“I’m here,” said Newt. “Ricardo, can you answer?”
The mound of foam on which he lay collapsed, spilling him out from under the hell-beast. Ricardo’s eyes blurred over for a moment, then his vision began to brighten.
“Newt!” he said.
“I’m here.”
“I can see Mars. I really see it. I—I’m going…”
“Wow, Ricardo! Great! How is it?”
“Just like I im—”
He shrieked, his eyes fixed on the Martian firmament that no one else could see. He wailed as the moontips burst the membrane of sky and the red heavens poured down around him. Up he rose through the dark flood, like a bubble in a bottle of burgundy, and it seemed he would never reach the surface, never breathe again. For the air of Mars was thin, thin and cold, cold as death.
“Mars Will Have Blood” copyright 1989 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared in Scare Care, edited by Graham Masterton.
UNEASY STREET
“Ah, good, here come the cops to arrest some more mutants,” said Raleigh’s boss, Pete. “Can’t have them just lounging around, living off the fat of the land, snacking on the core of our civilization.”
Raleigh finished counting verdigrised pennies into the grimy hand of a man who wore a heavy overcoat and woolen muffler despite the August heat, then he handed over the brown bag full of Copenhagen slicks. His eyes followed the man out into the heat-warped glare of the street. In the flickering intervals between speeding cars, he could see that the tiny park across the street was full of cops.
“Mutants?” Raleigh said, glancing into the fish-eye mirror at the men who browsed between racks of cello-wrapped magazines and sex toys. “You mean, like, genetic drift?”
“I’m talking sci-fi horror movies, kid. I mean bug-eyed monsters with green skin and the faces of dogs. Nothing remotely human.”
Raleigh looked back at the park. “They’re just bums, Pete. Street people.”
“I must disagree,” Pete said, taking a moment to readjust his John Lennon spectacles, which looked as misplaced as a lorgnette on his oft-broken nose. “Neither hapless hustler nor decrepit wino, Raleigh. These are the genuine item. Homo mutatis. I’ve been studying them for years, from this inconspicuous vantage. And what’s more, I’d wager the police will find their ragged pockets stuffed full of Easy.”
“Easy? That new drug, you mean?”
Pete stood up excitedly, peering past Raleigh and wagging his finger in the direction of the cash register. Raleigh turned to face yet another overdressed customer bearing yet another glossy, overpriced skinzine. As he searched for the dollar value among kroner, pounds, and lire, Pete went on about mutant pharmaceuticals.
“It’s everywhere these days, Raleigh. It’s as common as the mutants themselves. Don’t know where they get it, but they’re all pushers, selling it to each other. They call it ‘Easy,’ I gather, because it’s so easy to fix. A snort, a swallow—no needles need apply. And because once you take enough of it, life seems easy. Easy as pie. Maybe it caused the mutants; I don’t know. You can blame them on solar flares, or pesticides, or the national debt. From my experience, poverty can warp the mind; why shouldn’t it have subtler genetic effects?”
“Thank you, sir,” Raleigh told his customer. “You might want to keep on this side of the street for a few blocks.”
“Won’t matter,” Pete proclaimed. “The police have their hands full at the moment. Hey, Raleigh, take a look at this one. I’ll watch the register.”
Raleigh switched places with Pete in the cramped space behind the counter, and by stepping on the hidden cashbox, he managed to get a clear view of the melee.
“All I see is a bunch of cops,” he said.
“Brown coat, brown hair—it looks like a victim of cosmetic malpractice. And it hops like a frog.”
“Jesus, Pete,” he said. “That’s a person, not an ‘it.’”
“And I say you’re wrong, kid. That comes to $9.95.”
“You have no compassion, Pete.”
Raleigh watched the woman stumble against the metal steps of the paddy van. With both hands cuffed behind her back, and the cops pushing her ahead of them, she stumbled forward like a sack of potatoes. A plastic bag full of gray powder fell from the folds of her coat; one cop snatched it up with a shout. Raleigh had a glimpse of her face: wide, loose lips; basset-hound eyes showing more red than white; skin a cigarettish brown-green in color. As the cops shoved her into the van, he realized why the woman had “hopped,” as Pete put it. One leg of her slacks flapped loose.
“My God, that poor lady. She’s an amputee, and the way the cops are shoving her around—”
“Let me see,” Pete said, striving to regain his old place. Raleigh held on long enough to see her remaining leg disappear into the van, then the door slammed shut.
“Well, that’s that,” said Pete. “But they’ll be back tomorrow, and twice as many, too. Confine them in a cell and they multiply even faster.”
“You’re sick,” Raleigh said. His face burned; his throat had closed up and gone dry. “Those are just regular people, like maybe you and I could have been if we’d had a long run of bad luck. It’s living on the street makes them sick like that.”
“The street, eh? You sure it’s not the greenhouse effect?”
Raleigh sputtered and laughed despite himself. Pete slapped him on the shoulder, then leaned in close, whispering, “So what makes them look like this?”
He referred to the next customer, a stunted, pop-eyed-old man with a fringe of gray beard and a toothless mouth. Raleigh gritted his teeth and counted the proffered money, all in tarnished dimes, though he felt as if he were selling Wet Beaver Beach Party to Snuffy Smith.
“Sorry, gramps,” he said a minute later. “There’s not enough here. Why don’t you go get yourself something to eat?”
“You crazy?” the old man rasped. “That shit’s expensive!”
The next morning, before Pete’s shop opened, Raleigh stood in the park across the street with a lukewarm cup of coffee and a doughnut. Brick high-rises enclosed the little square of balding grass and litter; an alley ran along one edge. Thorny hedges concealed a few long, lumpy shapes like lint-colored turds the size of men; the sound of snoring drifted from them. Otherwise the park was empty.
As he drank his coffee, he saw Pete wandering up the far side of the street, beret pulled down low on his brow. Raleigh drained the Styrofoam cup and tossed it toward the trash can, but a gust of stale wind swept it aside.
The park was full of garbage. One cup more or less made no difference. Yet Raleigh could not avoid the voice of his conscience. Littering was bad, punishable by heavy fines. He wandered over to the hedge and carefully spread a few branches, looking for his cup.
There it lay, swaddled in bloody bandages, steaming.
He staggered back, slashing his wrists on thorns.
“Raleigh! Ho!”
Pete hailed him from the door of the shop. Raleigh hesitated, drawn to take another peek into the bushes despite the sickness caused by his first look. He finally broke and ran across the street ahead of a wave of traffic, the glimpse of dirty, blood-soaked swathes still hanging in his eyes.
“I’m glad you came early today,” Pete said as they went in. The shop was dark, and he kept it that way as he went back into his office for the cashbox. “I wanted a chance to talk to you privately.”
Raleigh was wondering about the heap of bandages. He tried to make himself concentrate on what Pete was saying, but it wasn’t easy. He was accustomed to tuning out most of his boss’s words.