Chapter 7

The office, only six square meters total, was actually somewhat modest considering its occupant was the most powerful person on Mars. The desk, made of synthetic material, was no different than any other desk found in any other office in the Martian capital building. There was no luxurious couch, no wet bar, no real trappings of power such as what would be found in a head of state's office in Ken's day. A computer monitor sat atop the desk with a printer next to it. The carpet was standard pile, not exactly low quality, but certainly not as nice as what Karen Valentine enjoyed in her home. The plainness of the office was deliberate, symbolic of the fact that the woman who occupied it was considered no better than any other Martian on the planet.

Governor Mitsy Brown was 21 years old. She was marginally attractive, with pleasantly styled brunette hair, piercing brown eyes, and the dark skin that indicated a considerable amount of African-American and Oriental blood in her ancestry. Like any Martian who worked in an office building for a living, her clothing was very skimpy, not the least bit elitist. As she sat behind her desk, sipping a cup of coffee brewed from WestHem beans, she was dressed in a pair of brief tan shorts and a bright blue half-top that showed off her cleavage, which was her most impressive feature. She was not a representative of the ruling class, for there was no ruling class on Mars. She was a high school teacher by trade, her subject political science. Her career in Martian politics had begun only seven years earlier, when she received notice that she had been selected for planetary legislature duty for Eden's district 19.

The lower house of the Martian congress was, at any particular time, filled at least one third full of conscripts to the job instead of elected officials. The Martian constitution stated that participating in government was not just a right of every citizen, but a responsibility. Positions in the legislature were filled in much the same manner jury duty had once been filled on Earth. Each legislative district consisted of approximately 200,000 people. Any adult in that district over the age of eleven, who possessed a bachelor's degree or better and who had no criminal record, was eligible for conscription. The term was for one year of service and very few excuses for why a person could not accept the duties of office were accepted. After a person served his or her year he or she could then retire from politics for life and go back to his or her job (the Martian constitution demanded that the job be held for them during their service), or they could run for re-election to the office for another term. If they chose the latter option, as Mitsy Brown had, their name was put on the ballot for their district in the next election, their opponent the unknown new conscript. There were no political parties or platforms on Mars, only individuals. If the legislature member had done a good enough job that their constituents felt they were a better bet than the unknown new person, they would be re-elected. If they weren't re-elected, they were banned from politics for life. The limit for the planetary legislature was three terms. At that point a candidate was eligible to run for a position in the senate, the upper house of Martian congress.

The senate, where most of the important decisions were made, consisted entirely of elected officials who had maxed out their legislative terms. Only those who had gained the respect of their districts as well as the surrounding districts were voted in. Each Martian city was allowed two members of the senate, for a grand total of 26 members for the entire body. Martian citizens had learned since the revolution to research their choice for senator very carefully before voting. Gone were the days when ten-second sound bytes during political commercials or who was the most attractive on television swayed the average voter. Martians now voted based on the record of the individual running and whether the politician's views agreed with their own.

Mitsy Brown, like most of the post-revolutionary Martian governors before her, had not grown up with the ambition to one day administer policy over the entire planet. Instead, she had found that she had a flair for the job of politician, a natural leadership ability, and so, after her first term as a conscript, she had steadily moved forward, impressing enough of those who voted each time that she was always overwhelmingly elected to each higher office. She was now eight Martian months into her first term as governor and had already been touted as one of the most effective at the job since the great Laura Whiting herself. She herself found the job much lower key than she had expected. In truth, there was not all that much turmoil, not all that many agonizing decisions to be made. By this point in Martian history the government and the citizens had both evolved to the point that things practically ran by themselves.

Today, however, things were just a little different. Today the first major crisis of her governorship had been placed before her, a crisis that could potentially damage the planet in ways worse than a fully armed surprise attack by EastHem and WestHem forces. It was a crisis that had been many years in development, spanning the administration of three previous governors but that was now coming to full-blown worrisome status during her tenure. Didn't she just have all the luck?

Sitting before her desk was Roscoe Reamer, the Planetary Security Advisor. He was twenty-five years old and had spent the majority of his working life in the intelligence business, steadily rising through the ranks due to his almost uncanny efficiency at the tasks of gathering and analyzing information. He had been in his current position for almost seven years now and had advised two previous governors on how to keep the planet safe from WestHem or EastHem encroachment or influence. Unlike in the Earthling systems, past and present, his was not a position that changed with each new administration. It was simply part of the government apparatus.

Also present in the room were Diana Mingus, a senior member of the senate, and Reef Haverty, a senior member of the legislature. They were here for observation of the briefing she was to receive since the classified information clause of the constitution had been invoked for the matter at hand. Secrecy in government operations was forbidden in the Martian system except in grave matters of planetary security where public knowledge of what was being discussed could potentially jeopardize lives. In the rare instance that a discussion was declared classified, congressional oversight by one member of each house was mandatory.

"Computer," Mitsy said. "This is a classified discussion. Invoke clause seventeen-assfuck-nine."

"Fuckin' aye," the computer replied. "Confirmation is required."

"Legislature Mingus is down with it and confirms," Mingus said.

"Senator Haverty is down with it and confirms as well," Haverty added.

"Fuckin' aye," the computer said cheerfully. "I'm down with the confirmation. Seventeen-assfuck-nine is in effect in this room until ordered terminated. Recording devices are still in operation but no public release of the transcript will be allowed unless authorized by legally prescribed means."

"Good enough," Mitsy said, taking another sip of her coffee. "Roscoe, lay the briefing on us."

"Fuckin' aye," he told her, leaning forward over the desk. He took a deep breath, his expression grave. He was obviously not very happy about what he had to report. "We have just received conformation that the Sythro particle accelerator lab facility in Mexico City has gone into full production of anti-matter."

Mitsy winced as she heard the report. Though she had been expecting just such affirmation of her fears, it was still a shock to hear it come out of his mouth. "This is certain?" she asked.

"Fuckin' aye," he said solemnly. "We have numerous assets in Southern WestHem, including two reliable contacts inside the Sythro facility itself. My analysts assure me this is solid information. Sythro is now working three shifts at double capacity on all three particle accelerators on site. We also have preliminary evidence that the Sythro Lab sites in Calgary and Tulsa are gearing up for greatly increased production as well. WestHem is planning to produce a shitload of anti-matter, much more than normal or even abnormal weapons production would call for."

"I see," Mitsy said softly, pulling a cigarette out of box on her desk and lighting it up. She took a deep drag and then exhaled the smoke slowly into the room. "And you are certain that this anti-matter is not for an advanced propulsion drive for a new spacecraft?"

"Absolutely certain," he replied. "We have every shipbuilding facility in WestHem and EastHem thoroughly infiltrated by men and women loyal to our ideology. If there was an advanced spacecraft project going on in any of the existing facilities, we would have gotten wind of it long before they reached the point of producing anti-matter for it. In addition, neither WestHem nor EastHem has the technology available to them to produce the amount of anti-matter needed for such a ship even if they were building one. We are at least a decade ahead of them in quantum physics technology and we are still nowhere near being able to produce anti-matter on that sort of scale."

"Assuming a worst case scenario," Mitsy asked, "how much will they be able to produce? And how fast will they be able to produce it?"

"Our knowledge of their particle accelerator specifics is quite detailed," he said. "If every particle accelerator in WestHem ran full-speed ahead, 24 hours a day, with only routine maintenance shut-downs made, they will be able to produce approximately 250 kilograms per Earth year, or about 500 kilos per Martian year."

Mitsy whistled softly. "Oh Laura," she said nervously.

"That's a worse case scenario," Beamer reminded her. "A more likely scenario is of only half that amount. I seriously doubt that WestHem would commit all of its particle accelerators to such a project, no matter how compelling their reasoning is."

"They're still producing an awful lot of anti-matter though, aren't they?"

"They are," he agreed. "Which forces us to ask ourselves why the WestHem government, an institution thoroughly corrupted and motivated only by profit margin, would expend vast amounts of capital to manufacture this material in this amount."

"And only one explanation seems to make sense," Mitsy said. It was not a question.

"Correct," Reamer said, taking out a cigarette of his own. He paused to light it, took a quick drag, and then looked at his boss. "They're incapable of producing enough to power a propulsion system but they are producing many times more than is required for weapons needs. There is only one anti-matter application that requires the amount they could conceivably produce. I'm afraid our worst fear is going to come true. WestHem is preparing to utilize the knowledge they acquired on Project Lemondrop."

"Project Lemondrop," Mitsy said angrily. "Those flapping physicists at the University of Triad. They should have never been allowed to pursue that line of research."

Reamer kept his face neutral. The last three governors had all said the same thing every time they'd been briefed on some aspect of Project Lemondrop or the aftermath of it. "That is unfortunately a moot statement," he told the current governor. "The drive in the early post-revolutionary days was to pursue every conceivable avenue of physics and medicine that had not been allowed under the WestHem system because of funding problems. The superior education our students received at the new universities provided the brainpower for the research to take place. Lemondrop was only one more intriguing aspect of quantum physics that demanded exploration, just like the research into teleportation and anti-matter production. Those scientists and engineers probably had no idea they would actually come up with a functioning system. They thought they were just going to prove that Lemondrop couldn't be done."

"But did they ever consider the ramifications of what they were doing?" Mitsy asked. "They had to know that WestHem would copy their research and try to duplicate it."

"Sadly, the thirst for knowledge often drowns out such concerns. In any case, what is done is done. The research was done, was perfected, and WestHem did manage to get their hands on a copy of it. And now it very much appears that the so-called deep space research station they've been constructing beyond the orbit of Pluto is exactly what we've always been afraid it was."

Mitsy nodded solemnly. That an ambitious construction project of some sort had been taking place in interstellar space beyond Pluto had been evident to both Martian intelligence and EastHem intelligence for the past four Martian years. The suspicious nature of the project had been quite evident as well. The WestHem navy had declared the site a military exclusion zone with a perimeter of more than half a million kilometers. 22 California class superdreadnoughts, 35 Owl stealth attack ships, and 50 long-range destroyers, nearly half of the WestHem navy, patrolled this perimeter. Any EastHem or Martian vessel attempting to enter this perimeter was immediately challenged and driven off. This was a particularly aggressive and expensive method of protecting a deep-space research station, which is what WestHem claimed the structure was. That the structure was actually a Project Lemondrop application had been suspected from the start. Now, with the anti-matter production intelligence, the suspicion was as good as confirmed.

"It is truly frightening to think what WestHem will try to do with this application," Mitsy said. "For Laura's sake, don't they realize the possible consequences?"

"The consequences could be far-reaching and quite vast," Reamer said. "And there is truly no way to predict what they may be. That is why we outlawed further research into Lemondrop and further testing of the application. It was only common sense."

"Exactly," Mitsy said.

"But with WestHem, you're not dealing with people who utilize common sense. They see a possible advantage by utilizing Lemondrop and, once those in power appear to be in favor of it, those who advise them will twist and distort their analysis to support the use of it instead of giving a fair and impartial report. Any scientist or engineer who disagrees with what the powers-that-be want done, anyone who will try to say, "Hey, maybe we'd better think about this a little," will be discredited and dismissed from their position. That's how things work on Earth. That's the way things have always worked on Earth."

Mitsy sighed again, hiding the fear she felt inside. "Can we prevent them from carrying out the project?" she asked.

"If you're talking militarily, that is doubtful," he replied. "Our navy is technologically more advanced than theirs, but much smaller in size. We have enough ships and weapons to prevent invasion of our planet or of Rhea, where our fuel gathering facilities are based. We have enough stealth attack ships to hit their supply lines very hard and to protect our own. We do not, however, have enough firepower to force our way through the exclusion zone around that research station and still guarantee its destruction. Even attempting such a thing would require enough ships that we not be able to protect Mars and Rhea from counterattack. That, as I'm sure you're aware, is a direct violation of our military doctrine and I'm quite sure the commander of the Navy would refuse such an order as the constitution demands she do."

"So we can't directly attack the facility," Mitsy said.

"Correct," he confirmed. "The other military option would be to try attacking the supply ships carrying the anti-matter itself as they delivered it to the station. This is not really viable either. The WestHem navy will undoubtedly utilize numerous heavily armed escorts for each shipment and will probably use dupe supply ships within the convey itself. Finding the exact ship that carries the material and successfully destroying it will be extremely difficult to accomplish and would probably result in unacceptable losses."

"So you're telling me there is no way to prevent WestHem from utilizing Lemondrop," she said.

"You're down with it," he confirmed. "That is totally the shit. In approximately two years, maybe a little more, they will have enough anti-matter produced for a single utilization of Lemondrop and there is really no way for us to prevent it."

"So what are our options?" Mitsy asked him, although she already had a pretty good idea.

"We need to initiate Operation Counterdrop," he said simply. "And we need to initiate it as soon as possible."

"That's what I was afraid you would say," she said. Counterdrop was one of the few secret military plans that had been formulated by the Martians since the revolution. Its details, its very existence in fact, was known only by a few people in the planetary security department, a few scientists and engineers, a few top military leaders, the governor, and the two members of the executive oversight team. Its inception had been a direct result of the possibility that either WestHem or EastHem would try to utilize Project Lemondrop technology for their own means.

"There is really no other choice," Reamer said. "We have to construct our own Lemondrop reactor in order to counter theirs. And we have to construct it in secrecy, in order to keep them from learning we plan to counter them. Fortunately, we have all of the components, including that of the reactor itself, pre-fabricated and in storage at Whiting City in orbit around Rhea. It's just a matter of transporting these components and a construction crew to the assembly location."

"You say that like it's an easy task," Mitsy said. "You're talking about moving six hundred thousand tons of materials and more than eight hundred construction workers from Rhea to interstellar space without EastHem or WestHem detecting it."

"There is a plan for doing this. We'll use stealth attack ships with skeleton crews to transport everything little by little and keep the project supplied. It will take fifteen months to complete delivery of the components and another three months to assemble them. We are confident this can be done without detection."

"And what about the other aspects of the plan?" she asked. "The anti-matter production comes primarily to mind. We will need to produce twice as much anti-matter as WestHem, will we not?"

"Fuckin' aye," he agreed. "We will have to utilize Lemondrop twice where they will only have to utilize it once. But as I told you earlier, our particle accelerator technology is much more advanced than WestHem's. The numbers have been crunched many times. We can produce enough in the time allotted to carry off the operation. Of course, there is the matter of the explanation for the increased production."

"Yes," Mitsy said, distaste clearly audible in her tone. "We have to lie to the citizens. Something I took an oath never to do."

"I find it as repugnant as you do," Reamer told her. "I myself took that oath as well. But in that same oath was the vow to use our common sense in all official decisions and matters. The common sense of keeping the project secret overrules the demand for honesty in this case. We simply cannot hide the increased production of anti-matter. Nor can we give a vague explanation for what we want it for. Mars is rife with WestHem and EastHem spies, Mitsy. You know that as well as I do."

"Yes," she said. "I do." And it was true. Each year EastHem and WestHem sent dozens of intelligence agents to Mars mixed in among the thousands of legitimate immigrants. Though well over half of these spies decided after less than a year that they liked the Martian way of living better and defected, turning over their equipment and giving up the names of their contacts to Martian authorities, the other half was infiltrated far and wide throughout Martian society. This was how the Project Lemondrop information had gotten to WestHem in the first place, by a WestHem spy on the research team.

"You can bet your ass they have agents within the particle accelerator facilities," Reamer said. "The moment we increase production, they'll know about it, just as we knew about their increased production. The cover project is an integral part of Counterdrop. We have to have, not just an explanation for why we need the anti-matter, but an explanation backed up by concrete facts that they will actually believe. That's why there really is an interstellar ship project. That's why we really are working on an anti-matter drive. Not just so we can explore Alpha Centauri, but so, if the time came, as it now has, we could explain why we suddenly need to produce two tons of anti-matter. It isn't enough for a full-blown drive of course, but it's a plausible amount to test a prototype engine in laboratory conditions. The fact that we are actually close to producing such a prototype drive, and that there are undoubtedly WestHem spies on the research team who can confirm this, will set the WestHem intelligence services at ease, especially if they catch no hint that we're constructing any large structures in deep space."

"I understand the concept, Roscoe," Mitsy said. "It doesn't mean I have to like it. It goes against the Martian grain. It's a very Earthling thing to do."

"But you'll order it put into effect?" he asked.

"Yes," she sighed. "I'll order it put into effect." She looked at Mingus and Haverty. "This order will require oversight confirmation," she told them. "Do both of you understand the ramifications and specifics of what is being proposed here?"

"Fuckin' aye," Mingus said softly. "I don't like it either. It makes me feel skanky just to contemplate it, but I confirm the order."

"As do I," Haverty said. "The order is confirmed."

"Fuck my ass then," Reamer said. "I'll start making the preparations immediately."

"Really, Marcella," Ken said nervously, looking down at his naked crotch, "I don't think I can do this. This is starting to look like one of those videos they used to show us in aviator survival school about what the enemy would do if they captured you."

Marcella seemed to think this was a joke. She laughed dutifully and continued attaching the electrical connection to his rapidly deflating penis. Just a minute before he had been as turgid as steel in her hand, as he always was when she touched him in intimacy, but now, as she clamped the VED, or "virtual enhancement device" to him, the blood was rapidly fleeing to other parts of his body. The VED was an evil-looking plastic thing that fit over his entire cock and was connected to the computer plug-in via a cord that looked like a coaxial cable. It was, according to Marcella, the means by which most Martian men and boys masturbated these days.

"Has anyone ever been injured by one of these things?" Ken asked her.

"No," she said simply. "Although there are those who become addicted to them and never leave their house. Trust me, you'll like it."

"But what exactly is it going to do to me?" he wanted to know. "You told me it works electrically. In my day, guys did not like having the word 'electricity' and 'penis' mentioned in the same sentence."

"It's not exactly electricity," she told him. "At least not in the way you're thinking about it. All it does is stimulate your nerve cells artificially, so they're fooled into thinking you're really feeling the sensations that occur inside the VR fantasy. So, if you're in a fantasy and the computer woman is sucking your cock, the cells will be stimulated in such a way so your cock actually feels like it's in a mouth. If you're fucking a pussy, it'll feel like you're in a pussy. You see? Very simple."

"Very simple, huh?" he asked, dubious. "This thing is sending electrical charges into my nerve cells, manipulating them, and it's very simple?"

"Fuckin' aye," she said, making one last adjustment. She picked up two more attachments, each of which looked like a thick woolen mitten with coaxial trailing out of the end. "The same principal applies to the nerve cells in your hands. You put these on and, when you touch the computer woman's tits in the fantasy, you'll feel like you're touching real tits. When you slide a finger in her pussy, you'll feel like you're doing that too."

"And this doesn't cause cancer or anything like that?"

This truly made her laugh. "Cancer?" she cackled, shaking her head. "Spread my cheeks and lick between 'em. There's no such thing as cancer anymore. That's like asking if fucking will give you AIDS."

"I see," he said slowly. He still wasn't quite used to the fact that things that had been deadly serious issues back in his time-cancer, AIDS, heart disease, strokes, spinal cord injuries-were nothing but examples of how primitive the twentieth and twenty-first century Earthlings had been to the Martians. They worried about such things about as much as people in his day used to worry about scurvy, or blood poisoning, or polio.

This was not the first such revelation he'd had in the two weeks he'd been awake about how the advanced Martian medical science created entirely different outlooks on life. In a society where no contagious disease existed, where no debilitating medical conditions lurked in the shadows, where virtually the only things that caused death were accidents and extremely old age, the entire psyche of the populace was on a different plain.

The biggest example of this he'd noticed was how sacred the Martians considered the sanctity of life. In extending their lifespan to levels unheard of in human history, the Martians had created a fear of accidental or unnatural death that bordered on the psychotically paranoid. Martians did not engage in any sport or hobby that conceivably could cause death as a result of simple malfunction or miscalculation. There was no drive to build fast vehicles for the purpose of racing them. There was no skydiving for fun, no bullfighting or bull riding, no hang gliding. The word daredevil was simply not in the Martian vocabulary.

This paranoia extended into the workplace as well. Martian factory workers, construction workers, pilots, agricultural workers, and other occupations that were inherently dangerous worked under the strict guidelines of an occupational and safety administration that demanded enough safety equipment and procedures to all but guarantee a worker could not be killed by misfortune or negligence at his or her worksite. Spacesuits for those workers who had to go outside the safety of the city environment contained multiple failsafe and back-up systems so no one could suffocate or decompress in the event of a problem. Construction workers were outfitted with magnetic boots and tethered with unbreakable hemp ropes at all times. Agricultural machinery was outfitted with computer-operated proximity detectors that would shut everything down if a worker came into a zone where he or she could be placed in any danger of death. Even the military, as dangerous a job as that was, had been outfitted with enough safety devices and protection systems to make accidental death during flight, or armored exercise, or infantry training, to be all but unheard of. In the event of an actual war, Martian military doctrine itself was designed with the preservation of the lives of the soldiers its prime directive, even at the expense of losing territory and key positions.

Since awakening, Ken had been following closely the Martian newscasts on the Internet stations in order to help acclimate himself to their culture. In the past two weeks one of the top stories had concerned a twelve-year-old woman in the city of Libby who had been killed accidentally while working in the city's water recycling plant. Apparently a piece of steel debris had become lodged in a compressed air line somewhere, creating a build-up of high pressure. While trying to clear the line, the debris had come loose, shot out of the line at high velocity, and struck the woman in the head with enough force to kill despite the helmet she'd been wearing. In Ken's day, this would have been considered just one of those quirky events that occurred, worthy of no more than a few lines of print in the back of the local section of the newspaper. On Mars, it was planetary news on the order of the Challenger disaster or the Oklahoma City bombing. Expressions of sadness, horror, sympathy emanated from every city on Mars. Martian citizens were demanding answers as to how such a thing could have happened and how it could be prevented from happening again. The Martian OSHA-an agency with broad police and subpoena powers-was pulling out all stops in its investigation. Engineering experts from all over the planet were examining everything and everyone involved, from the supervisory staff of the plant to the composition of the helmet and the pipe itself. Every day updates were given on the discoveries of the previous day. On the streets, in the bars, and in the coffee shops of New Pittsburgh, the incident was the main topic of conversation. Karen had told him that any industrial accident that caused death was treated with the same gravity and, as such, incidents of this sort were extremely rare, occurring no more than once every two Martian years or so on average.