A Perfect World

Chapter 8




The MSS Ingram drifted silently above the planet Earth, 650 kilometers above
the cloud tops, completing one orbit every 93 minutes. The ultra-modern ship
was 75 meters long with a beam of 15 meters. Its fusion engines were
currently at idle, doing no more than providing power for the life support
systems, the computers, and the temperature regulation system. The ship was
constructed of radar absorbent materials that prevented even the smallest of
returns from that antiquated detection system. The temperature regulation
system-one of the most advanced on any ship in the solar system-kept the
hull temperature at a constant, neutral level that would not show up on any
active or passive infrared detection system. In short, Ingram was a stealth
platform, an invisible shadow being pulled in endless circles over the
Earth. It had been circling the planet more than a week now, actually below
the EastHem and WestHem orbiting cities and naval bases. The Earthlings had
no idea it was there, and would not have believed it was possible for a
Martian ship to approach their planet so closely.



Crewed with 45 Martian naval personnel and 25 members of the Martian
Military Intelligence department, Ingram's mission was intelligence and
espionage. The outside of its hull (the Martians did not refer to their
ships as "he" or "she," just "it") bristled with passive sensors that pulled
in and recorded every electromagnetic frequency in every known spectrum.
These sensors collected radio waves, digital signals, even communications
lasers, as they were beamed back and forth between ground stations, orbital
platforms, and relay satellites. Inside the ship itself, computers running
decryption programs years more advanced than what Earth mathematicians and
engineers could even dream of, worked around the clock decoding these
signals and putting them into readable form. The Earthlings would have been
quite surprised to learn that the Martians they held in such contempt were
able to access almost anything sent from place to place or stored in a
database somewhere. Only the most secure government and corporate sites were
hidden from them, and this was only because accessing such places would be
detectable, not because it couldn't be done.



Julie Dittmeyer was a member of the Intelligence crew. Her designation was
that of "Field Operative," which meant she was an expert in Earthling
language annunciation and had been specially trained to operate covertly in
WestHem or EastHem society. Like most employed Martians, she took her job
seriously and was very good at what she did. She could fit in anywhere on
Earth or on the Earth space colonies and fool the inhabitants into thinking
she was a native. In the course of her four year career as an operative she
had made seven covert trips to Earth, posing as a military officer, a
prostitute, an accountant, a police officer, and even a Baptist minister on
one memorable occasion. Not once had her true identity been detected or even
suspected.



As the Ingram approached the west coast of South Africa on its 107th orbit
of this special mission, Julie was strapped into an exercise machine, going
through the dull rigor of her required daily physical workout. Unlike most
other spaceships, both civilian and military, stealth platforms were not
equipped with artificial gravity or inertial damping since the heat and
electromagnetic waves created would destroy the stealth effect. This meant
the men and women who crewed them were forced to live for several months at
a time in either zero gravity or the extremely low gravity that came from
acceleration. Because of this, physical exercise was mandatory to keep the
muscles and vital organs from atrophy. Dressed in a tight pair of cotton
shorts and a see-through athletic brassiere, she was twenty-five minutes
into the workout and sweating freely, the drops beading up on her skin and
occasionally breaking free to float about the room until the ventilation
system captured them and sucked them in. She had the windowless workout room
all to herself at the moment-a rare instance of privacy on the crowded
vessel-and, as such, she had the Internet system set to a music station and
cranking out the tunes at top volume. She sang along with one of the more
popular Martian tunes, her arms and legs pulling and pushing the hydraulic
resistance bars to the beat.



She looked up in annoyance as the music suddenly cut out, overridden by the
ship's intercom system. Her annoyance increased when her name was mentioned
in the announcement.



"Dittmeyer," came the voice of Ron Sampson, the commander of the
Intelligence contingent, "get your cute little ass to ICC on the double."



"Fuckhead," she muttered under her breath, letting the exercise machine
return slowly to the neutral position. She looked up at the ceiling.
"Computer, open com link to Sampson."



"Fuckin' aye," the computer replied. "Link is open."



"Ron, this is Julie," she said, still looking at the ceiling. "How important
is this shit? I'm doing my workout right now. Can it wait a few?"



"Can't wait, Sweet Cunt," he told her, using a term of endearment he'd given
her when they used to fuck each other a few months earlier. "I've got an
assignment for you. Just towel off and get your ass on up here."



"Fuckin' aye," she told him with a sigh. "I guess you're used to seeing me
all sweaty, ain't ya?"



"I guess I am," he said with a laugh. "See you in a few."



She disengaged herself from the machine and allowed her body to drift up
into the air. She spun around so she was facing the front of the room and
then kicked off the wall with her feet, propelling herself toward her water
bottle and her towel. She picked up the former and had a long drink of the
cool water before picking up the latter and toweling the sweat from her
smooth skin. She stowed both in her workout bag and then kicked off the wall
again, propelling herself over to the hatch and the ladder that led upward.



Unlike a conventional spaceship, which was oriented towards fore and aft
like a seagoing ship, a stealth ship was oriented up and down, like a
stationary building. Because of this design feature the crew was able to
take advantage of the meager gravity produced when the ship was under
acceleration, and actually stand on the floor or sit in a chair or climb up
and down the ladders between decks instead of being pushed constantly
backward. Currently the ship was not under acceleration, of course, so
instead of climbing the ladder, Julie simply used her arms to pull herself
to the next deck. She continued upward, moving through five more decks,
passing sailors going about their daily tasks and a few of her colleagues
going about theirs. Most gave a friendly wave and a smile to her as she
passed. The crew of the Ingram, as on most stealth ships, was small enough
to be like family. Finally she reached the level just below the command
bridge. Here, next to the tiny wardroom, was the larger intelligence command
center, the only restricted portion on the entire ship.



She put her finger on the computer pad and the door slid open, revealing a
soundproof room, ten by ten meters, completely packed with computer
terminals and monitoring devices. About half of the intelligence team were
currently at work behind those terminals, most staring intently at whatever
they were tracking, some speaking softly to their computers. A large
computer monitor was mounted at the front of the room. It was currently
showing a view of the planetary surface below, along with a collection of
digital clocks displaying current time for various portions of the planet.
Near the rear of the room, at a desk that was slightly elevated above
everything else, sat Ron Sampson. He was a good-looking man of primarily
African descent. His head was shaved bald and his only clothing was a pair
of green shorts that barely covered his genitals. He was strapped loosely
into his chair by Velcro fasteners to keep from drifting upward.



"Hey, Sweet Cunt," he hailed as Julie drifted over the top of the other team
members and settled down in the chair next to his.



"Hey, Stubby Cock," she returned, a sweet smile on her face. She knew that
particular nickname irritated him to no end.



"It may be stubby," he told her, "but I've never had any complaints about
its functionality, have I?"



She had to admit he was right, of course. She had fucked him numerous times
since being assigned to his team the year before and even by Martian
standards, he was extremely good at sexuality. He could move his fat, stubby
cock in such a way that made it seem centimeters longer than it actually
was. He was especially good at zero gravity fucking, an activity that was
the main means of off-duty entertainment when assigned to a stealth ship.
"No," she told him. "You really haven't. In fact, maybe you could give me
another sample of it after watch tonight, just so I can make sure?"



"I'd love to," he said, "but I've been invited to a zero-G botch party with
the Engineering Department tonight. Besides, I think you're gonna be a
little busy studying your new identity to make use of any appendages."



This was the signal that the raunchy formalities of the meeting had come to
an end and it was time to talk business. In typical Martian fashion, Julie
turned immediately serious and assigned her complete attention to the
discussion at hand. "You found something we can use down there?"



"We think so," he told her, his own expression becoming serious as well.
"Ever since Governor Brown activated Operation Counterdrop, we've been
searching for some way to get someone close to one of the WestHem scientists
involved in their Lemondrop project. As you know, it's absolutely vital that
we find out exactly what they plan to do when they activate that reactor. If
we don't know the specific details, we won't be able to counter it."



"Which means we're going to have to get someone to loosen his or her lips,"
she said. "Is there someone on the team who might be inclined to do that?"



"Maybe," he said. "We've been scouring through Internet records ever since
we established orbit. We've looked into everything available about every
known scientist on the team.  Several weaknesses have turned up that we may
be able to exploit. You're going to go after one of the most promising ones.
Of course, for security reasons, I won't tell you anything about the
others."



"Of course," she said. "What's mine? Are we talking ideology, money, or sex
as the motivating factor?"



"Sex."



She smiled, letting the serious expression slip just a bit. "Ahhh, the most
enjoyable way to work a contact. Who is he?"



"He is a she actually," Ron said. "Computer, open file on Dr. Amanda
Hesper."



"Fuckin' aye," the computer replied. A second later a female face appeared
on the screen before them. It was a face that could have been pretty had its
owner tried to make it so. The eyes were bright, the nose small and
aristocratically pointed, the lips narrow and tight. The hair that framed
this face was long but was pulled back into a tight, conservative bun right
out of the early twenty-first century. An Earthling word-"nerd"-came
immediately to mind when one looked at the photograph.



"This is my mark?" Julie asked, her trained memory taking in all the
details.



"This is your mark," Ron confirmed. "Amanda Hester. Forty earth years old.
Employed by Sythro Laboratories Incorporated and assigned a top secret
security clearance by the WestHem government. She holds a doctoral degree in
quantum physics and has been identified as a primary member of the WestHem
Lemondrop team. In the past four years she has made three trips to their
deep space research station where the reactor is being built. The
probability that she would know the details we need in order to successfully
pull off Counterdrop is rated as extremely high."



"I see," Julie said. "And you have reason to believe she might be inclined
to spill those details to me?"



"We have reason to believe that," he said. "We've determined that Hesper is
a lesbian."



Julie nodded. "In the closet I assume?" Society in both WestHem and EastHem
tended to endlessly cycle through periods of liberalism and conservatism in
regard to sexuality and interpersonal relationships. These cycles were
approximately forty to fifty years long and in constant opposition among the
two halves of the planet. Currently, as was well known by the Martian
intelligence services, EastHem was in a wildly liberal state and WestHem was
in a staunchly conservative state. Religious fundamentalism and rigid family
values were the domineering themes of life in WestHem.



"Fuckin' aye," Ron agreed. "Homosexuality in WestHem, along with
extra-marital and pre-marital heterosexual sex, has been illegal since the
so-called Public Morals Act of 2175. This puts Dr. Hesper in a particularly
vulnerable position. If she were caught engaging in 'immoral sexuality,' her
security clearance would be immediately voided, she would lose her job, they
would revoke her doctorate degree, and she would be charged with a criminal
offense. So, yes, she keeps this aspect of her personality well-hidden."



"But not well-hidden enough, apparently?"



"Not from the all-seeing eyes of the Martian Intelligence Service," he said
with a sly grin. "It really is astounding how little respect the Earthlings
have for our capabilities. They know our computer programmers and
mathematicians are years ahead of theirs yet they refuse to even fathom what
we've been able to do with this technological edge. We know everything
Amanda Hesper has ever done from the time she activated her first PC at the
age of six to what she bought at the store yesterday evening. Every monetary
transaction, every school paper, every evaluation, every photograph of her,
every e-mail she ever sent or received is all stored in databases we can
access. The only thing we can't look at is her file with the Federal
Investigation Bureau and her personnel file with Sythro."



"And a pattern has turned up?"



"A definite pattern," he said. "She's been careful all of her life to keep
her desires suppressed. She does not act on her ingrained sexuality very
often and when she does, she is discreet to the point of paranoia.
Nevertheless, though there are some things she can conceal from the WestHem
FIB, our ability to cross-reference various databases makes it impossible to
conceal from us."



"What do we have?"



He tapped the screen with his finger, calling up a new window. Now showing
was a list of various files that had been dug up on Amanda Hesper. He tapped
the first one. "Age 13," he said. "And all of these ages are in Earth years
for simplicity."



"Fuckin' aye," Julie said.



"At age 13 she was taken to a psychiatrist by her mother. Of course, the
records were sealed but we were able to find them and access them in the
psychiatrist's inactive file. It seems Amanda's mother caught young Amanda
and her best friend naked in bed together, their fingers caressing each
other's pussies. At this point in WestHem medical circles, homosexuality was
considered a mental disorder that could be treated, particularly among the
adolescents."



"They certainly cycle in and out of that school of thought, don't they?"
Julie asked, a sad shake of the head. Martian medicine, which was eons more
advanced than Earthling medicine, had conclusively proven more than two
decades before that homosexuality-pure homosexuality as opposed to
experimentation-was actually biological in nature, rooted deep within the
brain. It was not something that could be "cured" or "caused" or
"prevented."



"How it is classified depends on where they are in the cycle of society.
When they're entrenched in the conservative part of the cycle they look at
it as a psychological problem and classify it as a crime. When they're in
the liberal part of the cycle they look at it as an aberration but a
quasi-acceptable one. In any case, shrinks saw both Amanda and her friend
after they were caught together. By examining the transcripts of both
sessions we've determined that Amanda was the initiator of the sexual
contact and the prime driver of it. The other girl felt tremendous guilt for
enjoying what happened between her and her friend and is currently a
practicing, committed heterosexual by all indications. Amanda herself felt a
small measure of societal induced guilt but none at the act itself. She
continued through six weeks of intensive therapy that the WestHems thought
would cure her of her misguided feelings for females."



"And it didn't work?" Julie asked sarcastically.



"Nope," he said. "We had Dr. Ming look over the file..." Dr. Ming was the
intelligence team's psychiatric expert, "and he concludes that Amanda-a very
bright young woman-simply faked the signs they were looking for, told them
what they wanted to hear, and was declared cured at the end of the therapy."



"Six weeks and you're cured," Julie laughed. "Those WestHems have a solution
for everything, don't they?"



"Fuckin' aye. We should be envious of them. But anyway, that's our first
indication. The next comes three years later, when she was sixteen. She
graduated high school two years early and was a freshman at the University
of Spokane. She had a brief sexual affair with a woman she met in her
Sociology elective class. This was determined through emails and text
messages the two of them exchanged during the relationship. It seems they
broke up because the older woman wanted to make their relationship more
open.  There is a small but vocal segment of WestHem society that believes
in challenging the Public Morals Act by flaunting their lifestyle. Amanda,
even then, was focused on her career path and determined to keep her
sexuality secret. They parted on bad terms but the relationship was never
exposed.



"After that, she avoided relationships for a while. From her text messages
and emails, it appears she had the occasional one-night stand with other
closet lesbians, including one of her physics instructors, but other than
that, she avoided female-female contact. She had several boyfriends during
this period, and it appears she had sexual relations with them at societally
appropriate times.  Though pre-marital sex is technically illegal it is
perhaps the most commonly violated law in WestHem and, for the most part,
the authorities pretend it doesn't happen as long as the participants don't
draw too much attention to themselves.  With Amanda, these relationships
were usually short and always terminated by the male in question. The common
complaint we read in the emails these men exchanged with their friends after
the breakups was she was unfeeling and listless, as if she just didn't give
a damn about them, didn't see them as people. Dr. Ming tells us this is
quite typical behavior for a closet homosexual attempting to keep up normal
appearances."



"This pattern continued until her second year of post-graduate study at
Stanford University in California. There she had an extended relationship
with a woman she met while doing required volunteer work at a local
hospital. The woman-Loraine Kensington was her name-was a nurse who was
married to a prominent doctor. Again, most of this relationship has been
reconstructed by reading the emails and text messages they exchanged. Both
of them were very careful not to leave any other trail that the average
Earthling intelligence official would've been able to follow. This affair
started off as a friendship at first. The messages they exchanged for the
first five months were non-sexual in nature, just the correspondence of good
friends. Dr. Ming says it is quite likely that Amanda and Loraine were in
love with each other and that both were so careful to keep their true
desires hidden, neither made a move for the longest time. This changed very
suddenly when the two of them took an overnight trip to the Lake Tahoe area
for skiing. They stayed in the same hotel room together and had a little too
much alcohol before retiring. It's unclear who made the first move, but they
became lovers that night, kicking off a very intense sexual affair that
lasted for nearly two years."



"They carried on for two years?" Julie said with a whistle.



"And they were very careful about it. They communicated through text
messaging only, which is thought by the WestHems to be uninterceptable. They
met either in Amanda's apartment or in Loraine's house when her husband and
children were not at home. They never met in a hotel room or in any place
where a transaction record would be generated. This affair was never
discovered by the woman's husband or any of Amanda's friends as far as we
can tell. There is obviously no record of it in the background investigation
she underwent prior to receiving her security clearance or she never would
have received it. The affair ended abruptly one night and the two never
communicated with each other again."



"What happened?" Julie wanted to know.



"We're not entirely sure," he replied. "We have email exchanges indicating
they planned to meet at Amanda's apartment on the night in question. The
next day, communication between the two of them ceased entirely and they
never saw each other again. There was no hint of problems between them up to
this point so we must conclude that something strange happened during the
meeting itself. Perhaps they had a fight and broke up, but Dr. Ming says
it's unlikely a single fight, no matter what the subject, would have kept
them apart indefinitely. Whatever it was, it was significantly traumatizing
to both of them to make them swear off their natural inclinations for quite
some time."



"Oh?"



"We back-checked Loraine just as a matter of course in the investigation.
She had no further affairs with women for the next five years. As for
Amanda, she stayed away from women for almost eleven years after that
night."



"Eleven years?" Julie said in near horror. "She actually went eleven years
without sexual contact?"



"Well, not exactly. She continued her pattern of dating men for form's sake,
and about two years after her break-up with Loraine, she married a man named
Stephen Larkspur. He was another physicist at the University where she was
employed. Their marriage, by all indications, was about as stale as such a
union can possibly be. They divorced after only three years. No children
were produced. During this time Amanda was a frequent downloader of lesbian
oriented Internet pornography, although she was very careful about this as
well. She accessed it by means of a false identity. Our ability to
cross-reference databases picked this up. WestHem's inability to do this
means they undoubtedly did not pick it up."



"So she likes hoochie porn?" Julie said thoughtfully.



"She does," he said. "And she continued to access it under a variety of
identities on a fairly infrequent but regular basis after the marriage broke
up. This pattern continues to this day. She accessed such sites as recently
as two weeks ago."



"And she hasn't downloaded any porn with cocks and balls in it?"



"Not a single time in her life," he responded. "We also have a record of her
utilizing female prostitutes covered as interior decorating consultants four
times over the past six years."



"Interior decorating consultants?" Julie asked.



"That's the current ruse the prostitution industry is forced to utilize in
WestHem society.  It used to be massage therapists but, as you know, the act
of massaging a human body is one of the things made illegal in the Public
Morals Act."



"How do those people live?" Julie asked, shaking her head in bewilderment.



"Not very happily," Sampson said.  "In any case, as you can imagine,
employing prostitutes is extremely risky behavior for her. Even though she's
utilizing false identities and bank accounts to arrange for the services and
pay for them, if she were to be caught, she would not only lose her job and
her security clearance, she would go to prison for violating the terms of
the security clearance. Consorting with prostitutes is definitely frowned
on, for males and females alike. Dr. Ming tells us these episodes of paid
sex are desperation measures, undertaken when she can't stand the pressure
of going without sexual gratification anymore. She knows how dangerous it is
to do it, but she just can't help herself."



"How long has it been since she's last munched some muff?" Julie asked, her
keen mind already seeing where he was heading with this.



"She last employed a prostitute fifteen Earth months ago," he answered. "As
far as we can determine, she has had no other sexual contact with a woman
since then. In fact, other than the prostitutes, she has had no sexual
relationships with women at all since she and Loraine parted company."



"So she's ripe for the picking," Julie said, a sad smile on her face. She
actually felt a considerable amount of empathy for the woman who would
become her target, a woman who was prevented from following her own bodily
urges by a repressive and hypocritical system.



"Exactly," Ron said. "This is the most promising prospect for several
reasons. The primary reason, of course, is that she's desperate for female
companionship. The secondary reason is that she lives alone in a fairly
exclusive part of the California region of WestHem. As you know, Earthlings
still buy and sell real estate and housing. As it happens, the house next
door to Amanda's has just gone up for sale."



"And you want me to buy it," Julie said.



"Fuckin' aye I do," he replied. "Here's the plan. Tell me if it makes sense
to you."



"Lay it on me," she told him, knowing of course, that if the plan didn't
make sense, or seemed too dangerous to her, she was expected to refuse it.



"We'll send you down there and create the cover of a divorced, professional
woman. The job we came up with is a mid-level accountant with Agricorp. This
is both vague enough and boring enough so you won't have to explain your job
too much to her once a relationship is established. Everyone knows that
accounting is the most boring job on Earth, right?"



"Fuckin' aye," Julie agreed.



"The programming team is already at work setting up bank accounts and a past
for you in the WestHem Internet. You're pretty good on North American
geography, particularly West Coast, so we're going to have you born in
Seattle. Your parents were both mid-level Agricorp managers as well. You
were educated at the University of Seattle and hired by Agricorp shortly
after graduation. You've moved steadily up the ranks to the position you now
hold, working in Seattle, Spokane, Redding, and San Francisco before being
transferred to Sacramento operations. The house you'll be buying is in
Stockton, 95 kilometers from Sacramento, where your alleged job is, and 60
kilometers from Livermore, where Amanda spends most of her working hours.
We'll give you a good credit rating and enough capital to qualify for the
house. You'll make an offer the seller won't turn down and you should be
able to move in within one Earth month. In the meantime, we've already
rented you an apartment four kilometers away from the house."



"What about family?" Julie asked. Although she knew she'd soon get a
complete briefing document with every last detail in it, she was curious
about how they'd handled this part.



"Parents still live in Seattle, although they are divorced," he replied.
"Your ex-husband lives in San Francisco and you have no contact with him
other than to collect your monthly alimony allotment. He works for Agricorp
too, as a sales representative. You have not given birth to the one child
you're allowed yet. That makes it short and sweet, yet believable in the
unlikely event anyone goes snooping around your back trail."



"Sounds static," she said.



"I'll have Dr. Ming give you a more thorough briefing on the best means of
prosecuting this mark, but as you've already guessed, romance is the angle
we're going after here. And we're not talking about simple sex either.
You're going to have to get closer to her than just muff munching if you
want her to spill details of their Lemondrop project. You're going to have
to become very close to her and make her feel very close to you."



"I understand," she said.



"Any problems with seducing a woman?" he asked her, more out of formality
than anything else. He already knew Julie, although primarily heterosexual,
was fond of munching a little muff when the opportunity presented itself.



"No," she said. "And she's actually kind of cute. I take it the slow
approach is the key here?"



"Fuckin' aye. Dr. Ming warns that she'll be very cautious, possibly even
terrified about entering into another relationship with a woman. You're
going to have to be her friend first and then gradually work the sex into
the equation."



"I love a challenge," she said. "When do I head down?"



"In forty-eight hours we'll have a window to get you down there. I'll have
the briefing materials to you in an hour so you can start studying them."



++++++



Two days later Julie stood in the main evacuation room amidships, a
specially designed biosuit covering her body. Ingram was currently under
.08G of acceleration-its ass end pointed into its orbit in order to slow the
ship to sub-orbital speed. This allowed Julie, and everyone else on board,
to stand on the deck without floating away. .08G was far from normal
gravity, of course-a simple flexing of the calf muscles in the wrong way
could propel you all the way up to the ceiling-but it was certainly better
than the zero-G conditions under which they spent most of their time.



Ingram's captain, Julie knew, absolutely hated performing the covert entry
maneuver, which was why they were under acceleration. The entire ship was
slowly sinking toward the surface of the Earth, no longer traveling fast
enough to maintain an indefinite orbit. If something went wrong with the
engines right now, they would be forced to abandon ship and possibly be
subjected to capture by either EastHem or WestHem authorities, at which
point they would be treated like spies. Although such a thing had never
happened before, it was within the realm of possibility and enough to cause
worry. But the risk was necessary in order to initiate the mission, and
therefore made sense, and therefore was being undertaken. The captain didn't
have to like it, but he knew it had to be done.



"I hate these fucking suits," Julie said, her voice transmitted through the
radio link to the room's intercom system.



"I know, Julie," Ron said soothingly. He knew it wasn't really the suit
Julie disliked-it was the insertion pod she was about to climb into while
dressed in it. To the safety conscious Martians, the idea of descending to
the surface of a hostile planet in an unpowered vehicle, with nothing but a
thin layer of heat-proof, radar-absorbent alloy to protect you, was
particularly frightening. Even though her common sense told her it was
perfectly safe, even though past statistics told her an agent had never been
killed, injured, or captured because of the insertion method, the mere
thought of streaking through the atmosphere like a meteor and relying on a
parachute to keep you from smashing into the ocean was enough to make her
sweat.



"No offense, Dittmeyer," said Lieutenant Commander Horatio Morales, Captain
of the Ingram, "but the sooner you get your sweet little butt cheeks in that
thing and separate from the ship, the more time we'll have to deal with an
engine problem if one occurs. So how about shagging ass into the pod now,
huh?"



Julie gave Morales a sour look but said nothing. Like most Martian naval
officers who rose to command rank, he was notoriously stiff with little
sense of humor. It came from the awareness of being constantly on the job
while out in space, a situation that left one constantly in the serious work
attitude. Morales never went to after-hours botch parties in the engineering
spaces, never went to the after-hours intoxicant bar adjacent to the kitchen
because, for him, there were no after hours.



The insertion pod was cylindrical in shape, three meters long by two meters
wide. It was set into the bottom of the deck and connected to hydraulic
machinery that would allow it to be lowered into the airlock on the next
deck down and then ejected through the side of the ship. It had no windows,
just a solid door that was currently standing invitingly open. Julie took a
last look at those assembled to see her off and then picked up her
watertight backpack. She attached it behind her biosuit and then pushed
upward with her feet, allowing her to drift into the air. With a quick twist
of her body her legs swung into the pod and the miniscule gravity floated
her gently down into the cramped seat. She squirmed back and forth a few
times, settling in, and then pulled the restraint harness over her shoulders
and latched it.



"Computer," she said, "close hatch."



The computer didn't answer her verbally but immediately lowered the access
door into place and sealed it, hiding her from view. A dim red light blinked
on in the pod, allowing her to see the computer screen before her, which
displayed a series of readouts showing her current status. She ran through a
quick pre-release checklist, manually checking pressurization, power level,
and a half dozen other things.



"How you doing in there, Dittmeyer?" came Morales' voice over the intercom
link when she finished.



"All systems online," she reported back. "Ready for ejection."



"Stand by for ejection procedure," he told her. "Good luck down there. Use
your common sense."



"Fuckin' aye, Cap," she said. "Kick me out when ready."



A moment later she felt the sensation of movement and heard the low-pitched
whine of the hydraulic arms in motion.



"You're in the airlock now, Dittmeyer," Morales reported. "Depressurizing."



"Copy," she said, taking a few breaths of her canned air.



A minute of virtual silence elapsed before Morales reported the
depressurization of the airlock was complete and the outer doors were
opening. Julie, looking at her status screen, confirmed this information.



"Ejection in five seconds," Morales said. "Laura be with you. Five, four,
three, two, one."



There was a sharp jolt as the hydraulic arm forcibly ejected the pod from
the capsule, kicking it loose into the vacuum of space. Instantly the slight
acceleration she had been under disappeared. She didn't mourn its loss. She
knew it would be back in spades before long.



With the pod cut loose and falling toward the planet on its own, Ingram
retracted the hydraulic arm, closed the airlock, and cut its engines back to
idle. As the pod drifted further and further away, utilizing the slight
momentum supplied to it by the ejection arm, Ingram used short blasts of its
maneuvering thrusters to spin itself around, so the rear end was facing away
from the orbit once more. The engines lit up again, providing .08G of
thrust, only this time in the opposite direction. Slowly, almost
immeasurably, the stealth ship began to rise back to its normal orbital
altitude. Once there it would cut its engines and drift, remaining on
station until either Julie returned safely to orbit or another stealth ship
relieved it.



In the meantime, however, Ingram had another job to do, one vital to the
successful insertion of Julie's pod. Though the pod itself was constructed
of radar-absorbent material and would not produce sufficient heat while in
orbit to be detected by infrared scanners, soon it would be contacting the
atmosphere of Earth. There was no possible way to conceal the heat of
reentry from the EastHem and WestHem tracking stations. They would have to
be made to think the pod was something else, something the governmental
authorities would not concern themselves with. Hacking programs on the ship,
utilizing communications lasers on a frequency the WestHems thought
unbreakable and secure, accessed a military satellite linked to the
far-space defense and detection system. There, a false radar and infrared
image was inserted, giving the software the impression that an iron
meteorite, 2.5 meters in diameter, had just come into detection range from
the direction of the ecliptic. As the seconds ticked by, Ingram's computers
continually updated this false image, creating the illusion the phantom
meteorite was moving rapidly toward an intersection with Earth's atmosphere.
Software in the Earthling tracking system quickly evaluated the speed, mass,
and course of this meteorite and determined it was not on a collision course
with any orbiting structure and not large enough to pose a danger of a
ground strike. The computers continued to track the object as a matter of
course but, per the programming, no human operator was informed of the
object.



Julie's pod, traveling at 27,000 kilometers per hour, made three more
revolutions of the planet before finally contacting the upper atmosphere
over the Indian Ocean. Velocity was converted to heat by means of
atmospheric friction, slowing the pod gently at first and then with
considerable force. Ionized plasma was produced from the superheated air,
leaving a fiery trail visible on hundreds of tracking screens and to the
naked eyes of hundreds of millions of people on the surface. At exactly the
same moment as atmospheric contact, the computer-generated meteorite being
produced by Ingram was in exactly the same geographic location. That display
then ended and was replaced by the imagery from the actual pod without so
much as a hitch on the scope. No alarm was raised. It simply looked like a
particularly large falling star, the likes of which occurred at least once a
month somewhere on the planet.



Inside the pod, the temperature remained a steady 30 degrees but Julie was
enduring nearly 4G's of deceleration force. She braced herself
uncomfortably, taking shallow, quick breaths as the harness bit into her
biosuit. It felt as if an elephant was sitting on her chest. For all the
love she had of her job, for all the importance she knew it held, this was
the part she hated most.



The pod streaked over the Indian subcontinent, past the south coast of
China, and then out over the Pacific Ocean, descending rapidly, slowing
rapidly, the G-forces gradually easing up until terminal velocity was
reached 22,000 meters up in the night sky just off the coast of California.
 From here, the pod fell more or less like a rock, almost straight down, the
interior returned once more to a state of zero gravity thanks to the
free-fall effect. At 2000 meters up, explosive bolts blew open a compartment
door in the rear of the pod and a large, black parachute ballooned out,
slowing the fall from terminal velocity to a gentle three meters per second.
Unseen by human eyes, undetected by tracking devices, the pod dropped gently
into the calm waters of the Pacific eight kilometers from the Santa Cruz
waterfront.



Another set of explosive bolts blew the hatch free. Julie gave a final
command to the pod computer system, setting a timer in motion. As the
countdown started, she released her harness and climbed carefully out of the
pod, letting herself fall into the water, her pack still attached to her
back. She bobbed on the surface for a moment until her suit computer opened
a series of valves, allowing ballast water into several bladders on the
outside of the suit. Her buoyancy eliminated, she sank slowly beneath the
waves to a depth of 20 meters, at which point compressed air was
automatically released into other bladders, creating neutral buoyancy. Using
a navigation display in her helmet, she aligned herself toward the shore.
With a command to the suit computer, a water jet propulsion system attached
to the front of her suit activated, providing forward thrust. Moving at the
lightening-fast speed of 2.5 kilometers per hour, she headed ashore.



Five minutes after she set out, the timer in the pod finished its countdown.
A series of seals around the bottom of the ship opened up, allowing seawater
into the interior. Within a minute the pod sank beneath the surface. It fell
slowly, lazily to the bottom, 200 meters below, its purpose served.



The trip to shore took nearly two hours to complete. As the sea bottom began
to slope upward toward the breaking waves, the suit automatically adjusted
and readjusted the buoyancy, slowly raising her up. Her head breached the
surface 120 meters offshore of a sandy beach, three kilometers south of the
main Santa Cruz pier. A readout in her suit goggles informed her it was 0337
hours, Pacific Standard Time. Infrared enhancement in the goggles helped her
scan the shoreline for signs of human habitation. She spotted a pair of
lovers engaged in sexual congress near the high tide mark some 500 meters
north of her position. Other than that, the beach was deserted.



She angled away from the lovers as much as possible, keeping her eyes on the
lookout, and finally cleared the breakers five minutes later, dragging
herself ashore in the heavy suit, her body straining slightly in the gravity
that had been mostly absent from her life the past two months. Knowing this
was the part of the insertion when she was most vulnerable to discovery-when
she was standing on a hostile shore wearing a Martian biosuit and in
possession of various spy paraphernalia-she moved as rapidly as possible,
quickly finding a place of concealment among the sand dunes.



It took her only three minutes to remove the biosuit from her body. Standing
naked in the sand, she folded the suit, the face piece, and the control
mechanisms into a package small enough to fit into her backpack. She then
removed a set of WestHem style clothes from the backpack and got dressed.
The clothes were much more modest than what the typical Martian woman wore.
White nylon panties went over her crotch. Her large and alluring breasts
were packed tightly into a plain white brassiere, the likes of which had
never been seen on Mars. A pair of baggy cotton pants, drab in color, went
on her legs. A loose fitting, long-sleeved cotton shirt, in a matching but
equally drab color, went over her chest. Her long brown hair was pulled back
into a simple ponytail. Sensible black shoes went on her feet. Her skin
almost immediately started to itch from what she considered excess
adornment. It was a sensation she knew would take two or three days to go
away.



Once fully dressed she was indistinguishable from any other upper-middle
class Earthling woman. She had a WestHem model PC clipped onto her waist. If
a police officer were to stop and question her, she had already prepared a
cover story as to why she was out so late. She could give the story in a
perfect Earthling accent and back up the story with a fingerprint on the
officer's patrol computer that would identify her as Julie Dittmeyer of
32456 Spaniard Court in Stockton. Only a search of her backpack would reveal
anything out of the ordinary, but this was a worry that was minimal at best
since Earthling police had been pretty much stripped of their ability to
search a person's personal belongings over the years. In the more likely
event that she was accosted by one of the many thugs that prowled any
Earthling metropolitan area, her PC was capable of delivering an
incapacitating jolt of electricity similar to that of a tanner.



So prepared, she began to walk, working her way out of the dunes, her pack
strapped securely to her back. She crossed the narrow strip of beach, coming
to a set of concrete steps built into a small hillside. She climbed them and
just like that, she was in the urban area of Santa Cruz, standing on a
boulevard lined with high-rent apartment buildings and private homes whose
price tags were in the neighborhood of 100 to 120 million dollars apiece.
The streets supported a little more activity than the beach had. In the
alleyways between some of the buildings, homeless Earthlings prowled,
digging through garbage cans to subside on the food the wealthy threw away.
Further down, in a neighborhood a little seedier, a house of prostitution
thinly disguised as a card house spilled its light out onto the pavement.
After taking a moment to orient herself to her location she turned in that
direction. Next door to the whorehouse would be a tram station. Her pod had
come down exactly where it was supposed to and she had come ashore less than
fifty meters from her planned ingress point. Not bad navigation for a bunch
of people who were considered the scum of the solar system by the
Earthlings.



More homeless people were lounging around at the elevated tram station, some
sleeping on the benches, some begging for handouts. Though Julie's heart
ached for them, she ignored them completely just as a professional
upper-middle class WestHem woman should. When the magna-train slid into the
station ten minutes later she boarded it, utilizing her fingerprint on the
payment screen. The PacificTrans computer detected no problem with her ID or
with withdrawing $50 from the bank account that had been created for her out
of thin air less than twenty-four hours before.



She found a seat near the rear of the mostly-empty train. The ride to the
inter-city train station took only fifteen minutes. Once there, she
purchased admission to Stockton-a ninety-minute ride. The bullet train left
the station only thirty minutes after her arrival. She pretended to sleep as
it streaked its way over the low coastal hills and into the central valley
of California-just another traveler bushed from a day of traveling. In
reality she was quite wide-awake. Though it was 0400 on the West Coast of
California, her body rhythm, which was used to life aboard Ingram, thought
it was 1500, or mid-afternoon.



It was summer in the western hemisphere of Earth and, as such, the sun was
just starting to poke above the eastern horizon when she arrived in
Stockton. The sun seemed so large here, so harsh. Unlike the gentle,
soothing sun of Mars, you couldn't even look at this one without having to
avert your eyes. As she walked to the Stockton public transit station next
door to the inter-city terminal, she pulled a pair of sunglasses from her
pocket and put them on to cut the glare. Societal norms on Earth had
recently liberalized to the point where a woman could wear such things
without being considered slutty or unladylike.



There were even more homeless people on the Stockton loading platform since
it was in a much seedier neighborhood. As she had done in Santa Cruz, she
ignored them, occasionally manufacturing a look of disgust, as if she was
appalled to be in such surroundings. The transit train arrived almost ten
minutes late, which was actually pretty good for an Earth transit system.
She climbed aboard among the early morning commuters and waited through
sixteen stops and nearly an hour of travel before reaching the Bellafont
Street station in the fashionable section of the city.



The landscape here was dominated by the WestHem version of high-rise
apartment buildings. Each was fifteen to twenty stories tall, containing 60
to 100 units each. Rents were in the range of $12,000 to $14,000 per Earth
month. At the San Joaquin Towers building, which was owned by one of the
largest housing corporations in WestHem, a two-bedroom, 350 square meter
apartment was waiting for Julie's arrival. It would serve as her temporary
home until she could facilitate the purchase of the house next door to
Amanda Hesper. The hackers aboard Ingram had already inserted her name into
the accounting and tracking computer that controlled day-to-day operations
at the San Joaquin Towers. The database would show that Julie had already
toured the apartment, passed a credit and background check, provided the
management company with first and last month's rent and a $25,000 security
deposit, and had put her fingerprint to a month-to-month rental agreement.
Not even the on-site management personnel, if they bothered to look at their
tenant list, would find any fault with this since the only person listed as
having had face to face contact with Julie was a manager who had been
transferred to another building some weeks before and would not be able to
tell anyone that the contact in question had never actually occurred.



She entered the building without incident, her fingerprint opening the
security controlled main lobby doors and the security controlled elevator.
The apartment door slid easily open with a simple touch of the finger on the
pad. The inside was empty, of course, since no furniture delivery had been
arranged yet, but that didn't bother her.



She set the thermostat on the wall for 22 degrees-the universal temperature
on Mars-and stripped off all of the uncomfortable Earth clothing, hanging it
neatly in the closet. Nude, she sat on the window ledge looking at the city,
memorizing the layout, checking out her surroundings. Rush hour was now in
full swing and the sidewalks below were crowded with neatly dressed men and
women heading toward the public transit stations where they would crowd in
like cattle. Meanwhile, in the sky 500 meters above the higher rooftops,
small aircraft known as condors zipped back and forth, carrying the
wealthier members of society to their respective jobs. The condors were
winged craft with two variable tilt engines. They took off and landed like
helicopters, but once in flight, the engines swung downward for horizontal
flight. The elite who rode in them did not actually fly them, of course.
They simply told the flight computer where they wanted to go and a central
air traffic control system coupled with GPS locaters in the aircraft took
care of the rest. The Earthling Julie was imitating would not be quite
wealthy enough to own her own condor and would have to suffer the
indignities of public transit when she wanted to go from one place to
another. She didn't really mind. WestHems were not nearly as safety
conscious as Martians and, as a result, the condors occasionally crashed,
usually with lethal results.



When she felt she had the details around her committed to memory, she turned
away from the window and picked up her Earth PC. She used this to access a
variety of Internet sites, purchasing furniture, cooking utensils,
toiletries, and all of the other items she would need to get by as a citizen
of WestHem. The money was deducted from her considerable bank account or
tacked onto her considerable line of credit. She ordered rush delivery for
everything. Later, she would have to go out and buy a complete wardrobe, but
before she could get to that, she had an appointment to keep.



She had one more change of clothes in her backpack, this one a professional
business suit favored by WestHem women. She showered, washed and set her
hair, and then put the bulky, uncomfortable clothing on, grimacing as she
got a look at her appearance in the bathroom mirror. God, but these WestHems
were so fucking prudish. The swell of her breasts was almost completely
obscured, as was the firmness of her ass. How in the hell was she supposed
to attract her mark when she couldn't show off her body? Oh well, she would
have to use her other assets. She'd done it before.



She left the apartment and walked down to the transit station again. This
time the train was almost twenty minutes late. When she got off, she had to
run the three and a half blocks to make her appointment.



The house she intended to buy was a pleasant looking two-story, thirty
Earth-years old. Like most homes built since the World War III era, it was
built on as small of a lot as possible to conserve precious real estate.
There was no lawn, no driveway, no backyard, only a small cement strip
surrounding the perimeter and separating it from its neighbors. She looked
it over only for the briefest of seconds before letting her eyes go to the
house next door, where her mark lived. That house was identical except for
the color and the address numbers stenciled near the front door. Amanda
Hesper, the resident closet lesbian, was nowhere to be seen.



Joshua Chambers, the real estate agent representing the house, was there,
however. He was standing near the front door, a conservative business suit
covering his body, a salesman's grin on his face.



"Miss Dittmeyer, I presume?" he said, his Earthling accent thick and very
pompous sounding to her Martian ears.



"Yes indeed," she answered, her fake but realistic Earthling accent
sounding, if anything, even more pompous than his. "Thank you for seeing me
on such short notice." That notice was actually even shorter than he
realized. He was under the impression that she'd made an appointment to see
the house a week before-which was indeed very little time in the Earthling
way of doing things. Actually, the hackers had inserted her into his
schedule the previous day, making it look like she'd made the appointment
the previous week. That was the beauty of automated appointment systems.



"No problem at all," he told her. "You picked a fine home to look at today.
A fine home indeed. We've been getting a lot of enquiries on this beauty."



"I'll bet," she said smartly, as if she believed him. In truth, she knew
from perusing computer records that the house had been on the market for
nearly a year now and the price had been dropped five times.



They shook hands and he led her inside. The house was neatly kept but
smelled slightly musty. The furnishings were expensive but impractical to a
common sense-oriented person. The layout of the house itself was even worse,
with much wasted space designed to look attractive to the eye but actually
serving no useful function. None of this mattered to Julie. She oohed and
ahhed over everything, playing the part of a superficial,
appearance-oriented woman who had stumbled onto the exact thing she was
looking for. Without laying it on too terribly thick, she gave Chambers the
impression she was a serious prospect for finally unloading this house.



"The asking price is nine and a half million," Chambers told her when the
tour was finished. "Although, in truth, they just might let it go for nine
and a quarter if you'd agree to a quick escrow."



Julie knew they would more than likely let it go for eight and a half
million, possibly even a flat eight, but she kept this observation to
herself. Money, after all, was no object to her thanks to Ingram's hackers
and nine and a half was well within the range of what she would qualify for.
"That's a little more than I was really wanting to pay," she said politely.
"But I really do like the house. I'll have to think on it for a day or two
if that's okay. I want to go look at some of the other prospects I've seen
since I've been looking."



"Okay," he said dubiously, "but, like I said, there's been a lot of interest
in this property. I'd hate to see you lose it by hesitating too long."



"I guess I'll just have to take my chances," she told him.



They walked outside and spent a moment exchanging a few more pleasantries.
As they stood there, movement from the house next door caught her eye. It
was Amanda Hesper, walking out of her house to tend to a few flower pots
arranged on her front porch. She was dressed casually, though still very
conservatively, with a baggy pair of denim jeans covering her legs and a
long-sleeved, drab shirt on her upper body. Her hair was pulled back into a
tight bun. She carried a watering can in her hands and was about to pour
some into the first pot when her glance happened onto the two figures
fifteen meters away.



She was good, Julie thought as she observed the reaction. An untrained
observer would have noticed nothing unusual about the glance she gave them,
about the way her eyes lingered for just the briefest of seconds, about the
way her breath momentarily stopped, about the slight hesitation in the
pouring motion. But Julie was a trained observer and she did notice these
things and she had a pretty good idea of just what they meant. Amanda had
noticed her and had been interested in what she had seen. Very interested.



Julie returned the gaze for an instant, flashing a quick, friendly smile
before turning her attention back to Chambers and his salesman blather. She
didn't look over there again or pay any other sort of attention to Amanda.



Soon after, she left, walking slowly back to the transit station. Two days
later, she would return and, at that time, make an offer on the house and
put down the required deposit. From there, the lawyers would have to get
involved. On Earth it was impossible to complete any sort of financial
transaction for anything worth more than five thousand dollars without
securing a lawyer to look over the sales agreement. If no snags were met-and
there was no reason why there should-she could be moving into the house in
about six weeks, maybe eight. From there, the long, slow seduction could
begin.



+++++



Ken stepped out of the elevator onto the serenity level atop the University
of Mars at Eden building. The park setting up here was nicer than that found
atop Whiting University, with a larger duck pond, more rolling hills, a more
extensive network of paths, even a few short trees. It was also higher,
since the UME building contained a medical school, a complete teaching
hospital, a veterinary science department, and a complete aeronautical and
surface-to-orbital engineering department in addition to the standard
University classes and departments. As such, the building stood 184 stories
above the street level of Mars' largest city. Although this serenity level
was larger and higher, the view actually left a lot to be desired. Built in
the old downtown district from pre-revolutionary days, all that could be
seen were other high-rise buildings stretching into the sky on all sides.



Ken didn't mind the lack of a view outside the windows. He had figured out
some time before that he actually liked looking at the trees and the water
and the ducks instead. The glass walls, the forbidding landscape outside of
it, and the pink sky above only served to remind him that he was not on his
home planet. The park setting, with its smells, its sounds, its tranquility,
at least gave the illusion of Earthlike openness.



He had been awake for six months now-Mars months, not Earth months-and liked
to consider himself fully acclimated to life in the future on a strange
planet. Though he still had an Earthling accent thick enough to cause
frequent comment by Martians he encountered, he had all but mastered their
vocabulary and was able to understand pretty much everything said to him, no
matter how crude or profane the phrasing. He had long since moved out of
Karen's house in New Pittsburgh and into his own small but comfortable
apartment in Eden near the University. He was a full time student enrolled
in the Hummingbird training class and getting marks near the highest in the
program. He also had a part-time job as a plow operator in one of the
agricultural fields, spending four hours a day, four days a week churning up
Martian soil in the greenhouses so new crops could be planted. This helped
supplement the 200 credits a month he received for being a student and
allowed him to pay for housing nicer than what he could have had for free.
Though he lived among college students, most of them nine to eleven years
old, which made him sometimes feel as if he were living in an unsupervised
high school summer camp where the inhabitants were allowed unfettered access
to beer and marijuana, it was some place he could call home. While living
with Karen and, for a short time when he'd first moved, Jacob, he'd always
felt like a guest, no matter how accommodating and gracious they were as
hosts.



For the most part, Ken was happy with the life he was living. As cynical and
disbelieving as he'd been at first about the very concept, he had to admit
that life on Mars, under their system of government and laws, really was
fair and really did make sense most of the time. Most of the Martians he met
were happy and trusting, very friendly by nature, and completely lacking in
that guarded way of thought that most Earthlings from his day had been
infected with. When a business proposition was suggested on Mars the first
thought to come to mind was not: how is this person trying to screw me? When
a stranger struck up a conversation with you on the transit bus or in an
elevator or while waiting in line, the first thought was not: Is this person
potentially dangerous to me? When parents sent their young children off to
school or to the scouts or to a gymnastics class, when they hired a
babysitter to watch over them for an evening, they did not have to worry
that they had just employed a pedophile who was going to take advantage of
the situation. Things like that simply did not happen here.



When dealing with the government on any level, there was a startling lack of
bureaucracy involved and one's thoughts did not turn to how the ultimate of
bosses was going to screw you over, cheat you blind, or display criminal
incompetence. You could walk the streets of a Martian city, any city,
anywhere within it, and not fear robbery or assault or rape. And if some
dispute did flair up, either with another person or with a business or even
with the government itself, you did not have to hire a lawyer to deal with
it, did not have to fear that your side would be dismissed simply because
you didn't make as much money or have as much influence. Yes, after
observing things in action for one Earth year now, Ken could do nothing but
conclude that Karen had been entirely serious that first day in the hospital
when she'd explained Martian society to him. Life was fair here and it was
fair for everyone. This really was a perfect world.



He walked along the footpath of the serenity level now, his PC clipped to
his waistband, his well-broken-in moccasins slapping on the concrete. It was
lunchtime and around him other people, mostly students but a few faculty as
well, were sitting at the picnic tables or stretched out on the grass. Some
were studying from their PCs, some were napping, some were dozing, a few
were engaging in some form of sexual activity. About half of the serenity
deck visitors, whether they were engaging in sex or not, were completely
nude since nudism was a common and accepted practice in this section of
Eden. Ken hardly noticed anymore, he had become so used to the sight of
people naked and even fornicating in public. He went to the very back corner
of the park, where two of the glass walls came together. A small hill was
landscaped here and atop it was a walnut tree about eight meters tall. He
made his way to the base of the tree and sat down against it, facing out
over the park instead of over the landscape. This was his favorite place to
spend his study periods, communing with what passed for nature.



He took out his PC and, with a few voice commands, soon had a small
holographic display of the hydrogen/oxygen combustion chamber of a
Hummingbird engine floating in the air above his screen. Pilots were
required to intimately know the inner workings of their aircraft and the
combustion chamber was the focus of this week's lessons. Since he was
naturally mechanically inclined, Ken had already memorized all of the major
parts that made the engine work. He just wanted to go over a few of the
minor parts for a test scheduled for later that day. The instructors were
notorious hard-asses when it came to learning their material and he did not
want to incur their wrath.



As he studied the three-dimensional schematic, touching here and there to
switch the view back and forth and to expand certain pieces for closer
examination, he reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out a pack
of unfiltered cigarettes that had been manufactured on the east coast of
North America and imported to Mars by Agricorp, the largest food supplier on
Earth. He shook one out, stuck it in his mouth, and sparked it up using a
laser lighter. He took a deep drag and slowly exhaled the smoke out into the
park, feeling the effects of the nicotine coursing through his veins.
Smoking was something he had done in his previous life but had given up as
unhealthy shortly after joining the army in his twenties. Though he had
always enjoyed the relaxing sensation of smoking, he had not fancied the
thought of one day contracting emphysema or lung cancer as the trade-off.
Here on Mars, there was really no health-related reason not to smoke since
cancer had been eliminated as a concern, and emphysema and heart problems
were easily cured by cloning a new set of lungs or a new heart and replacing
the damaged items. With the health concerns taken care of, most Martians no
longer considered it against common sense to smoke and well over
three-quarters of the adult population engaged in the habit these days. Ken
had resisted for the first three months of his stay on Mars and then, in a
drunken haze at a botch club with Jacob one night, he had lit up the first
cigarette when one was offered to him. Within a week he was smoking half a
pack a day again and loving every one of them.



A fat brown squirrel, one of hundreds that called the University's serenity
level home, saw Ken sitting there and scrambled down the trunk of the tree
to the ground. It looked him over for a moment, flipping its bushy tail at
him, and then scampered forward until its paws were resting against his
outstretched leg. Ken looked up at and smiled.



"Hey, buddy," he said, reaching forward and scratching the animal between
its ears. "How are you doing today?"



The squirrel chattered insistently at him in reply and then jumped
completely onto his leg, running up until it was perched on his thigh. Ken
reached into his pocket again and pulled out an unshelled peanut, a supply
of which he habitually carried around for just such occasions. The squirrels
of Mars had been imported from Earth-where they were an endangered
species-in the early post-revolutionary days. They served absolutely no
purpose in the artificial environment except for adding a bit of character
to the many parks. Park visitors rarely, if ever, mistreated them and, as a
result, they had completely lost their natural fear of humans over the
generations.



"Here you go," Ken said, handing over the nut. The squirrel happily took it
from his fingers and began to chew it open, leaving a small pile of shell
debris on Ken's thigh.



"So you have friends after all, do you?" a female voice said from his side.



He looked over and saw Kelly Stanford standing there. She was one of his
classmates in the Hummingbird class. At ten years old, she was at the low
end of average in age among those striving to be a civilian pilot. Like most
Martians, she looked much younger to Ken's eyes than she actually was. She
had a very fair complexion-a rarity in the hodgepodge of the Martian gene
pool-and flaming red hair that could only be natural. She was not a
subscriber to the nudism school of thought and, as such, her small but perky
breasts were covered with a brief half-top and her lower half was clad in a
pair of UME shorts. She and Ken sat next to each other in the class and had
studied together a few times up on the serenity level. She enjoyed teasing
Ken about the solitude he typically displayed, a solitude that went somewhat
against the Martian grain.



"I have a few," he said, reaching down and giving the squirrel another
scratch between the ears. "Although I do seem to attract all the wrong
types, don't I?"



She laughed, sitting down next to him without waiting to be invited. "You
Earthlings have the strangest sense of humor," she said.



"I've heard that a time or two," he said. "I've even been told mine is
stranger than most."



"Fuckin' aye," she said. "Although I think it's pussy."



Pussy, he'd come to learn, was a Martian slang term for cute and cuddly,
like a rabbit or a squirrel. It was the first time he'd heard his sense of
humor referred to in that manner. "I'll take that as a compliment," he
replied.



She laughed again. "You'll take that as a compliment," she said, shaking her
head. "Spread my cheeks and lick between 'em. You got a million of 'em,
don't you?"



"A million and six," he said. "A million and six. So what brings you out to
my little tree? Having trouble memorizing the combustion chamber
components?"



Since this signaled the start of a subject related discussion, she turned
immediately serious, the smile fading from her face, her eyes taking on a
somber look. "I'm down with the anatomy of the chamber," she told him. "It's
the physiology of some of the minor components I'm having a fuckstick about.
Like the Bentley bearing? Is that for feeding the secondary blow-by
recirculation valve, or is that the camber fitting?"



"That's the camber fitting," he said. "The Bentley bearing is what's
connected to the gimble of the primary hydrogen line. It's what keeps the
pressure constant during fuel fluctuation."



She shook her head in frustration. "Lick my clit, I just can't remember the
difference between those fucking things. I swear to Laura, I'm gonna flunk
this test today and they're gonna kick my slutty ass out of there. I'll end
up flipping burgers in my mom's goddamned roach pit for my first career."



"Oh, come on," he encouraged, giving her a companionable shove on the
shoulder. "It's not that bad. Let's just go over the chamber part by part
again. We'll get it."



She favored him with a grateful smile. "Thanks, Ken," she told him. "You
have good common sense."



They started from scratch, both of them looking at holograms of the chamber
in question and dissecting each little piece by touching it. It took the
better part of twenty minutes to accomplish since the combustion chamber of
a semi-rocket engine was a fairly complicated piece of machinery. As they
went through each piece they took turns naming it off and describing its
function, both specific and in the greater scheme of things. The parts they
had trouble with they went back and covered again, flipping to entries in
the electronic textbook in order to supply description.



"Feel better now?" Ken asked her when they finished.



"Fuckin' aye," she told him. "I think maybe I'll get through this test after
all."



"Goddamned right you will," he said.



"Of course I'll just flunk the next one when we cover the hydrogen
circulation system," she said sourly.



"You will not," Ken said. "We'll study that one together too, okay?"



She smiled again. "Okay. Thanks again, Ken. You really are an infected
asshole, you know that?"



This was considered a high compliment on Mars so he gave the smile back to
her. "That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me," he said.



She scooted closer to him, so her body was in contact with his, shoulder to
shoulder, bare leg to bare leg. Her leg was smooth and warm. She made sure
she rubbed it against his a little, allowing him to feel the femininity of
it. "How about I give you a proper thank you for helping me?" she asked him,
her hand dropping to his thigh, up high, near his crotch.



In his early days on Mars, he would have been embarrassed by such a blatant
come-on from a woman with whom he had only a casual acquaintance. He
would've said something like: "I like helping you, but you really don't need
to thank me." Those days had long since gone by the wayside. The moment her
soft fingers touched his bare thigh a surge of blood rushed to his cock,
stiffening it up. He knew Martians well enough by now to know that she would
not be offering herself to him if she didn't want him.



"That would be static," he said casually, as if she were offering no more
than a sip from her drink or a light for his cigarette.



She leaned over him and kissed his neck, slowly and softly, her full lips
leaving a dab of saliva on his skin. At the same time her hand slid upward,
gliding over the expanding bulge of his cock beneath his shorts and up to
his bare stomach. She rubbed back and forth here, just below his navel, her
touch barely perceptible but enough to raise goose bumps on his flesh.



"Mmmm," he sighed, his own hand sliding over her back and up to the scruff
of her neck. He caressed her skin here, scratching it with his fingertips.



She kissed his neck a few more times, making little love bites and sucks.
She then moved her mouth a little lower, to the point where his chest joined
his throat. She licked here with broad strokes, using both the top and the
underside of her tongue. Her hand began to move downward again, this time
going under the band of his shorts. A few seconds later, he felt her fingers
encircling his cock. She began to slowly jack it up and down, using
practiced strokes, clenching at just the right time. He quickly achieved a
full and willing erection under this treatment.



She adjusted her body next to him and then lowered her head to his lap. With
a quick tug of her free hand, his cock was released from its confines and in
the open air of the park. She slurped it into her warm mouth and began to
bob her head up and down, sucking on each upstroke, jacking with her hand on
each downstroke. The sensation was exquisite, everything he had come to
expect from a Martian woman who had been instructed by the public education
system in the ways of human sexuality.



"Fuckin' aye," he groaned, his head falling backward in pleasure, his hands
coming up to run through her red hair.



"Mmmm," she moaned from around his cock, giving him a particularly
enthusiastic suck.



Soon, her drool was running down his shaft, wetting his balls. Using her
free hand she cupped them and smeared her saliva around his sack, making it
slippery and sending tingly sensation throughout his groin. She let one
finger play with his ass for just the briefest of seconds and then, when he
gave no objection, she inserted it, sliding it in about half an inch.



"Ahhhhh," he groaned, feeling his body tense up, but in a pleasurable way.
Over the past six months he had had sexual encounters with quite a few
Martian women and had learned to enjoy the anal intrusion that most of them
favored. As long as they confined it to a single finger, it was pleasurable,
adding a new dimension to whatever sex act was being performed. It was
particularly enjoyable during orgasm.



He let his left hand slide downward from her head across her back and to the
back of her shorts. He went lower, stroking the smooth skin of her upper
thighs, letting his fingers delve between them. She opened her legs for him
and he pushed two fingers under the crotch of her shorts. He found a very
wet pussy there, the lips eager to suck his digits into her body. She moaned
as he penetrated her, her mouth breaking stride on his cock for just the
briefest of instances.



He began to finger-fuck her, sliding in and out in rhythm to her head
bobbing. Her juices quickly began to saturate his hand and drip down onto
his wrist. Her pelvis began to gyrate back and forth, her thighs opening
even wider, encouraging more and more.



"Oh, Laura," she said, breaking contact with his cock and raising her head
up. Her face was flushed, with just a hint of perspiration on it. "Why don't
we fuck? You down with that?"



"I'm down with it," he said, pulling his fingers free. He patted his lap.
"Climb aboard."



She quickly whipped off her shorts, dropping them to the ground. As was the
case with most Martian women, her vaginal area was completely bare of pubic
hair-a result of having the hair-growing genes for this part of the body
deactivated. Her lips were swollen an angry red and very wet. Her clit was
standing at attention, as hard as his cock.



He took his own shorts off, completely unmindful of the other occupants of
the park, most of whom could plainly see what they were doing. He stroked
his wet cock with his hand while she swung one leg over his and straddled
him. She brought her pussy into contact with the head of his cock, rocked
back and forth a few times to spread the moisture around, and then sank down
on him, engulfing him in her tight body. Both of them sighed in sheer
pleasure at the conjunction.



They began to move together, both using practiced motions of hips and
pelvis, motions designed to give and receive as much physical sensation as
possible. His hands went to her ass, his fingers digging into the cheeks,
using them as leverage to help move her up and down upon him. Her hands went
to the back of his head, her fingers running through his hair.



"Nice," she said, grinning in arousal. "I knew you'd be nice."



"Fuckin' aye," he agreed, pushing upward, his mouth going to her neck and
kissing it.



She lifted up her shirt, baring her small breasts to him. They were pale,
the hard nipples barely darker than the surrounding skin. He took the left
one in his mouth, suckling it, bathing it in his saliva, even biting it when
she encouraged him to do so. He then switched to the right nipple, giving it
the same treatment, arousing her further and further on the climb toward
climax.



As a general rule, Martian women did not fake orgasms. Sexuality was
considered such an important aspect of the culture that pretending for the
sake of a poor performer's ego was considered a grave disservice to those
who came after. Similarly, it was considered the ultimate in bad manners for
a man to allow himself to have an orgasm before the woman had at least one
herself. Techniques for enhancing the female's pleasure during coitus while
simultaneously controlling the urge to come from the stimulation were taught
to Martian males in middle school and high school. Ken had never had such
classes of course, but he had enough sexual experience in his previous life
to have learned such things on his own. So far he had never committed the
ultimate in bad manners with any of the partners he had coupled (and
tripled) with but it was a struggle at times, especially with that manner of
clenching their vaginal muscles Martian women had.



With Kelly, no such struggle was taking place, even though the physical
sensation was just as pleasant as with any other woman. He had utilized his
Internet masturbation connection before leaving his apartment that day,
engaging in a common fantasy of his that involved a graduating class of
Catholic schoolgirls and a bottle of baby oil. That particular session had
resulted in two orgasms into the VED and, as such, he was now able to easily
hold off while Kelly ground herself to first one and then two climaxes while
riding his cock. Finally, sweating and panting, his hands digging into her
ass, his tongue deep within her mouth and dueling with hers, he released the
block he had put in place and allowed the mechanisms within to complete
their journey.



"Yes, oh fuckin' aye!" Kelly cried enthusiastically as she felt him tensing
up, as she felt his thrusts become more powerful, less controlled.



"Ahhh," he cried, pulling her tightly against him as the pleasure burst
throughout his body and the jets of semen went blasting up his cock and into
her tightness.



They held each other for a few moments, exchanging affectionate kisses,
their hands stroking softly. Once the sweat started to dry on their skin
they gave each other one last kiss and Kelly climbed off, her pussy
disengaging from his cock with a slurping sound and a drool of their
combined juices. She stood up, picking her shorts up from the ground and
slipping them onto her legs. She pulled them up, catching the juices that
were oozing out of her in the crotch piece, which had been designed by
Martian fashion engineers with just that purpose in mind.



"I'd better get down to the roach pit and grab some chow before we go back
to class," she told him, absently pulling her shirt down over her breasts
once again.



"Static," Ken said, leaning back against the tree, not bothering with his
shorts for the moment. He preferred letting his privates air-dry before
dressing. "Catch you later, Kelly."



"Catch you later," she said, giggling. "You and your Earthling expressions.
Anyway, have wet dreams."



"Have wet dreams," he returned.



She walked off, heading toward the elevators. He watched her go for a moment
and then let his eyes wander back to the duck pond and the trees again,
seeking serenity in his surroundings, finding some, but never quite as much
as he was after. Such was the story of his life here on Mars.



He had no complaints about the lifestyle he was living in his second life.
Life on Mars was like living in a cross between a Utopian novel and a
pornographic movie. Society was fair for everyone and tilted in favor of no
one. Those who were willing to contribute to society were rewarded for their
efforts. Those who chose not to contribute were given basic services and
nothing more. There was little crime, little conflict, and little day-to-day
strife. What there was a whole lot of was sex, in every way, shape, form,
and function. His encounter with Kelly was a perfect example of just how
casual sexuality had become-sort of like a very intimate handshake between
acquaintances.



Never, not even in his most adolescent fantasies, had Ken ever envisioned a
constant flow of varied sex such as he was experiencing on Mars. Even for
someone with a reputation for shyness and keeping to himself, he was able to
get laid on very short notice at least three times a week, usually with
someone he barely knew. And if a few days went by without any action and he
started to get horny, there was always the botch clubs. And even if he was a
little short on credits and couldn't afford to spend a night botching, there
was still Internet porn that was almost as good as really getting laid. No,
there was no sexual frustration in this life. When he needed relief, it was
never far away.



But even with all of this, he found himself increasingly on the serenity
level of the University or in one of the parks near his home, staring at the
trees, the water, the ducks and squirrels, and trying not to notice the
glass walls that surrounded him or the futuristic buildings outside those
glass walls, or the alien landscape of Mars' surface beyond that. He found
himself longing at times for the smell of burned exhaust, the sound of
honking horns, the roar of traffic whizzing by him. He missed the feel of
rain on his face, of ocean fog clinging to his hair and making it damp, the
feel of a damp, icy wind in his face. In short, he felt like a man out of
place in his environment, a man a long way from home.



The expression "you can't go home again" was very much on his mind at times.
He doubted that anyone, anywhere, had ever been able to apply those words
quite as literally as he could. Even if he were to return to Earth, the
planet of his birth, even if he were to take up residence in California, he
would still be in an alien environment, surrounded by people who were
generations apart from him, buildings that were covering all of the open
spaces he was used to, and a political system that was 188 years more
corrupt and malevolent than what he'd left behind. Except for brief,
pitifully inadequate escapes into the virtual reality environments of the
Internet, he was trapped forever in a place and time he wasn't meant to be
in. He was used to his surroundings now and even enjoyed them most of the
time. After all, what wasn't there to enjoy in such a place? But he knew he
would never grow completely adjusted to things here and would never
completely fit in. He would just have to make the best of the cards he had
been dealt.



He picked up his shorts and shook the loose grass from them. Raising his
hips off the ground, he pulled them back over his legs and up, taking a
moment to adjust them. He checked the time on his watch and saw that he
still had twenty minutes before class resumed. With a small sigh, he pulled
his PC from his waist and powered it up.



"Computer, access storage folders," he told it.



"Fuckin' aye," it replied in the feminine voice he'd programmed it with.
"Which files are you down with?"



"My pictures," he said, and then, "Annie."



"Fuckin' aye. Digital photo software is activated for viewing."



A menu of the pictures appeared on the screen. He looked at it for a moment
and touched one of them. A second later a picture of Annie at age 36
appeared above the screen in two-dimensional holographic form. Like all of
the photos he had of her, it had been pulled from ancient records on the
WestHem Internet. The only shots available for him were photos that had been
taken in some official capacity or put in news publications during her life.
This particular shot was an identification photo taken by a
computer-operated camera in 2006 at a DMV office. He stared at it for a
moment, smiling at his wife's kind eyes, at her full mouth, at the face he
loved and had hoped to spend the rest of his life with. Well, things just
hadn't worked out that way, had they?



He picked another photo, this one from the San Jose newspaper. It was a shot
of her attending his funeral, receiving the folded American flag from the
captain of the honor guard. She was wearing a black dress of mourning and
her face appeared composed, although just barely so. He didn't stare at this
shot too long as the emotional response it invoked was not altogether
pleasant.



The next shot was from later in her life, after her remarriage, during World
War III. It was another newspaper shot, this time from the Corpus Christi
publication. She was at a black-tie fundraiser for the war effort, sitting
at a table full of dignitaries. She was wearing a red cocktail dress that
looked absolutely stunning and had a beautiful, happy smile on her face.
Sitting next to her, a contented smile on his face as well, was David Brown,
the man she had married three years after his funeral. It was one of the few
photos of Brown that Ken had been able to find. He was a handsome man in an
average sort of way, older than Annie by about ten years, it appeared. His
hair was a dark blonde color and his eyes were bright blue. He looked like a
decent man if appearances meant anything and, from the family legends Karen
and Jacob had told him, that was just what he was. Ken had expected there to
be a resemblance between Brown and himself-his ego telling him that Annie
had been so much in love with him that Brown was merely a replacement. But
in this he was wrong. Brown looked nothing like Ken at all. He looked, in
fact, like the epitome of an investment counselor. Ken tried not to harbor
any hard feelings towards the man for marrying the love of his life, but
sometimes it was hard. Sometimes it was very hard.



He called up another picture of Annie, this one of her alone. It had been
taken in 2005, at the dedication ceremonies for the Ken Frazier regional
park, which had been named in honor of him getting his dumb ass blown away.
This shot was his favorite. In it, she was standing near the plaque that had
been placed near the playground in his memory. She was reading the
inscription upon it, a pensive look on her face. She was wearing a
sleeveless white blouse and a pair of tan slacks. Her wedding ring was still
on her finger in the shot. He stared at this picture for a long time.



"Annie," he said softly, speaking to her image. "This is really some kind of
place I'm in now. You wouldn't believe all of the things I've seen here, all
of the things they have."



She didn't answer him. She never did. He sighed again and then closed out
the picture, leaving only blankness behind.



"I just wish you were here to share it with me, hon," he said.