Chapter 3A

Though there had been many advances in communications technology since the beginning of the space colonization age there was one constant that never changed and probably never would. No matter what carrier for the signal was used, be it encrypted laser beams or modulating radio waves, they could move no faster than the speed of light. As such it was impossible for a person on Mars to hold a real-time conversation with a person on Earth. Even at the closest approach of the two planets — a mere fifty-six million kilometers — it took a message more than three minutes to travel from one place to another. Now, three months after the inauguration, with the two planets within ten degrees of being as far apart as they ever got, it took just under twenty minutes. And even that was not the extreme end of the communications lag. Once the sun became positioned between the two planets it would effectively block all radio waves from traveling from one place to the other in a direct line. All correspondence would then have to be routed first to a communications array in orbit around Jupiter, a step that added anywhere from forty minutes to two hours to the trip, depending upon just where Jupiter was located in the great scheme of things at the time. This period of "extended relay lag" as it was known in government documents, came once every twenty-four months and lasted for six weeks at a time. The next such period was calculated to begin in a little over five weeks.

William Smith sincerely wished that it were upon them right now.

He sat in his desk chair behind his desk in his office, a place that he felt he had been spending far too much time in during the last twelve weeks. He had just watched a scathing communiqué from Steve Carlson, CEO and chief stockholder of Agricorp and arguably the richest man in the solar system; a communiqué that had demanded the most immediate response. To say that Carlson was displeased with the recent events on Mars — a planet where seventy-four percent of his company's products were grown or manufactured — was the equivalent of saying that World War III had been a little skirmish. Agricorp stock, once the staple of the New York Stock Exchange, had fallen by more than a hundred dollars a share thanks to the perceived instabilities caused by the current political crisis. And Carlson, who had calmly expected the troublesome Whiting to be either discredited or dead by her second week in office, was now demanding answers of the man that was supposed to have overseen her removal.

"I thought that you knew how to play the game for keeps," he had told Smith in his icy, unforgiving voice. "I thought you knew what measures needed to be utilized to protect corporate interests over on that flying dust ball they call a planet. Maybe entrusting you with the day-to-day operations of our most important holdings was a mistake. Please report back to me immediately with an explanation of why this communist greenie bitch is still in office over there and still ranting about independence and nationalization."

In the world of corporate politics, where everything was said in doublespeak and innuendo, those were harsh, scathing words indeed. Smith knew that he was within bare inches of losing everything he had worked for over the years. All of the grappling and struggling and back-stabbing that he had done to rise to the position he now held, all of it would be for nothing if the Laura Whiting situation was not brought under control one way or the other. What had started out as an annoyance had quickly become the worst crisis of his entire career.

He sighed and opened up his desk drawer, pulling out a sterling silver box that was about the size of a charging battery for a hand-held laser. Inside was an airtight compartment stuffed with clipped marijuana buds harvested from the Agricorp greenhouses. The buds were of course the very finest available, the kind that were only sold in country club bars and exclusive restaurants for more than eighty dollars per hit. Smith received them for free of course. It was one of the perks of his job. In a felt compartment next to the buds was a small pipe that had been carved from genuine ivory, one of the most expensive substances in the solar system. He loaded the pipe up with a healthy sized pinch and ignited it, drawing deeply. He had been smoking a lot of marijuana lately, just to take edge off.

After exhaling and letting the THC work its way to his tired brain, he put his paraphernalia away and put the box back in his drawer. He then looked at his Internet terminal, which was in stand-by mode, the Agricorp logo the only thing showing. "Computer," he said, "communications software."

"Communications software up," the computer answered as the screen changed.

"Addressee is Steve Carlson, CEO." He took another deep breath and consulted some handwritten notes he had composed. "Begin recording."

The camera light on his terminal blinked on and he looked at the screen, his eyes making solid contact with it, his face showing the pleasant, subservient expression he used when talking to those higher on the ladder than himself. He spent a few moments spouting pleasantries, asking about Carlson's wife, children, and mistress just as if this were a normal business communiqué. Once that was accomplished he turned to the meat of the matter.

"I understand completely your concern that the Laura Whiting matter is still going on despite the passage of twelve weeks since her inauguration," he said. "I also understand the fact that you, as the head of the corporation, would question my abilities as CEO of Martian operations for failing to deal with it. I have no doubt that were our positions reversed, I would be asking the same questions of you and would expect detailed answers. I have always been a loyal manager for this corporation and I must tell you that I have done everything within my power here to dislodge Whiting from high office by one means or another. I have pulled out all of the stops and somehow she has managed to think ahead of us at every step of the way. Whiting is not a typical greenie, Steve, not in the least. Sometimes I'm forced to wonder if she's really a greenie at all. Allow me to summarize the measures we've attempted so far and how she has managed to counter them.

"The impeachment attempt. This was our first attempt to remove her from office and, though it had never been used before, it was the pre-planned method for dealing with such a gross abuse of trust on the part of a politician. The set-up for it was executed perfectly and without anything in the way of opposition from competing corporations. After all, Whiting was not just spouting damaging statements towards Agricorp, but towards all corporations and in fact our very way of life. Every Earth-based corporation on this planet rallied their lobbyists within hours of her inauguration speech and began putting pressure on the members of the legislature that they sponsored. Between us we owned every last one of the sixty-two members of this body and she should have been impeached unanimously within a week of taking her oath.

"Well, you already know how that one worked out. Whiting is a very charismatic speaker and she was somehow able to convince the common greenies to put enough pressure on their elected representatives to derail this process before it was even started. What was worse was the fact that she was able to pervert eleven of the representatives over to her point of view before a vote was even called for.

"And I'm afraid that this perversion of the representatives did not end there. As of this morning here in Eden, a grand total of twenty-nine planetary representatives, twelve of whom had been primarily sponsored by Agricorp, have renounced their previous affiliations and announced support for Whiting and her goals. These representatives will no longer take calls from lobbyists of any kind and will not respond to requests for communications from corporate heads. The Speaker of the Legislature is thankfully still in support of the corporations and she is still one of our employees as it were, but even she has been muted to a certain degree by the happenings here on this planet. For all of her power she is still nothing more than an elected representative that is vulnerable to the recall vote from her constituents. This has forced her to walk a very fine line in regards to which laws she votes upon and what other actions she takes. If she is perceived as being too biased towards us or any other corporation, we may very well lose her to a mass recall vote.

"That brings me to the second way we attempted to remove Whiting from office, namely the media blitz of negative publicity. As you are aware this is the most common and most effective way that we have of dealing with a rogue politician and it's something that has worked well since long before the colonization of this miserable planet. In this case I'm afraid that it is failing. Again, this is not due to any lack of participation on the part of other corporations. On the contrary, each one of the big three media conglomerates have been outdoing themselves in this effort. You receive the feeds back on Earth so I'm sure you know that you can hardly turn on a terminal to one of the big three channels or read one of their publications without finding something negative about Whiting. They've done stories about her past ties with militia groups, they've done stories about her business dealings and skewed votes as a representative, they've done stories hinting that she is a lesbian and a child molester. I'm sure that the people of Earth, if they've been watching this, are completely appalled by Whiting and are probably demanding her immediate removal. But here on Mars we're not dealing with rational people. These greenies watch the media shows but instead of demanding her removal or her indictment, they mock them. They regard them as comedy entertainment. Over the past seven weeks it has developed into something of a ritual that they gather in large groups, smoke marijuana and watch the latest show on Whiting so they can laugh at it. They have discussions in the Internet bulletin boards about how ridiculous the accusations were. The more inflammatory the charges brought are, the more amusing they seem to find it. Even Whiting herself has been poking fun at these shows in those damn bi-weekly addresses that she gives on MarsGroup. I'm afraid that we will not be able to count on the media blitz being any sort of deterrent to her behavior or any sort of vehicle for her removal.

"And then there are some of the other options that we've discussed in the past, namely those involving the Federal Law Enforcement Bureau, which as I'm sure you're aware has always been a great friend to all things corporate. I've been in constant contact with Corban Hayes, the director of the Martian FLEB offices here on Mars, ever since this crisis began. My instinct as a manager is to try to blame this fiasco on him and his agents, first for clearing Whiting for high office in the first place and then for failing to get her out once her true colors became known. That is my instinct but in this case I simply cannot assign any blame to him. As early as the third day of this crisis Hayes and his agents began a thorough investigation into Whiting on corruption and bribery charges. After all, she admitted during her inaugural address and in several subsequent speeches that she took unreported money from various corporations including Agricorp. You'll recall that I explained the plan that the two of us concocted to place blame on Sandy Callahan and several of her middle-management team for giving those bribes. While this would have cost us Callahan and a few others, and while it would have cast a slight pall upon our public relations, it should have resulted in Whiting's indictment and removal from office. Hayes was able to secure a search warrant for Whiting's financial records and bank accounts and everything seemed to be going well and then we hit the snag that killed the plan. All of that unreported money that we gave her over the years — every last dollar of it from the time she was an Eden city council member to her election to governor — it's still sitting in her election account. As incredible as that sounds, all twenty-three million dollars was logged and transferred from her personal account to her campaign account and it is still there, duly documented and technically completely legal from her standpoint. She did not spend so much as a dime of it for her own use. It is doubtful that Hayes would even be able to get an indictment of her on that basis, let alone a conviction. So that is how that plan fell through and it also goes to show just how long Whiting has been planning this little scheme of hers.

"That brought Hayes and myself to the final, most drastic plan for Whiting's removal, that of... well... arranging for an assassin to stalk her and remove her permanently. By the time we reached this point we were desperate, having exhausted almost all other options. Hayes was certainly agreeable enough to making the arrangements and he even had a plan in his files for how to go about such a thing. The problem with this plan is not in the conception or the assets but in the execution. Whiting has an elite battalion of the Martian Planetary Guard providing around the clock security for her. Now most of the MPG are bumbling boobs that like to dress up as soldiers on the weekend and play with guns, but the VIP security arm are not cut from this same mold. They are full-time members of the MPG and they train extensively with the latest weapons and techniques. They know their stuff and Hayes is of the opinion that it would be almost as hard to get to Whiting as it would be to get to one of the executive council members. He is, of course, still looking into the possibilities of the assassin plot but I have been told that it probably will not be feasible unless the MPG drops their guard to some degree."

Smith looked up at the ceiling for a moment, taking a deep breath and allowing the camera to keep rolling. He looked back at the screen. "Steve," he said, "that is my explanation for why Whiting is still in office. I hope you accept it and I hope you will agree that I've done all that I possibly can from my end. I'm dealing with greenies here and sometimes I find it hard to believe that they are actually the same species as we are, their thinking is so different. Now that I've had my say I hope you'll continue to listen to me long enough to tell you just how bad things really are here on Mars and how critical it is that something is done about her.

"Whiting's speeches on MarsGroup are the biggest threat. Twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday at 6:00 New Pittsburgh time, she goes live and gives a ten to twenty minute speech. I've sent copies of them to you and I'm sure you'll agree that she sounds like a raving madwoman spouting a bunch of drivel about freedom and independence and government for the people. She's a goddamn communist, no doubt about it. That is how we perceive her speeches however. These ignorant greenies adore her and they hang on her every word. Each one of those speeches gets more than a ninety percent market share of the viewers on the planet. Ninety percent! Think about that for a moment. Ninety percent is an unheard of amount for any one show no matter what it is and this politician is achieving that with her rants. And believe me when I say that the greenies are not watching her for the sheer entertainment value that she represents, they actually buy into what she is saying. These greenies are actually starting to think that they should be free of WestHem. There are increasing reports of pro-separatist graffiti on corporate buildings and property. I'm afraid that if this trend continues we may start to have some sort of work slowdown or other job action in the greenhouses. I don't have to tell you what that might do to profits.

"The most detrimental effect that we're feeling down here though is the loss of control over the legislature, which has always been our most powerful weapon for keeping the greenies of the labor pool under control. Because of the defection of twenty-nine of the representatives in this body and because of the public pressure on the others that Whiting is fomenting, we have been unable to push through a single one of the twelve bills we had planned for this session. Six of these bills were planetary tax breaks towards food production operations and would have saved us nearly a trillion over the course of the year. The other six were easements on health and safety rules that would have saved us another half a trillion. How long will it be before things start working in reverse and this corrupted legislature body starts proposing increased taxes or greater health and safety requirements? I fear it won't be long at all.

"Steve, I've done everything that I can do from my end. I don't think I've slept a complete night since that bitch was sworn in. I've pulled in every favor and I've threatened almost every person with any sort of power on this shithole planet. None of it has worked. I'm sorry I've failed you and failed the company but please believe that it was not for lack of trying. You can replace me of course and I would understand completely if you did, but you have to realize that my replacement would be stuck with the very same problems and he would not have the same connections here on Mars that I have developed.

"The bottom line is that all of the solutions available on this planet for dealing with this problem have been exhausted. What we need is bigger pressure on bigger people and that means the executive council members and the federal apparatus on your end of the solar system. My suggestion would be that you try to get the FLEB director on Earth to allow Hayes and his people to start cracking down on these greenies as hard as they can. Once you start throwing them in jail and hounding them, they'll think twice about being so vocal in their protestations. And most important of all we need to find a way to remove Whiting from office. That will be the thing that will most effectively defuse this situation. The longer she remains in office, the worse this thing is going to get.

"Awaiting your reply and your instructions. Signing off. End recording."

The camera light blinked off and he let his subservient face slack.

"Email is ready," the computer told him. "Would you like to review?"

"No," he replied. "Just send it off. Use the highest level of encryption."

"Sending mail with level five encryption sequence," he was told. "Would you like to compose more mail?"

"No," he said testily. "Shut down communications software and give me some music. Something classical."

As the soft sound of synthetic instruments filled his office he reached in his drawer and pulled out his sterling silver case once again. He set up another hit and began to wait for the reply.

Meanwhile, 325 stories below, a black and white police cart came driving slowly down Agricorp Avenue, in no particular hurry. Brian and Lisa were inside, Brian behind the wheel, Lisa clucking in amusement at the text upon their dispatch screen. They were not often sent into this part of downtown although it was technically their area of responsibility. Not a lot of crime happened in the business district since most of the office buildings, the monstrous Agricorp included, had their own private security force.

"That must be our victim," Lisa said, pointing as they approached the solar system's tallest building. Sitting outside one of the side entrances on a planter in the street was a middle-aged man in a business suit. He was holding a towel to his face while two Agricorp security guards flanked him.

"Must be," Brian said, pulling to the curb next to them. "Looks like an officious Earthling prick to me."

"One of the ones that's been fucking and raping us all these years," she agreed. "I can't imagine why anyone would want to assault him."

"He probably can't either," Brian said.

They stepped out of the cart and shut the doors, both pausing to adjust their weapons belts before walking over to their victim. The security guards, both of whom were undoubtedly Martians, were clearly amused by the predicament of the man they were supposed to be protecting. Dressed in light blue armor that was more decorative than functional, they had barely concealed smiles upon their faces. One of them, the male half of the team, walked over and met them halfway.

"What do we got?" Lisa asked, pulling her patrol computer from her belt and flipping it open. "An upset corporate manager?"

"You know it," the guard said, letting his smile come forth now that he was no longer in view of the victim. "Mr. Ronald Jerome the Third there is one of the bigwigs in the subsidiary accounting division. It seems that as he was leaving the building to go home this afternoon a group of vermin happened across him and roughed him up a bit."

"I guess the vermin are good for something, aren't they?" Brian said whimsically.

"It's only 1500," Lisa said, checking her watch. "What the hell is he doing leaving work now for?"

"He's one of the upper echelon pricks," the guard replied. "They make the fresh meat work ninety hours a week here but the bosses pretty much come and go whenever the hell they feel like it. They come staggering in here between 1100 and 1300 and then go staggering back out again a few hours later. No one is really sure what it is they even do in there but it must not be very important."

"Are you kidding?" Brian said. "They're the ones that keep this great planet running. Where would we be without Agricorp and their bad-ass management team?"

"Free?" Lisa asked.

"You got that shit right," the guard said. "Anyway, he's all livid that he got manhandled by this 'gang of thugs' as he calls them. He's demanding that you go find them and take them to prison."

This cracked both of the cops up. "Prison for simple assault on an Earthling," Lisa said, shaking her head a little. "What fucking planet does he think he lives on? Christ."

"Let's go talk to him," Brian suggested. "This oughtta be fun."

They walked over, both making little effort to put their professional faces back on. There had been a time not too long before when an assault by a welfare class person upon a corporate person would have been a big deal. A full investigation would have been launched and teams of police officers would have been sent out to comb the ghettos until the perpetrator of perpetrators were found. Once arrested they would have had the proverbial book thrown at them, very likely receiving an extended prison sentence. In WestHem society the question was not what the crime was but who the victim had been. Crimes against corporations and corporate employees were considered much graver than crimes — up to and including murder — against working or welfare class.

But that had been before the inauguration of Laura Whiting and her bi-weekly speeches on MarsGroup. Her dissertations on the inner workings of the various corporations, of how they achieved the blatant political manipulation that kept them in perpetual power, had had a tremendous effect on the people of Mars, both welfare and working class. True everyone had always known that the corporations were the real government of the planet and of WestHem itself, but human nature had commanded that they not think about things that they could not change. What Whiting had done was force them to think about the way things were and to think about the fairness of the situation.

"Life is not fair," Whiting had said in one of her speeches shortly after the successful deflection of the impeachment proceedings. "That is one of our most common sayings as a species. Life is not fair and there's nothing you can do about it. We're taught that in school, in our Internet programming, in the movies that we watch and in the literature that we read. Everyone knows — they know — that life is just not fair and that is that. We know that because that is what they tell us. Isn't that right?

"But has it ever occurred to you, fellow Martians, that they only tell people things like that so that we will accept it, so that we will not try to change the system and come up with something that is fair? Because when you think about it, who is life not fair to? Is it not fair to you, the common people of this planet, or is it not fair to the leaders and the corporations that rule us?

"I don't think I have to have an opinion poll put out to hear your answers. You know and I know that life is not fair to you. The advantages go to those that have the money and the power. And if you were to try and take some of those advantages, some of that fairness, and shift it over to your side, that would necessarily take some of it away from their side. They don't want that. So they tell you just to accept the fact that life isn't fair. They tell you that in a thousand different ways each and every day from the time you are born throughout your entire life until you and everyone else becomes convinced that this is an indisputable fact of life, an unbreakable natural law. It carries the same weight as a law of physics. Parents teach this concept to their children, they believe in it so much. Teachers teach it to their students. Life is not fair and you'll just have to live with that and do the best that you can with the crumbs that you've been given. Isn't that how it is?

"But did you ever stop to think, even for a moment, even just fleetingly, why life has to be unfair? There really are no natural laws that say this has to be so. Fairness and unfairness is a human state of mind and their executions are products of human society. Why shouldn't life be fair? Why couldn't it?"

Of all of the speeches of Laura Whiting it had been this one that had done the most to open the eyes of the Martian people. The power of her words lie not in her presentation but in the blatant simplicity. Why couldn't life be fair? Why couldn't a system that insured life was fair to everyone be developed and put in place? There really was no reason except for the obvious one: the corporations and the government that they controlled did not want life to be fair. They did not want fairness and they would fight with everything that they had to keep it away, to banish it from the very thoughts of the people that had been without it for so long.

And after the speech in which the Martians had it explained to them that life did not really have to be unfair, Laura Whiting had then followed this up with other speeches outlining just how things were unfair in specific instances and just how this benefited those in power. She laid out the inner workings of the Martian and the WestHem systems in a way that high school civics instructors would never have dreamed of. "Money," she told them. "Everything comes down to the common denominator of money. Those that have the most of it are able to use it to pervert even the most moral of us to do their bidding. And who has the most money on this planet? Who controls the flow of money on this planet? Who runs the industries that make this planet such a valuable commodity to the WestHem system?"

Nobody had to be told that Earthlings was the answer to this question. Earthlings owned more than ninety-six percent of the holdings on Mars yet they made up less than two percent of the population at any given time. They made decisions each and every day from their glittering high-rise buildings, decisions that could take away the livelihood of thousands upon thousands of Martians, yet the Earthlings were never laid off and sentenced to perpetual welfare status. The Earthlings employed Martians in their corporations and had them do all of the manual labor, all of the paperwork, all of the cleaning and guarding, yet the Martians were rarely, if ever, invited into upper management positions within those companies. Martians were rarely if ever put in charge of decision making. Martians were allowed into the WestHem armed services where they served with distinction in all branches but they were rarely promoted to officer rank and they were never promoted to command rank.

Whiting pointed out these fallacies and many others to the Martian people twice a week and she had succeeded in transforming what had been seething resentment towards the Earthlings into white hot hatred of them. As William Smith had noted to his superiors, anti-Earthling graffiti had begun to spring up everywhere, on every building where Earthlings could be found. Leaflets expounding everything from general strikes to actual terrorist violence had begun to appear on apartment doors and bulletin boards in housing buildings. And reports of violence against Earthlings — usually random in nature and usually little more than minor harassment — had begun to crop up everywhere on the planet. Though Laura Whiting did not advocate these violent acts in her speeches — on the contrary, she begged her people to show restraint — years of frustration and apathy were being released and it was inevitable that many of the Martians would chose the most basic of human natures to express their discontent.

What was perhaps the most startling about this wave of anti-Earthling violence and vandalism was not its existence in the first place but the acceptance that the Martian criminal justice system showed towards it. There had never been any official memos on the matter, there had never even been verbal instruction from superiors, but through a strange form of osmosis the message had been passed up and down the ranks of the system, from the lowliest patrol cops to the judges and lawyers that ran the show: Crimes against corporate Earthlings were no longer the big deal that they had once been. Why should they be? Why should those that exploited and raped the planet receive special treatment? Reports were still taken of course but gone were the days that resources were wasted in any way tracking down the perpetrators of acts that were being looked at less and less as crimes with each passing Laura Whiting speech.