Total Recall

CHAPTER 16 Venusville

The noisy, old-fashioned train, probably a refugee from a condemned twentieth-century New York subway, pulled out of the station and entered a dark tunnel. Outside were clattering sounds and flashing lights, as if the thing were about to fly off the tracks and smash into a pillar. That, combined with the crowding, created a feeling of anxiety.

Quaid looked around, alert to potential danger. He wasn’t exactly well dressed at the moment; he had barely been able to hang on to his purse when his unsecured clothing got blown off. He was doing his best now to make that purse seem like a package. But no one seemed to notice. Blase Mars natives (anyone who had been here more than a year was a native) were talking among themselves, and he overheard snippets of conversations.

“While you were gone,” one Martian said, “Cohaagen raised the price of air.”

“Again?” her companion asked, resigned. “That’s the third time in the past two months.”

“Yes, and meanwhile our pay stays the same.”

Interesting, Quaid thought. They never mentioned the price of air when they offered the sizeable bonuses to potential colonists from Earth.

The woman was speaking again, in a lowered voice. “And did you hear about the Hamiltons?”

“I noticed that their place was dark last night.”

“And the night before, and the night before that.”

“Gone on a trip?”

“You could say so,” the woman said with a knowing smile. Her voice became scarcely more than a whisper and Quaid strained to hear her. “We’ll see how long the Administrator lasts when all of his workers have ‘gone on a trip.’ ”

Quaid followed the woman’s eyes as she looked pointedly at the posters that plastered the interior of the car. The posters proclaimed a huge reward for the capture of the mysterious leader of the rebel forces, Kuato. The name was spelled out in large, clear letters.

But there was no picture.

Here was something else that got short shrift in the emigration brochures. Quaid had had no idea that the Mars Liberation Front had such a broad base of support. The newscasts made it sound as though the rebels were just a few, disaffected troublemakers. Yet they had the obvious approval of the ordinary-looking, middle class couple on the train. It certainly didn’t sound as though Vilos Cohaagen was universally beloved. Hardly surprising, if he was gouging the populace for the very air they breathed. He filed the information away for future reference.

Red light flooded the car. The clattering diminished as the subway emerged onto the surface of Mars. Quaid peered out the window at the weird landscape, drinking it all in. It was barren, it was awful, but it was the land of his dream!

He crossed to the other side of the car as the reverberations faded. He stared, fascinated, experiencing a rush of emotion.

There was the pyramid-shaped mountain of his dream! There was a mining facility on its side. His dream was real! The things in it really were here on Mars!

After a moment he turned and tapped the nearest Martian on the shoulder. “Excuse me. What’s that?”

The man glanced at him, then out the window. “You mean the Pyramid Mine?” Then he saw Quaid staring fixedly at it. “I used to work there, till they found all that alien shit inside. Now it’s closed.”

Alien artifacts? Then that, too, was true. He had been there, and his dream was a true memory, not idle fancy! But if he had fallen in, how could he have survived unscathed? Unless the fall had been broken, and he had taken a bash on the head that gave him amnesia. But that wouldn’t explain why others wanted to kill him, or why Hauser wanted to get even with Cohaagen. He still knew far too little!

“Can you visit?” he asked, rapt.

“Ha. Can’t get within ten miles.”

So there was some secret there. Why were they keeping people away? Certainly they weren’t going to keep him away! One way or another he would get there, and unravel his past.

And find his woman.

The Pyramid Mine was as impressive from another angle, as seen from the hall leading to Cohaagen’s office. Richter stared through the glass wall at the mining complex, wishing that he rated a stunning facility like this. He entered the office and faced the back of Cohaagen’s chair across his desk.

“Mr. Cohaagen,” he said. “You wanted to see me?”

Cohaagen swiveled around in his chair. He smiled silently for a moment. “Richter,” he said finally. “Do you know why I’m such a happy person?”

Because you’re the top man, Richter thought, with subordinates to chew out. He let none of this show through the dutiful expression on his face.

“No, sir,” he said respectfully.

“Because I’ve got a great fuckin’ job,” Cohaagen said calmly. “As long as the turbinium keeps flowing, I can do anything I want. Anything. Nobody’s looking over my shoulder. Nobody cares how I live. Nobody gives a shit if a few Martians have to suffer.” He paused.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” he continued. “I wouldn’t trade places with the Chairman.” It was difficult for him to keep a straight face. He had the Chairman by the short hairs and he knew it, but it wouldn’t do to give that kind of information to Richter. No, the masquerade would go on. For the time being.

Besides, there was nothing funny about the rebel situation. They were causing him more trouble than he had expected. If they weren’t stopped… No. It wasn’t a thought worth considering. He would stop them.

He stood, leaning forward, his hands on the desk. “In fact,” he continued, “the only thing I ever worry about is that one day, if the rebels win, it all might end.”

Suddenly Cohaagen exploded in fury, pounding his fist on the desk. The fishbowl that graced one corner jumped. “And you’re fuckin’ making it happen! You disobeyed my orders! And then you fuckin’ let him get away!”

Richter’s face remained impassive. There was no way Cohaagen could prove that his radio transmission had gotten through, so there was no way he could prove Richter’s insubordination. They both knew that.

“He had help, sir,” Richter said evenly. “From our side.”

“I know,” Cohaagen said impatiently.

“But I thought…” Richter could not conceal the surprise in his voice.

“Who told you to think?” Cohaagen snapped. “I don’t give you enough information to think!” He shook an index finger in Richter’s face. “You do what you’re told! That’s what you do!” Cohaagen resumed his calm demeanor. He opened a drawer and withdrew a small box. He gently shook some flakes into the fishbowl on his desk.

“Now let’s get down to business,” he said in reasonable tones. “Kuato wants what’s in Quaid’s head and he might be able to get it. Rumor has it that the geek is psychic.

“Now I have a little plan to keep this from happening. Do you think you can play along?”

Richter wanted to push Cohaagen’s head into the damned bowl and let the fish eat his face, but “Yes, sir” was all he said.

“Great!” said Cohaagen, looking up from the fish with a beaming smile. “Because I was just getting ready to erase you.”

Quaid stepped from the subway station and emerged into the dazzling downtown section of Chryse Planitia. This was where sophisticated, wealthy people conducted business. The beautiful public square overlooked the spectacular Pyramid Mine. There was a great deal of airspace here, and the geodesic dome was clean.

In fact, this was the kind of place where he would like to be, even if he didn’t have his past to recall. It might be crowded in the subway, but it would never be crowded in the great outdoors of Mars! Not only was Earth crowded all over, it was also polluted, while here—

But he couldn’t dawdle. There were agents on his trail, and they would catch up to him all too soon. He needed to disappear into his assumed identity.

He looked around and spied the entrance to the Hilton Hotel. He walked inside.

It was as fancy inside as outside. This was truly a paradise for tourists!

He approached the desk, where a clerk sat at a computer terminal. The clerk looked up and smiled with recognition. “Oh, Mr. Brubaker. Nice to have you back.”

Well, now! Hauser had really set this up well! “Nice to be back,” he said.

“Would you like the usual suite?”

“Of course.” This was almost too good to be true. Of course it wasn’t true, technically, being an assumed identity. But where identities could be set up, they could also be tipped off to enemies. He would play along, yet keep alert.

The clerk checked the monitor. “Hmm. Seems you left something behind on your last visit.”

Quaid tensed. He had left a slew of murderous goons behind! But also his memories, and his woman.

The clerk walked to the mailboxes and returned with a sealed manila envelope. He handed this to Quaid. “There you go.” He studied the monitor. “Now, that’ll be suite two-eighty in the blue wing. The key-card will be ready in just a minute.”

The clerk turned away to encode the key-card.

Quaid tore open the envelope and pulled out a sheet of red paper folded into a small square. He unfolded the paper and found an advertising flyer for a bar: The Last Resort, in Venusville.

Oh, yes, the notorious sleaze den, a magnet for tourists. There was a Marsville on the planet Venus too, with a similar reputation.

He focused on the flyer. It contained a drawing of a naked girl. On the back was a handwritten message. “For a good time, ask for Melina.”

Surreptitiously, Quaid took a hotel pen and scribbled “Melina” under the written message. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he saw the handwriting matched.

This was a message intended only for him. He thought of the woman of his dreams. Was it possible? No, of course not. Yet—

Before he knew it, he was on his way out. As he opened the door, he glanced back. The desk clerk was turning back. “Here’s your key, Mr. Bru—”

Then the man realized that he was speaking to emptiness. He looked surprised.

The door closed behind Quaid. He emerged at the front of the hotel and stepped toward the cabstand.

A black man in an outfit reminiscent of the ancient jive era approached him. The man looked to be about forty. “Need a cab, man? I’m Benny, and I’m what you want.”

Quaid nodded toward the first cab in line. “What’s wrong with that one?”

“He ain’t got six kids to feed.”

Quaid saw that the driver of that cab was a punk in his twenties. That wasn’t any more appealing than Benny. He nodded.

“It’s right around the corner,” Benny said eagerly.

As Quaid followed to the bootleg cab, the punk cabbie saw his fare being stolen. “Hey!” he protested. Then he realized that it was no use. “Asshole!”

Mars wasn’t much different from Earth, after all! But for the kind of business Quaid might have here, with agents on his trail, a scoundrel cabbie might be better than a legitimate one. Benny wouldn’t be eager to turn him in to anyone, and probably knew the back alleys of Mars as well as anyone did.

As he approached the dilapidated cab, a huge explosion ripped through the upper level of the Pyramid Mine. Windows shattered and Benny was thrown to the ground as alarms began to sound. Quaid managed to keep his footing, barely.

Benny staggered to his feet, slightly dazed.

“Welcome to Mars,” he said wryly. Suddenly soldiers were everywhere, shooting at unseen rebel forces who returned fire. Benny lifted the gullwing door of the cab hastily. “Let’s get out of here, man.” Quaid climbed in.

Benny quickly pulled into traffic and then seemed to relax.

“What’s all the trouble about?” Quaid asked, craning his neck to watch the smoke rising from the mine.

“Oh, the usual,” Benny said nonchalantly. “Money, freedom… air.” He changed lanes. “So, where to?”

“Venusville.”

Benny gazed at him. “How’s that again, man?”

Quaid pulled out the flyer. “Venusville.”

Benny shook his head. “Man, this is Venusville! The upside part of it, anyway.”

“Then make it the downside part of it.”

“Oho! You know what you want!” He put the car in motion. “Any special—?”

“The Last Resort.”

“Mister, you can do better than that!”

“That’s the address I have.”

“Right, man!” Benny agreed dubiously. He guided the car toward the edge of town.

Quaid took this opportunity to shuck the clumsy galoshes. He wore his own shoes underneath. Two segments of the plastic gun were nestled in the toes of the galoshes; he stuffed these in his pockets, then added two more segments from his purse. He didn’t want to carry that purse around anymore; he would ditch it somewhere along the way. He was just glad that he had been able to hang on to everything that counted when the window blew out at the spaceport.

Soon they entered one of several big tubeways that crossed the chasm separating the two sides of town. Ah—now it was coming clear! The slum section was on the other side of the tracks, as it were.

“First trip to Mars?” Benny inquired conversationally, in much the way an updated JohnnyCab mannequin might. If he had noticed Quaid’s business with the galoshes and purse, he was too discreet to mention it. Tourists could have peculiar ways.

Quaid was staring out the window, still distracted by the view. Such colossal mountains, rifts, rubble-strewn plains; the perfect desolation, yet enthralling too. He could look at this stuff for hours, for days! Yet that wasn’t the half of it. He had dreamed of Mars, longing to travel there. Now he was here, and he was fascinated by it, but the longing remained. For his real identity, and for the woman, and for something else. But try as he might, he never quite got the whole picture. It was as if under all his superficial concerns lay a deeper one, like basalt under topsoil, signifying some horrendously significant past event that he ignored at his peril. As if the matter of whether he survived were inconsequential, compared to what that buried layer meant.

He came out of it, realizing that the cabbie had spoken to him. “Mm-hmm. Well, no… Sort of.”

Benny absorbed that. “Man don’t know if he’s been to Mars or not,” he muttered.

Quaid realized that it did sound confused. But it was true. Someone in his body had been to Mars before, but Quaid himself had not. When he recovered his memory, then he could claim to have been—

He shook his head. The more he learned, the less he seemed to know for sure.

The tubeway emptied into a plaza in the poor section of town. The contrast with the affluent neighborhood was shocking. The upside had broad, clear streets and lovely views; this downside had grim, claustrophobic streets tunneled into the mountainside. It was in perpetual night. There were dim street lamps, but the only natural light flowed through a distant archway. This was not because of a change in the hour; the Mars day, coincidentally, was about half an hour longer than Earth’s, and so easy to adapt to that most people hardly noticed the difference. It was because of the subterranean nature of the city. This was like living in a mine. It was no pun to call this the shady neighborhood.

People moved listlessly under low ceilings. A significant proportion of the population, if what was visible was typical, was deformed in some way. Quaid shuddered.

All the buildings were dilapidated and covered with signs and graffiti. Psychic parlors seemed to be quite popular. Numerous wanted posters advertised a reward for Kuato, and like the ones on the train, they had no pictures. Kuato, the fabled leader of the Mars Liberation Front. Quaid could see how the denizens of a place like this could long for liberation! If they put their hope into a nonexistent figure—well, maybe that was better than having no hope at all.

Something almost floated to the surface of his mind, but it slipped away before he could catch it. Did he know something about a way to liberate Mars? Liberate it from what? The fact was, poverty was endemic; there was plenty of it on Earth too. There was no magic wand to wave to free the downtrodden masses of Mars.

Or was there? He saw soldiers patrolling the streets in pairs. The hostility between them and the people was palpable. Could there be a way to get these poor folk out of the dark ghetto and into the sunside? To provide enough daylight land for all of them?

He shook his head. He was no social worker. As long as domes were required to provide livable atmosphere, the common folk would be captive to those who built and controlled the domes. It was just the way Mars was.

The cab gained on an attractive woman with a sexy walk, seen from behind. She held a small child by the hand.

“Not bad, eh?” Benny inquired.

Quaid had to concede that even this hellhole had its bright spots. As they passed the woman, he turned around to see her face.

She was horribly deformed. Her child had the same congenital defect.

Darkness and poverty weren’t the only afflictions here! Quaid turned to Benny. “Tell me something. Why are there so many…?”

“Freaks?” Benny supplied helpfully. “Cheap domes, man. And no air to screen out the rays.”

Oh. No doubt the material of the domes, when properly placed, screened out harmful solar radiation while admitting the good part of the light. But a cheap dome would simply let it all through. Mars was farther from the sun than Earth was, so the light was less intense, but it still had harmful components. On Earth the ozone layer served to filter out a lot. There had been trouble when man’s carelessness had depleted that ozone, and nothing had been done about it until the skin-cancer rate quintupled. That finally got the attention of the politicians, and they started listening to the scientists who had been screaming warnings for decades, and put in motion programs to restore the ozone. It had been expensive, and had taken time, and the job was still being done, but the cancer rate was dropping. Here on Mars, it was evidently more than cancer; it was genetic damage. That was a tyranny that not even an enlightened social system could alleviate. It was inherent in the conditions of the planet.

If only there could be one simple, universal answer! One change that would solve all the problems of the powerless. But that was dreaming, and not sensibly.

The cab parked in front of The Last Resort. It was a seedy dive, even by the standards that obtained here.

“You sure you wanna go here, man? You’re liable to catch a disease.”

A sensible caution! Quaid did not find the place very appetizing. Yet where was he to look, if not where the confusing message had hinted?

Maybe it made sense. If the wrong person got the envelope and saw the ad and came here, looking for the promised good time, he would get disgusted at this point and give it up. But the right person would not be dissuaded. So it was a good way to couch the message.

“I know a much better house down the street,” Benny offered. “The girls are clean, the drinks aren’t watered, and—”

“The boss gives kickbacks to the taxi drivers,” Quaid finished.

Benny turned around and pleaded guilty with a broad smile. He had a mouthful of bad teeth, including two gold caps, one with a crescent moon design, the other with a star. “Hey, man, I got six kids to feed.”

Quaid handed him a large tip. “Take ’em to the dentist.”

Benny got excited as he counted the money. Quaid opened his door and got out. By the time Benny looked up, he was walking away.

“Hey, man!” Benny called after him. “I’ll be waiting for you. Take your time. Benny’s the name.”

Yes, he remembered. Quaid turned partway to wave the cabbie on, then entered The Last Resort. He hoped he wasn’t making a bad mistake.