Destiny’s Choice

 

By Lifetrekker

 

 

Chapter 2

 

 

“To hell with your New Jerusalem! Your stupid hill city! This is life! Not some holy crusade!”

 

“Then why did you come?”

 

“I didn’t. I’m Martian born—bred.”

 

“A snob.”

 

“You can call me that,” replied Adita Patel as she circled the tables, staring coldly at the classmates assigned to undertake the identities of The Famous Thirty, the name given to those men and women who had battled over Mars’s decision to declare independence from Earth. “My great great great grandfather—“

 

“To hell with your great great great grandfather, or anyone else in your family, Karolek! That’s all we ever hear about from you. ‘In memory of my great great great grandfather, Colonel Armstrong Karolek, who arrived with the first settlers and who terraformed--!” Sadmir Bartok glanced at Adita, a blush painting his solid Serbo-Croatian features. “Bah!”

 

“And well you should! Without him, or his colleagues—or others of his vein you wouldn’t be sitting here right now flapping your mouth like some Johnny Dickinson—“

 

“Dickinson?”

 

“I’d think an ancestor of yours?” Adita cocked her head and shot him a crooked smile.  “Like you he argued during the vote for American independence against independence! He sought reconciliation.”

 

“Who cares about the United States! It’s passé! We’re talking Mars!”

 

“That’s right!”

 

            “Except that the ideals and the shortcomings of what we fight for and against start their and with the Western ideologies of the eighteenth century.”

 

Hayley sat back, crouching, evaluating, and enjoying the play and interaction, as the class became their assigned roles. Of course, she had chosen Adita Patel, the most outspoken in her course on the Founding of the Republic of Mars, to play Marla Karolek, the John Adams of Martian Independence and her great great mother. So far, she had been pleased by the selection. Not that the two women looked anything alike. Bronze and admiringly dark, Adita was slim and short, much more so than the Amazonian built Marla Karolek. Still the stubborn bull-headedness and passionate devotion to the fundamental ideals of the U.G.C. and its less powerful predecessor, the United Nations, would have made the two friends, or so she thought. Even now, almost 120 years later, Hayley wondered about that spark and the familial connections that still so politicized her family.

 

She hid her grin as Adita parried with Sadmir, who had the role of Jerome Glucksenheim, who had insisted that Martians could never handle any kind of independence. “We need the United Galactic Confederation for guidance, for money,” he argued from the risers where the classroom’s built-in VAS workstations rimmed the classroom. He brushed back his curly jet-black hair. Like Adita and several others in the room, he wore the bright orange jumpsuit of Defense Force Cadets.

 

            “Shortcomings! Blazes, Adita!” Peter Jones, a former Bahamian, slammed his dark brown hands on his desk. “There you go again! Disparaging the government you have sworn to defend and protect.”

 

            “I am not!”

 

            “Karolek never brought up this goddammit line about the correctness of U. G. C. culture!”

 

            “She did, too! I found this letter in the archives—“

 

            “Patel, face it. Your argument is dead and buried. No one wants to hear—“

 

“For heaven’s sake, Adita!” Tom Watson exploded. A toe-head with a strict military buzz, his dark khaki slacks, and black shirt made him seem almost albino. His gray eyes burned red as he confronted his similarly clad colleague. “How can you question DeBow or the U.G.C.? You sound like a damn Green. Doesn’t the oath you took for the corps mean anything?”

 

Flush highlighted Adita’s South Asian complexion crimson. She walked towards Tom, “My oath doesn’t mean I have to act like a blind jarhead! I have the same right as any other citizen to question the political tenets and actions of my government.”

 

“You owe the U.G.C. your loyalty!” demanded Sadmir. Several centimeters shorter than Tom, his wide shoulders squared to fight, his hands contracted into hammers ready to ram his opinion down the throat of anyone who would defy him.

 

“Now, you’re questioning my loyalty!” Accustomed to the intensity of these debates, and personal opinions they often touched upon, the class flinched when repeated Jones’s actions.

 

“If the shoe fits—!” Tom pointed accusingly.

 

“Whoa!” Hayley moistened her lightly painted lips and gestured for calm. “Loyalty is not the issue.”

 

            “But?” Peter and Sadmir wheeled in unison.

 

            “But nothing!” A stronger, more authoritarian voice projected itself from the doorway at the top of the arena. Instantly, a dozen or so orange clad bodies straightened to attention. “Your instructor asked you to cease this line. The argument is old and at this moment, mute.”

 

            “Yes, sir!” The cadets replied.

 

            The civilian students, the remaining members of the class snickered.

 

            “I guess with that,” Hayley smiled at the lieutenant in the doorway, “means the end of class.” The various individuals reached for their attaches. Please review today’s session and the diaries and notes of your respective ministers. Many of you were too silent. As I said on the outset, everyone is required to participate.”

 

            “Maybe if fewer cadets were in this class,” grumbled one of the civilians.

 

            “Dr. Genetti’s the best historian on this campus,” trumpeted Tom, who was tilting his brows flirtatiously in her direction.

 

            “I’m afraid my grandmother has me beat.”

 

            “But didn’t she die last term?” said Sadmir before he could censor himself.

 

            “Sadmir!” Adita hissed.

 

            Hayley swallowed. “Yes,” she choked on her reply, but smiled, hoping to camouflage the pain she had lived with for the last year.

 

            “I’m sure Sadmir--,” Adita immediately apologized.

 

            “I’ve just got the damned’ed mouth.”

 

            “Yes you do,” Lieutenant Carol Chang said evenly with each step she took coming down the steps, her eyes boring in on each of her students.

 

            “Sorry, ma’am,” Sadmir stuttered before he gave his C.O. a quick glance. “You’re the best. See you at the book talk, Saturday.”

 

            “It’s okay,” Hayley smiled after them as he left, her sparkling blue-green eyes, sad and soulful.

 

“Yes,” Tom winked. “The lecture, Hayley.” The playboy nearly crashed into Chang’s shorter, but solid body. “Sir!”

 

“Mister—you’re going to be skating on the Polar Caps very soon—without a tank.”

 

            Quietly, trying to look unflustered, Hayley snatched her valises and an indigo blazer she had set on the podium at the back of the rooms lecture pit.

            “Sorry about that,” Carol patted Hayley’s back as she gathered her belongings. “Sometimes they don’t think.”

 

            Nearly five centimeters shorter than Hayley, Lieutenant Carol Chang seemed irrelevant as Hayley leaned into the touch.  “Don’t worry about it,” Hayley lied. She knew Carol could see through her facade.

 

“You know, they really love you.”

 

“You my friend are very persuasive.”

 

Carol led Hayley up the stairs to the upper exit. “No. No one takes an advanced level course in Martian history without cause and since only Sadmir, Adita, and Achombe have any designs outside engineering and the hard sciences, the only explanation is you.

 

Hayley sighed and turned back to look at her friend as she turned off the lights and closed the door. She swiped the gossamer strands of her hair back from her face, wondering for the umpteenth time whether she should mimic her friend and cut off her hair. Carol’s hair, shiny and black beneath the corridor’s florescent lights, was cut short. It hung at her earlobes.

 

“What are you doing here? I thought you had flight training at thirteen thirty.”

 

“It was canceled,” Carol answered flatly. “Do you have time to get lunch?”

 

“Yes--I’m glad Tanner set you free,” said Hayley. “I really didn’t want to spend another afternoon reviewing my notes.”

 

They found the closest mover and settled into a cab.

 

“Is Watson giving you any problems? You know, he has a crush on you.”

 

Hayley blushed and checked the buttons on her blouse, worried that one of them might have popped open.

 

 “Hayley, the Temptress.” Carol chuckled.

 

Hayley’s cheeks heated to crimson. “I think not. Look at me, the Olive Oyl of Mars.”

 

Carol laughed almost too loudly. “Face it, Hayl, you’ve got a mug that men love.”

 

“Yeah, yeah. Men who like my face should be arrested. Hell, Carol!”

 

“Baby face.” Carol pretended to pout as she pinched the cherub roundness of Hayley’s left cheek. Now Hayley laughed. “Better, buddy.”

 

The mover angled off the main track and slowed as it reached the Main Commons track. It stopped long enough for the two to exit and join the flowing tide of the hungry students, faculty, staff, and assorted visitors.  Overlapping tiers filled with spacious study nooks, galleries, stores, offices, serpentine people movers and escalators, and glass encased elevator lobbies spread outward like a hundred spokes in a gigantic web.

 

Hayley stepped up to a vacant prep station. “Vegetarian Delight on whole nut grain bread—lemonade, slightly tart—full glass ice, crushed,” she ordered and slid her credit identification through the payment slot and pressed her thumb against the scanner. She waited a few moments. The processing light changed from red to yellow and then green. When the door opened, Hayley reached in and removed a tray.

 

She joined Carol, who with her tray already in hand, led Hayley with programmed effortlessness away from the banks of food processors out to the main dining patio, which was littered with a noisy accumulation of Martian humanity. Weaving through the narrow corridors between the expanse of tables, chairs, briefcases, and outstretched legs, Carol intuitively, as if guided by the newly engineered navigational sensors she had helped with while working on her second doctorate, found the only empty table.

 

Sitting and setting her tray down on the transparent polymer tabletop, Hayley snickered and shook her head in disbelief. “You could find a red igneous scarab in the dunes of Utopia Planitia.”

 

Carol sat. She drew her legs up under her medium frame and flashed that knowing, almost cocky, grin that at times could drive Hayley crazy. “You put yourself in the hands of a top-notch pilot and I’ll get you anywhere.” Carol removed the cap to her bottle of berry flavored water and took several gulps. Then she took a ravenous bite from her sandwich and opened a package of potato crisps. “Your classes go well?” she inquired after swallowing.

 

Hayley nodded an affirmative as she opened a bottle of lemonade and poured the contents into the glass. “Yours?”

 

A graduate student in propulsion engineering and systems design, Carol also taught in the United Galactic Confederation’s Defense Force flight officer’s program. “Aah,” her answer was noncommittal. “I was glad you were free for lunch. I needed to talk to you.”

 

“Why?” Hayley took a bite of her sandwich. It crunched.

 

“Tanner and I won’t be able to attend the book talk Saturday.”

 

“No!” Hayley put down her sandwich and stared in horror. Her stomach almost leapt into her throat. “Carol, you know I need your support. You were the one who talked me into getting up there and making a complete fool of myself! You’ve got to be there!”

 

“I’m sorry, Hayl, but we can’t.” Carol’s lips curled apologetically. “Orders. We’re leaving at 0530 tomorrow morning.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Taking the entire cadet corps on maneuvers to the Alpha Centari system. We’ll be gone all weekend.” Carol laughed when Hayley shook her head. “Come on, Hayley. You don’t need me. You’ll be great. You lecture every day.”

 

Hayley grumbled her stomach agitating. “It’s not the same.”

 

“How?”

 

“I’m not up on a stage.”

 

“No, you’re down on a stage. And Saturday, you’ll just have a larger audience, except for my students who can no longer come. So,” she said cheerfully, “you should think of this as a blessing in disguise. No Tom.”

 

Hayley snickered at the logic. “What about the reception? You know how I hate parties. I’m always so tongue-tied, claustrophobic. I really don’t trust Delores, or my mother.”

 

“They’re just proud of you,” consoled Carol. “Hayley, have courage. You’ll be great. You always are.”

 

Nodding, Hayley emitted a weak smile. She picked up her sandwich, but found the gymnastic exercises taking place in her stomach had dulled her appetite. So, putting it down, she emptied the contents of her glass and listened as Carol described her morning and the new hyperlight PSOL six engines, a new propulsion system Carol was dissecting and troubleshooting as a part of her doctoral dissertation. “Right now there are so many bugs in the system—it could take a decade to make it practical for current applications,” she said with enthusiasm as Hayley listened. “Of course, the applications—“ Carol’s wristcom beeped. “Excuse me,” she said, and then activated her wristcom.

 

It was Tanner. There was a crisis, one of the cadets. Carol said nothing else. She had to leave.

 

Seeing Carol go off to mother her cadets, Hayley, no longer hungry, returned to the confines of her cluttered office, or as she liked to joke, her converted house-droid storage cabinet. Old books, discs, scraps of information, and a hundred other little odds-and-ends lay scattered on top of her desk and shelves.  She took a few minutes and tidied the mess, making the small space a little more functional. “VAS on,” she sat in front of her workstation. The screen flickered on and she called up her notes for the book talk. Sensing their familiarity, she perceived a growing awareness that she had of late. She realized that if she looked at her notes one more time, her brain would overload and explode. She wanted to scream and throw up her hands in total frustration.

Her eyes drifted to a small photograph on the narrow shelf above her monitor. Taking it she fingered the smooth, cool detail of the silver framing her namesake, her maternal grandmother, Dr. Hayley Karolek. Attired in the long black robes and white and purple cowl of academia, the steely-eyed face stared back as if she knew Hayley were looking at her. Hayley swallowed. A small tear leaked from beneath her fair lashes. It had come so fast, Hayley shuddered. The thick silver hair had thinned and turned ice-gray hair. Her strong body had shriveled, relegating her to a self-propelling, then manually pushed, airglider. A year and a half, that was all it took.

Grandma, Hayley mouthed and finally acknowledged the hand the older woman held with consanguineous pride. Adorned in the same accouterments of scholarly achievement, Hayley looked forward, mirroring the pride she felt in the grasp. It was the day the U.G.C. had announced the prizes for research and scholarly writing. The prize had been for the tome of Martian history she and the older Hayley had spent more than a decade researching and writing; it was also the day the university had bestowed on her the full rank of professorship.  Heaving a lonesome sigh, her heart as heavy as the day of the woman’s death, Hayley fought back against the depression she knew resided within her being. “Grandma—my light. Help me.” It was her prayer, the only one she ever uttered.

 

The university’s voice modulator activated and filtered through the office’s comm-system. “Dr. Genetti.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Council-Representative Delores Genetti-Sharpleton is on-line.”

 

Hayley grimaced. “Put her through.”

 

A new window spread like a virus, blotting out the text on her screen. A darker, more regal version of herself, sans freckles, appeared.

 

Unlike Hayley, Delores had acquired the same Mediterranean features of the Genetti bloodline. Her eyes were brown with darker flecks of chocolate sprinkled throughout. Meticulously painted and outlined with pencil and other highlights, Delores’s eyes were dark and deliciously rich. Porcelain, cherry-red lips parted exposing perfectly sculptured teeth. Delores’s charcoal-brown hair hung short, curling just slightly along her velvety cheeks in the contemporary fashion popularized by the women forming the Martian elite. She wore a tight, light blue kimono-styled dress.

 

“Fast at work, little sister?” Delores joked, letting just a hint of condescension slip.

 

More than six years older, Delores shared almost none of Hayley’s personality traits. Delores was a complete extrovert. She loved to mingle and dicker with bureaucrats, technocrats, physiocrats, and anyone else of influence in the Terran solar system. The tussle and gambits that could be won on the Parliamentary Space Station, which hung midway between Earth and the Lunar colonies, or in the Legislative Council of the Martian Colonies, where she currently served as a representative from District Three of Martian Central, brought her unending satisfaction. In short, Delores was a politician; and like her husband, the renown Minister Bruce Sharpleton, and their mother, Governor Pro Tempore Sophia Karolek -Genetti, a damn good one.

 

“Hello, Delores.” Hayley thought her sister beautiful. She idolized her, but--.

 

“I tried to contact you earlier. Did you forget your wristcom?”

 

“No—the imaging receptors haven’t been working. I took it in for repairs. I forgot to get a loner. I’m sorry.”

 

“No matter. I thought your last class ended at thirteen hundred hours?”

 

“It did. Carol came by. We had lunch.”

 

“The irrepressible Lieutenant Chang—and how is your favorite space jockey, cadet nursemaid?”

 

“She’s leaving on a mission this evening.”

 

“No security blanket,” Delores tisk-tisked, seeming to take almost a perverse pleasure in Hayley’s disappointment. “That’s too bad.” Hayley wondered whether the lamentation had any truth or whether Delores simply echoed the sentiment she thought she wanted to hear.

 

“I’m sure the Faculty Literary Board will make an AV-ROM so Carol can catch a replay. Have you been working on your presentation? ... You’re so compulsive,” Delores chided when Hayley nodded an affirmative. “Hayley, it was perfect last week.”

 

“I was just double checking—making sure the visuals were properly aligned and that I remembered my cues.”

 

“Hayley, you need to get away from the office. That’s why I called. Bruce has a meeting on Parliamentary and won’t be home until late. I thought maybe you and I could go out for a bite and a bit of shopping. That’s what you need—a new dress or suit for the presentation.”

 

“I’ve already decided what I’m going to wear.” Hayley declined Delores’s suggestion. She wanted to wear the simple dress Grandma Hayley had helped her pick out on their last excursion to the Lunar Markets several years earlier. Granted, it wasn’t new or in fashion, but it fit and she liked it. Besides, Hayley rationalized, she needed to wear something to remind her that the spirit of her mentor was still close and watching over her. She recognized the fallacy of her metaphysical beliefs. Yet, like an athlete who went through a set of pre-ordained rituals prior to a big tournament, Hayley wanted to keep to her superstitions.

 

“The green dress is a good choice,” Delores agreed. “Come over anyway. You need a diversion.”

 

“In about an hour?” The thought of spending time with Delores somehow sounded nice.

 

“Then I’ll see you—and bring your credits—just in case.”

 

The screen went blank. The text of her talk returned. Hayley looked at it. Her stomach jumped. Oh no, she thought to herself, not again. Grimacing, she gave her abdomen a pat.