A Perfect World

Chapter 6



The passenger window of the surface-to-orbit spacecraft was a little bigger
than aircraft windows in the 21st century. It was about two feet square, Ken
estimated, and not composed of the thick, blurry double panes of glass as
were passenger aircraft windows. Instead, the barrier between himself and
the lethal Martian atmosphere was nothing but a thin layer of the same sort
of clear plexiglass that made up the walls of the serenity level on top of
the university building, or the glass that made up the windows of Karen's
house. It looked dangerously flimsy to Ken's eyes and was so clean, one
could hardly tell it was even there. He could see perfectly through it to
where the taxiway of the spaceport was rolling by outside. Yellow lines were
painted on the edges of the taxiway and blowing Martian dust drifted by on
the dunes beyond. All around him he could feel the gentle thrum of the
spacecraft's engines at idle. The inertial damping system was at work again
and he could feel no motion.



"Tell me again how safe these things are," he said to Karen, who was sitting
in the plush seat next to him.



They were seated near the front of the vehicle, just five rows back from the
cockpit door. All around them other Martians were relaxing in their seats,
some peering out the window as he was doing, others looking at the screens
of their PCs or talking softly to each other.



"There has never been a fatal accident of a surface-to-orbit craft since the
revolution," she assured him. "Not even one. For every take-off, there was a
landing or a docking with all hands exiting safely."



He sensed no deceit at her words and they did make him feel better about
being blasted into space toward an orbiting city in geosynchronous orbit on
the other side of the planet. "What about before the revolution?" he asked.



"Well..." she said slowly, "there were occasionally some incidents back
then. The Earthlings who ran the spacecraft industry in those days weren't
quite as safety minded as we Martians are. They tended to sacrifice safety
features if they were deemed too expensive to install or maintain. It was
kind of like the airline industry back in your time, I imagine."



"What kind of incidents?" he asked. "Were they crashes?"



"Historically, the most common type of surface-to-orbit accident occurs
during reentry as a result of something damaging the heat shield.
Unfortunately, that usually results in everyone getting smoked."



"I see," he said, chewing his lip thoughtfully. He looked back out the
window and noted they were now turning onto another taxiway, the landscape
spinning slowly to another angle. They began to accelerate again, the lines
on the ground picking up speed as they shot past them. A female voice from
the intercom system then began to speak.



"Good morning, my butt buddies," it said. "What the fuck's the haps? They
call me Lauren and I'll be flying this heap of shit for you today. We're
talkin' about one hour and thirty-three minutes from lift-off to docking at
Triad Spaceport, if we don't erupt in a ball of fuckin' flame halfway up."



There was a laugh from the rest of the passengers at her words. Ken however,
didn't think it was the least bit funny. "I can't believe she just said
that," he told Karen.



She shrugged, disinterested. "That's one of the oldest lines on the hard
drive," she said.



"So anyway," Lauren, the faceless pilot continued, "just kick your shit
back, have yourself some of our smoke if you're into it, and slap out with
the ride."



They continued to head down the taxiway, traveling at about forty miles per
hour, Ken estimated. Once again he reached down to check his seatbelt and
once again became distressed when he remembered there weren't any seatbelts.
Though his chair was quite comfortable, there was absolutely nothing to
secure him to it. And something else was missing as well, he suddenly
realized.



"Don't the flight attendants give a safety lecture before we take off?" he
asked Karen.



"A safety lecture?" she asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.



"Yeah, you know, like what we should do if there's an emergency while we're
in flight, a decompression or something like that?"



"If something like that happens," she said simply, "then we'll all die.
What's the point of having a safety lecture if there's nothing to do about
the problem?"



Ken really didn't have an answer for that one. He decided to just sit back
and not think about the fact of what was about to happen. It was something
he didn't do a very good job of.



After ten minutes of rolling along the taxiway Ken sensed a change in the
thrum of the engines. He looked outside and saw that they were slowing down.
The spacecraft turned one more time, edged forward a little, and then came
to a halt. They sat there for a few seconds and then there was a clanking
noise, clearly audible throughout the cabin.



"What was that?" he asked.



"The launching ramp locking onto us," she said. "It's built into the ground.
Once we're parked on it and secured to it, it will elevate us to launch
attitude, which is sixty degrees."



"So the front of the craft is going to lift up into the air?"



"It's already happening," she said, pointing out his window.



He looked and was startled to see they were indeed rising into the air, the
front of the spacecraft being elevated to point at the red Martian sky. His
head began that uncomfortable swimming sensation again at the conflict in
sensory and movement input. He should have been pushed back in his seat,
should have been holding on for dear life to keep from falling backwards
toward the rear of the cabin. Instead, he was sitting nicely in his chair as
if he were on level ground. He felt as if he could even get up and walk
around in the aisles if he wanted, nearly perpendicular to the ground
outside. In fact, three or four people were walking around at the moment,
two of them uniformed flight attendants, one a passenger returning from the
restroom.



"This is just too weird," he said, tearing his eyes from the outside so he
wouldn't have to look at it.



"You've gotta love artificial gravity," Karen said as she fiddled with the
computer console installed on the back of the seat in front of her. "Where
would we be without it?"



"Safely back on Earth?" he asked.



She seemed to think this was a joke and she laughed. "How about some smoke?"
she asked him, pulling a long hose out of a slot. "I just ordered up a few
hits of some Eden green."



"You're going to smoke marijuana now?" he asked her.



"Why not?" she asked, putting the hose in her mouth. "It's the only way to
fly." She began to suck on the hose, drawing in a large hit. When she
finished she tried to hand it to him.



"Uh... no thanks," he said. "I've already got enough of the paranoids."



"Suit yourself," she said. "But if you want to order some booze instead,
just access the menu on the screen in front of you."



"Booze? Its only eight in the morning."



This prompted another look of confusion from her. "What does that have to do
with anything?"



"Are you kidding?" he asked.



"I don't think so. Is there something wrong with using intoxicants at eight
in the morning?"



He took a really good look at the other passengers for the first time and
noticed that many of them were in fact sipping from bottles of beer or
glasses filled with obviously alcoholic beverages. And they weren't Bloody
Marys either, the one drink that had been deemed socially acceptable to
consume in the morning hours in his time. "Well, back in my day," he said,
"it was considered... uh... uncouth to drink alcohol before noon."



"Why?"



He found he really didn't have an answer for her. "I'm not sure, now that
you mention it," he admitted. "What the hell? Maybe a little booze will
mellow me out."



"Now you're talking," Karen said, taking another hit from her hose.



He ordered a rum and cola drink from the menu screen. No sooner had he
finished pushing the buttons than a scantily clad and very attractive flight
attendant appeared with it in her hand. She smiled flirtatiously at him,
passed a few trashy words, and then told him he owed her a quarter of a
credit. He laid some derm on her screen and she disappeared back down the
aisle once more. He sipped from his drink, finding it refreshingly heavy on
the rum. It warmed his stomach nicely as it went down.



A minute later the captain announced they had been cleared for lift-off. Ken
had time for one last nervous look at Karen before the entire spacecraft
began to thrum with power. Karen reached out and took his hand comfortingly
as thick smoke erupted outside the window, obscuring the view.



"And we're off," Karen said, taking another hit from her hose.



Ken, fascinated and terrified, continued to look out the window. The smoke
and dust cleared a moment later and he saw they were now several hundred
feet above the ground and rising quickly. The spaceport dropped away below
them, opening up in a panorama of taxiways and buildings. The speed of their
ascent increased exponentially and within seconds, the entire city of New
Pittsburgh became visible. And again, there was that uneasy feeling of not
being able to feel any motion, even though his eyes could clearly see they
were moving nearly straight up at a tremendous speed under what had to be
crippling acceleration.



"What do you think?" Karen asked, watching his face.



He tore his eyes away from the window and looked at her. "I think I need a
drink," he said, putting his glass to his lips and gulping nearly half of it
in one swallow.



The engines continued to blast and they continued to rise higher and higher.
Outside, the pink tinge of the sky gradually darkened to the black of space.
Below them the landscape became a wide-open view of the cratered Martian
surface, with no signs of human habitation visible. He could clearly see the
curvature of the planet now. Six minutes into the flight the captain
announced they were now free of the atmosphere and would be throttling down
a bit for injection into the geosynchronous orbital path. There was a
moderate lessening of the powerful vibration and a few mute pops that Karen
explained were the maneuvering thrusters firing, adjusting their course. The
engines burned for another ten minutes, during which Ken finished his first
drink and half of a second one, and then suddenly cut off, leaving an eerie
sense of silence.



"What now?" he asked, still looking out the window to the planet far below.
A ways in front of them he could see the terminator between day and night
approaching.



"Now we're just coasting," she said. "They've got us on a path that will
carry us up to geosynchronous orbit and allow us to catch up to Triad, but
that will keep us from actually breaking orbit and heading off into space.
When we get closer they'll turn the ship around so they can decelerate us
for docking."



"And Triad is on the night side of the planet right now?"



"Right," she said. "All of the terrestrial cities are in the western
hemisphere. Triad orbits over the eastern hemisphere. That's so
surface-to-orbit craft don't have to make a complete orbit to dock. They
just blast up to the proper altitude and by the time they get there, they're
at the station. It makes things much more efficient that way. We don't have
to wait for a certain window to launch toward Triad or head back down to the
surface."



He nodded, taking another sip. He was starting to relax and enjoy being in
orbit now. "Won't it be the middle of the night on Triad though?" he asked.



"No, it's the same time in Triad as it is in New Pittsburgh. Since it's an
orbiting city the actual position of the sun doesn't mean very much. The
lights will be bright there and it will be the middle of the workday. During
the evening hours the streetlights are dimmed down to help keep body rhythms
aligned."



"I see," he said, his mind trying to grapple with that one and finally
succeeding.



They floated in silence for a while. The ship overtook the terminator of the
planet and the view of the landscape was replaced by total blackness.
Outside, where the bulk of the surface didn't intrude, the stars shone with
a brilliance he had never imagined. Not even in the clearest deserts of
Earth, not even atop the highest mountain could they shine with this
intensity and in these numbers. The individual constellations were
meaningless, unrecognizable due to the sheer amount of other stars that
ordinarily couldn't be seen. The white glow of the Milky Way, which was
never more than a vague dusting on Earth, looked like an endless band of
glowing steam, clearly visible in three dimensions.



"There's Earth," Karen said, leaning into his shoulder and pointing at a
particularly bright, bluish colored star. "It looks like it's about
three-quarter phase right now."



Ken looked where she was pointing, fascinated at the thought of viewing his
home planet from a hundred million miles away, further than any human had
ever been from it in his time. "Wow," he said, mostly to himself. "It's so
small from here."



"Hard to believe that more than twelve billion people live on that little
blue blob, isn't it?" Karen asked. "You can't tell by looking at it with the
naked eye, although with a good telescopic magnifying program you can make
out the city lights on the surface. If you look close you can make out the
moon at about three o'clock."



He averted his eyes just a little, so that he wasn't looking directly at the
planet, and sure enough he could see a dim point of light just to the right
of it. "And there are cities on the moon too?" he asked.



"Oh yes," she said. "Almost as many people live on the moon as live on Mars.
It's EastHem's primary mining colony. They have seven large cities on the
surface and a complex economy."



Ken shook his head a little in wonder. "It's hard to imagine all of that,"
he said quietly. "I mean, I was up half the night reading about your history
on the Internet and I've even seen pictures of it, but my mind just has a
hard time accepting it. I just can't grasp that there are now people living
on the moon, even people living on Mars and I'm now one of them."



"Culture shock," she said sympathetically. "As I told you yesterday, all of
our cryogenic people have gone through it but you're probably experiencing
it the worst, because we had no time to ease you into the way things are
these days."



"Yes, it is mighty shocking all right."



"You seem to be handling it fairly well so far, though," she said. "And in
time you'll adjust and even embrace our way of life, I think. You just need
to see a little more of it in action. Jacob is going to be at Marjorie's
house when you meet her. I'll talk to him about arranging that police
ride-a-long I told you about."



"Jacob is your brother, right?" he asked, trying to remember all of the
names she had thrown at him the day before.



"Fuckin' aye," she said. "My little brother, although he's half a meter
taller than me and outweighs me by more than twenty kilos. He caught a
military flight up from Eden, where he's stationed."



"He lives in Eden but he'll be able to arrange a ride-a-long for me with the
New Pittsburgh police?"



"Oh yes," she said. "His husband used to work for NPPD."



Ken wasn't sure that he had heard her correctly. "Did you say, his husband?"



"Fuckin' aye," she said casually. "His name is Belung. He and Jacob met when
Jacob was in flight training at New Pittsburgh. They just had their third
anniversary."



Ken swallowed slowly. "Are you saying that Jacob is a... is a..."



"A faggot?" she asked.



"Uh... well, I was going to say gay, but..."



Karen laughed. "Now that's a really old-fashioned word. Wow. The only place
you see gay used is in ancient literature. Here, the polite term for a male
who likes to exclusively fuck the same gender is faggot, although
rump-ranger, dick-smoker, and fudge-packer are also acceptable terms in
mixed company."



"Those were all... you know... derogatory slang terms back in my day," he
said, still trying to grapple with the fact that his grandson was... well...
a faggot.



"Yes," she said, nodding. "Like 'fuckin' aye' and 'down with it' and 'suck
my hairy ass,' right?"



"Well, I never told anyone to suck my hairy ass, but... yes, I guess so."



"The normal evolution of words over the generations," Karen said. "Although
here on Mars I imagine it evolved a little quicker than usual. Remember who
our ancestors were, after all."



"Yeah," he said. "I suppose that makes sense." He swallowed again. "So on
Mars gay... uh, faggots, are allowed to marry each other?"



"Yes," she said. "Homosexual and polygamous marriage has been legal on Mars
since pre-revolutionary times, although the Earthlings didn't recognize such
things when they ran the place. They still don't on Earth, by the way, in
EastHem and WestHem both."



"Polygamous marriage is legal too?"



"Of course," she said. "If any two people or three people or ten people of
any sex or combination of sexes wish to get married, what right does the
government have to say they can't? What business is it of the government?"



"Well, back in my day they used to think it was a lot of their business.
Marriage was heavily regulated and controlled. There was a lot of paperwork
involved. And only a man and woman could get married."



"And, if I'm not mistaken," she said, "you had a divorce rate that was
nearly fifty percent, right?"



"Yes," he said. "That sounds about right. What is your divorce rate?"



"Less than five percent," she said. "It's gone down considerably since we
post-revolutionary children started to reach marriage age."



"Less than five percent?" he said in disbelief. "You have men marrying men,
women marrying women, three and four people marrying each other, and only
five percent of them get divorced?"



"Well, polygamous marriages of more than three are pretty rare, but yes,
that's how it is. You have to understand though, marriage is viewed
differently by us than it was by you."



"Differently? In what way?"



"It is considered an almost sacred thing among Martians," she said. "To
marry a person is to make a deep commitment to them, to declare that you
love them and you wish to spend your life with them."



"That's what marriage was in my day as well," Ken said.



"No," she said sternly. "That is not what marriage was in your day. That is
what you pretended marriage was. What marriage actually represented to your
society, and what it still represents to Earth society to this day, is a
social conformity for both sexes. You were told by society that you must
marry in order to be normal and so what happened was the desire for marriage
became independent of the desire to find someone you actually wanted to
spend your life with. Your people ended up marrying someone they thought
they could get along with instead of someone they loved. Women ended up
marrying for status and for what their husband did for a living. Men ended
up marrying because career advancement demanded that a man maintain a
family."



"That's not true," Ken said. "I married Annie because I loved her. I did
want to spend the rest of my life with her. And obviously she loved me as
well or she wouldn't have had me frozen and shipped off to space instead of
just letting me die."



"Annie did love you, Ken, of that there is no denying. And I have no doubt
you loved Annie as well. Unfortunately, however, you are a rarity among
Earthlings of your time period. Surely you must see that, don't you? Think
back to others you knew. Had most of your friends and acquaintances married
by the time they turned thirty of your years old?"



"Yes," he said.



"And of all the people you knew who did that, how many of them were truly
happy? Be honest now. How many?"



He did as requested and gave an honest evaluation of the people he had known
and the status of their marriages. And, shockingly, he discovered she was
right. His best friend at the SJPD was Jack Stellon. He and his wife barely
tolerated each other. They had gone through two trial separations and both
routinely cheated on each other. They remained a couple in name only for the
sake of their children. His other two close friends, Rick Palestine and
Jason Markley were both divorced and paying child support. Even his own
parents had divorced when he was sixteen years old. Annie's friends were no
different. At the time of his death Annie's best friend at the school had
been knee-deep in divorce and child custody hearings. Annie's parents had
divorced when she was a teenager too. Her sister, at the time of his
shooting, had been slogging through a loveless marriage to a wealthy
accountant and popping anti-depressant pills and Valium just to keep her
sanity. Of all the people he knew, he honestly could not say any of them had
a marriage as happy as the one he had shared with Annie. Not even one!



"My guess is you can't think of any, right?" Karen asked gently.



"No," he admitted. "I guess I can't."



"The sanctity of marriage is a beautiful thing," she said. "It is symbolic
of love and respect and is the basis for childbearing and childrearing. You
Earthlings at some point perverted the institution to the point where you
had people marrying because they felt they had to, because they didn't want
to be different from their friends, because they thought that was what a
life had to encompass in order for happiness to occur. And what you ended up
with was a world full of miserable people who eventually ended up hating
each other. There were, of course, exceptions to this rule but they were
rare. Your marriage to Annie was one such exception. You were one of the
lucky few who happened to find someone you actually loved to marry. If I
understand my family history correctly, you met Annie quite by chance,
didn't you?"



"Yes," he said. "We met when I demonstrated for her class the helicopter I
flew."



"A very fortunate turn of events," she said. "But suppose you hadn't met her
that day? Suppose she had been sick or there had been some emergency that
would have precluded you from demonstrating your aircraft for her. What
would have happened in your life then? Would you have gone on searching for
that perfect woman until you found her? Or would you have married someone
else because you thought it was time to get married?"



Again he employed some brutally honest self-examination and again he found
she was entirely correct. He had been 32 years old that day he had met her
and had been dating semi-regularly for the past eight months an emergency
room nurse he had met in a cop bar. He had vividly clear memories of turning
the marriage idea over and over in his head in those days. And why had he
been considering marriage to Jessica the nurse? Had it been because he loved
her, or even because he thought he loved her? No. Of that there was
absolutely no doubt. He had been thinking about it because it had seemed he
was getting too old to be single, because people might start to wonder if
there was something wrong with him, because his parents and his friends were
always asking him when he was going to settle down. If he hadn't met Annie
when he did it is very likely he might have proposed to Jessica the nurse
within six months, surely no more than a year. And would they have been
happy together? After living with Annie for two years, after enjoying a
marriage to a woman he truly loved, he knew he would not have been. Within
six or seven years, after producing a few children, no doubt, they would
have been just another divorce statistic or just another couple enduring a
loveless life of staying together for the sake of the children.



"I would've married someone else," he said.



"Whether you loved her or not?"



"Whether I loved her or not."



She smiled sympathetically at him. "That's exactly the sort of thing we have
gotten away from here," she said. "The average age of marriage on Mars is
around seventeen years old-about the age you are now. There is no legal
basis for this, of course. Anyone on Mars can legally marry once they reach
the age of nine. Most, however, choose not to. Most of us choose to explore
life for six or seven years, to develop the maturity required to make such
an important decision, to explore all aspects of sexuality. It has also been
found that encountering true, mutual love, that finding the right person
just takes that long. Sometimes it takes longer. There are people I know who
are more than twenty years old before they find that special someone. One of
the doctors at the hospital is 25 and still hasn't found that person. But in
our society we are conditioned to wait until love finds us the same way your
society used to condition you to marry young whether love existed or not."



"And there is no stigma attached to being 25 years old and unmarried?" he
asked. "People don't start to... you know... wonder if you're all right?"



"No. We Martians tend to mind our own business about that sort of thing. It
is assumed that if someone hasn't married yet, they just haven't found
anyone they want to marry yet."



"And there is no stigma about being... uh... a faggot either?"



"Not among the majority of the population," she said. "We are however a very
diverse society by nature, so naturally there are some people who oppose
homosexual unions both on the sexual level and the marital level."



"Really? Who are they?"



"Mostly God-freaks," she said. "As I said, we have all types here on Mars."



"God-freaks? What are those?"



"Adherents to the ancient Earth religious teachings," she told him. "We
don't have much organized religion here but what we do have is often very
vocal. There are some Mormons, some Baptists, a few Catholics and Muslims.
They like to tell the rest of us we're sinners, damned to hell, destined to
be thrown into a pit of fire, and other such bullshit. They bag on the
chosen lifestyle of the majority and spend a lot of their days trying to
convert others to their viewpoint." She shrugged. "Most people just find
them amusing. Who doesn't like being compared to Sodom and Gomorrah, after
all?"



"Are you saying that religious people are the minority here?" he asked.
"That most of the people are atheists?"



"No, I wouldn't say that most of us are atheists," she said. "It's just that
most of us aren't down with organized religion. We don't believe there is a
God somewhere who is going to punish us after we die because we like to
engage in pre-marital or extra-marital sexuality, or because we have
homosexual encounters, or because we don't believe exactly what has been
written that we should believe. It's a common sense issue for most of us.
The bible and the Koran are illogical and are obviously written with the
idea of behavioral control of the population in mind. As Karl Marx said,
religion is the opiate of the masses. It is designed to keep us in line by
laying down a set of rules to follow on the threat of eternal damnation. It
is designed to quell the urge for revolt by promising a better life after
death. Why try to change the miserable system you live under if you get
paradise after you die? Well here on Mars, we have revolted, we have changed
the miserable system we lived under, and we have achieved a fairly decent
lifestyle for the masses. Most of the people feel no need for religion here.
Many of us-myself included-believe there is a higher power and there is even
a Heaven and a Hell we may go to after death. But we also believe admission
to that Heaven or that Hell is dependent on your deeds here in this life,
not on the beliefs you hold or the deity you chose to worship. We believe
your afterlife, if there is such a thing, is probably a reflection of the
pain you have caused others throughout your lifetime. We believe pleasure is
a virtue to be embraced and shared, not to be ashamed of and hidden."



"No shit?" Ken said in wonder, finding, much to his astonishment, that her
religious theories actually made a certain sort of sense. Fundamentalist
Christians wouldn't think so, of course, but then they had never been big
proponents of common sense anyway.



Karen gave a dreamy smile. "You'll have to excuse me," she said. "I get
really philosophical when I get stoned. Anyway, that's the Martian view of
religion and spirituality for the most part. There are some atheists among
us and there are the God-freaks. The atheists tend to keep to themselves.
The God-freaks tend to get a bit annoying at times but most people just
ignore them."



"I see," Ken said. "But going back to this marriage thing for a minute."



"Sure," she said. "What about it?"



"You just got done telling me how sacred you Martians view the institution
of marriage, how seriously you take it."



"Fuckin' aye."



"Well, the other day, when I was in the hospital, and Zeal, the nurse, gave
me that... uh... massage."



"Yes, what about it?"



"I asked her what her husband thought about her giving such massages and she
told me he didn't mind."



She looked at him, perplexed. "I'm not quite down with where you're going
with this."



"She implied to me that she often did other things with patients as well
as... you know, other sexual things. I also got the distinct impression she
did sexual things with other people who weren't patients as well."



"Yes," Karen said, a strange smile on her face. "That's Zeal all right. Her
husband has been known to do a few things sexual too."



Now it was Ken who had the perplexed look. "That doesn't exactly sound like
people who revere the institution of marriage to me."



"Why not?" she asked. "I know Zeal and Stellon very well. They love each
other very much and they're absolutely static parents to their three
children."



"But they're having sex with other people," he said, exasperated.



Karen shrugged. "They're not monos," she said.



"That word again," he said. "Zeal said that same thing to me when I asked
her about it. What the hell is a mono anyway?"



She gave him a sympathetic look. "A mono is a person who believes in the
practice of monogamy within a relationship," she told him. "I understand
that in your society such a thing was considered normal, wasn't it?"



"Yes, monogamy was considered the foundation of both a marriage and a
relationship."



"And how many people, particularly men, actually adhered to it?" she asked
him.



"That's not the point," he protested.



"Actually, that's exactly the point," she said. "Most of the monos here on
Mars are the God-freaks and that's for a reason. The practice of sexual
monogamy is religious in nature, not biological. We believe that sex and
love are not mutually exclusive. Sexual pleasure is a great gift and it is
not meant to be confined to only one person or even only two people or
three. Sexuality is to be shared among friends, to be practiced and
perfected. Just because a person commits to a marital relationship with
someone does not mean the urge to engage in sex with others should be
repressed."



"So you're telling me," he said carefully, "that you Martians all engage in
extra-marital sex, with the full knowledge of your spouses, and everyone is
okay with that?"



"Except for the monos, yes, to varying degrees we fuck others of both sexes
and no one minds. We've accepted that it's a part of life."



"So you get together all the time and just have a bunch of orgies?"



"Orgies are fairly common here on Mars," she said, "but I would say that
most of the extra-marital sex that goes on is done in the normal fashion. A
man and a woman, or a woman and a woman, or a man and a man meet someone
they wish to have sex with and if the feeling is mutual, they do it, either
alone or with the participation of the spouse. It all depends on what people
want. Again, this is all stuff that went on in your society on a regular
basis but was kept hidden and underground. As I've told you before, we have
come to grips with our sexuality here and we embrace our urges with relish."



"Amazing," he said, shaking his head a little. He wanted to be appalled at
what he was hearing, but, in all honesty, he simply couldn't. She was right.
What she was describing was something that had gone on regularly in his day.
Though he had never cheated on Annie, it was undeniable that he had never
stopped finding other women attractive, that he had never stopped imagining
what it would be like to touch them, to be naked with them, to have sex with
them. He could not deny that he had even been tempted at times to cultivate
a sexual relationship with one, although he had never quite been able to
take that step. And the male friends he had had throughout his life. How
many of them had routinely cheated on their spouses? Nearly all of them. All
the Martians had done was to bring this out into the light and made
legitimate what had once been clandestine.



"It's just life on Mars," she said with a shrug. "Try to understand however,
you don't have to participate in sex with anyone you don't wish to. I don't
want you to think it is an obligation or anything like that. And pressuring
someone to have sex when they don't wish to is considered very poor taste
here."



"Oh is it now?" he asked. "What about Zeal and her handjob? What about
Marcella last night?"



"What about Marcella last night?" Karen asked mischievously.



Ken blushed, cursing himself for allowing his mouth to get ahead of his
brain. "Well... she came to my room last night... and... she kind of... you
know?"



"Fucked you?"



He blushed a deeper shade. "Not quite. She gave me a... she uh... orally
copulated me."



Karen looked at him in astonishment for a moment and then burst out in
laughter. "Orally copulated you?" she asked, loud enough so that several
nearby passengers looked at her quizzically.



"Jesus, Karen," he hissed at her. "Could you maybe yell it a little louder?
I don't think the pilots up in the cockpit were able to hear you."



"Sorry," she said, lowering her voice but still chuckling a little. "It's
just that I've never heard a blowjob referred to like that before. A
twentieth century term, I take it?"



"That was the legal term for a... a blowjob," he said. "But my point is that
with both Zeal and Marcella, I told them I didn't want... you know... sexual
contact with them and they did it anyway."



"Oh really?" Karen asked. "You didn't want sexual contact with them?"



"No," he said. "I'm not quite used to your Martian ways yet, and I..."



"Are you saying you were raped?" she interrupted, a slight teasing light in
her eyes. "Because if you were, both Zeal and Marcella are in big trouble
with our legal system. Non-consensual sex is a major crime here, as I've
explained."



"Well... no, I'm not saying I was raped," he said. "It's just that I was
somewhat reluctant at first and they both pushed forward."



"But at some point-and rather quickly if I know those two-you became a
willing and enthusiastic participant in what they were doing, right?"



"Uh... I guess I did," he admitted.



"Then I would say you were seduced," she said. "Seduction is not a crime.
It's static to convince someone to have sex with you. Most of us like
seduction, in fact, wouldn't you say? When it becomes wrong is when you are
forced, either through threats or physical contact, to participate in sex.
Do you see the distinction I am making?"



"Yes," he said. "I do."



"So which category would you place your experiences in?"



"Seduction," he said, almost reluctantly.



"Exactly," Karen said. "That's how things work here in our relationships.
You may as well get used to seduction attempts, Ken. You're a good-looking
guy and you're going to get them a lot, from both sexes. Sometimes you will
be asked straight out if you want to fuck, sometimes it will be subtler, but
it is going to happen frequently. Mars is a planet of sexual creatures. We
have replaced the greed that used to drive your society with lust and
decadence. My suggestion is that you simply enjoy yourself. Learn to cast
aside the guilt you feel at such encounters. If someone wants to fuck you
and you find him or her attractive, go ahead and do it. That's what being a
Martian is all about. But if you decide you don't wish to do it with
someone, just tell him or her no in a firm manner. They will respect your
wishes without hard feelings. That too is the Martian way."



Ken took another sip of his drink as he pondered this. "I think I'll have to
tell the men no," he said. "I have nothing against... uh... faggots, but I'm
just not into that sort of thing myself."



She shrugged. "And that is your prerogative," she told him. "A lot of our
men shun homosexual sex among themselves as a matter of course. All you have
to say is that you aren't down with fudge-packing or rump-rutting or
something like that. They'll understand."



He couldn't help laughing a little. "And that's the polite way to do it,
huh?"



"Yes," she said, in all serious. "Can you think of a nicer way?"



+++++



An hour later Ken caught his first glimpse of the orbiting city as the
spaceship drifted steadily toward it. Like most of the other scenery he had
witnessed since awakening, the view was awe-inspiring, a testament to human
engineering skills. It looked like a glittering diamond floating impossibly
in the blackness of space. As they drew closer he was able to see that the
lights came from tall buildings that protruded both upward and downward from
a centralized support structure similar to the street level of New
Pittsburgh.



"It's huge," Ken said in awe, his eyes looking everywhere at once.



"Remember how I told you that we Martians tend to take advantage of vertical
space instead of sprawling out horizontally?" Karen asked.



"Yes," he said, pressing his face against the window like a child.



"The same principal applies on Triad, even more so, in fact. Construction in
space is horribly labor intensive and, before the revolution, was very
expensive as well. Since Triad is in orbit there is no ground level to worry
about so the vertical advantage works both up and down from the main street
level. Right there in the middle is where the traffic moves about, and the
buildings are constructed in both directions from there. The most expensive
buildings on Triad are the ones that reach downward, toward the planet. The
view tends to be nicer."



"This was just so completely unimaginable in my time," he said. "It took us
more than a decade and the resources of many different countries just to get
a simple space station built in low orbit."



"Yes, the International Space Station," she said with a condescending
chuckle. "It was abandoned back in World War III and almost de-orbited
before they were able to nudge it back up. The entire structure is now in a
museum in Departure City."



The spacecraft drew closer and closer, until the point that it was
impossible to see the entire city at once. Soon they were drifting along
about a mile from the edge, the maneuvering thrusters firing short blasts
every once in a while. Ken could see the navigation lights of other
spacecraft around them and concluded they were in some sort of an approach
pattern. Finally, exactly on schedule, there was a brief flurry of thruster
firings and they eased up to what looked like a steel tunnel sticking out
from a portion of the city. Around them he could see other such tunnels,
some with spacecraft docked to them, others empty. There was a loud clanking
noise and the pilot came on the overhead to announce that they were docked.



"Welcome to Triad Spaceport," she said. "Now get your asses off my ship."



The spaceport itself looked to Ken like a large American international
airport. There were luggage collection areas and shops, arrival and
departure screens on every wall, trashy Martian voices on the overhead
announcing which ships were boarding, and hundreds of people moving to and
fro or waiting in lounges. Since they had no luggage to collect Karen and
Ken were able to move quickly through the busy place and exit through a
series of sliding doors out to a main street.



As in New Pittsburgh there was a glass ceiling fifty or sixty feet above
them, through which could be seen the shapes of the high-rise buildings
stretching off into space. Artificial lighting was present, illuminating the
environment as brightly as high noon. There was no sense whatsoever of being
in an orbiting space station 17,000 kilometers above the far side of the
planet. Instead, the sense was of being in a city-a vibrant, alive, and
active metropolitan area. A large tram station was across the street and
within five minutes they were able to catch one of the trains toward the
section where Marjorie Valentine, his great granddaughter, lived.



They exited the tram after a ten-minute ride and walked two blocks through
the narrow streets until they came to a building called the PhobosView
Tower. The main lobby was not quite as opulent in appearance as that of
Karen's building, though it was far from cheap or trashy looking. They
entered an elevator at the rear of the lobby. A sign over the top of it
read: LOWER FLOORS ONLY. Karen told the computer they wished to go to floor
Lower 87. After a few minutes of stops and starts to let other passengers
out they arrived and stepped out into a narrow though lushly carpeted
hallway. Ken found himself becoming nervous as they walked along and stopped
before apartment L8712.



"You're gonna love her," Karen assured him as she pushed the doorbell button
on the access screen.



"Who the fuck is it?" a pleasant female voice responded from the speaker.



"It's Karen, Nana," she said. "We're here."



There was a brief pause and then Marjorie's voice spoke again. "Come on in,"
she said. A second later the door slid open before them, revealing a cozy
entryway. Beyond it was a sparsely furnished living room.



"Come on," Karen said, leading him inside.



He followed her in and sitting in a chair before a large wall-mounted
computer screen was a pleasant-looking dark haired woman. She was very fit
looking and smiling broadly. Ken's first thought was that she couldn't
possibly be the woman he had come here to meet. Marjorie was 120 years old.
This woman looked no more than fifty at most, and a young looking fifty at
that. Her face was unlined, her skin unwrinkled, not a trace of gray in her
hair. Looking at her eyes however, made him realize that maybe this really
was her. Her eyes, though clear and bright blue, like Karen's, were ancient.
They were eyes that had seen more than a century of turbulent life.



"Ken," Karen said softly. "Meet Marjorie Valentine, your
great-granddaughter. Nana, this is Ken."



Marjorie stood slowly, the smile on her face widening, a single tear falling
from her eye and tracking down her face. "It's really you," she said. "After
all these years, after all this time, it's really you. Back among us."



Ken felt the emotion of the moment affecting him as well. This was his
great-granddaughter, a woman who had known his son, a woman who had helped
pass on the family legends and drive that had brought him back from the dead
after 188 years. He felt his throat tighten, felt tears of his own just
under the surface. "It's... it's very nice to meet you, Marjorie," he told
her.



"You can't imagine how nice it is to meet you, Ken," she said, her voice
breaking into a sob of joy. "Come here. Let me touch you. Let me make sure
you're really there."



He stepped forward and they embraced, her small arms going around his back
and pulling him tightly against her. He returned the hug gladly, feeling his
own tears start to fall now.



+++++



She gave him a tour of her modest apartment, the most impressive aspect of
which was the view from the living room window, which looked out over the
planet Mars far below. He also met Eucalyptus, her pet, whom he was told was
given to her by Karen two years before on her birthday. Eucalyptus was a
four-foot tall giraffe that was fond of licking the necks of guests with his
rough tongue and who lived off the leaves from the tops of the many plants
Marjorie kept about the house.



After the tour Marjorie, ever the pleasant Martian host, made each of them
powerful drinks from her bar and then proceeded to open up a brass box that
contained marijuana, scissors, and thin white papers. She spilled some of
the grass out onto the surface of the box and quickly rolled a joint.



"I hope you don't mind smoking out this way," she said apologetically as she
sealed it shut by licking the end. "Karen and Jacob are always getting on my
ass about using the bongs and water pipes they've given me, but I'm a bit of
a traditionalist when it comes to my buds. You down with it?"



"Uh... no problem," Ken said, feeling decidedly strange at the thought of
getting high with a 120 year old woman.



But get high they did. As Karen had told him the night before, smoking
marijuana seemed to be an important social aspect of Martian culture.
Marjorie sparked up the joint with some sort of laser ignition device, took
a huge hit of it, and then passed it over to Ken. He hesitated for the
briefest instance and then took a large hit of his own, feeling the effects
going to his brain almost immediately.



"This is some pretty good shit, Marjorie," he said as he exhaled the
fragrant smoke into the room.



"Good old Eden green," she said. "Karen, watch the spit on the end! How many
times do I have to tell you that?"



"Sorry, Nana," she squeaked, wiping her saliva free and passing the joint
back to her.



Once the joint was nothing but a roach and they were all enjoying the
intoxicating effects, they sipped their drinks and talked. For the most part
Ken played the roll of listener as Marjorie talked of the life she had lived
as the first of his descendents to be born on Mars. She concentrated heavily
on her memories of Ken Jr., his son, her grandfather, whom she had known for
the first 34 Earth years of her life.



"He was a good man," she told him. "One of the finest I've ever had the
privilege of knowing. It was his encouragement that persuaded me to gear my
life toward medical school back when I was in high school. It was his
connections that allowed me to get into medical school in a time when we
greenies weren't considered worthy of it."



"Greenies?" Ken said, raising his eyebrows a bit.



"That's what the Earthlings called Martian natives," Marjorie told him.
"It's what they still call us, in fact. As one of the original greenies, I
can tell you the name evolved from an old term people from your era had for
fictional aliens who lived on Mars."



"Little green men," Ken said.



"Fuckin' aye," Marjorie said. "It was a rankin' offensive term when it came
out of those Earthling mouths, I'm here to tell you. It was the equivalent
of calling an African descendent from your day a..." she hesitated. "What
was it you used to call them?"



"Uh... a nigger?" he said hesitantly, calling up the most offensive term for
a black person that had been in general use in his day.



"That's it," she said. "That term was still used a little on Mars when I was
a child. It had died out by the time I started my practice, although I
wouldn't be surprised if it was still in use on Earth. There's still quite a
bit of inequality along skin color lines on that horrid planet, you know,
particularly in EastHem. Most of the continent of Africa is a huge ghetto,
I'm told. But anyway, I was talking about your son. Sometimes I just ramble
on, you know. It's part of the organic brain syndrome process. Did Karen
tell you about that?"



"Yes," he said slowly.



She gave him a wink. "It's worse when I get loaded," she said. "Oh well. If
you gotta lose it, may as well be with some good green. That's what I always
say." With that she picked up the roach and lit it up, taking another
tremendous hit.



For the better part of two hours they talked of Ken Jr., of Joshua,
Marjorie's father, and of life on Mars during the Agricultural rush and
beyond. Ken was fascinated by what he was hearing, listening to an
eyewitness dissertation of the events he had spent hours reading about the
night before. He was also enthralled to hear the tales of his son, was in
fact able to get a sense of what kind of man he had been-this man he had
last seen as a swelling in his wife's abdomen. She also told him of the
strong, almost obsessive drive to revive him from his slumber-a drive passed
on by Annie and Ken Jr. to the rest of the family.



"It's all we ever heard about while we were growing up," she said. "From my
generation all the way up to Karen here, who actually went and did it."



"Using a lot of your original research ideas," added Karen, whose eyes were
half-lidded and very bloodshot.



"Oh dear, don't give credit where it isn't due," Marjorie scolded. "It was
mostly you. I just provided the starting point. I wouldn't have been able to
do it with the technology we had in those days even if the WestHem assholes
would've allowed me to continue down that road." She turned to Ken. "Did you
know that Karen's research in reviving you from sleep is being applied for
many other things as well? She probably didn't tell you that, did she?"



"No," he said. "She didn't."



"Long distance space flight is the most obvious application," Marjorie said.
"Now that we know how to place people in stasis and bring them back out of
it again, our space administration is starting to look at manned
interstellar flights. It could be that pretty soon a manned mission may be
heading off to Alpha Centauri to take a good look at just what is there."



"That's still a few years in the future, Nana," Karen told her.



Ken's eyes widened as he heard this. "Alpha Centauri?" he said. "You'll be
able to do that?"



"Bet your ass," Marjorie said proudly. "And Karen's technique will be what
makes it possible."



"There are a lot of factors involved in that as well," Karen said. "Putting
people into stasis and bringing them back out of it is only the start. We
have to figure out how to do it automatically, without any human
intervention. We're still a year or so away from that. And then there's the
spacecraft that will carry them. We've sent a probe to Alpha Centauri of
course."



"You have?" Ken asked.



"This was shortly after the revolution itself," Karen said. "Using fusion
drive and the largest propellant tank ever built, we were able to accelerate
the probe up to twenty percent of light speed, faster than any other
man-made object has ever been accelerated."



"That's pretty fast," Ken said, impressed.



"Incredibly fast," Karen said. "Our fastest manned spacecraft can only
achieve a little more than a half percent of light speed because they have
to retain enough fuel to turn around and slow to orbital speed once they get
to where they're going. Our probe was traveling forty times as fast as that
and even so, it still took almost ten of our years to get to its
destination. Once it made it there, there was no way to slow it down so it
shot through the entire system in less than thirty-six hours and went off
into deep space. It then took another two years for the data transmission to
make it back to us so it could be analyzed."



"And what did it show?" Ken wanted to know.



"There are twelve planets in the system," she said. "Four of them are gas
giants, the rest are rocky planets, varying in size from as large as Earth
to as small as Mercury. One of the rocky planets, the fourth from the sun,
has a thick atmosphere consisting of oxygen and nitrogen, just like Earth.
There are continents and liquid oceans and the mean temperature seems to be
similar to that of Earth as well. There is evidence of extensive plant life
on the surface although no signs of advanced intelligent animal life. No
cities or orbiting spacecraft were noted."



"So you have evidence that life does exist apart from Earth, though?" he
asked.



"Well, sure," Karen told him. "We have life other than Earth right here in
this solar system."



"There is?"



"Europa has an extensive ecosystem of primitive sea creatures in its
oceans," Karen said. "That was discovered shortly after World War III. A few
have been studied, put in aquariums, and that sort of thing but for the most
part they've been left alone. Nothing to exploit about them and there's
nothing on Europa that anyone wants. There are also lichens that grow here
on Mars and Titan has some simple single cell organisms as well. But with
Alpha Centauri IV there's a good possibility we'll find complex organisms,
possibly even sentient organisms for the first time in human history. The
problem is getting there intact in a reasonable amount of time."



"And putting people into stasis is the answer," Marjorie said.



"Well, that and the spacecraft. The advances in antimatter research are what
will eventually get us there."



"Antimatter research?" Ken said. "You mean like on Star Trek?"



Karen furrowed her brow a little. "I'm not sure what Star Trek is," she
said. "But if you're referring to matter/anti-matter drive, yes, you're down
with it. We've been able to produce anti-matter since your time, Ken. The
problem is producing enough to provide sustained power for a space drive.
Right now both we and the Earthlings can produce enough to manufacture
weapons."



"Weapons?" Ken said appalled at the thought. As if thermonuclear bombs
weren't bad enough.



"Oh yes," she said with a sigh. "As long as EastHem and WestHem are enemies
to each other they are both potential enemies to us as well. They both have
antimatter weapons and so, therefore, we must have them as well. For the
most part they are used as anti-ship torpedoes for space battle. They are
quite effective in that manifestation. However, all three of us also have
them in stealth platforms attached to re-entry vehicles in case full scale
war should break out. Mutually Assured Destruction, a term from your day, is
very much in play in our day as well."



"Just how powerful are these weapons?" Ken asked.



"Matter/anti-matter produces an almost perfect energy release," she said.
"So the explosion is quite powerful indeed. The standard weapon is probably
ten to twenty times as powerful as the most lethal thermonuclear device from
the early 21st century. That is quite enough to destroy a starship from 200
kilometers away, or to flatten an entire city from ten thousand meters
altitude. The amount of antimatter needed for such a detonation is minimal,
less than a kilogram."



"That's all?" he asked, shocked.



"It takes far less effort to destroy than it does to build," Marjorie said
sadly.



"Fuckin' aye," Karen agreed. "The amount that will be needed to propel a
starship to Alpha Centauri will be considerably more, unfortunately."



"How much more?" asked Ken.



"Something on the order of six hundred tons," she said. "If we could
manufacture and store antimatter in that amount and perfect a drive system
to utilize it, it would be enough to accelerate the ship up to thirty
percent the speed of light, allow it to slow to orbital speed for
exploration of the system and then re-accelerate and re-decelerate in order
to return to Mars when the mission is done. Total mission time would be
something on the order of twenty-five years."



"Mars years, right?" asked Ken.



"Right," Karen said. "A little more than fifty of your years, though of
course with the stasis and the Einsteinian effects of traveling at thirty
percent light speed, the humans involved will have aged no more than a
year."



"Wow," Ken said, struggling with that concept for a bit with his intoxicated
mind.



The conversation shifted from Einsteinian theory and antimatter powered
spacecraft back to Ken Jr. and his accomplishments as one of the original
Martian colonists. As they were discussing his political views in regard to
Martian independence there was a pleasant ringing sound from the overhead
speakers in the room.



"That must be Jacob," Karen said. "He said he would be here around 1400."



"I swear," said Marjorie with a shake of the head. "You have to wake an
ancient relative from the dead to get that boy to visit his Nana." She
looked up at the ceiling. "Computer, show front door view."



"Fuckin' aye," the computer responded. Instantly the large screen monitor at
the front of the room, which had been blank, came to life with a close up
view of a man's face. It was a pleasant looking man who appeared to Ken to
be about twenty years old. He was clean-shaven, his brown hair cut short and
neatly styled. The family resemblance to Karen was obvious.



"Computer, open front door," said Marjorie.



A moment later the screen blanked out again and the door at the end of the
room slid obediently open on its track. Jacob came strolling in the room. He
was dressed in the Martian equivalent of civilian clothes, namely a tight
pair of shorts and a loose fitting tank top. He appeared to be in exquisite
physical shape, as if he worked out regularly. His brown eyes locked
immediately onto Ken.



"Well fuck my ass," he said softly, his voice full of awe. "She really went
and did it."



Formal introductions, such as they were in Martian culture, were made and
Jacob, tears leaking from his eyes, gave Ken a tight bear hug, nearly
lifting him off the ground in his enthusiasm. After releasing him he
exclaimed over and over again how he just couldn't believe he was actually
standing there, looking at Ken Frazier, talking to him, after all these
years.



They settled down into their chairs and Marjorie quickly rolled another
joint from her supply and fired it up. She started passing it around and
Ken, feeling quite overwhelmed by all of the intoxicating substances he'd
imbibed over the past forty-eight hours, attempted to pass on consuming any
more. A few looks and whispered words from Karen conveyed the message that
it would be considered rude if he did not smoke at least a little bit with
Jacob. In order to preserve family harmony he took a few hits of the weed
and was soon flying high again.



The conversation picked back up and Marjorie soon distributed fresh drinks.
As they talked Ken found that Jacob was a very likeable and charismatic
person, his demeanor straightforward and honest. He possessed the air of a
career military man, used to giving orders and having those orders followed.
Though he was as foul-mouthed and crude as the other Martians he'd
encountered since awakening, he also exuded that typical intelligence he'd
noted as well. He had no mannerisms that would have been associated with
homosexuality in Ken's day. He did not lisp or act the least bit effeminate.
When he started telling Ken of his job with the Martian Planetary Guard's
air wing Ken, as a fellow pilot, found himself quite entranced.



"The wingspan of the Mosquito is how much?" he asked at one point.



"Thirty meters," Jacob said. "And wingspan is kind of a relative term, you
see, because the entire aircraft is basically a flying wing. It has to be in
order to get any lift out of the thin atmosphere."



"What kind of stall speed do you have then?"



"Probably pretty fuckin' high compared to what you're used to," he said. "In
order to achieve lift, a fully loaded Mosquito needs to accelerate to 380
kilometers per hour. We're .9 mach just taking off. We cruise and make
attack runs at 650 kps."



"No shit?" Ken said. "What kind of armament do you carry?"



"Not much really. Twin anti-tank lasers with a cycle time of eight seconds
apiece. That means it takes them eight seconds to recharge between shots. We
also have a thirty-millimeter, high velocity cannon for strafing runs
although not much of that is done in practice. Generally, the Mosquito is an
anti-armor platform. We skim the ground near enemy columns, pop up at the
last second, take out two targets, and then dive back down to safety before
anti-air lasers can get a shot at us. Our doctrine is to ignore the tanks
and go after the APCs. Our anti-tank units can handle the tanks by
themselves when they reach the main defenses. Our goal is to kill as many
infantry troops as we can before they get to the battle area."



"And that's a sound doctrine?" Ken asked. In his army days United States
doctrine had been just the opposite. Taking out the tanks first had been a
sacred decree.



"It kept those Earthling fucks from taking our cities in the Revolutionary
War," he answered. "Between the Mosquitoes and the special forces teams,
more than a third of their infantry troops were killed or taken out of
action before they even reached our main line of defense." He gave a
predatory grin. "I guess we made enough of an impression on them back then.
They haven't tried us again since."



"I'd like to see one of these Mosquitoes up close sometime," Ken mused.



"I can do you even better than that," Jacob offered. "I can take you up for
a flight in one. Hell, I'll sign out a trainer and let you fly the fuckin'
thing if you want."



"You can do that?"



"Why wouldn't I be able to?"



"Well, you know, liability and all that," Ken said.



Jacob looked at him confused. "Liability? What do you mean?"



"Well, you know, if you crashed or something while I was on board, wouldn't
they be afraid I'd sue?"



"Sue? What's that?" he asked.



Karen, who was apparently more of a historian than her brother, spoke up at
this point. "That was a custom of Ken's day," she said. "When something like
what he described occurred, a lawsuit would be filed in a court of their
law. The object was to make the entity pay money for the accident."



"How would that help anything?" Jacob wanted to know. "I don't see the
point."



"It was to punish the agency responsible for the accident," Ken said. "It
was also to recover money for injuries or death that was caused."



Jacob shook his head in astonishment. "We don't really do things like that h
ere," he said. "If I were to crash with you on board and you were injured,
the government would take care of your medical expenses automatically, just
like they do anyone who is injured by any means. If I were responsible for
the accident through negligence then I'd be criminally liable, just like I
would if you weren't on board. If poor maintenance or some other form of
neglect caused the accident, then whoever was responsible would be punished
criminally. If it was just one of those things that happens, then it's just
one of those things."



"So nobody sues anyone on Mars?" Ken asked.



"Not in the sense that you mean," Karen replied. "We do have civil law, of
course, a society has to have such a thing, but its not administered the
same way that you did it. It's more closely tied to criminal law here. In
your society the civil law was eventually perverted to the point that it
became quite a quagmire, wasn't it?"



"Yes," Ken said. "I'd say that's a pretty good word for what it was. You had
everyone suing everyone else for every little thing that happened. Someone
always had to be responsible, even if it was an act of God, even if it was
your own stupid fault. And usually the person they went after was whoever
had the most money."



"Right," Karen said. "And it was the lawyers who ended up encouraging the
whole thing and making all the money from it, was it not?"



"That's correct."



"Give me an example of a lawsuit in your day and I'll tell you how it would
be handled here," Jacob said.



"Okay," Ken said, thinking for a moment. "Okay, here's a famous one that
everyone was talking about just before my... uh... my shooting. A woman goes
to a fast food restaurant and orders some coffee. They sell it to her and,
as she's driving home in her car, she spills it on her leg and burns
herself. She sued the restaurant for not warning her the coffee was hot."



All three of the Martians stared at him for a moment in astonishment.
Finally it was Karen who spoke. "She sued the restaurant for not telling her
the coffee was hot?" she asked.



"That's right," Ken said. "That was a fairly typical type of lawsuit for my
day."



"That's fuckin' insane!" Jacob said. "Of course the fuckin' coffee is hot!
It's fuckin' coffee!"



"The cup they sold it in wasn't defective or anything like that?" Marjorie
asked.



"No, my understanding is she simply spilled it while she was driving. You
have to understand, though, the purpose of a lawsuit such as this is not to
go to court and fight it out. The hope is that the company in question will
offer a settlement in order to dismiss the suit. Most big companies did
that. They give this woman ten thousand bucks or so and she agrees to drop
the suit. The lawyer takes forty percent of that and the woman gets the
rest. The company does this because it's cheaper for them to throw money at
someone and make it go away then to pay their own lawyers to litigate to the
end."



"I've read about shit like this," Karen said with a bewildered shake of the
head, "but to be honest, I always thought it was propaganda. You're saying
this actually happened?"



"Quite regularly," Ken assured them. "How would such a thing be handled here
on Mars?"



"Well," Jacob said, "in the first place, there are no private lawyers on
Mars. All of the lawyers work for the government in one way or another. If
you have a problem you think requires the assistance of a lawyer, you go to
the Department of Justice and explain your problem to them. They will
investigate the matter and, if warranted, will bring the matter before a
judge or refer the problem to the criminal justice system if they feel that
is needed. In this case the woman would be laughed out of the office the
moment she explained what her problem was."



"It's generally understood here on Mars," said Marjorie, "that coffee is hot
and will burn you if you spill it on your skin."



"That was generally understood in my day too," Ken replied. "The problem was
it became so commonplace for these big settlements to occur whenever a
company was sued that people started doing it for every little accident that
happened. That led to ridiculous warning labels on everything. After the
coffee lawsuit they started putting warnings on coffee cups that the
contents were hot. The whole issue of responsibility shifted from the
individual to the manufacturers."



"Which makes absolutely no sense," Karen said.



"Right," Ken agreed, finding himself thinking in the Martian way. "No sense
at all."



+++++



LJ'S HOUSE OF NASTY-ASS DEBAUCHERY read the lighted sign out in front of the
establishment. Above the letters were crudely intoned silhouettes of a male
and female engaged in rear-entry intercourse. Next to this-unchanged over
the centuries-was the universal sign for cocktails, a martini glass. Next to
this was the apparent universal sign for marijuana use-a smoldering joint.



"LJ's house of nasty-ass debauchery," Ken said as they approached the
entrance. "You Martians and your business names."



"I know," Jacob said apologetically. "It sounds a bit pompous, doesn't it?
It's not really as high class as the name makes it out to be, though."



Ken looked at him for a moment to see if he was joking or not and, after a
moment, determined that he wasn't. He sighed a little, thinking that even if
he did live another 200 years, he was never going to get used to these
Martians.



It was 2030 hours and the lights had dimmed down on the streets of Triad to
artificial night levels. Jacob and Karen were taking Ken out for a taste of
the Martian nightlife, which, they had assured him, was somewhat sedate up
here on Triad but still something worth experiencing. He was reasonably well
rested for a night of drinking and smoking and whatever else Martians did on
a weeknight. After talking until nearly 1600 with Jacob, Karen, and
Marjorie, he had crashed out in Marjorie's spare bedroom for a much-needed
nap. After a shower, a change of clothes, and an exquisite dinner prepared
by Marjorie herself he had agreed to accompany them on their night out. Now,
reading the sign in front of the establishment and seeing the symbols, he
wasn't so sure. What exactly went on in a place like this?



He followed his two fifth generation grandchildren through the sliding doors
that led into the place. Another set of interior doors stood just beyond
this. A sign mounted on them read: BE NINE YEARS OLD OR GET THE FUCK OUT.
There was no doorman checking identifications at these doors, simply a
computer terminal where each person approaching laid some derm on a pad,
presumably so they could be identified and their age verified. After each
laying of the derm the door would slide open long enough for that person to
walk through. Karen explained to him that if someone attempted to slip
through on the heels of another an alarm would alert the bouncers inside.



First Karen then Jacob then Ken himself put their fingers on the pad and
were allowed admission. The moment the doors slid open the sound of loud
music assaulted his ears and the smell of marijuana and tobacco smoke
assaulted his nose. They stepped into a large, square room that was set up
much like the dance clubs Ken used to visit before he got married. A bar,
staffed by three bartenders, ran the length of one wall. Martians were
crowded two deep around it, waiting for their turn to order. Cocktail tables
were scattered around the bar, most with two or three or four people sitting
at them, a few empty. A dance floor took up the bulk of the room and it was
packed very tightly with couples, triples, even quadruples of Martians
bumping and grinding against each other in a manner that seemed vaguely like
dancing but was much more erotic and physical than what had been the norm in
even the raunchiest clubs on Earth. They slid their crotches together,
gyrating them in time to the music. They ran their hands up and down each
other's bodies, obviously squeezing and palpating various locations as they
did so. They kissed each other deeply, seeming to take care to continue
moving to the beat as they did so. The dancer combinations were mostly male
and female but with more than a few female/female and male/male thrown in.
Ken was entranced by them, particularly by two attractive females who had
hooked their legs together and were rubbing their crotches up and down while
they licked at each other's necks. He felt his penis begin to stir a little
in his pants at the sight.



"Let's get some drinks," Karen said, her voice loud over the pounding music.



"Fuckin' aye," agreed Jacob. "I'll get the first round."



While he headed off to the bar Karen led Ken to one of the empty tables and
they sat down, facing the dance floor. Ken continued to watch the dancers
and after a moment realized that a few of them were not just simulating
intercourse but were actually engaging in it. Just at the edge of the floor,
about fifteen feet from their table, a man and woman were twined together,
her leg up in the air and wrapped around his back. The crotch of her shorts
had been pulled to the side, as had his, and he was thrusting himself into
her, using long, rotating strokes timed to the beat. A few feet over from
them another couple was utilizing the rear entry position, she bent slightly
over at the waist, he gyrating in and out of her from behind while his hands
squeezed her breasts beneath her shirt. Again, this was with the crotch of
their shorts pulled to the side and all carefully in rhythm with the music.



Nor were these acts of public intercourse the only sexual acts taking place
on the dance floor. As he looked closer he saw that many of the dancers were
doing more than just rubbing against one another through their clothing.
Fingers were being slid beneath shirts and shorts so that bare body parts
could be stroked. Shirts were being pushed up so that nipples could be
suckled and licked. Asses were being palpated by hands driven into the hem
of shorts. One of the foursomes out there, which consisted of three men and
one woman, were actually full-tilt into a bona fide group grope with each
member using one of his hands to stimulate the person next to him.



"This is considered tame?" Ken asked Karen after finally dragging his eyes
away.



She nodded a little sadly. "Triad is a really conservative city," she told
him. "The botching that goes on in the clubs is somewhat restrictive."



"Botching?"



"That's what they're doing out on the floor there. We call it botching. It's
a word that evolved from debauchery. That's what makes the name of this club
somewhat pretentious sounding."



"Botching," he said slowly. "I see. And uh... this botching here is
considered restrictive?"



"You'll notice they're keeping their clothes on," she said. "That's the
custom up here. Down in the New Pittsburgh clubs it's quite acceptable to
strip down on the floor once you get rolling. In Eden, which is probably our
most liberal city, the clothes usually come off before you even enter the
floor, sometimes before you even enter the club if you're in the nudist
section of the city."



"I see," he said. "And the purpose of this botching is...?"



She gave him a strange look. "Well... to have fun," she answered. "What else
would it be for?"



He cast another look at the dance floor. Yes, it certainly did look as if
they were having fun out there. "So it's kind of an upgraded version of
dancing from my days."



"Exactly," she said. "It's a chance to go out, meet people you don't know,
and fuck them."



"And do you do this sort of thing a lot?" he asked her.



"Not as much as I used to," she said. "I've been putting in a lot of hours
these last few years concentrating on getting you awake so I haven't been
able to go out on the town much. This is the first time I've been botching
in about six months or so." She smiled. "I'm looking forward to it. I've
been told I'm quite the botcher, you know."



Ken blinked, preferring not to think of his granddaughter in that manner.
"Well, you go ahead and botch," he said. "I'll just sit over here and have a
few drinks and..."



"Oh no, you don't," she said. "We brought you here to have a good time. I
expect you to go out on the floor and botch along with the rest of us."



"Well... I've uh, never botched before, as you can probably imagine," he
said. "And I'm not really sure I'm quite ready to botch now. I'm still
missing Annie terribly and I'm still having more than a little culture shock
at the place I find myself in."



"Fuck that," she said, shaking her head. "Having fun transcends grief.
That's one of life's great truths. Instead of stewing in your grief you need
to go out and have a good time, loosen up. That's also what you need to do
to get used to living here. Mars is a sexual society, Ken. That's a good
thing, not a bad thing. I know you're used to much more conservative times,
but you're here now, where pleasures of the flesh are given freely to anyone
who wants them. Instead of judging us, why don't you try our lifestyle for a
bit?"



"Well..." he said, doubtfully.



"Besides," she added. "I don't think you're going to be able to sit here
undisturbed for long anyway. I can already see several people giving you the
eye. Before long someone is going to come over and ask you to botch. Are you
going to turn them down all night?"



He looked around and, sure enough, he saw that several women and, to his
discomfort, several men were looking him over, not the least bit
surreptitiously. One of the men in fact gave him a little wave as their eyes
met. He quickly looked away.



"Okay," he said. "I see what you mean. Maybe I will try it, after I get a
few drinks in me."



"That's the shit," she said with a grin. "I knew my hot Martian blood came
from somewhere."



"But I don't want to botch with any men," he said. "I really don't swing
that way."



"That's fine," she told him. "It's a very common attitude, in fact. Remember
what I told you before. If a man wants to botch with you all you have to do
is tell him you're not down with rump-rutting. Trust me, they won't be
offended."



"I'm not down with rump-rutting," he repeated.



"Well, where in the hell did I get my genes from then?" asked Jacob, who was
suddenly behind them with their drinks in his hand.



Ken flushed as he heard this and opened his mouth to apologize for the
remark. He closed it again, however when he saw that Jacob was chuckling.
"Uh... I'm not sure," he said.



"Don't get me wrong, though," Jacob told him, setting the drinks down and
grabbing a seat. "I like a nice tight pussy every once in a while too. What
man doesn't? But you haven't lived until you've slid your cock into a rough,
hairy ass. That's what I always say."



"You're embarrassing him, Jake," Karen admonished. "Remember where he came
from. Faggots were uncouth in those days."



"Yes, the dark ages," he said. "Tell me the truth, Ken, does it bother you
that one of your grandsons is a rump-ranger? You can tell me if it does."



"No," he said honestly. "It really doesn't. My partner the day I got shot
was a lesbian, in fact, and she was one of my best friends. California was
probably the most tolerant part of the country for homosexuals. They were
just part of the scenery."



Jacob gave him a confidential look. "Did you ever smoke the old control
stick yourself? Just to see what it was like?"



"Jake," Karen said, exasperated. "In Ken's time that was private
information. Chill your shit."



"Sorry, Ken," he said, seeming anything but.



"It's okay," Ken said, feeling overwhelmed. "And the answer is no, I never
did."



"Fair enough," Jacob said. He swallowed half of his drink at once and then
stood back up. "I see my first target of the evening right over there. It's
time to botch. I just wish Belung could've come up with me. Oh well, he's
probably botching down at that cop bar he hangs out at anyway, the little
slut." With that, he headed across the room, weaving in and out of the
people and stopping at a table where two men and three women were sipping
drinks. He conversed with one of the men for a moment and then the two of
them headed out to the floor. Soon they were moving to the beat, their
crotches rotating around and coming into frequent contact.



"There are a few points of etiquette to botching that you'll probably want
to know," Karen said, sipping from her own drink.



"Okay. Lay them on me."



She smiled. "The first rule is that you never force anybody to do anything
they don't want to do. If someone is pulling back from you when you put your
hands onto certain things, you stop doing that until they either tell you to
go ahead or start doing it themselves."



"Sounds reasonable," Ken said.



"The second rule has to do with coming."



"Coming?" he said slowly. "You mean... uh..."



"Ejaculating in your case," she said. "Orgasm for the women. You don't want
to do it out on the botch floor. That's considered rude."



"So you can have sex, but you can't finish up?"



"That's right," she said. "Botching is not considered sex, it's more like
foreplay. The idea is to get as sexually aroused as possible without
release. Some people like to move from person to person in order to do this.
That's kind of the approach I favor. Others like to stick to one person for
the night. But don't finish up out on the floor."



"So all these people out there are doing that to each other and none of them
get to come?"



"I didn't say that," she said. "You just don't do it on the botch floor.
When you can't stand it anymore you ask someone to leave the floor with you.
Then you take them over to the O-section."



"The O-section?"



"That dark area back there behind the botch floor," she said, pointing to a
gloomy area he hadn't noticed before. "There are chairs and couches and
things back there where you can finish up. If you're with a woman, be sure
she comes before you do. It's the ultimate faux pas to leave a woman
hanging."



"Wow," he said, shaking his head in amazement. "And again, this is all
considered tame?"



"Very tame," she said. "You'll simply have to visit Eden one of these days.
Anyway, once you've both come you come back out here, recharge a little, and
then do it all over again. With your new, healthy body you should be able to
cycle through at least three orgasms in one night."



"Three in one night," he said appreciatively. "That is pretty impressive."



"And you have us doctors to thank for that," she said.



"What about, you know, body fluid mixing and pregnancy and all that? None of
that is a problem?"



"No. As I told you, we have no sexually transmitted diseases here, we've
eliminated them all. And everyone here has their birth control genes turned
on. No one would ever come out to a botch club if they were fertile."



"What about me?" he asked. "Am I fertile?"



She shook her head. "Dr. Mendez activated your birth control gene as a
routine part of his re-awakening exam. It's standard practice here."



"I see," he said, unsure how to feel about that.



"So have no fear," she said. "Put your cock into anything you want, spread
body fluids from here to Eden, get down and stinky, and all you have to do
is take a shower when you're done. Isn't Mars static?"



He was a bit taken aback by her blunt words but he did have to agree that
Mars was pretty static.



A minute later a young red-headed woman came over to their table. Ken
figured she was going to ask him to botch with her and was prepared to turn
her down-he simply had not had enough alcohol yet to do what everyone else
was doing. To his surprise, however, it was Karen she wanted to botch with.
To his further surprise Karen accepted.



"See you out there, Ken," she said over her shoulder as she followed the
woman onto the botch floor. Soon they were rubbing themselves together,
going through the preliminary steps of botching.



"Jesus," Ken whispered to himself. "What have I gotten myself into here?" He
swallowed down his drink and then went to the bar to order another. He
figured he was savvy enough with Martian civilization to at least do that.



It took him a total of five drinks before he developed enough courage to go
out to the floor with someone. During the time it took him to consume these
five drinks eight people-six women and two men-approached him and asked him
to botch. The women he politely turned down, stating that he was a recent
arrival from Earth and had never botched before. They all seemed sympathetic
and understanding to this, most of them offering to check back with him
later. When the men asked he nervously told them that he was not down with
rump-rutting, just as Karen had suggested. And, as she had promised, neither
of them seemed the least bit offended by this. They simply took it in course
and went to another table to find another partner. They always did within a
few minutes. Karen and Jacob both came back to the table between botches to
sip on their drinks and offer him encouragement. Karen was always sweaty and
flushed, her nipples clearly visible poking through her shirt. Jacob was
always sporting an impressive bulge in his own shorts. It was somewhat
disturbing to him to see his grandchildren in a state of sexual arousal, but
the more alcohol he dumped into his stomach, the less it bothered him.



He finally agreed to botch with a tall, dark-skinned woman. She had been one
of the first to ask him and she was the first to make a return trip. She was
exotic looking, her features a mixture of Oriental and Pacific Islander. Her
outfit consisted of a tight-fitting blue half-shirt and a matching pair of
loose-fitting shorts-the kind of shorts that would be easy to pull to one
side. She had already been botching for half the night and, like Karen, she
was flushed and glowing, her nipples hard little points sticking out of her
shirt. The crotch of her shorts was visibly damp. Her smile was infectious
and when she asked him if he was ready to give it a try yet, he smiled back
and told her he guessed he was. She took his hand in hers and led him out
onto the floor.



Ken had been a fairly good dancer back in his day and the Martian music-a
mixture of electric guitars, synthesizers, and a pounding drum beat-was easy
to keep time to. Feeling acute embarrassment he began to imitate what
everyone else was doing, swinging his hips forward and back, touching his
partner about the shoulders and back. But this wasn't the dancing he was
used to and within seconds his partner was pushing forward against him, her
crotch coming into fleeting contact with his, her breasts pushing against
his chest and rubbing up and down. Almost instantly he began to get erect
beneath his shorts.



"Are you sure you haven't done this before?" his partner asked. "You seem
like a natural."



"I'm quite certain I haven't done this before," he replied with a laugh,
feeling himself flush as her hands slide briefly down and cupped the cheeks
of his ass.



She laughed. "I like your Earthling accent," she told him. "I don't think
I've ever heard a thicker one. How long have you been here?"



"Just a few days," he said, letting his own hands venture down onto her
upper back. Her shirt was slightly damp with perspiration and he could feel
her muscles moving beneath.



"Don't be shy," she told him, her hands giving his ass another squeeze. She
ground her crotch against him once more. "Touch me where you want to touch
me. I don't mind."



Continuing to move to the beat and realizing that he was becoming quite
aroused now, he let his hands slide even lower, into the small of her back.
Meanwhile, she slid her own hands around to the front, trailing her fingers
up his thighs and briefly brushing over his expanding cock. He jerked a
little at the contact, momentarily losing the beat.



"Stay with the music," she told him sweetly, leaning forward and planting a
quick kiss on his chin. "That's the most important thing, not to lose the
beat."



"Of course," he said, starting to pant a little now.



They continued to move while the song played on and she continued to get
closer and closer to him, to rub her body more and more suggestively against
his. Her breasts were now moving up and down over his chest, tracing
circular patterns around it. He could feel the delicious weight of them and
his own hands dipped even lower, onto the smooth bare flesh on the back of
her upper thighs. He moved them up again, briefly squeezing her shapely ass.
She moaned a little as he did this, grinding against his crotch again,
putting exquisite pressure on his cock, which was now as hard as a rail
spike.



"Good to see you out here," a voice said on his right.



He looked and saw that Karen and her current partner, a young man of African
descent, had botched their way over to his position. Unlike Jacob, who stuck
primarily to males, Karen seemed to have no compunctions about botching with
either sex. She had spent an equal amount of time rubbing herself against
women as she did against men. Her current partner had his hands firmly down
the back of her shorts and was squeezing her butt rhythmically. She had her
hands in a similar position, performing a similar act.



"I guess I finally had enough to drink," he told her, trying not to look at
what she was doing.



"Remember, pace yourself," she said breathlessly as her partner fastened his
mouth to her neck and started kissing her. "You only have about three good
blasts a night."



"Right," he said, giving a shiver of his own as his partner ran her hand
under his shirt and pinched one of his nipples. "Pace myself."



They botched off and disappeared in the mass of the crowd, leaving him to
concentrate his energies on his partner once again. He realized he was
squeezing her ass, having her squeeze his, and he didn't even know her name.
He discovered he didn't really want to know her name, that not knowing who
she was seemed to add to the sexual excitement of the situation. It seemed
that maybe that was one of the attractions of botching in the first place,
that you could do it with total strangers and never see them again when it
was over.



It didn't take long for his partner to up the ante a little. She slid her
hands around from his ass to the front of his thighs and then, in a
beautifully graceful maneuver, pushed them up under the hem of his shorts
into his crotch. He felt her soft fingers cup his balls and then grip the
shaft of his cock with a quick, teasing stroke before sliding back out again
and running up to his stomach.



"Nice unit," she told him with a sexy smile.



"Thanks," he said, proud of himself for managing to keep with the beat while
she had done this.



He then made a move of his own, something he'd seen some of the other
botchers do quite frequently. He slid his hands around her waist until they
came together in the front, right below her bare belly-button. He moved them
upward, his fingertips gliding over her stomach and underneath her shirt. He
forced them into her cleavage and then slid each hand to the side, so he was
cupping her breasts. The flesh here was damp with perspiration and slippery
to the touch. The nipples pushed insistently against his palms. He tweaked
each one briefly between his thumb and forefinger and then slid his hands
back out, bringing them back to her ass.



"Mmmm," she moaned softly. "You're getting down with this real well."



"Yes," he said lustily, feeling as horny as he ever remembered feeling in
his life. "I think I am."



They came together chest to chest again, her hands going down the back of
his shorts to feel his ass and to pull his crotch tighter against hers, so
his hard-on was grinding into her. He put his own hands up the back of her
shirt, onto her bare back, his fingers making ever increasing circles across
it. Her head came forward, so her hot breath was blowing on the skin of his
neck. He felt her tongue make contact, just above his shoulder, and run
slowly, sensuously up to his chin. He growled deep in his throat at the
sensation. She gave a quick suck on his chin and then moved her mouth
higher, so her lips were against his. Her tongue stabbed out again, licking
his upper lip, driving slightly into his mouth to caress the underside of
it. His own tongue reached out to touch it, slipping around it, twirling
together. She gave it a quick suck and then released it, moving her mouth
back to his neck, where she began to suck and give gentle bites in time with
the beat of the music.



As she kissed his neck, licking the sweat from his skin, and as his fingers
touched her sweaty back and his hardness ground against her crotch, he began
to understand that there was an opulent discipline involved in botching. The
only rule was to keep moving to the beat of the music-a seemingly simple
thing to accomplish. In practice however, it took every ounce of his
willpower to keep from savaging her without regard to keeping in time, to
keep from throwing her down on the floor right there and rutting into her
like an animal. Somehow he did manage to keep with the rhythm though,
maintaining the necessary discipline, pushing things further and further by
the minute.



He kept his hands busy, moving them all over her body, from place to place,
lingering for a second or two before moving onto the next destination. He
paid particular attention to her breasts, running his hands over and around
them, stimulating the nipples, palpating every square millimeter of their
form. He would then drive his hands into the back of her shorts to touch her
ass again, clutching each cheek, even letting his finger dab between them.
Finally, when both of them were nearly insane with lust, he let his hands
slide up her soft legs and under the hem of her shorts. Her pussy was smooth
and hot, completely bare of hair. The lips were swollen and saturated with
her juices. He put first one and then two fingers inside, sliding them in
and out to the beat, feeling her slippery membranes clutching at him,
drawing him in further. She moaned loudly at the intrusion of her sex, her
face a mask of naked desire.



She kissed and sucked her way up his neck to his ears, where she licked the
lobe and then slid her tongue briefly inside. And then she was whispering in
his ear, her voice soft and dripping with sex. "I want it now," she told
him. "Are you ready to fuck me?"



"Uh... yeah," he said, swallowing nervously.



"Do me from behind," she told him. "That's the easiest for a beginner."



"Right," he said.



Still dancing and grinding, she slowly turned herself around, so that her
back was against his chest, her firm butt pushing against the bulge in his
shorts. She bent forward at the waist, her ass shuffling back and forth
against him. "Remember to keep with the beat," she told him. "Just pull my
shorts to the side and put it in."



"Fuckin' aye," he heard himself say. He took a moment to feel self-conscious
about doing this in the middle of a crowded dance floor but buried the
emotion when a quick look showed that no one was paying the least bit of
attention to them. Most were busy doing just what he was about to do, or
working their way up to it. He reached down to the crotch of his own shorts
and, after fumbling about and almost losing the beat, managed to pull his
turgid cock out from around the hem, so it was sticking out before him,
purple and dripping pre-come. Using his other hand he pulled the hem of her
shorts to the side, exposing her gaping slit. It was an almost angry red,
the lips open and ready for action.



"Do it," she encouraged, her voice almost desperate. "Drive it into me."



He angled forward, touching the tip of his cock to her lips and then drove
into her in one fluid stroke, burying himself in her tightness to the hilt.
They both moaned at the penetration. Her muscles clenched at him knowingly,
squeezing him almost like a wet hand. His hands went to her waist and he
began to thrust in and out, feeling her clench and release in time to the
music. Again the discipline of botching came into play as he fought to simul
taneously keep in rhythm and avoid committing the faux pas of coming inside
her on the dance floor.



I can't believe I'm doing this, he thought as he moved in and out. I'm
actually fucking a woman in the middle of a dance floor. And not only that,
but he was fucking someone who had an almost supernatural control of her
vaginal muscles. The way she squeezed his cock, drawing him in and out, was
beyond anything he had ever experienced in his considerable sexual history.
The sensation mixed with the nastiness of doing it in a crowd had him
fighting furiously just to maintain control of himself. Are all Martian
women this good? he wondered. Or is this one just a fluke? He had a feeling
he would get a chance to explore this question considerably before he left
the club that night.



Just when it seemed he wouldn't be able to take it any more, that he must
come in her or explode from trying to hold it in, the song ended in a flurry
of drums and guitar chords. Their thrusts came to a halt as well. She
loosened her vaginal grip on him and pulled away, causing his wet and
swollen cock to slip out of her in a gush of juices. Her shorts fell back
into position and she turned around, a dreamy smile on her face.



"Not bad for a beginner," she told him, leaning forward and giving him a
little peck on the cheek. "I'll keep my eye out for you later, okay?"



"Uh... sure, okay," he said, dazed, hardly aware that his cock was still
hanging out in front of him.



With that, she wandered off, quickly disappearing into the crowd. Shaking
with desire, he reached down and put himself away. As the next song started
up on the sound system he left the floor and walked slowly back to their
table, the front of his shorts wet and bulging noticeably outward. Neither
Jacob nor Karen were there. He took a quick sip of his drink and then sat
down to catch his breath. His cock remained hard, stubbornly refusing to
deflate.



Before five minutes went by another woman came to his table to ask him to
botch with her. This one was a tall brunette, her primary ancestry obviously
Caucasian. She had very large breasts that bulged and bounced from the
bottom of a half-shirt that was incredibly brief, even by Martian standards.
She looked very young, younger even than Marcella, another testament to the
Martian medical procedures no doubt. He allowed her to lead him by the hand
out to the floor and soon he was in the middle of yet another botch.



This one moved a little slower than his first partner. She felt up under his
shirt and grabbed quick strokes of his ass through his shorts but stayed
well clear of his cock for the longest time. She allowed and encouraged him
to feel her large breasts, even going so far as to shove his hands in there,
but she backed away when he tried to move his hands up her thighs to her
crotch. Remembering Karen's admonishment, he didn't attempt to force the
issue, simply contenting himself with playing with her tits. His patience
eventually did have its reward. After nearly twenty minutes and three songs,
her flushed face began to take on the unmistakable expression of barely
controlled lust that he was becoming familiar with. She then began thrusting
her crotch at him, obviously encouraging him to resume explorations of that
part of her anatomy. It was an encouragement he took her up on, starting at
her upper thighs and quickly zeroing in under the hem of her shorts. Soon
his fingers were rubbing across another hairless, sticky pussy, sliding into
yet another set of tight lips. Her own hands began to move over the bulge in
his shorts, even dipping beneath once in a while until she worked her way up
to grasping him tightly, stroking up and down. Shortly after that, as one
song ended and another began, she turned around, presenting her ass to him
and bending over at the waist. Keeping carefully to the beat, she pulled the
crotch of her shorts to the side, displaying her slit for him. He slid his
fingers in and out a few times and then bared his cock for the second time
that night. He thrust into her tightness and began to fuck her to the beat,
discovering she too was as adept with her vaginal muscles as his first
partner. They copulated nastily, moving back and forth, occasionally bumping
into other botchers, the beat guiding their thrusts. Once again Ken found
himself struggling to keep from coming. And, once again, when the song
ended, they disengaged from each other, she gave him a polite kiss on the
cheek, thanked him for the botch, and disappeared into the crowd.



He didn't even make it off the floor before another woman grabbed him. This
one was very dark skinned, an almost full-blooded African descendent. Her
breasts were small and her body was trim and petite. She started off by
rubbing her smooth legs against his while sucking on his neck. Before the
first song was even over she was bent over at the waist, her crotch pulled
to the side while Ken thrust into her tight slit from behind. She too had an
obvious mastery of her vaginal muscles, leading him to believe it was
something Martian women were taught and practiced, probably in grammar
school based on his earlier discussions about Martian sex education.



After that encounter he had time to consume one more drink and let the
perspiration dry from his skin a little. His cock, however, throbbed the
entire time and his balls were aching with the congestion of blue-balls. He
needed relief and he needed it quickly. Fortunately his next partner, a
tall, full-bodied Hispanic woman with large, jiggling breasts, needed the
same thing.



Like the woman before him, she moved quickly, with an almost desperate air.
She grabbed his hands right away and pulled them to her breasts for a few
squeezes before shoving them into her crotch. As he fingered her saturated
pussy beneath her shorts she kissed him deeply, putting her tongue obscenely
far into his mouth while she jacked his cock up and down, smearing his
pre-come around. Then, without any preliminaries, she hooked her leg around
his back, pulled his cock out the bottom of his shorts, and pulled him
against her slit. Continuing to tongue kiss her and being careful to keep
with the beat, he slid inside her, fucking face to face for the first time,
feeling the now familiar squeezing and pulsing of her vaginal muscles
against him. Again he had to fight mightily to keep his orgasm at bay,
knowing that soon the fight would be lost. Every muscle in his body cried
out for release. He felt almost desperate with it.



He managed to hold off until the end of the song, though he was actually
trembling with desire as it faded away. They stopped their thrusts and
pulled apart, both of them fixing their clothing to conceal their privates.
Instead of kissing his cheek and departing this time, she licked his neck
and put her mouth against his ear. He could feel her hot breath panting
against him. She whispered, "Do you want to go to the O-section with me? I
need it."



"Fuckin' aye," he instantly replied.



She smiled and led him off the floor. On the way they passed Jacob, who was
in the middle of a group grope between three men and a woman. He seemed to
be enjoying himself greatly. He caught Ken's eye as they passed and gave him
a thumbs-up.



The O-section of the club was nothing more than a dimly lit area near the
back. Couches, chairs, and other types of furniture that looked like
unfolded lawn recliners were scattered here and there. Most held couples,
even a few triples, in the act of fornication in a variety of positions. He
saw two women, their clothes off, lustily involved in a frantic 69. He saw
two men doing the same a few chairs over. On one of the couches a woman was
being fucked from behind while she ate another woman's pussy. At yet
another, a woman was bouncing enthusiastically atop a man's cock in the
female superior position. The sound of moans and unmasked profanity filled
the air, as did the almost overpowering odor of sexual musk.



His partner led him to an empty recliner chair. Wasting no time, she pushed
her shorts down and kicked them off, revealing her wet, swollen, and
hairless pussy to his greedy eyes. "Sit down," she told him. "I want to sit
on your lap and fuck you while you suck my tits. That always makes me come
fast."



"Fuckin' aye," Ken agreed, unhesitantly pushing his own shorts down and
spinning around to sit on the plush chair. The moment he was down she
straddled his legs and brought her pussy lips down to touch his cock. She
rubbed him back and forth for a moment and then sat down, impaling herself
on him, sinking down to the hilt.



Ken groaned as he felt her tightness, his hands pushing up the front of her
shirt, baring her breasts. They were sweaty and slippery, the nipples
engorged with blood. He put his mouth on the nearest one and began to suck
as she started to raise and lower herself atop him, squeezing him all the
while in that Martian way.



It went very quickly for both of them. Her thrusts were hard and fast,
almost violent, designed to draw the orgasm from her body as rapidly as
possible. She rubbed her clit with her fingers as she fucked him and he
switched from one nipple to the other, sucking and biting them. Within
seconds she was panting uncontrollably, her vaginal muscles going from
controlled squeezes to frenzied, delicious spasm. Her free hand gripped his
shoulder nearly hard enough to hurt and she screamed out her pleasure to the
room as her juices flooded his crotch.



His own orgasm was right behind. Before her spasms even stopped, his began,
building up quickly, uncontrollably, with an intensity he'd rarely
experienced in his life, that was almost frightening in power. The waves of
pleasure burst throughout him, tightening every muscle, momentarily stopping
his breathing, and then exploded as his congested cock began to blast her
insides with jet after jet of hot semen, so much that it quickly overflowed
and ran down onto his legs.



The thrusts came to a gradual halt and his mouth finally disengaged from her
nipple. They both panted in place for a moment, their hearts hammering in
their chests, their fingers stroking each other affectionately. Finally she
looked up at him and gave him a slow kiss on the mouth, her tongue probing
between his lips for a few seconds.



"Mmmm," she said, her Martian accent thick. "The first one of the night is
always the best, don't you think?"



"Yeah," he breathed, still overwhelmed.



She kissed him again, more chaste this time, and then stood up. She bent
over and picked up her shorts. "Well," she told him, "I'm off to the shitter
to clean up. Nice doing the O with you."



"Yes, it was," he agreed.



"See you around," she said over her shoulder, walking away. A moment later
she was out of sight.



He sat there for a moment, his cock wilting for the first time in several
hours, his mind vaguely troubled by what he had just done now that the
release had come. He could not believe he had just fucked a total stranger
in a recliner in the back of a bar and had come in her pussy. Every value he
had been raised with screamed at him that it was immoral, damning behavior,
especially for one only two days in mourning over his wife. Yet, what was
really wrong with what he had done? Was there anything wrong with it? There
were no worries of sexually transmitted disease, no worries of illegitimate
pregnancy. The women in question had all been willing, enthusiastic
participants in what had taken place, particularly the last of them. This
was all something that was socially acceptable among the inhabitants of this
planet, that was even considered tame by some. So was there anything to feel
guilty about? Was there really?



"Hey, asshole," said a gruff, Martian accented voice. "You think this is a
fuckin' lounge or something?"



He looked up to see a sweating, aroused man standing with an equally sweaty
and aroused young woman. Their expressions were of clear annoyance. He
realized they wanted to utilize the chair he was sitting in and he was
impeding that process by sitting in it alone.



"Uh, sorry," he said, quickly standing up. He leaned down and picked up his
shorts, slipping them on over his legs. Before he was able to walk away the
couple quickly stripped off their own clothing and fell into the chair, the
man atop the woman. He shoved his cock in and began pounding into her.



Ken dragged his eyes away and left the O-section. He stopped at the bar on
the way and ordered another drink, still vaguely troubled. But by the time
that drink was in his stomach his unease had faded mostly away. When a young
Oriental woman approached him a few minutes later and asked him to botch he
took her hand and let her lead him back out to the floor.



Karen turned out to be wrong. By 0230 hours, when they finally left the
botch club and headed back to Marjorie's apartment, Ken had managed to blast
off four times.