Defying Mars (The Saving Mars Series) - By Cidney Swanson Page 0,18
sat with his daughter. “Ever since the announcement about the lasers was leaked, there’s been a contingency … a faction, if you will, who argue we should use this opportunity to renew trade relations with Earth.”
“Why?” asked Jess. “We fought a war with them.”
“Yes,” said her father. “And now there’s an idea that it’s time to put all of that behind us. That a more prosperous future awaits us if we can re-engage in trade. Things we need in exchange for tellurium.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” said Jess. “Has everyone on Mars suddenly forgotten what Terrans are like? Because I’d be happy to provide a refresher course.”
Her father shook his head. “The ideas are taking hold in people’s minds, Jess. The hope for a brighter future.”
“Our future looked plenty bright last time I checked,” said Jess.
“People don’t want to wait.”
“People are idiots in that case,” said Jess hotly. “What makes anyone so sure Terrans wouldn’t blow us out of the sky from Earth instead of Mars if we went there to converse about trade relations?”
“Hope,” her father said simply. “People—some people—want to speed up the timeline for terraforming. Some want a better quality of life. Some are just struck with Terran-fever, I guess.”
“There’s nothing wrong with our quality of life,” said Jessamyn.
Her father smiled sadly. “Says the girl who’s seen life on Earth.”
“Yes, I have seen it. And it sucked. We don’t want anything to do with the water planet, trust me. They are all crazy over there.” She frowned, thinking of Pavel and Brian Wallace. “Well, most of them are crazy. My point is, we do not need that kind of crazy interfering with life here on Mars.”
“Your mother and I agree with you,” he said. “But all of this Terran-fever means Mei Lo is rather overwhelmed at the moment. It’s not a good time to request a return mission.”
Jessamyn sat silently. She wasn’t going to argue the point with her father. Nor did she intend to drop the subject with Mei Lo.
“I need to go sit with your mother,” her father said softly.
“Of course,” said Jess. She stayed where she was. She couldn’t handle her mom. Not right now.
Down the hall, Jess could hear her father’s soft voice. A sense of disappointment filled Jessamyn as she examined the empty space surrounding her. This was not the homecoming she’d imagined. Nothing was right.
I just want things to be like they used to.
She wanted her brother back. She wanted a version of her mom who hugged. And now a bunch of greedy Marsians were standing in the way of everything she wanted. A faction, her father had called them. She wasn’t certain what it meant, but the word sounded horrible.
Pounding a fist upon the rations table, Jess rose and exited the front airlock, stepping into her walk-out suit and passing out of her dwelling.
Everything was horrible.
8
A PREDILECTION
By the end of her first few weeks at the New Timbuktu Gold Processing and Re-educational Center for the Retirement of Criminals, Harpreet Mombasu had made quite a name for herself. If you were depressed, prisoners advised, you should speak with Harpreet. Anxious? Consult Harpreet. Worried about your future? Harpreet. All of which tended naturally to: Have a yearning to confide desperately secret information? Harpreet will listen.
Not that she had forgotten her own sorrows or concerns. But on the twelfth day of her captivity, Harpreet had awoken from a dream with the certainty that the Red Galleon would touch down safely upon Mars.
“Well, that is most welcome news,” she said upon awakening. She didn’t question the information, simply took her dream as proof-positive the event would transpire.
Which tended to make her even more open to listening to the sorrows and concerns of others.
To date, she had heard the confessions of not one but two individuals who claimed to have formerly served as Head of Global Consciousness Transfer.
The fact that their stories, told individually, corroborated one another made it hard for Harpreet to doubt what either reported. The second (Harpreet thought of him as Number Two) told of how he’d agreed to assume the body of the first and to keep secret this deception. The first (Harpreet thought of him as Number One) expressed dismay at having awoken in prison, in a new body, only to see his former body accompanying Lucca Brezhnaya as if nothing had happened. The same body had apparently now been delivered to a third Head of Global Consciousness Transfer (whom Harpreet thought of as Number Three.)