Cyberpunk

riots, the famines, the plagues. Instead he examined Curtis, the governor of the colony, with care. The man was soft, pallid, mannered in his speech. Kane asked simple questions—limits to the population, energy sources, chains of command. He found Curtis’s answers evasive, dismissive. Kane felt the vast gulf between himself & the Earth as an ache inside him.
    • • •

    Their first morning on Mars, Reese had taken him to the ruins of the native city. Kane was fascinated by the enigma of the Martian holocaust—the artifacts of intelligence assimilated into the processes of nature.
    “Why no bodies?” Kane asked, scuffing through the rings of ash, sand & boiled rock. “They should have mummified when the water went.”
    Reese shrugged, the motion barely discernible through his bulky suit.
    Kane wandered off, trying to picture the city before the disaster. Some of the walls were almost intact, blistered & pitted, but recognizable, while on all sides there was only rubble. The stone, obviously artificial, was indistinguishable from the surrounding rocks. It formed an architecture of intersecting lines, with the Druidic power of Stonehenge.
    At dinner he sat across from Curtis’s wife, Molly. She was tall, dark, full breasted, with a quality of listless abstraction that Kane found compelling. He desired her in a dark, impersonal way that was nonetheless intense. As for Curtis, Kane found him increasingly officious, dangerously authoritative. He identified Curtis with his uncle; at the thought, the taste of his food turned sour. His mood turned chaotic & violent & he held his fists under the table until the worst of it passed.
    “The panel,” his uncle said, “is circular, about 35 cm in diameter, studded at irregular but frequent intervals with PROMs.” The fluorescent light was harsh & Kane’s attention wandered toward the smog & riot-torn streets outside the window. “At least three of these chips are mutants, and are responsible for the power output curves on this chart.”
    Kane glanced at the chart & away again, despising his uncle, the broad waxed desk, his own poverty & failure. His uncle’s life depended on his staying in business; if he failed, his employees would tear him to pieces.
    “We have to get those chips into the lab,” his uncle said, “or we’ll never know why they perform the way they do.”
    “You say this panel is dangerous.”
    “In the hands of the colonists, yes. It’s been ten years since the space program was terminated. They undoubtedly need resources from Earth, if they’re even alive at all. How do they feel about Earth after we cut them off? Can we even hope to understand them? A ship powered by that panel is a weapon pointed at the Earth.”
    The walls of the office were lined with renderings of yet more offices. Kane sat & allowed himself to be manipulated. Something had gone out of him during his years of student exile. He no longer had the will to resist.
    On their second trip to the ruins, Reese took Kane into the central underground complex. The entrance was small, a vivid black hole in the orange glow of the desert. Kane lowered himself after Reese & found himself on a steeply descending ramp. As his eyes adjusted to their flashlights he made out the circular pit to his left. It seemed to have no bottom. The ramp curved around it & he followed, no more than a spectator, just as he had been in grade school, watching on TV as Reese planted the US flag on these same ruins & turned to wave to the cameras.
    Now Reese turned off the ramp & moved between tilted slabs of rock to an inner chamber. Reese’s hand moved & a door swung open from the wall. Kane followed him inside. The door closed behind them & Kane heard the unmistakable hiss of pressurized air. Inside his helmet a light changed from red to green. Reese took off his helmet & opened an inner door. Light flowed from the walls themselves & Kane turned off his flash.
    The walls were made of the same artificial stone as the ruins above, lacking all ornament. Walking into the room, he loosened his helmet & set it on the floor. The chill air stung his cheeks & made him wince. Here there was finally decoration, a low relief that reminded Kane of a printed circuit board. It ran from floor to ceiling with circular protrusions at key points, but no visible dials or meters. He understood the chauvinism of such an expectation. At the far end of the room, where Reese stood, the outlines of a door were etched into