A mess of electrical wires tangle together along the cavern’s ceiling like a jungle of black and red vines. Lights hang down from the jungle, swaying gently as air from the Common’s central oxygen system circulates. At the center of the township dangles a massive holoCan. It’s a square box with images on each side. Pixels are blacked out and the image is faded and fuzzy, but never has the thing faltered, never has it turned off. It bathes our cluster of homes in its own pale light. Videos from the Society.

My family’s home is carved into the rock a hundred meters from the bottom floor of the township. A steep path leads from it to the ground, though pulleys and ropes can also bear one to the township’s greatest heights. Only the old or infirm use those. And we have few of either.

Our house has few rooms. Eo and I only recently were able to take a room for ourselves. Kieran and his family have two rooms, and my mother and sister take the lone second-story room.

All Lambdas in Lykos live in our township. Omega and Upsilon neighbor us just a minute’s worth of wide tunnel over to either side. We’re all connected. Except for Gamma. They live in the Common, above the taverns, repair booths, silk shops, and trade bazaars. The Tinpots live in a fortress above that, nearer the barren surface of our harsh world. That’s where the ports lie that bring the foodstuffs from Earth to us marooned pioneers.

The holoCan above me shows images of mankind’s struggles, which are then followed by soaring music as the Society’s triumphs flash past. The Society’s sigil, a golden pyramid with three parallel bars attached to the pyramid’s three faces, a circle surrounding all, burns into the screen. The voice of Octavia au Lune, the Society’s aged Sovereign, narrates the struggle man faces in colonizing the planets and moons of the System.

“Since the dawn of man, our saga as a species has been one of tribal warfare. It has been one of trial, one of sacrifice, one of daring to defy nature’s natural limits. Now, through duty and obedience, we are united, but our struggle is no different. Sons and daughters of all Colors, we are asked to sacrifice yet again. Here in our finest hour, we cast our best seeds to the stars. Where first shall we flourish? Venus? Mercury? Mars? The Moons of Neptune, Jupiter?”

Her voice grows solemn as her face with its regal cast peers down from the HC. Her hands shimmer with the symbol of Gold emblazoned upon their backs—a dot in the center of a winged circle. Only one imperfection mars her golden face—a long crescent scar running along her right cheekbone. Her beauty is like that of a cruel bird of prey.

“You brave Red pioneers of Mars—strongest of the human breed—sacrifice for progress, sacrifice to pave the way for the future. Your lives, your blood, are a down payment for the immortality of the human race as we move beyond Earth and Moon. You go where we could not. You suffer so that others do not.

“I salute you. I love you. The helium-3 that you mine is the lifeblood of the terraforming process. Soon the red planet will have breathable air, livable soil. And soon, when Mars is habitable, when you brave pioneers have made ready the red planet for us softer Colors, we will join you and you will be held in highest esteem beneath the sky your toil created. Your sweat and blood fuels the terraforming!

“Brave pioneers, always remember that obedience is the highest virtue. Above all, obedience, respect, sacrifice, hierarchy …”

I find the kitchen room of the home empty, but I hear Eo in the bedroom.

“Stop right where you are!” she commands through the door. “Do not, under any condition, look in this room.”

“Okay.” I stop.

She comes out a minute later, flustered and blushing. Her hair is covered in dust and webs. I rake my hands through the tangle. She’s straight from the Webbery, where they harvest the bioSilk.

“You didn’t go in the Flush,” I say, smiling.

“Didn’t have time. Had to skirt out of the Webbery to pick something up.”

“What did you pick up?”

She smiles sweetly. “You didn’t marry me because I tell you everything, remember. And do not go into that room.”

I make a lunge for the door. She blocks me and pulls my sweatband down over my eyes. Her forehead pushes against my chest. I laugh, move the band, and grip her shoulders to push her back enough to look into her eyes.

“Or what?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

She just smiles at me and cocks her head. I back away from the metal door. I dive into molten mineshafts without a blink. But there are some warnings you can buck off and others you can’t.

She stands on her tiptoes and pecks me good on the nose. “Good boy; I knew you’d be easy to train,” she says. Then her nose wrinkles because she smells my burn. She doesn’t coddle me, doesn’t berate me, doesn’t even speak except to say, “I love you,” with just the hint of worry in her voice.

She picks the melted pieces of my frysuit out of the wound, which stretches from my knuckles to my wrist, and pulls tight a webwrap with antibiotic and nervenucleic.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask.

“If I don’t lecture you, you don’t quiz me on what’s what.”

I kiss her on the nose and play with the thin band of woven hair around her ring finger. My hair wound with bits of silk makes her wedding band.

“I have a surprise for you tonight,” she tells me.

“And I have one for you,” I say, thinking of the Laurel. I put my sweatband on her head like a crown. She wrinkles her nose at its wetness.

“Oh, well, I actually have two for you, Darrow. Pity you didn’t think ahead. You might have gotten me a cube of sugar or a satin sheet or … maybe even coffee to go with the first gift.”

“Coffee!” I laugh. “What sort of Color did you think you married?”

She sighs. “No benefits to a diver, none at all. Crazy, stubborn, rash …”

“Dexterous?” I say with a mischievous smile as I slide my hand up the side of her skirt.

“Reckon that has its advantages.” She smiles and swats my hand away like it’s a spider. “Now put these gloves on unless you want jabber from the women. Your mother’s already gone on ahead.”

3

The Laurel

We walk hand in hand with the others from our township through the tunnelroads to the Common. Lune drones on above us on the HC, high above, as the Goldbrows (Aureate to be technic) ought to be. They show the horrors of a terrorist bomb killing a Red mining crew and an Orange technician group. The Sons of Ares are blamed. Their strange glyph of Ares, a cruel helmet with spiked sunbursts exploding from the crown, burns across the screen; blood drips from the spikes. Children are shown mangled. The Sons of Ares are called tribal murderers, called bringers of chaos. They are condemned. The Society’s Gray police and soldiers move rubble. Two soldiers of the Obsidian Color, colossal men and women nearly twice my size, are shown along with nimble Yellow doctors carrying several victims from the blast.