“She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered outside the dome thirty years ago. The doctor said she died of natural causes, and you can’t prove otherwise.”
I shook my head, still trying to fathom it all. “You didn’t count on how much it would hurt your mother—or that the hurt would go on and on, mear after mear.”
He said nothing, and that was as damning as any words could be.
“She couldn’t get over it, of course,” I said. “But you thought, you know, eventually …”
He nodded, almost imperceptibly—perhaps he wasn’t even aware that he’d done so. I went on, “You thought eventually she would die, and then you wouldn’t have to face her anymore. At some point, she’d be gone, and her pain would be over, and you could finally be free of the guilt. You were biding your time, waiting for her to pass on.”
He was still looking at the carpet, so I couldn’t see his face. But his narrow shoulders were quivering. I continued. “You’re still young— thirty-four, isn’t it? Oh, sure, your mother might have been good for another ten or twenty years, but eventually …”
Acid was crawling its way up my throat. I swallowed hard, fighting it down. “Eventually,” I continued, “you would be free—or so you thought. But then your mother struck it rich, and uploaded her consciousness, and was going to live for centuries if not forever, and you couldn’t take that, could you? You couldn’t take her always being around, always crying over something that you had done so long ago.” I lifted my eyebrows, and made no effort to keep the contempt out of my voice. “Well, they say the first murder is the hardest.”
“You can’t prove any of this. Even if you have DNA specimens from the cockpit, the police still don’t have any probable cause to justify taking a specimen from me.”
“They’ll find it. Dougal McCrae is lazy—but he’s also a father, with a baby girl of his own. He’ll dig into this like a bulldog, and won’t let go until he’s got what he needs to nail you, you—”
I stopped. I wanted to call him a son of a bitch—but he wasn’t; he was the son of a gentle, loving woman who had deserved so much better. “One way or another, you’re going down,” I said. And then it hit me, and I started to feel that maybe there was a little justice in the universe after all. “And that’s exactly right: you’re going down, to Earth.”
Ralph at last did look up, and his thin face was ashen. “What?”
“That’s what they do with anyone whose jail sentence is longer than two mears. It’s too expensive in terms of life-support costs to house criminals here for years on end.”
“I—I can’t go to Earth.”
“You won’t have any choice.”
“But—but I was born here. I’m Martian, born and raised. On Earth, I’d weigh … what? Twice what I’m used to …”
“Three times, actually. A stick-insect like you, you’ll hardly be able to walk there. You should have been doing what I do. Every morning, I work out at Gully’s Gym, over by the shipyards. But you …”
“My … my heart …”
“Yeah, it’ll be quite a strain, won’t it? Too bad …”
His voice was soft and small. “It’ll kill me, all that gravity.”
“It might at that,” I said, smiling mirthlessly. “At the very least, you’ll be bed-ridden until the end of your sorry days—helpless as a baby in a crib.”
Postscript: e-mails from the future
Despite my vow to give up shortfiction, some offers really are too good to refuse. In October 2007, I was contacted by Carol Toller, an editor at Report on Business Magazine, one of Canada’s top glossy magazines (and one that I had written for occasionally in my freelance-journalist days; my last article for them had been in 1992). For their January 2008 issue, the magazine was preparing a look at the business environment a decade down the road. They wanted me to contribute a creative piece, and offered $1.50 a word (by comparison, a really good rate for an SF story from a science-fiction publication is eight cents a word). How could I say no?
For the record, my real agent is the wonderful Ralph Vicinanza, who also represents Stephen King, the estate of Isaac Asimov, and most of the major SF writers working today—and, no, he’s never once called me “baby.”
To: Robert J. Sawyer
From: Big Name Author Multimedia Agency
Date: February 14, 2018, 9:31 a.m. EST
Subject: Going, going … gone!
Rob, baby, Happy Valentine’s Day! Oh, wait—got that dang wavy purple underline in Word: intellectual-property problem. Let me correct that:
Happy FedEx Valentine’s Day—when your love absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, heh heh.
Seriously, speaking of sponsorship, we’re closing the bidding in two hours on the beverage product placements in your next novel. Please don’t give me a hassle this time, okay, Rob? That “I’m an artiste” stuff is so last millennium; I don’t care if the character is the kind of guy who’d only drink fine wine … if you want to drink anything that isn’t rotgut, you’ll do it my way!
I’m pretty sure Coke is going to take the Canadian rights, but Pepsi in the U.S. is hot on science fiction right now, what with their billboard on the side of the International Space Station, so I suspect they’ll be the high bidder here. And just be happy that Coke and Pepsi haven’t merged yet—monopolies mean only one bid!
And, yeah, I know Pepsi pays in U.S. dollars, but, hey, those are still worth something down here even if they don’t go very far up in Toronto, and, believe me, I’m barely keeping body and soul together with the paltry 40% commission I’m charging you. What’s the greenback worth now? Forty-five cents Canadian? I swear, someday we’ll be out of this Iraq quagmire! And don’t even get me started on what we’re doing in Colombia …
Anyway, keep that BlackBerry implant of yours turned on, baby! I’ll have more news soon.
Your pal in the Big Apple™ (all rights reserved),
Jock
“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.”—Bill Gates
To: Robert J. Sawyer
From: Big Name Author Multimedia Agency
Date: February 14, 2018, 11:42 a.m. EST
Subject: Your book is all wet …
Color me surprised! (Or maybe that should be colour— you guys still doing that “u” thing? You do know the NorAm Economic Union is going to standardize spellings soon, right?) Anyway, Ontario Clean Water Inc. outbid Pepsi—for the U.S. rights. All the characters in your next novel are going to be kicking back cool, clear Canadian H2O—the best that money can buy (as we New Yorkers well know)!
Hey, speaking of Canada, I wish I’d bought Canadian biotech stocks ten years ago—you guys are going through the roof! Who’d’ve thunk that the United States would fall so far? But I guess when you stop teaching evolution in the schools, you end up with no competent life scientists. And when you ban stem-cell research and all that, well, it’s no surprise that someone else is picking up the slack.
And, on the topic of Canuck ingenuity, man, I love that lawsuit you guys have brought in the World Court! Seeking a royalty on compasses because the magnetic north pole is in Canada—doing that takes Timbits! Still, I guess if it’s possible to claim ownership of parts of the human genome—and all sorts of companies do!—you should be able to do the same with other natural phenomena, no? I suppose I’m not the first to suggest that if you win the case, the royalty will come to be known as the pole tax … :)