Meridien K - Chapter 30: The Day They Would Be Judged

A kick to the ribs more vigorous than usual. Not night because I smelled coffee. Closed eyelids, Martian sunrise like a rapidly-preheating oven. Grunts on my behalf, still tired from a long night, wanting to sleep under my desk an hour or two longer. Confused because it was usually viceversa, back on Blue and Ben asleep or hungover or still drunk, me doing the shoulder-shake, the Ben Ben BEN until he woke but instead:

             

"John! Get up and take a shower!"

             

Rising in an awkward way, avoiding the big bump of the makeshift desk as I crawled out, wiped the dust off my eyelids before I opened them. Benjamin Scott Meridien, clean-shaven, hair cut, stood there in a fresh white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, in wrinkled but proper khakis and his nicer pair of canvas hiking boots.

             

"The fuck?" I asked.

             

"You forget, chief? You're going to miss the circus."

             

"Oh, shit."

             

"That right. Oh, shit."

             

"Why're you dressed up?"

             

Trademark smirk and, "Because I need to make a good impression so I can bum some favors, of course. Now get the lead out. Scuttle is they'll be here in two hours local."

            

 I got up and slammed half a cup of black coffee from a tin can on a hotplate, so hot I had to wrap my sleeve over my palm to lift it and sip its nectar. I went outside and stretched, looked over my dominion, that gaping Red plain going on out there forever, past all the dry lakebeds, the hills, the haze of distant mountains, Olympus out there, still unclimbed once we shrugged our shoulders and moved on to redder pastures. I walked along the rock wall to our shower, stripped, showed my nakedness to the spirit of the world, rinsed in the lukewarm trickle of water, scrubbed, lathered in the hardwater the best I could with diluted shampoo.

             

Outside in the plastic bin Ben had laid out an outfit similar to his, my blue dress shirt somehow ironed, given it had been wadded up in my pack the whole of the two years on Red. Khakis rust-colored from the impossibility of avoiding the color of the world, like how you can't get grass stains out of jeans. I dressed, moved to our lesser half-hut where a scrap of mirror hung over a washbasin. I took the scissors and snipped away at my beard and hair, removed the Mountainman from myself and became Dr. John Douglas Kraid, PhD. Finishing off with the electric razor with a minuscule charge, not wanting to shave clean because I always cut myself and I wanted the scruff to remind everyone that it was still Mars.

             

I went back to the lab-office-living-quarters. Ben sat in an off-kilter lawn chair outside, looking out past the cliffs and down to the Settlement and the M2 Base. Some people already called it a Colony, if the Settlement even met the prereqs for that criteria. More like the outdoor grounds of a terminal sanitarium.

             

"Lookin' shark," Ben said, barely turning.

             

I pulled up my splintery wood chair and sat next to him. He handed me a closed-top porcelain mug of still-warm coffee fixed with sucrose.

             

"What's the drill?" I asked. "What's the angle?"

             

Ben shook his head.

             

"None of that. Just go down and say hello."

             

"What did Intihar say?"

             

"Intihar said not to scare them but to get down there before rumors kicked up about the crazy men up in the mountains. Apparently we're quite famous back on… well… Elliott say anything?"

             

A long sip and, "Nope. You expected something? I feel bad for the kid. Probably still asks permission to use the latrine. He doesn't have the heart to stand up to Tibs."

             

"What's the load?"

             

"Horses or some crazy shit. The ship's half American, half Soviet. The latter brought dogs. One's named Laika, of course. A lot more women this time. They figure we have enough scientists so it's mostly straight-up civs. I heard there's a fertility doctor. Guess some asshole wants to be first guy to bust his nut and plant a seed on Red. This seems more like a sight-seeing tour. Mothership's staying in orbit and sending down a Lander. There's talk about turning M3 into a space station in sync, like how we turned the moon into a fancy rest stop. 3 prolly wants to hang up there so the mil guys can quest for water so they can fuel the Lander to go back to momma, and for M-Whatever and all that shit to go back home once they show up and offload and take the tour. Like Red is just some place to come and gawk at. Maybe we could go into business building a chairlift ride up Olympus? Charge visiting CEOs a thousand bucks a pop. Fuck it. When we’re among the unwashed masses we should visit the lemonade stand and buy some pirated Hollywood DVDs. God. I love America."

             

I looped a tie around my neck and thought better of it. Then I set it on my desk and wondered where the hell Ben found a necktie. Outside we both took the rags near the Rover and brushed off the solar panels, took the tarps off the tender spots where the dust fucked it up. We got in and didn't bother with the seatbelts, we knew every bump along the road, knew when to hang on to the rollcage.

            

"Let's go join the natives."

             

Ben was still trying to ride all the way down the half-mountain without touching the brakes. It was like playing chicken with himself. I was used to it, sheer drops and certain death and all, not much different than doing the same thing on bikes when you were a kid, except instead of a skinned knee you'd end up as a fresh corpse. It was our calling card, anyway, going so fast we kicked up a wake big enough for the Settlement below to think a duststorm was coming. And then the long winding switchbacks we had carved on the hillside, tires locked and drifting around hairpin turns like rally racers, finally down to our own private road - though not paved like those over by the Base - that encircled our half-mountain and split off to caves where a rotating squad went underground to look for water. Ben pulled the handbrake and brought the Rover to a hard stop that summoned a wall of dust.

             

When it cleared, Intihar was there, holding a handkerchief to his face. I hadn't seen him in a while. He suddenly didn't look so doughy-faced anymore. I stood up and he grinned, probably knowing with me around there'd be about fifty percent less bullshit and shoulder-punching than if it was Ben alone. We shook hands.

             

"How you doing, Brian?"

             

"I'm doin' swell, John. Real swell. Excited about the landing."

            

"Yeah? Anything special."

             

"My brother's on the ship. He brought our dog. Can you fuckin' believe it?"

             

Ben stood there and gave Intihar a hard stare. But instead of muscling him later he just threw it out there, I didn't care, it was sort of public knowledge, and I was over it, it happened, and it happened to a lot of people.

             

"That's great, asshole. You do know that John's brother is dead, right? So wipe that grin off your shit-stained face," said Ben.

             

Intihar, even with a bad Mars sunburn-tan, went pale, said, "Oh, shit, John, I'm really sorry, I didn't know and--"

             

"Relax. Ben's still in asshole mode," and a turn to my counterpart and, "But aren't you supposed to be nice to these fine folks from the homeworld?"

             

Ben spat on the ground, said, "What homeworld? Home's up on the mountain."

             

"Hey, Brian," I said, "Ben here is trying to convince me he doesn't have an agenda for these M3 types."

             

"Come on, Ben, you're so full of shit," said Intihar. "You told me you wanted to hook up with their aerospace engineer and build yourself a rocket. Talking about it like it's some Gravity's Rainbow shit. To what end, I don't fucking know. Send off fireworks or something equally dumb."

             

"Last time I tell you something I don't tell anyone else," said Ben.

             

"What about Elliott?" I asked with minor incredulity, having long since targeted Elliott as our man concerning those affairs.

             

Ben with another ball of saliva for the ground and, "Yeah, what about him? That's worked out really dandy for all of us. We want an informant and we end up with a timid mouse."

            

I wasn't in the mood to debate. I looked around the Settlement, still separate from the cement barracks over at the makeshift Base, both of which were probably as hot and dusty as our own shack. It wasn't early, but most of the M1 leftovers were waking up, most probably on different parts of their Blue-Red adjustment clocks. They looked at us with the same weird detachment as they would a full-fledged, bug-eyed Martian as they made their way toward the Showers and the Mess over at the Base. From the opposite direction came a busload of the cave crew coming in from an overnight spelunk. Morning everywhere, or at least the morning routine; people going for their coffee same as we had ours.

             

Another syrup-thick Benjamin Meridien plot: What did he want with a rocket? Why suggest cutting Elliott loose when, eventually, we'd need another mind like his? We started walking toward the Base and the new strip, leaving the Rover behind because we'd get an earful if we kicked up any more dust.

             

Only waiting remained, nothing else to do, really, except gravitate toward the Mess, where everyone congregated and had their own bits of gossip that Ben and I never cared for. Inside, we encountered the usual stray glances of the mil guys, standing guard for no reason other than that it was their assignment. Our reputation preceded us, Men of the Mountain, or worse: rebels, rogues, goons, know-it-alls, no room in our hearts for the American flag stitched on their uniform sleeves. Inside, Intihar got in line for chow and Ben and I sat in the back corner. Everyone wore their Sunday best. Other than the work-a-day privates and corporals, who wore their fatigues, most others wore their Class As, all ribbons and medals, Colonel Tibbits with his colonel's hat that I certainly'd never seen before. A tension in them, too, an electric current, like gearing up for a performance review or a meet with the goddamn Defense Secretary. None of the M2 mil guys were wearing their surface suits, and most of them looked like they were going to keel over.

             

"Look at those motherfuckers," said Ben, reading my mind. "Huffing and puffing and it's not going to help them. If it's day one for them with Red air, it's day one. Shit, when we crashed it was about twice as hard."

             

"Like breathing through a straw," I said, that old echo, how we told our story to the new people, how we told it over the comm to Blue for those who were into that, for that nameless audience who could never talk back to us or heckle us.

             

"Now it's like two straws," Ben said.

             

Intihar came back with a synthegg omelet, freeze-dried apples, and powdered orange juice.

             

"Man," he said, making quick work of the omelet, "I can't wait for those hippies they have on M3 to set up a farm so I can get some fresh eggs and meat. I'm not a frugivore like you," with a plastic fork pointed at Ben.

             

"Well, don't get too comfortable," said Ben.

             

"Oh, I'm getting comfortable," said Intihar. "I went and re-upped with Tibbits yesterday. I'll get bumped to sergeant and be on Red as a noncom for three more years. Then, hell, I'll stay."

             

"No shit?" said Ben with some genuine surprise, a gleam in his eye.

             

There was a sudden sink in my spirits, however juvenile; like Ben was captain of the recess kickball team and his first pick became Intihar instead of the default: me.

             

"Yeah. I love this place," said Intihar. "It's an alien planet! How straight-up fucking cool is that? Plenty of land. Pretty sunsets. Even if they turn it into a giant gas station, at least I'll have been one of the first settlers, eh? I'll be as old as you farts if that ever happens. And, shit, women and pets and better air on the way, right? No nuclear wars in sight. No, well, war in the, uh, typical sense. And, obviously, why the fuck come here if I'm just going to turn around?"

             

"Fuckin' A," said Ben.

            

 I checked my watches. Then I checked them again.

             

"Patience, John."

             

"Since when were you one for waiting?"

             

"When all you can do is wait. When that's all you can do, John."

(Chapter 31 coming Wednesday, January 25, 2012.)