Free Olympus Mons by William Walling

curved vases, drinking goblets, stemware and suchlike. That plug-ugly doesn’t fit the title of glassblower, he’s an artiste. He endorsed my presence by lowering his blowpipe, glaring at me in friendly fashion.
    Drawing a shaky breath, I launched into my sermon. “Listen, Blood. You’re black like me, but trash my partner and we’ll tie up on the spot.”
    His friendly glare turned a sight less friendly . “Fight the li’l white devil’s battles for him, eh, Barnes?”
    â€œWhoa! Not the right way to look at it. All I’m saying is that having him stove-up wouldn’t suit me. He’s my pal.”
    The unfriendly glare degenerated into a red-eyed scowl straight out of a fever dream. “That mouthy, skinny white devil’s your pal?”
    I admitted to a fondness for mouthy, skinny white devils. A quarter-hour later, bewildered but by no means coerced, the glassblower halfway agreed not to savage Jesperson. Not right away, anyhow.
    Later I mentioned to my partner how I’d intervened. He nodded solemnly. “An act of true Christian charity. You’ve saved the life of a valuable human being.”
    â€œYeah, yours.”
    â€œUh, uh,” he contradicted, “his.”
    ***
    Once ayed into office, Black-like-me blistered the audience with a force-three scowl that semi-hypnotized the gathering. Once the Marsrats had settled into their version of order he plopped down in row ahead of us, muttering, “Get outta line, I bust a few heads.”
    At the podium, Doc Yokomizo summed up the quake damage in Burroughs, announcing it as superficial, which we already knew. His overview concluded, he invited questions from the floor, which amounted to something like handing your local firebug a book of matches.
    Eager to have his say, the director let Yokie’s meaningless Q&A session grind along for a spell, interrupting only once to request a more specific account of personal loss from a lady who busily recited a laundry list of broke items. Nodding wisely, he whispered something to the council’s secretary, busy at the computer terminal recording minutes of the meeting.
    I had taken it for granted that Jesperson would be on his feet, telling the council we should be discussing means and methods of resurrecting the aqueduct. Never happened, which surprised me. Patience personified, Jess stayed slouched in a folding chair, totally relaxed, out of it, his only reaction to the ongoing back-and-forth complaints and responses was to now and then shoot a glance my way. I figured he was waiting for the “damage to my quarters,” and “my breakage,” and “Why me, Lord!” gripes to slack off. The Marsrats were looking for sympathy from the brain trust. They got practically none.
    When things quieted down a tad, Scheiermann harr-r-rumphed! rapped his gavel and tried to pour oil on the enclave’s troubled waters, not by mentioning our very own water troubles, but by dodging and tap dancing all around the prickly topic. Ignoring the meat and potatoes of our serious dilemma, he explained how Burroughs had at last come of age, and called the inauguration ceremony “a watershed moment and major milestone.” He assured us how deeply the homeworld authorities deeply appreciated the difficulties our struggling enclave had faced and continued facing. He filled us in on how conscious the high mucky-mucks were of the ups, downs, sidesteps and backsteps leading to formal U.N. sanction as our absentee lords and masters.
    Jesperson must’ve figured I was about to stick a foot in my mouth and say something because he shot me a cryptic look and a whisper urging me to let Scheiermann unwind so we could get to the nitty-gritty core problem: how to avoid a waterless future.
    The director unwound, but his sermon went on for another seven or eight minutes. “Furthermore,” he declared, “in recent communiques the prospective