Mission Mars (21 page)

Inside the central tower, apartments were small and hallways were narrow, but it was clean and the various warning
signs were subdued to give an impression of false safety. Though much smaller, the cluster of towers that would one day form the downtown of New America were connected by familiar transportubes.

The transparent aluminum tubes were light, strong, and crystal clear. Steve knew the thick coatings required to absorb the solar radiation made tubes like this particularly expensive. Still, the transparent tubes offered him a unique opportunity to watch the rising sun glint off the Martian skyline.

As he traveled out from the center of the city, the rising sun that glinted off the Martian skyline mesmerized him. It was a sight as breathtaking as the thin air outside. In the distance, the mountains glowed with morning light and the red sands of the desert blazed, as if on fire.

The further away from the city's center Steve traveled, the more he realized just how early in the process Martian colonization really was. Instead of the costly transparent aluminum, the transportubes outside the heart of the city were simple ceramic, formed from the Martian sands. With only the occasional small window, walking these transportubes gave Steve the heavy impression of being trapped beneath the Martian surface. Plus, the air in the outer buildings was filled with the sounds of equipment pumping air and other resources through the walls. There were frequent warning signs, no longer subdued—stick figures representing the dire consequences of not following the rules. Outside the safety of the inner city, such things were constant reminders that it was only the airlocks and outer walls that separated you from the harsh alien environment. Against his will, Steve's mind wandered to his lessons aboard M301. He was distracted
from such morbid thoughts when the viewscreen on his wrist tingled, reminding him to head back for his first day of work.

At 1240, Steve arrived outside the office of Iron Castle Waste Management and examined the sign outside the door. It was emblazoned with the ICWM logo, and the subtext beneath it informed him that this was a subsidiary of Castle Infrastructure, as well as a joint venture of Castle Corporation and Castle Investments.

At 1300, he walked through the door. The secretary immediately recognized him, and with little more than, “Steve Meritt? Follow me, please,” she led the way. The office itself was a single room, relatively large, and packed with dozens of engineers. As Steve followed her toward the back of the room past the workers, he took note of their engineering designs, which covered everything from recycling routes to septic tank design, both a challenge to adapt to the infrastructure and lower gravity of the red planet.

Scanning the room, trying to identify an empty desk he might be assigned to, Steve stopped short as the door along the back wall swung open and nearly hit him. The woman who stood framed in the doorway might have been considered attractive by some standards, Steve thought. She was tall and had the classic hourglass shape, but she didn't look natural. Maybe it was because her clothes fit her in just the right way to exaggerate her every womanly feature. Even her obviously silicon breasts, in the reduced gravity, were lifted to impressive proportions.

Still, the makeup could not hide her deeply shadowed, bloodshot eyes. And her mouth was stuck in an uncomfortable grimace, as if it were a struggle to lift the corners of her
permanently red lips. Frederick was right.

“I am Cynthia Abilene Castle,” she said without extending her hand. “We are running behind on a project, and I want you to finish it as soon as possible. Monday, actually.” It was a command, not a question.

As he followed her into her office, he began to understand her reputation, and the enormity of her family fortune. The room was large and airy, expansive. And the view overlooking the colony her family had built, at the same time it had built its fortune, covered an entire wall. Her desk and chair were raised on a platform, like a throne, and the desk was supported with a transparent sheet of glass that curved around three sides, instead of on individual legs. The result was that Cynthia Abilene Castle could look down her nose at anyone who sat in front of her, while they looked directly up her skirt. Steve had no doubt that this was intentional.

Cynthia walked over to the window, her back to him. Abruptly, she put her arms behind her back and turned around. “I run this company. I'm here to make sure this colony becomes a city, a very large city. And when it does, it will be clean.” She gave him a look that dared him to disagree. “I gave you this job, and just as easily, I can take it away. Do we have an understanding?” The queen walked over to her desk, sat down, and crossed her legs. Slowly.

“Yes. Absolutely.” He stopped himself from adding “your majesty.”

Cynthia nodded and leaned forward to poke a few items on her display. Over the next hour, she caught him up on the work he would have to continue. He noticed she only continued talking as long as she could see her computer
display, and frequently, she halted as if she were reading from a script. Steve had a strong impression that the introduction had been prepared by his predecessor. He noticed, too, that her speech at times slurred, and she had trouble pronouncing words, such as ‘polypropylene'. He decided not to bring it to her attention, which, as it turned out, he couldn't have done anyway. As soon as Cynthia Abilene Castle finished reading her script, she sent for the secretary.

“Show him to his desk.” The secretary appeared in the doorway and motioned Steve to follow her.

The desk itself turned out to be recessed in a sterile little alcove directly across the hall from the bathroom. He sat down, shifting the screen so that he wouldn't have to see every time someone went to add more sewage to the pipes. The screen turned on, revealing a solitaire game that covered the entire desktop. Steve minimized it, and immediately recognized a familiar icon in an odd place. Right in the center of the desktop sat a file – README.md

Steve tapped the icon. The message was short and to the point.

If you're reading this, you're probably my successor. Do not cross Cynthia Castle!

She is only here because it is the place she can do the least damage to her family fortune—and to the Mars community. She does not understand the nature of mistakes. She does not understand the nature of success. But one thing she does understand—if you make her life difficult, she'll make yours miserable. And, if you do, you'll find yourself back on a transportation ring, just like me.

Steve noted that the message was followed by not one, but three names. He swallowed. How many engineers had she fired? His apprehension growing, he left it on the desktop while he reviewed the state of his assigned project. Cynthia had asked—no, told—him to finish the proposal in a week, and deliver it Monday. As he began to digest the work done by those before him, he realized more than a few late nights would be required to meet the deadline.

The drink in front of Steve was the color of the red planet's sand. The drink in front of North was the color of the Martian sunset. It was Thursday night, and Steve had finally finished the sewage project for Cynthia. As a celebration, North had offered to treat him to drinks at Lone Crater.

“I swear to you,” Steve said, “My desk is right next to the bathroom. It's like they think putting me closer to the source of sewage will help me know better how to dispose of it. As if that wasn't bad enough, the project is one of the most boring I've ever had to work on. It amounts to nothing more than a pipe that will dump sewage into a crater a safe distance away from the center of the colony.”

North raised her eyebrows. “You're dumping sewage away from the colony?”

“Yeah, of course. What else would we do with it?”

“Do you realize how valuable that sewage is? It's one of the most concentrated sources of nutrients available on this planet. You of all people should know that. With the right treatment, it could—it should—be routed to the gardens we're
trying to establish around the downtown area.” North glared into her drink. “Apparently, this isn't new. When I told Dr. Canton where you worked, she went on a short rant about how Cynthia never listens to her requests.”

Steve mulled over the new information. “What exactly do you need all the nutrients for?”

“You're kidding, right? And you called yourself a farmer? Well, why do you plant soybeans in places you used to grow other crops?”

“Soybeans are legumes. We plant them where other plants used to grow, because a symbiotic bacterium that lives in their roots helps fixate nitrogen back into the soil. Nitrogen is an important nutrient for plants to grow.”

“Right. But rhizobium don't really flourish here on Mars,” North retorted “Right now, we're doing the best we can with limited nutrients. Small gardens housed in domes may look nice, but they're not very efficient, they're difficult to maintain, and they certainly aren't helping process the atmosphere for the longer term terraforming plans.”

North took a sip of her drink, letting the chilled alcohol soothe both her throat and her indignation. “To that end, Dr. Canton and I have been working on creating genetically engineered plants that can actually thrive in the native Martian conditions. The problem is that they require abnormal amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous in order to grow, far more than we could get from enriching small amounts of soil with soybeans in the lab.” Now she looked at Steve with a pointed expression. “If only there were a readily available source of those nutrients.”

A grin began to spread across Steve's face. Thinking back
to how his parents used the animal waste on the farm, a plan began to take shape. “Those nutrients can be extracted from the sewage relatively easily,” he acknowledged.

North nodded and returned the grin. “Now you're catching on. If you look at the plans for city growth, we have plans for a large garden out to the west. What's keeping us from starting work on it is that it will be exorbitantly expensive to build the enclosure. If we could extract the nutrients from the sewage system, we could use the outdoor plant varieties for much of the space.”

“Exactly,” Steve replied, “but ICWM keeps dumping the sewage to the east because it's easier to deal with the safety regulations where there is less population. No nutrients, no outdoor plants, no park, and most importantly, easy for Her Majesty to understand.”

Finally satisfied that Steve understood, North said, “Why are you looking at me like that? You're grin is wider than Hellas Planitia.”

“Cynthia originally said to have a plan by Monday. I mentioned I would be finished tonight, but now I think I'll tell her it's going to take a couple more days after all.”

North, suddenly more friend than business, eyed Steve with equal parts curiosity and concern. “What exactly are you thinking?”

Steve downed the last of his drink and plunked the now empty glass onto its coaster. He hopped off the stool feeling lighter on his feet than even the Martian gravity usually afforded him. “I think I'm going to go do my job.”

Steve worked late into the night and arrived at his desk again early Friday morning. Based on the quick retreat to her office, Steve guessed that Cynthia had hit the bars the night before. After absolutely no acknowledgment from her, he opted to send her a message instead of risking a face-to-face confrontation with her. In the message, he indicated that the plans would not be done early after all, but rather delayed to the original deadline. He received a curt reply asking why it would be delayed. Steve indicated he was making some “minor changes to better suit the needs of the colony,” and he assured her that the completion date would not change again. Overall, Cynthia seemed to take the change fairly well. There were no further messages, only a brief visit from her secretary confirming a meeting between Cynthia and him at 1600 hours Monday afternoon. “Make sure your plans are complete, and be prompt,” she said.

The safety regulations for sewage disposal posed a particularly complicated problem on Mars. The density of the buildings, and the existing equipment required to keep the environment safe and comfortable, meant a more complex system was needed to move the sewage out of the colony, and also meant less space for sewage pipes. The projects, up until this point, were designed to dispose of the waste as directly as possible, mostly by pumping it outside of the planned expansion zone.