RED PLANET SHAMUS (part II)

(© 1951 Avon Paperbacks, reprinted with permission)

2.

It is the violet hour in the Metropole. Port Gale comes alive when the Sun sets and the sky turns indigo. The Inner City – the Metropole, where its fantastic skyscrapers and elevated trams contrast with post-Martian architecture and its strict ideals of vertical and horizontal design – adorned in neon and argon, is gleaming with light. Seen from above, approaching in a transport, the city of Port Gale sits in and around Gale Crater shining like a bowl of new pennies, spilling over and glowing copper in the dusty red sand. It is the Byzantium, the Paris, the Manhattan of Mars: the center of trade, culture, education, and intrigue. It remains the largest and most populous city on Mars, though Arcadia is the capitol. It’s also the city of the damned.

Summer on Mars is hotter than Hell, day and night. As I made my way down the sidewalk, I was sweating like a New Orleans hooker on Dollar Day in July. I hadn’t planned on getting started until tomorrow, but D’Viana’s story was so moving, and she was so enthralling - so sexy - I couldn’t sit still. I headed to a seedy part of the city, off the beaten path and amok with the kind of riffraff that come in on Earth transports and crew SSR ships (Search and Rescue and Recovery) around the planet: Earth scum and Martian trash. Before I made my way up to Elysium Mons, I wanted some answers. And in this megalopolis, with its artificial phosphorescence and its countless painted birds, if you want answers about the tops, you’ve gotta start at the bottom. So I was looking for a particular dive, one I hadn’t visited in some time, but knew all-too-well: Bar d’Ivoire.

I turned down Boulevard Ti Ala, a once-magnificent promenade and shopping district, long sidelined by urban sprawl. Long-closed shops and boarded up storefronts, their luminescence burned out - sad reminders of a forgotten era - are now filled with the homeless, camped out in tents, and with derelicts and vagrants sleeping in doorways. At the end of it all, where the street meets a high wall topped with Concertina wire to keep the proletariat from encroaching on the luxurious aristocratic apartment complexes that stand beyond, there is a flickering red light. A neon beer sign for Martian Ale, whose silly radio adverts linger in the public consciousness - “Make mine a Martian!” – beckons the beautiful and the damned. It is a place where one goes to escape everything and everyone. The most famous actors in Hollywood are anonymous here. A Red Planet rathskeller in a one-story building made of indestructible Martian bricks, with a large, dirty glass window, a single wooden door riddled with bullet holes, and the smell of cigarettes and stale beer wafting from inside, Bar d’Ivoire is as dive as dive can be.  

Outside the bar, standing seven feet tall, is a familiar African man, one of a handful that work security. There’s never a dull moment at Bar d’Ivoire, and the presence of a lug like him is intimidating and great insurance for the owner, himself from Africa. With guys like this around, most trouble that gets started ends quickly.

“Zenebe!”

He turned and looked down at me. “Eddie Farrow! Well, it has been a very long time, but not so long that I would forget your face!”

Zenebe hugged me and I thanked my lucky stars that he likes me because I don’t think I would recover from any physical contact from him if he didn’t.

He was wearing a dark brown, pinstripe suit, with a black shirt open at the collar. His face was made up with chalk and Martian sand, with circles around his eyes and stripes down his cheeks: traditional Ethiopian decoration to intimidate adversaries but also to attract the ladies.

“Looking good, Zenebe. Any hot prospects tonight?”

“Always looking good, Eddie,” he smiled. “There are some very lovely Martians here tonight. Right up your alley, ah? For me, not so much.”

“No?”

“No African women tonight. I need to meet a nice one. Someone I can bestow my gifts upon,” he laughed. “After all, this is what my name means.”

I cocked my head a bit. “I thought Zenebe meant, ‘powerful and strong.’”

“Nah. That is just something I like to say,” he smiled. “Actually, it means ‘care taker,’ which is appropriate as well. Although my Mother always told me it means ‘born on a Sunday.’”

I smiled. “Well, Born on a Sunday, your secret’s safe with me!”

He laughed, big and loudly, slapping me on the back. “I’m glad! You have a good time tonight, Eddie!”

I gestured slightly with my finger and leaned in a bit; he leaned down as I whispered slightly. “I’m actually looking for, well, anybody who works the mine up at Elysium Mons. Anyone like that here tonight?”

“Oh, always with them. End of the bar, there’s six or seven guys. You can’t miss them, ah? They’re covered in dust. Not pretty like me – dirty.”

“Thanks.” I smiled and slipped him a Jackson as he opened the door for me. As you walk into the foyer, there is a second door, fixed open, and a closed transom window above it, with a handwritten sign in French that reads, “Tous sont les bienvenus en Enfer.” Translation: “All are welcome in Hell.”

The place wreaked of chlorine and the lingering smell of beer, cigarettes, and deception. The air conditioning was pounding like a Russian winter. Small relief. I caught a few stares and ignored them as I moved to the middle of the bar. I could see the miners at the far end, half in the bag and a little too loud for your average World War. I’d get to them soon enough.

The bartender wasn’t glad to see me. “No trouble tonight! If you got a Jade Fever, you come to the wrong place!”

“Really?” I looked around at all the beautiful indigenes in this dead-end gin mill and shook my head. Some of them smiled at me, so clearly, he was mistaken. Last time I was here, things did not go so well for a couple of sauced Martian goons who didn’t understand Boston rules about bar fights: the guy with the gun always wins. As the barman and I both recall, it was all over a Martian cookie with a taste for Terrans, and me with a sweet tooth.  The barman and his buddies didn’t care for mixing, and he especially didn’t enjoy seeing his fellow Martians take a beating.

I didn’t have any interest in worrying about this sap and his jones for me. I put a twenty on the bar. “No trouble tonight. Just a bourbon, rocks, with a water back.”

He served me without saying anything. Took the money, made change, and then walked to the end of the bar with the miners. I took a slug of the bourbon and winced. It was a little rough going down, but after a full day of drinking coffee and gobbling aspirin, it was downright gratifying.

I heard some noise over the ambient din of the bar. It was coming from the far end. A careful glance in my periphery and I could see the miners, being wound up by the barman.

They were all clocking me. I didn’t think they wanted dance lessons.