Well Shit!

Jagger and Joplin popped into mind, and I couldn't help grinning. "Probably not, but with the technology of today, nothing stays hidden for long."

We finally drifted off to our rooms, bound for Sydney in the morning.

It was a short trip, and we were at her hotel by ten in the morning. It wasn't as hard to get into her suite as one would think, a little flirting from Ronnie and Jane, a few flexes from Steve, and we were in, moonstruck security and assistants following us. Quinn grinned and turned the juice up, and all three of her backup singers were hanging on him like bad fashion.

She was on the huge bed, with four or five more, and we had to pry them off gently to get to her. The pace smell of pure, high-octane sex. Her 'Mood' enhanced pheromones hung in the air like thick fog, and all of us could feel it. Most of us grinned, having long ago learned to control the effect on us. I think when Quinn's hit her the eyes popped open, and she grinned, rising from the bed in all her glory.

"Quinn! Guys! It's really good to see you."

Quinn opened his arms and she flew into them, before bouncing around to all of us. All the pheromones bouncing around had the natives wandering around in a trance, so they were paying no attention at all to us. Jet grabbed a robe and wrapped it around her, stepping over and around the writhing couples and groups as she led us to her to the living room. She sat and grinned, before sighing. "I know, I got out of control. Again. Sorry guys, it never used to hit me like this when we were home. Something about the atmosphere here seems to trigger it off, and when it takes over... well, you know."

"We know. We've talked it over, and decided what you do is up to you. Just be careful who you seduce, a bullet from the gun of an enraged spouse, male or female, will kill you just as dead as a local. Remember Bobby."

Bobby was a crooner from the fifties who had women swooning all over the world. He was good, no doubt, but the massive dose of pheromones he released at the beginning of every show had a lot to do it. He was entertaining two women after a show, not knowing they were the daughter and wife of a mobster. The enraged husbands burst into the room, one unloading the contents of a drum magazine on a Thompson submachine gun, while the other emptied his shotgun. Then he reloaded and emptied it again. There was nothing identifiable left, and it took the coroners two days to separate the pieces.

She showered, dressed, and I saw Quinn sigh when she came out with clothes on. He hadn't had sex in almost twenty years because of his wife's ailments, and though he would stay true to her until she passed, he was only hu...Martian, and the atmosphere was charged with left over pheromones.

"We're thinking about outing ourselves."

Jet gasped. "You think that's a good idea?"

"Well, we're warming up to it. It's been over a century, and by now they'll understand we mean them no harm."

"What about them harming us?"

It's a possibility they may try, and while we know all they know, they don't know much about us. We could use that to keep it peaceable."

"Well, it's good that the President is one of ours."

Quinn spoke up. "Not a good idea. Even though she was born here, a lot of people will be uneasy if they perceive an alien is leading the country. She's pretty good, but some from the past are flaming failures."

We mulled that over. Mussolini had been one of ours. Hitler, however, was home grown. Ho Chi Min, ours. Not a good example of leadership when it came to people and their rights, but he got things done. A couple of Mideastern sheiks were ours. One was a bit power mad and I didn't see a good ending, but he had already lasted longer than I thought he would, despite at least five assassinations attempts. Putin? Half, and a bitter disappointment to all of us. We were watching him closely because he was at the end of his lifespan and was showing signs of instability. We were scattered out in almost every governing body in the world.

In the end, we slept on it. Jet slept alone for the first time in over a year.

In the morning, it was decided the four Council members present would ask for a summit, and assemble everyone. The requests were sent out, and 38, a majority, would appear. Most of the others were at the end of their lifespan and couldn't attend, and sent word that we should be considering candidates to replace them.

As we left, Claudette promised she would tone it down, and Quinn surprised all of us by hugging her. Then he gave her his opinion. "Honey, do what you want to do. Most people on this world could care less who your bed partners are. Polygamy, polyandry, they're making a comeback. Remember, same sex unions were mostly illegal in the past, now most people accept it as being normal. Civilization is expanding and contracting all the time, so do what makes you happy and don't worry about it."

Wow, pretty deep for a self-professed simple farmer.

..............................................................

A year went by before the Council meeting. Some things had changed. Quinn's wife had been living in a facility for dementia patients, her mind slowly eroding from the relentless disease. He had left his farm and moved into an apartment on the grounds of the facility, and spent most of his days with her. She was slowly losing grip with reality, but every month or so she would have a remarkably clear day, and they would talk about their life together until she slipped away again. One day, she talked for two hours, telling him how much his love had meant to her and how blessed she was to have him in her life.

Then she stopped suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, and never spoke again. Death took her in a relatively short time. A lot of us showed up for the funeral, and it gave him a lot of comfort. Just as I left, I told him he'd been elected to the council, and gave him the time and place of the meeting.

"I don't want to be on the Council."

"Most of us don't, Quinn, it reminds us too much of the home we had to give up. But there's too many here just to fade into oblivion. Some have to be held in check, accountable for their actions. Others, especially the children who have come after us and accidentally discover the truth, need to be guided as they learn about their heritage. It's a heavy burden but a great honor. Your calming voice could be just what we need. The needs of the many..."

We laughed. Roddenberry was one of us, and while some of the props on the original series were hilarious, the later movies and multiple television series were pretty close. It was addictive, and we watched every minute of all of them. He finally agreed to attend at least this one meeting.

.......................................................

We met on a remote island in the Pacific, close to Fiji. The Council owned the island, and had turned into a resort for us, somewhere we could go and relax without worrying about the real world. For this week, it was closed to vacationers, so we had the run of the island.

There was a lot to be discussed, and the conversations were confrontational at times, but never out of order. We reasoned through every concern, and after due consideration, we decided to out ourselves to the world. One sticking point was what to do with the few who were developing their own rockets, to exploit our home world and a few selected meteors.

The world governments had an accord where no one country or private individual could own a planet, all the while leaving enough loopholes to get away with it.

That's when I got to go home. There was a dozen with me, including Quinn, Ronnie, and Millie. It was really strange watching our planet come into view. It had been ninety-five years since we last saw it.

................................................................................

We were reminded that while we were Martians, we could never live there again, because of our changed physiology. No longer able to breathe the air, we lived in pressurized compartments and had to wear oxygen tanks when we went outside. All of us walked the planet one last time, knowing we would never again see it in our lifetimes. We went to flag hill, a ridge dedicated to all that left, to add our personal flags to the millions already there.

After three days of discussion a plan was made to prevent a land rush on our planet. We would contact Earth, and show up in a ship, to open diplomatic relations. As a sovereign world, people couldn't touch it, and we had made sure enough weapons were brought and demonstrated to really enforce that moving against us would be a spectacularly bad idea.

First contact dominated world news for weeks, and the planet waited breathlessly for the arrival. The ship stopped just past the moon to keep it out of reach, and smaller transports finished the journey, landing just outside New York City, and arriving at the United Nations via a long procession of limousines. The hall was packed by representatives of all the countries with membership, and some that didn't but were invited anyway.

The representatives all were air masks, filtering the air into levels they could tolerate. Left without masks, they would literally suffocate from too much oxygen, a feeling akin to drowning. I think what surprised most people was how normal they looked; the most marked difference was stature. Our people average seven feet tall, and while their bodies were proportional, they tended to be on the slender side.

Several leading scientists from both worlds got together after the introductions, to share information. The earth doctors were most interested in how we had managed to remove disease from our species, and were thoroughly unsatisfied by the answers. If they had known how much our technology had already helped them with the eradication of many diseases, polio for instance, they would have been astounded.

There was a brief discussion about the recent covid epidemic, and were surprised by their answer. Most knew the disease was manmade, developed in China and got out through a leak in procedures. "Your species have a way of managing to find and manufacture your own doom. Ebola, AIDS, the list goes on. Venereal disease is constantly a real problem, with new strains emerging all the time. We fear one day you will manage to find something that will doom your species, making you extinct."

There were several warnings about their management of natural resources. "You should learn from us. We destroyed our planet to the point we nearly became extinct ourselves, and you are heading in that direction at an alarming rate. It may be too late, but you need to change course, and do what is good for your people. You Americans tout yourself as the most successful on the planet, but you've fallen behind on education, science, every major discipline in your world, and seem to be controlled by greed, kowtowing to the few and leaving the masses to fend for themselves. We've studied your forms of government, and while yours was a noble experiment, it is in great peril of collapsing. That is all we intend to say on the matter."

There were a lot of protests over what we'd said, but it was the truth and they couldn't deny it. The world made vague promises they had no way or intention of keeping, and after six months, they left, promising constant communication, leaving a few gadgets they were going to invent on their own eventually.

One of our engineers made an observation about satellites. "You've got to get rid of the obsolete ones, improve the models you're developing now. You don't and the clutter will be so much it will lead to disaster."

A few years later it did. A satellite from the sixties malfunctioned and crashed into an eighties model from Russia, and a chunk of metal the size of a basketball ripped through the space station, killing everyone aboard. One of our ships arrived, and helped them rebuild it into a self-sustaining operation, which included a ten-acre hydroponic farm. Then we strongarmed them into letting us do a salvage operation, pulling about half of the satellites circling the globe. We immediately towed them out to where they could do no harm and destroyed them, so any information they contained could not be harvested. Then we disappeared again.

..............................................................................................

Twenty years went by. Things were changing on our planet, and not for the better. The climate had gotten wildly unpredictable, and superstorms of epic damage was ravaging the world. A major ice shelf in Antarctica had finally broken loose, drifted into warmer waters, and coastlines had shrunk back on an average of twenty miles. Many islands were completely eradicated. Then years long droughts would hit, turning fertile farmland into desert. The North Pole had all but disappeared, and farms had sprung up on what were once glaciers.

Three major powers were at the brink of war, not over ideological difference, but for land. India had absorbed Pakistan after a very bitter war which reduced the male population of both countries by about a third. China was making noise about invading them and Russia. Russia had never quite recovered from the Ukraine war years ago, and many satellite countries had thrown off their yoke, but the people running the country were throwbacks to the time when they basically ruled most of Europe, and yearned to return to it. There was no chance short of nuclear intervention that they could survive a war with China. America had descended to a second-tier country, and it seems nobody took them seriously any more.

That rankled a lot of people, and they yearned to regain their status as the number one country in the world, and agents of the government actively fed information to all sides, hoping that if they all went to war, they would all be weakened or destroyed, leaving them to reclaim power.

We did what we could, trying to avert the war to end all wars. Projections were if it got bad, the nuclear options would come into play, turning vast tracts of everyone involved, as well as some of others, into a nuclear wasteland.

The council was convened, and the debates were prolonged and heated. Some were for us just taking over and putting the barbarians in their place. Others urged caution, citing it was their world and if they wanted to end it, they would.

The consensus was that if it got bad enough, we'd leave. Besides the megaship we had arrived on, four more had been assembled and were waiting, ready to carry us away. The original settlers were incredibly sad, and that included me and my friends. We'd committed to this world, and it pained us for it to end like this. We were also pragmatic enough to know when it was time to go, we'd be on the ship.

Oddly enough, with the reduced pressure of not having to stretch resources, Mars began to rebound. Births went up by 60% in the last 20 years, and the home scientists had found ways to partially restore our surface, and our people were living as we had five hundred years ago.

One of our deluded pioneers finally reached the engineering capacity to build a couple of ships capable of coming to the planet, though it took a very long time. By the time he reached the home planet, our people had built them a habitat, and soon enough disillusionment set in. He'd promised them untold riches and subservience, and had brought enough guns and ammunition to try and stage a coup.

When they attempted it, they discover our latent abilities of violence and retribution. Instead of fighting them, we blew up their ships, leaving them stranded on our planet. Then we withdrew, meeting each foray with withering assaults that decimated what troops they had left. Then we would leave them alone, and they slowly ran out of resources. In the end, they begged us to save them. We felt compassion, and spared their lives.

Then we sedated them and dropped them off on Earth. Everyone except their leader. He got left behind, stuck in his habitat, given ample food and water, leaving him to slowly go mad.

It was made worse by him looking out portals and seeing us walk the planet, knowing he couldn't come outside because his engineered genetics wouldn't allow it. He spent his time sending desperate messages to Earth, offering massive rewards if someone would rescue him. Those messages never made it, because we blocked them. The authorities were kind enough to let him view what was happening back on his home, the wars, the destruction, his empire crumbling slowly, and after the span of five earth years, he destroyed his own air system, and suffocated.

....................................................

Back on Earth, the situation was getting more dire as the years passed. Our people formed an informal militia, thwarting wars with quiet negotiation and occasionally, public assignation. Resources were dwindling, population out of control, the plutocrats still active in trying to destroy everything in the name of profits.

The Council now met three times a year, instead of just when the situation called for it. The vote wasn't unanimous, but the majority implemented a plan for an exodus. New ships were built and sat quietly, waiting to take us away.

By now most of the originals had died off, leaving second generation through fourth generations. A small minority were of pure Martian legacy, the rest from half to eighth our blood.

In the end, faced with extinction, the ones who were at least a fourth Martian were offered the chance to leave. The extra ships weren't needed, because most opted to stay to the end, especially when they were told they would probably die before another habitual planet was reached. To fill the other ships, we carefully recruited pure earth born, giving them an option to preserve their species. Those offered were sworn to secrecy, but humans were even more prone to gossip than Martians, and information got out.

It almost came to war between the planets as politicians, oligarchs, and militaries vied to seize the ships, even if they didn't know exactly where they were or how to board them. Anyone suspected of having Martian blood was detained and interrogated, usually interrogation by torture. The ones born here could tell them nothing even if they wanted to, but enough information was gleaned to arrest a few of the original settlers. That caused things to get...tense. They grabbed Milly and a few others, and were well on their way to torturing to death when we struck back. We grabbed most of the civilian leaders, and as many of the upper officers of their military as we could get to, and executed them one by one. They still refused to surrender them, so we killed everyone, then progressed to anyone even remotely related to the leadership. The economy was in chaos, the food supplies low, and the populace rioted, until anything bearing any semblance to government was eradicated. The few left bartered what remained of our people for safe passage, which we gave them. Then we hunted them to extinction all over the world.

.................................................................

In the end, we left for a brave new world. Three ships bound for three different planets. Our technology had advanced and space travel was much quicker, our research drones located planets much closer but still inhabitable. One was passed by because it already had a humanoid/Martian race that were in what equivalated to mid-sixteen century earth technological advancement. We left a couple of satellites to keep abreast of their progress and traveled on.

Most all on board were a new breed of humanoid, half Martian, half human. "Earthians" was what they called themselves. They exhibited the best of both species, as well as the worse. It was going to be a very interesting experience. Each ship had a council, a governing body to keep things on target.