Red Planet Blues

FORTY-SEVEN





Diana, with her gorgeous new body, drove by my place to pick me up in Juan’s buggy.

“How’d seeing Juan go?” I asked.

She smiled, and although it wasn’t the smile of hers I was used to, it was still very pleasant. “He’s such a sweetheart,” she said. “He was so relieved that I was still alive.”

“I bet.”

“But—funny. I knew he liked me; I mean—come on—it was painfully obvious. But he didn’t look at me the same way this time. I know I’m ten times better-looking now than I was before, but . . .” She shrugged a little. “Maybe there is something to be said for people who like you just the way you are . . . or were.”

“Maybe,” I said softly.

We drove to NewYou and collected the dead transfer body that had housed the bootleg Rory. Horatio Fernandez, per my instructions, had put the fried brain of the legitimate Pickover into the empty skull. In good mobster fashion, Diana and I stuffed the cybercorpse into the trunk. We then headed to the western airlock and drove through the tunnel there and out onto the surface.

I’d said before that newcomers to Mars sometimes hurt themselves because they feel invincible in the low gravity. I imagined something similar could happen with transfers: the combination of enhanced strength and feeble gravity makes them feel like comic-book superheroes. And Joshua Wilkins—poor, grieving Joshua Wilkins, who had recently lost his doting wife Cassandra—would quite plausibly have felt more reckless than most.

There were amazing places on Mars, and if a tourist industry ever develops here, I’m sure the brochures will feature Valles Marineris and Olympus Mons—respectively, the solar system’s longest canyon and its largest volcano. Either of those would have done well for our purpose, but unfortunately they were both clear around the globe from Isidis Planitia. But Rory—who, of course, knew his geology—suggested a suitable spot closer to home. There was a dried lava flow extending thirteen kilometers from a mountain peak in Nili Patera. The sides of the flow were steep, and in some places featured an eighty-meter sheer drop.

Diana and I had brought along some climbing gear—carbon-fiber rope, a piton gun, and so forth—to make it look like old Joshua-never-Josh had decided to try his luck rappelling down the lava flow. We found the steepest edge we could along its length, opened the trunk, and carried the body to the precipice. I took one leg, Diana took the other, and we dangled it headfirst over the edge. “Count of three,” I said. “One, two, three.”

We let it go and watched it fall in that wonderful Martian slow motion, down, down, down, descending a height equal to that of a twenty-seven-story office tower. Mars, being Mars, served up a Wile E. Coyote falling-off-the-cliff-style puff of dust when the body hit.

It might be years or mears, or decades or mecades, until the body was found, but, when it was, I’m sure the coroner’s report will read “death by misadventure.” If my time ever comes, I’d like the same thing, I think—beats all hell out of being gunned down by an ex-wife, strangled by a creditor, or knifed by a disgruntled client.

The trip back to the dome took the better part of a day, and that gave Diana and me plenty of time to talk. And, after several hours, with the sun low behind us and the sky ahead purpling, I decided to pop the question—the one that had been swirling at the back of my mind ever since I discovered that she was still alive. But getting to it required some setup, so, as we continued east, I said, “I think it’s time to change things around a little.”

“Oh?” replied Diana, turning her lovely head to look at me.

“Yeah. I’m tired of being the only private detective on Mars.”

“What would you do instead?”

“No, no, no. I’m not talking about quitting. I love my work; to quote one of my predecessors, this is my métier. But I’m thinking about taking on a partner.”

“Maybe Dougal McCrae would like to join you,” Diana offered. “I imagine he gets tired of all the paperwork that goes with being a cop.”

“No, not him.” I took one hand off the steering wheel and swept it back and forth in front of me, as if indicating lines of text. “Can’t you just see it? Light streaming through a window with two names painted on it, and the names visible as shadows on the floor: ‘Lomax and Connally, Private Investigators.’”

She looked surprised, but whether at the vocational suggestion or at the discovery that I knew her last name, I wasn’t sure.

“Well?” I said. “You certainly can’t keep working at The Bent Chisel. No one wants to be served booze by a transfer; it’s like having a Mormon bartender—the vibe is all wrong. And, sure, I know you don’t need to pay the life-support tax anymore, but surely you still want to make some money.”

She looked at me with lustrous acrylic eyes, and her voice was soft. “Oh, Alex . . .”

“Yes?”

“Alex, baby, don’t you get it? I transferred for a reason.”

“Of course. Immortality. Eternal youth.”

“Not that; none of that matters to me. But, honey, I’ve been here twelve years, and, unlike you, I haven’t been going to the gym. I wanted strength.”

“You’ve certainly got that,” I said. “That’s one of the reasons you’d make a great partner.”

She shook her head gently, the blonde hair glistening as she did so. “Stop for a second.”

I did, and she turned around in her seat and pointed through the clear canopy. At first I thought she was referring to the body we’d disposed of—as if that was an impediment to being a private eye—but then I realized she was indicating the evening star, a sapphire glowing low in the western sky.

“Earth?” I said.

“Earth. I’m going home, and I’ll weigh three times there what I weighed here. I could never have managed it in my old body. But in this body, I’ll do just fine.”

“But what’s Earth got that Mars doesn’t?”

The question was facetious, of course; the list was almost endless. But, still, her answer surprised me. “Reiko.”

“She’s here.”

“For now. But she wants to go home; she never intended to settle here permanently—and, frankly, neither did I; it just sort of happened. Reiko and I are booked on the return flight of the Kathryn Denning.”

“But Reiko’s still biological, no? And she’ll weigh three times as much there, too.”

“Sure. But she’s only been on Mars for a couple of months, and she’s been working out. She’ll have no trouble readjusting to a full gee.”

“I’ve never seen her at Gully’s.”

“That dump? Alex, she works out at the Amsterdam.”

“I’m going to miss you,” I said.

“Come see me. Surely that’s why you’ve been working out, right? So you could go home someday?”

“Someday,” I said quietly. “Maybe.” I looked again at the blue planet, slowly setting behind us, then turned and started the buggy up. We drove in silence for the next hour or more, and when we did start talking again, it was about nothing of consequence.

Finally, we made it back to the New Klondike dome. We parked Juan’s buggy, and I returned my rented surface suit, and, of course, I escorted Diana back to her place; it was, after all, almost 4:00 a.m.—although, realistically, she was in a better position now to protect me than I was to protect her. I wondered if she was going to invite me to spend what little was left of the night, but, as we headed up the rickety stairs to her apartment, she said, “Reiko’s staying over, although I’m sure she’s sound asleep by now.”

I nodded, accepting that.

“But if you can wait for just a minute . . .” She unlocked her door and went in without turning on the lights; perhaps she was using infrared vision to do whatever she wanted to do. She came out again carrying a plain white bag, and she moved in and gave me a hug—a gentle one, as if she still wasn’t sure of her own strength. “It’s been fun, Alex.”

She then reached into the white bag and pulled out another bag, one with a shiny rainbow-sheen finish and U-shaped handles secured by a red satiny ribbon. “I got you a little gift,” she said. “Something to remember me by.” She handed it to me. “Go ahead. Open it.”

I was no better with the knot in the ribbon than Dr. Pickover had been with the knot in Lakshmi’s lasso. Diana, who had longer fingernails, laughed a little and took the package back briefly to undo the bow. She then handed it to me, and I opened up the bag and pulled out its contents—a crisp gray fedora.

“Now you’ve got a real hat to tip at people,” she said.

I picked it up by the crown and positioned it carefully on the top of my head. The fit was perfect. I lifted it and gave its inaugural tip to Diana.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said, and I leaned in and kissed her on the lips one last time.

“My pleasure,” Diana replied. “Take care of yourself, won’t you, Alex?”

“Always have,” I said. “Always will.”

I walked down the stairs and out into the lonely night.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR





Robert J. Sawyer’s novel FlashForward was the basis for the ABC TV series of the same name, and he was a scriptwriter for that program.

Rob is a lifelong space buff. In 2007, he participated in the invitation-only workshop The Future of Intelligence in the Cosmos at the NASA Ames Research Center. In 2010 and again in 2012, he was the only science-fiction writer invited to speak at the SETI Institute’s first two SETIcon conferences on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In 2011, he became an invited contributor to the 100 Year Starship initiative, sponsored by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). A thirty-year member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, a member of both The Planetary Society and The Mars Society, and a graduate of the NASA-sponsored Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop, Rob has published in Archaeology, Nature, Science, and Sky & Telescope, and has done science commentary on-air for both the CBC and the BBC.

Rob is one of only eight writers ever to win all three of the world’s top awards for best science-fiction novel of the year: the Hugo (which he won in 2003 for Hominids), the Nebula (which he won in 1996 for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which he won in 2006 for Mindscan). According to The Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards, he has won more awards for his novels than anyone else in the history of the science-fiction and fantasy fields.

He’s also won an Arthur Ellis Award from Crime Writers of Canada, and The Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper named his previous SF/mystery crossover Illegal Alien “the best Canadian mystery novel of the year.”

Rob hosts the Canadian skeptical television series Supernatural Investigator. He has been writer-in-residence at The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy in Toronto; at the Canadian Light Source, Canada’s national synchrotron research facility, in Saskatoon (a position created specifically for him); and at Berton House in Dawson City.

Rob has received an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University and the Alumni Award of Distinction from Ryerson University, and he was the first-ever recipient of Humanist Canada’s Humanism in the Arts Award. Quill & Quire, the Canadian publishing trade journal, calls him “one of the thirty most influential, innovative, and just plain powerful people in Canadian publishing.” His website and blog are at sfwriter.com, and on Twitter and Facebook he’s RobertJSawyer.