"I saw what you did through Sergeant Daiv's monitor, Biberkopf," he said. "You showed real courage and brains today."
"Thank you, sir," Johnsmith replied.
"Next time out," Torquemada said, "you'll be team leader."
Johnsmith closed his eyes. He put his hands over his face to hide the tears welling up in his eyes. He felt as if he had died and gone to hell. What kind of world was it where courage and intelligence were rewarded with more suffering and exposure to deadly danger?
Mars was hell, it seemed.
He felt a light touch on his damp right hand. He opened his fingers to see Frankie Lee Wisbar, her expression knowing and yet caring. She saw the tears in his eyes and put her arms around him. He buried his head in the pliable plastic of her pressure suit, and felt her fingers running through his matted hair, as if she were a mother whose child had fallen down and hurt himself.
"It's all right," she said, nearly crooning. "It's all right, Johnsmith."
But Johnsmith knew that it wasn't. That things would never be the same again.
He wept for the dead. He wept for himself. He wept for the living, and for the people on Earth who were so empty that they had allowed this to happen to their fellow human beings. But who was he trying to kid? This kind of thing had always gone on since the beginning of recorded history; his surreptitious reading had taught him that much, at least.
The grim silence of the prisoners was accompanied by the whine of the carrier's engines all the way back to Elysium. They were given water, but no food on the return trip. Nobody could have digested anything after what they'd been through today.
At least, Johnsmith told himself as the desert began to darken, he had not been a coward. If he had betrayed the Conglom, so what? As the Arkies had been quick to point out, the Conglom had not exactly done well by him, so why should he worry about the Conglom? Maybe he wasn't really a hero, as the surviving prisoners seemed to think, but at least he wasn't a disgrace.
The carrier slowed as it approached the compound. Johnsmith was surprised to see that the two other carriers were already docked.
The engines shut down, and the carrier rocked gently as the prisoners got to their feet. Alderdice had been sleeping. He seemed confused as his eyes opened wide and then blinked against the glare.
Once inside the compound, those who were not wounded were permitted to go directly to their barracks. They limped in, exhausted. But no sooner had Johnsmith crossed the threshold than he was beset by a jubilant Felicia. She leaped on him, arms and legs encircling him and almost knocking him down.
"Oh, Johnsmith!" she sobbed. "Thank God you're all right. When the other carriers came back without you, I was so worried. I didn't know which one you were on."
Somehow, he managed to keep his balance, even though Felicia squirmed and covered his face with wet, hot kisses. "I'm okay, Felicia."
"They wouldn't tell me what had happened to your group," she said, her feet finally touching the floor.
"We ran into trouble," Johnsmith said. "There were a lot of casualties."
"Oh, my poor Johnny!" Felicia buried her face in his chest. Though he was tired, Johnsmith didn't mind. He was rather touched by Felicia's unabashed relief to see him alive and well. Ronindella had never been like this, even in the best of times.
As he lay down on his bunk, Felicia still clinging to him passionately, he wondered why he was thinking of Ronindella now. She hadn't entered his mind in weeks, months.
Kissing Felicia deeply, he recalled with grim satisfaction that his wife was in his past. He would never see her again.
"MY GOD!" RONINDELLA shrieked in a decidedly unevangelical fashion. "Your father's a hero!"
Smitty II smiled. He had always known that his Dad was a hero, but he felt good that his Mom finally saw it too.
She was looking at
Pixine
, and the moving images on the page depicted a series of action sequences within the bowels of Mars. Wait until the kids at school saw this, Smitty thought gleefully. Dad was shown wiping out a gang of anticap thugs in these caves under a gigantic volcano. It was just about the neatest thing Smitty had ever seen in his whole life!
"At first I thought this was some kind of mistake," Ronindella was saying. "But there can't be two people named Johnsmith Biberkopf on Mars, can there? And besides, there he is, right there in three dimensions and enhanced color. He never looked so handsome when he was here."
Smitty thought his Dad had always looked pretty good, but he didn't say so. He had seldom seen his Mom so happy. Why rock the boat?
"Look at him in that paper uniform," Ronindella said. "He's so trim and athletic looking."
"Mom . . ." Now was the time to bring up something they hadn't talked about in weeks.
"What is it, honey?"
"Remember that contest I won?"
"Mmm." She obviously wasn't paying attention to what he was saying.
"You know, the one where I won the trip to Mars."
"Mars?" She dropped the copy of
Pixine
. "It was a trip to Mars? I thought it was Luna . . ."
"Yeah, you remember. You tried to trade it in for cash, or a new car. They said I could only have the trip to Mars, because I'm a minor."
"Oh, yeah." She turned to Smitty with wonder in her eyes. "Well, honey, why don't we just go to Mars, then?"
"Really, Mom?"
"Really." She had that look on her face that only appeared when Dad's money arrived every month. Only this was a lot more intense. "Why should we waste an expensive trip to Mars? After all, only a few thousand civilians get to go every year, right? It's wonderful that you won this contest, isn't it?"
"It sure is."
"And ordinarily people have to pay through the nose for a trip like this, right?"
"Right."
"So let's go and have a good time."
"And see Dad?" Smitty asked. He wasn't sure if she wanted to see him or not.
"We'll visit your father." She smiled at him.
"
Great!
" Smitty couldn't remember feeling this happy in a long time. A very long time. They were going to be together again, on Mars.
"We'd better start planning this right away." She closed
Pixine
and got up. "The Church will give me a leave of absence, since I'm still legally married to your father. If we can just get some—"
The phone rang. Looking distracted, Ronindella went to answer it.
Ryan Effner's handsome face came into focus. "Hi, hon," he said. "Are you getting ready for our session with Madame Psychosis?"
"No, I'm not," she said with a note of satisfaction.
"You'll be late." Ryan said, evidently oblivious to the change in Ronindella.
"I'm not going to see Madame Psychosis."
"Aren't you feeling well?" Ryan frowned, beginning to see that something was wrong.
"Never better."
"Well, then, would you mind explaining why you're not going today?"
"I'm not going today, Ryan," Ronindella said merrily, "or any other day."
"What?"
"You heard me. You might have tricked me into going to that cybershrink, with her New Age nonsense and that drugged gas, but this is the end of it."
"But I thought . . ."
"I'm going back to my husband, Ryan. Johnsmith needs me."
"What in the name of God are you talking about?" He laughed aloud. "He's on Mars, for Christ's sake. How can you go there?"
"Smitty's won a free trip for two."
"But that was weeks ago. I thought you weren't interested."
"I suggest you pick up the current issue of
Pixine
."
At that she signed off, leaving a gaping image of Ryan on the screen for a moment before it faded to a dull gray.
"All right, Mom!" Smitty yelled. "I guess you told that scumbag where to get off."
"Smitty . . ." But Ronindella couldn't bring herself to scold him. Smitty had never liked Ryan, and the boy's intuition had turned out to be more accurate than hers. Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways, she told herself.
"We'll be with Dad before you know it," Smitty said. "Right, Mom?"
"Well, it takes quite a while to get there," Ronindella said. "But it'll be interesting, I'm sure."
"It's like those miracles they're always talking about at Church," Smitty said thoughtfully.
Ronindella grinned. "You know, it really is."
"When do we go to Mars?" Smitty asked.
"Oh, I hope the offer is still good."
"Yep, it's good for a whole year."
"Wonderful, honey." She went to Smitty and embraced him. "Our family will be back together again." And Johnny's pension would make them a lot more comfortable than they ever could have been on Ryan's teaching salary. But that wasn't something to discuss with a child.
What the hell was going on? Ryan sat at the phone, completely mystified by the conversation he had just had with Ronindella. He had thought that she was completely wrangled, and now this . . . .
Well, he'd straighten this mess out in a hurry. The first thing to do was contact Madame Psychosis. She'd know what to do. There was a secret code to contact her on the phone. It was to be used only in case of emergency, of course, but it seemed to Ryan that this situation qualified.
"Let's see . . . ." He had written down the code somewhere. He opened his desk drawer to search for it. Duplicates of his credit cards, receipts, bills, but no code. Where the hell had he put that thing?
He got more and more upset, his stomach hurting, as he pored through the drawer. Finally, he became so frustrated that he pulled the drawer out and dumped its contents on the desk top.
A piece of paper fluttered to the floor like a sick moth, lighting on the pile of cards and notes. He pushed his squeaking office chair back and bent to pick it up. He noticed that his hands were trembling. He hadn't been this angry in years. No, it was more than anger. He was hurt. Badly hurt. How could Ronnie do this to him?
"This will straighten things out in a hurry," he said, certain that the fallen slip of paper was where the code was written.
But it was only a notice about his low job performance. It had been sitting on his desk a couple of mornings ago, but he hadn't bothered to look at it, thinking that it was nothing more than a routine job evaluation.
"Shit!" he said, loud enough for heads to turn in the neighboring cubicles. He crumpled the evaluation slip and tossed it in the wastebasket.
Goddamn it, if he couldn't find the code, he would go to see Madame Psychosis personally. It was probably better to do it that way, anyhow.
He got up and started to go toward the door. His face felt hot and he hardly noticed the people staring at him as he walked. He couldn't have talked to Madame Psychosis here, he realized. His next evaluation would reflect the tortured conversation he had just had with Ronnie, and following that call with another one to his cybershrink would be disastrous for his career. This had to be worked out at the New Age Building, and later in private with Ronnie. She would have to understand that she couldn't go back, only forward. She was denying her karma by going to Mars.
Getting into the elevator, he pressed the button for the roof parking lot. He had forgotten to put on his protective headgear, and cursed his stupidity for it. But he didn't go back inside the building to get it. Instead, he dashed recklessly across the hot concrete roof as soon as the elevator door opened.
The flyby's engine failed to start on the first try. He cursed it and tried it again. It caught, and he lifted off the roof, heading downtown.
What had she been talking about, something about the new
Pixine?
Maybe he should take a look at it before he went running off to Madame Psychosis. Well, there was a viewstand only a block away from the New Age Building. He could just park and run over there to see what she was so excited about.
He brought the flyby down into a slot. He didn't wait to see if the license plate was scanned correctly. Let them overcharge him. He had more urgent things on his mind at the moment.
By the time he got to the viewstand, he was almost delirious from the raw UV beating down on him. Luckily, there was a sunshield over the stand. Sweating and gasping, Ryan made his way past a
Fuckbook
dumpbin display and the flyzines shelf. He stopped for just a second to glance at the tiny section with text magazines. Johnsmith had always stopped to look at these little insignificant zines that barely sold enough copies to keep their publishers in business.
Pixine
, the most popular periodical in the solar system, was stacked by the creditier. Ryan grabbed a copy and ran it over the creditier plate, stuffing his card in the slot.
"Thank you," said the creditier.
Ryan thumbed through the zine, his eyes smarting from the brilliance of the imagery. There were the usual stories about 'gram stars, celebrity affairs and marriages, Kwikkee-Kwizeen ads, and one piece with a stentorian voice that announced: "Heroic Conglom Troops Rout Rebels on Olympus."
He was about to pass the article by, and in fact had turned the page to shut off the obnoxious voice, when he realized that one of the brave troopers was none other than Johnsmith Biberkopf.
"Holy Gaia!" he shouted.
Ryan looked around in embarrassment, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him. It was probably customary for people to shout here, especially in the
Fuckbook
section. He flipped back to the offending page.
" . . .was the courageous act of team leader Johnsmith Biberkopf, a former University professor who has sought a new life on the Red Planet."
Ryan couldn't believe this bullshit, but he kept listening, and watching the impossibly muscular, idealized figure of Beeb blasting away at unshaved guys with faces like rodents.
" . . .singlehandedly killing a dozen of the enemies and rescuing an entire squad of freedom fighters from a batallion of violent malcontents whose goal is the usurpation of the entire social structure of the solar system . . ."
Ryan wondered briefly why he had never heard of such a vicious bunch of cutthroats, if they were so dangerous.