Chapter 9

"New Pittsburgh tower, this is civ-air flight six-nine," Ken said into the intercom microphone in his bio suit helmet.

"What the fuck's the haps, civ-air six-nine?" answered the air traffic controller on duty at the low altitude terminal. Ken recognized the voice as belonging to John Callahan, a man he had gone out to intoxicant clubs with a few times. John had once allowed Ken to fuck his wife from behind while she fellated him from the front.

"We're clear the air-lock and on the taxiway. All systems are green. You down with it?"

"We're down with it," he confirmed. "Got your flight plan on my screen now. Confirm destination and load."

"Four workers and 200 kilos of tools, bound for magna-track maintenance station 373-Buttfuck. Fuel and oxygen supplies are at maximum, transponder is set, altimeter is calibrated."

"Fuckin' aye, six-nine. You're second in line for take-off, behind civ-air four-four. You got a visual on it?"

Ken looked down the taxiway and saw another hummingbird 500 meters in front of him. It was identical to the one he was now piloting, namely, it was a civilian model that belonged to the nationalized Martian construction and maintenance industry. The civilian models of the aircraft were all painted fluorescent green, a color that contrasted starkly with the Martian surface in case search and rescue was ever needed. Ken knew that Elisa McGovern, one of his colleagues, was piloting the other aircraft on a mission to transport consumables to yet another magna-track maintenance point. "I got a visual," he confirmed. "I copy I'm second in line for take-off behind her. No incomings?"

"Fuck no," he replied. "Nothing until a flight of MPG Mosquitoes enter the landing pattern in 15 minutes. Go ahead and get your ass in the air as soon as four-four clears the runway. Winds are from 276 at 33 KPH. Turn left to 060 upon take-off. Your assigned altitude until clear of the perimeter is 2100 meters."

"I'm down with it," Ken told him, adding a little throttle to the aircraft. "Talk to you when I get back."

"Fuckin' aye."

Ken picked up speed until he was rolling along the taxiway at 40 kilometers per hour. Before him, Martian sand, blown by the constant wind across the surface, created a gentle patter against the windshield. On Mars, blowing sand was something every engineer for every piece of machinery or construction had to deal with in some way. The runway and taxiways he was driving on at the moment had to be plowed twice a day in order to keep the painted lines visible. On the aircraft's air intake manifolds, where the thin atmosphere was sucked in so the meager amounts of oxygen could be utilized for the semi-rocket engines, special screens that had to be changed after every three flight hours were in place.

"Take off in about two minutes or so," Ken said into his flight intercom for the benefit of the four passengers he was carrying. They were sitting in the cargo area, strapped into small seats, all of them wearing biosuits as well. They all nodded at his words and then went back to the conversation they were having among themselves. All were veterans of Hummingbird flights and the least experienced of them still had nearly five times as many hours in one than Ken himself.

He brought the aircraft to a halt at the limit line 200 meters before the head of the runway. Ahead of him, Elisa had just turned her aircraft onto it and was throttling up for take-off. She streaked down the runway, accelerating rapidly and finally lifting off into the sky. She banked right and disappeared over the set of low hills south of the airport, still climbing.

Ken throttled up again, just a bit, moving forward once more. Using the rudder petals he turned onto the runway and made a quick visual check for any obstructions that might be in his path. Of course there was nothing-sensors built into the runway itself would have detected anything larger than a pea-but it was part of his checklist to look anyway. If there was one thing that had been ingrained in him during his training at UME, it was safety first, even to the point of mind-numbing redundancy.

Once aligned on the runway, he pushed the two main throttles slowly forward to maximum thrust. A roar of power filled the aircraft, sending gentle but insistent vibration through the fuselage as hydrogen and oxygen combusted in the two engines and the thrust was expelled out behind them. They picked up speed quickly, the digital speedometer on his HUD winding upward so fast the individual numbers were unreadable. At 320 kilometers per hour he pulled back on the control stick with his right hand. The nose of the aircraft came up and there was a slight thump as the landing wheels left the surface of the runway. There was no ocean to define sea-level on Mars, so the base 0 altitude, from which every other surface altitude was calculated, was the ground floor of the Capital Building in downtown New Pittsburgh, home of the first settlement on Mars. The altimeter display began to wind upward, from 010 meters at ground level through 500 meters in a matter of seconds. He pulled a lever on the panel and retracted the landing gear. At the same time he banked to the left at thirty degrees, evening out the bank at a compass heading of 060 degrees. He throttled down a bit and leveled the aircraft off at an altitude of 2100 meters.

He cleared the air traffic perimeter five minutes later, then banked back to the right a few degrees. Below him, winding back and forth between the hills, he could see the elevated inter-city magna-track. This was the main line that ran from New Pittsburgh to Eden, carrying both passengers and freight at speeds of up to 500 kilometers per hour. It consisted of a single track for much of its length although every fifteen kilometers a one kilometer section of double-tracking was beside it to allow trains moving in opposite directions to pass each other. Currently, no trains were visible from horizon to horizon although that would change soon since passenger trains left both cities every 50 minutes throughout the day.

Maintenance station 373-B was exactly 373 kilometers outside of New Pittsburgh. It consisted of a platform connected to the tracking. A covered structure housed a small transport vehicle the maintenance team in the cargo area would use to make their way out to the section of the track they were scheduled to work on. The flight out there took just under an hour. As he got close, Ken slowly let the aircraft descend. When the platform came into sight ahead of him he was 1000 meters above the ground. He pulled up on the control stick, bringing the nose up, and, with his other hand, manipulated the controls for the thrusters, spinning them slowly downward, changing the aircraft from horizontal flight to vertical. The transition went smoothly enough-by now he had almost three hundred hours at the stick-and he descended slowly toward the landing circle on the edge of the platform. He put the gear down, checked that they were all locked into place, and a minute and a half later came to a soft landing in the middle of the circle, the blast from the engines blowing all of the dust that had settled there free. He went through the power-down checklist step by step, shutting everything but the APU down. Then, and only then, did he open the rear door, allowing the work crew to exit.

They thanked him for the flight and began to gather the many tools they had brought with them and carry them outside onto the platform. Ken remained in the pilot's chair, forbidden by OSHA rules to assist them with the unloading lest he become injured and rendered unable to fly them out of there in a hurry if such a thing became necessary. He was also forbidden to leave the crew out here and pick them up later. If something went wrong with a biosuit, or if someone became critically injured on the job-both extremely unlikely scenarios at best-he had to be able to fly them out of there in minutes. The life of a civilian pilot on Mars was more sitting around and waiting than anything else. Ken didn't mind. It allowed him to engage in two of his favorite non-sexual activities-reading and browsing the Martian Internet-during the waiting period.

Once the work crew was clear of the aircraft and loading their equipment into the transport vehicle, Ken walked out through the back ramp onto the platform, carrying a 30-meter length of electrical cable looped over his left arm. He plugged one end of the cable into an outlet on the edge of the platform. The outlet was powered by the main electrical supply of the track itself, which, in turn, was powered by a fusion reactor back in New Pittsburgh. He stretched out the cord and carried the other end back to the aircraft. Inside an access panel near the number one engine was a shore line jack. He opened the panel and plugged the cord in. It would provide enough power to keep his engines warm and his communications equipment operating. He climbed back into the aircraft, shut the rear ramp to keep the blowing sand out, and then powered down the APU.

That done, he settled into his chair for the long haul, his radio tuned to the emergency frequency in case the work crew needed him. He opened the Internet connection on his suit computer. The home page he had programmed appeared on the heads up display in his helmet. A mouse pad of sorts was installed in the knee section of the suit. Using this to move the curser on the display, he quickly navigated to a site he had been perusing the day before. He had developed an interest lately in the Martian Supreme Court and the various rulings it had handed down in the course of its history. He was continuously amazed at the cases that came before this body and the means by which they came to and explained their take on constitutional issues. Common sense and the good of society, as opposed to an individual, were the guidelines the court used in making their rulings and nothing else was allowed to matter.

The case he was reading now was titled Brannigan vs. Mars and had been ruled upon ten years after the Martian revolution. Magellan Brannigan was a man who thought that working for a living was an activity he just did not enjoy participating in. In the course of his adult years he had worked a variety of jobs, usually for less than a month at a time, and always with large gaps of unemployment between them. One day, during a period of unemployment, he had been drunk and participating in a football game with other residents of the public housing neighborhood in which he lived. He took a particularly hard hit and his spinal cord snapped in his back, rendering him paralyzed from the waist down. Ordinarily this was not a big deal. Simple accelerated cell regeneration could restore the nerve impulses in a matter of weeks, leaving the victim as good as new. But in the case of Mr. Brannigan, he refused to go through with the cell regeneration, stating his religious beliefs forbade him from undergoing advanced medical procedures.

This was all fine and dandy with the Martian government. If someone did not wish to have their paralysis cured, it was his or her constitutional right. The problem started when Mr. Brannigan applied for permanently disabled status, a designation under the constitution that one was assigned when one was no longer able to work due to a physical disability. This would have entitled Brannigan to a monthly government pension for the rest of his life, based on the amount of credits he had earned in previous years. Although most people would not be willing to give up their ability to walk and have sexual relations in exchange for a mere 103 credits per month and a lifetime without having to work, Brannigan seemed to think this was a fine deal. The Martian government, on the other hand, did not agree and denied him permanently disabled status on the grounds that he was making the choice to be permanently disabled. Brannigan appealed the case and, in the way of the Martian bureaucracy, the Supreme Court heard the arguments two weeks later. Brannigan argued that the Martian government was discriminating against his religious beliefs-something that was explicitly forbidden under the constitution. The justices however, did not quite see things this way. While they agreed that Brannigan was entitled to refuse medical care on religious grounds-or on any other grounds for that matter-he was not entitled to collect a disability pension when the disability in question could easily be cured by modern medicine. He was free to remain crippled if he wished and could continue to not work if he wished and could continue to live in public housing and collect his grocery and clothing allotments just like any other citizen, but he would receive no credits from the Martian government unless he developed a disability that could not be cured.

As was the case with Supreme Court decisions in his day, the ramifications of Martian Supreme Court decision stretched well beyond the case in question because of the precedent that was set. Brannigan vs. Mars was applied from that day forward to many less extreme cases that fell along similar lines. Until that point it had been common practice for members of society with a similar work ethic to Brannigan's, when they became injured in some way, to refuse the accelerated treatment offered by the Martian medical science in order to extend the amount of time-off work to which they were entitled. That all came to an end with the Brannigan decision. From that point onward, if a worker refused to accept medical treatment that would allow him or her to return quickly to productive status in society, the payment of credits from the Martian government would stop at the point where they would have reasonably been able to have returned had they accepted it.

Though the decree of the nine-judge Supreme Court was that majority ruled, the decisions they handed down tended to be unanimous. Such was the case with Brannigan vs. Mars. Ken was in the midst of reading through the actual opinion document itself when an icon in the upper right corner of his view suddenly appeared, indicating he had an incoming communication request-the futuristic equivalent of being told he had a phone call. The text beneath the icon told him his caller was Slurry Bagwell.

Slurry was a part-time worker in the cafeteria back at the civilian Hummingbird terminal. She was twelve years old and very reclusive for a Martian-almost as reclusive as Ken himself. Up until a few days before, Ken had barely talked to her, had barely noticed her at all, in fact. And then she had been assigned to the preparation area where the food orders were actually taken instead of the cleaning section. Since then Ken had come into increasing contact with her and his initial impression was that she was not quite the brightest bunny in the forest. She talked to him at strange times, both in person and on his computer link, but never seemed to have anything important to say. This was a very un-Martian manner of communication.

"Answer," he said, just a hint of impatience in his voice. The text document he had been reading instantly disappeared and was replaced by a three-dimensional image of Slurry's face hovering before him. Her ancestry seemed to be largely Hispanic and Caucasian. Her skin was somewhere between olive and pink, her hair straight and dark brunette, her lips pouting. Though she was not heart stoppingly attractive, she was far from what would be considered ugly. "Hi, Slurry," he said. "What's the haps?"

"Oh, hi... uh, Ken," she said, giving a nervous giggle. "What's down with you? Are you flying?"

"Uh... no," he said slowly. "If I were flying right now, I really wouldn't have been able to answer your com."

"Oh... fuckin' aye," she said, blushing. "I guess that makes sense, doesn't it?" She shook her head. "I act like such an Earthling sometimes." Her face became alarmed and she blushed deeper. "Uh... that is... not an Earthling like you... but... you know... an Earthling like..."

"It's okay, Slurry," he reassured her. "I know what you meant."

"I'm sorry," she said, seemingly near tears now. "I'll just leave you alone. Talk to you later."

"Slurry," he said patiently, "did you com me for some reason?"

"Reason?"

"Yeah," he said. "You know, to convey or request some information? That's usually why someone coms someone else."

She shook her head again and then took a deep breath. "I just wanted to know if you'd be back for lunch or not," she finally said. "You know, so I could take the lunch order for you and your crew?"

He took a moment to gather his thoughts before he replied. This was a perfect example of unnecessary communication from her. Instead of calling him up to ask him if he and his crew would be back for lunch, she could have simply asked the operations computer-where an itinerary of his daily schedule had been downloaded-and learned the answer to her enquiry in a quarter of the time. "Uh... no Slurry," he said. "We won't be back for lunch. They're inspecting rivets on a one-kilometer stretch of line today. That'll take 'em about six hours. Looks like we're eating the protein gel for lunch."

"Awww, that's an ass-fuck with a sandpaper dildo," she said sympathetically. She had probably never eaten the protein gel herself since she was not an outside worker, but its reputation was notorious. Ken himself actually didn't think it was all that bad. It came in a variety of flavors ranging from sirloin steak to crab soufflé and did a good job of filling the hole in your belly. To the native Martian pallet, which was, after all, accustomed to a high degree of quality even in the cheapest fast food, the consistency of the gel was an abomination before Laura.

"Well, that's the life we have to live when we choose to put on the biosuit, isn't it?" Ken asked.

"Fuckin' aye," Slurry replied, a tinge of awe in her voice. "Where would Mars be without people like you, Ken?"

Ken couldn't quite decide if she was serious or not. Even after a year of living in their society, he still didn't quite understand the Martian sense of humor. He suspected that she wasn't joking. Slurry was not much of a comedian. "Right in the shitter, I guess," he said. "Anyway, thanks for asking."

"It's too bad you won't be back," she said. "We're making meat loaf today, double sauced, with mac and cheese casserole on the side."

"Uh... yeah, it is too bad," he said, with real regret. The cafeteria's specialty was good old white trash style meals and the workers who prepared them displayed typical Martian pride in their work. Their meatloaf was the best he had ever tasted.

"I'd save you some for when you got back," she said, "but you know how fast the meatloaf goes."

"That's all right, Slurry," he said. "Maybe..."

"We're having bratwurst and potato salad too," she cut in. "Maybe there'll be a little of that left over. Usually that gets all eaten up too, but I think enough people will have the meatloaf or the stroganoff that there might be..."

"Uh, Slurry," he said, swallowing thickly.

"Yeah?"

"Could we stop talking about food? You're making my protein gel lunch sound less and less appetizing by the second here."

She giggled again. "I'm sorry, Ken," she told him. "I'm torturing you, ain't I? Will you forgive me?"

"I forgive you," he assured her.

A silence developed, during which time they both simply stared at each other's image. Finally, Slurry said, "So... how are things going out there? You keeping busy?"

"Just, uh... doing some reading," he said. "That's how I occupy myself during the waiting periods."

She smiled whimsically. "You struck me as a reader," she said. "There's just something about you. I love to read too, you know?"

"Uh... no, I didn't know that."

"Oh, fuckin' aye. Mostly I read stuff for school. I'm a student at Whiting. But when I do get to read for pleasure I like to read historical fiction. You ever read any of that?"

"Uh... well, in a manner of speaking, yes, I've read lots of historical fiction. Most of it more historical than what you're probably used to."

"Like what?" she asked, her eyebrows perking up.

He hadn't really expected her to ask this. He phrased his reply carefully. "Oh, writers from the twentieth century mostly," he said. "You've probably never heard of them."

She gave him an amused grin. "I'll bet you I have," she said.

"Oh really?"

"Really," she said, her demeanor more confident now than he'd ever seen it. "You wanna bet on it?"

"No, that's not really necessary," he said, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice. Why was she still talking to him? Just what was the point of this conversation? Here he was, sitting almost 400 kilometers out in the Martian wastelands having a non-productive conversation over an Internet link with a ditsy cafeteria worker.

"Come on," she challenged again. "At least tell me who your favorite is. You tell me yours and I'll tell you mine."

Figuring it was the best way to get rid of her, so he could go back to reading, he decided he might as well answer her. Then she could say she'd never heard of him and they could terminate the connection. "Okay," he said. "I have lots of favorites, but the author I like best from that... uh... era is a guy named James Michener."

She smiled. "Michener is pretty fucking good," she said.

"You're saying you've heard of him?" he asked with unmasked disbelief.

"Fuckin' aye," she confirmed. "He wrote Hawaii, Poland, Centennial, The Covenant, just to name a few. The quality of his research was impressive for the time period, as was the honesty of his narrative, particularly the books he wrote after the corporations began to rise in power. I think Space is my favorite by him. It's a good look at the history of orbital flight."

Ken blinked, staring at her image. "You've read his works?"

"All of them," she said. "My favorite author from the era is Herman Wouk though. Have you read him?"

"Yes," he said numbly. "Most of his work anyway."

"For entertainment value, The Caine Mutiny is undoubtedly the best. But for sheer historical value, the Winds of War and War and Remembrance series gives an eerily accurate picture of World War II on all fronts. What's unique about this series is that it does not merely utilize the allied point of view, as most World War II literature of the day did. One also gets the Russian, German, and even the Japanese view of the war as well."

Again, he looked at her in sheer surprise, almost unable to believe he was talking to the same person. The ditzy cafeteria worker had suddenly turned into an authority on twentieth century historical literature. How in the hell had that happened? She even used the proper terms for the ethnicities-Russian, German, Japanese. Every other Martian he'd discussed history with in any way simply used the term "Earthling" to describe anyone from the mother planet, no matter what their geographic location or time period. "I've uh... read that series several times," he said. "You're right. It is a comprehensive novel on the war."

"I told you I'd know who you were talking about," she said, somewhat huffily. "I have a bit of a fascination with that particular time period. It was the height of the moralistic hypocrisy period, the beginnings of the corporate take-over of the government. The naiveté and the passion of the people of the time is an interesting historical contrast. Virtually the only place you can see it honestly portrayed is in certain fictional works of the time."

"Uh... yeah," Ken agreed slowly. That did make actually make sense.

"For instance, in Michener's Hawaii, you get a basic step-by-step microcosm of the way big business comes to dominate and eventually control a culture. And this was written nearly twenty Earth years before the super corporations actually began their rise on the mainland. He was very insightful for an Earthling. I'm inclined to believe he was the ancestor of a future Martian. The Martian style of common sense and honesty is reflected in his work."

"I uh... never thought of it that way," Ken said weakly. In just the space of a few minutes he had gone from thinking that Slurry was mentally slow despite Martian medical science to feeling like a complete dumb-ass before her.

She shared more of her insights on twentieth century literature, covering authors from John Irving to Tom Clancy to Stephen King and explaining how each one's style reflected the attitudes and contradictions of the time. Ken found himself fascinated by what she was saying and before long was adding insights of his own and discussing the symbolism and themes in the stories he had read. Before he even realized it, more than an hour had gone by and it was time for Slurry to start working on the lunch menu.

"Its been rankin' bullshitting with you about all of this," she told him. "There aren't many people on Mars who give an asswipe about Earthling literary works. Not even the first generation Earthlings care. They're usually just happy to have escaped from the place."

"I've been accused of being more than a little different than the average Earthling at times," Ken admitted, smiling.

Her eyes twinkled. "Fuckin' aye. You are that. But that's rankin', cause I've been accused of being a little different than the average Martian."

"You are that, Slurry," he told her. "I'd love to talk to you about this again sometime. Feel free to com me again if you get bored."

"I probably won't get much of a chance today," she said. "But I'm off work at 1500. You get off at 1700, don't you?"

"Assuming I'm back from the last flight," he said.

"Maybe we can get together for a drink or something after you get off," she suggested.

"How about dinner and a drink?" he countered, realizing, as the words came out of his mouth, that he was asking a woman out on a date for the first time since he'd asked Annie in his previous life. He'd had plenty of sex on Mars, but no dates. He'd never met anyone he cared to do more than fuck until now.

"You talked me into it," she said. "I'll upload my ID number to you and you can put it in your PC when you get back. Com me when you get off work."

"Right," he said. "I'll do that."

The shy smile was back on her face. It looked happier now than it had earlier. "Bye, Ken," she said. "Have wet dreams."

"Wet dreams," he said, returning the standard Martian farewell statement. A moment later she clicked off and the text of the Martian Supreme Court opinion returned to his vision. It was only then that he realized he did not have the slightest idea just how Martians went about dating.

Slurry's housing building was about two kilometers from Whiting University-the place where Ken had been reawakened. He rode the tram to the nearest station, arriving at 1835 and then walking four blocks from there. Her building had no name, just an address: 4300 East Bradford Avenue. He entered the lobby and walked past the various commercial businesses, finally coming to the bank of elevators. He pushed the call button and a minute later the doors opened. He spoke to the computer, telling it to take him to the 68th floor.

After realizing that he actually had a date with a woman, Ken had commed Karen at her office to get a crash course in Martian dating etiquette. She filled him in on the basics which-as he'd suspected-had changed considerably since his previous dating days. For instance, there were no longer any automobiles or personal transportation. So how did one go about meeting one's date? He wasn't sure if he was supposed to ride the tram over and pick her up, have her come over to his place, or meet her at the intended destination. The answer to this question, Karen told him, depended on just what the circumstances of the date happened to be.

"Who asked who out?" she wanted to know.

"Uh... well, it was kind of a mutual thing," he said. "She suggested drinks and then I suggested drinks and dinner."

"I see, so it was you who modified the initial plan, so that means you were the one who asked her out. If that is the case, you should go pick her up at her place, but first, you let her pick her favorite restaurant. If your intentions toward her are more than just fucking her-and that is usually why we go on dates on Mars-the last thing you want is to have her go to a restaurant in or near your own building. That's suggestive that you want quick sex and is considered rude."

"So I don't want quick sex?" he asked.

"Laura no," she said. "The purpose of dating is to see if you like someone enough to establish a relationship with them. You don't want to have sex right away with a potential mate. The more you like each other, the longer you wait until you fuck the first time."

"You're putting me on," he said.

"Not at all. Manny and I didn't fuck until we'd been dating for almost two months."

"You went two months without sex?" he asked in disbelief. On Mars, among the non-religious population, that had to be near a record.

"No, I went two months without fucking Manny," she corrected. "I still had all the normal sex."

"Let me get this straight," he said. "If I like this woman, I can't fuck her, but it's still okay to fuck other people while we're waiting."

"Of course," she said. "Remember, love and sex aren't mutual in Martian society. There's no need to curtail your physical urges during the initial aspects of the relationship, in fact, most people would go insane if they did."