The Martian Lie

Interludes

Interludes

I – The Madman Cometh

Roark would use his ticket, but he damn sure didn't want to.

That bitch Sienna had betrayed him. His Achilles Heel being that he had truly thought her too blindly devoted to do it. Of course, he had wised up quickly enough, but it was too late. She had thwarted his plan.

Never mind, he would come up with a new one. He wasn't sure what, yet. But he had a whole five-week voyage to the red planet to get with Bell and figure something out.

Part of him wished the pansy Richard hadn't been such a pansy. He wasn't sure if the non-pansy action would have been joining him or killing him, but his lack of action had caused quite a bit of inertia in Roark's action-driven life.

Ever since he had decided to move out of the small town he was born in, he had always been moving on to the next big thing. Until he reached the biggest thing – interplanetary domination.

But the problem with almost reaching the top is what to do next. After almost getting the biggest prize, he wasn't willing to settle for something less. So he had to think of a new plan.

He had to.

Staying on Earth was unthinkable. Richard had offered him a spot, helping out with those left behind. What good would that do? Would he gain some kind of humanitarian, good Samaritan respect from people? Possibly. Was that enough? No. Earth was about to be plunged into the dark ages, and he didn't aim to be a part of that.

So he would use his ticket. He would not do the right thing. Because the right thing wouldn't get him to the top. And he would be damned if he wasn't going to get there eventually.

II – The Legitimate Ticket

Herrera was sitting in his rectory when he received the word. After helping with the payload, he had elected to go home. He wasn't much for intricate plots to bring down dictators.

He wasn't much of a television watcher, either, but today he had it on as he made sermon notes. They were announcing the lottery winners and he knew that while some of his parishioners would be selected, the majority of them would not. He thought that if he knew who, it might inspire him in his words of encouragement come Sunday when the spaceships were gone.

He had been thinking a lot about God lately. As he hadn't in years. At first, it had always seemed to him that if man could create a second Genesis, that maybe God hadn't existed after all. But all the sudden, there was a comet coming, and it was going to destroy their world as they knew it. Possibly, there was some God in there as well. A little dose of, you made your bed, now lie in it. He liked that. It was poetic – you played God, live in your creation then.

The announcer had made it to the H's. He hadn't noticed the letter of his last name being spoken. Nobody in his church had a last name starting with H, so he wasn't listening to this portion with all his attention. That was, until he heard his own name, which was impossible to tune out.

He sat, dumbfounded. In all of his musings about what he would do on Earth after the lucky ones left, he had never imagined he would be one of them. Jordan Spencer had offered him a seat for his help and he had turned it down. He figured that had been his only shot – why would he be offered a seat if he was in the general population list?

That settled it – God was at work.

There was not a moment's hesitation in his desire to fill his ticket. He would leave the church in good hands. One of his deacons could deliver a sermon. His sermon would be his goodbye letter.