The Rhine Read online

  She went on past, silently.

  By the time she reached the door at the end of the hall her heart rate had picked up and her mouth felt dry. Her eyes were wide as she pulled an old fashion key from the front of her blouse and lifted the chain that it hung on over her head. She always felt this way ... like she had to sneak, because of what Adam and Jason would say.

  Alexandria inserted the key into the lock and turned. When it clicked she pressed the latch and pushed the door open. Once inside, she immediately closed the door.

  Light came in through thin, delicate white curtains revealing what was so obviously a girl's room. A silver flute lay carelessly out on a desk, where it held down paper sheets of music. A school uniform hung from the back of a closet door. The bed ... a school tablet rested on the rumpled spread and a holo of unfinished homework still hovered above its screen. On the nightstand chrysanthemums that Maria had put in the room three years ago, the morning that Rachael was killed, were preserved perfectly with a transparent molecular film used for protecting antiques.

  Adam wanted to take all this away and turn it in to a computer den— that was what he was pressing her about. They needed no such thing. And Jason ... he wanted to go places on the tram with his friends. Like Rachael did that morning she never came back.

  Alexandria put her back to the door and sunk to the carpet, the old familiar feelings of guilt working down into her bones and pressing like a weight on her chest. You see, she had been at work that day and hadn't known that her own daughter died. The nagging accusation that she should have known, felt something, was always in the back of her mind. When the call came from Adam, because he had been the first to learn of what happened, it was ... a surprise. It shouldn't have been, she should have realized it ... sensed the death of her daughter across the kilometers of city blocks, through steel and concrete, without having to be told over a handcomm.

  She let the guilt torture her, it was the only way she could atone for her failure as a mother to Rachael.

  At some point she realized that she needed to get up. It was Jason's birthday, and she didn't want to fail him too. She took a deep breath, and stood. Every thought and word she exchanged with Rachael lingered in these walls ... and she listened for a moment longer to the echo of those conversations before turning and leaving.

  From the kitchen she called Jason on his handcomm, because she wanted to give him his birthday present privately.

  When he walked in he seemed deflated. Expecting an argument about staying the night at his friend's or a flat out no. She realized that his odds with her on the subject of going across town with friends was fifty-fifty ... and he knew it too. She never meant it to be like that.

  "Stop it," she said, and smoothed down his hair when he got within reach. "It's your birthday. Mothers are not allowed to tell their sons no on their birthday."

  He smiled.

  "But ..." she held up her finger. "I will have your father or Greg pick you and Jon up for school in the morning. I know you want to ride the tram around the city and visit the arcades and whatever else teenage boys may do, but in the morning ... you get picked up."

  He had been on the verge of protest but nodded and said, "Thanks, mom."

  "Wait," she said, he had turned to leave. She picked up a picture frame lying face down on the counter and handed it to him, smiling. "Your birthday present."

  His eyebrows furrowed as he took it from her and turned it over. "You already gave me my gift."

  "Front row tickets to the Colts game next week is more a gift for your father, but I'm sure he'll enjoy having you along," she said. "This is something I wanted you to have."

  Jason read the scrape of paper sealed behind the transparent plexi. "Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals deplorable. Go West, young man, go West, and grow up with the country."

  "It's by Horace Greeley, a famous newspaper editor," she explained. "And it is the last surviving ink and paper form of those words from the New York Tribune, eighteen-sixty-five."

  His eyebrows went up, and she smiled.

  "You know I've always wanted you in the family business ... maybe take over for me some day. But, if journalism is what you want to do, I will back you."

  She thought of telling him the lesson behind Greeley's words ... or perhaps her lesson by way of the old editor's words. She wanted Jason to see Ulysses in them— 'tis not too late to seek a newer world ...' Whether he wanted to be involved in the family business or not he was still an inheritor of what she built now. It was her hope that he would continue that work in some way, even as a journalist. The future was going to need all kinds.

  Alexandria decided not to tell him the lesson. He would have to see it on his own for it to become meaningful to him.

  Jason thanked her, mentioned the university he was leaning towards, hugged her, and then went back to his friends. She stood in the kitchen for a few moments looking out the window at the garden and thinking of her mother, then realized that she had unconsciously forced Maria into some other part of the house, so she went to the living room and crawled onto the chair beside Adam. She lay her head down and put her hand on his chest, and watched him sleep.

  13 - Ludwick

  Ludwick had been in the holding cell of the dome's security station a couple of times before. Once for a disorderly after having too much to drink at a Thai bar about fifteen years ago, and then again a couple of years later for hitting a plant worker who mouthed off to him. He knew that if he hit the guy someone would report him, but if he hadn't hit him then he would have lost the respect of his welding team.

  He swore the paint on the walls was the same color as it had been at the time of his previous sleep-overs.

  Almost twenty hours after he was dragged to the station and tossed in the cell with a dozen other protestors a UNSEC soldier in riot gear unlocked the door and called his name.

  "Let's go," the man said. "The L.T. wants to see you."

  That couldn't be good.

  He heard, as well as felt, bones pop as he pushed himself up off the floor. There were twelve of them packed in the cell and he had slept literally sitting hunched over while a pipe fitter named Henry Carson leaned on his back. Two drunks had been shoved in with them around midnight and to reach the door he had to step over a dried pool of vomit.

  The lieutenant was a Japanese man with an expression on his face that made him look constipated. A silver name pin over the left pocket of his uniform shirt read H. Tojo. Ludwick had never met him and immediately considered that a good thing. Tojo stared at him from his seat behind the desk and for some reason he got a strange urge to stand at attention. Behind him the soldier closed the door and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Maybe the lieutenant wanted to see him beaten with a stun baton.

  "Things got out of hand," Tojo said with a thick accent ... so he wasn't raised in the domes. This guy was legitimately ethnic.

  "Ah, Packerson was just doing a little name calling ..." Ludwick tried to explain. He had roped the man into the protest for just such a purpose. His anonymous benefactor wanted to heat things up and Packerson's natural dissatisfied demeanor and temper made him perfect for the job. All Ludwick had to do was shout a little louder, make his statements a little bolder, and Packerson got fired up. When they were hauled to the station he was pulled out of the main group and taken to Processing, he suspected.

  "He threatened a United Nations Security Officer," Tojo corrected.

  Well, that was probably true. When he didn't respond the lieutenant continued.

  "I am releasing you because you did not cause any direct violence. The others will be released over the next eight hours. Mister Chaserman, if this happens again I am holding you directly responsible. Do we have an understanding?"

  "Yes, sir. We do," Ludwick told him.

  "Very well, but you should know one more thing before you leave."

  Tojo picked up a tablet from his desk and
turned it so he could see. It was a picture of obvious plant workers— UniMine by their logos— holding signs and pressing up against the plexi shields of UNSEC soldiers. The camera was close-in so he couldn't tell where they were, but UniMine's plant was in New Chicago dome. Tojo tapped the screen and the picture jumped into motion. There was shouting and then someone threw a Molotov cocktail— a streak of fire that went over the heads of the protestors and landed somewhere out of sight of the camera.

  Interesting, Ludwick thought. He knew that there were some scattered protests in other domes, but this was a whole new level.

  "It's heating up," Tojo said and laid the tablet down. He felt himself go pale at the lieutenant's choice of words. "You did this. Wherever this ends, it is your fault."

  It would look that way. The strikes and protests started with him. But maybe he wasn't the only one ... maybe his anonymous benefactors were working with others. Tojo nodded to the soldier standing behind him and he heard the door open.

  The desk sergeant gave him his things and he walked out of the front doors, the soldier that brought him to the lieutenant's office following him out to the sidewalk, watching. Ludwick ignored him and checked his handcomm, it was almost 09:00. He thought of going to a kiosk and buying a few drinks before going home. Ninety percent of the dome's population did shift work at the plants, so it was never too early to get started. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw the soldier put his hands on his belt and frown. Hmm, he thought. Maybe I should just go home. I need a shower and some sleep, anyway.

  Ludwick shoved his handcomm in his pocket and walked away, the soldier continuing to stare at him.

  As he walked the streets of the dome's 'downtown' district he began to wonder how much of what Tojo said was true ... or more in particular how much he truly felt responsible for. You did this. Wherever this ends, it is your fault. It was the kind of statement that might have played with his conscious thirty years ago, but not now. He didn't know where the strikes and protests were going to end— where his benefactors were heading with it all— but wherever it ended it had begun with the mining companies and the crappy labor laws that did little to protect worker's rights in the domes.

  Ecological disasters caused by pollution and over population forced the UN to add some teeth to the Global EPA. New regulations bit into the refinement of raw ores that the governments of the world consumed with the voracity of Grendel. So the first mining ships headed to the belt and the moon domes were built to house workers for the plants and refineries that processed the incoming ore and gases. The whole ecological nightmare opened up a real space age for humanity. Ore drop-off stations were built and commercialized, Mars became an experiment in colonization, more moon domes were built for more refineries ... and it all brought more problems.

  So, in his heart of hearts, Ludwick refuted Lieutenant Tojo's claim that wherever this ended, it was his fault. He had done nothing but try to help his fellow plant workers get better benefits and a safer place to work— things that should have already existed, things that no one should have to fight for. And when that failed, well ... he turned to common graft.

  So what?

  As he reached his apartment door and keyed in the code he allowed himself to think of the future. Wherever this ended, he was going to have a tidy sum of money. Closing the door behind him he got the screwdriver from the drawer and opened the vent on the wall. Taking the old handcomm out he checked it ... and smiled. Fifty thousand ... that's what going to jail for a night was worth. He put the handcomm back inside the vent and replaced the grill.

  Grabbing a beer from the fridge he sat down in his chair. He knew Tojo meant what he said when he told him that he would hold him directly responsible for any more incidents. Ludwick had no wish to test him on that point, so it was fortunate that he already had a backup plan in place. Something that would heat things up but couldn't be tied back to him.

  He finished his beer, showered, then slept hard until evening. Around midnight he strolled into the SriGoGo, a bar in an alley between a place that announced it loaned money in bright red LED strips in the windows and an apartment building with dingy permafab walls. He immediately found what he was looking for— young, blustering boys on the cusp of manhood. They were old enough to drink, but not old enough to handle it. The kind that would have rolled him if he hadn't offered to buy a few rounds. After which, he offered them a job. They were all part of the same crew, so the financials were easy, he just paid the leader directly, with the old handcomm.

  Early the next morning— earlier than expected— he woke to the sound of UNSEC soldiers beating on his door. They escorted him back to the security station where Tojo personally interrogated him about seemingly random acts of vandalism that had one thing in common— a spray painted message that read 'An injury to one is an injury to all'.

  Ludwick told him a couple of the bars he frequented last night, it was possible someone would remember seeing him. In the end the good lieutenant could prove nothing and Ludwick went back to his apartment to nurse his hangover. When he checked the account on the old handcomm, the money that he spent hiring the immature thugs had been replaced with an additional fifteen thousand UNDs. He didn't know who his mysterious benefactors were, but he sure loved them.

  14 - Shultz

  The building that housed the Governor's Office was not the UN Complex of Paris, the space for something that size didn't exist in Capital Burrow. So, the conference room was packed— literally— wall to wall, as the saying went. At the head of the room Lieutenant Colonel Compton stood straight as an arrow at the podium, flanked by a rough looking black woman wearing sergeant stripes on her perfectly pressed UNSEC uniform. Shultz and Jung were standing to the side of the podium, waiting for the expected incredulous uproar among the attending business owners and corporate representatives seated at the cramped table. And the media circus formed a U surrounding the table.

  Let's hope the air recyclers kick into high gear soon, Shultz thought as Compton continued his report. The room was getting a little stuffy.

  "As you can see from the images taken of the site, the dome and its contents are a total loss," Compton was saying, and indicated the screen at the opposite end of the room.

  It was quite a piece of work, Shultz admitted. Nothing but a blackened circle, burnt and twisted debris scattered out for hundreds of meters around the dome's foundation. Jung's people sure knew what they were doing.

  "We believe the explosion to have occurred around ..."

  "Is that important?" Fredrick Weston yelled, his face red. Shultz didn't know his official company title, but he was the Sol-X representative on Mars. "What I want to know is what are you doing about it? Can you assure us—" by us it was clear he meant everyone at the table "—this is it? No more bombings?"

  Compton frowned, looking directly at Weston. "Mister Weston, we are doing everything in our power to locate the perpetrators."

  "Colonel," Blake Sawiris, interrupted this time. He was PermaTech's man, serving the same function as Weston did for Sol-X, and part of the 'Big Three'. Sol-X, PermaTech, and AgraSource, represented the three largest companies on Mars. There were a few other big names, and to be sure they were here at the table. Jung's people had hit three of them over the last year. When Compton shifted his attention Sawiris continued.

  "What you're saying sounds like the party line. To be honest, the Association of Martian Businesses met last night to discuss the issue," Sawiris said. The AMB was a rich boy club that had no official standing on Mars. They met regularly at a rented office across the burrow and talked finances while smoking expensive cigars and drinking liqueur the captains of haulers brought in for them when they delivered company merchandise. Shultz had been to the place a few times. He didn't care for the atmosphere, but while they might not have any official standing in the economics of Mars their positions and the amount of money they controlled made an invitation from them difficult to turn down.

  "We are requesting UN protection. Soldiers
on our properties. A formal request, signed by everyone here will be submitted later this afternoon, but we want assurance from you that such a request will be immediately approved."

  Compton stopped him from going on. "Mister Sawiris, you are aware that we are prohibited by law from guarding personal property."

  "Enough of this, Compton," Weston shouted and slammed his fist down on the table. "I can't believe you can't stop what amounts to a bunch of angry college kids. The UN guaranteed a safe environment, we expect you to uphold that point of the contract."

  "I believe they were thinking in terms of air and water. And, the terrorists are exhibiting a level of tactical organization and access to weapons that precludes them from being simply a bunch of angry college kids."

  "Then get more soldiers! Get more guns! What are we paying UN tariffs for if we can't get protection—" Weston stopped mid-sentence and looked down at his handcomm on the table. A light was blinking on it. "Never mind," he said and picked up the handcomm. "Sol-Exchange is pulling out. I've got to go pack." He stood and turned to leave, the room exploded in to a crapstorm of yelling, questions, and reporters rushing around the table.

  * * *

  "Sol-Exchange is officially closing its outlets on Mars, and preparations are already underway to remove the company's assets from the planet. CEO Martin Cumberland said that he feared for the safety of employees and that the board of directors was unanimous in their support of his decision."

  It was the same on all channels. Shultz turned the volume down and stood from behind his desk. Jung was seated on the couch, holding a glass with the remnants of his whiskey. He could feel the man's eyes on him as he walked to the window and looked out.

  "I don't understand," Shultz said. "Are you changing your position?"

  It was a mere hour after Compton's report and the mess that followed. Not enough time to understand the fallout ... and he didn't like what he was hearing from his old friend and political partner.