The guards were all fresh Martians. That made sense. The new United Mars state would be their sponsor, their BM and family.
“You can’t just hold us here,” I said. “What happened to Gretyl?” My four companions turned on the guards, pointing fingers and shouting. We all demanded our rights — communication, freedom, advocates.
It became an open rebellion until the third guard pulled a flechette from his pack. He was the shortest, a slim man with plain, short-cut brown hair and perfect, saintly features. His eyes narrowed, very cold. I thought, Here’s a Statist sympathizer. The others were merely hired hands.
“Blow it down, right now,” he demanded.
“You injured Gretyl!” I shouted. “We need to know what happened to her!”
“Sabotage is treason. We could shoot you in self-defense.”
He raised the pistol. All of us backed away, including the two other guards.
“That wouldn’t be smart,” I said.
“Not for you.” The slim fellow gave us a cold thin smile and pushed us down the hall.
We entered a stripped-down double room, immediately sprawling on the bare cot and chairs, another small gesture of useless defiance.
“You’re going to be here for a while, so get comfortable.”
I didn’t like him pushing his pistol and didn’t want to provoke him any further. We peeled off our skinseal — it was a blessed relief to be free of it, actually. The West Indian tossed the shreds into dust bags. Enough smear floated loose to make us sneeze.
As if meeting for the first time, the five of us nodded and made introductions where necessary. We knew each other only slightly; one had been a classmate of mine, Felicia Overgard, about a year younger and two steps behind. I did not know Oliver Peskin well, a step higher and an agro major, and I had only met Tom Callin and Chao Ming Jung in the trench dome.
The slim fellow averted his eyes. Bizarre, waving a gun at us but ashamed of our bare flesh. He thrust the gun at the vapor sacks in the washroom. “I don’t know if you have lice, but you smell pretty rank.”
The vapor bags hadn’t been refilled or filtered in some time and we didn’t smell much better after the showers. Water was inadequate to get rid of smear, and we carried itchy patches of red and orange all over. We’d have welts by tomorrow.
Three hours passed and we learned nothing. The guards stayed in their suits to avoid the dust. They had removed any identifiers and would not tell us their names. The sympathizer grew more and more grim as the hours crawled, and then ramped up to nervous, fidgeting with his gun. He whistled and pantomimed breaking it down and reassembling it. Finally, his slate chimed and he answered.
After a couple of brief acknowledgments, he sent the female guard out of the room. I wondered what they would do next, why they didn’t want the woman there.
Surely they weren’t that stupid.
Conversation with my companions became thin and quiet. Fear had worn off — we no longer thought we were going to be shot — but the numbing sense of isolation that replaced it was no better. We settled into shivering silence.
The rooms were kept at minimum heat and we still didn’t have any clothes. The three men suffered worse than Felicia and I.
“It’s cold in here,” I said to the sympathizer. He agreed but did nothing.
“It’s cold enough to make us sick,” said Oliver.
“All right,” said the sympathizer.
“We should find them some clothes,” said the West Indian.
“No,” said the sympathizer.
“Why not?” Chao asked. Felicia had given up covering herself with her hands.
“You caused a hell of a lot of trouble. Why make it any easier on you?”
“They’re human, man,” the West Indian said. He was not very old, twelve or thirteen, and he had to be a recent immigrant. His West Indies accent was still obvious.
The sympathizer squinted and shook his head dubiously.
We’ve won, I thought. With fools like this, the Statists don’t have a chance. I couldn’t quite convince myself, however.
We spent ten hours in that dorm room, cold and naked, skin itching furiously.
I fell asleep and dreamed of trees too tall to fit into any dome, rooted unprotected in the red dirt of Mars: redwoods in red flopsand, lofting a hundred meters, tended by naked children. I had had the dream before and it left me for a moment with an intense feeling of well-being. Then I remembered I was a prisoner.
The West Indian prodded my shoulder. I rolled on the thinly carpeted floor. He averted his eyes from my nakedness and drew his lips tightly together. “I want you to know I am not all in this,” he said. “My heart, I mean. I am truly a Martian, and this is my first work here, you know?”
I looked around. The sympathizer was out of the room. “Get us some clothes,” I said.
“You blew up the train lines and these people, they are very angry. I just tell you, don’t blame me when the shit sprays. People go up and down the halls — the tunnels. I look out, there is so much going on. They are afraid, I think.”
What did they have to be afraid of? Had the LitVids grabbed Gretyl’s injury or death and put our cause on the sly spin?
“Can you send a message to my parents?”
“The fellow Rick has gone,” the West Indian said, shaking his head. “He meets with others, and he leaves me here.”
“What happened to Gretyl?”
He shook his head again. “I hear nothing about her. What I saw, it made me sick. Everybody is so crazy. Why did she do it?”
“To make a point,” I said.
“Not worth losing your life,” the West Indian said, frowning deeply. “This is small history, petty people. On Earth — ”
My temper flared. “Look, we’ve only been here a hundred Earth years, and our history is small stuff by Earth standards, but you’re a Martian now, remember? This is corruption and dirty politics — and if you ask me, it’s directly connected with Earth, and the hell with all of you!”
You really sound committed, I thought. Abuse could do wonders.
I awakened the others with my outburst. Felicia sat up. “He isn’t armed,” she observed. Oliver and Chao stood warily and brushed dust off their backsides, muscles tensed as if they were giving thought to jumping the man.
The West Indian looked, if possible, even more abjectly miserable. “Do not try something,” he said, standing his ground with arms out, shaking his head.
The door opened and the sympathizer returned. He and the West Indian exchanged glances and the West Indian tilted and shook his head, saying, “Oh, man.” Behind the sympathizer came a fellow with short black hair. He wore a tight-fitting, expensive, and fashionable green longsuit.
“We’re kept here against our will — ” Oliver complained immediately.
“Under arrest,” the man in the fashionable green suit said jovially.
“For more than a day, and we demand to be released,” Oliver finished, folding his arms. The man in the suit smiled at this literally naked presumption.
“I’m Achmed Crown Niger ,” he said. His voice was high Mars, imitative of the flat English of Earth, an accent rarely heard in the regional BMs. I presumed he would be from Lai Qila or some other independent station, perhaps a Muslim. “I represent the state interests in the university. I’m going from room to room getting names. I’ll need your family names, BM connections, and the names of people you’ll want to talk to in the next hour.”
“What happened to Gretyl?” I asked.
Achmed Crown Niger raised his eyebrows. “She’s alive. She has acute facial rose and her eyes and lungs need to be rebuilt. But we have other things to talk about. Under district book laws, you are all charged with criminal Trespass and sabotage — ”