continued to live with his grandmother in a middle-class apartment.
Matt Mendez was also released but was not returned to flight status due to the dialysis shunt in his subclavian artery and vein. Two brand new kidneys, cloned from his own DNA, were being grown for him but they would not be ready for another eight weeks. Matt did not let this discourage him. He applied for flight training and was accepted with the stipulation that he would not be able to participate until he was fully healed up and his new kidneys operational. In the meantime, he would draw three hundred and twenty credits per month in temporary disability payments.
Brian Haggerty was asked to be an instructor for one of the new flight schools that was being formed in Libby. The anticipation, according to General Jackson, was that ninety-five more Mosquitoes would roll off the assembly lines before the earliest expected return of the WestHems (assuming, of course, that Jack Strough did not get a general labor strike going as he was starting to threaten) and they needed combat experienced pilots to teach them. Haggerty refused the promotion and resigned his commission with the MPG. He had had enough of war. He went back to his position with the Eden Police Department, intending to enjoy the reforms that Laura Whiting was promising for the criminal justice system.
Lisa Wong, on the other hand, resigned her position with the Eden Police Department and signed on for full- time active duty with the MPG. General Jackson was planning to vastly increase the amount of special forces troops for the next deployment and it was strongly suggested that most who had seen action in the first phase of the conflict would be promoted. She wanted her own squad and it seemed well within her reach to get it.
Lon Fargo, recognized as an especially astute special forces member, was offered a position in training new inductees to the force. He accepted the position on the condition that he would stay in Eden. His condition was granted and he was sent immediately to an intense, six-week program in New Pittsburgh to be taught how to be an effective instructor.
And then there was Belinda Creek, the ex-wife of Jeff Creek. While her former husband was enjoying his new life and newfound respect, she sat alone in the apartment they'd once shared most of the time. She had long since run out of money. Some of it had been blown by buying bogus alcohol and coffee shipments, most had been stolen by her former partner in her lucrative black market venture. She had also run out of alcohol and there was no way for her to get any more. Over a period of a week or so, just after the cease-fire was announced, while the rest of the planet was celebrating victory, she had stayed in her bed, suffering through a vicious case of alcohol withdrawal that had nearly killed her. She had had no less than twelve grand mal seizures in a six-hour period at the worst point. She had urinated and defecated upon herself and gone without food for almost six days. Slowly she had recovered and managed to get some nourishment from the welfare mart but she was blackly depressed all the time now.
Her husband was gone and with him, her hope of getting pregnant and obtaining that larger apartment. Divorce bureaucracy moved quickly on Mars and hers was final before the WestHems even left orbit. Most of her former friends had gone. They had taken jobs in the agriculture fields, in the factories, in the MPG. She had no desire to follow in their footsteps. She had been raised like her parents, believing that life owed her a handout and that the overriding concern was to avoid employment of any kind.
On October 25 she found herself sitting on her bed with a pistol in her hand. It was the tiny 3mm pistol that Jeff used to carry in his gang days, before Laura Whiting had filled his head with visions of independence and grandeur. She caressed it, touching it's cheap plastic handle, fingering the magazine protruding from the bottom.
She was very stoned. Marijuana was the one intoxicant that was still readily available on Mars since it was actually produced there and she had smoked nearly two grams of it on this evening. Instead of cheering her, however, it only made her more depressed. She hated weed, hated the way it made her feel. She wanted to be drunk, to experience the blissful nothingness of a three-day binge of Fruity.
She put the pistol against her head, her finger caressing the trigger. She did not quite have the nerve to pull it just yet but she was working that way.
The computer screen was on, showing a MarsGroup soap opera that she used to like but had lost interest in as of late. The show ended while she was contemplating suicide and a brief top-of-the-hour news report came on.
'This is Jenna Cocksman reporting on the latest news of Mars,' the middle-aged news anchor said. 'In New Pittsburgh today, union leader Jack Strough blasted Laura Whiting again on what he called her 'unrealistic dreams' for the future of our planet. Strough, the leader of a growing number of citizens who advocate conditional reconciliation with WestHem, was particularly contemptuous over Whiting's vague plans for resuming trade if and when an armistice is ever signed.'
'What exactly are we going to trade for?' Strough's image asked in a reasonable manner. 'Whiting is proposing that we remain completely separate from the WestHem economic system, that we do not accept their money nor give them these so-called credits that she has come up with. So what are they going to pay us in? How are we going to compensate the workers who pick all the food and produce all of the profits? She has no answers for that. While I respect her for the stand she's forced us to make for independence the simple fact of the matter is that we need WestHem in order to survive as an economy. They are the market we sell our goods to.'
'Whiting had little to say about Strough's statement,' Cocksman continued. 'The only effort she made to defend her proposed policies was to state that Strough and the growing number of those who follow him, 'just don't get what the revolution was supposed to be about'.'
'I got what it's about,' Belinda said contemptuously, grabbing her crotch a few times. 'I got it right fuckin' here.'
'In other news,' Cocksman went on, 'the delegation of diplomats from EastHem are now less than a week out and the prospect of increasing trade with them is looking more and more hopeful.'
'Fuckin' EastHem,' Belinda spat, putting the gun back to her head. 'Who gives a fucking shit?'
'As we've been reporting over the past two weeks,' Cocksman said, 'the EastHems are requesting luxury agricultural items such as prime meat cuts, prime vegetables, and marijuana. In return they are offering to trade Indonesian coffee, Turkish cigarettes, and, perhaps most welcome to a whole lot of thirsty Martians, beer, wine, and other spirits from throughout their empire. Now interestingly enough both Laura Whiting and Jack Strough agree that this is a lucrative and...'
Belinda stared at the screen, not hearing anything after 'beer, wine, and other spirits'.
The report ended a few moments later and the next soap opera —
'Computer,' she said, 'display all MarsGroup print stories regarding beer, wine, and other spirits being brought to Mars that were generated over the past two weeks.'
'Displaying,' the computer said. 'There are one hundred and twelve such articles, sorted by date and relevance.'
The soap opera went away and newsprint appeared in its place. Belinda had rarely read news stories throughout her life and was, in fact, barely literate at a functional level. But she read them now. And all said the same thing. The Martian government was preparing to negotiate for the shipment of booze to Mars in return for agricultural products.
'How long?' she wondered, trying to delve deeper into the articles. It took her a few minutes but eventually she found that negotiations would commence as soon as the EastHem diplomats arrived in one week. Once an agreement was reached, it would be maybe six weeks before the hooch started flowing once again.
It was a long time to wait, of course, but she thought she could stick it out. She smiled for the first time in two weeks. She got up and picked up the gun, putting it back in the bedside drawer.
Suddenly she had something to live for again.
The negotiations on the EastHem trade agreement actually took the better part of five weeks to hammer out. The sticking point was the matter of compensation for the goods. EastHem wanted Mars to convert to their system of currency — the EastHem pound. They wanted to pay Mars for the agricultural products they purchased in pounds
