their
second careers, and both had been hinting quite strongly of late that they'd
enjoy a little spousal swapping session with Ken and Slurry. This was
exactly what Colander was hinting about now, in fact.



"Aegis and I are going to be cooking up some lobster we scored from the last
Earth shipment tomorrow night," she said, her eyes unabashedly looking up
and down Ken's body in a manner that could only be described as greedy. "You
and Slurry are welcome to join us if you're down with it. We'll have some
bonghits and some wine, boil up the scavengers, and then see what kind of
stinky things pop up from there."



"That sounds really static, Collie," Ken told her with sincerity. Though
Colander was in her late fifties in Earth years, she certainly did not look
it. A sixty-year-old Martian woman would easily pass for under thirty had
she been back on Earth in his time and Colander was no exception. And, as
Ken had delightfully discovered during past encounters with other older
Martian women, forty years of experience at the act made for an incredible,
almost sublime session of sexuality. "I'll talk to Slurry tonight and see
what she has to say about it. I imagine she'll say yes. She's been wanting
to get together with you two for quite some time now."



"That's the shit," Colander told him, putting a kiss on her finger and then
touching it lightly to Ken's crotch. "And since you and Slurry are thinking
about starting a family we'll have to make this happen before you get your
reproductive blocks turned off."



"That is true," Ken agreed. And it was. He and Slurry were planning to see
Manny Mendez, Karen's now husband, the following week to have their
reproductive systems activated. Once that happened a Martian couple
practiced strict monogamy until conception of a child was confirmed. At that
point the male had his reproductive drive turned back off and, according to
Martian tradition, the couple then invited all of their friends to their
house so they could share the good news and host an orgy. Ken was
particularly looking forward to this part. For all of the sex he'd had since
awakening, he still had never been to an actual orgy.



He and Colander said their goodbyes and went their separate ways down the
hall. Ken arrived at his front door a minute later-his mind still thinking
of reproduction and announcement orgies-and put his finger on the keypad.
The door slid open and he walked in. He had been expecting the smell of
cooking steak to greet him. His mouth was actually watering in anticipation.
But the odor of the apartment was nothing but fresh air. Nor was there any
sound. Slurry was nowhere to be seen.



"Slurry?" he called. There was no answer. What the hell?



He almost performed a search of the house to confirm she wasn't there. Even
after all of his time on Mars he still couldn't shake some old habits from
Earth. He stopped himself and instead asked the computer if Slurry was
there, which was a quicker and more efficient means of confirming or denying
her absence.



"She ain't been here," the computer told him. "She left at 0833 and ain't
come back through the door yet."



"Hmm," Ken said thoughtfully. That was very odd. Slurry, despite her
fascination with her work, was never late getting home, especially not on
nights she was supposed to cook dinner. And even if she were going to be
late, surely she would have commed him to let him know, as he did her when
he had a flight mission that took longer than scheduled.



He walked over to the nearest computer terminal, which was on the coffee
table next to the living room couch. "Computer, com Slurry," he told it.



Instantly, Slurry's pre-recorded face appeared on the screen. It was her
video mail server. The fact that it had popped up immediately meant that
Slurry had directed her PC not to accept coms from anyone. This was
something she occasionally did if she was in a meeting, but it was well past
her office hours now and she had always allowed calls from him-even if no
one else-when she was not working. Things were getting odder by the minute.



"Computer," he said. "Tracking request. Find Slurry for me." He was asking
the computer to utilize the law enforcement system's tracking computers to
locate his wife by triangulating on her PC. The Martians were big on
personal privacy rights so this was not something that was done lightly.
Though Martian children and adolescents could be tracked by their parents
without their permission or knowledge, adults could not. By requesting this,
a signal would be sent to Slurry's PC letting her know who was attempting to
track her and asking her permission to allow it. Only if she agreed would
triangulation occur and her location revealed to Ken. And even so, a log of
the request would be permanently stored in the New Pittsburgh Police
Department's statistic computer. If the requests became a routine thing-as
they often did in domestic violence households or in cases of stalking-a
patrol team would eventually be sent to their address just to make sure
things were okay.



Ken had never felt the need to track Slurry before so he wasn't exactly sure
how long it would take. Nor did he find out now. "Slurry Frazier has denied
your tracking request," the computer told him thirty seconds later.



"Denied?" he asked, feeling his alarm deepen.



"Fuckin' aye," the computer confirmed. "De-nied!"



This was so wildly out of character for her that he knew something dreadful
had to have happened. But what? Was she having an affair? That was absurd.
There was no need to have an affair in a society where you could pretty much
screw anyone you wanted to anyway. Had she been kidnapped? That was even
more absurd. No one kidnapped anyone on Mars. Was she just pissed off at
him? Possible, but for what? As far as he knew he had done nothing to offend
her. He had commed her during her lunch period today and she had been
fine-her normal, bubbly self.



Answers were not forthcoming. For the next hour he tried to com her every
five minutes, getting her mail server every time. He tried to track her
every ten minutes, receiving denials back every time. Finally, convinced he
had no other options, he walked to the computer screen and commed the police
department.



At the NPPD, like all Martian police agencies, the com-takers and
dispatchers were all senior police officers instead of civilian employees.
The face that appeared on the hologram in response to Ken's com appeared to
be about forty Earth years old, which meant he was actually in the
neighborhood of 35 Martian years of age. His eyes had the perpetual gaze of
cynicism career law enforcement officers tended to develop, even, it seemed,
on a perfect world. "Wassup, Dawg?" he asked Ken. "I'm Officer Chadworth,
NPPD. You got some serious shit goin' down, or what?"



"Uh... well," Ken said nervously. "I'm not sure if it's serious shit or not,
but I'm worried about my wife."



"Lay some facts on me," Chadworth told him. "Tell me what's got your butt
plug too far up your ass."



Ken told him what was going on. Chadworth listened attentively, nodding from
time to time, but not asking any questions until the tale was told. His face
gave no hint to what he was thinking.



"So your old lady has never shut you out of the com loop before?" he asked
after Ken finished.



"Never," he said. "We've never even really had a serious fight, except for
when I wanted to go hydro-diving on Saturn on our honeymoon, and even that
was just a disagreement."



"You went hydro-diving on your honeymoon?" Chadworth said, raising his
eyebrows a tad, as a man does when he suddenly realizes he is dealing with a
mentally ill person.



"Yeah," Ken said dismissively. "But we've long since resolved that. I'm
telling you, we just don't fight very often. And she was her normal self
earlier today."



Chadworth scratched his chin for a second and then stifled a burp. "I'll
tell you what I'll do, my ass buddy," he said. "I'll send an emergency
breakthrough signal to her PC. If she has it turned on, it'll force it to
answer so, if nothing else, she'll at least be able to hear me talking to
her."



"And then you'll let me talk to her?" Ken asked eagerly.



"No, I'll ask her if she's okay and let her know you want to speak with her.
If she's not under duress of any kind and she still doesn't want to talk to
you, then you're shit outta luck."



"I see," Ken said. "And what if she doesn't answer you?"



"Well, then we'll start to think about getting a tracking order from the
judge so we can see where she's at. Sound like a blowjob?"



"It does," Ken said gratefully. "Thanks."



"Ain't no skin off my ass," Chadworth assured him. "Hang on the screen. I'm
gonna put you on hold."



His holograph disappeared and was replaced by on-hold entertainment,
something else that had certainly changed since the old telephone and
automated answering system days. Instead of cheesy pop music from the
previous generation, a clip from a pornographic movie appeared. It was a
threesome between two men and a woman. Ken hardly watched it. He lit up a
cigarette and paced nervously around the computer desk. He managed to smoke
it all the way down to the butt and fire up another one before the screen
changed and Chadworth's hologram reappeared.



"You there, Dawg?" he asked.



"I'm here," Ken said, rushing back over. "Did you get hold of her? Did she
answer you?"



"Fuckin' aye," Chadworth said. "The emergency breakthrough did the trick."



"Is she okay? What did she say? Why isn't she answering me?"



"She's okay," he said. "Although she seems to be a bit intoxicated."



"Intoxicated?" he asked.



"Fuckin' aye, on alcohol it would seem. Anyway, she hasn't been kidnapped or
anything like that. She just seems to be rankin' pissed off at you."



"Pissed off at me? What for?"



"She didn't say," he said. "And it ain't none of my business anyway. All she
told me was she is okay and she knows you were trying to com her and track
her but she don't want to talk to you right now."



"But..."



"She said to tell you she'll be home when she gets home," he said. "And then
she d/c'd the com."



"Well, can you com her back and..."



"Fuck no, I won't com her back," he said. "That was one fired up slut, my
ass buddy. If I was you, I wouldn't do whatever it was that you did to get
her like that again."



"But I don't know what I did," Ken replied.



"Don't know what to tell you," Chadworth told him. "In any case, she's where
she's at and doing what she's doing of her own free will, in my opinion, so
there's no need for the cops to be involved any further. You down with it?"



"Yeah," he sighed. "I'm down with it."



"Fuckin' aye then. Have wet dreams, Dawg."



With that, the screen went blank. Ken continued to stare at it, puffing on
his cigarette from time to time, wondering just what the hell was going on.



+++++



It was after midnight when the front door finally slid open and Slurry came
staggering in. Her hair was in disarray and the odor of alcohol exuded from
her like a low-grade gas. Her eyes were bloodshot and she had several
scrapes on her knees, as if she'd fallen down a few times. Ken was sitting
on the couch, waiting for her, an overflowing ashtray and several empty beer
bottles before him. He stood up to meet her and winced at the glare she shot
at him.



"Slurry?" he said carefully. "What's going on?"



"Take a flying fuck at Phobos," she spat at him, her words heavily slurred.



"Look, obviously you're upset about something I've done, but..."



She barked out sarcastic laughter, interrupting him. "Obviously I'm upset?
Well that's the Laura-damned understatement of the fucking
post-revolutionary period, isn't it?"



"What did I do, Slurry?" he asked, keeping his voice as calm as possible. "I
have no idea what's going on."



"It's not what you've done," she said, a sob breaking out of her mouth,
seemingly against her will. "It's what you're going to do!"



"What I'm going to do? What do you mean?"



Her sobs grew worse and her words quickly became incoherent. She cried
great, drunken tears of grief and anger and Ken had not the slightest idea
why. He tried to take her in his arms, to comfort her, but she shook him off
almost violently, storming away toward the spare bedroom.



"Slurry," he cried, going after her.



"Leave me alone!" she yelled, stepping through the door. "Just leave me the
fuck alone!"



The door slid shut, leaving him standing in the hallway. He heard a beep
from the control panel next to it, indicating she had locked it from the
inside. He could have easily overridden the lock-it was his right as one of
the registered residents-but he didn't. As a former cop he knew that trying
to reason with someone as hostile as Slurry was-especially when such a
person was drunk-was a recipe for disaster. He would just let her cool off
for the night and maybe she would discuss this with him rationally tomorrow.



He went to bed a little bit later but it was several hours before he managed
to fall into a fitful sleep. When he awoke at 0800 the next morning, Slurry
was still in the spare bedroom. It was nearly 1000 before she finally
emerged, still wearing the same clothes she had worn the night before, her
face a textbook example of pain and misery.



The hostility seemed to have diminished considerably but she was still quite
obviously upset as she went to the kitchen and poured herself a large glass
of DeHang-a Martian developed hangover remedy that was a mixture of water,
sodium, potassium, acetaminophen, vitamin B-12, and glucose. She drank down
nearly a liter of it before staggering into the living room and plopping
herself on the couch. She moaned, putting an ice pack against her forehead
and leaning backward.



"Are you okay?" Ken asked her softly.



"I'll live," she grunted.



Silence ruled for another five minutes, both of them just sitting there.
Finally Ken forced himself to break it. "Are you going to tell me what this
is all about?"



She sighed. "I can't," she told him.



"You can't?"



"I can't," she repeated. "It would be a violation of my secrecy oath."



Now he felt anger stirring within him. "So you get all pissed off at me,
ignore my coms, call me names, lock yourself in the spare bedroom all night,
and now you tell me you can't say what I've done to warrant this because of
a freakin' secrecy oath?"



"That's right," she said.



"That's unacceptable, Slurry," he said. "You can't treat me like this and
not tell me why. You said it was because of something I'm going to do. What
the hell does that mean?"



Another sigh. "To tell you the truth, Ken, I really don't know what it
means."



"Slurry..."



"I can't say anymore," she told him. "I can't! And for more than one reason
too. In the first place, I don't even understand what I've found out. All I
know is that you're going to break my heart."



"Break your heart? What do you mean? I would never do that! I love you
Slurry. That's why I asked you to marry me."



"I know you love me, Ken," she said. "I really do. And I love you too.
That's why this hurts so much."



"Why what hurts so much?" he cried, frustrated and confused.



"What you're going to do."



"What in the fuck am I going to do?" he nearly screamed, his temper flirting
with the breaking point.



But she was insistent that she couldn't tell him and no matter how much he
demanded it of her, she would not give him so much of a hint. Round and
round they went on the subject, not approaching anything that even resembled
a compromise or a middle ground.



"So where do we go from here?" he finally asked. "Are you going to divorce
me?"



"I thought about it," she said slowly. "I really did."



"And?"



"And I don't think I will," she said analytically.



"I see."



"I'm sorry, Ken," she said, showing something like affection for the first
time. "I know how all of this must seem to you and I know that, in a way,
it's unfair of me to be angry with you for something you haven't even done
yet. I just can't help myself. I'm still in shock."



He knew better than to ask what she was in shock about. They had already
beaten that particular issue well into the ground. "So that still leaves us
with the question of what happens now?"



"I'm going to try to get over this," she said. "I think I can do that. I'm
strong."



"Slurry..."



"I think maybe we can get back to where we were," she said. "It's worth a
try anyway. I think maybe I can forgive you in advance."



"Jeez," Ken said. "This conversation is like something out of freakin' Alice
in Wonderland."



"I know," she said. "And again, I'm sorry. Let's try to go on, okay. Let's
just try. I think it's important, for more than one reason."



"Okay," he said. What else was there to say?



"But there is one thing," she said, her voice dropping lower, a tear forming
in her eye.



"What's that?"



"We need to keep our reproductive blocks active," she said.



"Keep them active? But Slurry, I thought you wanted to have children right
away. Why would we stop those plans now?"



"It's just not a good idea right now," she said. "You'll have to trust me,
Ken. We need to wait and see how this is going to pan out before we have
kids."



This precipitated another long discussion that became quite heated at times,
but in the end he was forced to agree with her. They would leave the
reproductive blocks in place for now.



+++++



"I handled it quite badly I'm afraid," Slurry told Rigger Johannesburg the
next day.



"Yes," Rigger agreed. "It sounds like you did. Although I must say it's
understandable considering the magnitude of what you've discovered. I'm not
sure if I would have handled it any better. Even so, you were flirting with
violating your secrecy oath."



"I know," she said. "I'm sorry. I let my emotions get out of control."



"Again, understandable if not condonable. You can't let this happen again
though. If it does..." He let the threat remain open.



Slurry got the message. "I'm down with it," she said. "But Rig, what does it
mean? How could those modifications to the digital images have possibly been
put there? How?"



"I don't know," he said. "Not exactly anyway, although it is quite
suggestive, isn't it?"



"It's rankin' terrifying to think about it."



"But obviously, it's meant to be," he said. "And we as historians have to
consider that very carefully."



"What do you mean?"



He gave her a pitying look. "I suspect there will come a time, and very soon
now if I read this correctly, when the fulfillment of what is meant to be
and the choice of not fulfilling it will rest on your shoulders."



"Mine?" she asked. "How could it rest on mine? I don't understand."



"You will," he told her cryptically.



+++++



Back on earth, Amanda breathed, "Oh my God," trembling with desire as she
saw Julie emerge from the bedroom. It was now quite evident what Julie had
meant when she said she had a surprise for her.



"You wanted to see me, Ma'am?" Julie asked, making her voice high pitched
and nervous, the voice of an innocent teen called to the teacher's office.
"I hope I haven't done anything wrong."



Amanda could hardly talk for a moment as she continued to take in her
lover's attire. The Catholic schoolgirl outfit had changed little in the
past 200 years. Not even the length of the pleated skirt had suffered from
the Public Morals Act restrictions since, as a religious symbol (as the
horny old men who had written the law deemed it) it was exempt from the "no
higher than the distal end of the tibia" mandate other skirts were bound by.
The hem was six centimeters below Julie's pretty knees, just ten centimeters
above the top of the white knee socks. Julie had also done her hair in
classic Catholic schoolgirl fashion. It was braided into pigtails that hung
down to her shoulders. The net effect of all this was both startling and
gloriously erotic. Julie's youthful face combined with the outfit made her
look exactly like what she was portraying-a sixteen year old girl from a
religious school.



"Ma'am?" Julie repeated, taking tentative, nervous steps forward, acting the
part as well as looking it. "This isn't about me and Cindy looking at the
dirty Web site, is it?"



"Where... where did you get that?" Amanda stammered, unable to take her eyes
from her legs in that skirt.



"We just found that site accidentally, Ma'am," Julie said, not allowing
herself to be jerked from her role. "We didn't mean to look at it."



"Julie... I... uh...," Amanda continued to stammer, unsure what to say, what
to do, alternately terrified of this game her lover was playing and
incredibly aroused by it. She had always harbored fantasies about pubescent
Catholic schoolgirls and their oh-so-erotic outfits. And now, here was Julie
before her, dressed and looking exactly like a manifestation of that fantasy
come to life.



Julie, of course, had not just stumbled upon this particular sex fantasy by
chance; although that was the impression she intended to leave Amanda. Study
of the porn sites Amanda had perused over the years and the pictures she had
seemed most smitten with had revealed this potential kink in her armor long
before. Now was just the right time to finally give it a shot. The
schoolgirl outfit-as well as all of the lingerie she had worn for Amanda
during their relationship-had come down a few months before from one of the
Martian stealth platforms in orbit around Earth during a routine personnel
change out. "I know it was naughty, Ma'am," she said, taking another clumsy
step forward, "but I hope you're not going to... you know... spank me or
anything."



"Sp... sp... spank you?" Amanda said quietly, her eye nearly glazing over
with lust at the very word.



Julie suppressed a smile. She knew she was playing extremely dirty now.
Spanking was another one of Amanda's dark, secret fantasies, both giving and
receiving of. "Yes," she said. "I know that's the punishment for getting
caught looking at naughty pictures, but you don't really have to do that, do
you? You don't have to make me lay on your lap so you can pull up my little
skirt and spank my bottom... do you?"



"Oh God," Amanda breathed, going through another shudder. The glaze in her
eyes became almost insane.



"Ma'am?" Julie asked, allowing her bottom lip to quiver. "You're not going
to do it... are you?"



The prudish part of Amanda was shoved to the side by desire. You could
almost see it happen. "Yes," she said at last. "I am going to spank you.
That is the punishment for being... for being... a bad girl."



"Oh please, Ma'am," Julie said, her considerable acting skills putting a
pleading tone in her voice. "I promise I won't ever do it again. I'm not a
bad girl."



"You are though," Amanda told her. "You've been a very bad girl. Now come
over here and take your punishment."



Julie walked forward, stopping just before Amanda's legs, her eyes downcast
as if in shame, her hands clasped behind her back.



"Lay across my lap," Amanda told her, her tongue licking her lips
unconsciously.



Submissively, Julie put her petite body across Amanda's lap so her butt was
in the perfect position. In truth, she was actually getting a bit wet
herself. Spanking was one of those things she liked to fantasize about as
well. "You're not going to pull my panties down and spank my bare butt, are
you?" she asked.



"Yes I am, young lady," Amanda told her, obviously getting into how things
worked in this game. "You will receive the full punishment."



"Oh no, not the full punishment!" Julie cried.



"Yes," Amanda said gleefully. "The full treatment."



Amanda pulled the hem of Julie's skirt upward, over her sexy legs, revealing
her tight butt. Julie was wearing plain cotton panties-as any Catholic
schoolgirl should-but this certainly did not detract from the sexiness of
the situation. Amanda put her hand on the material, unable to keep herself
from caressing for a few moments. She then hooked her fingers into the
waistband and pulled them down, exposing the pale, white ass cheeks.



"Oh please, Ma'am," Julie pleaded, keeping up her role.



"Be quiet, young lady," Amanda told her, "or it'll only be worse."



Amanda slapped her hand down on Julie's butt, the crack of her palm hitting
flesh echoing through the room. Julie cried out at the impact, just as she
was expected to, although it didn't really hurt. Amanda spanked her again,
and then again, her arm rising and falling, some of the blows soft and
loving, some of them hard and almost painful. Julie knew her ass cheeks were
getting red from the punishment, an effect that would undoubtedly drive
Amanda even further into the land of lust. To someone with a spanking
fetish, there was nothing quite like the sight of a reddened bottom.



It went on for almost five minutes, Amanda spanking Julie until her cheeks
were numb and tingling, and, Julie had to admit to herself, her pussy
sopping wet and leaking juices onto the cotton of Amanda's skirt. Finally
the hand stopped. Amanda hesitated. She was panting with lust and as turned
on as Julie had ever seen her, but she didn't know what to do next. The
role-playing game was new for her.



But Julie knew. She stood up, her panties still around her knees, turning so
she was right before Amanda, her crotch just below face level. "It hurts so
bad, Ma'am," she said pitifully.



"Well, I uh... hope you've learned your lesson, young lady," Amanda told
her, playing along.



"But... something happened to me while you were spanking me," she said next.



"What's that?"



"I got all... wet down there... in my poochie."



"Your poochie?" Amanda asked, her eyes widening.



"Yes Ma'am," she said. "My poochie. That's what Sister O'Callahan wants us
to call it. It's the same thing that happened when Cindy and I were looking
at those naughty pictures. My poochie got all wet. Do you think there's
something wrong with it?"



"Uh... no, there's nothing wrong with it," Amanda said hesitantly, missing
her opening.



But again, Julie knew what to do. "Well," she said, lifting her skirt up
slowly, revealing said poochie in all its wet and hairy glory, "can you just
look at it for me? Make sure everything is okay. It's kind of itchy too,
like I need to scratch it."



This pushed Amanda neatly over the edge. Her hands reached out, grasping
Julie by her reddened ass, and pulled her crotch forcefully into her face.
Julie moaned in true pleasure as she felt that experienced tongue jabbing
out, licking up and down her swollen lips, gathering that wetness, savoring
it.



"Oh... Ma'am," Julie moaned, letting the sensation take her away.



Amanda ate her to orgasm right there, her hands gripping her ass, her lips
sucking her clit until she nearly exploded into her mouth. She then took her
to the floor and ate her some more, driving her face into her, rubbing it
back and forth, licking and sucking at her like a woman possessed. She drew
two more orgasms from Julie before they even left the floor.



Even then, they didn't go far. Amanda stripped off her pantyhose from
beneath her prim and proper skirt and sat down on the couch. She grabbed
Julie by the pigtails and yanked on them, drawing her face into her own
crotch. Julie gave her best, as she always did. It was only a matter of
minutes before Amanda's first come of the evening exploded from her-its
force nearly enough to make her pass out.



Eventually, they moved to Amanda's bedroom. Though Amanda quickly stripped
off all of her own clothing, she insisted that Julie keep the schoolgirl
outfit on and the pigtails in her hair. It was a request Julie complied with
gladly. The passion brought out in Amanda by the sight of her in the outfit
surpassed even her wildest dreams.



For the next ninety minutes they engaged in a lustful, sweaty, profane, and
most of all, satisfying session of lovemaking. Amanda came no less than six
times, Julie eight, a record for her with a non-Martian partner. Finally,
after the last tingles of orgasm faded away, they cuddled together atop the
covers, Julie resting her head on Amanda's bare breast, Amanda's hand still
gently caressing that beautiful, reddened ass beneath the skirt.



"God, I love you, Julie," Amanda told her. "I've never felt anything like
what I feel for you right now. Not even with Loraine. How did you know about
my Catholic schoolgirl kink? And the spanking? I've never told anyone about
that before."



"I love you too, Mands," Julie answered, craning her head up and planting a
quick kiss on her lover's mouth. By now she didn't even felt guilty when she
told the lie, when she played with her mark's emotions as she was now doing.
It was something that had to be done, that was all. "And everyone who likes
poochie likes a Catholic schoolgirl. It wasn't that hard to set up."



Amanda giggled. "You must have quite the black market connections, you
naughty girl. How much did an outfit like that cost you anyway?"



"Not nearly as much as you might think," Julie said slyly.



"Well it certainly got my attention. My God. You look so damn hot in that
thing. Just like a sixteen-year-old girl, pigtails and all. Will you wear it
for me again sometime?"



"Anytime you want, baby," she told her. "Anytime you want."



They basked a little more, both of them cuddling, feeling their flesh
pressed together, enjoying the body heat they shared. Julie was actually
starting to drift off toward sleep when Amanda finally spoke up again.



"I really do love you, you know?" she said softly.



"I know you do, Mands," she said sleepily. "And I really do love you. It's a
pity we can't be out in the open, isn't it?"



"Yes," Amanda hissed, shaking her head in anger. "All because people think
what we do is perverted and wrong. What are we doing that's hurting anyone?"



"Nothing," Julie said, the fatigue backing off a bit as she sensed the anger
in her lover. "We're doing nothing wrong."



"Am I a poor physicist because I like to sleep with women?" Amanda asked.
"Does that make me more incompetent, more of a security risk?"



"Of course not," Julie told her.



"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I'm just lost in one of my
injustice moods. It really gets my chicken sometimes how we're treated. How
we have to hide who we are. I mean, I love WestHem as much as anyone, but
it's not my fault I fell in love with a woman, that my desires are for
women. I didn't ask for this. Why should they have the right to tell me I
can't do what my heart wants?"



"They shouldn't," Julie said, her mind whizzing as she tried to think of a
way to take advantage of this situation.



"Damn right they shouldn't," Amanda said bitterly, lapsing into
uncharacteristic profanity.



Julie took a chance. "You ever thought that maybe..." she stopped, knowing
of course that Amanda wouldn't allow her to drop it. "Never mind."



"No," Amanda said. "What were you going to say?"



"Well..." she said carefully. "I was just thinking... maybe those greenies
aren't so bad after all."



"The greenies?" she asked. "They're a bunch of fascist pigs! Everyone knows
that."



"Yes," Julie said, "but they do allow homosexual couples to wed, don't they?
You ever thought about... you know... sneaking off to Mars? Like those navy
people did that time in that stealth ship? Like those sailors and merchant
marines do when they're in port there? After all, if we went there, we could
get married. We could be with each other all the time. I hear the greenies
will even let you have children if you can find a sperm donor."



Amanda didn't speak for the longest time. Julie was afraid that maybe she
had spoken too much, that she had maybe tipped her hand and aroused Amanda's
suspicions that her lover was really too good to be true. She held her
breath, knowing that she should not be the next one to talk, that trying to
convince Amanda further would do nothing but raise those suspicions if they
were present.



"It is tempting," Amanda finally said.



Julie suppressed a sigh of relief. "Then maybe we should think about it,"
she said. "I mean, really, you know that Mars can't be as bad as they say it
is, right? And we could be together."



There was another long pause. Finally, she said, "It wouldn't do any good."



"What do you mean?" Julie asked carefully. "I know it would be hard to get
there, but we could at least..."



"No," Amanda interrupted. "You don't understand. It really wouldn't do any
good. In about a year things will be different on Mars. They'll be the same
as they are in WestHem."



Julie commanded herself to mentally count to ten before replying. Laura, she
was getting so close here. She could not screw this up now. "What do you
mean, Mands?" she finally asked. "How much different could it be?"



"Very different," she said sadly. "You'll have to trust me on this."



"Is it because of that weapon you're working on?"



"It's not a weapon," Amanda told her. "It's not going to kill anyone, but it
will change Mars very suddenly."



"How much could it change them?" Julie asked her. "I mean, sure, we'll
occupy the planet again and be in control of all their food, but WestHem
won't be able to just change how all Martians feel. They'll still have to
let the greenies have most of the things they already have. I mean, maybe
they'll make homosexual marriage illegal, but the people will still remember
they accepted it and we would be able to live together there without anyone
minding or arresting us."



"No," Amanda insisted. "You don't understand."



"Make me understand," Julie said, taking a huge chance. "Why wouldn't we be
allowed to be together if we went to Mars?"



Amanda looked at her seriously. "If I tell you, you can't tell anyone else,"
she said. "Not ever. Not even when you're an old woman in a nursing home
about to die."



"Okay," Julie said, fighting back the excitement.



Amanda took a deep breath. "When the project I'm working on goes on line
next year, Mars will go back to being a WestHem colony instantly, without
any fighting, without any invasion. It will be like the greenies were never
independent in the first place."



"What do you mean?"



"It's called a Lemondrop reactor," Amanda said. "It's something that WestHem
spies stole from the Martians about ten years after their revolution,
something their physicists developed and tested but that they then decided
was too dangerous. They shelved the technology, buried it, but we still had
it. And now, we're about to use it for our own purposes, to right what
shouldn't have happened in the first place-namely, the Martian Revolution."



"What does a Lemondrop reactor do?" Julie asked.



Amanda told her. Julie did an excellent job of feigning shock.



"You're kidding," she said. "That's not possible, is it?"



"It's more than possible," she said. "The greenies have already tested a
small reactor back when they first developed the technology. Their test was
rather benign but it worked just like it was supposed to. You have to
understand that the reactor burns itself out during use so we can only make
one and manufacture enough anti-matter for one, but we're pretty sure we
know what to do."



"That's insane, Mandy," Julie said. "How can you possibly know what's going
to happen if you start messing around with stuff like that?"



"Oh, we're being very careful," Amanda assured her. "Believe me, our
scientists and historians have been working for years on just how to utilize
the one shot we'll get. They've come up with a scenario that will have very
little impact on anything but the Martian revolution itself."



"How could they do that?" Julie asked. She did a commendable job of making
it sound like casual curiosity even though it was perhaps the most important
question she, or anyone else in the history of the solar system, had ever
asked before.



"It's very simple," Amanda told her. "Now remember, you cannot tell anyone
about what I'm saying. I'm violating my security clearance."



"I won't," Julie promised.



"Okay," Amanda said, satisfied with her sincerity. "What they're going to do
is..."



+++++



It took less than 12 hours for the information to make its way to the
Martian capital building and the office of Mitsy Brown. She was told to
cancel her early meetings so she could receive a briefing on Project
Counterdrop first thing this Tuesday morning. Such a proclamation guaranteed
it would be done. At this point there was absolutely nothing more deserving
of attention from the Martian executive branch than Project Counterdrop. The
entire fate of Mars, and possibly the solar system in general, rested upon
it.



Roscoe Reamer, Planetary Security Adviser, was the one giving the briefing.
As was the norm during classified discussions, Dianne Mingus and Reef
Haverty, senior members of the Senate and Legislature, respectively, were
present as well to provide the constitutionally required oversight for
matters of secrecy.



"We know what they're going to do," Reamer announced once the meeting was
called to order.



"Thank Laura," whispered both Mingus and Haverty in unison. Though they were
only providing oversight, both had been privy to the Counterdrop information
long enough that the thought of WestHem actually activating that reactor
kept them awake at night.



Mitsy kept her divine gratitude to herself for the time being. She was all
business. "Lay it on us," she told Reamer.



He laid it on them, speaking almost verbatim the words that Amanda Hesper
had told Julie Dittmeyer half a day before.



"Idiots," Mitsy said, shaking her head. "Have we confirmed this
information?"



"We have not," Reamer admitted. "Nor are we likely to. The source, however,
has been deemed an eight on the 1-10 scale of reliability. I'd rather not
reveal just how we came by it, but let's say it is a contact that has been
worked for nearly a year now. Our agent on the ground on Earth and our
intelligence department both feel this is reliable information."



"And it's the only information we're likely to get?" Mitsy asked.



"Fuckin' aye," Reamer said. "My thoughts are that we have no other choice
but to assume it correct. We're not going to get anything else in the time
we have left."



"Laura," Mitsy said. "Do they really think that utilizing that reactor for
something like this is harmless? They're deluded."



Reamer shrugged. The question of whether the WestHems thought their plan
harmless or not was immaterial to him, the important point was that they
planned to try it. "In any case, we at least have a starting point for our
Counterdrop team. We need to start making our plans immediately."



"I agree," Mitsy said.



"I'll get started right away," Reamer said. "There is one other thing
though."



"What's that?"



"I think we should get the MHAD involved in this. They'll be a great help."



"Fuckin' aye," Mitsy told him. "Make it so."