Losing Mars (Saving Mars Series-3) Read online

  “I’ll tell the Shirff there’s been a mistake,” said Jessamyn, rubbing her eyes. She felt suddenly tired. “After I get a couple hours of sleep.”

  “Jessamyn,” Ethan called after her. “You will not wish to sleep at the moment.”

  “No, I think I do,” replied Jess, irritated.

  “I spoke inaccurately,” said Ethan. “Although you may wish to sleep at the moment, you will prefer to remain awake when you hear what has transpired this morning.”

  “Besides me being made a citizen without my permission?” snapped Jess.

  “Harpreet reports that the current Head of Consciousness Transfer has placed white lilies upon the grave of his wife,” said Ethan.

  “White lilies?” Jess stared at her brother blankly. “So what?”

  Ethan frowned and looked to Harpreet for assistance.

  “Perhaps,” said Harpreet, “Your sister’s mind grew weary last night as we discussed the affairs of a world she has not yet learned to care for.”

  That was likely enough, thought Jessamyn, flushing. The meeting had been completely Earth-centric. Only her respect for Harpreet had kept Jess from screaming out, What about Mars? What about going home?

  “As I believe you are aware,” continued Harpreet, “Earth’s Chancellor appoints the Global Head of Consciousness Transfer. This position has been held for twelve Terran years by Malcolm Bonhoeffer. Or by someone inhabiting his body.”

  “Oh,” said Jessamyn, catching at a detail she remembered. “And you met two individuals while you were in prison who claimed to have held that position. In the same body, right? But at different times.”

  Harpreet nodded. “Only to find themselves upon separate occasions waking up in New Timbuktu prison one morning, incarcerated and in the wrong body. One of them, whose moral values appeared to have been most … Marsian, spoke of regrets regarding his wife’s funeral arrangements. She died whilst he was in prison. The person inhabiting his body—appearing to be him—placed upon her grave red roses, a flower she disliked.

  “He told me that should he ever find himself released and reinstated, his first act would be to place white lilies upon his wife’s grave. His second would be to call for planet-wide reform of the Rebody Program by exposing what he knew about irregularities in the program, up to and including his own defrauding of the system.”

  “Has he made good on the second promise?” Jessamyn asked, interested in spite of herself.

  “He’s called for a live press conference which airs in twenty minutes,” replied Harpreet.

  3

  TRAIL OF TELLURIUM

  Lucca Brezhnaya smiled at her newly-restored Head of Consciousness Transfer. “It would seem,” she said, “that in sending you to New Timbuktu, I did myself and the world a grave disservice. Your successor—that is, the man you are replacing—had certain hesitations in carrying out his duties. I am so glad that you seem to have moved past your … hesitations. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you back to your position.”

  Malcolm Bonhoeffer, happily returned to his familiar body, smiled softly. “I am eager to serve, as I indicated.”

  “Good,” said Lucca, her dark red lips drawing back to reveal perfect rows of white teeth in an approximation of a smile. “I anticipate the need of your finely honed skills and your … discretion.”

  Bonhoeffer gave a slight nod of acquiescence.

  “In addition, you will, on tonight’s newsfeed, present a plan encompassing changes to the Rebody Program based on our current global shortage of tellurium.”

  Bonhoeffer’s raised eyebrows indicated the shortage was a surprise to him. Lucca smiled. The manufactured shortage, suggested by Vladim Wu, was a surprise to everyone. Also, it did her good to see her subjects kept off-balance. “We want to avoid creating panic, naturally,” Lucca said.

  “Naturally,” agreed Bonhoeffer.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of drafting your proposal for parliament,” said Lucca. She passed him a small, coiled strip of plastic. “Look it over. You will exude confidence. You will assuage fears. You will encourage conformity. Understood?”

  “Of course, Madam Chancellor,” Bonhoeffer said softly, in a tone that indicated his absolute compliance.

  “Dismissed,” said Lucca, rising.

  Bonhoeffer bowed.

  “One thing more,” Lucca called after him. “Your wife’s grave—I understand you visited it?”

  Bonhoeffer felt a flush of color rising to his skin. He cursed his inability to hide his emotions in this, his own threebody.

  “It was commendable of you to remember the past,” Lucca said softly. “But see you give no cause for others to murmur as to any personality … alterations. Such as a sudden obsession with the dear departed. It might make people wonder if you are who you appear to be. You understand the need for a seamless transition, I’m sure.”

  As the restored Head of Consciousness Transfer gave a curt nod and departed, Lucca’s thoughts returned to the vanished red-haired inciter. Unlike the Martian girl, Lucca had unlimited funds. She had an entire shipload of tellurium, in fact. Whatever the red-haired girl had been ordered to accomplish, she’d have a hard time doing it without tellurium. And an even harder time doing it without a ship to fly home. Like Pavel, the girl was trapped on Earth now. She could not hide forever.

  Lucca smiled. The intelligence Wu’s operatives had gathered all pointed to the Martian hiding somewhere in the Americas. There were cities large enough to swallow shipfuls of Martians in North America alone. But Lucca suspected the girl would go to ground somewhere less populous. Somewhere more like home. Vladim Wu had concurred.

  Lucca had long allowed certain factions and enclaves to exist outside her government’s direct control. Wu’s attentions were focused upon these fringe settlements. The Chancellor had discovered two centuries earlier that overzealous restrictions on petty dissenters tended to breed revolutionaries. But leave them alone, or let them think they were being left alone, and most of these dissenting elements did little harm.

  The only inciter attacks in the past fifty years had been of Lucca’s own manufacture, to encourage the citizenry to call for greater government controls. Or, most recently, to encourage Pavel to come out of hiding. Lucca scowled. The attack on the hospital in Hong Kong had not achieved her objective of flushing out her nephew. Although she imagined it had made him miserable enough. Which was something.

  Her thoughts returned to the present. Wu had additionally instituted a tighter observation of the ebb and flow of tellurium on the open market. Since the Martians had sent tellurium in the second ship, it was almost certain they had brought it in the first. It would explain something else as well—there had been an influx of tellurium into the world market several months back. The timing corresponded well with Lucca’s first encounter with the red-haired girl. It was time to find out with whom the girl had been associating. It was time to follow the tellurium and see where it pointed. Major Wu and Lucca both felt certain it would point the way to any Martian sympathizers.

  As for finding the Martian, Lucca decided she would monitor four of the largest closed societies in North America: one in Alaska, one in the Idaho wilderness, one outside of the tiny nation of Vermont, and one beside former Los Angeles. She held out little hope for the one rumored to exist beside the ruined City of Angels—the radioactivity would have done in any residents decades ago. But Wu had insisted and satellites had shown some minimal activity. Someone scratched out a living there.

  Lucca pinged her secretary. “I want the Head of Global Solvency.”

  She brought her fingertips together, forming a sort of tent with her hands. “We follow the flow of tellurium,” she whispered. And then she smiled as she prepared to roll out Wu’s latest suggestion.

  When Mr. Casale, Head of Global Solvency, appeared holographically, Lucca had her story well-prepared.

  “I have just uncovered most unwelcome news,” said the Chancellor. “It would seem we have inciters to thank for the cu
rrent shortage of tellurium. They’ve accessed reserves that ought to have supplied us well into the next century.” The lie slipped out easily.

  “I’ve heard nothing of this,” replied Mr. Casale, clearly suspicious.

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” said Lucca. “I don’t make a habit of including just anyone in my top-secret investigations of inciter activity.”

  Casale’s holographic image flushed. “Well, this is most unwelcome news, Madam Chancellor. Inciters! I had no idea.”

  “Indeed. I shall require your attendance upon me here in Budapest so that we can discuss how you will follow the trail of tellurium leading back to the thieves. Make the arrangements with my secretary. Chancellor out.”

  Casale’s horror at the idea of a global inciter plot had been clearly written upon his face, thought Lucca. How much nicer to make certain everyone was properly motivated to do the research she needed them to do.

  Now, of course, anyone who did have an extra bit of the rare-earth metal lying about would be reluctant to part with it for fear of being accused of associating with terrorists. Only those who had no other choice would use the metal. That should unearth the rogue Martian and her business associates quickly enough.

  Lucca smiled.

  4

  IRREGULARITIES

  Brian Wallace rose to turn off the newsfeed following the announcements made by Malcolm Bonhoeffer, the Head of Global Consciousness Transfer. Bonhoeffer had said nothing of any irregularities in the Rebody Program, addressing only rumors of tellurium shortages.

  If Harpreet suffered disappointment when the man she’d known in New Timbuktu failed to keep the second of his promises, she did not allow it to show.

  “Perhaps Dr. Bonhoeffer will yet turn toward the path of balance and harmony,” she said quietly.

  Jessamyn angled her face away from Harpreet to deliver a spectacular eyeroll to Pavel. He looked down quickly. Jess could tell he admired Harpreet. But then, who didn’t? And who was Jess to judge the soul of another? If anyone knew how to read people, it was Harpreet.

  “He has evidently determined not to make such a turning at this juncture,” said Ethan.

  Jessamyn smiled to hear how her brother had taken in Harpreet’s very non-concrete language and followed it perfectly. Instead of confusing Ethan, it seemed to Jess as if constant exposure to those who made no allowance for his preferences must be helping him. It made her heart swell with pride. Ethan had overcome so much to function in a world that ran counter to his internal wiring. She’d been dead wrong about the rebody setting him back. She shook her head, certain she would have done much worse in the body of another than her brother was doing. He had strengths she would never understand.

  “I wonder what angle the Head of Consciousness Transfer is playing with the so-called shortage of tellurium?” asked Dr. Kazuko Zaifa. Kazuko, a former employee at the Mars Containment Programs facility, spoke rarely—and usually only to Ethan. She now assisted Ethan in his efforts to access and control the deadly satellites circling Mars. “Does he believe the shortage is real?” she asked.

  “My aunt is behind the shortage,” replied Pavel. “That announcement has Lucca’s fingerprints all over it. Only my aunt would announce a shortage when she’s just taken in enough to pay a king’s ransom.”

  Jessamyn felt her face flushing bright red: that Pavel’s aunt now had access to a surplus of tellurium was her fault. She’d crashed the Galleon thanks to the weight of the tellurium sequestered in its hold by those who wanted Mars Colonial to begin trade relations with Earth again.

  “Perhaps the Chancellor wishes to tighten her ability to control her citizens,” said Harpreet. “If some were to be denied the opportunity to rebody because of a tellurium shortage, whom do you think would be the first to be denied?”

  “Dissenters and those who have lost rebody credits for undesirable behaviors,” said Pavel.

  “Me own self, certainly,” said Brian Wallace.

  “Look on the bright side, Brian: your body’s worth something at an off-grid facility, at least, now you’ve lost so much weight,” said Pavel.

  Wallace patted his shrunken belly sadly. A life on the run followed by life in a desert had not been kind to him. “Aye. I’m but two-thirds the man I used to be.”

  “So Lucca’s hoarding tellurium and trying to control people,” said Jess, yawning. “Wake me up when something interesting happens.” She rose and began to shuffle toward the sleep chamber she shared with Kazuko Zaifa and Harpreet.

  She knew her attitude was selfish. But she couldn’t help it. While she felt gratitude to the denizens of Yucca for accepting her so readily, Jessamyn could not find it in her heart to care deeply for Earth or its inhabitants. She yearned to return to Mars. To help Mei Lo ensure for once and for all that relations with the miserable Terran world were severed completely. Only, she was stuck on said miserable Terran world. And even the people she cared for most here in Yucca seemed to be urging her to think of Earth as home.

  She didn’t want to settle down and accept that Mars was lost to her. Earth would never be home. And she certainly didn’t want to be Yucca’s guardian of secret-tea-ingredients. She flopped onto the bed she’d been given and kicked at her boots, sending them sailing across the room. She knew she ought to get up and retrieve the footgear, to stow it neatly away. Both Kazuko and Harpreet were tidy. But she just couldn’t make herself care.

  The chance to fly a special supply run had been the one thing toward which Jessamyn had looked with anything like eagerness. And that had been canceled for today—the entire settlement was grounded. She missed flying as though it were a physical part of her that had been excised. Jessamyn was not finding life on Earth to be an improvement over life on Mars.

  5

  ANOMALOUS PATTERNS

  Chancellor Brezhnaya was not having a good morning. Johnston, the agent she had appointed through the recommendation of the Head of Global Solvency, was a dullard. But more to the point, he was an unsuccessful dullard.

  “As I have attempted to explain, Madam Chancellor, there is no difference between tellurium processed on the long-ago Mars Colony and tellurium processed here on Earth,” said the slow-wit before her.

  “Yes, yes,” said the Chancellor, tapping her nails on her glass-topped desk. She’d kept the secret of Mars’s recent visit to herself, asking Johnston the question about tellurium in hopes Mars’s tellurium would be … different somehow—identifiable.

  “Well, what headway have you made, then? Surely, Johnston, with the resources I’ve placed at your disposal in the past week …” The Chancellor’s brows rose in an unspoken question.

  “Yes, Madam Chancellor,” replied Johnston. “We have indeed noted anomalous patterns in the usage of tellurium as we’ve analyzed circulation for the past several months. But we are having difficulty pin-pointing the origin. Whoever has been spending the metal, or trading it, rather, has done an excellent job of covering their tracks.”

  Lucca scowled. “Well, then, we must do a better job of uncovering those tracks.”

  “I have all my best people on it,” replied Johnston. “Rest assured, we will find something sooner or later.”

  “I want sooner!” The Chancellor rose and paced out the length of her office. “The current shortage ought to be bringing the rats out of hiding. They can get more credits for the metal, surely, at this point in time?”

  “Your own recent legislation has made that … dangerous, Madam Chancellor.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Her heels clicked in rapid succession as she retraced her steps back to her desk and Johnston. “Perhaps we should attempt to draw out those with large surfeits by offering a better rate of exchange.” Lucca frowned.

  “We could make the attempt,” admitted Johnston. “Greed can drive a certain sort of person to exercise less caution.”

  “No, no. I have something better in mind.” The Chancellor smiled. “I will make the suggestion that it would be patriotic to turn in sheltered amount
s of the metal in question. We’ll offer rebody credits to those who empty their coffers—create a civic duty to turn in whatever is lying about. If we offer rebody credits, we can avoid changing the actual exchange rate while increasing the perceived value.”

  “Yes, Madam Chancellor,” said Johnston. “Those holding unusual quantities of tellurium might be motivated by such an offer, if they are operating in the open market. And those operating in the black market would be able to command favorable rates of exchange with this incentive in place as well.”

  “And once the tellurium begins to flow more freely—”

  The dullard interrupted the Chancellor. “The trail will be easier to follow.”

  Perhaps he wasn’t so dim-witted after all, thought Lucca, a smile forming upon her visage.

  6

  UNDER THE RADAR

  The enforced week on the ground had passed and Jessamyn was once more allowed at the helm of a ship, flying Pavel, Harpreet, and Brian Wallace to the Republic of Chicago.

  Brian Wallace told Jessamyn she would need to keep low to the ground to avoid detection.

  “I love a challenge,” she said, grinning.

  “It’s a flying technique used extensively by those engaged in black market activities,” Brian explained.

  “Is it really?” asked Pavel. “Last year, I took off a lot without telling my aunt. I figured out by accident that so long as I hugged the ground, I never got stopped or reported.”

  “Aye,” replied Brian. “But Lucca probably knew where ye were, lad. Ye’re only truly safe if ye remove the tracker that communicates with Air Safety.”

  “Which you did on this ship, right?” asked Jessamyn.

  “Which we did,” replied Pavel.