The Battle for Moscow, Idaho & Other Stories by Edward W. Robertson

Author:Edward W. Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, fantasy, short stories, science fiction, aliens, steampunk, alternative history, aether age
Publisher: Edward W. Robertson

The Mayor of Mars

"You can't think of it that way," Jim said, running a rag over the perfectly clean grip of the Loemann-Chen .28-caliber caseless pistol which I knew for a fact he took to bed with him. I glanced out the car window for the eightieth time, not because the cops would even meet our eyes (they were so deep in Prelutsky's pocket they were stuck to the mints), but because I’d been watching for them since I was twelve and once something's second nature you can't just break it. Down the barrel of the alley, pedestrians in shorts and short skirts fought the cart traffic on Ryan Street, itself hardly wider than the yardstick of packed dirt we were packed on. I had seen pictures of Earth streets before, wasteful yawning things you could squeeze an entire dome into. Jim elbowed me, clearly forgetting he trained to kill people with his arms, too. "It's cut and dry. Sanders is banging Jiminez's cousin. Ergo, Jiminez is essentially blowing Sanders himself. He would have to be actively sabotaging us not to get it." He looked at me out the corners of his eyes. "Or you would have to up the ante on him."

I frowned. "Up the ante?"

"I hear Sanders likes it rough."

"I'm a model of competence. They should be filming training videos about me."

"No one's saying you're not."

"Just I don't deserve a position I was essentially promised after the Carter account. This is a screwjob. He treats me like the annoying girl you bang until the real thing comes along. But I'm not the annoying girl. I'm the equivalent of bringing him turkey sandwiches at work. With chips. And then I grab his crotch before I go." Jim was making a face at me. I frowned back. "I'm saying. I was ready."

"I know, Pibb," he said. "That's just how things work."

I thought for a while, but the simplicity of the argument cut out my legs and then kicked me while I was down. The fact remained Sanders was an asshole and I was working for him so what did that make me? 33 and holding down more or less the same position I'd been in more than five years, some dope with a two-room in one of the old polyglass domes the Martian winter winds scratched so bad the outside looked like nothing more than a brown-orange smear.

"Garbage," Jim said.

"Huh?"

He jerked his chin at the dashboard radio. From the speakers, a firm but hoarse voice—I realized, with faint irony, it was Cal Watson—railed about the need to port in fresh blood: "...because diversity isn't a word you use to make yourself feel good, or to talk about your neighbor with the different skin without doing anything to know him or help him, it's a keystone of a healthy species—and it's a keystone of a healthy community, too. If New Houston is ever going to be anything more than an experiment, an eccentricity, it needs more than fish from the same pond.

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