Greenies

He nodded. 'Very well,' he said. 'See if you can scare up a few special forces members from Eden to go in plain clothes and keep an eye on things. That's about all we can do.'

'Right, General,' Warren promised. 'I'll get right on it.'

Warren signed off and Jackson, knowing that further sleep would be impossible, got up and walked to his pantry. He opened it and removed a small box full of Agricorp Greenbud. He walked to one of the kitchen cabinets and removed an electric bong. He filled it with fresh water, cut a slice of lemon and dropped it into the water, and then carried it to the seat by his window, which looked out over two other housing buildings. He took a few hits and tried to relax, his mind spinning with worry over several different things.

The vote was only a week away. It was anyone's call how it would turn out. Jack Strough, in the tradition of WestHem special interests dating back to the late twentieth century, had used a large portion of his organization's available funding (which came from the dues paid by the workers) to produce slickly done commercials touting his side of the ballet issue and then buying up hundreds of hours on every MarsGroup Internet channel to air these commercials. Jackson had seen many of these productions personally. One could hardly turn on any show on MarsGroup without seeing one at every break.

Strough's commercials were very reasonably worded. He took care to never insult Laura Whiting in any way, knowing how the populace revered her. Instead, he chose to combine graphic war images and cold WestHem military figures with the implied threat that worse would follow if Mars did not vote to come to terms and take advantage of the position of strength it now held.

The commercial that had been playing over the past two days was a perfect example of this. It opened with images of wounded men and women — all Martians — being brought in from the field and treated by medics. It showed shots of the dead lined up in neat rows. Jack Strough's voice would then begin speak.

'The battle we just fought for this planet was an honorable one, a just one, but a bloody one, costing us over three thousand Martian lives and wounding more than six thousand. We have achieved our goal of freeing ourselves from the tyranny of WestHem domination and influence. We have sent a very powerful message to the corporations of our mother planet.

'But the time for the sword is at an end. It is now the time for healing, for reconciliation. We stand in a position of strength right now but that will change if we do not take steps to come to terms with our former masters. They have a population of more than five billion. They have more than thirty million men under arms. They have vowed this planet will never achieve autonomy from them.

'These images you see are from a conflict in which they vastly underestimated us, in which they failed to send enough men to complete their mission. And even so, we barely scraped through without losing Eden to them. If they have to come back, they will send many more men, many more machines, they will cause many more deaths, and they will take that position of strength we now enjoy away from us.

'Governor Whiting is a great person. She will go down in history as the woman who freed our people. But if we continue on the course she suggests, we will not remain free. We cannot stand up to the face of WestHem military might indefinitely. Let's stop the killing before it can begin again. Vote for reconciliation with WestHem. We will deal with these corporations under our own terms and we will enjoy peace with honor.

'I'm Jack Strough and I represent the Martian Federation of Labor. Vote for reconciliation. Vote for peace.'

Jackson had asked Laura if they could make their own commercials. He volunteered to appear in them himself, to explain to the populace that the MPG was going through a massive increase in forces, that tanks were now rolling off the assembly lines, that he had plans for even more formidable defensive positions outside of every Martian city. Laura refused.

'We will not sink down to that level,' she said. 'In the first place, the legality of using Martian credits issued by the government to purchase Internet advertising time is questionable at best. In the second place we would be seen as spewing propaganda to counter propaganda. That is not what a common sense government should do.'

She was right, of course, but that only served to frustrate him more. He couldn't help but think that they were losing the support they'd enjoyed for so long. The working Martians were turning against them, grasping at the straw of peace that Jack Strough and his cohorts were waving before them. They were becoming convinced that Mars really couldn't exist without WestHem and that reconciliation on Martian terms really was the best solution.

'We'll lose everything eventually if they vote this in,' Jackson had told Laura the day before. 'It might take awhile, but as sure as I'm standing here, we'll be right back where we were a year ago at some point.'

'You are more correct than you know,' Laura replied.

'Then what are we going to do about it?' he'd pleaded. 'Your speeches are good, Laura. The people still love you, but they're listening too much to that asshole Strough. They're letting themselves be seduced by him.'

'I know,' she said. 'I'm very worried about that. I knew something like this would happen, of course — there is always someone trying to take advantage of new circumstances — but I was hoping that by now...' She'd trailed off, sighing again.

'By now what?'

'Never mind,' she'd said. 'It's in the hands of the Martian people now. I'm hoping for some divine intervention.'

'Divine intervention?' he asked. As far as he knew Laura was an agnostic at best.

'Hopefully you'll find out soon,' she said. 'Time is running out on us.'

Laura Whiting met with hundreds of agricultural workers at the Eden AgriCorp deployment center. They were thrilled to be in her presence and they swarmed around her, posing for pictures with her, shaking her hand, hugging her, and listening to what she had to say. All were members of Jack Strough's Martian Federation of Labor — the very people Strough was trying to get to carry the vote for him. Most expressed a seemingly sincere worry about being invaded again, about losing what they'd already fought for.

'All these people here,' said one of the crew leaders, 'are going out to help harvest and care for the vegetables and the marijuana that we're trading with EastHem. We've been going full-blast for the past three weeks to get that order up to Triad and onto those ships when they arrive. Most of us were unemployed before the revolution and had been for generations. We're all working and making good money now and we're worried that it will come to an end if we don't negotiate peace with WestHem.'

'Don't you understand what you're doing?' Laura responded to him. 'You're glad for the revolution because it gave you a job and allowed you to make money. In the same breath, however, you're telling me that we shouldn't fight anymore to keep what we fought for.'

'Not if we can negotiate a suitable settlement with WestHem,' he replied.

'If we let WestHem back in here, if we allow them any sort of control over our industries or our agriculture, we will go right back to where we were within a generation no matter how favorable the terms they've offered us are. They will be using their wealth to bribe our politicians again, corrupting our government, passing laws that will slowly, one by one, take away everything that we could hope to gain by negotiating with them. Use your common sense, Dawg. You have to know that what I'm saying is true. Deep down inside you have to know that.'

The crew leader did know that what she said was true. He just didn't want to face it. He had been given a comfortable existence right here and right now and his self-interest would not allow him to think about might happen in the future.

'What about your children?' Laura asked him.

'Children?' he chuckled. 'You mean child, right? And what about him?'

'No, I mean children,' she said. 'The legislature is right now working on a document that will officially repeal the birthing restrictions on Mars. Starting as early as next week, any woman can have as many children as she wishes. We're going to bring back brothers and sisters to the planet. We're going to bring back aunts and uncles. So what are your children going to have to endure if you piss away our revolution because you're afraid of losing your union scale wages? Do you want them to have no hope of college education? No hope of having a job when they grow up? Do you want them to be called vermin like the employed class used to call you?'

The crew leader was shocked by her words, as was everyone in earshot. Laura did have a way of putting things into perspective. She knew that most of these people that she talked to would be voting against reconciliation. She knew that her trips were doing a lot to change the minds of the workforce. But it could hardly be