Chapter 27
The thing Fred liked most about
the Durg Orca from the moment he first stepped through its ancient battered
airlock was the bar’s cramped darkness. Most places, especially here on
Mars, try to effect an airy modern healthy look; all clean smooth cerametal
and bright shiny chrome, fresh cropped shrubbery and shimmer-twisted neon.
The "Durg Orca Bar and Grill" is no such place. First off, it’s a submariner’s
bar. This alone more than explains the bar’s claustrophobic closeness,
its abundant use of dark Martian redwood and antique Earth sailing reproductions.
But beyond that the Durg Orca is an "indy" bar, and as such decidedly non-corporate.
In the very beginning, when Atlantis
Tower stood as no more than a partially completed ten kilometer-wide foundation
ring, the tower's transport pad and sub-pens became a convenient shuttle
point for many of the outlying habitats and independent submariners. During
these early days the Durg Orca, or "prevaricating predatory cetacean" as
the name’s meaning had once been explained, had been little more than a
hand painted sign epoxied to the side of a sealed shipping container; a
warm dry place for indies to hold-up in while waiting for work.
During the project's first two Martian
years Atlantis Corp hadn’t sufficient on-planet corporate personnel to
simultaneously erect the power-tower, effectively maintain their legal
teraforming obligations, and still produce enough marketable aquafarm food-stuffs
to offset the tower's more than formidable construction costs. Fortunately
for Atlantis Corp their personnel crisis came just as most of the independent
habitats on the surrounding planitia were coping with the sudden loss of
forestable lands following the rapid rise in the North Martian Sea. Despite
considerable computer modeling to the contrary most of the local population
were rapidly finding themselves holding no surface-claim and just enough
monetary credits in their accounts to buy into one of the new hybrid tri-subs
flooding out of Utopia’s robot-factories. Wanting to take advantage of
a skilled and highly-motivated local labor force -- Atlantis Corp's only
real hope of staving off almost certain economic collapse -- the company
eagerly afforded the local independent settlers every possible consideration.
The Durg Orca Bar and Grill became one of those considerations.
As the story goes, and Fred has had
to piece most of this together from things he's overheard since first being
hired, during the foundation-ring’s finial pouring one of the local indies
asked Atlantis Corp to lease him space to open up a dining and drinking
establishment near the newly completed permanent sub pens. Onsite Atlantis
Corp executives quickly agreed, but Earthside legals fearing any set termination
date might lead to possible construction delays stipulated that the bar's
lease would lapses when: "Current tower construction renders said establishment’s
lease-hold unserviceable". Apparently Earthside legals hadn’t met very
many Martian indies. On this planet "unserviceable" usually means some
melted lump of slag buried under a megaton of avalanche at the bottom of
the sea. And even then some deep-water dredger would probably try to dig
the poor thing up and salvage it for parts.
Within two days of the lease signing
the bar's owner had four prefab bi-level habitat modules hauled on-site,
welded them together, had them sealed for pressure, then double re-enforced
the whole lot for hoist-point integrity. Within two standard weeks the
bi-level twenty-by-forty meter enclosure included both self-contained bar
and kitchen, reclamating showers and toilets, and could seat and serve
well over one hundred people; most of whom never even left with the goods
purchased to the tune of nearly a kiloton of high-grade bioticly neutral
fertilizer per month. By the end of Atlantis Corp’s next pay-period the
Durg Orca Bar and Grill had by far become the hottest venue within a hundred
kilometers, operating twenty-four-point-six hours a sol, and was completely
self-contained and transportable. So much so that for the next three Martian
years whenever construction came it's way the Durg Orca’s owner simply
arranged to have his bar hoisted up onto the next level, never actually
straying outside his intentionally ill-defined lease-hold. No one thought
much about this until one day some Earthside bean-counter finally noticed
that the Durg Orca sat five levels up from its original location and was
paying them only about two-percent of the site’s estimated rental rate.
The lease had been signed before the foundation's floor had even even been
poured, so there had been no mention of which level the lease secured,
only its section designation. By then Atlantis Corp found itself facing
a serious legal disadvantage. For one, the precedent of lifting the bar
up onto the next level had already been set and re-set at least six times.
The last few at the express bidding of Atlantis Corp management itself.
Both parties apparently resolved the issue in what seems to Fred to be
an extremely friendly settlement wherein the Durg Orca agreed to take permeate
lease-hold on its existing location at fifty-percent of current standard
rates.
On paper the arraignment sounds good
for both parties. The Durg Orca stopped moving up into increasingly expensive
levels which made the Earthside bean-counters happy, and the bar remained
down near the sub pens and the Orca’s primary clientele, easing some of
the owner’s socioeconomic concerns. A few more levels up and the bar would
be completely out of the Industrial section and up in Consumer Commercial
with McDonalds and Macy’s.
Fred never heard anything even resembling
a reasonable explanation for why the corporate types didn’t just leave
the bar sitting up top until they sealed over the habitat; although he'd
been left with the vague impression that some subtle form of blackmail
may have been at play. One of the Durg Orca’s more endearing qualities,
and one that will forever make the place popular with privacy obsessed
indies and many like-minded corporate types, is that the bar pays the additional
insurance premiums to leave the lounge's archive inputs shut down. This
makes the Orca's back lounge the perfect place to engage in any activities
or associations that might someday be interpreted as either legally or
corporately questionable. Fred sometimes suspects the bar’s owner of walking
into lease negotiations carrying "accidentally acquired" archival leverage
not quite reflected in any court documents.
Actually, if the truth be known, Fred
sometimes suspects the owner’s very existence. Fred seems fairly certain
of the general manager’s existence, a particularly high degree of assholish
personality traits seeming necessary for one to manage a place like the
Orca. But on the other hand, the "owner" appears to have neither presence
nor identity. In the month since he'd first been hired Fred has heard many
things about the man's early pioneering exploits and his outrageous parties,
but receives only a grunted shrug whenever he asks after the man's name.
Whoever this guy was, or is, he's very strange. Only some sort of deranged
genius could take a sealed gray metal box like this and turn it into some
sort of cozy hand-carved Nordic inn.
Crammed below the foot-worn
slabs of redwood serving as the bar's main floor lay mostly reclamation
equipment and storage compartments. The rest, about a third of the basement's
twenty-by-forth meters, the mystery owner had turned into rent-by-the-minute
showers and offices and prep-kitchens for the main kitchen up stairs. The
squat vault remaining above, technically the habitat's second level, the
owner then had broken up into three distinct serving areas by way of a
massive hand-carved serving bar and columns of dark redwood pillars.
During the worst of the North Sea
floods most of local foresters were practically giving their trees away,
and some of them had apparently been extremely crafted artists. Into the
room's center an ornate hand-carved bar protrudes out from the rear wall
nearly six meters to occupy a full ten meters of the room's floor creating
a large bar-lined storage-area that separates the dance floor from the
Orca's back lounge.
Protected from both bar areas by two
long columns of rough-hewn beams the Durg Orca's main dining hall stretches
nearly the habitat's full length. The Orca's main kitchen and food service
areas serves to close off the back-bar from the more respectable diners.
Technically all of the Durg Orca’s public areas are in the same habitat
space, but it's a fact somewhat hard to perceive when standing in the room's
forest of rough-hewn beams and hand-carved wall panels. The room's every
surface is hand-finished, every corner piece and flashing formed, shaped
and polished smooth by human touch. Nowhere gleams the hard perfection
of machine; that is until you look behind something.
Through the Durg Orca’s obsolete airlock
customers find themselves standing in the bar's long vaultedbeam dining
hall facing two seven-meter "Viking tables" both made from single slabs
of young Martian redwood, and both usually full aroar with loud happy feasting.
Smaller more intimate tables and booths populate both ends of the Great
Hall with the tables nearer the dance floor reserved for more adult oriented
groups. The less adventurous and those with children usually take the tables
closer to the kitchen. The service there is also a bit better. Fred suspects
the owner had left the now useless airlock in place simply to empress the
rubes just in from the outback deep. Imagine discovering a hand-carved
Viking’s liar complete with wide-screen publics and a live band just on
the other side of a common airlock.
In broad high-defination displays
set above the Orca's three separate bar areas state-of-the-art wide-screen
publics project a bright energetic world to a room full of people who would
just as soon sit in some dark bar and not participate. At the moment all
the bar publics display one of the current top-hit sports-sites. That is,
except for the public across the dance floor, the one that's usually flashing
out the net's latest dance archives. This one quietly babbling Earth news.
Most afternoons Fred usually tries to catch up on a little Earthside dirt
for free. Seems the US president is in trouble again. This time the opposition
say she’s been giving her Secret Service escorts zero-g blowjobs in the
back of Air Force One.
Who cares?
The lunch crowd, that is those who
had actually been eating, have mostly all gone back to task. The others,
those making a conscious commitment to pissing-off the afternoon, all sit
more or less evenly dispersed around both bar and lounge, alone or in small
quiet groups; save one.
"Hey, Fredy. How ‘bout another pitcher
of Maggies?" One of the young independent submariners shouts interrupting
Fred’s news-filled quiet. The tall skinny kid with blonde crew-cut and
hawkish nose, just past teenage back on Earth but not yet a teenager here
on Mars, sits partying with two slightly older teenage friends in the lounge’s
back-corner booth. It seems that once Fred’s mixed California-Chicano heritage
became common knowledge that any Margarita he touched automatically became
"authentic"; a word defined here on Mars as meaning direct from Earth.
Fred punches the same pre-sets on the same MixMate Auto-Bartender as every
other bartender working this place, yet somehow when he serves the tequila
the drinks acquire authenticity. In reality his only actual participation
in the fine art of bartendery is confined to the knowledge that these guys
prefer their pitcher served "rocks". Other than that the entire process
could have just as easily been handled by a reasonably competent robot-arm
and auto-conveyer.
"Who’s tab?" Fred pulls himself away
from the dance floor’s public and its twenty-seven-point-three minute delayed
Earth-site news. A huddled conversation rumbles around the booth.
"Andy’s." Comes the reply. Fred glances
across the booth at the tall blonde man with deep set blue eyes. Andy nods
a reply.
"Fresh glasses?" Fred asks.
"Nah. Just got the salt licked down
on this one." Sometimes Andy’s teasing leer bothers Fred, but never enough
for him to let it show.
"I’ll take one." "Me too." The other
two speak up. With a single fluid movement Fred flips a clear ceramic beer-pitcher
out of the bar’s refer and begins filling it with cubed ice while his other
hand enters the drink's code into the MixMate. The pitcher finds its spout
just as the drink begins to pour.
Fred really enjoys bartending. Some
people apparently find the occupation demeaning and feel obliged to show
you this by acting with a great deal of unnecessary condescension. Far
from demeaning, Fred finds bartending fun, like getting paid to throw a
party every night at somebody else’s house using somebody else’s food and
booze.
Setting down his tray to divvy out
the drink and glasses Fred notices the kid who’d ordered, the one name
of Dude, staring up at him with expectation. Quickly considering the other
two sitting at the table Fred prepares for a standard recitation of his
sorry-I’m-straight line when the kid looks up and asks: "So, Fredy, you
just came out. Tell us what it's like down Earth?"
"You know." Fred shrugs. "The usual."
"No, I don’t know. I was born out
here."
"Oh." Glancing around at the sober
stares Fred smiles back at the kid. "You natives have just got to
start wearing badges. You all look exactly like the guys I grew up with."
A faint chuckle works its way around the booth. This is another small talent
of Fred's that the Durg Orca’s manager has begrudgingly come to appreciate.
Indy subbers tend to be a quirky lot, and easily provoked. Fred's goofy
talent for defusing awkward situations has lead to a fifty-percent reduction
in random customer breakage.
"So, tell us." The kid insists. "Tell
us about Earth."
Dude seems a fairly likable kid, if
not a bit naive and puppy-dog stupid. Fred briefly considers obliging the
him; but then thinks about the manager?
Then again, the publics are all
turned off.
"Yah, Fredy, go on. Tell us all about
Big Mama Earth." Andy beams up a slightly lurid grin. "All you got going
is some neurotic addiction to SNN. The news is all flat, nothing's up,
so tell us all what's the real shit back on the Big Blue Ball?"
A quick look around the mostly empty
bar makes Andy’s point for him.
"You doing okay, Bill?"
The thin older man hunched alone at
the bar silently nods his bald head down at his beer.
"You two need anything?"
The two lovers sitting over next to
the bar’s empty dance-floor both ignore him, lost in their giggled chatter.
All of the other patrons seem to be back here in the lounge. Slowly propping
one hip up on the very last barstool Fred keeps ready to slip down under
the draw-bridge and back behind the bar should the manager uncharacteristically
return from lunch before the dinner shift. With an elbow resting up on
the bar's dark polished redwood Fred clears his throat.
"Okay." He tells the kid, then notices
a small peak of curiosity sweep the room. "So, what is it you want to know?"
"I don’t know." Dude shrugs. "I told
you, I was born out here. All I know about Earth is like from the archives
and the surround-domes and shit, so... tell us about…
oh, I don’t know. Just tell us about..." With a shrug Dude's words trail
off in search of some unfathomable something. Then back up at Fred with
a questioning squint in his pale blue eyes. "Earth."
"Well..." Fred clears his throat again.
An entire planet seems a fairly large topic to surround in bar-room sound-bites.
"Earth is a lot of different things. I mean, on the one hand, yes it does
sort of look like what you see the surround-domes. The Grand Canyon,
Paris, stuff like that; it all pretty much exactly like the way you see
it. But it’s all different when you’re really there. It’s all..." Pausing
to consider the notion Fred finds himself also in need of defining the
distinction. "Earth just feels bigger; you know? And it’s not just
the weight thing, it’s like… like I remember this one time I was standing
out on the beach at Pismo and…"
"Yah I know its all bigger and shit,
but... " From Dude’s expression Fred can tell he's entirely misread the
kid's question. "What’s Earth like. I mean, like all the people
and
shit. I mean, do they really all run around all wild and shit like on the
sites? I mean, I saw this one archive once of this New Years gig in Times
Square way back in E2050 where all these like ninjas all go fuckin’ nuts
and start slaughtering everybody in sight. And I mean like everybody.
It was
all fuckin' gross! Body-parts everywhere!" Dude's eye-roll
mimics one of the current Earth-site talking-heads. "And, then this one
time I saw this one about this like big fly-in woodstock thing out in the
middle of Africa. There's like two-and-a-half million people all living
out on the savanna and shit. Painting themselves all these wierd colors
and shit. Everybody all fuckin' skull-zonked on some sort of psych-shit,
and everybody just totally fucking themselves nuts to these really really
orbital
live shows. Then, get this!" Dude bounces up like the exuberant child that
he is. "Like out of nowhere all these wild animals and shit start running
through the crowds slaughtering everybody. I mean, like all these totally
absolute babes get all eaten up and shit."
"Man, that shit's all faked." The
other indy at the booth tells him. "They multi-dupe the archives and fake
all that shit. A four-year-old with a standard fuckin’ handtablet could
do it."
"So what do you say?" Dude's
curiosity seems tinged with both hope and suspicion. "Is all that shit
faked or what?"
"Well..." Fred begins. It easy to
imagine how this Mars born kid might find the distinction between hard-news
and any number of news-dramas difficult to discern. Especially if Dude
frequents some of Earth's more lurid simulated-reality sites.
"No doubt most of fairly high-hit
sites are faked." Fred tells the kid. "But the really big boys -- the old
cable nets the Big Four and PBS -- they’re mostly all for real. That’s
why you always see me watching SNN and ESPAN. Everybody filter their news,
but after a while you learn how to to pick up on what’s really being said
from what it is they're saying."
The kid looks up considerably more
puzzled than satisfied.
"Now, if you're just looking for a
little first-hand confirmation that there are a whole damn lot of people
back down on Earth, then the answer is most defiantly yes. There are a
whole
damn lot of people back down on Earth. That’s why I'm immigrating out.
But, during all my time back home I never once remember seeing any 'real'
news about ninjas in Times Square or no fuck-fest out on the Kalahari."
Fred hurries on before Dude’s gaping mouth finds voice.
"But then, on the other hand, if you're
asking what the people on Earth are like, I mean individually, then
it’s like I said; just take a look around. Some of you guys might be a
little bit taller than most of the kids I grew up with back down Earth,
but other than that we'd all really have to wear badges to tell the natives
from the immigrants." With a glance back over his shoulder at the airlock
to check for the manager's return Fred continues.
"Back when I first started studying
at Cal Poly, just when they first started up all those big industrial aquafarms
off San Luis Obispo, I use to work a bar-back shift down at this place
by the pier called 'Tits'." This is another part of bartending that Fred
truly enjoys: unabashed storytelling. "Those saltwater subbers all looked
exactly the same as you guys. You both babble the same bullshit jargon,
both wear the same sort of work-suits, both fumble around with the same
little chrome fittings when you get bored. The only difference is their
hulls are a little thicker and their ocean's a little deeper."
"Not for long, maybe." An off-duty
construction worker puts in. "The way things are going, and the water still
rising. Looks like we might actually see the Referendum in E2100."
"Especially if Fredy’s AeroDyn buddies
keep dropping icetroids on our heads." A fat old surface prospector named
Buck pops another pretzel into his round bearded face. The man's unkempt
crumb scattered girth sits crammed into the lounge's largest booth. "Although,
it seems to me we've not been seeing all that many 'Chicken Littles' here
lately; aye, Fredy boy?"
"Yah! What’s up with that?" Dude pounces
onto the next new curiosity. "Your guys haven’t put out a single class-one
iceteroid alert all month. No, it's been more like two months now!"
"Probably some sort of scheduling
thing." Fred evades. "I'm ahh… I’m not exactly on AeroDyn’s priority-mailing
list these days." Better to have them suspect him of some sort of personal
misconduct than give any hint of the real reason he’s grounded. "And, pardon
my confusion, but I was under the impression that both Teraformation and
the Referendum were good things." Even positive political topics can sometimes
turn dangerous in the Orca, but just now Fred needs a diversion, any diversion,
even a potentially dangerous one. Besides, there hasn't been a decent fight
on his shift all week.
"Some people find losing their surface
claims just a little disturbing." Buck gruffs.
"So fuckin’ what!" Dude blurts,
his voice filled with the authority of youth’s infinite wisdom. "All the
floods did was turn a bunch of tree-farmers into a bunch of shrimp-farmers
a century or so before anyone planned. So fuckin’ what."
"You know." Scratching at his chin
Fred again glances back the bar's open airlock. "I’m not even sure how
this whole instant-teraformation thing got started?" Having spent much
of the past few years studying Mars in the archives Fred knows perfectly
well that there are considerably more opinions than people as to just exactly
how the permafrost eating nanites had been produced or just exactly who
had let them loose, but at the moment a mildly provocative diversion without
any hope of solution seems a good tactic.
"I mean, I hate to all sound like
a stupid Earthy, but I just spent the last six Es trying to get my ass
out to the Belt. What I know about Mars amounts mostly to the expression:
Prime Target. Every once in a while I'll hit you guys on one of the news
sites but that’s sort of like sitting on a beach in Malibu and watching
the weather in Moscow. You see it, but you still don’t
get it."
"I heard it was this big secret ex-CIA/KGB
lab hidden way out in the Belt somewhere that dropped the bug on us." Dude
seems eager to demonstrate his knowledge of arcane Martian history. "They
say this experimental bug got away from some containment lab and when one
of the researchers tried to ditch the station the bugs all killed him and
then his shuttle fell in and crashed on Mars. I heard it landed…"
"Bullshit." Bill’s voice rumbles across
the bar. "It wasn’t no fuckin' ex-CIA or none of that conspiracy bullshit,
it was just some stupid little kid, that’s all. Some poor dumb-ass little
kid." Bill being usually sullen and quiet Fred runs a quick mental check
on the location of both the bar's stun pistol and riot net. When the "quiet"
ones start barking its time to paying attention.
"What kid?" Dude objects. "I never
heard of no kid. I heard it was..."
"Bullshit!" Bill growls. "You heard
fuckin' bullshit! You know, kid, Fredy here’s right. You been hitting to
many shitty sites. I know what happened back then ‘cause I was there.
The first fuckin’ things I ever remember was my mom dragging my ass up
into an orbital shuttle and me bawling my head off ‘cause we were leaving
my dad behind."
To Fred’s knowledge this is the first
hint of personal information Bill has ever volunteered. Gauging from the
room’s sudden silence this just might be the first any of them have ever
heard. As with most spacer societies – and subbing is about as close to
spacing as one can get while still remaining inside a gravity well – constant
close quarters make most forms of personal privacy a critically guarded
commodity. Often violently so. Only Dude’s naïveté allows the
kid press his point.
"But, what’s that got to do with some
kid?" Looking around the lounge for support Dude finds only downward glances
and mild disbelief. "I mean, nanites are like the hardest things in the
fuckin' world to make, and this was like way back in, what? E42? How's
some kid supposed to have all this really big lab stuff and expensive computers
and shit?"
With a sigh of long sufferance Bill
looks down the bar at Fred’s staunchly held expression.
Yes. Fred thinks squarely at
the man.
I will taze your ass before you get halfway across the floor.
And yes, you will be eighty-sixed from the bar for the next six
weeks. To avoid any provocation Fred makes no sudden moves, merely
watching as Bill twists around to aim barely disguised contempt down at
young Dude. Violence seems imminent.
"You really want to know?" Bill asks
as a threat.
"Yes, sir." Dude replies politely,
straightening a bit of his barroom slouch. This seems to startle Bill,
as if he hadn't really expected the kid capable of showing any form of
respect. "Before my grandma died she use to tell us all stories about back
in the Evacuation. About how all the nanites killed everybody that stayed,
and how the bugs all dug down and started breaking out the greenhouse gasses
and stuff. But she never would say how it all got started."
"What’s your grandma’s name, kid?"
The gruff old submariner's interest turns genuine.
"Maude." Dude replies. "Maude McAlester."
"Ms Maudie?" Bill’s smile grows wide.
"Well then. Me and you got something in common, kid. Your grandma wiped
both our shitty little asses. Ms Maudie was up on Phobos with me and my
mom. She really helped us out."
"She helped out more than just you."
A solemn-faced Andy says without looking up, his thumb and forefinger slowly
twisting the thin stem of his margarita glass. "Grandma Maude adopted my
mother up on Phobos. Officially she adopted fourteen '42 orphans before
they all came back down. My mom said at least twice that many lived with
them."
"Just so." The old submariner nods.
"So, how come none of you old guys
never said nothing about this kid." Dude’s curiosity persists.
"Maybe because all us old
guys
all lost someone important back in E42. Maybe several someone's. My family
had just come out to Mars so we only lost my dad, but your grandma Maude
had been part of the first civilians out. And likely the most fertile women
ever to touch her foot to ground. She lost four out of a family of eight,
your grandpa Ellis and the three older sons that had immigrated out with
them. E42 is not something us old guys like to sit around and reminisce
about. But…" The old submariner’s squint slowly draws to some conclusion
as for once Dude finds the actually sense to keep his mouth shut. The old
submariner doubts the kid will appreciate his effort and pain until much
later when this story hangs dimmed by time and neglect, but for the benefit
of that much older Dude the old indy goes on.
"Up on Phobos, when I was about
two-and-a-half-Ms I use to sometimes hide and listen to the mothers talk.
I guess they all thought I was too young to understand, but I understood
all right. I understood. One time I heard the mothers all talking to this
load of new immigrants, some of the ones still trans-orbital during the
disaster. They told them about this kid named Bobby. Bright kid. Total
fuckin’ genius. Usually a good thing, you know. Only unfortunately this
kid’s father happened to be the chief nanite researcher for one of Earth’s
biggest megacorps.
"Seems this ‘very bright’ kid who
was like, I don’t know, maybe four-Ms or so, one day this kid starts dicking
around with the nanite fabricator in his ol'man’s lab. The kid had watched
his ol'man program the thing a hundred times so he starts dickin' around
with the interface until he comes up with this nasty little aggressive
airborne auto-reproducing nanite. Little fucker used both radiated and
conducted energy to find and separate out water molecules from the permafrost.
Then just for kicks, the little shit sticks in a random-variance reassembly-subroutine
into the bug’s kernel so the little fucks can adapt themselves to whatever
environment they happen to fall into. Thing is, the kid didn’t know to
program in any sort of cut-offs. No timed death. No automatic safeguards.
No nothing.
"So next day while little Bobby is
off at Asimov Station on some sort of field-trip the kid's old man comes
in and starts running his completed programs through the fabricator. When
he finds a sealed sample tube with no label on it he figures it's a start-up
empty and tosses it into the waste compactor like usual. The kid’s little
nastes hit the atmosphere not all that particular about the difference
between the water in permafrost and the water in the old man's blood. Two
hours later the little fuckers had every molecule of water in this guy’s
body split down to vapor while they reproducing themselves silly on all
the minerals and shit floating around in the guys blood. They say dying
from nanites is sort of like having a virus that gives you the bends. Everyone
at the dome including the kid’s mother died. At first they thought the
bug was biological, so they quarantined the dome. Next morning the nanites
were out through the foundation cracks and into the permafrost."
"So, why the big secret?" Dude asks.
"It wasn’t the kid’s fault. He didn’t know."
"That’s right, it wasn’t the kid’s
fault. Or his father's. Or for that matter anyone else's. But a lot of
people still got killed. And, meanwhile little Bobby is up there
with the rest of us on Phobos. Most of the men who'd immigrated out back
then died thinking they could beat the little fuckers. It finally took
kamikaze-nanites and global irradiation to kill'em off. When we came back
down most of the civilian colonists were all women. They owned most of
the original Martian private teraformation claims. And, those women weren’t
about to let no nine-E old child take the blame for all that death. And
most of all, they weren’t about to let anybody on Earth, or for that matter
anyone with any form of legal authority, know just exactly who the kid
was or to which family he’d been adopted out to. On top of that the kid
was still very much a minor. And even way back then most all governments
were scared shitless of being sued or slammed on the nets for intentionally
harming a child."
"I’ll bet his genome's still on archive
somewhere." Dude grasps at a shred of conspiracy paranoia.
"Who knows?" Bill grunts. "Who cares?"
Part Two
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