Greenies

representatives to do everything in our power to bring that about. I've done what my sponsors have wanted me to do my entire career, ever since I was voting for beverage contracts on the school board. I've never been able to do what the people who elected me wanted done. My soul aches because of that and it always has. I'm a Martian and its time to start balancing the scales a little bit. I'll probably go down in flames for this stand, but at least I'll go down a hero to the Martian people and not a corrupt politician.'

'My God,' Steve said frightfully. 'You've gone ideological.'

She laughed a little. 'That I have. You're a very good chief of staff, Steve, but if you do not wish to be a part of what I'm going to be doing, I'll accept you resignation. You shouldn't have much trouble getting hired with someone else.'

He thought about that for the briefest of moments. 'I guess I'll stick with you,' he told her fatalistically. 'What the hell? I'm a Martian too, ain't I?'

'I guess you are,' she said happily. 'Now how about scheduling that press conference for me.'

'I'll get right on it.'

'And let my secretary know that I'm no longer taking calls from lobbyists.'

'Right.'

At 325 stories in height — nearly 1800 meters from base to roof — the Agricorp building was the tallest in the solar system. It stood sentinel over the downtown Eden area, towering more than 300 meters higher than any of its neighbors. More than three hundred thousand people worked in the building, most of them for the entity that had lent its name to the structure. Lobbyists, accountants, security consultants, management types, auditors, and hundreds of other job classifications all poured into the building each and every day and toiled there for eight to twelve hours or more — all of them working to keep the great empire's Martian operations running and profitable.

William Smith, as the CEO of Martian operations, naturally had his office on the very top of the building. The view was commanding. Looking southward from his huge picture window, he could see the thousands of other high rises that made up Eden and the stark border on the edge of the city where the wastelands began. The Sierra Madres Mountains could easily be seen as well, the peaks poking up over the horizon. It was a view that other men might have killed for in a city where all that could usually be seen out one's window was the bulk of another building. It was a view that Smith had long since ceased to even notice.

As the sun sank behind the horizon to the west, Smith was sitting at his large desk, his bottom planted in a genuine leather chair that had cost more than beginning apple pickers earned in a month. There were two Internet terminals on the desk before him and he was using one to hold a conference call while the other was tuned to a big three station.

'What in the hell is going on around here?' he demanded of his caller. 'Has everyone gone completely insane?'

'Sir,' said Corban Hayes, the Martian director of the Federal Law Enforcement Bureau office, 'I realize that maybe things are starting to spiral a little out of control here, but...'

'A little out of control?' Smith shouted, leaning closer to the screen. 'Correct me if I'm wrong, but did I or did I not just watch three of the planetary legislature members — politicians that have been bought and paid for and are supposed to be representing our goddamn interests here — go on live Internet and say that they support Laura Whiting? That they support independence for Mars? Maybe you saw something different than I did, Hayes, but it sure as hell looked a lot like that to me.'

'That is true, sir,' Hayes told him complacently. 'Three of them did do that. And I will also agree that a good portion of the rest of them will be forced to vote against opening an impeachment investigation into Whiting.'

'So that greenie bitch is going to remain in office!' he yelled. 'She is going to remain the governor of this planet and she has somehow managed to pervert three of our reps over to her twisted way of thinking. This is not a little out of control, Hayes, this is a goddamn nightmare.'

'I'll admit that I was somewhat surprised by the response of the greenies to her speech,' he said. 'Who would have thought that greenies would respond in the sheer numbers that they did to her call for recall email? It's inconceivable.'

'It's inconceivable but it has happened,' Smith said. 'That woman has to go and go quickly before she does any more damage here.'

'You have the big three working on a discreditation campaign,' Hayes reminded. 'I saw a few of the programs that they managed to get out today. Very impressive. I particularly liked the one that linked her with EastHem interests.'

'Yes,' Smith said. 'That was very good, very fast work on the part of the big three. The problem is that hardly any Martians watched it. I talked to Lancaster over at InfoServe a few minutes before I called you. He says that according to the media tracking computers most of the greenies are watching MarsGroup channels. MarsGroup! That sleazy, rabble-rousing excuse for a legitimate corporation. And all MarsGroup has been publishing or airing has been favorable profiles and bios on Whiting. They're canonizing the bitch and those greenies are eating it up!'

Hayes shook his head a little, as if bewildered. 'That's a pattern we've noted in the past with the greenies,' he said. 'They put very little stock in the legitimate news programs for some reason. They prefer the bland, left- wing drivel that they get on MarsGroup, God knows why.'

'Is there any way to shut MarsGroup down?' he asked. 'Some federal law against inciting riots or something like that?'

'We could probably swing a federal order of some sort on that basis,' Hayes told him. 'But I'm afraid that that would be a bad idea. We would technically be violating our own constitution by doing that and no matter what reason we offered the greenies for doing it, they would perceive that it was to silence the Whiting viewpoint. I don't even want to imagine what chaos would result from that.'

'Those ignorant greenies?' Smith said with contempt. 'What trouble could they be? I say go ahead and do it.'

'Those ignorant greenies have just sent in more than forty million emails to their elected representatives,' Hayes reminded him. 'Like it or not, they've achieved organization on this matter and they have very strong feelings about it. I'm sorry, sir, but I don't think that shutting MarsGroup down via federal order will serve WestHem interests very well. I'll run it by my superiors in Denver of course, but I'm going to recommend that it not be done. It's too dangerous.'

'Then how are we going to keep them from getting riled up any further?'

'The main goal, the only goal remains to get rid of Whiting as quickly as possible. Without her leading them the greenies will quickly go back to the way they always have been — troublesome, ignorant, but controllable.'

'Which brings us back to the question of how we do it,' he said. 'The discreditation campaign is being ignored and the impeachment is probably going to fail. What does that leave us? Can you arrange an accident for her? Or a lunatic assassin?'

'That's a possibility,' he said without hesitation. 'And it's one that I'll have my most trusted people look into. A more likely possibility is one that we've already discussed: a corruption indictment. Like you said before, Whiting admitted to taking unreported campaign contributions throughout her career. Granted, all politicians engage in this habit, but that does not present much of a problem. We're only talking about Whiting here. We can leave the other politicians completely out of the argument.'

'Didn't you say that you would have to indict the corporate people for offering these contributions? I seem to recall you speaking out against this course of action yesterday.'

'I did then,' Hayes said. 'But I didn't realize that more conventional methods of removal would be neutralized. I'm now starting to think we might have to resort to that.'

'And what about the return indictments?' Smith wanted to know. 'I can't have you discrediting Agricorp or one of our sister corporations on charges of bribery. It's bad for public relations. Do you have a way around that?'

'You'll need a scapegoat that you can blame it on,' Hayes told him. 'Pick some upper-level management type that you can live without and make it look like he and he alone got a little overzealous in trying to recruit Whiting. Rewrite your financial records so that it looks like he embezzled the money out of your assets to transfer them to Whiting. His motive could be movement up the corporate ladder. He was after your job, sir, and was willing to go to