Robert Sawyer: Red Planet Blues

Because of speed-of-light delays, it’s impossible to interact in real time with people on Earth. You can’t chat with them by video; you can’t speak with them on the phone; you can’t swap instant messages. And so I hadn’t spoken to Wanda—really spoken to her—in the ten years I’d been on Mars.

I didn’t regret my choice, I didn’t regret it at all. Wanda had done the only thing she could do. That abusing bastard had to be stopped, and she had stopped him, simply, cleanly, and for all time. But when you love someone, you look after them—and I looked after her. I took the rap for her, and, rather than face decades in jail, I escaped to a sealed dome on a red, barren rock; sometimes, it was hard to tell the difference.

Despite everything that had gone down these last few days, a man needs routines in his life, he needs order, he needs something to hold on to. Every week—every seven Earth days—I would record a video message for Wanda and pay to have it transmitted to Earth: Howard Slapcoff got his fee whether you were coming or going, whether you were living or dying, or whether you were just one of the living dead. I always found it awkward making the videos; it wasn’t like me to talk about what was going on in my life. But a few days after she received mine, she’d send one of her own in reply, and when I got those, when I saw how happy she was, how at peace, how full of joy, it made everything worthwhile; it made me, at least for a time, feel alive.

And so I sat in the chair in my office, the wallpaper displaying the alternating green and caramel stripes of our house from all those years ago, and I straightened my collar, patted down my hair, cleared my throat, activated my camera, and spoke to it. “Hello, sis…”

Diana, with her gorgeous new body, drove by my place to pick me up in Juan’s buggy.

“How’d seeing Juan go?” I asked.

She smiled, and although it wasn’t the smile of hers I was used to, it was still very pleasant. “He’s such a sweetheart,” she said. “He was so relieved that I was still alive.”

“I bet.”

“But—funny. I knew he liked me; I mean—come on—it was painfully obvious. But he didn’t look at me the same way this time. I know I’m ten times better-looking now than I was before, but…” She shrugged a little. “Maybe there is something to be said for people who like you just the way you are… or were.”

“Maybe,” I said softly.

We drove to NewYou and collected the dead transfer body that had housed the bootleg Rory. Horatio Fernandez, per my instructions, had put the fried brain of the legitimate Pickover into the empty skull. In good mobster fashion, Diana and I stuffed the cybercorpse into the trunk. We then headed to the western airlock and drove through the tunnel there and out onto the surface.

I’d said before that newcomers to Mars sometimes hurt themselves because they feel invincible in the low gravity. I imagined something similar could happen with transfers: the combination of enhanced strength and feeble gravity makes them feel like comic-book superheroes. And Joshua Wilkins—poor, grieving Joshua Wilkins, who had recently lost his doting wife Cassandra—would quite plausibly have felt more reckless than most.

There were amazing places on Mars, and if a tourist industry ever develops here, I’m sure the brochures will feature Valles Marineris and Olympus Mons—respectively, the solar system’s longest canyon and its largest volcano. Either of those would have done well for our purpose, but unfortunately they were both clear around the globe from Isidis Planitia. But Rory—who, of course, knew his geology—suggested a suitable spot closer to home. There was a dried lava flow extending thirteen kilometers from a mountain peak in Nili Patera. The sides of the flow were steep, and in some places featured an eighty-meter sheer drop.

Diana and I had brought along some climbing gear—carbon-fiber rope, a piton gun, and so forth—to make it look like old Joshua-never-Josh had decided to try his luck rappelling down the lava flow. We found the steepest edge we could along its length, opened the trunk, and carried the body to the precipice. I took one leg, Diana took the other, and we dangled it headfirst over the edge. “Count of three,” I said. “One, two, three.”

We let it go and watched it fall in that wonderful Martian slow motion, down, down, down, descending a height equal to that of a twenty-seven-story office tower. Mars, being Mars, served up a Wile E. Coyote falling-off-the-cliff-style puff of dust when the body hit.

It might be years or mears, or decades or mecades, until the body was found, but, when it was, I’m sure the coroner’s report will read “death by misadventure.” If my time ever comes, I’d like the same thing, I think—beats all hell out of being gunned down by an ex-wife, strangled by a creditor, or knifed by a disgruntled client.

The trip back to the dome took the better part of a day, and that gave Diana and me plenty of time to talk. And, after several hours, with the sun low behind us and the sky ahead purpling, I decided to pop the question—the one that had been swirling at the back of my mind ever since I discovered that she was still alive. But getting to it required some setup, so, as we continued east, I said, “I think it’s time to change things around a little.”

“Oh?” replied Diana, turning her lovely head to look at me.

“Yeah. I’m tired of being the only private detective on Mars.”

“What would you do instead?”

“No, no, no. I’m not talking about quitting. I love my work; to quote one of my predecessors, this is my métier. But I’m thinking about taking on a partner.”

“Maybe Dougal McCrae would like to join you,” Diana offered. “I imagine he gets tired of all the paperwork that goes with being a cop.”

“No, not him.” I took one hand off the steering wheel and swept it back and forth in front of me, as if indicating lines of text. “Can’t you just see it? Light streaming through a window with two names painted on it, and the names visible as shadows on the floor: ‘Lomax and Connally, Private Investigators.’”

She looked surprised, but whether at the vocational suggestion or at the discovery that I knew her last name, I wasn’t sure.

“Well?” I said. “You certainly can’t keep working at The Bent Chisel. No one wants to be served booze by a transfer; it’s like having a Mormon bartender—the vibe is all wrong. And, sure, I know you don’t need to pay the life-support tax anymore, but surely you still want to make some money.”

She looked at me with lustrous acrylic eyes, and her voice was soft. “Oh, Alex…”

“Yes?”

“Alex, baby, don’t you get it? I transferred for a reason.”

“Of course. Immortality. Eternal youth.”

“Not that; none of that matters to me. But, honey, I’ve been here twelve years, and, unlike you, I haven’t been going to the gym. I wanted strength.”

“You’ve certainly got that,” I said. “That’s one of the reasons you’d make a great partner.”

She shook her head gently, the blonde hair glistening as she did so. “Stop for a second.”

I did, and she turned around in her seat and pointed through the clear canopy. At first I thought she was referring to the body we’d disposed of—as if that was an impediment to being a private eye—but then I realized she was indicating the evening star, a sapphire glowing low in the western sky.

“Earth?” I said.

“Earth. I’m going home, and I’ll weigh three times there what I weighed here. I could never have managed it in my old body. But in this body, I’ll do just fine.”