Red Planet Blues

FIFTEEN





Buttrick looked up suspiciously as Dirk and I entered the bar. He opened his mouth, as if to issue an automatic complaint about me needing to pay off my tab, but closed it, presumably realizing I was uncharacteristically up-to-date.

“A pretty-boy transfer is gonna come in here in a few minutes,” I said. “Long hair, short beard. Send him to the booth in the back, would you?”

“All right,” Buttrick said as he polished a glass in classic bartender mode. “But no rough stuff.”

I threw up my hands. “You wreck a joint one time . . . !”

Dirk and I headed to the back. I chose this booth because it was near the door to the kitchen, which had its own exit into an alleyway; it was always good to have an escape route in mind. This booth also had my favorite bit of graffiti carved into the tabletop: “Back in ten minutes—Godot.”

Shortly after we sat—side by side, both of us facing the rest of the bar, Dirk on the inside of the booth and me on the outside—Diana appeared, and I got up and gave her a hug. She stretched up to kiss me on the cheek. “Hey, baby,” I said.

Dirk, I noticed, was content to look at Diana’s killer rack while she and I spoke. “Hi, honey,” she replied, smiling warmly at me; she had a great smile. I brushed some of her brown hair away from her brown eyes. “Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too,” I replied, and I kissed her briefly on the mouth. Diana stole a look over her shoulder to see if Buttrick was watching. He was. She turned back to me, flashed her smile again, and said, “The usual?”

I nodded, and she tipped her head down to look at seated Dirk. “And for you, tiger?”

Dirk hesitated. I’d been there before: the moment when you’re supposed to order something but can’t really afford to.

“On me,” I said, returning to the booth.

“Beer,” he replied.

“Domestic or imported?”

“Domestic,” I responded. No need to go crazy.

There were only three domestic choices, all synthetic. Diana rattled them off in what I realized was descending order of crappiness. Dirk hesitated again; he clearly hadn’t been on Mars long enough to know the brands. “Bring him a Wilhelm,” I said—which was a cute name for a beer, if you knew Mars history; Wilhelm Beer and his partner produced the first globe of the Red Planet back in 1830.

Diana headed off, hips swaying. I watched, and I imagined Dirk did, too. Blues was playing over the speakers—I think it was Muddy Waters. “When Berling gets here,” I said to the kid, “watch him like a hawk. I don’t know what his game is, but he’s one angry man.”

“Here he comes,” Dirk replied.

It hadn’t been twenty minutes, and that made me even more alert; Berling might have been getting here early to plan his own escape after an altercation. Buttrick pointed in our direction; Berling nodded and headed this way. He passed Diana, but he didn’t spare her a glance; well, he was sleeping with Vivien Leigh. When he reached us, he sat down. I liked having the wide table between us; he couldn’t grab my neck or punch me across it.

“Who’s this?” he said, indicating Dirk with a movement of Krikor Ajemian’s head.

“My assistant,” I said, and before Berling could object to his presence, I pressed on. “You wanted to talk about—that ship.”

He nodded. “You just startled me, is all, when you brought it up at Gargalian’s.” He looked past me, more or less at the door to the kitchen, which I knew had a round window in it. “You know, when I went to NewYou, I asked them if there was any way to edit out portions of my memories as they did the transfer, but they said that’s not possible. I’d trade all my fossils to get rid of those memories, those flashbacks.”

At that moment, Diana reappeared, depositing my gin and Dirk’s beer. “And for you?” she said to Berling.

He looked at her with a blank expression. Alcohol was wasted on transfers, and most of them soon gave up paying for it; they could get a buzz or deaden their pain in other ways. Buttrick could rightly say, “We don’t serve their kind in here”—but only because they almost never came in.

“Nothing,” he said. Diana headed off. This time I didn’t watch her depart; I didn’t take my eyes off Berling.

“I didn’t know the history of that ship when I brought it up,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Berling scowled. “What happened aboard the Traven”—here in the darkened back corner, he was willing to utter part of the name—“was horrific.”

I took a sip of my gin.

“You’ve got to understand,” Berling continued. “We were young kids, most of us.” He glanced at Dirk. “Kids like you. Some looking to make a fortune, some looking for adventure, some just looking to get away from Earth. We knew it’d be harsh, but we assumed it would be harsh after we got here.” He shook his head. “You know why I’m still here? After all these mears? Because I’m terrified of spaceships—couldn’t ever bring myself to fly on one again. Not after what happened on the Traven.”

I tried to make light of it. “Turned out okay,” I said. “You must have finally struck it big to buy new bodies for you and your wife.”

“Yeah, I’ve had some luck at last. A couple of new species of rhizomorphs; previously unknown taxons always fetch top coin.”

“Good for you. Never had much luck hunting fossils myself.”

He placed his perfect hands on the scratched tabletop, palms down. “So, what exactly is it that you’re investigating?”

“Some cargo that had been brought here aboard the Traven has turned up.”

Berling narrowed his eyes. “Cargo?” But then he nodded. “You mean the land mines.”

I kept an impassive expression. “What do you know about them?”

“I first heard about them after we landed—somebody discovered some in the cargo hold, or something like that, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Christ, if I’d known about them while we were still in transit, I’d have set them off. Anything to put an end to it all.”

I’d wondered if it had been Berling himself who had brought them on that voyage. After all, he clearly had access to high-quality fossils—which might mean the Alpha. But, judging by the deteriorated state of the unexploded mine Pickover had brought to my office, I’d assumed they’d been planted many years ago, and Berling had apparently only recently come into wealth. “Do you know who smuggled them aboard?” I asked.

“I didn’t at the time. Like I said, I didn’t even know they were there. But after we got to Mars, yeah, I figured it out. It was . . .” He trailed off.

“Yes?” I prodded, lifting my eyebrows.

Berling tilted his head. “How did you know my wife had transferred, too?”

Oh, crap. “I do quality-assurance follow-ups for NewYou,” I said. “You know that. She’s on the list the franchise here gave me to interview next week.”

“No, you don’t,” said Berling. “I was at NewYou a few days ago, getting a couple of minor adjustments made. I asked the new owner there, Fernandez, about you. He said, sure, he knows you, but he doesn’t employ you. Said when you’d talked to me before you were investigating the disappearance of the previous owner, Joshua Wilkins, who I guess had transferred the same day I had. But when you came to see me about that, Lacie hadn’t transferred yet.”

“I work for the head office on Earth,” I said. “I stopped by your place, but you weren’t home.”

His eyes narrowed. “Lacie never mentioned that.”

“Anyway,” I said lightly, “you were saying the person who brought the explosives aboard the Traven was . . . ?

But it was too late. Berling was on his feet. He didn’t have enough to justify attacking me right there—but he certainly had his suspicions. “I knew I shouldn’t trust you, Lomax,” he said and stormed out.

I downed the rest of my gin. Dirk, wisely, didn’t say a word.