“I’m not asking for freebies, honey,” he protested. “It’s more like a commission.”
Then he saw Quaid walking down the stairs, despondent. “We’ll pick this up later,” he promised.
He rushed to intercept Quaid by the door. “Hey! That didn’t take long.”
Quaid scowled at him and walked out.
Quaid stepped into the dense crowd in the plaza, taking pains to avoid the soldiers, who seemed to be everywhere. Benny scrambled to keep up.
“Ever make it with a mutant?” Benny asked.
“No.”
“I know these Siamese twins,” Benny said. “Man, you won’t know if you’re comin’ or goin’.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Quaid said. The thought poured salt on the wound. How great it could have been, should have been, with Melina! Yet how could he convince her of his feelings when he couldn’t remember anything about their relationship?
Benny was still dogging his heels. “How ’bout a psychic?” he said. “You wanna get read by a psychic?”
Could she tell him how to make it up with Melina? Fat chance! “Where’s your cab?” Benny pointed across the street. Quaid sighed. “Bring me to my hotel.”
Benny shrugged as they drove out of the dark slum and entered the bright, sunny tubeway. He had done his best.
Somehow the brightness didn’t do a thing for Quaid’s spirits.
CHAPTER 18
Edgemar
Quaid relaxed cautiously in his room at the Hilton Hotel. It was tourist-room night, which was not the same as Mars night. The half hour added length of the Martian day might not seem like much of a problem to the workers here, but tourists fresh from Earth could get all out of synch. So each room could be set to whatever rhythm and particular time the occupant wanted. Quaid hadn’t bothered to reset it from the time the prior occupant had left it. After all, he was a fresh tourist too. Thus it was night in here, while still late afternoon outside.
Cohaagen’s minions still hadn’t come after him. Had he truly given them the slip, or were they waiting till the time they thought he would be asleep? After their several unsuccessful attempts to kill him, they might have learned caution. More likely they just didn’t want a big messy scene here in the tourist district of Mars. They might succeed in taking him out, but if it cost them a bad tourist season because travelers would be afraid of getting murdered in their hotel rooms, it wouldn’t be worth it. So maybe he was safe, for the moment—and maybe he wasn’t. He would take precautions when he slept, setting up a dummy in the bed while he slept elsewhere, just in case.
But his mind really wasn’t on survival at the moment. It was on Melina. What should he have done to make it right with her? He was now assured that she was the woman of his dream, for a setup would have played along with him, pumping him for information while she had supposedly spontaneous sex with him, then signaling the goons to come. Instead she had thrown him out. That convinced him, painful as it was to take. So maybe he had played it right after all, because now he knew he could trust her—if only he could get her to trust him.
Well, he would sleep on it. Maybe he would dream again, and the dream would be of her, and show him how to approach her. Meanwhile he would try to relax. He had eaten, perhaps foolishly: he had loaded up on more Mars candy bars, and a package of vitamins, just to keep things balanced. It wasn’t that he was a freak for candy, but it made him feel closer to Hauser, and he hoped that he could get close enough to remember something vital. He wasn’t any more of a psychologist than he was of a social worker, but it seemed to him that the more he immersed himself in the things associated with Hauser, the more likely he was to trigger some additional insight into the man. Such an insight could save his life, or give it more meaning.
He turned on the video. The room didn’t sport a wall-sized screen, as Mars didn’t have much of a consumer industry, but it was possible to adapt to the smaller set.
An in-house documentary about—what else?—Mars came on. There were boring images of black rocks in the red desert. The same sort of scene had fascinated him earlier in the day, but now that he had blown it with Melina, anything that didn’t look like her was dull.
“The first evidence of an alien presence on Mars was not uncovered until forty years after the first manned expedition,” the narrator said, off-camera. “When glazed sand provided proof of visitations by nonhuman travelers.”
Quaid lay on his bed in the dark hotel room, bathed in the pale blue glare of the screen and the pale red glare from the skylight. This should really interest him, he knew, but the image of Melina’s angry face pretty much blotted it out. With her by his side, everything about Mars was wonderful; without her, the allure was gone.
He changed the channel. The face of Vilos Cohaagen filled the screen and Quaid sat up to watch more closely. Cohaagen was delivering a speech from his office.
“Tonight, at 6:30 p.m., I signed an order declaring martial law throughout the Mars Federal Colony. I will not tolerate any further damage to our mineral export operations. Mr. Kuato and his terrorists must understand that their self-defeating efforts will only bring misery…”
Quaid regarded the face of his enemy. Why was Cohaagen declaring martial law? What was the point? With the power of Administrator and with the Agency at his fingertips, it seemed ridiculously redundant. But that was the way of politicians. As long as things appeared to be aboveboard, they could continue with all the dirty work they pleased belowdecks.
The news report changed. Here was something else they never mentioned to Earthlings considering emigration to Mars.
The scene was of an air lock in which four shackled prisoners were standing. The air was being slowly let out of it. It was evident that the prisoners knew this, and were helpless.
“Francis Aquado, defacing public property,” the announcer said. “Judith Redensek and Jeannette Wyle, resisting arrest. Thomas Zachary, treason.”
The depressurization continued. The prisoners gasped, suffocating. Their mucous membranes bled. Their eyes bulged. The camera focused on each in turn, the close-ups showing all the detail a sadist could desire. This was obviously death by torture. Not only was it evidently standard, here, it was so firmly established that it was done openly, televised for a mass audience. That said something ugly about the nature of the audience. On Earth, at least, the dirt was usually swept under the carpet.
The screen went dark. He had turned it off involuntarily. He held his head, lost.
If the penalty for defacing public property on Mars was an agonizing death, that meant that anyone who made graffiti was doomed if caught. If an innocent person was arrested on a trumped-up charge and resisted, that resistance became grounds for execution. Treason might be no more than stating an objection to such policies. He was already guilty of them all! He hated Cohaagen, and he had in effect defaced public property when he resisted arrest, because he would be blamed for the broken spaceport window. There was no doubt he was guilty of treason, because already he condemned the government of Mars. If there ever appeared before him a magical button labeled ABOLISH MARS GOVERNMENT, he would push that button in an instant. But the chances were that the Mars government would catch him first and push the button marked ABOLISH HAUSER/QUAID.
Yet there was supposed to be a secret locked in his head that could blow it all wide open. If he could just remember it!
He was startled by a knock at the door. He froze, on the alert. Would the goons knock?
The knocking was repeated. “Mr. Quaid…”
He hesitated, then decided to answer. After all, the goons would probably just have broken in, or fired bullets through the door. “Yes?”