A hugely fat lady waddled from the back of the ship toward the front. She carried several packages. As the captain hung up, she squeezed past him. Her vanity was such that she even wore high heels, though they jacked her up to above the height of most men and did absolutely nothing for her sausagelike legs.
“Excuse me, madam,” the captain said with forced civility. “You’ll have to return to your capsule.”
“Where’s my cabin?” the lady wheezed, shoving a boarding pass in his face.
“Number nineteen. Straight ahead.”
“Thank you.” She waddled on down, taking her time.
The engines, responsive to the captain’s directive, revved up more noisily. Richter emerged from one cabin and pushed the fat lady out of the way, disgusted by the brief contact. “What’s that noise?”
“We’re taking off now, or we’ll miss the lunar sling,” the captain said. “You’re welcome to come along for the ride.”
“You can’t take off until I say!” Richter said. “Security takes precedence over schedule!”
“Really? I shall have to recheck the manual. Now I suggest that you take one of the vacant berths if you don’t want to handle the acceleration on the floor here. We have sealed the entry port.”
Richter realized that the captain was pulling the same deal on him that he had pulled on Cohaagen. He would be unable to prove that the captain didn’t know that security took precedence, and by the time he got hold of the space manual it would be academic: they would be in space.
He glared at the captain, about to say something acid. Helm rushed up. “I checked the landing gear. It’s clean.”
The captain collared a passing stewardess. “Charlotte, show these gentlemen to some cabins,” he said briskly. Then he headed to the fore.
“Right this way,” the stewardess said, smiling prettily.
Richter had to follow her, grinding his teeth. His only consolation was that he was sure that Cohaagen was grinding his teeth with even more anger.
Richter and Helm went with Charlotte toward the rear. The captain moved on toward the cockpit in front. He passed the fat lady, who was still struggling to climb into her upper berth.
“Where’s my cabin?” the fat lady asked.
“This is it, ma’am,” the captain said patiently. “You’ve found it.” He shook his head as he got past her. It had been a long day.
Richter, glancing back, smiled briefly. He was glad that the captain had his problems too. Served him right.
Charlotte showed them to their capsule. She smiled without a trace of guile, which meant she was as professional in her capacity as Richter was in his.
What did pretty stewardesses do in the long hours of travel, in their time off? Maybe it would be worth finding out, as long as he was stuck here. She could be a useful ally, because she interacted with all the passengers. If he asked her to report anything odd, it just might help him a lot.
Richter put on his most charming smile, as hypocritical as Cohaagen’s own. “Thank you, miss,” he said.”Perhaps we shall see more of each other soon.”
Her smile congealed, as if she had just spied a tarantula in her purse. “I doubt it, sir,” she said, beating a hasty retreat.
Damn!
The fat lady hurriedly locked the door and opaqued her porthole. “Where’s my cabin?” she asked, though there was no one else there.
She put her hands up, took hold of her ears, and pulled. As she jerked, her face split in the middle. The skin peeled away from the nose on either side, taking with it the fat cheeks and chins.
Underneath was the face of a man. It was Douglas Quaid.
He drew the artificial face the rest of the way off. Even the hair was fake, and the small earrings. As it came free, it sprang shut, resuming its original aspect, somewhat deflated.
“Where’s my cabin?” the face asked querulously. “Where’s my cabin?”
He held it in his hands and poked at it with a finger, but it kept talking. “Where’s my cabin?”
Annoyed, he slammed the face against the wall. It was quiet.
He relaxed. Then, after a beat, the face spoke again. “Thank you.”
He had to smile. At least the mask had done its job, fooling the goons.
He didn’t bother to remove the dress or the layers of foam-filled plastic that rounded out his slim shape into the gargantuan proportions of the fat lady. He was quite comfortable in it and, besides, he didn’t want to be caught on board without his disguise. He had already decided to ride out the trip in stasis and he would pull the mask back on after takeoff. There was no sense taking chances.
As he leaned back in his capsule, he stared down at the most remarkable feature of the outfit Hauser had provided. The galoshes were covered with thin, flexible holograms, which gave the illusion that he was wearing sturdy high heels, though inside, his heels were flat on the bottom. This had the effect of subtracting three inches from his height, because people allowed for the height of the heels. He was still one big, tall figure of a woman, but able to pass. He would have to be careful never to let his knees show, though, because his calves would seem shortened. There wasn’t much to worry about in that department, however; his dress came down almost to his ankles, effectively hiding his legs.
There was more he was hiding. Realizing that he would need a gun, but that he wouldn’t be able to smuggle it aboard a subway, let alone a spaceship, he had shopped at a black-market outlet for a special one. It was made entirely of plastic and other nonmetallic materials, guaranteed to set off no alarms. Plastic could be made as hard as metal, as its bullets showed, and bullets used plastic explosive for their detonations. Such guns had been outlawed for decades, but could be had—for a price. This one was even fancier: it disassembled into camouflaged parts. The buttons on the fat lady’s dress, the decorations on her shoes, the combs in her hair—everything served some other purpose, so that even a physical inspection would not betray its larger nature. The gun would be a job to assemble, but it could be a lifesaver. Just so long as he didn’t need it while he was in costume!
Actually, now that he had passed the boarding check, he could assemble the weapon and keep it ready in his purse. Then when he reached Mars he could disassemble it into a few major components and stash them in his purse and the spaces in his galoshes. Mars didn’t have the fancy X-ray sensors Earth did; it depended on routine physical inspection, which he understood was cursory. So he could sneak the gun by, and put it together again quickly thereafter. He would have to rearrange his clothing to make it hang together without some of its buttons, but women were known to change outfits all the time. It would be all right, as long as he didn’t encounter any tornadoes. There really was small likelihood of that, on almost airless Mars.
The engines’ roar increased. The vessel shook violently. These clunkers were lucky if they didn’t shake themselves apart during takeoff! He hurriedly strapped himself into his bunk as the ship heaved itself up.
He leaned back, relaxing. It was the only way to handle acceleration. Now he could sort out his slowly recovering memories, aided by what he had learned last night. So he was Hauser, a turncoat agent with a conscience. He liked that. He had seen enough of Agency methods to know that he didn’t want to be associated with it. But what was the secret he knew that made him so dangerous to them? That remained blank. Why had they gone to so much trouble to keep him alive and healthy, despite having to detail a crew to keep watch on him and keep him pacified? They must have wanted him for something. But that, too, was blank.
At least he was on the way to Mars, where the answers were. To Mars, where the woman of his dreams was. He was now certain she existed. He had dreamed her because he remembered her, on a level suppressed by the implant that had rendered him into Quaid. Somehow some of that memory had leaked, giving him a desire to return to Mars and an image of the woman. If he could find her, he could find the rest of his past.
He would also have to deal with Cohaagen. Hauser had told him th
at, and it rang true. He would not be allowed to live if Cohaagen and his deadly minions remained free.
The acceleration pressed him back, making breathing labored. He found himself thinking of three things: smashing Cohaagen, loving the Mars woman, and something else of overwhelming significance. But it wouldn’t come clear. Not yet.
He oriented on that third thing, knowing that in it lay the key to all the rest. It was—it was what he had been going after when he was with the woman, when he fell into the pit. It was there, under the ground of Mars. But what was it? Its physical aspect was only part of it. There was so much more . . .
He lost the thread. He let it go for the moment and pulled the curtain aside to gaze out the porthole. He imagined himself turning ghostlike, a hologram, flying through that port and out to pace the ship, then around to see the fiery, noisy exhaust of the engine. He zoomed right into it, until all his world was blazing red. If only he could burn away the whole of his false existence, and recover his real identity, and know what it was that haunted his deepest mind, that was so significant as to change the fate of a world . . .
CHAPTER 15
Spaceport
It was dark and silent. Then Phobos, the larger of the two potato-shaped moons of Mars, floated into view. It was about seventeen miles long, thirteen across, and twelve deep, which was pretty small as moons went, but still about twice the size of its companion, Deimos. It was as ugly as a barren rock could be, hardly more than a fragment torn from some larger body and frozen in its irregularity. But it was an excellent spot for a rendezvous, because it was solid without having any significant gravity of its own.
The space cycler came into view, closing on the moon. The ship looked tiny in comparison, a mere speck. Then, above the two, was the huge red mass of Mars, so large in proportion that only its arc showed. Yet Mars was one of the smallest planets, barely over a tenth the mass of Earth. How perspective changed things!
Quaid, aboard the small shuttle, watched Phobos and the space cycler recede. The other passengers paid no attention, bored with this as they had been with the rest of the journey out. All they wanted was tourist trophies and the gaming tables. But he was fascinated. The riddle of his life was here, and not just in the people here. There was something about the landscape of Mars . . .
The shuttle thrust up, closing the distance. Gradually Quaid’s orientation altered, until he no longer saw the planet as above, but as below. That was a bit more comfortable.
The shuttle crossed the landscape, ragged and pocked by craters of every size. Quaid was locked into it, unable to tear his eyes away. This was almost like his dream, only, only—
He shook his head. It just wouldn’t quite come. What had been done to his memory was like a thick rope wound around his body, tight, chafing, giving only a little in places, hurting him when he struggled. He needed more than just his thoughts to free himself..
The terrain was violent, as befitted the planet named for the god of war. He saw part of the enormous equatorial canyon called Valles Marineris, the better part of three thousand miles long, dwarfing Earth’s Grand Canyon. In some sections its walls had collapsed, evidently washed out by flooding. Mars had once had water on its surface, a lot of it; now that water was locked in buried ice, in virtual glaciers under the dust and sand of the surface. No one was sure just how much water there was, if it could only be released, or what might lie below it. He saw the three great shield volcanoes sitting atop the Tharsis ridge. He knew this region; it was coming back to him as he gazed down at it! But where was the thing buried deeper in his memory? It had something to do with the ice . . .
Now the shuttle approached the peak of Olympus Mons, some fifteen or sixteen miles high according to his memory, a magnificent mountain unlike any other in the Solar System. It might have seemed odd that a planet much smaller than Earth had a volcanic mountain much larger than any on Earth, but this was because the gravity was less, and the mantle of the planet did not constantly shift. On Earth such a structure would have been brought down long ago by the forces of gravity and weather, and the shifting mantle tended to cut volcanoes off from their sources before they could do much.
The retro rockets fired for the shuttle’s vertical descent. On the boulder-strewn plain of Chryse, the spaceport roof opened up, revealing a landing pad inside. The shuttle dropped into the spaceport, and the roof closed over it. Such mechanisms were necessary because the air of Mars was far too thin to permit external unloading.
Quaid, in the guise of the fat lady, exited with the tourists. He showed his passport, the one provided by Hauser in the satchel, and an official seal stamped down on it. MARS FEDERAL COLONY/CONFEDERATION OF NORTHERN NATIONS. No one was really checking the papers; Mars wanted both tourists and colonists, and so kept the red tape to a minimum. That meant that a person could normally be processed through within a couple of hours.
It would be better, of course, if they got it down to two minutes. But bureaucracy was incapable of that. Even if there was only one little bag to check, containing no more than a Mars candy bar, that justified an hour’s delay. On other planets, where they didn’t care about making a good impression, it would justify four hours’ delay, and more if the victim fussed. Bureaucrats were little tyrants in their domains, never able to understand why visitors didn’t like them.
Fortunately, the Mars gravity made standing in line easy. Even a fat lady like him could handle it.
In the Immigration Hall of the spaceport the travelers were queued up in three long lines, waiting to be processed by the three immigration officers on duty. Why didn’t they have a dozen officers there, doing other chores between ships? Richter smiled knowingly. Because that would be too efficient. Visitors needed to feel the power of the bureaucracy, which was demonstrated by wasting their time. He approved of this. It was right that civilians be constantly reminded who had control.
He looked around. An imposing picture of Cohaagen hung on the front wall, greeting all visitors. Soldiers stood ready, armed, in case anyone should think of protesting. He remembered seeing a video about the ancient days, when the Nazis added vicious attack dogs to the lineup, and loosed them if anyone gave them a pretext. Lovely!
He saw the fat lady standing in line behind a mother with a baby slung over her shoulder and his lip curled in disgust. Thank God, Lori never gained weight! The thought that he would see her soon raised his spirits even more.
An escort of soldiers appeared. They shoved people aside to make room for Richter and Helm, who were escorted to the front of the nearest line. As they passed, they jostled the fat lady, who was playing cootchy-coo with the smiling baby. Richter recoiled at the touch.
Two agents in suits approached, greeting Richter and Helm like VIPs. Well, why not!
“Welcome home, Mr. Richter,” the first agent said enthusiastically. “Mr. Cohaagen wants to see you right away.”
Richter walked past the two, hardly deigning to notice them. “What the fuck is that?” He pointed to graffiti on the wall: KUATO LIVES. A painter was in the process of cleaning it up.
“Things have gotten worse,” the agent said tightly. “The rebels took over the refinery last night. No turbinium going out.”
Richter and his entourage proceeded down the hallway. He was disgusted. The last thing they needed was messages from the mythical leader of the Mars Liberation Front! It was enough of a pain dealing with that traitor Hauser without running afoul of imaginary characters. The worst problem with nonexistent folk was that they couldn’t be killed.
“Any news about Hauser?” he asked, reminded of his mission.
“Not a word.”
Bothered about something he couldn’t quite nail, Richter paused and looked back at the patiently waiting people. He saw the baby playing with the fat lady’s hair. The fat lady had rearranged her outfit, but it still didn’t do a thing for her. Then the baby pat-a-caked the woman’s face with some force, not knowing its own strength.
“Where’s my cabin?” the fat lady
asked incongruously.
Richter focused on her, vaguely disturbed. Was that the only thing she knew how to say?
The fat lady opened her mouth, seemingly horrified. The baby laughed.
Oh. She was doing it for the baby. Richter turned away, dismissing his concern. The entourage had almost exited the Immigration Hall.
“Where’s my cabin?” the fat lady asked again.
Richter stopped and turned again. Suddenly his vague concern was clarifying into a sharp suspicion. Was it possible?
The fat lady was evidently trying to stifle herself, holding her face as if it were talking without her volition. The baby laughed and laughed at this exhibition. The other people were looking at her now, including the soldiers, who found her behavior strange but not dangerous. Women did tend to get sappy about babies; it was one of the annoying things about them.
Then the fat lady looked his way. She locked eyes with Richter.
Now he knew! “That’s Quaid!” he rasped. “Stop him!”
The fat lady broke from the line and ran to the front, moving with surprising alacrity for her size. She opened her face, which peeled away on either side.
The soldiers were shocked, thinking she had some kind of loathsome disease. She charged them, and they almost fell over each other getting out of the way, not wanting to be infected. That enabled her to run away from Richter.
Richter scrambled after Quaid, drawing his gun, but couldn’t get a shot. The damn lines of stupid people, now scattering across the hall, ruined any decent line of sight.
Another soldier pulled a gun at close range to the fugitive. But Quaid swatted his arm, shoved him into another soldier, then smashed a third soldier in the face. Richter would have admired the man’s finesse if it hadn’t been so important to nail him. Agency training sure showed!
But Quaid couldn’t stay clear for long. He was confined to the spaceport, and the people were clustering at the sides of the hall. In a moment he would be a fair target.
Quaid ran down a corridor. Now, there was a mistake! He had lost his interference. Six soldiers were racing after him, and Richter and Helm after them. They’d corner the rat in a moment!