The Martian Lie

Chapter 14

Chapter 14 – Reunions

The ride over has been interesting, but uneventful. I spend my days reading the novel Hera gave me. It's detailed in all the events that take place that lead to the two falling in love. I can see why Hera likes it. I am bored by it. I abandon it for the final Harry Potter book quickly enough. Ron and Hermione are more my speed as a love story. I'm assuming Richard likes me for my intelligence and ambition, so I can only hope that extends to my empathy for his mortal enemy.

Speaking of his mortal enemy, Roark and I have become something of friends. He, too, has a vast knowledge of historical trivia of dictators. We share facts and theorize about all the famous tyrannical controllers and what eventually upended them. It's fun to have someone to talk to about these things now that Dr. Latimer is gone. I wonder if I'll find him on Earth. He and Roark, I suspect, would be friends. I wonder how the CIA is getting along without him now that he abandoned them. Probably just fine, since the CIA seems to survive forever.

He and Sienna are disgustingly in love. It annoys me, but only because I am unsure if I will have the same thing as them. He truly came around for her. Her betrayal, although not used to make him see her point of view, achieved setting her at a higher status – he knew he wouldn't always have her so he had to impress her.

When we aren't talking about dictators, Roark tells me stories of he and Richard when they were younger, just oil workers. Their drinking days, going out and meeting women. It makes me laugh, and I feel like I know Richard better. Our days were romantic, yes, but I missed the traditional get-to-know-your-past stage that most relationships get. I long for the easy, knowing way Sienna and Roark have with each other.

The morning we are to land, I shower and sparingly apply Hera's mascara to my eyelashes and highlighter to my cheekbones. It seems ridiculous to show up on a comet-ravaged planet full of refugees wearing makeup, but I feel compelled to put it on. I don't wear the special olive dress, but I choose my best pair of leggings and fitted shirt to put beneath the space suit. I'll save the dress for a day when I'm forgiven. If I'm forgiven. I push the thought away. Easier to only imagine the positive. I let my hair air dry and run my fingers through it until it is slightly wavy and soft.

Sienna, Roark, and I meet at the cockpit of the shuttle. Normally, we go there once a day to make sure everything is on track. It always is, as the flight it totally automated. But it makes us feel like we are doing something purposeful besides playing cards and watching videos together.

By video surveillance, we are able to determine that the survivors have clustered in mountain ranges across the world. By deduction, we decided that Richard was most likely in the Appalachian region, since it would have been closest to the Spencer compound when the waters began to rise. I hope I am right and he didn't go on a grand quest to the Rocky Mountains, but if he did, I will eventually find him.

There are a few pockets of civilization that appear to have sprung up in the mountains. Their success at rebuilding varies. One in particular looks advanced well beyond the others. Terraces have been built to accommodate crops and a settlement of homes that are more than shacks as well. We decide to aim for this settlement, not because I believe Richard to be there (although if anyone could engineer such a settlement in such a period of time, it would be him), but because as the most advanced settlement they might have news of the others in the area. They are also the most likely to be working on communication back to Mars. They are near a major metropolitan area and could have possibly raided it for communication supplies as well as survival supplies. Then again, maybe they had more to worry about. It is all speculation by Roark and me. Sienna usually reads Hera's book, which I passed on to her, when Roark and I talk shop.