Free The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker Page B

across the seat and fastened herself in. The Brick lurched up beside her and closed the hatch, and toggled the switches that turned on the lights and life support. The warmth and rush of air felt like an embrace.
    They demasked but still said nothing to each other, as the Brick started up the drive and maneuvered his rig out through the lock. Marywatched on the screens: there was the wide pink road before them on the frontal cam, the larboard cam showed four Jinma rigs thundering up the slope from Clan Morrigan’s allotments, and on the starboard cam nothing but the broad empty slope of Mons Olympus. Only when the Jinmas had fallen into a convoy behind them did Mary clear her throat.
    “Mr. Brick. Are there really all of six lads working the South Pole Line?”
    The Brick grunted a negative. “Only Dun Johnson.”
    “Is he a Donald?”
    “Dunstan.”
    “Oh.” Mary folded her hands in her lap and watched the screens, the endless procession of road markers hurtling toward them from right and left.
Perhaps we won’t need the boy’s name for a gravestone
, she thought.
Perhaps we’ll need it for the marriage certificate. And the birth certificate. A happy ending. Perhaps the silly little bitch will come to her senses and thank the Goddess when she gets him back alive and well
.
    She tried to summon the boy’s face from her memory, without success. One bearded countenance was pretty much like another, and on Mars all beards were red or reddish, after a while. He had seemed slight of build, before he psuited up, she remembered that much; but she had no memory of the sound of his voice.
    They got out into the open stretches, the tilted miles of rock, and in the rear cam the Jinmas in the convoy moved up closer, to avoid the dust billowing in the Brick’s wake. The forward cam just showed the pale bump of Nav Depot on the horizon, nearly obscured as it was by the dust of other rigs, where the Haulers’ frozen cargo was weighed and processed.
    “Had he any family Down Home?” Mary asked.
    “I have no clue, m’dear,” said the Brick.
    They pulled into the depot and masked up, and climbed from the cab. The wind and cold bit into Mary at once, the driven red sand stinging like pepper. The Brick put his arm around Mary to keep her steady in the throng of Haulers pushing through the lock. Inside, he roared hisidentification to someone with a headset, who thumbed it into a buke. Mary looked up in the crowded darkness and saw a vast blurry holo-projection hanging above her.
    After a moment’s disorientation she recognized what it was: a topo map of the Southern Hemisphere. An area had been marked off with a blue overlay and divided into a numbered grid, some of which were colored green. As she stared, another square winked green and an amplified voice said:
    “Sector 46, Rob Meggs in Sweet Marilyn! Rob Meggs, you listening?”
    “Oi!” shouted someone in the crowd, and a man began shouldering his way to the exit lock. Another square went green and:
    “Sector 47, Nangsa Nangsa in the Blue Phantom! Nangsa Nangsa, where are you?”
    “Here!” yelled a woman at Mary’s elbow, making for the exit straightaway. One by one the squares went green, until at last:
    “Sector 74, Brick in Big Waltzer! Acknowledge, Brick!”
    “Got it!” the Brick roared. Mary turned to what she thought was the exit, but she had gotten turned around in the shifting mass of Haulers and ran into the crowd from Clan Morrigan, who had edged in behind them. The Brick fielded her and towed her after him until they emerged from the depot. Mary spotted the quaddy, looking ridiculously tiny amid all the big rigs, just arriving with its freight of food and drink for the returning searchers.
    Back in the cab, rumbling away to Sector 74, and Mary shuddered as she watched the screens. She had only been this far out a few times; she had forgotten how immense the desolation of the far plain was. Somehow the double line of boulders marking out the edges of