Shelf Life
by Pras Stillman

"Mars?" my wife asked, fanning herself with a real estate brochure. "I don't know. Martian property is cheap, but it would add three hours to my commute."

"Mars is full of rednecks," my mother-in-law grumbled from the ledge above the door. "Their domes are filled with barking jackals and shuttles up on blocks. You know what you call your cousin on Mars? Grandpa!"

"Honey," I reminded my wife, "we have embryos that are ready to incubate and no place to put them. Mars is the kind of place you can raise kids."

"Sure," Lucinda's mother said, "if you want them to kill you in your sleep."

"Mom!" Lucinda gasped.

Mother Larry raised her eyebrows. Her brow-ridge was already nearly at her hairline, courtesy of a postmortem face lift. "Any kids you have," she added, "are sure to grow up to be Red Supremacists."

I looked to my wife for some support. She ignored us both. I crossed the pod and got myself another beer. I couldn't sit down and enjoy it properly. The bed was covered by laundry and Lucinda was sitting in the chair. I punctured the beer box with a plastic straw. Good old Ionian Bud.

Mother Larry glared at me. I don't think she's forgiven me for stuffing her in my underwear drawer last week. But, damn it, sometimes that's the only way to shut her up.

"You're thinking of the old Mars," I told her. "It used to be that Mars was filled with isolationists. It's a regular place, now, with regular people. You go to any populated sector and there's nothing but miles of shopping malls and condo hives. They have everything there: Macy's, Where's Waldo Mart, Buck The Cheese."

"So," my mother-in-law responded. "Uncultured subversives have been replaced by sheep in human clothing. Mars has turned into a soulless suburban sprawl."

Mother Larry looked down on me, both figuratively and literally. No taller than twelve inches from the top of her head to the end of her neck, she insisted on being placed on the highest point in the pod. From there, she had the greatest view of everything we never wanted her to see.

Raised voices seeped in from next door. The builders of Eve's Paradise spared every expense when it came to developing the hollowed-out asteroid. The way they put this place together, we're lucky we have air to breathe and gravity to hold us down.

I finished off my beer then tossed the box into the reduction bin. Two points, but there's no challenge in a pod as small as this one. I flopped down on the bed, landing on Lucinda's best white blouse, only to earn matching mother and daughter scowls. I got up and started folding clothes. Better than sleeping on the floor again.

On Mars, a man has room to move, I thought as I hung up my coveralls. On Mars, a family can live in a house that's big enough for more than one chair. I could make a comfortable living trapping their growing population of Mickey Mice. Ever since the Great Escape from the linguistic lab at Olympus U, Martian Heights has been overrun with talking rodents.

Even with the addition of human genes, Mickeys are capable of only a limited vocabulary. I hear they use it to their advantage. Even the hardest heart can't flush a rodent that's pleading "Help me, please! I have babies to feed." They can also say, "I wanna mate. Now!" I wondered if it would work for me.

I looked over at my wife. Slender, olive-skinned, small bags under her eyes. She wore a patched bathrobe and socks with holes. I could make some serious money on Mars.

All I have to do is talk Lucinda into moving off this captured hunk of stone and we could live like regular people.

* * *

Morning on Eve's Paradise. Maintenance workers hosed off the dust-grating with reclaimed water. The community's developers tout Eve's self-sufficiency in their advertisements. They never mention drinking water that tastes like dirty socks. I took a freight elevator to the surface and hiked through a maze of transparent tubes. Under glimmering stars and the overhanging shadow of Mars, a new wing of housing units was rising atop the asteroid. Nice view, if you had the seniority to move outside.

The pest-control workshop was just below the surface. Bottles of chemicals lined the shelves. Traps filled the floors. Whiteboard walls were covered with reminders. The shop shook. The sound of a docking ship carried from the hanger through the tubes, making it hard to concentrate. I unclipped my personal audio system from my belt and moved it to my collar. What to listen to... I selected silence and pressed play. Instantly, the clang and whirl disappeared. All I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. I turned the silence up. My breathing became imperceptible. I glanced up at the calendar. Tuesday's task; Death to Ants. Ah, the kitchens, with their fragrant grease traps.

I turned around and nearly yelped. Helen O'Hara, Eve's Vice Engineer, stood before me, a generously proportioned woman in professional beige. Her mouth moved silently. I turned my sound-system down.

"I said, what the hell are you doing in here? Watching porn?"

"No," I huffed. "I'm going to spray the food court."

"Not today. A freighter just came in and you're going to check it for stowaways."

"Stephanie is on dock-duty," I said, referring to my colleague from the PM shift.

"Not for the next six months. She's on family leave. Her wife gave birth last night."

A pang of jealousy shot through me.

"Did you hear me, Cotton? You have all of Eve to take care of by yourself." O'Hara turned on her square heels and marched off.

The port is Eve's public face, all done up in murals of pink and green. I entered as a commuter shuttle exited. It might have been the Number 5, carrying my wife to an artificial satellite an hour's flight away. She spends her days designing children for a diverse selection of societies. Lucinda tells me that Eve's Paradise, and the more upscale Lilith's Garden, order daughters at a 100:1 ratio to sons. It's a Man's World and Planet Tom are just about the opposite. At least out here we can legally reproduce. Satellite societies are filled with exiles from Earth. The marginalized, the ostracized, the criminalized. Lucinda was born here. I was taken in as a hardship case.

A battered black freighter, sporting the Red Planet logo of an agricultural combine, sat in the middle of the landing pad. The ship's crew climbed out the cargo hatch. Beefy men, gravity-born, they wore scarlet coveralls with rolled up sleeves. Several of them sported tattooed ears of corn. I found myself wondering what kind of vermin they brought with them. If Eve were truly self-sufficient, pests wouldn't sneak in from shipping containers. There were no mosquitoes in Hawaii until visiting ships dumped bilge water on her shores. There were no cockroaches on Eve's Paradise until someone ordered sandals from Hong Kong.

"Hey, Cotton!" Carlos Gwenderson ducked under an exhaust port. "Look at this."

"Help me," a tiny voice sang. "We just want to be free. Me and my family."

Carlos tossed a purple mouse to me. Bright pinwheel eyes whirled in circles. I caught the toy just as it started a second verse. "Come to Buck's. You'll be in luck. We have the best cheese in the universe!"

And Mother Larry says that Mars doesn't have culture.

"You playing poker, Saturn's day?" I asked, handing it back.

Carlos tugged at the collar of his guard's uniform. "Can't. Betsy promised we'd help paint Kelley's classroom."

"That leaves just me and Tim. You can't play a good game with only two people."

"When's the next game?" he asked. "Two weeks, no, wait. Kelley has a tennis table tournament. Next month," he promised.

Another friend lost to the family lifestyle that Lucinda doesn't think we're ready for. I headed up the cargo ramp. My warm-blood detector pinged before I crossed the hatch. Rodents. Beside the red light, an amber display glowed, weakly. Fleas.

I dug pheromone lures and charitable traps out of my backpack, along with surfactant-coated capcasian bombs. It wasn't long before I snared a male, lured by the scent of females in heat. Guy rats are quick to surrender to base instincts. Female rats, unless they're in season, have to be drawn in by their appetites. I sat down on the tine of a forklift and keyed the accessory pad on my detector. A virtual poker game, populated by trademarked cartoon aliens, sprang to life before my safety glasses.

"Is this an exclusive game or can anyone play?"

I jumped. The game should have been invisible to everyone else. I turned and faced a grinning cargo-swab.

"Didn't mean to spoil your fun. Rex," he said," holding out a hand.

"Cotton," I replied, shaking it.

Rex tapped the cage of rats with a booted toe. "What do you do with them?"

"Mammals and reptiles and birds are sent to Forest Station, for rehabilitation." I shrugged, not entirely convinced that the All Ways Life movement was worth the effort. "The insects go in the reduction bins."

"Reduction bins?" Rex ran a hand backwards through his flattop hair. "Yeah, I guess a settlement like this would need every ounce of raw material."

"Always," I said.

"On Mars, we've got whole mountains that the developers have been tearing down and cycling into housing tracts. It's getting to look like a regular honeycomb." He shook his head. "Ordinary Martians get charged for dumping crud."

"Charged a lot?" I asked.

Rex shook his head. "More the principle than the cost. Damn government and their little inspecting bots look through everything. It's a real invasion of privacy." He shook his head again. "You play poker? Real poker?"

I was about to answer when my detector chimed. The traps were filled.

Rex snapped his fingers. The forklift I'd been leaning on returned to life. "Come back after your shift and we'll deal you in for a few hands."

"You'll still be around?"

"The O2 scrubbers went out. It'll take till half-past Phoebus-rise till Mr. Fixit has them up."

Something about his smile said that there was more to the offer than just poker. I shook my head. "Tonight's my mother-in-law's After-Life Support group. It's the only night that my wife and I have to ourselves. Maybe your next time through."

"Maybe," the hauler said. He drew a remote controller off his belt and got to work.

I carried my little rat collection back to my shop, locked the door and dug out my box of porn.

* * *

The pod was peaceful when I got home. All it took was Mother Larry being gone. I warmed up two plates of red beans and rice, leftover from last night's trip to the community dining hall. Lucinda came in still dressed in sterile whites. She dropped her briefcase on the bed and sat down beside it. I handed her a bowl of food. She set it on the dresser and pulled out her design-pad.

"This is our only time alone," I complained.

"I just want to finish this. It should only take me a few hours."

"Hours? Your mother will be back in a few hours."

Lucinda turned around and glared at me. I could swear she stole the expression directly from Mother Larry. "Is sex the only thing you think about?"

"Who said anything about sex?" I took a bite of beans and rice. It tasted like flatulence. I slammed the bowl into the sink. "At least I have normal, healthy urges. It's not natural to work even when you're off."

"Oh, quit feeling so neglected," Lucinda snapped. "It isn't manly to whine."

The way she said manly, it made the hairs on my arms rise.

"Are there any more insults you'd like to sling at me?" I snapped back. "I am a bad husband? Do I leave the toilet seat up, forget to shave? Do I cheat on you?"

Lucinda looked up at me. "You're not the woman I fell in love with."

"You knew," I said, quietly. "You knew from the moment we met that I was shifting gender. You said you supported my decision."

"I did until you started bitching about, well, everything. The pod's too small," she said in an imitation-Cotton voice. "Everyone has babies except us. There are too many women here and none of them like me."

"I never said that. I only said there aren't enough guys."

"What's wrong with women? It was that long ago you were one."

"Nothing's wrong with women, it's just, just..."

How could I explain that Eve's society is geared toward women? Lesbian women, at that? It wasn't just the atmosphere, filled with Women's Music and Women's Sharing. It was something in the way that the women who were listening to the music or doing the sharing looked at me, as if we had nothing in common anymore. I didn't know how to explain to Lucinda that I just didn't fit in.

Instead of trying, I said, "I was never a woman. I was—"

"Stuck in a female body." She huffed. "I remember. Who do you think nursed you through all those surgeries?"

Her eyes veered from the top of my head, down to my groin. Completely normal, as I said. She helped me pick it out. But still I get the look. It suggests that I was fine the way I was, a boyish girl with a Minnie Mouse voice. I grabbed my jacket.

"Where do you think you're going?" Lucinda demanded.

"Poker!" I said, opening the door. "I'm going to play poker with some guys I met."

* * *

What the hell happened? One minute I was looking forward to an evening at home with my wife and the next I was heading off to strangers. Women. Even though I was one once, I've never understood them.

I took the direct route to the port, through what we on Eve call downtown. I passed City Hall, which is nothing more than a yurt. Potted trees made up a park. It was filled with women, laughing, singing, and decorating the rim of the Yam Hole for the upcoming festival. I veered around the abundance of good cheer. When I got to the hanger, the Martian ship was still there. All the freight had been unloaded, leaving it quiet enough to hear the squeak of a mouse, but there were no rodents about. Just unfamiliar men.

"Hey there, Cotton." Rex shuffled a deck of cards in one oversized hand.

They set up a folding table and chairs in the empty cargo hold. Refreshments consisted of tub of beer and a couple of bags of broken pretzels. Nearby, a green plastic drum had been augmented with a wide-flanged spout. Someone painted the words, "Free Piss," on the side. It looked like they were ready for some serious playing. Rex introduced me to the guys. Big, blond, crew-cut men in oil-stained coveralls.

Lars cut the cards. Hans dealt. Ollie threw down a full house. We played for bottle caps: little chits with single-use credit numbers. We don't exchange them on Eve but they're useful for ordering goods from off the rock.

"Space invader," Lars cursed at Ollie. "You going to take your winnings and buy a shiny dome?"

"Shut the fuck up," Ollie said, "I ain't no immigrant."

Rex seized the cards and dealt them out, again. That's the way it went. Cards tossed. Caps bet. Losers calling the winners immigrants.

I was finally moved to say, "Isn't everyone an immigrant on Mars?"

Ollie stared at me across the table. "'Cept those of us who were born there."

"But there are new babies born there all the time."

"Brown ones, white ones, black ones, yellow ones." Ollie shook his head. "Every shade but the right one. We were terraforming the place before all the new-money migrants arrived. Goddamn earthlings and their upscale domes. We were halfway to a livable atmosphere. If the funding hadn't gone to their developments, we coulda turned the planet into a paradise. Goddamn pests."

"Who cares what's going on planet-side?" Rex growled. "We're here to play poker. You think you can deal me some decent cards this time?"

We played the next hand in an uncomfortable silence. No one bet more than a single Cap. Lars took the pot with a pair of jacks.

"Do you guys have any kids?" I asked, to get the conversation going.

Rex frowned. "What the hell would I want kids for? Do I look like I want to be tied down?"

Ollie laughed. He gave me the closest thing to a wink a guy could give another without anyone questioning the amount of Xs in his genes. "Sometimes you don't want but you still get, if you know what I mean."

Hans tossed down a pair of cards. "Just because you drop seed in every harbor and don't care where it lands, don't mean we're all so careless."

Ollie bristled. "Who says I don't care?"

"When was the last time you saw any of those kids of yours?"

"When they're old enough, I'll find them. Teach 'em their heritage."

"Heritage," Rex repeated, reverently. He shook his head, clearing the respectful expression off his face. "Call!" he said.

Lars won.

"Pussy," Ollie said, shuffling the cards, again.

I hadn't been around natural born males for a long time. The few we have here on Eve are either children or someone's late father, residing in a jar.

Carlos and Tim and I play cards. Sometimes it feels like we do it because we're supposed to. These guys tossed down beer and cards with such intensity you'd think it was written in their chromosomes. I felt like I should turn up my testosterone pump just to stay in the game. I hadn't seen this much ass-scratching and balls-adjusting since I was a kid, visiting my mother's Central Valley kin. For the first time I began to question my desire to live in a society with normal demographics.

"You have any?" Hans asked. "Kids?"

"Eight," I said automatically, obliged to add, "not born yet."

"Kids in Kans?" Rex asked.

"Future Perfect. My wife's a designer there."

"On a rock this small, I wouldn't think you could keep that many."

"You can't," I said, remembering to keep a poker face. "One kid for every couple and the singletons who qualify. Otherwise we'd run out of room. We wouldn't be able to provide asylum."

I could have explained that you have to make extra embryos, in case something goes wrong, but it didn't seem they were really interested. I won that hand and the next one too.

"Stump-fucker," Rex swore. He got up, knocking his chair over. "Done losing money. I'm out of here." He stalked off the freighter.

I glanced around the table. No one looked alarmed over Rex's outburst.

"Stick around." Ollie said. "He gets like this."

"Yeah," Hans agreed, pulling out a bottle of gin. "You gotta let us try to win some money back."

If he wanted to win, he shouldn't have dealt me a flush the next hand. We settled into a round of exchanging caps and jokes. They weren't bad guys. Smelled a bit more than normal people. Farted a bit more, too. Other than that, they were just guys.

"I'd make a good father," Lars said. He dribbled gin over the table, trying to fill a shot-glass. "If I had kids, I'd take them into space, like my uncle did with me. I'd show them the stars, then I'd take them home and show them they live on the best planet in the galaxy."

Hans nodded. "My Mom's step-brother did the same for me. A fuck of a lot more than my real father ever did." He turned to me. "What about yours?" he asked.

"My dad? Meat in a suit," I replied, "Two hundred pounds of angry."

The guys all laughed, like I was joking. I concentrated on putting my cards in descending order and arraigning them by suit.

For some reason, a memory of my father came back to me. I remember him checking the gun he kept in the glove compartment before he drove us all to church. I was in the backseat with my mother. My brother and sister got to ride up front. Dad called Mom a stupid bitch, affectionately, I think, and pulled the Lexus in front of rusted Jaguar, resulting in a five car pile up. Why I thought about this, in the middle of a poker game, I couldn't say. I hadn't seen either of my parents since they kicked me out, a decade ago.

I didn't convey the memories to the Martians. That'd be too much sharing, for guys. Instead I said, "Who in the fuck drooled over the cards?"

I wasn't that drunk when left for home: I could still pronounce inebriated but I probably couldn't spell it. I wandered around in circles for awhile before heading back to my pod. All I had to look forward to was a pissed off wife and a decapitated mother-in-law. I met Rex in the park, going as I was coming.

"Where the hell is the port? I went looking for a place to get a drink and this witch in the bar gave me a glass of white wine! I've got to get back to the ship before someone offers to braid my beard."

I laughed, which Rex didn't appreciate. He scowled, then shook his head and grinned. "You're all right, you know, for a guy that lives inside a pebble. How much did you win?"

I counted twenty bottle caps. "Not enough to buy a life off this rock."

Rex's brow creased. "I'd ask why you want to leave, but why would anyone want to stay? What the fuck, I could get you to Mars."

I wasn't drunk enough to think that it was a good idea. "I don't want to go as an illegal. I want a good job. I want a house. You have to have citizenship for those things."

 Rex nodded. "There might be a way of earning some extra cash. If you're serious about leaving, I mean."

I studied Rex, swaying just a little. Luckily, there was a nearby tree to lean on.

"You'd be doing us both a service," he said. "Your little society needs more raw material and you need money to buy yourself a sponsorship."

I was just about to ask Rex for more details but found myself distracted by the way his head was revolving in two directions at once. I leaned over a potted pine and threw up. Proving that timing is everything, Helen O'Hara walked by. She shook her head and muttered, "Men!"

"Women!" Rex sounded just as disgusted. "Well, what can you expect from someone who thinks with their ovaries?"

I could have mentioned that I have ovaries, too. They just happened to be in a jar on a shelf.

O'Hara looked back at me and glared.

"Yeah," I said, as soon as she had passed. "Get me out of here."

"Nice doing business with you," Rex replied. He handed me a cap of Sober Up and walked away.

* * *

"Look, it's the Martian ranger."

Mother Larry broke into song as I walked through the door. "Clone home on the range, where no deer and no antelope play, where seldom is heard an original word and the skies are oily all day."

"Oily?" I opened the refrigerator. No beer. No alcohol for a long time. I drank a jar of beet juice to wash the taste of sick from my mouth.

"It's a multi-viscosity world," my mother-in-law said, "but I wouldn't expect you to understand that, coming from a family of entertainers."

"That was my grandfather," I remind her, sitting on the bed.

"Right. Right," Mother Larry twittered.

I looked around the pod. "Where's Lucinda?"

"In my day," she said instead of answering me, "we had real rhymers. You would never hear a song as stupid as Bling Ex Lax Bling."

Lucinda's work clothes were in a pile on the floor.

"It was the corporate sponsorship Gramps could get. What are we talking about this for?" I asked, as the sober up kicked in. "Why are you distracting me?"

Mother Larry snorted. "The Product Placement Era ended the day that President Pepsi changed his name back to John."

Lucinda walked through the door. Papers hung out of her briefcase. Her hair was matted on one side.

"Mom, are you're telling silly stories again?" Before Mother Larry could defend herself, Lucinda killed the lights, cutting her mother's power source and plunging us into darkness.

I didn't ask where she had been. She didn't ask me. We climbed into bed, lying back to back, and pretended to sleep.

* * *

I awoke from a dream of flying rodents filling the passageways of Eve. Mother Larry was facing the wall, humming the Nike war chant. Lucinda had already left for work.

Back to the hanger. Working on auto-pilot. Crates of cargo hugged the walls. All sounds, even the early morning pings of cleaning equipment, were magnified a dozen times. I could have tuned into silence but that would just make it easier to think. Where the hell had Lucinda been? What did I get into with Rex?

My detector pinged in with a variety of beeps and squeaks. I turned down the gain. The lights stayed dark but the squeaking continued. Rhythmically. Damn near musically.

I made a sweep of the hanger. Gray flashed in my peripheral vision. I whirled around and spotted the source of the disturbance. At the same time I picked up a tune.

"It's a small world—"

Standing on its hind legs, on a wooden crate, swaying side to side. "It's a small world—"

I reached for the can of Def-Con II, on my tool belt.

"It's a small world—"

I flipped the cap and squeezed the trigger.

With a tiny "After all!" the Mickey was gone.

I charged across the hanger, shoving crates aside, looking over, under, and along side all of the remaining cargo, but the mouse was nowhere to be found.

Carlos walked in, sucking on a mug of coffee. "Hey," he said. "You look spooked. What's bugging you? Ha! That's a good one."

"Nothing," I mumbled. I checked the readings on my DNA sniffer. Nothing but Carlos and me. Could a Martian gin hangover produce hallucinations?

Carlos wandered off. I retreated to my shop. Greeting me was a frantic message from the mistress of the kitchens, claiming that they were being taken over by ants. I stowed my detection equipment and reached for spray. A small gray head popped out from behind a canister of Pest B Dead. For some reason I was expecting it to be wearing a beret. Thankfully it wasn't.

"Rex says thanks," the mouse squeaked. "Expect the first shipment soon."

Ten kinds of implements were within easy reach. But what could I do? I let him go.

* * *

Lucinda never mentioned the argument that drove me off to the poker game. Neither did I. We settled into a state of mutual unease.

May ended with the annual Yam Festival. Singing and dancing, homebrew, the burning of the Giant Yam at Midnight. June proved to be a big month for infestations. A visiting collective of performance artists built people-watching blinds out of bamboo, bringing in aphids. I caught pair of lizards and gave them to the school. Cute kids. They made me so melancholy that I didn't stay for juice and cookies that they offered.

The door was blocked by a crate when I got back to the shop. The return label read EMCA Supply Co, Falcate City, Mars. I looked both ways before I levered it into my shop.

The crate had a voice activated lock. "Red," I recited the pass-code Rex had given me. "Red as the shiftless sands of Mars." The lid popped open. The mouse stood on my work bench, watching as I rummaged through the packing material. It didn't say a word.

The real payload was hidden under a layer of lures and traps: a canister of untraceable ink, a mud-stained jacket and a single-use handgun, firing chamber fused. I stuffed the last three items into the reduction tube and sent them on their way. They would be rendered into the uniform gray slag of building material before a human laid eyes on them. I pocketed the bag of bottle caps and shoved the empty crate against the wall.

Can a heart actually explode inside a person's chest? How fast does it have to be beating before it does? I sank to the floor. The mouse leaned over the edge of the counter.

"You're doing the right thing," he said. "Rex is a great leader. He only wants what's best for his people."

"Go away," I breathed.

"Do you want me loose on your little asteroid?" The mouse ducked his head and scratched an ear with a front paw. "We're in this together, you and me."

"I don't need a Mickey to tell me what kind of trouble I'm in."

"A Mickey? I am no Mickey." The mouse's ears twitched. "Can't you tell by my advanced vocabulary? I am a product of much more sophisticated research. Call me Michael."

I left the rodent with airs of superiority scrabbling up the side of my trash can and headed to the port. The bay doors were closed. The landing was vacant.

"If you're looking for your pals, you missed them," Carlos said.

"Pals?" I asked.

"You know, your poker playing pals. Those Martian jukes, back again."

"They sell their produce cheap."

"Good thing," he said with a yawn. "We won't be getting any more deliveries from Mars today."

I felt my shoulders hunch nearly to my ears. I forced them back down. "Why?"

"Planetary lock-down. A regional governor got kidnapped. Where you going? Cotton?"

I could feel his eyes on my back as I walked out of the port. "Cotton?"

"I have to kill a mouse."

Good thing it was quitting time. I couldn't face my shop and the Martian crate. The Mickey, or Michael, was safe. I took the transverse gerbil tube across the rock, then headed down.

Mother Larry was well into her you-don't-know-how-good-you-have-it-speech when I walked through the door.

"Yes, Mother," Lucinda murmured. Still in a lab coat and scrubs, she sat with one leg over the other, massaging an instep.

"You never had to feel the grip of prejudice." Mother Larry declared. "Cotton knows. Don't you, Cotton?"

I opened the refrigerator. "Hungry?"

"A bit," Lucinda replied without meeting my eye.

"Dory and I were arrested twice, back on Earth. The first time, we were in church when Pastor Bill was caught giving a sermon on encryption."

I found a pair of soy yogurts, and handed one to Lucinda. She thanked me with a smile.

Mother Larry paused in memory of taking a breath. "The second time was we were trying to buy passports. I was pregnant with you, Lucinda — I couldn't let any child of mine be born in a detention camp. I never saw Dory again."

"Honey," I said to Lucinda.

She turned toward me, expectantly. What could tell her? I found a gun in the garbage that I agreed to dump?

"Yes?" she asked. "You want to tell me something?"

My mouth went dry. "Anything you want to tell me?" I asked back.

She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, the kind of kiss you'd give a child. "I have to get back to the lab."

"You don't know how lucky you are," Mother Larry repeated as Lucinda walked out the door.

* * *

It was a week before the next shipment arrived. After that they came every other day. Spent shotgun casings. Blood-spotted clothes. I could have pitched the packages into the reducer, unopened, but that would mean pitching the bottle caps too. The newest offering was about the size of a loaf of bread. Easy to ignore.

The Martian mouse was lounging atop an empty corn chip bag, licking salt off of his tail. He scrambled across the counter and pawed at the package. "Aren't you going to open it?" he asked.

"Be my guest."

Michael sat on his haunches and inspected his paws. "What, with these nails? You do it."

I charged the batteries in the DNA sniffer. I dusted the shelves. I found a dried up sponge under the sink and poured detergent over it.

Michael practically tap danced across the counter. "Come on, Cotton, open it."

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"Linguists wanted to trace the mutation that gave humans speech, thereby tracing the roots of civilization."

"I mean, what are you doing here, on this asteroid, in my shop?"

The mouse stopped and sniffed a smear of dried peanut butter that was still lodged in a trap.

"Don't touch that. It's dosed with a sterilizing agent."

Michael scampered backward. "You mean it'll scour the spermatozoa out of my 'nads?"

"You're pretty crude for a mouse."

"If rodents can't be crude, who can be?" Michael eyed the trap. His claws clicked three steps forward, three steps back. "Whatever happened to go forth and multiply?" he asked.

"Ask my wife." I shook my head. "She knows how much I hated being an only child. Big families are happier."

"You think so?"

"Sure," I replied, though I could barely remember what our family was like before the wreck. "It takes more than one kid to keep each other company or stick up for one another when things go bad." I shrugged. "Maybe things only go that bad when you lose kids. Anyway, you can't reproduce like that on Earth anymore, let alone here."

Michael sat up on his haunches. "You and me, we're not that different. We're driven to breed."

"Not that different!" I exclaimed.

"Almost identical," the rodent insisted. "Our genes are 90% the same. You have an equal number of genes for growing a tail as me. They're just not expressed in you."

I laughed. "Pretty big words for a Mickey."

"Eek, eek, eek," Michael said. It took a moment for me to realize that he was laughing, too.

I turned on my poker game. Michael devoted his attention to the package, gnawing and clawing a corner.

"Cotton!" Helen O'Hara shouted through the speaker phone. "Get down to the kitchens, now!"

I shouldered my sprayer and ordered, "Keep out of trouble."

The mouse replied with a snappy salute.

Panic filled the kitchens. That wasn't all that was in the air. A noxious mixture of burned lentils and the pepper-spray odor of ant wax formed a cloud above the stoves.

"You're not supposed to let it get hot," I snapped.

Red eyed and tearing, the matron of the kitchens fanned the galley with a dishtowel. "You said it was safe."

Melted wax oozed out of the scorched ant traps and into the wells of burners. I shooed everyone out, strapped on goggles and a respirator. Helen helped me bring in a couple of extra exhaust fans to beef up the kitchen's ventilation. Motors roared, blowing the fumes out into the evacuated hall and out an external port.

I smashed ants with my gloved hands and sprayed them down with soapy water. I thought how much better it would be when I had enough bottle caps to move Lucinda and me to Mars.

"Cotton!" A cook stood in the doorway; mask held to her face. "It's almost time for lunch. Is it safe to let everyone back in?"

"No!"

She fled. It probably was safe enough, but I could work much more effectively without anyone underfoot. Two hours later, I toted my equipment out the door. The corridor had a faint peppery smell.

"Thanks, Cotton."

"Good job, Cotton."

Cooks and scullery workers waved at me. I waved back. Being appreciated wasn't bad. I wound my way uphill through the boulder, passing the library and the Departed Citizen Club. It was Moon Day. Mother Larry would be there, socializing with her contemporaries. I wondered if the noxious odors penetrated their jars. They didn't have lungs but they did have mucous membranes. I peeked in the room, just to make sure they were okay.

A small collection of parents and grandparents sat in a circle of folding chairs in the center of an undecorated room. Parents and grandparents who, like Mother Larry, willed themselves to their children; whether they wanted them around or not. Green lights blinked on the base of each jar, indicated all systems were operational. They sat, dormant. Not saying a word.

"Hey, Cotton."

I must have jumped a foot.

Helen O'Hara stood behind me. She was smiling, maybe for the first time in her life. "What's going on?"

"I'm not sure." I mumbled.

"Anyway, I wanted to tell you that you did good work today. Everyone appreciates it. Thank you."

Unsure how to handle the praise I muttered an awkward, "You're welcome," and lugged my gear back to my shop.

Michael looked up as I crossed the door. Either I was anthropomorphizing I could swear he had a guilty expression on his face. Shredded card board littered the countertop. A ragged hole had been gnawed in the package from Mars.

"You've been busy," I said.

Michael backed away from the box. Five toes, attached to a human foot, poked out.

"Rex," I breathed. "I need to talk to him, now."

* * *

Carlos gave me a sideways glance when set up my pest detectors in the port. "Didn't you just scan this place yesterday?"

And the day before. Martians. They're never around when you need them.

"Waiting for your buddies to drop off an ear of corn and mysteriously break down?"

"That only happened once. Are you jealous?"

"Jealous of a bunch of ball-scratching malodorous truckers? I just can't figure out how they can be making any kind of a profit, delivering a bushel of produce at a time."

"I think—" I stopped myself before I said too much. "This is just a stop along the way."

"Busy buggers," he said. "Trucking veggies and delivering packages.  How are they even making their payroll unless it's with gambling? What do you think?"

"I—" I met Carlos' eyes. "I think Lucinda doesn't love me anymore."

He shifted uncomfortably on his wooden stool. "Don't you think that you should be telling that to a marriage councilor?"

"She said she doesn't have time for counseling."

Much to Carlos' relief, the Incoming bell chimed. I retreated to the windowed corridor and Carlos to the guard shack before the port's doors opened. A Martian freighter landed. This one was bright yellow and sported a cartoon of a grinning cow raising a glass of milk. We don't eat meat on Eve. We don't even use dairy or eggs. It's easy to stick to a vegan diet when you can't afford animal products. So what business did the freighter have here? The hangar re-pressurized. The pilot got out and exchanged a few words with Carlos and the port's day supervisor. I pushed the door switch. It stayed closed. I knocked but no one answered.

Carlos looked my way. The pilot turned and matched his gaze, staring directly, at me. They shook hands and the dairy freighter departed. As soon as the port sealed, the door into the hall opened.

"Hey!" I said to Carlos. "What's with the lock out? I was supposed to inspect that ship."

"Why? It didn't unload."

"What was he doing here?"

"He was trying to sell us ice cream," he said.

"Ice cream," I repeated, with a vague, childhood memory of the taste.

Carlos stared off into the distance, his expression tight. "Maybe you should get home," he suggested. "Spend a little time with Lucinda."

I didn't bother telling him that she wouldn't be there. I went to my shop, instead.

Nothing new had arrived in my absence. No boxes of evidence or body parts. Only Michael, running in a circle on my work bench. I told myself I should do some work. I really did. But it was hard to concentrate with a mouse chasing his tail.

"Michael, you're driving me crazy."

The Mickey circumnavigated a dried glob of salsa on the countertop. "Michael, cut it out!"

I grabbed a can of paralytic spray and squirted a jet in his direction. A puff of smoke rose from his mouth. Michael froze. Shit.

I picked him up. His body vibrated and emitted a faint hum. I turned him over, exposing a seam on his belly. It took minimal pressure to pull the fur back and expose hard plastic, a tiny condenser microphone and an on-off switch. I held the switch down for a few seconds. Michael rebooted.

"Pervert!" he snapped.

"Jeez!" I said as I dropped him. "You're a machine."

The mouse didn't deny it.

"Who made you?"

"The Department of Linguistics."

"No," I backed my chair up. "Who really made you?"

Michael emitted a low hum. Its left paw jerked. I rebooted it again.

"A product of EMCA Incorporated," it sang a little jingle. "Makers of robotic servants, companions, mementos, and novelties!"

"Mementos?" An image came back to me: the image of a room filled with late relatives who had nothing to say to one another. What would happen if I opened Mother Larry up? Would I find a micro-processor and cavity stuffed with straw?

Lucinda doesn't know.

Michael jerked, all four limbs stiffened. Its eyes flashed red then amber then back to red. Switching modes.

"You want to say something to me?" Rex's voice emanated from the mouse's mouth, absurdly baritone.

"Yeah," I said, slapping on a thin layer of composure. "No more packages."

"I was wondering when you'd get around to that." He almost sounded amused.

"It's getting too risky," I told him. "Security is suspicious, and a ship came by today, snooping around. It looked like a milk freighter but I think it was undercover police. Look, I figured out that you and you pals are Martian Supremacists. I'm not. I want out."

"Listen, man-bitch," the mouse growled. "You're in this as thick as we are. You're not backing out. If you want to know why, just ask your wife."

"My...my wife? What does she have to do with any of this?"

"Ask her."
The mouse's eyes switched back to brown. In its squeaky mouse voice, it asked, "What did I miss?"

No point in answering. Michael was only a machine. It was time to talk with Lucinda.

* * *

Mother Larry's eyes followed me as I entered the pod. "I know your secret," I whispered.

"Lucinda was a beautiful baby," she said to the opposite wall. "She had the biggest eyes and a head full of hair."

"How can you remember that? There's nothing left of you."

"A mother is supposed to remember. Hello, baby."

Lucinda dragged herself in and slumped into the chair. All the things that I planned to say seemed to evaporate. There was nothing left to ask except, "Lucinda, are you having an affair?"

"What? I work twelve hours a day. When would I have time to have an affair? Are you insane?"

"I've been called a man-bitch and insane in less than an hour. Now you're telling me that the only reason that you're not having an affair is that you don't have time for it. You need to tell me what's going on. You never used to work this much. If you're not having an affair, what are you doing?"

Faux Mother Larry babbled about the joys of childbirth while my wife and I glared at one another.

"Working."

"Is that what Rex calls it? Working?"

Lucinda closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were glistening. "With all that empty space, out in outer space, you think they need you to dump evidence? There must be a thousand ways of getting rid of it."

So. She knows. "What else would they want?"

"Me," she said, simply.

"You, you and Rex—"

"Would you forget about some imaginary affair? Rex wants children. Martian children. No genetic designer would have anything to do with him. But, thanks to you, he's blackmailing me. The deal is, I make him kids that can live outside of the domes, real Martians, and in exchange he doesn't turn you into the authorities as an accessory to murder and insurrection."

 "Who, who," I stammered, "who did we kill?"

"Maybe no one. Maybe it's a bluff. Or maybe it's the chief of police who vanished from Mt. Olympus View or the Vice Mayor who died of botulism. But Cotton, don't worry. It's taken care of. I have it all under control."

The air crystallized. My vision turned hyper-real. The one-room pod, painted warm shades of pink and orange, threatened to close in on me like a contracting womb. "I have to turn myself in."

"Don't be a—" Lucinda stopped herself before she insulted me again. "Don't overreact. Trust me. Okay? I have to go to the lab and work on a few gene sequences. I'm almost done."

She left me standing there, leaning against the wall for support. A pair of eyes followed Lucinda out the door then returned to me.

"What are you looking at?" I asked the jar on the shelf. I paced over to the refrigerator, pulled out a beer then put it back. Lucinda couldn't be that far ahead of me. I rushed down the hall. Up the stairs. Into the tube. No sign of Lucinda. There would be one last shuttle, leaving for the transfer hub in a few minutes. I raced to the port, shouldering my way through an assembly of giggling adolescents each carrying a single hydroponic flower.

"Hey! Stop!" A pair of security guards flanked the entrance. Neither one of them was Carlos.

"Pest control!" I shouted as I raced by.

A single ship sat, dead center. A grinning cow highlighted its hull. The bogus Ice Cream freighter. The shuttle was gone. My heart climbed into my throat.

I tried to back into the hall but my way was blocked by the flower-bearing girls. Their giggles were replaced by an air of forced restraint. Before I could make my escape, two women emerged from the freighter. Thin women, huddled close. Their heads were shaved and their feet were bare. They wore the gray cotton shifts I'd seen in photos from Earth's forced labor-camps. Refugees.

The girls gathered their flowers into a bouquet and presented them to the new arrivals. The Guiding Council clustered around, bearing gifts of new clothes, household items and hugs. It's was a bit hard to see the welcoming committee through the wetness that filled my eyes. I wiped them with the back of a hand and stepped forward to greet Eve's newest citizens, Judith and Morgan.

* * *

Eve's Paradise has no seasons. Heat from the power plant and life-support machinery gets trapped in the interior, making the place feel like summer, year round. But every June 21st the decorating team goes wild. Luau lanterns festooned the park. Flowerbeds bloomed in a swath of bright colors. With fewer secrets between us, my relationship with Lucinda grew a little warmer, too.

I had my hands full with an outbreak of scabies that the refugees brought from Earth. The clinic took care of the skin rashes but I promised the laundry I'd come up with an additive that would kill the mites in a cold water wash. My mechanical mouse was singing a medley of advertising jingles and I was adding Smother-Bug® to a cup of detergent when Helen O'Hara barged into my shop. Michael ducked inside a pair of work gloves.

"Cotton, I want you to meet your new trainee."

Judith hung back in the corridor. Her shoulders were hunched in a posture of defensiveness. I recognized the body language from my first days on the rock, before I met Lucinda. Judith had replaced her work-camp shift with bright linen pants and shirt. A blush of ginger hair was growing out over her scalp.

O'Hara took me aside. "I want you take Judith under your wing. She'll be going through the surgery, changing gender. You and she—"

"We what?" I whispered harshly, "We belong in pest control? You like making changers do the scut work?"

"No, Cotton." O'Hara said, patiently. "I'm assigning her to you since you've been through it. I thought you might be a good influence." She raised a single eyebrow. "It's not to late to see if Carlos could use another guard or if Tim needs help in the pharmacy."

"No, no," I said. "Send Judith in."

I fetched my trainee a jar of carrot juice from the mini-fridge and cleared a stool for her to sit. Him? No, she hadn't changed her name, yet. She was still living as a female.

"Look!" She started. "A mouse! There's a mouse in your shop."

"Oh, that." I picked Michael up. "Looks real, doesn't it?" I switched it off and placed it on a shelf. "How'd you end up on Eve?" I asked.

"Morgan's parents hired a detective to find us. He bribed the camp's commander into releasing us. Her folks knew we would never be free in the U.S., or any country with an extradition treaty, so they sent us here."

"They couldn't they afford to send you someplace better?"

Judith crinkled her nose. "Why, what's wrong with Eve? I like it here."

"Nothing, nothing," I said, quickly. "It's just that Lilith's Garden is a bit more...luxurious."

"After a year in the salt flats, a refrigerator box would be luxury." She laughed. "Besides, Lilith's Garden is closed to new arrivals, even refugees. They're full."

She took a sip of juice, giving herself an orange mustache. "Morgan is so excited. She started her new job today, too, building the new pods outside the asteroid. Tell me about the operations," she said.

"Pest control?" I asked.

"No."

"Oh."

I sat down on a crate and laid it all out for her, from the hormone treatments to the body restructuring. The surgeries aren't as crude as they were, say fifty years ago, but hearing about them, all at once, could be overwhelming. Judith sat, rapt, taking it all in and looking grateful for the education. For the first time in years, it felt like someone was really listening to me — someone really needed to hear what I had to say.

I finished by explaining how her ovaries could be frozen in case she wanted to have kids.

"Kids," she repeated, indifferently. "Do you have any?"

I shook my head. "Maybe later. We'll have one."

One. I could be satisfied with a small family, I decided. A little hybrid of Lucinda and me. Wonder what she would look like. I guess Lucinda would already know.

The intercom pinged with an incoming call. It was Carlos. "Cotton, you'd better get to the dock, right now."

"An infested ship?"

"You could say that. These are the vermin you told me to look out for. Fresh from Mars."

Judith stood, ready to follow.

"I think I'll handle this one alone." I loaded my utility belt with aerosols. "You stay here and read the procedure manual."

The landing pad was filled with shuttles and commuters. The Martian freighter was last in line. Rex was standing in front of the hatch when I got there. Sweat soaked a circle through the front of his overalls.

"This rock-rat says we can't unload our cargo."

I looked to Carlos then back to Rex. "He's doing his job."

"What's this shit about?"

"Your cargo, it's...it's contaminated." I held up an insect detector high enough for him to see it then thumbed a switch, turning the display red. "Can't let you unload. Too many odd proteins. Must be some sort of mutant Martian bugs you guys are breeding in your dumps."

"Inside. We talk. Now."

Carlos stepped in between us, one hand on his butt of his stun gun.

"It's okay," I assured him.

I didn't feel quite so okay when Rex latched the hatch behind us, closing me in with him, Ollie and Lars.

"You're trying weasel out of the deal."

"What deal? Between us, we've already passed enough evidence to put us all in Martian coma-cells. We're done with all the deals: The body parts in bags deal and the pretend you're helping us migrate to Mars deal."

Rex and Lars exchanged bored looks. At least they didn't argue or interrupt. "Most of all, we're done with the blackmail Lucinda deal. I'm not playing along anymore and neither is she."

The Martian turned his head and spat, fouling the already grimy deck. "She sent her mock-man to defend her honor? How sweet."

It occurred to me, perhaps a bit late, that bravery and stupidity might be the same thing. I wondered if I turned my testosterone pump up too high. I made my move anyway. Across the ship, with the Martian men triangulating in on me. I reached for my tool belt; armed with enough paralytic spray to immobilize a thousand-pound cockroach, and enough antidote in my blood stream to make me the last one standing. What I'd do with the jukes, after I knocked them out, was still a bit hazy. All I knew was that it would include Carlos arresting Rex and his crew, and probably even me.

I quick-drew a pair of canisters, ready for double-barrel spraying. The hatch slid open. Lucinda walked up the ramp.

"Thanks, Cotton," she said as she passed me by. "I appreciate what you're trying to do but it's really not necessary."

She held out a thick block of Styrofoam, sealed with packing tape. "It's done. Your embryos are ready. Just defrost and insert them, preferably in a uterus."

Rex reached for the package then drew back. "You didn't just send your boyo to renege?"

"Cotton is adorable." She smiled. "But we don't need heroes."

 Rex's lips twitched. "How do I know that this is what we asked for?"

Lucinda smiled. "You're bringing that up now? I suggest you pay me what we agreed on and put the embryos in your freezer before they spoil. They're the real deal. Mars's future."

"And they'll be able to live outside?"

Her smile swelled into a grin, radiating with pride. "When they're babies, they'll look like other kids. Raise them inside your barns or your barracks or wherever the hell you live. They'll start changing as soon as they are weaned. It'll be slow, at first, until they hit puberty. Then wham! By age fifteen, they won't have to go indoors again."

Hopefulness softened Rex's face. "They'll breed true?" he asked, politely.

"With their own kind and with regular humans, the new genes will be dominant."

"If you're lying—"

"Then Cotton gets turned over to the authorities. I understand."

"Lucinda!"

She turned my way. "You have to trust me too."

Lucinda and Rex exchanged packages. "Lars!" he shouted. "Start the engines."

At that moment, Carlos, backed by a battalion of security guards, flooded in the hatch.

"They were just leaving," Lucinda assured him. "And they won't be coming around anymore."

We left the port before either the law or the outlaws could change their minds. The battered black freighter cleared the dock just as Lucinda and I entered the gerbil tube.

Sunlight haloed the top side of Mars, crowning it in gold. Lucinda held her package of cash absently, as if it didn't really matter. Her hair fanned out around her head in the tube's light gravity. My dark haired angel. All she needed was wings.

"Our sons and daughters will be red," she announced. "Mars will be theirs."

"About moving there," I muttered. "I guess we have the money now, but I'm not sure I want to go. I mean, Eve isn't such a bad place. We're doing good things here. Saving refugees, you know. Maybe we can get one of the new, bottom-side pods when they're done. All we need is a little more room."

"Silly!" Lucinda giggled. "I wasn't talking about us moving there. I was talking about our offspring. Did you think I'd touch any of that cave-dweller DNA? You think I did all that work for Rex and his gang of thugs? I did it for you. All those sons and daughters that you can't have, on Eve — in a generation or two, they'll own Mars."

"What are you talking about?"

She had to repeat it, twice.

I turned my back on the view and stared at my wife. "Lucinda, you, you turned over our genes, the kids that would have been ours, to Rex. Doesn't that bother you?"

"No," she said, flatly.

I forced my jaw to unclench. She could say that she did it for me, but I couldn't miss how pleased she was with herself. "This project must have been a challenge," I said.

"You have no idea! The planet had been partially terraformed but I was still dealing with an atmosphere that's thirty percent of what humans require. I drew heavily on the works of Sachs and Gregg. Chow's piggyback hemoglobin studies saved me months of calculations. Without it, I don't know if I could have increased the oxygen carrying capacity without creating polycythemia."

I had no clue what she was talking about but I did gather that it had been a lot of work. "It sounds like you've been working on this project for a long time?

"Years!"

"Years," I repeated.

"I meant, it feels like years." Lucinda looked down at her feet.

"You told me that Rex started blackmailing you after the poker game, after I agreed to help him, but you were working for him long before."

"I didn't lie," she said. "The work was going too slow. He thought I needed some motivation to get it finished, and something to hold against me if I didn't do it right. I did it for you," she repeated.

She took my hand and squeezed it. "They won't look like us, Cotton. Not on the outside, and not so much on the inside, but they come from us. Together, we made a whole new race."

The running lights of a passing shuttle streaked the tube in rays of red and orange.

"Your mother was right about one thing," I said. "Our kids will grow up to be Martian Supremacists. If we lived there, they'd probably kill us in our sleep."

She shook her head. "Not Martian Supremacists. Martians. They're made from our genes. If anyone is disrespected, it'll be Rex and his group. Remember what you were like when you hit puberty? You didn't listen to a thing your parents said. Neither did I. It was amazing my mother put up with me."

I took in a big breath. "Lucinda, your mother is..."

My wife cocked her head to one side. "My Mother is what? Annoying beyond belief?"

She should be told that Mother Larry is nothing more than a memento, but I nodded at her guess and let it go.

Something else is more important: sons and daughters, in the hands of Red Supremacists. Sons and daughters I would never raise.

I have to get to Mars.