If Ian Beleri wanted to plant a tree on Mars, a tree would be planted on Mars. Beleri had clout. For all practical purposes, he owned Mars. He ran the mining operations. His corporation headquartered in the Beltway owned the bubbles themselves and everything under them. Most colonists worked for BeleriCorp or a subsidiary one way or another.
So, if Beleri wanted a tree in New Horizon (his dull name for the colony), he got a tree.
Not trees—a tree. Just one.
"A big old pine tree," he bellowed, "or spruce or whatever they were called. Fir? That what they called 'em? Anyway, I remember we used to have 'em for Christmas when I was a kid. Didn't matter if you were a religionist or not back then. Everybody did it. Used to decorate them with stars, glass balls, tinsel, angels and elves and garlands and shit like that. Real pretty, you know? And I want one, goddamn it. Right here in New Horizon. For Christmas. You got me?"
Beleri addressed the school of yesmen and yeswomen that followed in his wake like remora followed shark. He bellowed and waved and scratched his belly and they nodded and tapped on their comps and mumbled into their corders and dashed around him. Some tried to get noticed (the newer ones) while others tried to hide but not look like they were hiding (a trick the veteran yesser types had to learn in order to survive Beleri's mercurial temper.)
I witnessed the scene as I sat in the central bubble's main concourse where hundreds of colonists and workers lounged during what passed for their midday break. I wasn't scheduled for another transorbital flight until 1600 hours—three hours yet—so I had time to kill. I was the only shuttle pilot at the time sitting in the main concourse, what we called the Quad. I sat sipping a nice hot herb tea, chatting with a pretty, young thing from communications, when Beleri and six yessers entered the huge central bubble.
The Quad was a two hundred-meter octagon of open space with a ceiling fifty meters above our heads, half of that above the Martian surface, but I swear you could hear Beleri's bellow echo from the walls and ceiling tiles. He'd entered from the tunnel that lead to the hydroponics wing, a sprawling, green-smelling bay of plastic octagons filled with compact forests of fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, and other edibles. Nutritious stuff, but not a decorative molecule in the whole sprawl. Nary a flower or ornamental shrub giving off oxygen. Nothing frivolous, you understand, decreed our budget-conscious Beleri. If it had flowers, it was because he hadn't figured out a way to bypass that plant maturation stage yet. His biologists were working on it.
He turned every head in the place, interrupted every conversation. Or so it seemed. I sat closer to him than others—I liked sitting near the humid, mulchy-smelling hydroponics wing during my downside breaks—so I heard it all.
I would have found out anyway. His latest diatribe, complete with dialogue, graphics, annotations, and analysis would be on the net within minutes. Gossip came easy at New Horizon. Somebody once checked it out: one person can spread a given rumor to the sixteen thousand other dirtside residents in twenty-five minutes.
"A tree?" my companion, Connie Something, said, arching perfect eyebrows. Painted on in silver glitter, but perfect. Wilkes, that was her name. Connie Wilkes.
"Well, it'd be good for oxygen-CO2 transfer, add some color to the place—" I mumbled to a halt, looking around. Like every other centimeter of plastic, ceramic, and metal in the settlement, the Quad was drab, utilitarian. The only color appeared in the occasional touches of makeup worn by short-timers desperately bored and rebellious enough to flaunt Beleri's edicts against "resource-wasteful fads." Connie Wilkes would rotate back to the Beltway in thirty days. She had red on her lips. She wore a fragrance I couldn't identify. Something sweet but spicy.
"It would be pretty," she said.
"Pretty? Since when has Beleri done anything pretty?"
Beleri's non-stop bellow faded as he and his entourage stalked toward the corridor that led to the BeleriCorp office complex on the other side of the Quad. As he left, a hundred conversations took on a new animation.
"Too much jackjuice?" Connie suggested with a shrug. Did Beleri drink the illicit hooch everybody else on Mars and elsewhere outsystem seemed to know about?
"No way. Too inefficient."
"It sure would be a great boost to morale."
I looked at the faces around me. People looked grim. The settlement's drabness seemed to creep into people's facial muscles, made their eyes dull, their skin and bones sag. People didn't sit up, didn't smile. They whispered if they talked at all and moved listlessly.
It was so subtle I hadn't noticed it before—until it started to change.
And right before my eyes, the entire population's demeanor seemed to change. With Beleri's announcement—it was practically an announcement—that he'd plant a tree ("Maybe a whole forest," somebody sitting nearby gushed) on Mars, they seemed downright cheery. I saw people sit up straighter—who notices posture? I saw smiles, hands waving, people sitting on the edge of their chairs. Animation grew where a moment ago there had been lethargy. People were excited.
Connie laughed, eyes sparkling, and I regretted having to leave so soon. A glance at my chrono; I still had time.
"Listen," I said, "I have to leave in a couple hours, but we still have—"
My comm buzzed.
"Nichols here," I said to my left lapel.
"Nick, schedule's been changed." McDonnell, transport dispatcher. "Need you in Preflight ASAP."
I didn't protest. Mac just passed on orders.
"On my way." I shrugged at Connie, who returned the shrug. I tossed a twenty-mark chip on to the table for the tea and for whatever Connie had after I left and made my way to Shuttle Bay Three. My adrenaline started flowing.
You'd think after a couple years taking an eight-hundred ton shuttle from New Horizon to orbit and back again—up and back, up and back, every three days—that I'd get bored with the routine. But no. Each liftoff was a joy, each docking a heart-pumping thrill. I loved it. I guess I'm still a kid at heart and shuttle BC151 was my toy.
Of course, I'd rather pilot something in Earth orbit, and maybe someday I would. Meanwhile, the job with BeleriCorp transport kept me flying and that was the main thing.
Walking away from Connie didn't bother me too much.
What did bother me, just a bit, was the talk I overheard as I left. "—greenery in the Quad—" and "—a whole quaking aspen forest, like I remember—" and "—trees you could climb in and swing from—" and "—about time he loosened up—"
Everybody in the Quad seemed a little too excited about this. Me, I'm a skeptic, always have been. I served in the Corps, honorably discharged a Grade Three, and I learned not to expect too much. When you got R and R, you had no money to spend and when you had chips, you got no R and R to spend it.
Besides, I didn't remember Beleri saying anything about "trees," plural, or about planting them in the Quad or anywhere else. He'd mentioned one tree, just one. A Christmas tree. And I understood the tree would go in his office or his quarters.
Clearly, Beleri had gone crazy—crazier—but which way? I figured he'd just gone bonkers his own way, still a tightass sonofabitch but now crazy too. But everybody else seemed to think he'd gone suddenly crazy noble. Wishful thinking? Was morale that low? I guess I hadn't noticed; too self absorbed, another childish trait, I suppose.
Still, I hoped people wouldn't be too disappointed when they discovered the truth.
As I walked into Preflight, there stood Wesley Aker, transport superintendent. Aker was a company man right up his stiff backbone, not a flyer like the rest of us. He was so dry, formal, and uptight that nobody, fliers, crew, or comm, had come up with an appropriate nickname for him. Why bother? Nobody cared enough. Beleri's boy through and through.
Aker stood from the console he'd been crouched over as I entered the busy room and stepped over to me.
"Nichols, your assignment has been changed," he said. No preamble, no salutation. All business.
"No problem." I was ready to fly. Anytime. Three hours here or there didn't make a difference. But BC151 couldn't be ready yet. Could it?
"You're to pilot BC105 immediately—"
BC105 was a Mars-to-Earth interorbital runabout, sleek, well appointed. A real luxury craft for special mission stuff. It was to BeleriCorp's space fleet what a corporate jet was to their Earthbound execs. Me, I drove a truck.
"—to Earth orbit to pick up a package and return it to Mars orbit—"
"That's Hawkling's rig. Why isn't she—"
"Your orders are on your comp. Read it."
"But what about the 151? Who's going to—"
"You're just a pilot, Nichols. You report to me, not the other way around. Get moving."
I shrugged and got moving.
He was right. I was just a pilot and that's the way I liked it. No politics, no involvement in company intrigue. Leave me out of the loop, I don't want any trouble. I just do my job, take my downtime relaxing, sipping tea, trying to get a little whiff of something green—I loved downtime on Earth where they knew how to grow greenery—but it never happened often enough to suit me. A chance to do a run to Earth? Who cared why. Count me in.
I'd no doubt have a couple hours during refit when I could get some downtime dirtside.
Wyoming. That's where I'd go. A brisk hike through the Wind River Mountains, even if for just an hour or so, would be nice. If I got as much as a halfday or more, I might do a little fishing on the Green. I still had my license.
Still, what was I going to Earth for? Aker didn't say. Not my business, of course, but I thought about it after I'd left orbit, Earthbound, and shut down systems to transit mode. Little else to do. Logic and the gossip net gave some answers.
Talk on the net centered on the tree. Rumor had novaed, hot and wild, reaching off-planet stations, even the new facilities in Saturn orbit. "Informed sources" said vast forests, whole Siberias of forests, would be transplanted throughout the known cosmos before year's end.
The BC105's hasty departure for Earth orbit with me at the helm soon after Beleri had "issued orders" for the transplant also proved to the rumor mill that things outsystem were about to change for the better.
By year's end, or Christmas, as Beleri put it. Nevermind the logistical problems—transit time, payload capacity, available carriers, and so on. By year's end, the net said.
Connie was right; morale improved. I checked. Accident rates declined, production at several mines inched up, and downtime reports in several facilities, on planet and in orbit, had decreased.
So, I had been sent to Earth to fetch a tree. Actually, I'd probably load some crates of seedlings, I figured, but nothing like the quantities I was hearing about on the net.
It did no good to remind people they were still dealing with Beleri, who had clearly gone crazy. They were setting themselves up for a letdown. I got flamed. If it wasn't important, my critics said, why not just radio for a shipment on the next regular transport? Why send a ship—manned, yet?
No, instant authorities on the subject told me I had been dispatched because "Mr. Beleri" (a reference I hadn't heard in a while) had made "the transplant" a priority, and furthermore, he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart, recognizing the need for a major morale boost among personnel outsystem, etc. blah, blah, blah. And if I didn't like it, I could shove my cynical, negative ass through the nearest airlock etc., etc.
I stopped trying to make sense of the hysteria and shut up.
When at last I received the cargo in Earth orbit, I began to worry about what would happen when I got it back to Mars. In the cargo bay lay the tree.
The tree. Not crates of seedlings, not even a seedling at all, but a whole, mature tree. It looked ready for transplant, it's roots encased in a huge, damp canvas-material bag, a fine-mesh wire cage encasing the whole thing, supporting it so the branches wouldn't break if the cargo shifted in zero-gee or during transit burns.
What I had been dispatched to Earth to get was a six and a half meter tall specimen of fir, genus Abies, an evergreen, a conifer native to North America.
Despite the Green Laws, this tree type remained a favorite among those Earthbound who still celebrated the ancient mid-winter holiday known as Christmas. I discovered earlier celebrants used to actually cut down a specimen, take the tree into their dwellings, and decorate it. Then, when the holiday ended, they'd destroy the tree carcass as waste. Current Christmas observers, I discovered, used plastic trees, holographic images, or decorated living specimens designated for the purpose at local public parks.
I spent several hours on the return flight trying to estimate how much Beleri paid, including bribes, to transport this tree from Earth to Mars. The result was obscene. And the wasted space in the BC105 that should have been used to transport other goods back to Mars? What did that cost?
I saw the tree before I took my earned halfday leave dirtside, but I had no fun fishing the Green. My mind kept going back to the question: what would the New Horizoners—and all the other outsystem dwellers who'd heard about it—do when they discovered their forest was only one tree? And that Beleri planned to hog it for himself?
I had plenty of time to conjure up worst-case scenarios. But what I imagined didn't approach reality.
New Horizoners heard about my cargo soon after I left Earth orbit. First indications appearing on the net were the incredulous messages by those who'd discovered what I carried in the 105 cargo bay. When reality overcame the incredulity prompted by wishful thinking, anger followed.
The first hint of work stoppage came hidden among talk of delayed shipping, transport holdovers, extra downtime allotted my pilot colleagues, increased security activity, and so on.
It became a full-blown revolution when I was six days from Mars's orbit. Some workers took over Mine Number Six, tied up the managers and security people, set them walking back the few kilometers to New Horizon—painted green. Jackjuice flowed.
A riot in the Quad. Somebody made a tree-shaped thing in the center of the Quad from broken furniture and decorated it with garlands of stripped security uniforms.
The jail overflowed. A storage room near the security wing was made into an additional holding cell.
Hospital admittance records showed a threefold increase, "mostly in trauma injuries, all disturbance-related," according to the net.
By the time I reached orbit, Beleri was besieged in the administrative wing of New Horizon; weapons were being used. Power ran intermittent and communications were iffy. Transport and supply were at a standstill.
Now, I'm no religionist, but I have nothing against them. Hell, some of my best friends are religionists, but I wouldn't want my sister to marry one. I can see the need for laws to keep religionists from holding elective office or similar positions of power. So how Beleri got where he got mystified me; he was obviously a religionist. His fanaticism over this tree thing, once the revolution on Mars had escalated to a shooting war, could no longer be attributed to simple insanity.
I was amazed at how many people chose to follow him. Many did because they were company drones, like Wesley Aker, but it surprised me that many were true self-declared religionists. The tree became a rallying cry, bringing them out of the closet. They couldn't be persuaded to believe Beleri wanted the tree in his private quarters, apparently for private ceremonial use (I guess religionists did that; who knows?), rather than in a public place. Or maybe they knew and didn't care. Fanaticism? And like I said, Beleri had clout.
I figured the population split fifty-fifty over the issue. And within a few days, it became clear nobody would get the upper hand, at least not soon.
Fine with me. Fine because BC105 and its cargo had become the focus of attention from both sides and their guns.
"You off-load that damn tree, Nichols, and we'll blow you out of the sky," Nate Munroe, rebellion leader, barked at me on the AV. He commanded two orbital platforms he could program into a crash orbit with the 105, as well as a dirtside launchsite. I didn't believe he had a nuke at the site as he claimed, but a drone at full acceleration could breach my hull.
"Deliver your cargo, Nichols," Aker ordered. I knew he had nukes, but I felt sure he wouldn't use one. Still, seeing him on the AV hovering over the button—the button—was scary.
Aker threatened to nuke the rebel launchsite. Or one of their orbital units. Munroe threatened to blast me if they saw a launch toward them.
Stalemate. Nobody wanted to start shooting, afraid either they'd destroy the tree (Beleri and his religionists) or they'd lose their grip on the rebellion (everybody else, mostly the people I cared about) and end up dead or in prison.
I began figuring how long my on-board supplies would last. I began rationing my food and water.
And it dragged on and on.
Now, a pilot's life is made up of weeks of boredom separated by a few seconds of sheer terror. After arriving back in Mars's orbit, in the middle of a full-tilt revolution, I found myself easing back toward the boredom phase. I had long been used to boredom. I coped. I read.
I enjoyed reading. I didn't read superficially, mind you, the gossip topics and the like. I did research, dug deep. That's where the fun was on the net.
I read about Christmas traditions. I read about Beleri. I re-read the emergency orbital abandonment procedure manual.
About Christmas traditions: did you know Christmas didn't originate with the Christians? Many traditional rituals associated with the holiday predated Christianity, were in fact localized ceremonies dedicated to more ancient deities. The Christians more or less usurped the traditions, absorbed them, and made them Christian, sometimes at sword point. Thus the ancient gods found their support dwindling. The gods die, somebody once wrote, when nobody worships them anymore.
About Beleri: did you know he grew up on Earth? A country called England, a province called Wales. Studied business admin at a university in London before the flood, never married and so on. A lot of stuff about his family.
About abandoning the 105: suffice to say if I jumped, I'd be cannon-fodder to one side or the other within minutes.
Oh, yes, I had time during the stalemate to read about Christmas traditions and about Beleri. Plenty of time to try to figure out how to get my tender young butt out of this mess.
But the boredom ended and the period of terror returned abruptly one watch when I learned on the net that a fleet was coming from the Beltway. A BeleriCorp fleet. A war fleet. Soon after that I learned another fleet was coming from farther outsystem. This one, I heard, was a ragtag rebel war fleet.
The entire system poised on the brink of a war over a tree, one stinking lousy tree. Which I had in my hold. I became tempted to jettison the damn thing.
Instead, amidst the frantic interplay of threat and counter-threat, escalating minute by minute before the on-coming fleets and the expected flash of war, I remembered something I'd read during my period of boredom a few watches earlier. Two things, actually. The data's significance didn't register then, but it came back to me....
#
After weeks of solitude, the 105 seemed crowded with the three on board. Munroe glared under his thatch-like brow at Beleri. Beleri belched, scratched, and sighed theatrically. I grinned a lot, which unnerved both men.
"I think me and Mr. Beleri can agree on one thing," Munroe said. "You'd better get to the point pretty quick."
"Or?" I probed.
"Look, Nichols—" Beleri began. I cut him off. Also planned; my audacity further unnerved them.
"I have a way to satisfy you both," I said.
"I'll believe you as soon as I see trees," Munroe said, "I said trees, in the Quad."
"And will you decorate them, Mr. Munroe," Beleri asked, "in the old traditional way? Commemorate the season properly?"
"You religionists can take your wasteful ceremonies and—"
I went through variations of this argument and I had to restart negotiations several times before I got things shipshape. But I finally did.
#
"So, tell me about the deal you worked out," Connie Something said. "What did you do?"
We sat in a quiet alcove of the Quad, sipping herb tea spiked with a surreptitious splash of jackjuice from my flask. Her eyebrows glittered silver, her lips glistened red, and she wore some fragrance I couldn't identify, but it smelled green to me.
"I dunno—"
"Oh, come on." She grinned, uttered a girlish giggle, and sat forward a few inches, exposing another few centimeters of thigh. "It's me." I inhaled, added another dollop of jack to our cups and shrugged, emboldened.
"Okay," I said and leaned across the table, whispering. She met me half way, placing her hand in mine. "I promised that I wouldn't repeat the conversation we had on the 105, me, Munroe and Beleri—" She started to pull away—
"But—" She came back. "But I didn't promise not to tell how I came up with the solution to the problem. It's on the net, like I said. And I'll tell you what I found out and you can check it for yourself if you want to.
"About the Christmas tradition. There are several, you know, not just the one about decorating a tree. There's one about hanging a plant called a mistletoe overhead and couples kissing underneath it."
"I like that one."
"It goes back before Christians took it over. Also the one about burning what they called a Yule log. That predated the Christians too. You know they have winter on Earth and—have you ever seen snow?"
"I've never been to Earth." Her eyes widened.
"It wasn't as popular as the Christmas tree, but people used to burn a Yule log."
"But the oxygen waste—"
"Which they have plenty of on Earth."
"Yes, but, we don't here."
"Still, burning the log is a tradition associated with the mid-winter holiday—"
"But I thought Beleri wanted a Christmas tree—"
"He did, but he accepted the Yule log as part of the deal. It's still traditional, and that's what he wanted. Something traditional, you see?
"But the waste of ox—"
"The rebs—the Union, I mean—goes along because they get their trees, you see? If Beleri's going to burn one tree a year for some obscure holiday, we can sacrifice a little oxygen—"
"But—"
"—because to have logs to burn—just once a year, mind you, and just one log and even that just in Beleri's quarters—you have to have trees. Many trees. And they make oxygen, and the Union get to chose which tree Beleri gets to burn each year, so it's not like he's always taking the best, you see?"
"But—"
I sighed. I had a few drops of jack left. I poured it all in her cup.
"No, wait," she said, "I thought Beleri wanted Christmas trees—I mean, a tree, not this log-burning thing. I mean, he is a religionist, isn't he?"
"Well, yes, but—" I hesitated. I had promised Beleri I wouldn't tell, but Connie sat there, lips parted over perfect teeth, smelling tangy like something from an Earth forest. And, after all, it was on the net, there for anybody else to figure out for themselves if they had the time and patience to dig deep enough. I did.
What the hell.
I leaned across the table, drawing her closer. I inhaled her fragrance and spoke in a whisper.
"The files show Beleri is a registered religionist. Registered as a kid. I didn't find any indication he knew what he was doing—hell, he was eight years old at the time, probably something his parents did to him—but I also find no word of him applying to have the record expunged."
"Were his parents rich?"
"Some, yeah. Not much; they were religionists, remember. They died when he was ten. He inherited. But that doesn't account for his present wealth and position. He is truly a financial wizard, and he is good at hiding his background. But there's more—"
Connie moved closer. If we got any closer, we'd have to remove our clothes. Not that I'd mind....
"And, remember, this is all on the record for anybody to find, if they look hard enough, like I did."
"Okay, okay."
"So I'm not violating my agreement with Beleri and Munroe to not discuss our agreement on the 105—" Well; not much. "—when I tell you that Beleri is not a Christian—"
"But I thought he—"
"Pre-Christian. An even older religion. Druidism, I think they called it."
"Wait a minute." Connie's eyes flashed. "Didn't you say this burning of the youth log—"
"Yule log."
"—was a pre-Christian traditional ceremony? Something to do with mid-winter on Earth?"
"Like the tree. Both traditions predated the Christians. But Christians took to the tree more than to the Yule log."
"So when Beleri decided he wanted a tree—"
"—He wanted to revive his Druidic roots. He may be the only Druid left. But Christians, registered and closet, are in the majority among religionists—"
"And since both the tree and the Yule log fit his religionist preference anyway—"
"He was amenable to changing his mind, going with the Yule log burning rather than the tree decorating routine. Different ceremonies, but the same religion."
"I get it." She looked radiant. "So Beleri let his supporters go on believing he was a Christian, like them, to keep their support. And when you found out he wasn't—"
"If they'd found out on their own, they would have crucified him. Christians and what they called 'pagans' don't get along, I've learned. So he agreed to a compromise to keep me from telling his secret, blowing his support."
"But when people figure it out, like you did—"
"Not for a long time. I'm good at digging around in the net, Connie. Better than most."
"But others will figure it out."
"Maybe the tradition will get too long-established to break. Besides, Beleri will be ready to cover his butt. He's good with PR. There'll be a revelation, maybe, but no fuss."
"And in order to get their forest," she said, "the Union agreed to the annual sacrifice of one tree. Right? They won't be eager to see the truth revealed either. Both have something to hide so both have a reason to make your deal work."
"You got it." I squeezed her hand, and she squealed with glee. I knew she was smart. You just had to dig deep is all.
Connie Wilkes. That was her name, I remembered. Rotating back to the Beltway in a few hours, aboard the 105, my ship now; part of the deal. She smelled so sweet, smiled so pretty.
And we had plenty of time.
Ken Rand writes "semi-fulltime" from his home in West Jordan, Utah. He's sold fiction to Writer's of the Future, volume 13 (2nd place), Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, volume 2 (3rd place), Weird Tales, Pulphouse, Aboriginal, Quantum SF 1999, and others. Just recently, he sold his first novel, "The Eternity Stone", to The Fiction Works . He tells us, "It's a modern fantasy set in 2017 Wyoming, where I used to work as a reporter. E-book formats and paperback will be available late 2001." Ken also writes nonfiction, including interviews for Talebones. He's written for Speculations, SFWA Bulletin, Science Fiction Chronicle, and Starlog, among others. He wrote "The Ten Percent Solution: Self-editing for the Modern Writer" for Fairwood Press. For fun, he makes kaleidoscopes.
His website: www.sfwa.org/members/Rand/
His living and working philosophy: "Lighten up."
E-mail: KRand27577@aol.com
