Freedom's Light: Short Stories Read online

  "It's not about the damn Monorail bill, Ulysses!" Mark shouted. "It's about what they're going to do next!"

  "These stupid security bills come up every other year or so, and they always get voted down, so don't go worrying about it."

  "But--"

  The front door of the shop banged open, and three men entered. They were wearing their usual coveralls and hats, and they were sweaty and dirty after a day of plowing. The red Martian sand was everywhere--on them, their clothes, their hats, and trailing behind them in a cloud--but that was to be expected.

  "Damn, Ulysses," the first one said, giving a deep, relieved sigh. "That's some nice cool air in here."

  "Howdy, Prospect," Ulysses said.

  The man nodded at him and Mark.

  "Mr. McCoy," Mark acknowledged politely.

  "You'd think when those Tesseract, Incorporated geniuses were terraforming this rock, they wouldn't have turned the temperature up quite so high." Prospect McCoy laughed and mopped his face with a large red handkerchief.

  "If they hadn't, we'd be living on a ball of ice, just like Callisto," Ulysses said, leaving his tools for the moment and getting a few bottles of water for his guests.

  "I know that, Ulysses, but if we weren't complaining about the weather, we'd have nothin' left to talk about."

  Ulysses finally cracked a smile, and sat down.

  "We could complain about how Parliament is getting ready to screw all of us, if you'd rather, Mr. McCoy," Mark said. He was usually a good kid, with proper respect for his elders and all, but his earlier frustration crept into his tone and drew the older men's attention.

  "You might be able to pull that attitude with Ulysses, son," Herman Castleman said dangerously. "You're his apprentice, and I know you're close, but you keep on with that lip, and someone's gonna have to knock you upside the head to learn you some manners."

  Mark's face turned red, and he muttered a "yessir" before going back to his seat in the corner, away from the other men, but close enough to listen and comment.

  "How's the wheat comin' along?" Ulysses asked.

  Joey Seguin shrugged and took a sip of the bottled Europa water. "Same as always. The irrigation system is on the fritz--as usual--and the heat is going to bake it into dust here pretty soon--as usual--and we're waitin' to fix the irrigation system--as usual. Steve Angier went to town get some parts for it. Why couldn't those geniuses at Tesseract program in some rain?"

  "Come on, Joey," Herman said with a chuckle. "It does rain here, same as it snows on Callisto."

  "Yeah, but never when we need it."

  "And never enough," Prospect agreed.

  "Unless it's too much, don't forget," Ulysses added.

  "Exactly," the others chorused.

  They took a moment to chuckle and take another drink of water, and Mark remained silent in the corner, puttering around with his tools and pretending to do something useful.

  "So what's all this I hear about more security on the Monorail?" Joey asked.

  "Yeah, it's all over town," Prospect agreed. "Somethin' about needing to be DNA-scanned before you can board instead of just showing your credentials and your ticket."

  "Don't forget that your luggage has to be scanned and inspected, Mr. McCoy," Mark added, carefully minding his tone this time.

  Herman shook his head. "Damn glad I live here and not out there," he said with a wry chuckle.

  Maintaining a respectful tone, Mark asked, "But how long is it going to be before they bring their craziness out here to us and make us take it, Mr. Castleman?"

  The man thought about it for a moment. "Don't go borrowin' trouble, son. The universe has enough in it already without you creatin' more."

  "I'm not creating it, Mr. Castleman. I'm worried about somebody else creating it. I mean, come on. You heard about those fancy new badges, right--the mobes that you wear on your wrist instead of a regular hand-held one to make calls on the Current?"

  "Yeah, some fancy new gadget that kids'll be after," Herman said dismissively. "What of it?"

  "Some idiot in Parliament was actually talking about using those as your government-issued credentials. And that they'd be required. For everyone."

  Prospect scoffed. "That's never gonna happen, kid."

  "Maybe not," Joey said. "But the kid has a point, you know," he added carefully. "I mean, I certainly don't think that we're looking at being invaded by IPF agents or anything like that, but if they can get away with this, what'll stop them from getting away with more?"

  "Exactly!" Mark agreed.

  Ulysses shook his head. "I don't think we have anything to fear from the Interplanetary Police Forces, Mark," he said. "Any organization with a good agent like David Carter in it is okay by me."

  "Hear, hear," Prospect agreed. "It's good men like him that'll keep Parliament and the rest of them in line."

  "But scared people are stupid people, Prospect," Joey said pensively. "You've heard about what happened out at the mining station not too long ago. Now we've got separatists shooting cops at protests, here on Mars?"

  "Yeah, and when they catch that crazy sucker, they'll put him in the maximum security prison in the asteroid belt, and everything will go back to normal," Ulysses said, calm as usual.

  "Are you sure?" Mark asked. Instead of the arrogant kid attitude, he really sounded scared that time.

  Before any of them could answer, they tilted their head, listening. Somebody was shouting, doors were banging open and slamming shut, and unintelligible voices murmured outside. "What's going on?" Herman asked, standing up.

  Ulysses went to the door of his shop and opened it, looking up and down the street. He didn't want to let any more of the cool air outside, so he stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind him. In another few seconds, the other men joined him.

  "Hey, Pepe!" Joey shouted to one of his sons. The boy came barreling up to him, out of breath from a long sprint. "What happened?"

  He took a few seconds to catch his breath, and the words he finally managed to splutter shocked everyone in earshot: "Someone . . . blew up the Mars Rover Monument in Sharp City this morning."

  "What?" Herman blurted. By now, a small crowd of townspeople had gathered in front of Ulysses' shop, wondering and asking questions.

  "Yeah," Pepe explained. "It was all over the Current in Barrett City. There's probably sixty people dead--so far--and they're still filtering through the rubble. The bomb got the Monument and a couple of buildings nearby. But they said on the news that it could have been worse--a maglev full of kids on a field trip were supposed to be there when it blew. The train they were on was delayed because of a crazy guy on the tracks a few kilometers away. They missed the explosion by about four minutes."

  "Oh, God," Prospect muttered.

  "What explosion?"

  The others turned to see eight-year-old Sammy Angier approaching the crowd of adults.

  "Nothing, Sammy," Mark said, trying to shoo him away.

  "Don't do that to the kid, Mark," Ulysses said, kneeling down to look Sammy in the face. "Something bad happened in Sharp City today, Sam," he explained slowly. "There's a lot of people dead."

  The boy's face turned pasty white, and his lower lip trembled. "My dad went to Sharp City today."

  The shocked silence was oppressive.

  "He was getting some parts for the irrigation system," Sammy explained. "He hasn't come home yet."

  Before Ulysses or anyone else could reassure Sammy that his father was probably fine, they heard the soft whirr of an approaching car. Ulysses stood up and turned to look, and saw the insig of the Barrett City Primary Security Office painted on the side. He recognized one of the men who got out of the car.

  "Commissioner Jameson," Ulysses said politely. The other townsfolk deferred to him, and let him talk to the strangers.

  The commissioner shook his hand, but his face was haggard and strained. "I wish I could say I was here on a friendly visit, Ulysses, but I'm not. I'm looking for Pam Angier."


  All the adults knew what Jameson was here to do.

  "That's my mom," Sammy said, confused.

  Jameson didn't want to go on, but he had to. "Well, son, I need you to take me to see her, please."

  Sammy looked to Ulysses, who nodded and put a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder. "Come on, Sam. Let's go find your mom."

  Ulysses hadn't been worried before, but he certainly was now.

  Commissioner Jameson made the official notification of Steve Angier's death to his wife, who didn't take it well. Jameson was probably going to have some bruises after she flew at him in a hysterical rage and beat his chest with her fists before collapsing into a crying heap. He took it without flinching, and even without trying to stop her. Ulysses did appreciate that Jameson was the one to do it, though. It should have been a couple of IPF Division 7 agents from the Sharp City office--subversive attacks were their bailiwick, after all--but Jameson had asked to make the notification, because these co-op farmers were part of his jurisdiction, and he knew them. Not that the IPF agents would have treated the widow any less respectfully than Jameson, but sometimes it was better to hear something like that from an acquaintance rather than a stranger.

  Not that that made it any easier to hear.

  "You know where the blame for this is going to rest," Herman Castleman said sadly. Most of the adults in town had gathered in the rec building attached to the church to discuss what they were going to do. Not that anything they did would really help matters.

  "There're only two people they ever blame for 'subversive attacks,'" Mark Rankin said. "Manicheans and separatists. They know the Manicheans didn't do it, and that leaves the separatists." He wasn't his usual smart-ass self at the moment. He had been outraged before, but he was truly afraid now, and Ulysses didn't blame him. Mark ran one hand through his hair. "And that means us."

  "Not just us," Herman corrected. "Every farmer on Mars'll be under suspicion now, just because most separatists live in some co-op or other."

  "We knew something like this would happen eventually," Joey said sadly. "If it wasn't this bombing, it'd be another. Parliament has been sniffing around the co-ops for the last thirty years or more, trying to put us under their thumb. It was only a matter of time before they found some excuse they could use to justify coming down on us."

  "So, what do you suggest?" Mark asked quietly.

  Everyone in the room looked to Ulysses. He wasn't the mayor or anything, but people tended to look to him for a course of action. He was older, calmer, and less likely than other people who were present to make a sudden decision that would have disastrous consequences for the town.

  "I don't think we should do anything," he said after a moment's thought.

  "But they'll be coming after us!" Mark said. He was still scared, and that made him sound more like a whiny ten-year-old than a young adult. An angry murmur of agreement came from the others.

  "Maybe," Ulysses said. "But the minute we do anything other than sit and wait, we play right into their hands. Most cops and agents are good folk, like Jameson. We don't need to start treating them like the villains."

  There were a few nods.

  "Not yet," Prospect said angrily.

  "And if that changes, we change our response. For now, though, we should just mind our own business, and wait and see what happens. I find it hard to believe that Parliament would actually do something as idiotic as send IPF agents after every farmer on the planet. After all, we haven't done anything wrong, and they have no reason to suspect that we had anything to do with those bombers. If they want to question us, we should answer everything honestly. If they want to search the place, they still need a warrant to do that. If they have probable cause, then I invite them to come and search. I'd be disappointed if they didn't do that, if they have enough proof to get a judge to issue a warrant."

  Joey scoffed. "That's assuming one of their security bills doesn't allow them to skip that part."

  Most of the room murmured assent, and Ulysses held up his hands.

  "Now, let's not go borrowing trouble. That hasn't happened yet, and if it does, we'll have to come up with another plan." He sighed. "For now, we can contact our MPs, and see if we can make enough noise to get them to back off any legislation that might do such a thing."

  "Most of the Mars representatives are pretty good," Herman said. "We can write some letters, visit their offices, all that jazz." He scoffed. "I'd suggest a peaceful protest, but we all saw how that ended recently."

  Ulysses nodded. "We can also send someone into town to watch the news every day, just in case something happens." He looked at his hands, and knew that he had to say it. "If--and I do mean if--it looks like they're coming after us, we might get some warning. But for now, we should just go back to minding our own business, and wait and see."

  "That's it?" Mark asked.

  Ulysses stared long and hard at the kid before letting his gaze rest on all the people in the room. They were scared, and he didn't want them to do anything stupid. As Joey had already pointed out, scared people do stupid things, and doing anything stupid would bring something very bad straight down on their heads, with disastrous consequences.

  "No, son, that isn't it," he said quietly. "We make sure that we have a contingency plan. If we have to defend ourselves, we'd better make sure we can do it."

  For a long time after that, nothing happened. People kept waiting for it, but most of them planned for the worst and hoped for the best. They were farmers; they were used to doing exactly that.

  Eventually, people in town began to forget about it entirely. No IPF agents came knocking; a few piece-of-crap bills got passed in Parliament, but they seemed to have very little effect on the daily lives of any of the Martian farmers.

  Ulysses was in his shop one day, working on a handgun. Mark was in his corner, adjusting the trigger of another Henry rifle. The kid--well, he wasn't much of a kid anymore; he was getting married next month--had a real talent for those lever-action rifles.

  It was raining that day. The artificially-constructed environment on this planet had its own quirks, and sometimes the rain would move in and refuse to move off. It had been drizzling steadily for a week now, but it wasn't a violent storm, and most of the farmers were happy with the rain. If it kept this up, though, it would be in danger of flooding the crops.

  Mark looked up from his work. "Was that thunder I just heard?" he asked, a bit incredulous.

  Ulysses shrugged. "I don't think so."

  "There it is again," Mark said, standing up.

  That time, Ulysses heard it, too. He stood up very slowly, listening intently. Then he realized exactly what he was hearing.

  "That's not thunder, son," he said, taking his own Henry rifle from the rack on the wall. He checked it, and of course it was loaded, and went out the front door of his shop.

  A few of the other townsfolk had heard the same noise, and were outside looking for the source. Sure enough, there were a few specks of black on the horizon, heading straight for them.

  "Oh, God," Mark whispered. "Is that what I think it is?"

  "If you think that's a whole slew of IPF helicopters, you're right," Ulysses told him, still staring at the black objects coming their way. "I want you to run straight to Mr. Seguin, Mark, do you understand?"

  "But--"

  "No buts, son," he said gently. "He's mayor now. He might be able to talk us out of whatever trouble is headed this way."

  "What started this?" Mark asked. "There hasn't been anything weird on the news feeds in months."

  "It doesn't matter," Ulysses snapped. "Just spread the word, and start with Seguin. Go!"

  Mark ran through the rain, and Ulysses could hear him pounding on the front door of the mayor's house. In another few seconds, raised voices were audible as Mark spread the word through town.

  Ulysses didn't stop to watch what was going on. He walked down Main Street, between the businesses and homes of his friends, straight towards the IPF agents bearing down on
them. He neither slowed nor stopped to answer any questions. Word was spreading quickly, and most people took one look at him and ran inside to retrieve their own weapons, or bolt the doors behind them, depending on their inclination.

  The helicopters landed right at the edge of town, and began disgorging agents in black tactical gear. Ulysses kept going, counting them as he walked towards them. He gave up when he reached thirty. All of the agents were armed with bolt rifles--new ones, from the look of them--and those rifles were pointed in his general direction.

  He heard rapid footsteps behind him, and Joey Seguin appeared, with a soaked Mark Rankin right beside him.

  "You're not armed, Joey," Ulysses said, simply stating a fact.

  "How likely is it they'll be 'talked down' by a guy with a gun in his hands?" he asked with a chuckle that contained very little humor.

  "Not very."

  "I doubt they'll be 'talked down' at all, Mr. Seguin," Mark said. But then, he wasn't armed, either.

  The agents approached, using that half-crouch, rapid walk as they aimed their weapons at the three men in the middle of the street. One of them stepped forward.

  Joey extended his hands in a peaceful gesture. "I am the mayor of this town. What's your business here?"

  The agent did not seem impressed. "We have orders to search the premises," he said simply.

  "For what reason?"

  "That's not your concern," the agent said.

  "I have to disagree with you, sir," Joey countered, cold anger now replacing the courtesy in his voice. "If you are here to search the premises, you must have a warrant authorizing you to do so. I would like to see it, please." It was less a request than a command.

  The agent smirked. "I don't need a warrant for the likes of you," he said. "You subversives have been a thorn in the side of the Interplanetary Commonwealth for long enough."

  "We're not subversives!" Mark blurted, outraged. "We're just farmers!" Ulysses caught his eye and shook his head, and Mark was silent.