The autonomous had picked up Z at the hotel in town to bring her out to the shoot. The door swung open, Z stood on the gravel drive and looked up three stories to the peaked roof of the manor. The early morning air was cool and humid, with the promise of a warm and sticky afternoon. Alonzo was waiting on the front landing and descended the steps to greet her.
“Good morning, Ms Nasri. May I take your things while the shoot is on?”
Z handed him her bag and a light shawl she had been wearing. “Take these. Thank you, Alonzo.”
“You know the way to the back lawn?”
“Yes, I’ll guide myself,” she replied. Alonzo nodded, then returned to the house, where a lab had been set-up to examine the valuable package inside Z’s purse.
A makeup tent stood to the side of the lawn behind the house. Z sat in the chair and took out her tablet while the hair dresser and makeup artist fussed over her. She wanted to get this over with quickly—two hours, from makeup to end of interview. She had brought the headpiece but didn’t want to give them time to learn too much. Bargaining chip. Within half an hour Z sat across from an empty chair on the back lawn of the estate. The camera operator adjusted a fill light pointed at Z’s face and returned to his console. From there, he moved the three drone cameras into their primary positions. Ross was late; Z had anticipated as much. Working for him meant enduring an endless chain of sleights, calculated to remind her who truly held the most power. Even after delivering the much-coveted headpiece to Alonzo, she still could not be shown a moment of graciousness. Z took a breath and focused on her notes.
Julius came out of a side door of the house and nearly skipped across the lawn. He wore black slacks and knit shirt, a ThreadBand across his forehead. The camera operator began the recording in time to catch Z greeting him.
“Good morning. It’s a beautiful day for changing the world,” he declared, shaking Z’s hand and sitting.
“Are you going to wear that for the interview?” Z asked, gesturing to the ThreadBand.
“We’re launching it the day the interview posts.”
“So, do you think it will sell?”
“I guarantee it. The preorder is sold out. I owe part of that to you. You have made their mystique so powerful that every Marked person wants to buy one.”
“And it only works for Marked people?” Z asked.
“You have to use your Telmara positive to activate it, so every ThreadBand is paired with only one Marked owner.”
“May I ask you a personal question? If you have to be Marked to activate it, then how is it you are wearing one?”
“What do you mean?”
Z gestured to a chair. “Sit down. It’s my interview, this time.”
Julius scrutinized Z’s expression for a moment, then sat.
Z began, calmly, “As I did the research, an interesting scenario came to light: it was after NASA made it known that the next crew would need to include Marked people that you stepped into the spotlight, declaring yourself a Marked executive, leading a division of Marked brainchildren, promising AI that would restart the Martian city. Have you ever produced a positive test result to prove you are Marked?”
She paused for just a second to allow for a cutaway to Julius’ expression of surprise and rising displeasure.
“Just what are you implying?” he demanded.
“I’m not implying, I’m stating. You claimed to be Marked and you used that to give Logisen the advantage in competing to win a supplier contract for the first Mars colony. You pretended to have Martian heritage.” Now she waited.
Julius abruptly stood, causing the drone to quickly adjust to keep him in the shot. He sneered and pointed at Z. “Did you say pretending? This is ridiculous. You have my genotype. You know I’m Marked. What are you trying to get away with?”
“Accusations aside, you provided us with something you claimed was your genotype file. That’s very different than us acquiring a sample from you and testing it.”
Julius spat in Z’s face. “There’s my sample.”
Z wiped the spit away as best she could, stood, reached into her pocket and produced a Telmara blood sampler. “Prove it. Here on camera, give me a sample I can verify.”
“To hell with you.”
“Be honest, you’d love to prove me wrong. If you’re Marked, I’ll apologize on the show. But I don’t believe you are.”
Julius took a long moment to size-up his opponent. At every opportunity, he had tried to push her into a corner where she would have no choice but to join Logisen; and now she wanted to throw away that opportunity. What was this about? She knew he was Marked, so was she being pressured to do this? Did it get out that she was defecting to Logisen? Was she trying to protect her NASA image? Whatever the objective concealed by her provocation, Julius felt certain that if he called her bluff he would finally control Commander Elizabeth Nasri. He held out his finger and pushed it into the blood sampler.
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...
On the flight back to the States, Z held her bag in her lap and felt the import of the two deceptions she carried inside. Together they effected the slight of hand that would bring down Julius and hopefully save the City of Ghosts from Logisen. The first deception was the replica headpiece her team had created in the lab and which she had just proffered to Julius’ researchers as if it were the real thing—a feint that would buy her the time she needed to ensure her other ruse had worked.
The other deception had begun weeks earlier, at the New Mars Conference. There, she had produced a differently engineered replica headpiece—one designed to deliver a gene edit. She had placed the headpiece stones over Julius’ temples and they had delivered anesthetic and a vector containing a strand of DNA without the Martian variant. While Julius reeled from the anesthetic, that vector had begun his transformation from Marked to unmarked. But Z needed proof that it had worked. The sample of blood in her bag would tell if she had succeeded.
A few days later, Z sat in Triche’s office, nervously awaiting the test results from Telomics. This time there would be no formal envelope and card announcing the results of the test. Instead, they would receive a bland, clinical but authentic analysis of Julius’ genotype and, if things went as Z had planned, a report that he was unmarked.
The platinum assistant strode into Triche’s office, stood at the desk and silently beamed a report to her screen. Triche opened it, studied the contents and spoke to her assistant. “Send this memo to Katya Temple at Logisen: I advise you to view these results which we will report on the next Path of Discovery show.” Then, while the assistant quietly beamed the memo and results, Triche waved it back to its place on the couch and turned to Z. “My guess is that Ms Temple will be happy to see these results.”
Z felt sudden cold. Her mock headpiece must have failed. She had thrown away her chances. She had known in her heart that this outcome was a possibility; if so, then why had she tried? She sighed. It was for the ghosts who inhabited the City when she wore the headpiece. She wanted their lives and deaths to be remembered, not erased like those of countless other civilizations.
Triche slowly shook her head. “A total breach of trust. He tried to pull-off a fraud. Katya Temple, I’m sure, will be happy to take over as the new head of Logisen.”
Relief flowed from Z’s shoulders down her body the way a stream cascades down a cataract. Her gambit had worked.
...
The story had leaked to much speculation and hand-wringing over the future viability of Logisen, half the world’s transportation infrastructure, and the first Mars colony. Kellogg watched the show with interest; he wanted to see exactly how World Media would perform this very public takedown. He leaned back in his chair and watched the spitting and finger prick, and the return to the studio, where Z sat together with Triche, who was making a rare appearance in front of the camera. Triche turned to the screen behind her and, with a gesture, revealed the dizzying progression of color-coded letters A, C, T, and G that was the readout of Julius’ genotype. She highlighted a region of nucleotides that should have contained the Martian variant, but the variant was missing. Then she shook her head, in disgust. “A complete scam. All this time he was unmarked.”
Looking back from the genotype display, Z remarked to Triche. “The first odd thing I noticed was that he didn’t wear a red pin. That he surrounded himself with Marked people—people who introduced themselves with a suffix as in, ‘I’m Robert. Marked.’—but he never spoke of himself as Marked in the conversations I had with him. That gave me just an inkling that something was not right.”
Triche furrowed her brow with concern and leaned forward. “And you followed your instinct and it was correct.”
Z nodded with satisfaction. “Apparently so.”
“Might your ‘inkling’ have been a byproduct of the many times you’ve worn the headpiece? A sixth sense?”
“I’m hoping to experiment with that if NASA sends me back.”
“Well, if you go back do you think you’ll have any problems with the Logisen systems—after all, the division that built them is in some disarray. Julius Ross was such a dynamic force behind the growth of the company that this falsehood throws all his decisions into question. Their stock is falling. The board has asked Ross to step away. He refuses. It is a civil war that risks tearing the company apart.”
“The systems are built. The people are trained. We have technicians monitoring quality. The systems work well, even if the company is in trouble. And if NASA selects me for the crew, then I can help bring the City’s systems back online. We may not even need Logisen.”
Triche turned to the camera. “In the interest of providing full disclosure: Ross is suing World Media for slander.”
Z shook her head. “He can claim whatever he wants, but he has to back it up with a blood sample. We have a verified Telmara test that says he is unmarked.”
Triche spoke regally to the camera. “There you have it: the end of a long and twisted journey for Julius Ross. Count on us for more coverage of this fascinating story as it continues to unfold.” Then, turning to Z, “Commander Elizabeth Asala Nasri. Thank you for your investigation.”
The lights in the studio dimmed, audio removed their mics, and Z and Triche stood at the same time. The producer called out the audience data—the buzz was through the roof.
Triche leaned her head toward Z and said smugly, “You know, Katya Temple told me that you were joining Logisen—that World Media would lose you.”
Z was not surprised. “Hubris leads to false assumptions. Julius is a man with no loyalties and he assumed I would be the same. But since Mars, I’ve learned a bit about loyalty.”
Triche turned an ear to listen closely. “Hmm, have you….”
“I knew that once he had the headpiece, he would want everything he could steal from the Martian peoples.” Z turned to face Triche, knowing the significance of what she would say next. “I used his avarice to throw him off balance while I took the candy from right in front of his greedy little face.”
Triche took in her compliment, one of the few that had ever meant something to her. “And you gave it to the world, didn’t you,” she concluded.
Z gently shook her head. “I gave it back to the Martians.”
Triche gave a thin, wry smile back at Z. “You could rise up the ladder at World Media with an attitude like that. I’ll be more careful when I negotiate your contract.”
Z shifted her gaze past Triche’s shoulder into the dark edges of the studio, her smile and boldness now gone. “Maybe you won’t need to. There won’t be a show at all unless Sharp sends me back.”
Triche looked at Z in disbelief. “Have you seen the response to your plea for help?”